Something I need white people to stop doing in fandom: assuming anyone who is writing villain-centric fic is white. I'm black. I'm allowed to explore villains' backstories, psychology, etc. if I like. It doesn't render me white. I know, some people are just trying to shit on women so they throw "white" in front of the word women before they say "writing about villains is some white women shit". I know some people are just mad anyone writes about villains at all. For them, calling it a straight or white or straight and white woman thing is a way of not saying what they're actually thinking, which is that no one should do it.
But I would respect people a lot more if they just said what they meant. Just say you hate something. Don't assign a race or gender or orientation to what you hate. Say what you mean. Yeah, you'll get less fawning reblogs. You'll also be significantly less transparent and pathetic to actual black people reading your post.
This goes double for when someone is talking about a black villain. I can humanize him and give him a backstory instead of the ??? canon gave him. I can humanize him. And you know what? I like it when someone does that and they're white. If a white person humanizes a flat black character and sympathizes with them and treats them like a person, that's good, actually! Yes, even if it's the dreaded straight white woman of myth and legend doing it. Especially if it's her, even. I want to live in a world where a straight white woman pours her heart into writing a black man. I like that a lot. That means she's moved past the racist idea of scary black men and is viewing us as people.
Is it supposed to be woke or progressive to tell white women not to humanize others? Bc if so, my follow-up question is simple: how?
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I always feel so bad for the black girls in fandom who are into... like... Reylo or Phantom/Christine or some bog standard problematic het like that. The amount of shit they get, man...
(It happens with lots of other things, obviously. I've just personally witnessed some truly reprehensible incidents involving shippers of those.)
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Hiii! Absolutely in love with your writing! Never thought you'd ever write for Helluva Boss or Hazbin Hotel. Out of your top fandoms, may I propose that the reader is immune to Vox's hypnosis? Having this rare ability, they try escaping the V tower but it ends up being the biggest mistake. This TV seems to be possessive and canonically a control freak like a lot of TV based characters (looking at you Mr. Puzzles) lol! I know you're a busy person with their own life in the end of the day so I won't be mad if you refuse to write this. I love the content you provide us with already <3
Sure! I wasn't sure if you wanted a concept or a one shot, so I just focused on rambling out my thoughts on it. It could work either way though so maybe I'll follow this up sometime.
Yandere! Vox with Darling immune to hypnosis
Pairing: Romantic
Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Manipulation, Violence, Anger issues, Kidnapping/Post-Kidnapping, Stalking, Possessive behavior, Mentions of Val's smoke/Drugging, Forced relationship.
It's hard to say who, at this time, has immunity to Vox's hypnotism.
It's currently only known to grab the attention of people who are... paying attention.
So, maybe you're oblivious or just never paying attention to his hypnotism.
Which in itself is incredibly frustrating to Vox.
However, another method is natural immunity.
I'm thinking maybe you're also an Overlord that has to, unfortunately, have meetings with The Vees due to a partnership.
Vox probably still outranks you, yet you're strong enough to resist his powers.
Another option is simply having a specific type of gear or tech you created that blocks his hypnotism.
Regardless... One way or another Vox can't use one of his most powerful tools on you...
Which naturally makes him pissy.
He can't do his usual subtle charms against you, carefully manipulating you into listening and being his.
Even when he captures you, you never seem to listen.
Normally it's easy for Vox to make other demons listen to him.
Unless they're Valentino or Alastor.
But now he has yet another demon who can just... ignore it.
He has so many fits when he tries to trick you into something, only for you to shut him down.
It's humbling and he hates it.
So, if Vox wants to keep you in the V Tower, he has to expect more resistance.
In fact, normally escape attempts would be amusing as he can just charm you again.
But now he can't do that.
I feel your immunity would stress Vox out at times.
Even if he manages to manipulate you into V Tower, keeping you there is difficult.
Vox is naturally charming, so you may agree with what he says at first.
Hell, maybe you two were dating before things went wrong or at the very least on friendly terms.
Then he goes crazy and locks you in your own personal room with high security and everything.
Vox was once drawn to (and frustrated with) you due to your immunity.
That was what got him obsessed in the first place before he started having all these... feelings.
Sinful feelings.
You're distracting, even more so when he can't charm you to give him attention.
So what better way to force your attention than manipulate you into the tower.
Maybe you were meant to be another V, but once you had enough of Vox and his obsessive behavior, you tried to leave.
Only for Vox to lock you away.
