#rambly*

[duckduckington]

Differences of the WoY visual style between the pilot and the final show (Along some other stuff) (Part 1)

So a crap-ton of cartoon show bibles and pilots surfaced recently, which is kind of fucking cool, and it included stuff from Wander over Yonder, which is way fucking cooler.

First thing I did was over-analyze the show's visual style and I figure I should put my findings somewhere, so here you go! In a chronological order, it's easier that way (and builds suspense for the real good stuff, ooohooooh (in a spooky ghost voice)).

The first shot alone already brings forth some differences. As far as I know, the show never illustrates space like this, entirely black with just a couple of stars to break the void. There's usually some blue star dust or something, kinda like this:

The skullship was planned to be 3D-animated apparently, instead of being drawn in the same style as the backgrounds. This allows for WAY more complex movements, since it's easier to pull off.

We then get to take a looksie inside of the ship... this isn't like ANYTHING in the show.

We do see control rooms on occasion, but not one like this. It's a circular room with rows of watchdogs on the wall, watching monitors, circulating the middle where Hater sits on his throne. The railings on its support carry Peepers and his cockpit. Two watchdogs control the ship (I think) at the front. That blue goop at the top might be the ship's brain (you can also already see some animation errors in the front, peep their grabbers). There ain't ever been a color palette inside the ship like this, they usually opt for red and black rather than red and white. This might have been their solution to making the characters native to Hater pop out against the background before deciding to just substitute black for purple.

There's still bright locations within the skullship, but they're non-threatening ones, like the food court.

Commander Peepers and the watchdogs have designs that, while closer to their final versions than the pitch bible (or whatever that cover of that graphic novel was supposed to be), carry some traits still worth pointing out (well, so does everything here, but pshhhshshhhshh).

SHINY

COLLARS

Puffy collars around necks, wrists and ankles.

Detailed irises.

Detailed soles on shoes.

Those lines on their gloves that you see in your grandpa's toons.

(bugs bunny pictured flipping the bird)

This is specific to Peepers; the jagged thunder-spike on his helmet has dimension to it, as opposed to the implied dimension in his final design. Spikes on the side are also way longer here.

His eye/face emotes differently by just utilizing a black eyelid, rather than turning the hat into a pseudo-eyebrow, kinda like Double D from Ed, Edd n' Eddy.

We then get a glimpse at Hater's design...

Despite his face missing, you can already see some differences, like his arms resembling more those of an actual skeleton and packing a lot less mass. His hood is also a bit more tout and the folds surrounding it have more empathis.

Another space shot with some shapes to break up the infinite black; it's not always you see a warm color palette for space in the actual show.

Maybe here, when Wander and Sylvia stop the sun from blowing up in "The Good Deed".

When entering the city that's about to get its shit stirred by Hater, we notice that there aren't ANY other locations illustrated like this. We usually have smooth, airbrushy looking stuff, when this is more reminiscent of a comic strip, with clear lines and some hatching to indicate weight here and there. Same goes for the townsfolk, they remind me of... Krazy Kat or something. Craig McCracken has gone on record saying he drew a lot of inspiration from old comic strips, but I don't know if Krazy Kat is one of them. I just thought of it :)

The inside of the skullship looked different so this place might have had an unique artstyle to other locations we would've seen in this version of the show, but that would also be a big difference since the actual show keeps the background style consistent throughout the whole run (as far as I know).

Goes in hand with the skullship; the watchdogs are 3D-animated here, although subtly.

Different gun designs... they look more like water guns here. Big ol' TUBES. Their guns in the show are more sci-fi-esque.

Hater's logo is different, in-line with his design. Way flatter design too. Might as well take a look at his actual face now.

Well, more like next time. Just found out you can only use up to 30 images in one post. Oopsies. I'll continue this when I have the energy! I'll continue my chronological analysis/rambling and perhaps talk about the general art-style and animation at the end. Might take me a couple of more posts.

[proxyedgy]

I devoured (pun intended) Dungeon Meshi in a week because I got curious about a manga page that came by my dash at some point. Amazing story and my favorite part has to be how the entire climax ends with the main villain going "Laios what do you have there in your mouth. Laios. Laios stop eating that this instant" very dog owner behaviour.

