#sort of right? i took inspiration from 2000s cartoons anyways

[biptari]

attempt at a fake cartoon screenshot WOO! i always liked the deleted mall scene

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Charles Schulz vs Andrew Dobson: What a Blockhead!

There are certain things about Dobson’s behavior and particularly his approach at being a nerd and presenting himself as someone who enjoys the art of storytelling that I have issues with. Issues I want to tackle on in more detail within later entries quite a bit.

One such tendency is, that he mocks directly or indirectly the work and accomplishments of others.

See, if Dobson doesn’t like you as a content creator because he does not like something you work on, he will try to show it. He will make stupid assumptions of you (like how he accused Kojima of being a sexist creep because of Quiet and how he deals with “male gaze” in MGS compared to Death Stranding), half heartedly mock you (look at anything he makes about Ethan Van Sciver) or he will call a piece of work boring and dull based on a minor element instead of overarching problems (calling Batman the character a white supremacist based on the dumb work of only one author).

By doing that he also tries indirectly to insinuate that he is better in some manner, though most of the time it really just shows his own ego and that his pet peeves are rather petty compared to the overall quality of the work he criticizes as well as its flaws.

One such sight of ego boosting while mocking the work of his better is in my opinion to be found in this comic he uploaded sometimes around 2016/17 randomly online.

This comic in my opinion is both laughable and insulting. Why? I will explain soon.

First however I want to clarify that I get that this comic is supposed to be a joke mostly. The old “What others expect, what I expect” thing, where the punchline is supposed to be the discrepancy between the two fractions and what they expect, mostly by making one of the expectations come off as worse than the other. However, I find the punchline to be Charlie Brown (and as such what Dobson seems to see as something he does not want to be favorable compared too) quite insulting. Why, as I said, will be elaborated on sooner.

First, let me just get on the part I find laughable: The fact that Dobson in his own head seems to believe he can be even remotely compared to people like Paul Dinni, Bruce Timm, Greg Weismann, Justin Roiland, Miyazaki, Shigeru Miyamoto and all the other character creators and animators whose creations we see in the first panel.

 Dobson, don’t make me laugh. Putting aside the fact that those people are animators more than cartoonists, what makes you even believe in your wildest dreams you are on the same level as them? The fact you too are an animator, seeing how you graduated from an art school with a degree in that field? I have seen your contributions to the field and honestly, I would expect a bit more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0tdWNCrIxo

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps6PfiUCxHQ

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PyonOqClf8

 I give you credit, you can animate. Which is more than I can say for myself when it comes to the arts. But when you look what other freelance animators can do online, some of them younger than you and NOT with a degree in animation…

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=64&v=FmkAcGz1BJk&feature=emb_title

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97IfPfjSaDg

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEUoxQ4qSfs

 Viviepop’s demo reels alone are just gorgeous to look at and more fluid than what I have seen of you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFlha-KOKCc

 And it is not just the technical quality, Dobson. It is also just the overall “originality” of your work. Cause this is the thing with those animators hinted on in the first pic and even many, many freelancers/fanartists as well as webcomic creators online: They have a spark of originality in presentation and storytelling that you lack. I will one day go more into detail for that, but here is the most brutal thing I can say at the moment: I know shitty porn fanfictions, that have more plot development and character growth than all of Alex ze Pirate.

Your characters and stories tend to be derivative and you barely take any risks in telling a story. Neither in your fanbased work (like the Miraculous comics) nor your original content (mostly because you take comfort in four panel strips anyway)  and when you have an idea for something on which the basis idea actually sounds good, you screw it up by a lackluster execution. One example I want to give for that, would be this fanart of yours in regard to Steven Universe.  

(I apologize for not getting one in better quality) This pic was something Dobson created around 2015 for Steven Universe. The picture is supposed to show Lapis, trapped under the ocean following the events of the season 1 finale of the show. A very emotional situation if you are aware of why Lapis sacrificed herself and was “banned” to the ocean floor. Short explanation: Fused with Jasper and then took primarily control of the fused being they became (Malachite) by using her water powers to bond it with heavy water chains on the ocean floor, so that Jasper would not hurt Steven anymore.

