#AreDite | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lindsayschrctrillstrion · 6 months ago

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i first began with a silhouette to get the idea down, it was originally just a flow line for sketching the character but it turned into this. the main pose i was inspiring from was my previous drawing and a sprite of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure's Dio in his signature pose.

with assistance from the silhouette drawing and using the reference above., i put together the basic shapes to make up the body and head of my character. in regards to the ears, i changed them to fit better to be recognised better as a lynx cat rather than generally inspiring from any large cat in wildlife.

i then added more details along the feet, hands, added the fluffy around aredite's neck, redesigned his shoulder armor and his cape. at this point i was struggling with how to shape the shoulder armor like a angular point look without having the perspective and the form off. making the hands were a struggle in terms of what size i was going to make them and whether to add long sharp claws

i then began with the line art while along the way readjusting proportions and refining shapes and objects of aredite's appearance

i continued to add the shoulder armor, tail, torso and legs. the perspective and rotation for the chest was a slight challenge as i wanted to reference from the pose of dio above while staying close enough to my characters physique.

i then added some small details to the mouth, put together the arms and hands using basic cubic shapes to break down the complex parts of the body, added more corners along the cape using reference, reshaped the shoulder armor and finished off the legs down to the claws. at this point, i was still sharpening the edges of lines strokes and still wished to fix the line work until i was satisfied

i resized the fluff underneither the characters head to make the shoulder armor more apparent and began to add details to the face to give it a far more fierce and rageful expression to reflect how i imagined the character to appear like. along the way i cleaned up and connected lines together such as the ankles of the feet and the chest of the torso.

i decided on adding details to the body and rest of the character to make the details such as muscles, bones, fur, ripples in the cape and tendons of the feet more apparent. also thinned out some lines to create depth and almost shadow

i made the ears thicker to match more similarity to lynx cats in real life. i also removed and fixed the left arm as i had gotten the anatomy incorrect as i was treating the bicep as the forearm before this point. i also made the mouth detail more open so it was better to see in the silhouette

i made another silhouette of the character and didnt feel satisfied so i went and made the adjustments of the ears, hand and mouth as seen above

i then resized the head as i felt it too large for the body and hands. i fixed the hand to the left using a technique of breaking down the shapes of the hand and fingers and also made the claw of the hand more apparent to be shown in the silhouette.

i felt satisfied with my line work and enlarged the character to have higher stroke line resolution. i achieved this by hitting cmd t and enlarging the drawing and using the sharpen and sharpen more filter in order for the lines to not appear as blurry.

i then filled in each section of the character (fluff, body, mouth, shoulder armor and cape) using the magic wand selection tool and hitting select, modify, expand and expanded the selection to a few more pixels and separated the fills into individual layers so i could then change the lightness.

while adjusting each layers lightness, i added extra details on the shoulder armor and made parts of the character's body fur a more pale shade of gray.

i then made the colour palette all along and between red and yellow and achieved this by changing the hue and saturation of the layer segments. the rest of the palette. were shades of gray. i added a symbol to the shoulder plate to be one of the focal points to the viewer alongside the face and upper body.

i created the shading by creating a layer on top of the rest of the colours but below the line work layer. using a brown swatch and applying darken and 50% on the shading layer. my aim for my shading was for the light to hit where you can see the arrow where some parts are in the light and some are not.

this was the colour used in question. i however had to use pure black in order to achieve shading for the shoulder.

this is the final product. to reflect, i am far more happy with how the design and form of this redesign of my character, aredite, turned out compared to the previous design of him. this new design far more reflects how i imagined the character in my head put into illustration. the most difficult part of this process was certainly the hands and proportions of the character. i wasnt sure whether i wanted to make his design more buff but when i attempted to enlarge the torso, it just didnt look right. while the design is similar, there are still elements that set themselves off from each other, including the claws, ear shape, shoulder plates shape, colour and detail and a slight change to the colours.

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geekynichelle · 2 years ago

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In this “not really an essay” essay I wanted to address the myth of Ares, Aphrodite, and Hephaestus, the modern day incident involving Megan Thee Stallion, along with my personal anecdotes to talk about reinforcing the patriarchy.

Disclaimers: I’m an American who learned about Greek Mythology for the first time in 3rd grade and while I’m not particularly religious I’m a lover of stories, and I’m not going to treat these beings like fictional characters per say, so much as I’m going to focus on a story that they’re involved in to make my point. Treating them like still breathing beings, not long dead and gone. I’m totally on Megan’s side and am not at all trying to trivialize her experiences, if anything I hope the point I make will have you empathizing with her more. My personal anecdotes won’t mention names or anything. I acknowledge my memory isn’t always the best, but these are things that I know/remember happened and aren’t made up just to prove my point. I may update this (in a new post) if I think it will help. It’s long so it’s going to be under the cut.

