#I'll have to put the other drawings into a different post (sad and depressing news. People understandably boo at me. Women cry)

[zondearts]

Tonight we got @sugar-swirlz kanamafu :D

I really love basset hound Kanade, the pitiful dog, the pupper. Needs to be held and hugged ☝️

[brooklynisher]

Here's a bunch of old sketchbook doodles I made y'all

Stick around bc this includes my first SPG drawings!! (Before I joined Tumblr)

Riveting start

I'll start off with little drawings I made of myself. And my god do you see what I'm doing with the anatomy? Do you see how tiny those joints are? That's horrific. Why did I build everyone like that? But Yugo is where I began to find my art style. Will love them forever for that. I've got to go back to simple-shaped heads one of these days and blush/eyelashes on everything

We've got some lovely Smile For Me-related doodles. First is a Flower Kid design. Second was not smile for me specifically, but Face Love (by the same devs). And the last two were my earlier attempts at making comics and scenes. Ft. lancer for some reason.

Here are a couple of abandoned OCs. Pretty boy (Basil) is supposed to be yellow. We've all had that OC whose only trait was being a hot person and that's what he was all about. Didn't develop him much in terms of character which is sad because I kinda like his design. He was created when I was doodling random designs in FireAlpaca. I'll have to show the other doodles in a different post (If you are interested).

THIS GUY I WOULD LIKE TO BRING BACK! Might be kinda basic in terms of like "Weird Core" designs but I still love him. His plot keeps changing though because his design is so strange yet so simple to the point where I could put him in just about any world I wanted to had I gotten bored of the old one. Which is silly bc he's just a depressed news anchor man.

Anyway bc of that, Basil used to be his bf, but isn't anymore. He got replaced with fat peppermint man who fun fact: was inspired by the song Brass Goggles BEFORE I even got into SPG and learned what it was about! How silly is that! Peppermint boy is technically my first SPG OC!

She was a fun one, but I abandoned her too. I think she was too influenced by Frye's character from Splatoon. She was a warrior of sorts. Sort of tribal I suppose. She spoke fast, and in her tribe's language, so many people struggled to understand her. She was very bouncy too. Jumping all over the place. If you know Frye, you'll probably notice that they're a bit too similar to each other. That's usually why I abandon my OCs. When they're too similar to another.

Critter I doodled. Not really an OC, but I still think she's cute

Don't ask me about the first guy. The girl was a mii that was born in Tomodachi Life! Her name is Lily. She is the child of Kris (Deltarune) and Hatsune Miku. She looks silly which is why I love her.

I'm Picasso. Kinda vibe with this ngl. Not sure if I could ever turn this into anything though

Here are some low-effort doodles. Enjoyed the design of the big lady more than I thought. I was practicing drawing bigger bodies at the time. Joints are still KILLING ME but it's not bad considering I had the worst anatomy method imaginable

Here are some higher-effort doodles. Aside from the abhorrent anatomy (WHY DOES THE PIG ZOMBIE HAVE TWO DIFFERENTLY SIZED SHOULDERSS????) I quite like these critters. That mermaid girl had lore too. She could control the dead of the sea. She was lowkey evil. Never turned her into anything though. Also, you can see by that guy at the bottom of the first one, that Bunny's art was starting to take an influence on me.

Lots of stuff going on over here but LOOK! MY VERY FIRST SPG FANART! IT'S OF VI POINTING AT AN APPLE AND YELLING AT IT

I was inspired by Bunny to make these monster-ish-looking people

More thingies! There's the goopy robot which I initially drew as a first attempt at drawing a robot, but then I made it black and goopy bc that's what it was giving. The star guy appears and disappears a few times. I think I wanted to keep them, but the design was very similar to LightLazer so I felt a bit weird about drawing them.

More robot shenanigans. First time drawing Rabbit and The Spine! Cannot believe that my first Spine drawing was in a dress oh my god.

