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quokkaholic · 3 months ago

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Aquarium Guy h.j

Warnings/ tags: Pure delulu fluff, gn reader (if you consider guy neutral, which I do obv), little cussing. Minimally proofed

Synopsis: You work for a hobby aquarium store that offers in-home installation. After Han impulse buys a fish tank online, he sets up an appointment with you to help set it up, which leads to many subsequent appointments definitely for the fish and not to have an excuse to see you. (romance anime style with mutual pining and slight angst that could easily be solved by communicating your feelings with nothing but a sweet confession at the end. where all my romance lovers at? 🙋👋)

.° ｡𖦹˚ 𓆝 ｡𖦹°‧.° ｡𖦹˚ 𓆝 ｡𖦹°‧.° ｡𖦹˚ 𓆝 ｡𖦹°‧.° ｡𖦹˚ 𓆝

After loading your supplies into the comically large, industrial strength waggon you have to use to carry all your heavy and expensive equipment and lugging it through the halls of the high class apartment complex, you are out of breath as you press the doorbell outside of the door of the apartment number you have written on crumpled piece of paper in your pocket. The size of the tank and location are all the information you had received form your deadbeat manager leaving you to pack way more fixings than are necessary to ensure the customer had options. The lack of details could very well be due to the customers indecisiveness or simply not knowing enough to have opinions yet, but it's more likely that your manager didn’t even care enough to ask about it. In this job, you are more often than not setting up tanks for people with no experience keeping fish, and many don’t even want to learn; they just want living art in their homes. It gives you a job, but you often end up working with snooty people. You have no reason to expect anything less today. As you wait for the customer to answer the door, you go into customer service mode, thickening your skin in case you are to be barked at and ordered around for the next few hours and going over your script in your head.

A chipper but cautious voice comes from the speaker above the button asking of your identity, and your mind races with uncertainty. Are you at the wrong place? As you reach for the paper with the address in your pocket, you nervously answer,

“This is y/n from The Fish Bowl; I’m here for the appointment booked to this address...”

“Oh shi..” is all you hear before shuffling on the other side of the door, and it is flung open. To your surprise, a breathtaking man in casual attire opens the door completely destroying the image of a crotchety well-to-do you had been preparing for. You’re always a bit nervous about home visits, but the fact that he’s got to be around your age, and his casual demeanor mixed with his kind features, puts you at ease.

“So sorry, please come in! Let me help you.”

“Don’t worry I got it. It's my job” you respond, pulling the cart behind you. The place is decorated simply but it's still homey. He lets you know the tank will be in his room as he leads you there. The space is by no means dirty, but it's obviously lived in, which is honestly nice to see when most of the houses you end up at are sterile and maintained that way as a show of status.

“Sorry it's a mess, I may have forgotten I booked this…” his words trail off with a nervous smile.

“This is NOT dirty; I think your room is very cute and nice, but if you need me to come back another time, that's more than fine. What day would work better for-?” He cuts you off slightly panicky,

“No! No, today is great! Plus you’re already here; I just booked it on impulse and it slipped my mind. I’m sorry, again, but I’m really excited about this!”

“Please stop apologizing! I’m working for you today,” you say as you begin rifling through your supplies, hastily getting to work before you make things even more awkward. Han takes a seat on his bed. You work in silence, removing the basic items to get started with.

“You really think my room is cute?” There's a coyness to his voice.

“For sure! It has a lot of character. I really like that,” you say glazing around the room, eyes landing on stacks of manga, old game consoles, and multiple guitars before landing on the large empty tank resting on a desk along the wall opposite his bed and continuing,

“The aquarium is gonna look really sick in here,” a huge smile spreads across his face,

“That's what I'm saying! My friends think it's just another stupid purchase. I’ll admit, I buy a lot of useless stuff online, but this is not one. It's gonna be legendary.”

Having to help him though the decisions of what style filter and aquascaping he wants, you quickly learn how indecisive Han is. His answers to every question flip flopping back and forth for an eternity with a million questions about your experience and personal tanks and your opinions, often landing on whatever you say you have or like. If he wasn’t so cute and sweet, you’d probably be annoyed by now. His genuine curiosity and lust for knowledge are beyond endearing.

Many of your clients barely speak to you beyond the bare minimum, a lot aren’t even home while you're there, but Han casually lounges in the room chatting away. You can feel him watching your every move; it made you a bit nervous at first, but it quickly became obvious that he is just enthralled by the process, frequently commenting little ‘woah’s and ‘It's just like the video I saw!’

When the set up is done, he helps you fill the tank with water and pack up your equipment. Once the hard work is done, you give him the run down accompanied by the informational pamphlet, and his overflowing excitement is quickly replaced with utter disappointment when you inform him that the tank still isn’t ready, as it needs time to cycle before it's safe for fish. His jaw going slack and eyes bugging when you broke the news.

“I’m so sorry, Sir, I mean, Han,” He had asked you to speak casually with him when he found out you are in fact close in age, causing both your cheeks to slightly heat at you slip of the tongue before you bulldoze right over the awkwardness to continue the conversation,

“My manager should have informed you, I used special substrate and established media in the filter, which should speed up the process, but it could still take up to around 2 weeks,” his big eyes are brimming with sadness, dismay sullying his beautiful face. You just had to do something,

“How about we give it like five or six days and then I can start dropping by daily to test the water, that way we can get you your babies as soon as possible?” at your offer his exuberance returns along with immense gratitude. He tries to be polite and decline your offer, but you can tell it's just a formality, and he's desperate for his tank to be filled. He is a flustered mess when you tell him that what you're offering isn’t a service through your job, but a kindness that you want to provide because he is the best customer you’ve had in a long time, and you are genuinely excited to help him as you enter your personal number into his phone. That evening you receive yet another thanks from Han with details to set up the next time you’ll be over.

Six days later, you are back at the apartment ringing the doorbell. Instead of hearing Han’s cheery voice from the speaker, a more serious and suspicious voice comes out,

“Who are you?”

You weren’t prepared for this. You thought Han would just open the door, as you showed up right at the time he was expecting you. You even got there a bit early and sat in your car to ensure you’d arrive perfectly on time. You weren’t prepared for another introduction; you hadn’t practiced your lines.

“Oh um, I’m the… the aquarium guy?” you stutter out, just trying to say something, so he doesn’t assume you're some freak or solicitor.

“What?” Did he not hear you, or was he genuinely confused by your answer?

“I’m here to test the water of Mr. Han’s aquarium, he should be expecting me” a faint noise of approval is all you hear in response before a shout coming from the other side of the door.

“Mr. Han-yah, the aquarium guy is here!” the unknown tenant yells naggingly into the apartment. Soon the door is pulled open to reveal Han slightly flustered, assumedly he’d run from his room on the other side of the apartment. He introduced you to his roommate who must’ve been the one you spoke to. He was polite but not particularly interested in making conversation, which you appreciated as you were feeling particularly shy after your interaction through the speaker.

The visit was short. You made quick work of testing the water, putting some water in vials and adding the testing solutions before setting the timers and observing the color changes. The awkwardness that dissipated after spending a few hours together almost a week ago has returned, maybe even stronger than when you first met as you guys are in that weird phase when strangers become acquaintances. If it weren’t for Han's persistent curiosity, you probably would've spent the whole ten minutes in uncomfortable silence, but thankfully Han’s mind thirsts for knowledge, and he did not allow a single step in the process go by without asking at least one question. Unfortunately, you had to break the news that the tank was in fact not ready, and break his sweet little heart all over again. It hurt to have to break his spirits once again; you warned him that it probably wouldn't be ready for two weeks, but his excitement, and your unprofessional interest in him, has you continuing to show up at his apartment daily for another week, everyday having to crush his dreams of being a fish dad all over again.

Despite repeatedly dashing his hopes, the visits became something you looked forward to desperately. They were at all hours of the day to meet his complex schedule, but you always made time for him. The quick drive by water tests shifted to prolonged aquaria talks to straight up just hanging out under the guise of work. Even though not all of your meetings were during work hours, a lot of them were; you knew it was wrong to be hanging out on the clock, but one look at Han’s giddy face every time he lays eyes on you makes the guilt disappear instantly. It’s not like you're neglecting any job duties, time you typically would be wasting at the office are now being spent more effectively “building customer relations”. At least that is the answer you had prepared if your manager ever asked what you were doing, but he never did. He could not care less of your whereabouts and was probably happy to have you off his back and out of his hair.

The day after the levels looked correct you arrived bright and early with bags of colorful fish, you had painstakingly helped Han pick out with the help of Lee know. Even as a three man job, it took hours. After all that you ended up with a selection that looked strikingly similar to the set up of one of your community tanks you have set up at home. Even though Lee know acted uninterested, he sat with Han, watching you work and put the finishing touches on the tank before floating the fish. You all spent time gaming as the fish acclimated to the temperature of the tank. Once the temperature was equalized, you began drip-acclimating them to the water parameters. The drips were excessively slow and some would argue, unnecessary as the fish you all chose were on the hardy side to accommodate Han's inexperience, but you were definitely being extra careful, and not just making excuses to spend all day with them. Han ordered you all food, which you overly thanked him for, but he insisted that you deserved it for all your hard work.

When the fish were added and supplies were packed, you talked to Han about tank maintenance, and offered him the tank maintenance package that your work provides. He seemed extremely on board until he made a joking comment,

“I can’t be a single dad of twenty! You have to help me care for my babies,” he commands with a silly grin.

“Oh han,” you fein condescension “I was promoted beyond sucking up fish poop months ago; I’ll send one of my underlings to do that,” you jest, but it is not as well received as you would have hoped, Han’s face drooping for a moment before continuing the jesting conversation,

“Underling? What are you an anime villain?”, he asks. You pause for a moment before answering with a mischievous smirk,

“Definitely not…” His acting is on point as he acts out the dramatic reveal of the big bad. The slight disappointment still barely visible in his face as he continues,

“Maybe you could just teach me how to do it myself! I’ll figure out something for when I’m traveling when the time comes; I'll hold off for now. So you just do set ups or..?”