[butchbarneygumble]

"Bees make way too much honey anyway so it's ok to steal" listen here bucko I have approximately 200 individual pieces of Donkey Kong merchandise which is at least 180 more than the average person needs but I'll still throw a fit if someone decided to take even one of them

[mossandb0nes]

LISTEN!!

listen, human beings

I love you. You are so amazing. Keep on doing your best. If it's going well, hell yeah! If it's not, you can get through this.

And alterhumans!! Even if you don't consider yourself mentally/spiritually/psychologically human, you are still very cool and awesome and I love you!!

Everyone: be nice to yourself (and others), remember that your body is the only body you get so treat it well. Food is fuel. You are loved: if by nobody else, by me.

Ok I'm done rambling at you :)

[raggedles]

how to stop letting my emotions spike and ruin everything for everyone i love, no borax no glue

[bananabumbleb33]

I already miss boops

[featherlight-whispers]

i love jiang cheng immensely, but when i first watched mdzs i despised him. he reminded me too much of my father when he has a bad day. too angry. too unstable. too cold.

but as the chapters went by, i started unearthing the character and more reasons why i didn’t like him. he was the result of an abusive, dysfunctional household. just like my father. just like i am going to be when i grow older. and just like that, he started to grow on me. i started seeing my own anger in his scowls and scathing comments

jiang cheng was made to pick up on enormous responsibilities at a horrifyingly young age. he needed a defense mechanism, and as a grumpy person, anger was probably the easiest one to pick up. it’s the one he’s most familiar with, too. hiding a papier-mâché heart under rage is surprisingly easy

his defense mechanism is the flashiest one, especially compared to characters like nie huaisang (who literally depends on being the opposite to that), wei wuxian, and lan wangji. they’re all more subdued than him

i like subdued. but what i think draws me to jiang cheng, and sangcheng, too, is precisely how different jiang cheng is to the rest of the cast, the contrast between the headshaker and a man with a famously bad temper. he’s what i can become. what i fear to become, while nie huaisang, a smart man, someone who wears his masks to his advantage, beyond survival, is someone i want to become

what i want to say with this is that jiang cheng may be an asshole, and you might hate him for the very reasons i just said. but he’s someone’s comfort because seeing anger in a complex, genuine character displayed like that can be like a balm. sometimes i read a scene with him and it’s like being told “rage is valid. it’s not pretty. it’s not healthy long-term. but it’s a valid option too.”

[ali-dot-txt]

yo i played persona 5 for the first time (III)

Alright, so this post (previous one here and first post in the chain here) is going to be about my general final notes and about Hina as a character.

Despite all my gripes, I did end up enjoying the game. I wouldn't have poured 230 hours into it if I'd hated it.

But most of the enjoyment I wrung from it was a result of the mod and the personal headcanon I spent the whole game developing. I really don't think this game would've been for me without that, which is why I don't intend on playing Persona 4 (well, at least until that game's female protagonist mod gets off the ground). I might play Persona 3 Portable as that game's female protagonist after a little break, though.

The final tally of Hina's Confidants:

Sorry to all the Yusuke fans.

Everyone's final stats:

In 2017, this would be about 88,000 dollars? Which is an absurd amount of money for her to just have on hand.

Favorite characters? I guess I'll list the characters:

Hina (cop-out, i know, but I like her a lot)

Futaba

Haru

Lavenza/the twins

Sojiro

Sumire

Ann

Ryuji

Akechi (he really jumped up in the last arc)

Hifumi

Sae

Morgana (he really jumped very late in the game as well)

Yusuke (sorry, Yusuke fans)

Iwai (I feel like I'd like him more if I'd got further in his Confidant)

Chihaya (same as Iwai)

Makoto (a sudden and incredible fall)

Maruki (he's the worst therapist ever, but he's pretty interesting when he's not talking way too much and his final scenes are really good)

Skilled Gamer (gonna be real, I don't remember his name)

Ohya

Takemi

Mishima (would have preferred if he was removed entirely)

Hina never met Kawakami outside of class and never spoke to that politician.

Anyway, as for Hina...