As he can't charm his way into making you listen, now he has to keep you by other means.
Such as cameras, screens, electronic locks, all sorts of security.
Fine... You may be able to bypass his hypnosis...
But he has other means to keep you his.
The issue he ends up finding though is a lack of affection.
He can't charm you into giving it to him.
You ignore him and no matter how hard he tries... You never pay attention.
Considering how Vox thrives on attention...
This is devastating and leaves him screaming in frustration.
One way I can see him forcing you to be more... attentive is using Val.
Vox would probably somehow get Val to give him some of his smoke/spit.
Disgusting and disturbing? Yes... but that's the point.
Vox seems like the type of person to control you in other ways, since he loves control.
If you tried to escape your high security prison, or withheld affection from Vox, you're essentially getting gassed/drugged.
He most likely would test it with just a bit.
Then afterwards, depending on his mood, would up the dosage.
(This makes my skin crawl-)
Of course, escape was never going to end well for you.
Vox will find some way to break you.
Be that showing you his security, using Val, or isolating you...
Vox is going to force your attention to make you rely on him.
There's no genuine love with him.
Only ownership.
Escaping is near impossible with his coworkers, employees, and security.
At some point, you'll break and only have him to greet you...
Leaving Vox to embrace you with eager arms, his claws digging into your skin once you're finally his.
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How I save time on backgrounds as a full-time webcomic artist
Hi! I make webcomics for a living, and I have to be able to draw a panel extremely fast to keep up with my deadlines. I draw about 50 panels a week, which gives me about 45 minutes per panel if I want any semblance of a healthy work-life balance.
Most webtoon artists save time on backgrounds by using 3d models, which works for them and is great! but personally I hate working in 3d... I went to school for it for a year and hated it so much I completely changed career paths and vowed never to do it again! So, this is how I save time without using any 3d, for those of you out there who don't like it either!
This tactic has also saved me money (3d models are expensive) and it has helped me converting my comic from scroll format into page format for print, because I have much more art to work with than what's actually in the panels. (I'll touch on this later)
So, first, I make my backgrounds huge. my default starting size is 10,000 x 10,000 pixels. My panels are 2,500 pixels wide, so my backgrounds are 4x that, minimum. Because of this, I make them less detailed than I could or that you might expect so it doesn't look weird against my character art when I shrink portions of it down.
I personally find it much easier to add in detail than to make "removing" details look natural at smaller sizes, but you might have different preferences than I do.
I also make sure to keep all of my elements on separate layers so that I can easily remove or replace them, I can move them to simulate different camera angles more easily, and it's simple to adjust the lighting to imply different times of day.
Then I can go ahead and copy/paste them into my episodes. I move the background around until it feels like it's properly fitting how I want.
Once I've done that in every panel, I'll go back through the episode and clean up anything that looks weird, and add in solid blacks (for my art style) Here's a quick before and after of what that looks like!
This makes 90% of my backgrounds take me just a few hours. This is my tactic when I'm working in an environment that an entire scene, or multiple scenes, will take place.
But many panels will inevitably have a location that's used exactly once, and it would waste time and effort to draw a massive background for those. So in 10% of cases, I just draw the single panel background in the episode. I save all of these, just in case I can re-use it later (this happens more often with outdoor locations, but I save them all nonetheless!)
I generally have to draw about 2 big backgrounds per episode, and 3-5 single-panel backgrounds per episode! At the beginning of an arc/book the number is higher, but as the series is continuing and I'm building up an asset library of indoor and outdoor elements to re-use for the book, the number generally goes down and I save more time.
My series involves time travel and mysteries, so there's a lot of new locations in it and we're constantly moving around. If I were working on a series that was more consistent in this aspect, this process would save me even more time!
Like I said earlier, this also saves me a lot of pain and gives me a lot more options as I'm converting from scroll format to print format!
panels that look like this in scroll format...
can look like this in print!
because I drew the background like this, so I didn't need to go through the additional effort to add in the extra detail to expand it outwards at all.
Anyways, I hope this helps someone! As always if it doesn't help, just go ahead and disregard. This is what I do and what works for me, and I feel like I only ever see time-saving tips for comics that involve 3d models and workflows, which don't work for me at all! I know there's more people like me out there, so this is for you!
Enjoy!
Also obligatory "my webcomic" if you want to see this in action or check it out!
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In defense of late-canon x files (including the revivals)
I was thinking about this poll after I commented on it, and I kinda want to be brave and say more.