 How much of that was even an emotional strain on her and her psyche was in one episode of season 2 even a theme, as seen here.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK3l8mGNhMg

 I am not even a fan of the show and I get the emotional weight and impact of Lapis actions.

So… why is that not conveyed in the artwork? If you are so talented Dobson, why is none of the strain and despair on the character? The idea of a pic showing Lapis under water, longingly looking up, even in despair is a good basis for a fanart. But the execution lacks any emotional detail. You want to know how I would execute the thing if I had the artistic talent? Make the picture a huge horizontal pic, where we slowly decent from water surface down the ocean. The light getting dimmer. Blue turning into dark. The silhouette of a hand and an arm similar to Malachite’s in the background, trying to travel up, the fingertips barely touching the surface. Heavy chains around the flesh. Symbolic of the fusion trying to break free and cause havoc. And down on the dark bottom, beaten and exhausted Lapis with tears in her eyes and chains all over her body like she is Jacob Marley, desperately trying to keep Malachite at bay for the sake of the only being on earth who ever showed just a little bit of kindness towards her.

 Why can’t we have something like this here, Dobson? If you were even remotely as original as the creators you want to be compared with, I think you could come up with something like that and perhaps even draw it.

But you know, his delusions of being as good as them is one thing. It is even funny.

Pissing over the Peanuts is another. Dobson, what are you trying to hint at?

That people comparing you to Charles Schulz and his creation is in your eyes automatically a sort of insult? That it is something that should at best only be a mockable punchline in a comparison?

Just to clarify a few things: I am NOT much of a fan of Charlie Brown and the Peanuts as a property. As a child, I was just not very entertained by them. Yes, I saw animated movies, episodes and specials of them here and there and my grandparents gave me volumes of them to read, but as a whole I never thought them quite as entertaining than other comics or cartoons I watched. Some parts of Peanuts animation felt to me often times like just dead air (especially parts of Snooby dancing with Woodstuck, as they had no function to move the plots forward) and I really could not stand how some characters treat Charles on a regular basis. I mean, we all agree that Lucy is one of the worst female characters in fiction and that even while we hate Family Guy, this clip likely gave some of us some sort of satisfaction, right?

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZkJAx8FycI

 But before the Peanuts fan out there go and want my head on a silver platter, let me make one thing clear: I may not like the Peanuts franchise… but I respect it and the man behind it.

 Charles Schulz drew the comic strip from October 1950 till late 1999 (the final strip being finished months before it would be published on February 13 of 2000, one day after he died of colon cancer) , creating a total amount of 17,897 Peanuts’ strips. His work marks a major impact in the nature of newspaper comic strips and inspired many people out there, including Bill Watterson, to create comics or be in the field of animation. His achievements include among other things, that he created what many people consider the first animated Christmas special ever. The names of his creations became nicknames for the Apollo 10 command module and its’ lunar modul. Four of the five Peanuts movies in existence (animated made for tv specials not withstanding now) were written by him. And the fifth was only not by him, because that one came out in 2015, a decade and a half after he died.

And speaking of things Schulz wrote for the Peanuts, let me mention two things. Two things that though I am not a fan of the Peanuts, I have mad respect for existing in the realm of animation. Two animated specials that stuck with me ever since I was eight.

 “What have we learnt, Charlie Brown?” from 1983 and “Why, Charlie Brown, Why?” from 1990.

 In the first special, which functions as a semi sequel to the fourth Peanuts’ movie “Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown”, the characters actually travel across France and after ending up on Omaha Beach and Ypres the special turns into a tribute to the soldiers who fought in World War 1 and 2, elaborating on the sacrifices made during the war by showing actual footage of fights, recordings of Eisenhower and reciting the poem “In Flanders Fields” among other things. Do you know how impactful it is to learn about the world wars as a small kid, by being reminded of the actual sacrifices others made in order for your own grandparents to survive?