More Bunny-inspired drawings and I'm REALLY kinda digging that weird tiny robot critter. Looking at it now, it's kinda like Spring in a few ways, but it's also completely different from Spring in so many other ways. The limbs are retractable. I kinda like this thing actually. I Oughtta do something with it.

These ones are more SPG-specific. You'll have to forgive me, most of these are from memory. Don't ask me why Rabbit looks like David Bowie in the first one.

And finally, some Rabbit and Spine doodles! Rabbit's doing the "Hey Andy Sweetie" meme. I could totally reattempt drawing that today actually.

Anyway, hope you had fun. I did. Ugh this is so sillyy

[usagifuyusummer]

Just sharing my recent sketches here... If the formatting is fucked up, I will separate my yapping session on a different post...

So update, I've recently watched until season 2 of the original Fairly Oddparents, and oh boy, am I enjoying it immensely lol. I can't watch everything in one go, since I'm actually still so busy with university and... as usual with unavoidable family matters...

Still, at least I've noticed some people shared the same sentiments as myself on the original FOP. If they ended the series properly, then I won't have these lingering feelings of..., a void I guess about where FOP ended. Hm, I think this void feeling also got my creative drive going overdrive on how FOP would have ended, while also speculating on what Timmy's best fate would be from the show. I guess being reminded of the lackluster way original FOP ended made me sad angry that I wanted to go back into drawing again lol.

About the sketches, some of these were actually inspired by an FOP au by @cubbihue. A few days ago I've stumbled upon a post of theirs talking about the fairy species system and I got inspired lol. Their AU kinda helped me get the hang of how to draw the FOP characters in my own way (my artstyle is a chameleon so, my art will look somewhat different every time lol). So yeah, I do have a lot of questions regarding their AU, but I think I'll just observe them quietly for awhile. Still, if the creator of the AU is reading only this part of my yapping session, I think your AU is neat and cool! I want to read and see more of your AU when I'm able to. Have fun!

Other than that, I still can't get a handle on the FOP artstyle lol. I'll try until I get it.

Besides that, oof, I've also noticed something really upsetting (for me) on FOP. It seems some people blame Timmy for Cosmo and Wanda's relationship decline in the show? Blaming a depressed 10-year old (plus somewhat 50 year old but mentally 10 year old, the original does have some fucked up timelines lol) for that is just... kinda sad and shallow in my opinion? I think it's the people who handled the show and made the decisions were to blame. Heck, even Cosmo and Wanda's character writing and everything feels off in the later seasons. To me, this series has the same problems as Spongebob. As both series do suffer some kind of writing problem and seasonal rot.

Because of the new FOP series, it seems people who hate the original FOP and especially Timmy lmao came out of the woodworks to raise their pitchforks and burn Timmy at the stake for being an insufferable hellspawn hahahhaha. I mean, he is a little rascal hellspawn, but he's just that way? That's what his character is meant to be. Someone who does outrageous things because they didn't get enough attention and care from the people around them, especially from their birth parents. He's 10, of course he's going to make mistakes in his wish making decisions. He's a kid. That's the point of his character.

With his many flaws, that doesn't mean a child is the reason for a romantic relationship failings... I don't think anyone should blame a child for something like that at all. That's just fucking common sense. Adults are more mentally developed than children. Why are the children to blame for something that they don't even understand yet? It is the adults responsibility to nurture and care for the child, so that they grow up knowing their responsibilities and be happy with their lives. Why blame them for something that is out of their control like the relationship failings between two adults??? God fucking damn, look in a mirror first before blaming others, especially a child. (Sorry for the swearing, the Timmy hate made me depressed thinking about it.)

Timmy's not a saint, but he tries y'know? Can't you see that? That's what makes the original FOP so compelling to me. Is that, they are so fucking brave to put someone as depressed with many flaws as Timmy as the MC.

I think that's all I want to say... For now, I'll be observing quietly in the background. Thanks for reading my yapping session.