“Yeah mainly setups and upgrades,” you say trying to maintain familiarity, but it is obvious his mind is slowly slipping somewhere else. You quickly say your goodbyes as it's starting to get dark, and you still have to drop off the equipment back at the office.

The next day, you take some time to yourself and have a bit of a slow morning since you worked late last night. When you arrive at the shop, you settle in checking emails sipping on your fancy latte you actually had the time to make. You deserved a treat. You couldn’t quite pin down the reason, but the day felt a bit lackluster. Maybe you slept weird, maybe it was just one of those days, or maybe you didn’t have a meeting at a cute boys apartment to look forward to. After responding to the miscellaneous messages, you check your schedule to see if your manager booked you out for anything coming up. There were a few installs you knew you had coming up, but a highlighted date for your soonest appointment next week was new. After clicking on it and reading the description, a smile tugged at your lips, your heart raced, and the day seemed a bit less dim. Han was on your books for a lighting upgrade.

You looked forward to seeing him all week. You’ve gotten close enough that you will text about stuff unrelated to work, but neither of you are comfortable extending the conversation, so it usually just starts off with a fish tank questions and goes back and forth a bit before reaching a natural stopping point and then lies dormant until he sends you more questions or update pictures on the fish he insists are your god children, frequently adding that they “miss you very much”.

When you arrive at the apartment you have become all too familiar with, Lee know is once again the one to answer the door, which you have come to realize is the norm, and he shouts that the ‘aquarium guy is back’. He has taken quite fondly to calling you the silly name you gave yourself in a flustered panic, even going as far a s saving it as your contact in his phone. You question if he even knows your real name, yet he treats you like a friend nonetheless. Your lighting install takes little more than an hour, but you end up staying for a few; Lee know cooking you all lunch, before they are the ones who have to cut the hangout short as they have some appointments.

The next day, you follow your usual routine of checking emails and then schedule to see Han has booked you again to install a CO2 injector. You were very clear in explaining he didn’t need one because his plants are beginner friendly, but you won’t pass on another chance to see him. Despite being more than happy to keep this up, there's a nagging in your head reminding you that it can’t go on forever.

A few days later, you have to go to Han’s house late in the evening, as it was the soonest free time he had that you were available. You offered to push it back a few days, but he vehemently refused the rescheduling. When you arrive, Han is looking a little less put together than usual, sweats and an oversized hoodie with his hair pushed back in a ball cap and barefaced. He must’ve been at practice; he looks so exhausted. Feeling bad for keeping him up, you have to keep reminding yourself that he insisted that you be there. He tried to apologize for his appearance, but you shut him up quickly with a string of compliments that flew from your lips before you could think twice. He just looked so soft and cuddly which is only exaggerated by his flushing cheeks and ears. Yanking yourself swiftly from your admiring trance to avoid getting locked in it for the rest of the evening, you get to work hooking up valves and tubing before dialing in the right amount of gas to be released.

Finally connecting it to the lighting timer system. Usually, you’d take your sweet time chatting Han up while you work or just rush through the install to have more time to purely hangout, but since it was already so late, you opt to work in concentrated silence, only talking to feed Han information about his new system. After double and triple checking that the flow of gas is appropriate and there are no leaks in any of the connections, you hastily gather your stuff hoping to leave Han to get some rest after his ling day. He is already dozing off in a beanbag in the corner, a vintage handheld gaming system resting in his lap still playing idle music. You whisper a goodbye over your shoulder heading out the door, but before you cross the doorway back into the hallway, calloused fingertips wrap around your wrist.

“Wait...” his speech is broken up by a yawn, using his free hand to rub the sleep from his eyes,

“Let me take you to dinner?” it's less of a question and more of an order.

“Hannie,” a sweet nickname you’ve subconsciously adopted from Lee know,

“you’re so tired, don’t even try to deny it,” you respond to his ask, accurately predicting his next tactic causing his mouth to close as he swallows his words and contemplates a backup plan,

“Fine, I am tired, but I’m also sooo hungry,” he pleads with puppy dog eyes, dramatically gripping his stomach, trying to pull the sympathy card, but that ends up backfiring, as you’re now concerned that he isn’t taking care of himself.

“You haven’t eaten?! Come on man!” chastising him in a joking tone. His imploring face turns to one of shock as he goes to defend himself,

“I rushed home after we finished to see you! I bet you haven’t had dinner either!” His read is valid, pointing out your hypocrisy. If his comment about skipping out on food to see you wasn’t enough to drain the sternness from your tone, your embarrassment over your sanctimonious scolding was. Sighing, you relent,

“Fine, but you aren’t calling a ride, I’ll drive.”

Dinner with Han was the highlight of your week. You try not to think about it, but recently he has become the highlight of every week. The conversation is pleasant as ever; Han's silly nature has you sending jokes back and forth filling the nearly empty restaurant with bellowing laughter, even earning some snickers from the older cashier/server you could only assume is the owner or at least related to them. At one point, you even choke on your soda when Han made some offhand, absurd comment causing you to spit the drink, luckily, into a napkin and not his face or food, earning concerned looks from the few other tables and another lambasting from you. He insisted on paying for your meal, making it feel even more like a date, which only made your heart sink more as you laid in bed reflecting on the evening, once the post-date high wore off after dropping him off. There was only one upgrade left that you offer, and you had a strong inclination that the next time you worked, there would be that last appointment made at that cute man’s apartment.

Unsurprisingly, there was a new appointment with the all too familiar address for your earliest availability, but the whole calendar had been cleared after that. You would ask your manager about it, but he wasn’t in the store, which wasn’t out of the ordinary. You asked some of the other aquarium techs, but they hadn’t seen him either. It wasn’t till you entered the customer facing portion of the store and spoke to the cashier that they broke the news that your shit-head manager was finally canned for not completing job duties. While it was long overdue and definitely for the best for the company, you couldn't help but worry that the replacement would be stricter on your scheduling and keep a closer eye on your whereabouts, but that shouldn’t really be a problem after your appointment with Han tomorrow. After a quick phone call with upper management, you realize it actually won’t be a concern at all, as you’ve been promoted, you are the replacement.

You toyed with the idea of cancelling on Han; if you keep pushing it off, there would never be a last booking. You could save the final install for when you were ready to say goodbye, but you knew that day wouldn’t come. Plus if you pushed it off too much, they would probably just give the appointment to someone else so you can focus on your new managerial duties. Han had obviously become more than a client, not even the most delusional, irrational person could deny your growing feeling for him. It would be better to just rip the bandage off and move on. You steel yourself as you ring the doorbell one last time with your stupid cart filled with the supplies for a small brine shrimp hatchery, so he can have live food for his spoiled babies.

Soon after letting you in, Han had to take a phone call, leaving you alone in his room. You were simultaneously grateful for not having to navigate telling him that you won’t be seeing him anymore just yet and sad that your last hangout with him was sabotaged by some important conversation he just had to have right now when he should be hovering over you gushing about all the documentaries he has been watching or games he's been playing. When he finally enters the room, he finds you gathering your things.

“Damn, you're already finished?”

“No worries, Mr. Han. I’m all done here; you've got the whole shabang. Very jealous. Your fish are very lucky to have you,” you say, trying to cover your sadness with some joking sass, but it comes out a bit more cold than you would’ve liked, returning to formalities trying to solidify the customer and worker dynamic in your mind. The tightness in your chest making your trash acting skills even worse. Trying not to look his way for too long, especially due to the puzzled expression written all over his face as he tries to figure out what has come over you, you keep your head buried in your bag.

“I’m sorry, I wouldn't have taken the call if I didn’t have to,” he apologizes trying to solve your sour mood.

“No! It's fine, really! Please don’t be sorry; just feel like I missed out a little…” you confess; you are upset but not at him, and you can’t leave him thinking he had done something wrong. At your words the smile he had greeted you with returns to his lips,

“I’ll just have to bother you extra next time,” he says in a mocking tone. Face scrunching as you search for the words for a moment,

“Like I said, you’ve gotten all the upgrades available…” letting your words trail off, hoping he would put two and two together.

“Oh… well…I think Lee know said he wants a tank in his room for enrichment for the cats, or... maybe we could put one in the living room; that would look cool, right?” He is racking his brain for ideas to keep you around. You force a smile, but it doesn’t reach your eyes as you relay the ‘good’ news,

“I’ve actually been promoted again. This is my last appointment as an aquarium tech.” His face drops reminding you of when you denied him fish all those weeks ago, and if you thought it was heartbreaking then, the look on his face is practically earth shattering. He’s done trying to cover his motives, he decides before speaking softly,

“I don’t want to stop seeing you” his words are barely audible. Just as your words shocked him into confession, his do the same to you.

“I’d gladly go back to sucking up fish poop to keep spending time with you,” your admission triggers such a strong grin from him that it pinches his misty eyes causing the tears to gather in the corners threatening to spill down his pink cheeks that match your own. After a deep breath with just the trace of a quiver, he makes a proposition,

“How about you start coming over as my,” he pauses looking for the right word,

”friend,” he lands on skeptically, like he was planning on saying something else,

“not my aquarium guy?”

.° ｡𖦹˚ 𓆝 ｡𖦹°‧.° ｡𖦹˚ 𓆝 ｡𖦹°‧.° ｡𖦹˚ 𓆝 ｡𖦹°‧.° ｡𖦹˚ 𓆝

A.n- yes is do keep fish, how’d you know? This was inspired by the Han and Bang chan interview on Jaefriends when Han admits to being a big online/impulse shopper or “pushover consumer”. This took me so long to write; smut remains so much easier for me to write. I guess it's easier to be horny and depraved than to be wholesome and vulnerable. will consult the council on this one.