She's maybe my favorite player character in any video game ever. The slight jankiness of her implementation lent her so much charm, and characterizing her was a ton of fun, especially with how close my trans headcanon seemed to the game's reality. Does that affection transfer to Akira/Ren, or other people's genderswapped Jokers? Well, no, not really. I can't say I'm an expert on the way people view Joker as a character, but from a cursory glance, I feel like Hina's distinct enough from the popular interpretation that she's basically an entirely different person slotted into the role of protagonist. Maybe that's conceited of me.

Hina has the most common family name in Japan, and I thought Hina was the most popular given name in Japan in 1999, the year she was probably born. Turns out that wasn't the case, Hina is actually much more popular recently. The actual most popular name for 1999? Miku. So if I'd had accurate data, she may well have been called Miku Satou. Probably not though.

Hina didn't have friends in her hometown, partially because she was really quiet as a kid and partially because everyone started avoiding her after she started coming to school in a girls' uniform.

Hina's parents have been supportive from the beginning. In fact, her name is from them (she requested it). Also, they sent her to Tokyo with a maid outfit in her box of stuff, which is extremely funny. She calls them once a week, early on Sundays. She doesn't tell them about her phantom thief activities.

Hina's legal name is changed, but not her legal gender (people only ever call her Hina, even in situations where they'd have only read her name off legal forms, so her name must legally be Hina).

Hina largely doesn't react when people misgender her because she's used to it.

When Maruki mentioned that Hina might make a good counselor herself someday, the headcanon wheels started turning in my head and I realized that that's really fucking good. Hina wants to go to university to become a youth counselor, because she saw what happens when someone has the worst counselor ever. Not to mention Hina wanting to help kids like her who might not react well to an authority figure telling them how to live is really sweet.

Hina's trying to create a real version of her Phantom Thief outfit she can wear casually. She has red gloves in her winter school outfit! Why else would she have those? She's going to get white glasses frames next.

Hina isn't good at talking to people, but she comes off as confident because she also has a hard time speaking in any particular tone, so she almost always seems to be talking without reservations.

Hina is an only child. (Fairly sure this is an element of most people's imagined Jokers. No way does this person have siblings.)

I don't think most of the harsh things I put in quotes to indicate that Hina said them are things she actually would say. I think she's probably thinking them.

Hina has a gaming PC in her hometown. Her buying that laptop was because she was going stir-crazy from not having access to a desktop computer.

Hina likes Morgana much more than I do. She doesn't think of him as a big brother (lmao), but she does love him like a brother.

In contrast, I think Hina has exactly as much disdain for Mishima as I have.

Hina isn't really invested in Akechi. She thinks he's a terrible weirdo who she wishes would stop talking to her. When she learns about his actual motivations, that switches to thinking of him as kind of pathetic. She wishes he would have talked to her about his issues at all, because she probably could have helped him deal with them like she helps literally everyone else, but she's not so broken up about him not being in her life anymore. (In contrast, I actually quite like Akechi now that I get what they were going for with him.)

Hina is good at schoolwork, but she's lacking in common sense.

Takemi actually never misgendered Hina, and Maruki only did so once. It's pretty funny how the medical professionals are consistently the least transphobic people in the game. I wonder why that is? 🤔

Hina got really good at making coffee and curry in the year she spent at Leblanc.

Hina being shorter than regular Joker is especially funny because her animation speed has to be adjusted, so she walks really fast in cutscenes where she moves places. She has to move that fast to keep up with people.

Hina's relationship with Haru is going to cause an absolutely awful scandal if it ever becomes public. I have no idea how they're going to deal with that, but hopefully they'll figure it out.

Hina doesn't really find any new friends when she moves back home, but she's alright with keeping to herself and focusing on her studies while having friends she can talk to online and a cat who can talk.

Hina might be rejected from a lot of universities for her criminal record or her transness. She might've had her record expunged, but she still spent time in juvie, not to mention the heavily political implications of her actions might risk scandal for any university that she enrolls in. She might end up having to apply to universities abroad, where the Phantom Thieves and the events surrounding them weren't so much in the public consciousness.

Anyway, that's Hina Satou. I might write fic for her someday? But she requires a lot of context to really understand her. I care about her a lot, and people understanding her is important to me for some reason.

And finally: some of my favorite screenshots of Hina.

[phatburd]

Sometimes I wish I knew something about Overwatch. Then I could actually do something about Jean-Baptiste Bessières being mistagged into Overwatch by writing the world’s worst fusion fic.

