#if you want to obsess about a cartoon about a middle aged horse

[dovelydraws]

If you don't mind me asking,

What's art styles ended up influencing .. Well your art style?

Oh, this is a fun question, thank you for asking!

Hmm, I think it's a little hard to say since I've been drawing since I was basically a toddler, lol. Every little thing I've ever enjoyed has had some sort of influence. I'll try to go through the timeline though.

When I was a little kid, I had a special interest in zoology (still do! but it's not as obvious as it was back then.) I used to wake up first in the house specifically so I could turn on the tv to the animal planet channel and just watch documentaries all morning, and I carried a giant animal kingdom encyclopedia with me to school every day to just flip to random pages and read whatever popped up. During this time of my life, I pretty much exclusively drew animals- particularly elephants, canines, and horses. I had no interest in people.

I had no real interest in stylization at this point- obviously as a little kid I was never able to achieve perfect anatomy or anything like that, but I was more interested in making my animals look real than cartoonish- which meant I was never really influenced by the disney movies I was watching, since they stylized their animals so heavily.

I remember the dreamworks movie Spirit held my attention for a very long time, and I think it may particularly have been that way because the horses looked and acted more real than they did in disney movies. They were still stylized of course, it was a cartoon after all, but it wasn't to any extremes. I still find myself wanting to mimic that in my animals now; cartoon, but not cartoon-y.

I think these two gifs help illustrate my point lol.

After this exclusive animal obsession (followed by dinosaurs, and then dragons) I got really into Sonic the Hedgehog around age 11. Drew sonic characters, and made my own OCs for it, for basically the entirety of middle school. I've pointed out in the past that it seems the way I draw hands was heavily influenced by this phase

Very round, almost rubbery, where the ends of the fingers tend to flare out a little bigger than they are at the knuckles.

Then after sonic, I got into my first anime, Soul Eater, and this is really where I first started venturing into drawing people and more realistic human anatomy.

Interestingly, this artstyle seemed to also do the Sonic Hands thing, lol

After this I had a big anime phase, as well as just a general "I want to study actual human anatomy" phase during early high school. I was following a lot of skeletal/muscular system tutorials during this time.

Following that I started getting back into american media, in particular I remember invader zim, steven universe, and tmnt 2k12. I'm not sure I can really tell myself where the steven u artstyle is present in my own, but I've had people tell me they can tell I was into it at some point after saying so.

Then there was the Rubberhose Boom of 2017, with the release of Cuphead and BATIM very close together; I had a big hyperfixation on that artstyle specifically at that time, and I feel like I may owe some of the loose-ness in my artstyle to that.

Then, I suppose, we come to Rise of the TMNT. That show ended up being a major inspiration to me, and I think I owe a LOT of recent artistic growth to it. Rise pushed me out of my comfort zone big time. I always liked doing dynamic poses, but rise encouraged me to push things further, and I started drawing more backgrounds and making bolder color choices because of it as well.

I think my artstyle became just a bit more angular after drawing so much fanart as well.

And I suppose that's where I'm now at presently! Aside from media, I also can't say I'd be where I am artistically today without the influence and support of my many friends. :) I owe a lot of things about my artstyle, particularly specific things like my lineart, to compliments my friends paid me which made me pay more attention to the things I was doing accidentally that they happened to like, then making it purposeful and more refined as a result.

[danganronpa96]

So uhhhhh what Inspired you to do DR69 in the first place? Crossover Fangans are quite frequent as of now ( such as Cartoons In Danganronpa, totally not promoting one of my current favourite on going Fangans (; ) but nah on a serious note, just really curious to the upbringing of 69 and how the whole thought process with it's conception went yknow?

Ah yes, my origin story (or well the fic’s at least lol)

I did mention this in another post, but one day while I was scrolling through danganronpa fics (terrible decision, I know) I stumbled across a fic called DR9: Despair’s Counterattack (by PurpleDrank). Now, just by looking at the absurd but hilarious cast list, I was infatuated with the idea of placing random characters into a killing game. I knew of fangans that existed such as SDRA2, but I hadn’t really been exposed to the idea of crossover killing games until that fic.