The Fairly Oddparents Unfinished Sketches Boogaloo 2

[aq2003]

I feel like I may be cracking open Pandora’s box here but I am intrigued. How did the author of the new Obi Wan series mess up the Tony stark comic you posted about? I love obi wan and this fills me with dread

BOY HOWDY YOU ARE OPENING A GIGANTIC CAN OF WORMS BY SENDING ME THIS ASK

so basically if i had to give a distilled breakdown as to what is wrong with cantwell's iron man run it would be that he has a fundamental misunderstanding of who comics/616-universe tony stark is. the main point of the character, especially in the early comics that cantwell claims he's drawing from, is the duality of his "tony stark" and "iron man" personas. hes pressured to act cold and distant when he's "tony stark" ie the person he presents to the general public, but when he's "iron man" he can be his actual true self, that being a very selfless person that cares deeply and wants to help others . and at his core is a deep-rooted hatred for who he perceives himself to be . it is about the identity issues. the held belief that he is inherently lower than the people around him. the fact that he's more himself by putting on a mask because the Real mask is his "tony stark" persona . first ever iron man issue ever and they call him the most tragic figure on earth and well. yeah

meanwhile cantwell here seems to think that tony stark inherently believes himself to be above everyone else and the real mask is the fact he's trying to "hide his flaws" by becoming iron man. which is so INCREDIBLY incorrect and the best way ever you could write a superhero if and only if you wanted to make a reader hate their guts. heroes are heroes to HELP people and tony is no different! he did not become iron man because he wanted to better himself personally or get recognition from the public! like he has a line where he goes "i'm trying to be better. and maybe i'll be able to look myself in the mirror tomorrow" and i guess cantwell saw this and went "uoughg well i guess this means he wants to improve himself so hes better than everyone i guess". it makes me sooooo mad like how do you look at a character like tony stark and say he has a god complex or is a hero for completely self-centered reasons . if you wanted to write a story about tony realizing his humanity it would have to be about bringing him up and realizing how he isn't below the people he wants to save. not the other way around .

AND THIS IS NOT EVEN GETTING STARTED ON HOW HE WRITES PATSY (THE LOVE INTEREST IN THIS RUN). patsy is there to "call tony out" on his "privilege" which yes cantwell mr white guy of the month let's hear your cutting edge takes on oppression in society through the mouthpiece of this white female character. their romance is honestly kind of disgusting like you have tony sacrificing himself and patsy's like "wow smh you tried to kill yourself so you could get recognition from the public? that was so selfish of you" and tony's like "wow i guess you're right lol" and patsy is the one framed as being in the right. and also theres a scene where patsy's like "you are rich and white and do not understand what it is like to have mental illness" when tony canonically has depression but shes STILL framed as justified for saying this its so . its so. like theyre going to get ENGAGED in one or two issues from now and the narrative doesn't even come CLOSE to acknowledging how toxic this relationship is . what is going ON here . like how is marvel still letting cantwell write this comic . my god

616 tony stark is like . obviously very different from obi-wan besides the whole vibe of "oh my god this guy is so fucked up and sad and has never had anything go right in his life for very long" . but like i don't trust cantwell to write obi-wan because what ive seen of his general character writing so far is just so deeply bad and offensive to the source material and like. just who these characters are in the first place

[ms-demeanor]

I appreciate your positivity posts a lot, but there are a couple things that make me instinctively angry when i see them One, it really frustrates me that i cannot be good at everything. I know it may sound kinda stupid, but i feel jealous when i see people learning skills i know I'll never master cause they arent a priority over other skills im already working on Two, when im angry/frustrated and i see positivity, it only makes me angrier None of this is your fault, just needed to vent a little

(This post requires a table of contents)

Frustration that you can’t be good at everything - A

Frustration with positivity - B

Do I contradict myself? Kinda but not really - C

Ah-ha, but I have fooled us all - D

A

That doesn’t sound stupid at all, it actually sounds exactly like the insta-rage that I get from being bad at something or from hearing “anybody can do X.”