When something bothers you a lot, and it sticks with you for a long time, I think that’s worth examining. It would be easy to bog down my feelings about the whole Aphrodite/Ares/Hephaestus affair to “shipping”, but I feel like that would be disrespectful to the source material, and not really accurate. We currently live in a patriarchal society, and despite the fact that thousands of years and an ocean separate America from Ancient Greece, the similarities between societal attitudes towards women are too similar. This is in part due to America being influenced by the ancient world (for better or worse) when the government we know today was created (by white men), and in part due to the fact that the patriarchy (in my opinion) doesn’t really go outside the box. It’s a very straightforward rule book, with ebbs and flows regarding how we view marginalized genders and sexualities and how much they’re tolerated.

So what does a story about two ancient Gods cheating on another ancient God have to do with the patriarchy? And how does Megan Thee Stallion fit in? To start, I want to answer that by talking about the woman (Megan) and the feminine being (Aphrodite) in the story. Megan Thee Stallion is a tall and beautiful person, and Aphrodite is the literal Goddess of Beauty (among other things). Megan was the victim of a crime involving another celebrity, a fact that I think is pretty much indisputable by any reputable source. It seems like it would be pretty open and shut to believe her and sympathize/empathize with her situation. The internet however remains undefeated and there are those who not only don’t want to believe Megan, but also try to find reasons to make her being shot okay/justified.

It’s hard not see the reasons for this being related to anything but her being a young, Black, and queer woman. Aphrodite being a literal Goddess admittedly stands a bit higher above the celebrity for lasting power alone, but for all intents and purposes, she is again attractive, seen as representing the feminine, and could very well be seen as queer. In other words under the patriarchy not a perfect or likable victim. If Aphrodite is reduced to being a pretty bimbo and Megan a promiscuous shit talker, then what happens to them doesn’t matter. If one is married off against her will those vows should still be taken seriously. If one is shot we must know what she did to deserve it.

At this point I’m sure the exceptions to this rule are on some people’s minds, and that’s fair. There are no perfect absolutes, but in both real life and fiction even the examples of the exception reveal something. Most people are fine with emotional cheating in a sitcom when the boyfriend/husband is a jerk and the woman involved is a relatively innocent and good girl. Pam from The Office is nice and just a little lost in life. We can see why she has a hard time leaving her fiancé Roy and standing up for herself. I myself have experienced being presumed nice/innocent because I’ve always been quiet and come across somewhat passive. That and colorism (I’m a very light Black lady).

When I’ve stood up for myself or been less than accommodating I’ve also seen how that changes things. This bleeds a little bit into my next point, which is that male privilege is pretty powerful and doesn’t go away simply because you are marginalized in one way. Amongst the Gods, Hephaestus is often described as ugly and an ableist slur, so we’re just going to say disabled. There aren’t a lot of sources in my experience that get very specific about what that means. A being or man that’s considered average when everyone in their family looks like supermodels could still be a relatively good looking man. I will of course not discount the loss of privilege that comes from being different (Hera literally threw him away), but a God is a God and that still comes with some power that can wielded over others.

Back to my personal examples for a moment, I recall a time in college when I was a freshman and I was at a Halloween event with my roommate and some people she knew. Some dude in a zombie mask got a little too close for comfort so I kind of shoved him away from me. I’m not very loud and I’m 5’3 and it was crowded so at the moment I can only assume that that was the course of action that made the most sense to me. A few minutes later one of my roommates’ friends implied to me that the dude in the mask was mentally disabled. The friend was a bit vague so that’s the best I can say. What I know for sure is that at the time, all that guy was to me was a stranger in a mask invading my personal space. I myself am neurodivergent (though I didn’t know it then), and it felt a bit icky to me that I got the impression that I was meant to feel bad for the person who creeped me out/I was in the wrong for acting on instinct. I do of course have empathy for the socially awkward. I am socially awkward. How I reacted was awkward, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to cross someone’s boundaries.

That friend probably meant well, but he was essentially infantilizing that other guy and making it seem like he didn’t know any better, and thus I should’ve reacted “nicer�� to him. Megan Thee Stallion is taller than the man who hurt her by a couple of inches. Being a short guy in society is probably not easy. I can understand where the whole Napoleon complex thing comes from. A guy shorter than me in high school absolutely had a massive chip on his shoulder and was very rude to me when he felt like I slighted him (I sat in his seat to be closer to my friends). However, once you take out your frustrations on people with less power or social capital than you I stop caring as much. Megan doesn’t stop being a queer Black women because she’s tall, anymore than I stop being a queer Black women (who again is also neurodivergent) just because I acted “rudely”.

I’m not trying to demonize those kids from my past or say that you should hate the deity Hephaestus (though I don’t care about how you feel about Tory Lanz, hate him with my blessing), but I am trying to point out that harm being perpetuated by a man under the patriarchy is in general more protected and given more grace when the victim isn’t perfect, even if they are marginalized as well. In the case of Aphrodite, despite being a Goddess, she kind of is reduced to a piece of property in her marriage to Hephaestus. In some versions of myth she’s married off to him by Zeus because he fears fighting over her will cause another war. In other versions she’s married off to appease Hephaestus after he (admittedly rightfully so) expresses his anger at being mistreated/not taken seriously by the other Olympians. To cheat on her husband in those circumstances is akin to committing a heinous crime in a patriarchal society.