I don’t think anyone knows this, but since I was young, I was obsessed with crossovers. And I mean obsessed. Not like those 2 TV shows having a crossover special kind of interest, no, like slapping characters from separate medias I enjoyed and just thinking about them doing stuff together. From the most trauma-torn grunge middle-aged man to a cartoon horse to a random anime girl just hanging out because… why not? It’s free, and no one can stop you.

And believe it or not, that hasn’t changed.

For fun, I was just like, “lol, what if I wrote down my own cast of characters that might be funny to see interact because it’s not like anyone’s gonna read it anyway.” Once I assembled the cast, it spiralled from there. Oh, who would be the protagonist? How would these characters look in my current artstyle? What would the first floor of the school look like? At that point I decided to abandon my current fixation on a set of old OCs and focus on creating this fic. Unlike DR9, I wanted to actually draw the images myself, seeing as how photo editing could only go so far with the intro cards and not for more dynamic CGs (still respect the use of it though cuz it does make things more visually engaging imo).

I remember trying to figure out how to produce my own murder cases. I was very interested to try and use ideas related to the characters involved in the case, which is why for the first case, the BDA image is a reference to a gag from spongebob, and the method of murder is directly tied to the murderer’s iconic ability in his game. I also remember drawing small diagrams and jotting down the truth bullets that could expand the case such as accounts in a notebook I had. This process has actually been used a bit for DR96 too — just using different mediums to help plan can really refresh your mind if you’re having trouble figuring things out.

I didn’t think the fic would get as popular as it did. Back then, I’m certain crossover fangans were not a huge thing, and definitely not as saturated as they are now. It was fun having a small following, but as things grew, it definitely was exhilarating as it was intimidating. But I don’t regret going through with it at all, as I’ve seen first hand how it’s inspired many, allowed people to connect and form friendships and even open people up to other medias.

So all in all, I’m just a big crossover fan and danganronpa is a strangely good medium for it, and makes for a pretty gruesome one at that lol

[truly-a-snitch]

Faerie Story Time

One of my few faerie stories is one that will haunt me until I die. I’m legit- I remember it like it was yesterday. I was nine at this time, IE 2014-15. This was four to five years ago.

I was an innocent young girl. I liked the color pink, I played with dolls, and I had an unhealthy obsession with faeries- specifically, the folk lore, not the stupid books about cartoon faeries that help people for the sake of helping.

Any time I brought up faerie folk lore at my school, all my friends would laugh and say ‘Oh, oh-fuck-an-emotion, you’re so funny! Faeries aren’t real!’ It really made me start to believe it- at least... until May 1st.

See, I had an unhealthy obsession with anything Norwegian or Irish folktales. And I mean unhealthy- sometimes I forgot to eat for a whole day because I would be so wrapped up, researching tales, finding plot holes, fixing them to make more sense- they still didn’t. Cmon, I was nine, what do you want?- but that particular day I decided I would go outside for once.

My parents weren’t overprotective. I chose to stay inside. They didn’t need to be. But I think they didn’t realize that letting me stay out after dark was a big mistake. My curfew was usually at 7:30, but since it was the first day of the month, my parents decided that meant it was okay. I don’t know. They’re weird.

I got to stay out until 10:30. They brought me and my brother, who was seven at the time, to a big field in the middle of nowhere and told us to have fun and not get eaten by horses.(my brother is deathly scared of horses for whatever reason.)

He stayed near my parents, but I climbed a giant hill. On top sat a circle of rocks- I almost felt tempted to step in it. Almost.

I turn to run back down the hill and I trip on a branch, falling backwards. Straight into the faerie ring.