[proxyedgy]

The chaser, the runaway They are forming compositions of their feelings

I've wanted to draw these two for the longest time

[butchbarneygumble]

They need duolingo for programming/coding languages

[diogenescynic2288]

Gender Stuff and Hobbies

In fifth or sixth grade I was interested in the Babysitter's Club novel advertised in the monthly Scholastic Books advertisement catalog pamphlet thing. The description of the plot sounded like something that would be amusing to see on a sitcom. A girl classmate saw me circle it and teased me for being a boy that wanted to read a girl book. Also, my parents didn't end up ordering that one.

I don't have the experience some trans women have of: "I was always more into pink and dresses and Barbie than blue and trousers and GI Joe". I'm kind of neutral on colors*, I haven't tried wearing a dress yet, and I enjoyed playing with my GI Joe, He-Man, Thundercats, and Transformers action figures as a child.

I also did enjoy watching the GI Joe and He-Man and similar boys' action figure advertisement cartoon shows but the selection of things to watch was narrow enough that I also liked My Little Pony and Care Bears and She-Ra Princess of Power, which I think were more for the girls' marketing demographic.

I did own one She-Ra action figure that may have been a thrift store or garage sale find.

Somewhere I found out that one of the enjoyable things to read, for me, is books in the intersection of chick-lit and YA marketing demographics segments. Things like The Princess Diaries. Or everything Ally Carter writes.

Somewhere else I spent time on the internet and started learning that gender is a spectrum and that things like nonbinary and genderqueer identities exist, and had some realizations.

Recently I picked up the first of the graphic novel adaptations of the Babysitters' Club books and enjoyed reading it.

Most recently I had a good paycheck and felt like disposing of my disposable income in some specific ways I picked up the core rulebook for the Transformers RPG and another Babysitters' Club graphic novel, which seems to be second in the series: The Truth about Stacey.

I took that picture when I had both books with me. I finished reading the graphic novel in one long sitting at a restaurant. I'm still working on the Transformers. I'm about a hundred pages in, which is around a third of the way.

I was thinking of just posting that picture and a short text caption like "Enby's reading list", but it felt too reductive, and even though I am an enby and that is my reading list it sounded in my head too close to old people claiming schools have to put in cat boxes for catgender students. Don't ask me why.

*I do wear a bit more pink now as a deliberate FU to gender norms. In fact, I think when I get dressed and go out today I will wear my pink t-shirt with Wonder Woman circled by a rainbow.

Thank you to @thewizardofsass of enduring an early draft of this.

[iwantsomethingsoft]

Avoiding task -> sees tumblr notif -> opens tumblr -> scrolls for not even 5 min before losing all energy -> goes back to task that is being avoided and continues to not do it

[bananabumbleb33]

WERE ALMOST THERE CMON FRIENDS

[inurealea]

Now that I think about It, why did almost everyone assume that Undyne is gonna appear in chapter 3?? I mean Toriel did call the police, but Napstablook is also part of the police, so maybe they're gonna be the one that shows Up?

I think it would make sense since they are related to Mettaton, the one who is a TV star in Undertale, though not in Deltarune...

[lemon-mint813]

🍃tag nine people to get to know better🌽

tysm for the tag @foolishfreckles and @snfbabydrop ! 💖

🌊three ships: dnn, au!sunshipduo, c!drunz

⚓️first ever ship: Percabeth (I don't really know my first ship, but they were the first ones I got truly invested in and are just the og for me lol)

👀currently watching: Adventure Time! (My friends have been marathoning it and I pop in and out, it's been fun)

🎬last movie: Brave

📖currently reading: Chain of Iron by Cassandra Clare (I've only read the prologue but it's all I got for this question, trying to read anything other than fanfic these days is difficult ok aksnakdkjkpoekw)

🥦currently consuming: cereal! (Honey nut cheerios and rice krispies if you were curious) (yes in the same bowl it's very good trust me)

🥞currently craving: fresh hot white rice :(( (I miss home the rice at school isn't as good)

tags (apologies if you've already been tagged, also feel free to ignore this if you want! No pressure 💖): @nimonasnap @soyaintolerant @brightest-stars-blog @karl-not-found @luminal-space @wack-wizard @jupitersthirdstar (I know this isn't nine people but idk who else to tag I'm nervous ok /lh)