-mo 🐠

pic creds: pinterest x x

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literary-illuminati · 2 months ago

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2025 Book Review #10 – meat4meat (ed. Gray Levesque)

This is I think the first book I have ever read before it was published – as of posting the crowdfunding campaign is still ongoing! - so it’s a fun novelty to be able to say that I received an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. The book itself is also – well okay no, ‘fun’ is probably not actually the correct word, but it’s a body horror collection that succeeded at making me physically queasy at several points so it’s an unqualified artistic success in at least one dimension.

meat4meat is a short story horror anthology – specifically body horror, extra specifically body horror as written by trans and disabled authors (to quote the marketing copy, ‘by those who know it best’) – properly speaking it is an illustrated anthology, but that art wasn’t ready for inclusion in the copy I read, so I’ll stick to talking about the writing. Within the very vague remit the book sets out for itself, there’s no real unifying theme or much of a throughline between the eighteen stories included. They’re all very much short stories – I don’t think any were over twenty pages? - and flipping between them is a study in serial whiplash. Writing style, subject matter, thematic concerns and perspectives, even just conceptions of what ‘body horror’ means all vary drastically from story to story.

To be clear, I consider this a huge positive – it’s an anthology that really lives up to the potential of the medium, and makes an honest effort of capturing the diversity of perspective that’s pretty clearly part of the artistic project here. It also just keeps the reading experience from ever dragging or getting monotonous – if I do not vibe with one author (as is inevitable with these things), there’s a dozen and change others with entirely different takes on the subject. Even if it is somewhat grating to have one story use different paragraph breaks and spacing from the next.

I’m on record as often being pretty annoyed with how ‘horror’ as a genre label is used in books these days – which is to say how often it ends up being life-affirming tales of togetherness and found family but cast from the universal monsters catalogue – so for the sake of consistency I should really praise meat for really living up to the genre label. Even the stories happily framed from the perspective of something monstrously inhuman and happy about it are more than fucked up enough to still be compelling reading.

I’m also very much on record as thinkingthat horror is far better suited to short stories than novels; the extra length of which seems to bring a pressure towards explaining things and giving neat, validating endings on the one hand and on dragging out the tension past what the reveal can sustain on the other. This book’s an excellent case study of that – most of the stories are bare handfuls of scenes, hitting a particular beat or bit of imagery with as much force as they can; very nearly all of them can be summed up as ‘something really fucked up happens to someone’. Triumphantly happy and reassuring endings are thin on the ground, extended denouncements nonexistent. If anything, there are a couple stories that probably could have used a bit more space to breathe – ending up feeling more like imagery without the connective tissue or context to really make it land – but that’s just the natural tradeoff of the format forcing focus and writing economy.

Speaking of imagery – the book advertises itself as a body horror anthology, and it is not lying. There are several stories I would really recommend skipping if you have a weak stomach (which is, in this context, high praise). There’s also several stories that do take a more symbolic or oblique tack when discussing the ruin and gore they make of the human body (a couple of them are some of my favourites in the whole book), but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the most memorable by far are the gleefully, explicitly vulgar and carnal ones. Here meant in the most literal sense of being fixated on the mess and meat of your body, the way parts of you can swell and suppurate and rot and burst before your eyes (though there are one or two that leave you acutely aware the only difference between horror and niche erotica is framing and perspective).

The anthology is themed around trans and disabled authors, and it’s really very interesting how different stories lean into that. Some are very literally and directly about e.g. the misery and desperate hope of looking for a doctor who can help you until you’re willing to look past every red flag from one who says they will, others are far more symbolic or metaphorical (or else simply aren’t stories I would have though to view through that lens if they were in any other book). There is little (though not no) body horror in the sense of shocking and gory violence or something directly inflicted upon you by an obvious outside force. Instead it’s the horror of the body being usurped or broken from within, horrifying parasitism, some invisible injury or lack making it impossible to do what is expected of you, or a terrifying transformation that’s only dimly understood as it’s lived through that predominate. There are, unsurprisingly, quite a few stories that are in one way or another about the horror of pregnancy, of some disease or failing leaving you so disgusting as to be exiled from conventional society, or both.

While there isn’t much of a unifying subject or throughline between all the stories in the book, the organization and ordering of them actually does a very good job highlighting similarities between specific pairs or small sets of them. One story that is in some sense about or preoccupied with pregnancy or disfigurement or parasitism or romantic connection will be followed by another with an entirely different setting, plot and subject matter which is still very interested in the same theme. It works very well to give the book a sense of cohesion and structure, and makes some of the stories feel like much more than the sum of their parts.

This is definitely a book for a very specific audience – the kind who will read a first story that starts with strange pupating growths breaking across the narrators chest being described in careful and loving detail, and happily power through as it mostly just escalates from there. But for that audience, I absolutely recommend giving this a try.

In which case, the crowdfunding campaign is still active until March 11th – you can back it here.

#book review #horror #sff #Gray Levesque #meat4meat #ARC

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loupy-mongoose · 1 year ago

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So, I made some impulse purchases recently, including this lovely little gal.

Hai Luna~

When I ordered her, it started a bit of a Gardevoir kick in me. So I went and did some brainstorming about Jamie's Gardie pal, Clover.

This did get very long, but there's a lot of art that I really like! :3 Plus I borrowed a certain someone from @mewtwoandme~

Growing up I always drew the green headpiece as a bony structure with maybe green skin on it, like deer antlers. (Except it doesn't shed lol)

But in my efforts to redecide what it actually is to me, I went to Bulbapedia, and that called it hair. So I tried out hair as well, and I kinda like that better...

I love my deranged Gardie. :>

(Leaning into "Mischievous Fairy/Pixie" energy)

I wanted to draw some Gwen (M&M's Gardevoir), as her and Clover's characters are different in a lot of ways, and I thought it would be fun to draw them together. Turns out Gwen dwarfs my girls, and I adore that in every way. XD

I also came to realize that Jamie would admire Gwen--She doesn't wish change on Clover in the slightest, but she does like the grace that more conventional Gardevoirs possess. Plus she'd be astounded by her sheer size.

For the fun of it, I tried drawing them both in each of our styles. (Or more like "Features" than "style")

I did not like drawing Gardevoir in her style. All the respect and love to M&M, but it felt SO wrong to me personally. XD

Annnnd... I kinda accidentally thought of a different way to take their designs...

And then I tried to figure out the logistics of giving Gardvoir a tail. I kinda like the idea of there being one that blends into the Skirt, splitting and running down the length of the skirt ends.

A little character lore; Clover removed her skirt on purpose.

Growing up, I always had in mind that the skirt was skin, maybe acting as thermoregulation, or something like that. I don't think I ever decided whether they can feel through their skirts or not, but if I want it to be more angsty, then yes, they can feel.

Warning for general and self-inflicted injury in this paragraph. As a kid I figured Clover cut it off to prevent it from getting caught or grabbed. But now, with the developing idea of there being a tail involved, I got another idea with even more angst. I'm thinking possibly Clover had a tail bone broken, and maybe it healed wrong, causing her pain so she ripped off the whole skirt.

Okay, injury warning is over.

And now a little silly that's not exactly canon, but close enough. XD

Y'all can thank @puzzled-zebra for this, as she brought up the idea during a chat. It was too good to pass up. XD

And now I wish to finish with a nostalgia ramble, because Clover is very precious to me, along with Jamie.

I started a playthrough of Soul Silver many, many years ago--even before the playthrough that would become Jamie's trainer journey over ten years ago. It was a solo run, with a Ralts egg sent in to be my only companion. (I kept the rules soft, though, as I remember needing help from other Pokemon to beat Bugsy. XD) My memories of that playthough are faded, but I remember that Clover alone beat the Champion at level 64-65. Sometime within the next few years, she was my first ever Pokemon to reach level 100 without the use of Rare Candy or experience cheats. That playthough and whatever happened in it has no bearing on Clover's story, but it's what gave birth to her as a character, and I hold that very dear.

Her nature is "Hardy, Likes to Fight", and I'm really proud of little me for taking that in the direction she took it. XD

Anyway, that's my super long love-dump of my beloved gremlin fairy. Thanks to everyone who made it all the way, I know it got pretty long. ^^

#Art #branch #doodle dump #Everything I touch gets floof and a nose apparently. XD

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ladyloveandjustice · 3 months ago

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My Favorite New Manga and Graphic Novels I Read in 2024

I read 114 manga volumes and graphic novels last year! Here’s a link to my Goodreads year in books, which tallies one book from each manga series ( I've arranged it so the manga/gns at the beginning, the novels start with Red, White & Royal Blue) and my storygraph wrap up.

I have a post for my favorite books of 2024 you can read here! I also have a post on my top 12 anime for 2024 and you can read it here! (Also, since a lot of this is yuri, check out my broader yuri manga rec post here!)

Now let's get to all the new manga, with a little check in on ongoing titles at the bottom!

Love Bullet by inee

When someone who never had the chance to experience love meets an untimely death, they're given a chance to become a cupid. If they help enough people fall in love, they earn the chance to have another shot at life. Koharu meets her end after her best friend, Aki, confesses her love to her, and she becomes a cupid...

Love Bullet is a brand new yuri with fun characters and a cute art style that feels a little charmingly retro. The concept of modern day cupids using firearms and behaving like sharpshooters in an action movie is so fun, but there's also a beating heart behind it. The tragedy of Koharu's life being cut sort and the bittersweet arc where Koharu tries to help her living best friend deal with her lingering trauma over her sudden death...it's touching and well written. All the cupids already have a really great dynamic, and as befitting a yuri, the way the girls approach their jobs is casually queer, with the "targets" often shown to have both guy and girl options.

It's a story with great potential that seems like it could go a ton of interesting places. It's a little different than the rest of this list that it's not officially out in English yet. The reason it's here is because the author sent out an SOS that the first Japanese volume is struggling in sales, and the international yuri community, excited about the awesome story they've seen so far, rose to the challenge and bought out the first volume in Japanese! So far it's been successful! If you end up reading it (you'll have to rely on scanlation but they're easy to find) or even if you just simply want to support a cool story. I really encourage you to do the same. Here's a document on how to buy the Japanese version. Hopefully, the grassroots support will mean we get an official English release soon!