My dad found me hours later- I was suddenly in a random forest, that I thankfully (somehow) recognized. I ran to the edge and climbed the hill again, expecting the rocks to still be there- but they were gone. In their place was a circle of random toys. I recognized all of them; a faerie figurine I’d lost a week earlier. A teddy bear that went missing a year ago. A broken mirror with a torn picture taped to it, showing my friend and half of my face. Several wooden blocks with letters on them I had been looking for for ages. Lastly, a switchblade- one my friend loaned me when I needed it for my summer camp- that I’d lost at the camp. She didn’t forgive me for that.

I sat down next to it and reached to pick up the toys when I felt a sharp pain in my hand. I jumped back.

I know I fell asleep at some point and I woke up in the car with all the toys that weren’t broken. My father explained that he searched until three AM to try and find me. My brother was asleep in his car seat next to me(we come from a family of short, light kids- he needed a car seat until he turned 10. I was lucky, getting out of mine when I turned 8.)

My mom explained to me how she found all of my things on the ground in a circle, and when she picked them up there were rocks underneath. She knows I’m superstitious about that; but she isn’t, and neither is my brother. My dad is, though.

I don’t remember much other than that- but I do remember the feeling that I was utterly alone, knowing that if I didn’t stay out of the fae’s business they’d find me. Since that day it’s like I’ve been cursed- I trip on nothing, get sick for important days, choke on my own words- I have yet to break a bone, but I feel that the fae put me up to this and they won’t stop until I repay them somehow.

Share your stories so I can know that I’m not just insane, please

[the-desolated-quill]

Deep Breath - Doctor Who blog (New Doctor, Same Bullshit)

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

I was very cross going into Deep Breath back in 2014, and before I talk about this episode, I’d like to quickly address all the bullshit that surrounded the buildup to the Twelfth Doctor.

Moffat kept saying how Series 8 was going to represent a brand new direction for the series and that this new Doctor would be so different to any we’ve seen before. He even hinted at the possibility of a female and/or non-white Doctor, saying there was no reason why it couldn’t happen. Who did we end up with? Peter Capaldi! Wow! A middle aged white guy?! Never seen one of those before!

Now before @furrychimp has a go at me, I’ve got nothing against Peter Capaldi. He’s a brilliant actor and I was confident he’d be great in the role. That’s not the issue. The problem I had was that Peter Capaldi was the only actor auditioned for the role. Moffat didn’t even try to think outside the box or look elsewhere. I’m not angry because Capaldi was cast in the role. I’m angry because of the wasted opportunity here. It was a year after the 50th anniversary. A chance to break new ground and try something different, and Moffat didn’t take it. If Moffat knew a non-white, non male Doctor wasn’t on the cards, why in God’s name did he keep banging on about it? It’s like I said in my review of A Good Man Goes To War, he’s more concerned with looking progressive than actually being progressive. Anyone can say there needs to be more diversity or that there needs to be change, but unless someone within the industry actually pulls their finger out and does something about it, those are just empty, meaningless words.

‘Oh but Capaldi is a lot older than previous Doctors.’

Bollocks! He was 55! That’s not old! And besides, we’ve had older Doctors before. He’s not even the first actor to play an older Doctor in New Who, or have we all conveniently forgotten about John Hurt all of a sudden? This is nothing new or original. And while I’m on the subject of his age, good God how fucking patronising were the press at the time? Listening to them, you’d think Capaldi was a 200 year old corpse that had arisen from his tomb and was at risk of collapsing into a pile of bones by the end of the series. The whole obsession with his age was seriously odd on both sides (those who thought this was some kind of cheap novelty and those who thought Capaldi was so weak and frail that he wouldn’t be able to get around the TARDIS without the use of a motorised wheelchair).

And then there’s the promise that the show was going to get a lot darker than it was before, to the point where the BBC pushed the show further back in the schedules so that you knew how dark this was going to get. This isn’t teatime entertainment anymore. It has to be broadcast at 8:00pm because it’s going to be so much daaaaaarker. 

Well... we’ve all seen Deep Breath. We all know that was bollocks.