 And speaking of grandparents, I lost my grandmother as a child by cancer. So when I saw the second special I mentioned, you can bet it stuck with me. After all, of all the things in the world, the Peanuts addressing the seriousness of cancer by having a story where a friend of Linus is diagnosed with leukemia and we follow the emotional impact it has on Linus and the girl? Again, I may not like the franchise, but I am not ashamed to admit I think the special treats the subject with a lot of respect and dignity while telling a good story. You bet your ass I get a bit teary eyed when the little girl survives her leukemia treatment and finally gets on that swing again. Those two specials alone are more mature than ¾ of the shit Dobson likes to gosh about, including his oh so precious gay space rocks. And just for those things existing I have respect for Schulz, his creation and the impact it had on so many people. As such, Dobson “belittling” the Peanuts, at least for me, is a freaking insult. The only way Dobson could have been even more insulting is if he called Schulz something derogative.  Dobson should be glad if his life’s work in total could even amount to 10% of what Schulz has done and achieved.

 Cause Dobson, you are NOT a Charles Schulz. Schulz served during the second world war on the front, fighting actual Nazis instead of calling idiots on the internet fascists for not liking Star Wars. He had integrity and work ethics that drove him to draw and write over 17.000 strips, while you can not even finish one FREAKING story. He knew how to tackle a mature subject, while you make shitty shipping jokes involving Ladybug and Cat Noir and claim Steven Universe knows how to be about psychological trauma, when it just romanticizes abuse. He may have drawn simplistically, but at least he could tell a joke instead of constantly berating others for not sharing his opinion. He did all of that and more without having graduated from college.

 And what have you done, Andrew Dobson?

If Dobson reads this, there is one thing in my opinion he should take away from more than anything else: That if people compare him to Charles Schulz’s work, that it means a) he should not be ashamed of it and b) they overestimate him.

[duhragonball]

Continuity

I’m still reading Star Wars comics from the original Marvel run of 1977-1986.   Last night, I made it to the Return of the Jedi adaptation, so now I’ve read all the issues set between that movie and Empire Strikes Back.   As I expected, these comics (#45-80) feel a lot more like authentic Star Wars stories than the pre-ESB issues (#7-38).   The biggest plot hole that I noticed was that Luke still has his lightsaber throughout this period, despite losing it on Bepsin. 

It occurred to me later that this wasn’t necessarily a mistake.   There’s a deleted scene from ROTJ which shows Luke assembling his new lightsaber right before the mission to save Han Solo from Jabba the Hut.   This strongly implies that Luke didn’t have a lightsaber of his own between Episodes V and VI.   This was further supported by the ROTJ radio drama, produced in 1996, which incorporates the deleted scene into the story.   There, Luke expresses frustration with how difficult it is to build a lightsaber, and then he finally realizes that he should have been using the Force to assemble the pieces.   I haven’t read the novelization of the movie, but maybe it was touched on there as well. 

  Later sources indicated that building your own lightsaber is the final ritual for completing your Jedi training.   This is shown in the 2002 Clone Wars cartoon, where Barriss Offee assembles her own saber on Ilum, under the supervision of Luminara Unduli.  I’m pretty sure this scene was inspired by Darth Vader’s line in ROTJ, when he observed that Luke’s training is complete after checking out his badass green lightsaber.   The implication is that building your own lightsaber is difficult enough that Luke would have to be a Jedi Knight just to pull it off.

But in the early 80′s, none of that lore existed, and it would be a simple matter for writers to assume that Luke had no trouble at all getting a spare.  What I find strange is that no one bothered to explain where this spare lightsaber came from.    It’s like the writers just assumed he never lost the first one, but that’s crazy.

Really, the artists on the original Star Wars comics never seemed to be able to keep track of the lightsabers to begin with.    In the early comics, they paid no heed to the color schemes or hilt designs at all.    Not that I would expect late 70′s artists to really worry about props from a movie that had just come out, but they kept coloring all the lightsaber blades at random, and drawing the hilts way too short and thick.  Luke and Vader looked like they were holding soda cans.   The art started to get more true to the movies when Tom Palmer got involved, but one thing I started to notice was how the artists would draw Luke and Vader’s lightsabers on their belts, even when they were holding them, ignited, in their hands.   It was like the artists recognized the lightsaber hilts as part of the characters’ costumes, but they didn’t understand what they were.    I can’t really blame them for this, since the big column of light was what really drew everyone’s attention in the theaters, and it wasn’t like they could look up hilt schematics on Wookieepedia like you can now.  