The Summer You Were There by Yuama

All you lovers of tragic lesbians, this is for you. The manga follows Shizuku, a deeply depressed girl who is so guilty about something in her past she's got some serious suicidal ideation going. But when Kaori, a girl in her class, reads her writing and guesses what's behind it, she challenges Shizuku to a bet where she has to write a novel about a romance between the two of them. Now they're suddenly spending a lot of time together, and Kaori is helping Shizuku unpack her guilt. However, Kaori is struggling too. She's actually very sick, and though she hides it, it's getting worse.

The manga is a heart wrenching meditation on grief and redemption. For very different reasons, both girls think they don't deserve love and both girls are shown they're very, very wrong by the other.

I like how Kaori tries to be the manic pixie dream girl who fixes all of Shizuku's problems, but then Shizuku very firmly says "what the hell. no. You need support too" and they're both allowed to be full characters who find solace in each other. Shizuku's backstory is also really interesting, and it hits hard. It's just a very touching, but very sad read.

Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa

Barefoot Gen is a semi-autobiographical manga by Hiroshima survivor Nakazawa Keiji. Nakazawa said the story is taken not just from his life, but those of fellow survivors he talked to and lived with.

The story follows a boy named Gen, depicting how most of his family were killed by the atomic bomb, and how he struggled to survive in a post-war Japan, while surrounded by the horrible effects of radiation poisoning, economic devastation, and American imperialism.

It sticks out from other animanga I've seen about WWII bombings in that it's very critical and angry at the Japanese government, to the point that Gen even calls the Emperor a war criminal. What stands out even more is how direct it is in denouncing of Japan's war crimes against Korea and China, as well as condemning Japanese racism against Koreans. It makes sure you know that Korean POWs and forced laborers also died and suffered because of the bomb, and that the Japanese doctors discriminated against them, forcing Koreans to wait on receiving medical treatment until every Japanese person was treated.

It does a stomach churning, effective job depicting the horror of radiation poisoning and war, and its message is extremely firm: Its the common people who suffer in the wars while those in power exploit them, that war and violence are an endless vicious cycle we must break free from, and nuclear bombing must never happen again.

Though it puts a lot of blame on the Japanese government for entering the war and on citizens for supporting it, the story is also critical of America's cruelty and imperialism, depicting lot of things America did to Japanese citizens post-war we don't get taught-- like soldiers sexually assaulting Japanese women, like getting Japanese labor activists and protestors removed from their jobs, like literally torturing Japanese leftists, like luring Japanese citizens to treatment centers with promises of medical aid for radiation sickness, only to collect the data and send them off with no help...

Though the manga is brutal, there are moments of comradery and kindness (and a lot of silly humor). Gen helps a lot of people along the way, and his resilience and his message not to give up is the heart of the manga. It's educational and very direct about subjects that both sides don't want to acknowledge-- both Japanese nationalists and American nationalists do not like it (you can learn more about that here). Despite extremely gruesome content, it's aimed at kids, so it's very blunt and direct in its messages and dialogue. But that can be kind of refreshing.

It can get a little repetitive on occasion and storylines and characters tend to be introduced very abruptly, but it does keep you rooting for and feeling for the characters all the way through. I think it's an essential, highly informative and unforgettable read, and everyone should read at least a little bit. Or at the very least, read this interview with Nakazawa. If you can't handle the gruesome imagery of the comic, he describes his experience pretty in depth here, and there's a lot of other insight.

This Monster wants to Eat Me by Sai Naekawa

Hinako is a depressed girl who survived a terrible trauma and has been searching for death ever since. One day she gets approached by, Shiori, a mermaid who wants to eat her…but the thing is, this monster mermaid is a gourmet who wants her to be as delicious as possible, which means she’s going to make Hinako happy first before she eats her (as apparently that enhances her flavor). In the meantime Shiori has to fight off all the other monsters who want to snack on Hinako.

This is TOP TIER yuri horror and a must read for any lover of monster girls. It was custom made for a freak like me, who thinks a monster girl covered in the blood of her enemies seductively telling the protagonist she wants to devour her is the stuff that dreams are made of.

Shiori, the woman-eating mermaid in question, is a fascinating character right off the bat, always having a hint of menace and inhuman mystery, but showing some potential for genuinely caring for Hinako someday. There's an ongoing mystery of why monsters are so attracted to Hinako that's a good hook, as is the irony of Hinako starting to come alive thanks to a girl who wants to kill her. It's good stuff! And it'll get an anime soon, which I'm praying is worthy of such a cool story.

The Guy She Was Interested Wasn’t a Guy at All by Sumiko Arai

The green yuri! This web manga finally gotten a physical release this year! It tells the story of Mitsuki, a girl who works at a record shop. Her classmate Aya wanders in. Aya doesn't recognize Mitsuki with a face mask and hair hidden by a cap and immediately assumes Mitsuki's a guy. They bond over their mutual love of rock music and slowly start to get closer…and Aya finds her heart is fluttering not only over this mysterious boy, but her female classmate that seems a lot like him...

Despite it's clunky title, this manga makes a premise that could have been painfully cliche and, in the worst case, extremely uncomfortable and makes it work. It never swings into homophobic or transphobic territory imo. It helps that Aya is clearly catching feelings for "girl" Mitsuki along with "guy" Mitsuki from the beginning, subconsciously knowing they're the same person.

The focus of the story is the way their relationship develops through a shared love of Western rock music and it really captures the joy of finding someone who can share your interests and the affection that can spring up for that. The characters are very likeable and cute, the art is absolutely gorgeous, and the story as a whole has this laid back, naturalistic feeling while still developing at a good pace. I just really enjoy kicking back with my green yuri, and it's good reputation is well earned!

Maus by Art Spiegelman

This comic about Spiegelman interviewing his father, a Holocaust survivor, and learning his story (with Nazis being represented as cats and Jewish people as mice) is, of course, incredibly well known to the point it feels almost redundant to talk about it. But I did read it cover to cover for the first time last year, and unsurprisingly it's a great piece of art and an important story for anyone to look into.

The parts recounting the Holocaust were heartbreaking and horrifying as expected, and I'd expected that. But the things I hadn't heard as much about was how much the book explored Spiegelman's complicated relationship with his father, and his anxieties as an artist and whether he was the right one to tell this story. It was fascinating to see him struggle with those things, and it added a lot of layers.

The Moon on a Rainy Night by Kuzushiro

One rainy night, Saki runs into Kanon and is immediately infatuated with the other girl. When she sees Kanon at school, she discovers Kanon is hard of hearing. Kanon is understandably frustrated at the ableism she tends to endure. But as Saki reaches out and gets to know her, Kanon starts to open up. And Saki, having gone through struggles related to her sexuality in the past, starts getting anxious about her feelings for Kanon...

The Moon on a Rainy Night is just... REALLY good. Kanon is just a great character, and as a lover of stubborn, prickly girls I just find her so charming. She has a lot going on with her, like her interest in music and relationship with her family and various quirks.

One thing I really like is how narrative allows her to be frustrated about the stuff she goes through, allows her to have complex feelings about being disabled, and pays attention the little details. She has to clear up misconceptions she can't hear anything, she points out that only 20 percent of deaf people use sign language (but starts using it when she really relates to a movie and the way the cute actor uses it, which is such a teenager thing to do), the lip reading isn't treated as some magic thing, Kanon has to remind people to look at her or she can't hear them, and she misreads things a fair amount.

I'm not hard of hearing, so I'm far from the authority, but most examples of deaf and/or hard-of-hearing female characters I can think of in anime (okay so there's only two I can think of, can't say that qualifies as a pattern) are depicted as shy, super sweet and socially naive, so it's refreshing to have a character who brings some variety.

Saki is also super compelling as she wrestles with her insecurities.I really related when she was learning sign language and got bummed out by the heteronormativity of one sign (using "man" and "woman" for marriage). I also like that Saki finds an adult lesbian who gently supports her and mentors her, it's all very sweet. It's just a fantastic romance and character study, and I hope the upcoming anime does it justice.

Wash Day Diaries by Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith

Wash Day Diaries follows four best friends and their daily lives through interconnected short stories. As the official summary states: "The book takes its title from the wash day experience shared by Black women everywhere of setting aside all plans and responsibilities for a full day of washing, conditioning, and nourishing their hair".

The comic makes a great use of color to reflect the characters' moods, and the girls are drawn vibrantly and distinctively. The peek into the characters' daily lives feels like getting to know some good friends, and there's a great attention to detail, especially with the comic's beautiful step-by-step depiction of how each woman does her hair and what it says about her.

The comic touches on topics like depression, dementia, and homophobia. Just like real life, these things aren't neatly resolved, but the story does offer some hope and catharsis. It's a pretty quick read, but it's packed with good stuff.

Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. by Yu Aoki

I'm going to give myself a little break and just reuse my entry for the anime. (The only difference between them is that the manga flows a bit better than the anime, moving at a faster pace with huge panels suiting the art style and the action!)

Being a magical girl is no longer the domain of teenagers, and has evolved into an actual career dominated by adult women. Kana becomes a magical girl for a scrappy start up company, and tries her best to navigate working life.

It’s the magical girl story about adult women I’ve been craving for years! Magical girl media often explores the struggles of adolescence and growing up, and this show takes us to the next step by using magical girls to explore what it’s like to be a young woman entering the working world. The focus is one Kana struggling to grow her confidence and accept support from her workplace, but it also has a lot to say about companies exploiting their workers, prizing efficiency and growth over actually taking care of their customers, and it shows how the world could be better than what it is right now. Check out my review here for more detail!

I Married My Female Friend by Shio Usui

A pair of best friends enter a platonic marriage they both agreed to with the promise they’ll divorce if one of them falls in love. But one woman has decidedly not platonic feelings for her wife, and is trying to repress them...