Seriously, how is this any different from an episode in the Matt Smith era? (apart from the fact that Peter Capaldi is less zany and more tolerable than Matt Smith was). It still has the same goofiness and forced whimsey to it (more on that later). In fact some of the humour is actually worse than the Matt Smith era’s. When Madame Vastra tricks the Doctor into forming a psychic link with her so she can put him to sleep, they actually had the fucking nerve to add a comedy cartoon sound effect when he falls unconscious. How fucking desperate can you get?!

But what really strikes me about Deep Breath is how utterly unoriginal it all is. The clockwork robots are back from the overrated Girl In the Fireplace and they’re basically just doing the same shit as they did before only with an extra helping of stupid sprinkled onto them for good measure. ‘Don’t breathe’ is basically the same gimmick as ‘don’t blink’, but whereas ‘don’t blink’ made the Weeping Angels bloody terrifying, ‘don’t breathe’ just makes the clockwork robots laughably inept. A lot of the plot is similar to The Talons Of Weng-Chiang and we’ve seen dinosaurs in London before in Invasion of The Dinosaurs. Not to mention all the lines taken straight from the classic series that Moffat is determined to grind into the dirt (I swear if I hear the ‘you’ve redecorated’ gag one more time, I’m going to scream). Is this what constitutes a brave new direction now? Rehashing plots and concepts from previous stories rather than coming up with your own ideas? Moffat, go stick one of your BAFTAs up your arse. Best place for it as far as I’m concerned.

What’s worse is that this episode has been extended to an hour and 15 minutes, most of which seems to consist of extra scenes of the Paternoster Gang being their usual unfunny selves. At this point it’s not just that they’re boring, underdeveloped and utterly uninteresting characters that bothers me, but also that they are making the Doctor’s universe too small. The man has travelled all across time and space, Surely he must know some other people who would be willing to help him. Why do we keep having to come back to the Paternosters? Strax is still fucking irritating (how can he not tell the difference between an eye and a mouth? Humans and Sontarans aren’t that different. And what was even the fucking point of that medical checkup anyway other than to pad out the runtime?), and I really take issue with how Vastra and Jenny are written. I’ve taken issue with how Moffat presents LGBT characters in his stories before, but this just takes the cake. The episode constantly finds ways to patronise and objectify Jenny while Vastra plays a ‘man with boobs’ type role. And it gets worse when Clara gets involved and we see Vastra start to morph into the predatory lesbian stereotype. Call me picky, but I think we deserve better representation that that. And don’t get me started on that bullshit ‘oxygen share’ kiss. Doctor Who has never been apologetic about two heterosexuals kissing, so why should it treat two homosexuals any differently? It’s just wrong! If they’re open and okay about same sex marriage, why are they being so coy about two lesbian partners being intimate with each other?

So let’s talk about the Twelfth Doctor. Despite my anger and frustration towards the circumstances surrounding his casting, I knew Capaldi would make a great Doctor and he does do a good job in the role for the most part. I liked the stuff at the beginning where the Doctor is really confused and was having memory problems. You could almost draw parallels between him and someone suffering from a memory disorder like Alzheimer’s and it’s genuinely unnerving to see the Doctor in such a high level of distress. I also really liked his final confrontation with the robot and the moral ambiguity of whether or not he pushed him. This is a very different Doctor from Matt Smith and I’m curious to see where they take him (remember I haven’t seen any episodes past Kill The Moon, so I genuinely have no idea what happens to him). Unfortunately all of this is punctured by the usual shit you find in post regeneration episodes. A lot of crazy goofiness and pondering over whether or not this is the same man as before. Admittedly the latter was interesting at first, and The Christmas Invasion did add some dramatic weight to it what with the Doctor being the last of his race and therefore having a more personal connection with Rose than he did with any other companion as a result, but after the twelfth time you’ve done it, you’re just bored by this point. Is the Doctor the same person as before? Er... Kind of. That should be firmly established by now considering the number of bloody times the show has asked this question. Can we move on?