Short answer to the poll's question before I go any further: If you're a new fan and a sensitive sort who thinks you'll struggle with your blorbos Really Going Through It and you really need a happy ending, I suggest you stop at the end of season 8. Do not pass go, do not look at spoilers. Disregard this post entirely, close the internet, and go look at something that makes you happy. (Also fuck every part of society that characterizes sensitivity as inherently weak and bad and some kind of personal failing, you are valid.)
That said, "quality" as a concept is entirely subjective, and the question of whether or not there's a decline in quality for any story is wholly subjective, too. In the case of x files? I'm not convinced there is a decline. I am going to be upfront that I haven't yet watched past season 8, though I am almost completely spoiled on events after that - and the reason I haven't watched yet is not because of how I know events are going to unfold, but simply because I don't want it to end!!! Ohh, the tension between "I CAN'T WAIT!!!" and "Nooo don't be over D:"
When I first came to txf fandom on tumblr and gradually became spoiled about what happens in late canon though, I was often left uncomfortable and tbh kinda queasy about it. As I said in my comment on the poll, the hate for especially the revival and IWTB, or to a lesser extent even seasons 8 & 9, is very well documented. But! There are other takes to be found here on tumblr if you figure out where to look, and my feelings have changed!
The thing is, I have yet to find myself in any fandom where there isn't a vocal subset of fans who dislike the story after a certain point. I am not joking when I say that no one hates the things they love as passionately as sci-fi and fantasy fans. In my experience, it often hinges on the extent to which a viewer has strong notions on where they would like the characters to end up. In particular with series where shipping is a dominant component for the bulk of a fandom, I have almost universally found that there comes some turning point in the story where "let them be happy you cowards" is the dominant view, and things that compromise the attainment of a degree of romantic stability and/or domesticity are, to many fans, annoying at best and despicable at worst. But! As one tagset on the linked poll said:
and I think for any fandom, that last tag especially is so so so important. (I think that's harder for people watching a weekly series live, bc you have so much time to analyze and speculate and dream before the next breadcrumb drops, but I digress.)
So why am I saying this and how do I apply it to x files? Well, I eventually found that there are also a subset of fans who find redeeming things right up to the very end and actually quite like the whole thing! The things that I had seen people rage and ventpost so much about honestly never quite sounded to me as "out of character" or "untrue to the story" etc as those same ventposts made them sound. And I've discovered I'm not the only one who felt that way. Do I love that the spooky squad had to go through all of those things? No, those poor guys D: Life is hard and they have been through so much trauma. But do those events and their choices make sense to me in light of everything that came before? Yes! And I honestly can't wait to see them fight to overcome those things, breaking, healing, always learning, always growing, always getting better.
So if you're wondering "where does it go wrong"... well, I'm a completionist, as many people who've answered that post are, but also my personal opinion is that I don't think it does go wrong. If you're new and interested in exploring why I've gone from "vaguely queasy" to "excited" about the whole thing, or want to maybe balance out the impressions you're getting about the later seasons before deciding whether or not you want to see the whole thing, I'll put a few blog names in the comments.
Final admission: even once I started feeling a little more confident in the possibility that "actually ok maybe I'm not crazy, maybe this all kind of is in character and does make sense", there was one big plot point that I was NOT looking forward to and I thought I would never be comfortable about. In hindsight, I think my discomfort came from the negative responses being SO seemingly universal that I hadn't stopped to let myself truly consider other possible interpretations on that point. (I mean my initial instinct when I first read about it was, why are we mad about this?? CSM is literally the most unreliable narrator in history???? it's obviously fake news?????? this must be either a fever dream someone's having or it's a misdirection ploy against whatever shadowy forces might still be lurking?????????????? but for whatever reason I guess I had halfway written that off.) Happily, just last month there's a new post-s11 novel out, and although reviews for the book as a whole are mixed, it seems to have laid the groundwork for resolving that plot issue in a way I think most fans would be broadly happy with. If you're interested in being spoiled about that and seeing how, I recommend searching #perihelion on @agent-troi who liveblogged reading it with receipts, scroll back chronological-style to the first post on the subject and see how it unfolded. (And never forget that Dana Katherine Scully is the queen of denial as a coping mechanism lol)
Everyone's mileage will vary. Each person can feel however they want! But for anyone new, I wanted you to know that the very many ventposts you might be seeing are not all there is to this show or its fandom. Some of us love it despite - or even because of - all the things that went "wrong". I think we just don't talk about it as much.
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