This is a sweet, laid-back story from the creator of Doughnuts Under the Crescent Moon. It has a very slice-of-life feel, with the characters feelings and conflicts developing subtlety. There's a focus on domestic life and the compromises and struggles one makes along the way. It's set in a world where gay marriage is legal in Japan, which is cool to see. If you liked Doughnuts, or are just looking for a chill yuri, I'd check this out!

Himawari House by Harmony Becker

Himawari House follows the story of Nao, a half-Japanese woman who immigrated to America when she was young. She's now returning to Japan and feels a feels a deep sadness from how disconnected she's gotten from Japan's language and culture. While in Japan, she lives with two other girls, Hyejung and Tina, who are from South Korea and Singapore respectively. They form a friendship as all of them struggle to get used to Japan and deal with language barriers.

We get the interconnected stories of all three girls, and all of them are really interesting in their own way. This story does a lot of cool things with language, for example, showing words fading out when someone can't understand them, giving the reader the same experience the character is having trying to understand the language. It was a fascinating experience. The book does an effective job exploring Nao's feelings of alienation from both America and Japan, while having a lot of other interesting plotlines that made all the characters feel rounded and developed, such as struggles with independence and expectations from parents, trying to navigate romances, and dealing with homesickness. The art is beautiful as well. This is a well crafted and insightful story, that you might find especially great if you're interested in languages, cultures, stories about identity, and stories about Japan.

Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl by Canno

Kiss and White Lily follows multiple lesbian relationships, with its main storyline being about two academic rivals, where one is determined to rank first in class, and the other is an effortless genius who becomes intrigued at the possibility of someone beating her.

The main couple have the kind of messy combative sexual tension I wish we’d see more often in yuri because it’s so good. I just love the drama and mixture of rage and attraction. The manga follows other couples too and while some stories are stronger than others, they're all usually entertaining in some way and its fun to watch the characters grow. The art's also very cute and the characters are vibrant. The ending is really strong too, putting a perfect cap on the story of the main couple especially.

However, big warning for some nonconsensual kisses in early volumes, with Kurosawa being especially pushy. There's also a storyline with...well it does leave you a little wiggle room on whether it's actually incest between a minor and an adult portrayed romantically??? but um. the implication is strong. Fortunately, that's mainly contained to the seventh volume--you can just skip any stories about the sisters.

When the manga is good, it's really good, and that makes up for some of the questionable elements for me, even if I wish they weren't there. You might agree or disagree!

Ongoing and ended titles:

Here's a look at some of the ongoing titles I've been following! You can look at this post for breakdowns of what they're all about and why I recommend them.

I Think My Son is Gay and I Want to Be a Wall both wrapped up with fairly open endings but remained good reads over all. I finally got around to finishing After Hours, a yuri about a girl who gets ditched by her friend at the club, only to meet a cool punk girl who introduces her to the world of DJ-ing. It's a very charming three volume tale, and I love the playful vibe and more natural-sounding dialogue, especially for the cool party-girl love interest.

There are several manga that just stay the course as far as being excellent go: Otherside Picnic (which is finally at some of the best parts of the light novels! It's getting real!), Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun, Witch Hat Atelier, A Man and his Cat, How Do We Relationship, March Come in Like a Lion, The Summer Hikaru Died and She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat.

For Yuri is my Job, I have to warn for a intense predatory sexual assault scene between an adult antagonist and one of the underage main characters. It's even ambiguous whether the underage character in question got raped for a few pages (but she wasn't). It's completely framed as a an evil, bad act by the antagonist, but how it was handled was SO intense and kind of weird I'm not sure how I feel about it. Yona of the Dawn has gotten incredibly intense lately and continues extremely slowly but surely approaching the finale. Maybe we'll get it in four years or something.

And that it! I'm going to happily keep reading all these manga, as well as continue checking out some new ones, like Akane-banashi! I hope you enjoyed these recs.

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minyard-05 · 1 month ago

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okay. maybe i will type up my caramel 2cents

(keep in mind it's 5 in the morning i've listened to it about six times already and i will be continuing all day)

so. To me. to me it's almost definitely the clearest message that's been in any of their songs. like if you read the lyrics and possess 2 pieces of knowledge (1: all members of the band deliberately remain anonymous by choice and 2: a lot of their fans are often bad at respecting this choice) i think it's very clear exactly what vessel is saying here.

but the first thing i want to bring up is the Sugar parallel. first of all, it's fucking everywhere: the title, the way it was teased, the style of the intro, ALL of this is very heavily linked back to Sugar.

but like. if you go back and listen to Sugar (which i did), and you read the lyrics, it ALSO has a very explicit message, although admittedly there is slightly more metaphor in this one. but just as an example:

i wonder what that could mean

it's no secret that both Sundowning and This Place Will Become Your Tomb are about being in/escaping an abusive relationship, one that's specifically emotionally manipulative and isolating, and this entire scenario is reflected in what we know about Vessel and Sleep. that's a separate essay in itself, but i'm going into the rest of this operating on the assumption that we all know and are aware of those topics being prevalent most on ST's first two albums.

and now. Caramel.

as a very basic explanation of what went on with the actual release of the single: essentially, someone involved with the band i think posted about being excited for it to be released and fans came back and lost their shit for it not being 'enough information' or not being 'exciting enough'. my first response to that is get a grip. my second response to that is stop acting like they owe you anything because it's literally just a band. like this is their day job. leave them alone.

ANYWAY.

unfortunately, the aforementioned bullshit about Caramel's release ended up being ironic as hell because the single dropped today, and what is it about?

exactly that.

i mean. come on. come on. like i can't explain this any better than vessel already did, the message isn't even hiding behind a metaphor anymore. what else could "I guess that's what I get for trying to hide in the limelight" possibly mean? sleep token kind of shot into mainstream when Take Me Back To Eden came out, they suddenly went from smaller venues on tour for TPWBYT, to selling out Wembley stadium on Teeth of God, and that's a stressful place to be as an artist. you go from making music for yourself and writing what you want to write, fuck what anyone else says– to immediately being Watched and Observed and Studied like a fucking experiment. all of a sudden people want interviews and people want to know what you're writing and people want the next song and it should be like this and it should be exactly like the last one and fans want fans want fans want.

this is why i would argue that fan culture is one of the most damaging things to musicians. because while it can be incredible to have so many people at your back who express a love for your art, it's suffocating to try and create when you can't get the reactions out of your head. what if they hate it? what if what you make isn't good enough? what if the last song they loved was a lucky break but the next one won't hit right and they'll hate it and they'll hate you and then you lose all of it because you couldn't do it right.

so do you get why the band might want to stay anonymous? that's not even getting into the media and the paparazzi themselves, which are their own issue.

with all this said, that's what caramel is about: the message is stop. it doesn't matter if we don't know their names or their faces, the members of sleep token are people and they deserve respect like anybody else. you don't get to demand anything from them, whether that's music or information or whatever else. they don't owe you anything. you choose to listen to the music, to buy the merch, go to the concerts, that's your decision. you're not entitled to anything from any one of them, because i'll repeat: this is their job. they're working when they're onstage, in the studio, even handling releases like this. and as a songwriter myself, it's fucking work. it takes hours and hours of looping 7 seconds of a song to get the mix exactly right, millions and millions of takes and rehearsals and writing sessions and it's fucking exhausting.

so i guess my final thing is just. listen to the music. engage with the other fans if you want to. enjoy what the band is freely sharing with you (listen to the message they're sending) and just don't be a prick. <3

#AND STREAM CARAMEL IF YOU HAVEN'T ‼️‼️‼️#orpheus speaks #i'm scared to maintag this #sleep token #Spotify

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jeleynai · 3 months ago

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Hii hope you're doing good! Wanted to ask some things if you don't mind, if you do issok!! Just avoid this and sorry 😅

But does your art style have a name and do you have any tips on learning this type of art style? Been trying but it's been really hard and idk where or what to start on. Thank you! Love your art btw it's so breathtaking <3

I got this question ages ago and totally forgot about it until now, I'm so sorry >.> I never mind questions though!! I love nerding out about art c:

I don't think my style has a specific name? Maybe like a semi-realism type thing? (If anyone has a better way to describe it please let me know haha)

As for learning I'd recommend learning from life for this type of thing! I did a ton of photo studies (and still do).

What helped me a lot when I was starting out was doing timed environment studies. Weird I know with how many characters I draw but hear me out: When you're on a time limit (I usually set 30 minutes) you have to be a lot more intentional with the marks you're putting down so you end up waffling around a lot less over time. This also helps really hammer home how to use all your tools properly and forces you to think about your brush economy.

Here are some 30-minute environments from 2020 (I should.. do some more again, I haven't timed my plein air in a while oops)

(showing old ass art always feels a bit scary haha I'm getting old)

They're really rough but they helped me try to nail down colours and learn how to best use my brushes! I actually made a brush specifically for that image on the right before I got started on it because I knew I was going to be drawing layered stone and I wanted to prepare myself for the half-hour mad dash these things always end up being. (I named him Francis)

For more character specific things - I actually did the 100 heads challenge a few years ago and it helped TONS with getting more confident in my lines and putting down features. I'm still not a line artist or a great sketcher by an means but it helped me feel a lot more loose and relaxed when I start things!

PAINTING wise I also learned from photos and I drew from life! A good reference is honestly 90% of the battle, just make sure when you're studying or working off a reference that you're identifying what makes the image appealing and capture that as best as you can. For me that's usually the light or the mood of a reference since I'm personally drawn to those things the most. Film studies can help you LOADS with this too! Cinematographers are the composition goats.

And the main thing is try to keep having fun! Motivation and drive are SO important and something I definitely still struggle with. I started drawing originally because I wanted to draw my D&D characters and then I wanted to get better so I could draw them better. Having small goals and passions does wonders for progress! Try not to aim TOO high either, I know from experience that 'waiting until I'm good enough' for an idea can end up with just.. nothing being drawn because I don't ever feel good enough for my own ideas, if that makes sense? Just remember you can always draw it again down the line!