If Aphrodite was virginal and perhaps associated with something more innocent than blatant sexuality maybe she could’ve gotten the Persephone treatment. Be made into a figure that is granted choices by modern audiences because it’s easy to root for her like it’s easy to root for Pam. Instead many people think that making Aphrodite’s marriage to Hephaestus a happy one is the best solution. One that empowers both of them. I disagree. In the original myth Aphrodite already makes a choice. She chooses to be with Ares. One of the very few couples in ancient myth where there’s no evidence (that I’m aware of) of assault or a lack of consent. Her choice results in consequences, but those consequences don’t mean that changing her story into one of a happy marriage makes for a stronger narrative.

It does the opposite. It infantilizes Hephaestus and implies that he’s deserving of a beautiful wife because he’s a good guy, despite there being very little evidence to suggest he had that personality in canon. People portray him as the good guy/nerd, because at the end of the day ableism makes it easier to digest the story of a weak male victim being screwed over, than the nuance of a marginalized guy still not being very nice. He was publicly humiliated so he’s allowed to get revenge. He’s allowed to set his wife and brother up to be seen (non-consensually) by all their family mid hook up, because it doesn’t matter what you look like when you’re a man under the patriarchy who got embarrassed.

This in turn is also why Ares is the “bad guy” here. In myth Ares is the patron saint of the amazons, he’s associated with women often (not for feminist reasons, but as a sign of cowardice), and despite being the “most handsome” he makes “reasonable” and “rational” patriarchy figures look bad. He’s the chaotic side of war and he’s largely hated by the other Gods. When men in a “civilized” patriarchal society go “too far” or make other men look bad he becomes a lone wolf, or just the exception and not the rule as far as men being violent go. To be so closely associated with women and to steal your brother’s property (consensually sleep with his wife) you lose hot guy privileges. I’m not going to call Ares a feminist (that doesn’t really apply here), but as any ally will tell you siding with the marginalized or making the status quo look bad will take away your protections. Thus he gets humiliated too, to make sure other men know what happens when you don’t fall in line. We see this with incel/Alpha male culture today.

This is the part of that story/myth that I think people don’t consider a lot. It’s not only supposed to be a cute fairy tale or a forbidden romance or the story of two assholes. Its purpose is also to enforce the patriarchy. If Aphrodite represents the ultimate woman and is one of the most powerful beings in the pantheon, a being that Zeus felt like he needed to be worried about, what does it tell women of the time that even she can be/should be taken down a peg when she actually expresses that autonomy. What does it matter if Hephaestus is nice, or makes her nice things, when she didn’t have a choice? If she was being shallow does that change anything really? If Ares was an asshole, does that matter since we have no evidence that he was an asshole to Aphrodite? In order, no Hephaestus personality or ability to provide does not matter, no it does not matter if Aphrodite cheated because she was shallow, and no it does not matter if Ares was mean. The bottom line is that there’s a reason we’re meant to leave that story feeling bad for one party and hating one or both of the other parties.

There’s a reason why we downplay the violence or discomfort of women when a man is upset. The saddest part is honestly when this is co-signed by other women. I’ve seen people joke about how they’d take Hephaestus and appreciate him, and how some women try to find an excuse to see Megan taken down a peg. Even in my own examples I don’t recall my roommate asking if I was okay or bothered by a stranger coming up to me/rattling me, she just found the whole thing amusing. This I realized is exactly why the way people react to and adapt that Greek Myth bothers me so much. I’ve experienced people’s ableism disguised as empathy and compassion if it meant giving a guy a pass for bad or weird behavior. Especially if that man does something positive for society (because Hephaestus gives the other Gods stuff). I’ve experienced and seen how sexism, ableism, and queerness can make a person seen as not worthy of care or seen as not needing it. All this does is reinforce the system. That’s why it’s not about shipping or fan culture. It’s about our culture as a whole. That’s what I want people to think about.

Other Sources:

-Pop Culture Detective made two great videos on the misogyny from the Big Bang Theory that also gets into the phenomenon I was getting at with how we view Hephaestus.

The Adorkable Misogyny of the Big Bang Theory

The Complicity of Geek Masculinity on the Big Bang Theory

-A tumblr thread/post also did a good job explaining why Aphrodite and Ares are a good couple by Greek Myth standards.

In Defense of AreDite

-I’m currently reading Venus and Aphrodite: History of a Goddess by Bettany Hughes, which also gave me things to think about.

Venus and Aphrodite: History of a Goddess

#AreDite #Ares #Aphrodite #Megan Thee Stallion #Misogyny #Misogynoir #Writing

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