Anyway, it struck me as kind of interesting how something minor like that can start off as an oversight, and then be easily corrected, or magnified into a major plot hole.    It’d be pretty simple to explain Luke’s between-movie lightsaber. 

Obi-Wan Kenobi had a spare tucked away somewhere, and Luke had been keeping it in storage just in case something like this happened.

Yoda had a spare, and Luke took it with him when he went to Bespin, and put it inside R2-D2′s lightsaber compartment for safe keeping.

Luke found a new lightsaber on a mission.

Luke built a new lightsaber to replace his old one, then lost that guy, requiring him to build the green one in ROTJ.

Luke found/constructed a replacement weapon, but it’s actually a knockoff “laser sword” and it doesn’t work as well as a genuine Jedi design, but it got the job done until he could do the job right.

I find it curious that no one ever bothered to tell any of those stories, though.   The Expanded Universe era of Star Wars multimedia seemed determined to sew up as many continuity problems as possible.   Some writer in the 2000′s did a story to establish that Jedi would swap lightsabers as a gesture of mutual respect, just to explain why Mace Windu’s action figure has a different lightsaber design than the one he has in the movies.   I’m not too worried about this stuff, and I don’t think Jo Duffy or David Michelinie were too worried about this stuff when they wrote Luke carving up Stormtroopers in Star Wars #45-80, but between 1994 and 2008, there were people working for Lucasfilm who were paid to worry about this stuff.   I’m genuinely surprised that no one ever got around to penning Star Wars: Luke’s Spare Lightsaber: The Lobot Chronicles: Dark Tidings.

It’s the little things like this that get lost in the shuffle, I’ve found.   When you read a Star Wars novel or comic book, the major characters are always very consistently portrayed, and the story always sticks very closely to the groundwork laid down in whatever movies were around at the time.   Star Wars #45-80 excelled at this.   Every issue was either about the good guys searching for Han Solo, or dealing with a crisis big enough to pull them away from the search for Han Solo.   I was disappointed that they didn’t spend much time at all having Luke work on his Jedi training, or trying to make sense of Darth Vader being his father, but I think Marvel knew the next movie would address that, so they knew not to wade too deep into that stream.  

The stuff that gets changed the most is the minor characters.   I read one issue where they basically established that Wedge Antilles never made it off the base on Hoth in ESB.   He and “Nice Shot” Jansen had to take cover in the AT-AT Luke blew up, and then they lived in what was left of the base while they waited for the imperials to clear out.   He was stranded there for months, and it was a pretty cool story, but I’m betting that later Star Wars writers decided to ignore this, because they wanted to use Wedge in other stories during that period.  

General Tagge’s another interesting example.   He was the guy on the Death Star in Episode IV, the one who warned that the Death Star was vulnerable while the Rebels had the stolen plans.   Tagge’s kind of a walking continuity error to begin with, because everyone kept getting him mixed up with Admiral Motti, the guy who sassed Vader and got choked out for his lack of faith.  In the Archie Goodwin run on Star Wars, Tagge was killed in the movie when the Death Star exploded, but his brothers and sister turned up as recurring villains with a grudge against the Rebels and Vader alike.  Flash forward to 2015, when Disney took over Lucasfilm, and in the new continuity, Tagge survived the Death Star’s destruction because he happened to leave  right before it went to Yavin IV to get blown up.   This was done mainly to set him up as a rival to Darth Vader in the 2015 Darth Vader comic.    I guess they figured there was no reason to invent new characters when they could just salvage some of the officers from the movie.  Tagge feels more authentic than his siblings because we actually saw him on film.   He’s a “real” Star Wars guy, while rest of his family are just cartoons.    I think that’s the attitude anyway.    Back in 1978, they were probably eager to create new characters because they had tons of world-building to do.   So the 2010′s Marvel comics don’t square with the 1970′s Marvel comics at all, especially where the Tagges are concerned, but Darth Vader’s dealings with them feel pretty consistent.   