Art takes a loooong time to learn so be patient with yourself!

ANYWAYS super long answer I'm so sorry if anyone is still reading: hiiiiii <3

#answered asks #I'm sorry I waffle on for so long when it comes to art #I promise it's just because I'm excited - I can totally get to the point #mkay maybe I can't

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mrsjellymunson · 1 year ago

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The Biology Tutor | Extra Credits 02

Extra Credits 02: FRENCH

Series masterlist

Prev: Lesson 1: Female Anatomy | Lesson 2: Male Anatomy | Extra Credits 01: Communication Skills Next: Independent Study 01: Art | Independent Study 02: Creative Writing | Lesson 3: Human Reproduction

Pairing: virgin!Eddie Munson x fem!tutor!reader

Series summary: Eddie’s failing Biology class, so you decide to offer two different styles of tuition, textbook-based and *ahem* practical.

Chapter summary: You give Eddie a French lesson.

WC: 2.9k

CW: 🔞 18+ MDNI! This part isn't explicit, but the rest of the series is, so MDNI!! Fluff, kissing, mentions of arousal.

A/N: This takes place between Extra Credit 1 and Lesson 3. It’s an added extra to The Biology Tutor series.

My masterlist

Despite your best efforts to keep things cool, you and Eddie’s relationship at school has shifted.

Eddie will greet you with a cheery, “Heeey, Princess”, whenever you pass in the corridors, and you’ll sometimes give him a cheeky wave in the lunchroom. You both flush a little whenever your eyes lock, thinking about all the intimate stuff you’ve done together over the past days and weeks.

Thankfully, as yet none of your friends have noticed the way you’ve started to giggle a little more loudly at Eddie’s antics on the lunch tables, or the way he shoots you cheeky glances to check that you’re watching. Each of your social groups would likely have something disparaging to say, and you’d prefer to avoid that kind of attention for the time being.

You’ve become even more aware of your physical proximity in Biology class. Even though you could probably reach out and touch each other (and you would really, really like to do that…) you try not to draw too much attention to yourselves.

You’re finding it hard to keep your focus on the front, knowing that Eddie’s sitting inches away behind you. But you revel in the fact that he’s there at all (and is, in all likelihood, checking out your ass).

At the end of class, Mr Clarke calls you over.

“I wanted to thank you for your efforts regarding the private tutoring. Mr Munson’s work has certainly improved since you began, as has his class attendance, which is remarkable in and of itself. And he seems to have become more enthusiastic about the human biology aspect of the syllabus too, which is… unexpected, but really good to see.”

He looks off to one side, momentarily bemused, but recovers quickly and continues,

“Nevertheless, there is a big test coming up which, as you know, makes up a sizable proportion of your grade. I would very much like to see Mr Munson do well. I was hoping that you might help him prepare, and in the hopes that you’d agree, I’ve already booked private study room 2C in the library specifically for this purpose.”

You know the library well, and the one he’s describing is a particularly quiet one, located at the back of the rarely-used reference section. If you can get Eddie to join you, it’ll be the first time you’ve ever been alone with him at school. You experience a frisson of excitement at the thought.

You readily agree, figuring that even if that wasn’t reason enough, getting further in the good graces of Mr Clarke wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. However, you do think convincing Eddie to relinquish his entire lunchtime might be another matter entirely.

You approach him in the lunchroom, managing to get to him before his usual table fills up with nerds. He was initially aghast that you were anywhere near him, but once he realised nobody was really interested he listened to your proposal.

“You seriously do this shit voluntarily?” is his only response, until you mention, more quietly, how it would mean spending an entire hour in a small, isolated room. With you. Alone.

Suddenly, he’s all for it, packing up his stuff as you exit ahead of him. He extols the virtues of ‘accepting with grace the assistance the universe offers you’ to the smattering of confused Hellfire boys before hightailing it out of the hall, stuffing pretzels into his mouth as he goes.

You reach the study room first, and are already setting out books and pencils as Eddie barrels in. He practically skids to a halt, and ambles towards you, rubbing the back of his neck and trying to act nonchalant.

“Hey, Princess.”

He plops his bag onto the tabletop, and as he gestures to the empty seats next to you and across the table, he drops his voice to a lower timbre as he asks you,

“So, uh, where do you want me?”

Thanks to his mildly suggestive question, an image flashes across your mind of perching him, naked, on the edge of the table and climbing atop him, but you quickly shake it.

You tap your hand on the seat next to you, and he enthusiastically flops himself down in it. He sits up straight, clasping his hands in his lap, theatrically attentive.

As he’s already managed to fluster you, you decide to fluster him right back.

“You’re so good at doing what I tell you, Eddie. I like that.”

Eddie’s cheeks flush pink and he swallows hard. It worked.

It doesn't take long for you to go over the test questions. Eddie’s picked up more than he’d thought from the parts of your sessions where you’d actually studied, and he flies through most of it, only getting stuck on a couple of gnarly chemistry formulae. What’s more, he actually looks like he’s having fun, gaining genuine satisfaction from answering your questions correctly and beaming as you let him know,

“That’s it, Eddie! You’ve got it!”

You can’t tell whether it’s the academic achievement, or the broad smiles and encouragement that you’re giving him, that’s his biggest driver, but at this point you’ll take either as a win.

You've gradually started sitting closer as the session has gone on. You’ve scootched to the edges of your seats, and your elbows and knees are gently knocking together. You can feel Eddie’s breath on your cheek as he jabs at his test total on your pad, screwing up his face and making a fist with his other hand in triumph. You’re genuinely thrilled for him, and not just because the very idea that you could be the reason for those gorgeous dimples popping makes your tummy flip.

Checking your watch, you realise you have a few minutes left before you have to leave, and there’s another new ‘skill’ that you’ve been thinking about trying with him.

Once all your supplies are back in your bag, you check the time again before asking,

“Eddie, would you like to try another quick practical session?”

He looks around the room, eyebrows disappearing into his bangs.

“What, here? Now?”

“Yes, but not like our, um, previous sessions. Something less… involved.”

“Okay, but what is it?”

“Eddie, I hope you don’t mind me asking you this, but have you ever kissed anyone?”

He looks a little abashed as he answers,

“Umm, does kissing your relatives on the cheek count?”

You can’t help smiling at his cute admission.

“For the purposes of this discussion, I’m gonna say no.”

He looks self-conscious, maybe even a little ashamed. Staring at the edge of the table, he clears his throat before replying,

“Then, uh, no.”

Not wanting him to feel uncomfortable, you reassure him,

“That’s okay, Eddie. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

After a beat, you continue,

“Would you like to try it? With me?”

“What?”

“Would you like for us to kiss, Eddie?”

His eyes become locked on your mouth. He swallows audibly, eyes shining with want.

“Umm, yeah. Yes. Yes, I absolutely would, Princess.”

“Just so I know how far you want to go, would you like us to… French kiss?“

“You mean… W- with, y’know, tongue?”

“Yes, Eddie. That’s exactly what I mean.”

“Are you okay with that? I mean, you don’t have to…”

Shaking your head a little, you reassure him,

“I’m the one who suggested it, Eddie!”

He looks down at his hands, now clasped again as he rubs his thumbs together.

“Only if you’re sure. I might be awful at it.”

“Well, that’s why we practice, right? So, first of all, we need to get a little closer…”

You turn your seat so you’re facing him directly, encouraging him to do the same. You pull your seat forwards, slotting your knees between his. You see his eyes scanning your face, and his fingers fidget, suggesting he’s not really sure what to do with them.

“You can rest your hands on my legs if you’d like, Eddie.”

He does so, but not without a little trepidation, and you see him swallow again.

“Just relax. I’m not gonna bite you. Not this time, anyway.”

You give him what you hope is a cheeky smirk. He smiles shyly, not sure where to look when you’re this close to him. Nervously, he licks his lips. The sight makes your thighs clench.

“Close your eyes and relax, Eddie. I’m gonna start with a quick peck.”

“O- okaaaay.”

He does as you ask, and you spend a few moments appraising him before you lean into his space. He looks angelic, his wild curls framing his pretty face and his rosy pink lips looking soft and inviting.

You turn your head slightly so your nose will slide past his, close your eyes, and ever so slowly connect your lips with his. Pursing them a little, you press forwards, and you hear a slight intake of breath.

You said it was going to be quick, but you’re enjoying the feeling so much you relish in it for a few moments. Eddie’s lips are plump, warm, and just a little moist from where he’s licked them. A tiny amount of stubble tickles your top lip. He smells of old leather, some kind of spicy cologne and vanilla chapstick, with a hint of cigarettes and weed. It’s a heady scent you could easily get lost in.

Gathering yourself, you pull back, rolling your lips inwards to taste him.

Eddie still has his eyes closed. If you’re honest he looks like he’s about to faint. Even after all you’ve done together you’re still a little nervous, and you’re suddenly mortified that he found it repulsive.

You did remember to brush your teeth this morning, didn’t you? Did you eat garlic last night and forget? Do you have spinach in your teeth, even though you definitely haven’t eaten spinach in weeks??

“H- how was that, Eddie? Did you like it?”

Suddenly, his eyes pop open. His lips part a little and he nods his head quickly, causing his chestnut locks to bounce around his face. He stares at you for a few more moments before he manages to say in a tiny, cracking voice,

“More? Please?”

You smile widely, and lean in again.

This time you move a little, pursing and softening your lips, changing their position slightly to find out what he likes, slotting them in different places.

To your surprise, this time Eddie starts to kiss you back. His plump lips press against yours and the tiniest moan emanates from his chest. He’s tentative at first, but as he gains in confidence he presses a little harder, and moves a little more.

Your lips move in sync as you rhythmically purse and relax them.

Eddie exhales heavily, and more than a little shakily, through his nose, and you feel his warm breath dance across your face and décolletage.