A lot of times I feel Capaldi is scuppered by the humour. He can be a great comedic actor, but this sort of material just doesn’t work with him. It’s too whimsical and eccentric, like the whole sequence with the horse or him calling the dinosaur a big sexy woman. It feels like Moffat is still writing for Matt Smith and it just doesn’t sound right coming out of Capaldi’s mouth. And then there’s the painfully obvious metaphors. There’s a lot you could interpret about the Doctor from what you see on screen. The similarities between him and the robot, and how they both change and replace body parts to the point where you could argue they’re not the same people they originally were. The similarities between him and Vastra, both hiding behind some kind of mask in order to feel accepted. All potentially interesting, but what ruins it is Moffat’s need to fucking spell it out for us. How about crediting your audience with some intelligence?

I really hope Chris Chibnall doesn’t go through all this shit when Jodie Whittaker takes over. In my view, all post regeneration episodes should be like The Eleventh Hour. New body, new personality and then it’s business as usual.

But by far the worst aspect of Deep Breath is Clara. I can understand being worried about the Doctor’s memory problems and state of mind, but that’s clearly not the case at all. Clara is more concerned that the Doctor has gotten visibly older, which is beyond absurd. She’s seen all of the previous Doctors. She’s met the War Doctor. Why should the Twelfth Doctor be a shock to her? Vastra says it’s because the Doctor is no longer young and sexy and, no matter how much Clara tries to deny it, that’s pretty much the only reason I can think of why she’d be angry at the Doctor. I honestly can’t see any other alternative. It doesn’t make any sense why she would be this shocked about the Doctor’s regeneration. At one point she even asks how they change him back. It just makes her come across as really shallow and selfish (not a narcissist or an egomaniac. Seriously Moffat, try browsing a dictionary some time). But what really gets me is that the episode clearly expects you to be on Clara’s side, even going so far as to try to imply that the Doctor is so different now that he has at one point abandoned Clara and left her to die, which I didn’t buy for a second. The First Doctor may well have done that, but he’s a very different man by now. Does she have to stay as the companion? They even wheel out Matt Smith again for yet another goodbye speech to reassure her about Peter Capaldi, which was just plain silly. I suspect the BBC were a little worried that people wouldn’t accept an older, less romantic Doctor. I think the BBC need to have a bit more faith in the audience. May I remind everyone that Doctor Who lasted nearly 30 years without the need to shove in any Doctor/companion romances or snogging and people loved it?

And finally we get Michelle Gomez pissing about in a garden. Who is this mysterious and clearly crazy woman who appears to have intimate knowledge of the Doctor? Gee, it couldn’t be the Master, could it? Oh no! Of course not! The Master is a man! And besides, Moffat would NEVER do a plot twist that bloody obvious.

So what is the Promised Land? I don’t know and I don’t really care to tell you the truth. i’ve become so sick and tired of Moffat’s convoluted series arcs and endless intrigue that I honestly can’t even muster up the energy to even be mildly curious about it.

Deep Breath is an uncreative, boring and lazy start to Series 8. That being said, the Twelfth Doctor does show promise. We’ll see where they go from here.

[dlamp-dictator]

Allen’s Rambling XXVIII: It’s just a [         ] (Fandoms)

So yesterday on one of my RP blogs I talked about making a blog for a character from the Fate franchise since I’m playing Fate/EXTRA and getting reacquainted with the Fate series in general. An anon was nice enough to give me a bit of a brush up on Fate lore, but told me that the Fate RP community had a reputation of being unwelcoming, to which I gave this response: 

Dude, I’ve been forged in the fires of Gaia Online’s RP forums, trudged through the Touhou, Dangan Ronpa, and Blazblue RP communities my first three years of RPing on Tumblr, and have dealt with 18+ RP forums off this site. There’s not much I haven’t seen or dealt with in terms of difficult (RP) communities and fandoms.