The reason I bring up all of this is because I used to think that the continuity in Star Wars was never terribly complicated.   When production of  The Force Awakens got started, Lucasfilm announced that they were rebooting the whole Star Wars canon, declaring all the Expanded Universe content as “Legends”, which no longer counted as official continuity.  The only hard canon sources from now on were the movies, the Clone Wars TV series, and anything published after that announcement.   Naturally, all the post-Return-of-the-Jedi stories would be off the board, which only made sense to me, seeing as Force Awakens would contradict it.   But I figured the other stories could still be made to fit together somehow, since none of them had anything to do with Rey or Kylo Ren or the First Order, or whatever.   

But really, it’s been like that all along.    The novels and comics would introduce some idea, and others would build on it, and then George Lucas would override it with his next project.   Then the writers would have to pick up the pieces.  The 2008-2013 Clone Wars TV series trampled on a lot of continuity from the 2002-2005 Clone Wars books and comics, primarily because George Lucas worked on the TV series, and he was the final word on this stuff.   That announcement in 2014 pissed off a lot of Expanded Universe fans (so much that they bought a bunch of billboards to complain about it), but it was kind of inevitable.   They’ll probably have to wipe the slate clean again around 2040 or so, because there’ll be enough new movies that the comics and novels won’t align with them.

I sort of half-joke about my own fanfiction getting this kind of treatment.   My goal is to write stories that could fit into the established continuity, but I can only work with the continuity I know.    With Dragon Ball, that was easy, until Dragon Ball Super got underway, and Akira Toriyama started writing new stuff.    It was pretty easy to write my own female Super Saiyan, until DBS introduced a couple of their own, and now I have to wonder if they’ll say or do something that might contradict my own take.    Likewise, this Broly movie might establish some new lore that I need to take into consideration.    I can write new material to work around those things, but the stuff I’ve already written is pretty much locked in.    My private joke is that in any of these new animations, a character will just stare at the screen and coldly announce that “Mike’s fanfic never happened.”  

But that’s pretty much what Lucasfilm has been doing to the novel and comics writers for over forty years.    “Splinter of the Mind’s Eye” would have been the official sequel to Star Wars if Empire Strikes Back hadn’t been funded.   Instead, Dengar and Bossk looked at the screen and said “Alan Dean Foster’s novel never happened.”    Return of the Jedi killed every Luke/Leia shipper’s hopes and dreams.    “Oh, those fanfics never happened, my young friend,” Ben Kenobi said from beyond the grave.    Attack of the Clones wreaked all sorts of havoc on Boba Fett’s backstory.   The Force Awakens wrecked the Skywalker-Solo family tree.   “Han and Leia only had one kid, and I’m gonna kick his ass!” Rey shouted asskickingly.   And on it goes.    I read that one writer resigned after they retconned all the stuff she had set up about Boba Fett’s home planet, but that’s the way the game is played, unfortunately.   

Me, I’m just writing my stuff for fun, when it comes down to it.    I like to think all the continuity can be fit together, but the reality is that there’s too many redundant pieces, so they can’t all be part of the same picture.  You can either have Tagge or his brothers, but not both.   You can decide to keep Ben Solo or Jan and Jeice Solo from the EU novels, but not both.    Or you can do an AU, I guess.    They’re all AU’s when you get down to it.   

I suppose that, no matter what, I prefer my own assumption that Luke just didn’t have a lightsaber between Empire and Jedi.    I’ve read too many stories about how there’s more to a Jedi than his lightsaber, and how the best Jedi never use them at all, so it makes sense to me that Luke had to make due without one, and use the loss to force him to refocus on his training.    While the others searched for Han, he was doing cool Jedi homework that he should have been doing on Dagobah, and he purposely waited until he was finished before building a new lightsaber.   That just makes too much sense to me, even if some other version is presented.   But the other stories are still fun to read.   They don’t have to be canon to be enjoyable.