You part from him with a subtle wet smack.

He swallows thickly, and the grip on your knees strengthens.

You smile at him again, and his eyes flick between yours as he mirrors your expression.

“Okay Eddie, if you’re ready, this time I’m gonna use my tongue. You don’t have to do anything, but if you want to, just do what feels good. Alright?”

Eddie gives you another tiny, fast nod, and you feel him squeeze your knees again.

“Are you ready?”

“Yeah, I’m ready…”

He surprises you again as he shifts his hands slightly and slides them up your thighs, leaning into your space a little further. They feel warm, strong, and you can’t help but imagine how they might feel elsewhere.

What would it be like to hold his hand properly? Would his hand feel warm as it cupped your face? Would you be able to feel his rings? How would his calloused fingers feel running up your back, or across your…?

You’re broken from your thoughts as he closes his eyes again, a slight curl to his lips as he lets you know he’s ready.

You lean into his space again, and connect your lips as before. This time, you part your lips slightly and allow the tip of your tongue to poke out, and ever so gently brush across his lower lip. You hear that sharp intake of breath again as he stills, unsure of what he’s supposed to do, but then he parts his lips ever so slightly, and you slide your tongue past his lips and pearly teeth and into his mouth. You move it slowly, enjoying the feeling of his lips against it, the scrape of his teeth, the softness of his tongue beneath yours.

He moans again, and just as your tongue curls up to tickle the roof of his mouth suddenly his tongue is moving against yours, slowly, reverently, experimentally, and another moan leaves his chest.

His grip on your thighs tightens as he gets bolder, eventually pushing his tongue past your lips and into your mouth.

Abruptly, he turns his head slightly and pushes in more deeply, his tongue almost filling you. He’s insistent yet gentle, and now it’s your turn to gasp - he’s good at this - and a low whine leaves you.

You feel a chill on your legs as Eddie’s hands leave them, and you’re momentarily disappointed, but this rapidly turns into delighted surprise when one comes up to cup the back of your neck, the other grabbing the edge of your chair and pulling you closer towards him. He’s moaning continually now, turning his head to try different angles, licking and curling and sucking like you’re the very air he needs to breathe.

He’s pushing hard but not too hard, and when your teeth knock it’s adorable rather than uncomfortable.

It’s wet and messy, and oh, so fucking hot.

Your hands start travelling almost of their own accord, slipping up inside his jacket, sliding around his rib cage and settling on his surprisingly muscular back.

His hand travels up to your hair, mussing it, and you’re making his shirt ride up, but you couldn’t care less, lost in the sensations of your lips melding and tongues dancing.

There’s a pulsing heat in your core, and a wetness building in your underwear. You don’t think you've ever been this turned on just from kissing.

And how on Earth is Eddie so good at it?

You eventually both pull back, needing air, breathy and inhaling deeply.

Your eyes dance around his face, wanting to take it all in. His plump, kiss-bitten lips, his blown pupils, the way he’s looking at you with a stunned half-smile.

Needing a break from the intensity, you drop your eyes. But almost wish you hadn’t when you spot the obvious bulge in the front of Eddie’s pants.

He’s clearly enjoyed this as much as you have.

Just as you’re both leaning forward for another round, lips just brushing, the harsh and loud ringing of the school bell indicates the start of afternoon classes.

You and Eddie break apart with a start, exchanging breathy smiles, both a little surprised at how well that went.

He chuckles as he lets go of your hair, tidying it as best he can, and you pull down the hem of his shirt to straighten it.

”So, uh, I think I’d consider that lesson a success. Wouldn’t you, Mr Munson?”

He huffs out a little giggle, shaking his head slowly. His brow furrows and he fixes his face into as serious an expression as he can manage, as he dips his chin and replies,

“Oh, Princess, that feels like a great start. But you know, lessons work with me. So, just to be on the safe side, I think I might need a whole lot, lot more practice...”

He’s holding your gaze and nodding, raising his eyebrows and pursing his lips for emphasis.

You nearly snort at his brazenness, constantly amazed at how he so easily flips between abject fear and bolshy confidence, and manage to squeak out,

“Well, we’ll just have to see what we can arrange, won’t we?”

He grins at you again, those dimples even deeper this time, and tidies one more strand of hair at your temple.

Reluctantly, you both gather your things and leave the study room, still with shiny lips and heat in your cheeks.

You walk leisurely, your upper arms brushing, through the racks of dusty tomes. Neither of you is in any particular hurry to get to your next class.

You glance to your side, and notice that Eddie seems bigger, taller. He’s puffing his chest and is carrying himself a little differently. You like it.

He turns to you as he asks, “D’you think we should, y’know, leave separately or whatever?”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. Awkward questions, and all that.”

You see Eddie’s eyes glance to the floor, then flit to the section containing the large encyclopaedias and dictionaries, before he adds,

“You know what, you go first. There’s something I want to check out in the reference section anyway…”

He flashes you a wink as you round the door jamb, causing something to revolve in your chest as you step out into the corridor. You definitely want to offer Eddie plenty of opportunities to practice this particular new skill.

As you head off to your next class, you wonder what on earth he could be up to. But more than that, you wonder how he’ll react to what you have in mind for your next study session…

Series masterlist

Prev: Lesson 1: Female anatomy | Lesson 2: Male Anatomy | Extra Credits 01: Communication Skills

Next: Independent Study 01: Art | Independent Study 02: Creative Writing | Lesson 3: Human Reproduction

Thanks so much for reading!

Remember, writers thrive on your comments and reblogs, so if you liked this little extra please show some love 💕

A/N 2: I added this as an extra because I wanted Eddie and reader to share a special first kiss, but couldn’t work out how to fit it into the main Lessons without making them ridiculously long. I hope you like it!

The taglist for this series is open whilst it’s ongoing, and I have a general one now too - just let me know if you’d like to join either 😀 My masterlist, where you’ll find more Eddie and Steddie fics

Taglist (open whilst this series is ongoing): @airen256 @bimbobaggins69 @urlbitchin @jamdoughnutmagician @rustboxstarr @bl4ckt00thgr1n @bexreadstoomuch @cozmiccass @sadlittlesquish @yujyujj @cluz1babe @thunderg @aysheashea @paleidiot @cadence73 @eddie-munsons-wifey @siriuslysmoking @neville-is-my-husband @aestheticaltcow @jjmaybankswifes-blog @lightcommastix @ungracefularchimedes @spenciesprincess @joejoequinnquinn @freshoutthewomb2 @sunshinepeachx @tlclick73 @hellfirenacht @yourdailymemedelivery @wendyxox @madaboutmunson @80s-addict @the-unforgivenn @skrzydlak @eddiesxangel @bunny7232 @starksbabie

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creatingblackcharacters · 6 months ago

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Do you have any techniques/tips for drawing graying coily hair? I have a lot reference photos saved but when it comes to copying the look, afros in my art style end up looking like a block of color with a hard gradient of gray to deep brown/black or deep brown/black with noticable squiggly gray/white lines. I don't have a realistic style and have not seen many older/aging Black characters from the artists I follow, and I'm not skilled enough in a realistic style to copy a reference 1 to 1. If you have any recommendations of artists who draw graying coiled hair or any tips on how to incorporate lighter colors into a coily texture (this would go for dyed hair too), I would appreciate it so much. I have also struggled to find comprehensive photo references of how graying locs would look, how the lighter strands pattern with the darker ones when locked. Also, is there anything specific you would want ppl to know or include about aging Black and textured hair? Balding patterns, hair care specifically geared to older ppl, any general knowledge off the top of your head that could direct on what to watch for and include? Thank you in advance and have a good day

Ombre effects and/or blending! You can find this in dyed hair as well. Greying is not always even, anyway, if you're worried about symmetry.

But yeah for grey hair I'll usually do a base color of the original hair color, then spray paint the grey towards the roots out to wherever I want it to reach in the hair. Then I go back and use the hair brush textures to add the greying hairs and highlights where necessary. This works for locs and afros for me.

There's also a Black artist, @prinnay , that I think does an excellent job of using color to show different highlights in the hair. Here's a small example of a bit of grey and white in one of her pieces. Just because it's a bunch of different colors not blending when you look close doesn't mean that the effect won't be there when you step back overall. I would suggest studying their work as well, they're a far better artist than I!

As for aging hair care, nothing that I wouldn't say about our hair in general. Maybe that the texture might soften as the hair greys and to be more careful because aging hair might not be as strong. Balding isn't a unique experience to Blackness. And as always, I suggest following more Black artists and studying their work 👍🏾

#creatingblackcharacters #thatsjusttips #black character design #black hair

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star-daughter · 8 months ago

Text

Whooh boy. Hi everyone! Sorry, It's been a while. But I have quite the post for you all today, because we'll be talking about a webcomic I just finished! ... I will warn you all though, that I do not have the kindest of words to say about it.

You may be aware of this comic, as it has a considerable following, especially here on tumblr, the comic is called Sparklecare. It currently has 4 volumes and is on a short hiatus so the website can finish it's redesign, but the plot summary of the comic from the last available snapshot of the website is as follows:

The comic follows the story of a cat named Barry Ill and his experience of being admitted to the Sparklecare hospital. Despite its glamorous reputation, the hospital is actually a prison that tortures and kills its patients and drains their families of insurance by the corrupt hospital's owner, Dr. Cuddles. Cuddles is a greedy Capitalist scumbag who cares about nothing but money, and so far, everything is working out for him. Any patients who escape or try to speak out against the hospital aren't believed and are written off as crazy. The story follows Barry's journey into uncovering the truth about why this place really is the way it is, and why nobody's talking about it.

From the outside, the comic is very striking and intriguing! From it's prominent art style and art direction, to the concept itself, it sounds like a fun time! ...Right? Well that's where the comic gets you; see just like the in-universe hospital, Sparklecare isn't as inviting and pleasant once you really sink your teeth in. And I'm here to talk about why I think that is.