After that, the anon asked me why I would then go an RP community with a bad reputation when I’ve already experienced similar issues with others. I told that anon that specific question was Ramble-worthy, but the short version was that I’m older, wiser, and know what to look out for in terms of figuring out how a community behaves nowaday. Now, I’m not gonna’ talk about RP stuff since this is my personal blog and all, but I did want to talk about fandoms and my general view of them.

Honestly? I could care less about the behaviors and tendencies of a fandom. 

To give my general opinion, I don’t think any fandom is bad. I think some fandoms have rather loud, rather toxic voices in them at times, but at the end of the day whatever we’re into, whatever we’re talking about making ships and fanfiction about is just a game. It’s just a show. It’s just a book. It’s just a comic, and so on. These things are just pieces of media and it’s when one try to make them something more than that is when I get worried about that person.

As far as my own involvement in fandoms go I do quite a bit. I write lyrics to the BGMs of videos games I’m into, namely fighting games. I occasionally do comedic or serious graphics. I write fanfiction when the mood strikes me. I make RP blogs and write stupid, crazy crack plots with other RP writers. I’m... not linking that last one since I don’t do canon RP blogs as much anymore, but you get the point. I do all these things in the fandoms I’m in, but I try not to let them consume me. I’ll spend a solid 5 hours on a fanfic and lyrics, but that’s mostly out of my pride as a writer and lyricist, not my obsession with the fandom... I hope anyway. -_-;; 

That’s not to say I can’t take semi-critically look at a thing and pick it apart if I felt like (just wait until I start comparing FE: Fates and FE: Echoes), but I do realize it’s just a piece of media in the end, and whatever I say about is just my opinion. Whatever feelings we have about a certain thing, I hope we can all realize that these pieces of media don’t matter at the end of the day, it’s not destroying people’s lives, it’s not plaguing the nation with disease and famine. It’s just... a thing. I know a lot of people know this, but I think it’s worth saying to remind everyone that it really is just a piece of media at the end of the day. 

This isn’t to say that shows and media don’t effect people, they do. 90% of the interests I have now are due to media. My interest in fighting games and shounen anime had me taking martial arts when I was in middle school. My love of manga and anime inspired me to draw. All the cheesy YA books I read made me want to write. My interest in writing lyrics actually came from the Blazblue LA Vocals. Half the reason I wanted to play an instrument was to play my favorite video game BGMs. Hell, I got into rollerblading, a passion I’ve had since I was ten, solely because Shadow the Hedgehog was and still is my favorite character in the Sonic the Hedgehog series. When people asked me how I was able to rollerblade so well so quickly I just said it came naturally. No, what I really did was analyse Shadow the Hedgehog’s animations in SA2 so obsessively and Radical Highway so often that when I copied them at age 10 I was rollerblading perfectly with little assistance. No, fandom and media can push you to do many things, I won’t deny that. However, just know that when something about a fandom is making you upset and angry, it’s the people and not the media. And if the media is making you upset, then it’s time to find a new piece of media.

Of course, I have my fair share of annoyances with fandoms too. The fighting game community can be quite annoying when patches and update go through and I have to read through text wall upon text wall of complaints, “git gud” is an honest-to-god trigger word for me, and hearing commentators talk about who has skill in a game and who doesn’t just... drives me up a wall sometimes as a casual player, even if I can see where they’re coming from. I swear the next shounen/action anime that makes people spam it’s yaoi ships at me out of some social justice nonsense will be block. The next time I hear some asinine western cartoon discourse about horses and space rocks I might just scream, but... all the same, I don’t think fandoms are bad, you just have to find what you want to see and tolerate what you don’t... or block it, whatever works for you. At the end of the day, it’s just a piece of media, and if the people surrounding that media make you uneasy, then just enjoy the thing privately with those you trust and tolerate, nothing wrong if that. 

I mean, there’s a reason I tag my Video Game Updates and not my Anime Updates after all.