Before we begin, I'd like to clarify since I've become aware of the community's um... Questionable attitude towards critique, that if you enjoy Sparklecare, that's totally fine! I'm not gonna tell you what you can and can't read, I'm here to express my own thoughts on it.

Now, I won't torture you with this post if it ends up on your dash, so the full post will be under the cut! Please check the reblogs, I may add more there if I run out of space.

Also, CW for bright colours, blood and a whole heaping o' medical mispractice.

Before I get into some of the more serious issues with the comic, I wanna first start off with the thing you're going to first see trying to read it: The art. Here I would say the website, but since it's getting a redesign, I don't feel confident speaking on it. I'll leave one note on it though: it needs serious optimization...

Onto the art: I will say, I found the art quite charming, especially the art in the first 2 volumes. I think the comic has a way with setting mood and tone using it's palette, specifically in the dramatic "blue/red" scenes - I think those look gorgeous!

The style in volume 1 & 2 is also very pleasing to the eye, although it can look off at points. I think the style succeeds extremely well with it's tendency to give characters large, exaggerated expressions - it's very cartoony and I love it. The lineweight is also used very well in my opinion!

However... There's a few big elephants in the room that they are The designs, lettering & panel work.

I'll begin with how the series handles it's lettering, as it's one of the most important parts of a comic. Although it's unique, that does not mean it's good.

In volume 1, it starts off fine enough, it's a simple speech bubble with white/black text.

It sort of flip-flops between having a shadow/glow and not having one, which although confusing and hurts my eyes sometimes, not a deal breaker! The bubbles are all colour coded also so no matter the scene, you understand who is talking. That is very good! I like that! I wish the colours weren't as bright as the backgrounds, but I understand why they are.

Volume 2 introduces what I consider my favorite of the lettering styles, big bold outlines with bubbles that better surround the text!

It's easily the most recognizable lettering style of all the volumes, and it's very readable. It's simple, but lettering is at it's best when it's simple and understandable.

This volume's lettering also introduces colour coded words & different fonts.

Which, I think looks lovely! It adds personality, and since fonts carry different tones with them, it helps with emphasis and how people read the dialogue. However, this isn't to say I think this lettering is perfect.. I'm not a huge fan of the random dots & spots, I think they clutter up the page when there too many characters on screen speaking, which distracted me from focusing on the actual words they were saying.

It also changes mid-way through volume 2! Suddenly, we get character-coded dots & spots... Which, cool in theory, but in practice, as I mentioned, it clutters the page if there's too many characters speaking at once.

Plus, they're used on background characters who do not appear again after their introduction, which is such a waste... If you're going to introduce these character-specific details, they should be used on characters who are important, not character we'll never see again.

When we get to volume 3 & 4, the lettering style almost completely solidifies, the same big bold outlining from volume 2... But now instead of just having personalized dots, we get fully personalized speech bubbles. Which, again, cool in theory! But in practice it's just... So hard to read.

On lettering, I will applaud the use of a custom hand-written font. It looks great! It's fairly clear and adds a nice touch to the comic's overall appearance... But how they use the font is, in my opinion, awful. Characters talk way too much for how much page space there is, which means that there isn't enough space for the bubble to encompass the text, which means text needs to get smaller.

These pages are over 2000 pixels wide and tall, but there's no consideration for how the images & text will look when shrunk down to fit into a normal browser page, which means the text gets tiny and barely readable if there's too much of it - which there often is. I'll get into how I feel about the writing in a moment.

On the panel work, it's fine, it's not super jaw-dropping but it's serviceable. Where the panel work starts to fail though, is it's pacing. See, in comics, pacing is extremely important, good pacing means a better and clearer reading experience, bad pacing can leave the reader confused and force them to reread repeatedly to understand what's going on.

Sparklecare suffers from this heavily, I feel. Take a look to this page below, while not the worst example of it, I think demonstrates a bit what I mean.

There's a lot of text, similar looking shots, and... Very little background to help, well, ground where we are, which made me feel dizzy while reading. There's not a lot of proper flow, because speech bubbles float all over the place, often times out of order in which you are supposed to read them. You tend to dart your eyes all over the page to "properly" read it, which makes for a bad reading experience - the clearer the order is, the better the flow.

On backgrounds, I do not like the near-complete lack of them. Sparklecare gets around backgrounds by filling the colour voids of the panels with dots, specks, lines and patterns - but they don't do the job! It makes the pages feel more cluttered and difficult to look at and read.

Even when they do have backgrounds, they're also filled to the brim with patterning to take your mind off how often strange they look.

Being unable to see what's going on is a reoccurring issue with the comic, and it doesn't just end at the panel work or backgrounds...

The character designs in Sparklecare also contribute to the visual clutter, what with many of them having many small details or otherwise being unpleasant to look at due to their colour palette.

Here's a few examples of characters I think have too much going on or are just eyesores. And see, I get it, they're supposed to be sparkleanimals - designed like a kid on DeviantArt was making them in 2011, but you can get that look without making the designs hurt to look at. Sparklecare both tries to work within a limited palette and tries to have every colour possible on a character and it pulls neither off well. Not to mention, the multitude of small dots & details, adding more to the pile of small dots in the comic.

When a ton of characters are on screen, it tends to make things more confusing to look at - due in part also to the comic's continuity issue. Things or characters that are in one panel or page, will disappear the next, or swap places. Overall, small art issues pile up onto a mess of bright colours and rainbow.

Now here's where we get to the fun point, The writing. Oh boy! For the most part, or at least in volumes 1 & 2, the writing is completely fine. Complicated, a bit odd, but nothing to scream about... Until volumes 3 & 4, because that's when the issues in the writing really starts to show it's rainbow-speckled face.

I'll be direct, I don't like the writing in Sparklecare. The characters are typically unlikable or annoying, and when they do have something interesting going for them, it gets walked back on for plot reasons. Characters also seem to be unable to do wrong, unless they're deliberately out to be the bad one. Characters will do something bad, but get reassured that everything is fine and it isn't their fault even though they did something bad - which is weird the first time, but awful the next 40.

The writing does have it's good points (I liked most of the writing in volume 2, I thought Hemera's struggles with wanting to keep her friends safe was really interesting and I liked the chunklings), but there's prominent issues I can't shove aside.

I namely have issues with the humor, specifically it's uh... Sexual humor. Now, don't get me wrong, I love a good penis joke every now and then, but volume 4 has about 5x the sex jokes of any volume. It was genuinely horrible to sit through because I knew every serious moment would get a joke about stroking it a page or two afterwards.

(One note on that first image there, it happens right after Barry [the green guy] completely belittles and insults Uni [the purple one]...)

The meta humor also felt very, very forced.

It always came out of nowhere, and completely out of place every time it was used. I like meta humor also, but this is supposed to be a more serious comic, yes? I mean, it should be considering the topics at hand, so suddenly throwing in references to this being a comic feels weird to read.

I will say, I do like some of the jokes, specifically these ones:

Let me circle back to the character writing really quick, because there was characters I enjoyed! ... Just not the main ones.

I think, out of everyone, my favorite characters were:

Several background characters with no lines

Dr. Party

Cyn

Jean

Rem

I also really enjoyed how Cuddles was written in volume 1 & 2, he felt very threatening to me.

Outside of these characters though, I found little interest in the main cast and even found myself rooting for the downfall of a few of them due to their poor writing.

Specifically on Barry, there's a small arc in volume 2 where he realizes he needs to stop violently denying that Uni has magic (Which is a stupid plot in my opinion, by the way, considering the worldbuilding has a lot of magic in it. You'd think the smart guy character would know that?) after Uni's magic helps them in the dump. However, right afterwards, in volume 3 & 4, Barry goes right back to verbally assaulting Uni about how magic isn't real! It's not enjoyable to read, and makes no sense to me after what happened in volume 2.

One note, since I don't know where to put this but, I don't like doom. I really don't ... I think I'm supposed to feel bad for him? But I can't! I saw him in volume 1 take glee in having power over the patients, and as the site states:

Doom is not a normal nurse, because he takes on the role of a doctor by harming people alongside regular nurse duties.

He literally tortures people! I'm sorry, I cannot forgive that! No matter how bad he feels about it.

Some more notes on writing before I end this because it's getting too long.. The disability rep in Sparklecare is, questionable sometimes. For the most part I think it's perfectly fine, buuut there are moments I don't think of fondly.. Specifically this moment in volume 2:

Barry starts having a paranoid and panicky moment due to his contamination OCD (Because they're in a literal trash heap) and Uni decides to...

Call it cute??? Genuinely what the hell, who thought this was a good thing to put in here? I haven't read the spin-off AU comic, but I hear it treats it's character with OCD even weirder. Yuck!

On a related note, I hate the cutesy names for disorders. They don't even come up often in-universe, there's little purpose in having them, especially if most of them are just real life, actual disorders. I know it's about an abusive hospital but come on man! You don't have to use baby names for everything! You don't even follow the weird naming pattern for everything! Things like autism don't get a weird cutesy name, but OCD and depression get one? Have some consistency if you're gonna make a weird universe decision.

Alrighty.. This should be the end of it, I'm not sure how to end it because there's still more I want to talk about! I'm super-duper open to talking about anything I've said here or elaborating on why I feel certain ways. This is in no way meant to be a hit-piece of the creator of Sparklecare, I think there's a lot of protentional, and I simply adore some aspects of the comic (Specifically visually). I really do hope this comic will improve over time and that it sees a long life of success.

If you come to this post to disagree, I ask you read through what I say carefully and come at me respectfully, I have no interest in fighting with people over a webcomic about furries.

-Mod Star

#mod star #sparklecriticism #sparklecarecriticism #sparklecare criticism #sparklecrit #I was considering posting this in main tags until I realized I'd get my ass destroyed. Oh well!#Apologies if anything is worded odd or has typos #I was distracted often while writing this and it is quite long so I proofread as I went.

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