I know that sounds contradictory, considering that I’ve been saying “anybody can learn artistic skills with practice,” but I’ll explain in a sec.

Okay so I’m learning guitar right? Like, with all the hand-pain and dyspraxia and all I’m still giving it a go and it’s taking forever and it’s really frustrating.

It’s more frustrating because I realized I had to do it alone - if I’m practicing around people or a person is sitting next to me while I’m trying to learn a skill or get the fretting of a particular chord down or (especially this one) trying to memorize a sequence of notes and movements it’s. It’s extremely not pretty. It’s apparently very upsetting for the people who are around me when that happens.

I get furious with myself and I get frustrated because goddamnit fucking children can do this thing and I’m an adult and it’s a simple fucking sequence of five movements and I’m just getting it wrong because I’m a useless idiot.

It takes about four minutes with a guitar teacher or jamming with a friend for me to devolve into “attempt sequence > fuck sequence up > apologize > try again but now while more mad at myself > fuck it up worse > apologize > forget beginning of sequence > try really hard not to start calling myself a fucking idiot in front of a friend who really shouldn’t have to handle this.”

And when I do that it feels terrible. It feels bad, feels like my skills have regressed, makes me want to put the instrument down and not pick it up again.

The thing is, I do this with every skill that I’m learning. You should see me when I’m trying to learn a new version of some kind of software. It’s terrible. I’m at my absolute worst and lowest when I’m trying to find the new place Adobe has hidden a menu or what the new command is to format something in Word.

But here’s the deal: I know what this is when I’m doing it. This is emotional dysregulation.

Basically finding out that I have ADHD changed my life and got me to really start examining a lot of my reactions to things and the behavior patterns I’ve lived with for most of my life.

I experience an impulse to be furious when people are more skilled than I am, I AM furious when I feel like my skills aren’t where I think they should be. But neither of those things are actually good for helping me learn to do the thing and I’d much rather learn to do the thing than be angry about not being good enough at it.

I spend a fair amount of time in therapy. I have worked on recognizing when I have the impulse to do something that is going to be unhelpful or reactive and attempting to approach that impulse with other options.

That’s not easy! And it doesn’t come naturally! My first response to a lot of things is still anger or frustration or despair.

But since I *know* that’s my first impulse and I’ve learned enough about my own behavior to understand that my first impulse is frequently the wrong course of action (grounded in panic or whatever) I’ve been working on accepting that my first reaction is typically negative and moving on more quickly to other, more helpful reactions.

(this has been really fantastic for increasing my feelings of agency and control over my own life; acting on your panic response all the time isn’t good for your long term stability)

You know you can’t be good at everything, you know that it takes a long time to acquire skills. That doesn’t make it any less frustrating that you don’t have the skills that you want to have. So it’s understandable that your first reaction to the skills positivity posts would be negative, and it’s understandable if you want to sit in that negativity for a little bit.

It’s also understandable to mourn the skills that you could have had. “If I hadn’t stopped practicing guitar in my teens I could be so much better now.” “If I hadn’t had to get a job with such a long commute I could be drawing daily and I’d be so much farther along.” “If I hadn’t been discouraged by my parents I’d have had so much more practice with music.” “If I hadn’t gotten injured I’d be such a good dancer right now.”

There’s a perfect you that lives in your head and they’ve had all the opportunities you missed and got to keep practicing when you couldn’t and have all the money you don’t and sleep you keep missing. I get wanting to be that person. I get wanting what they want.

But the you in your head isn’t real and it’s sad if you’re ignoring how wonderful the real you is because you’re not perfect in the same ways.

So if you can, I’d recommend trying to see if there’s a positive response you can practice remembering when you get frustrated about your skills.

(for me it’s honestly just saying “the next best time to plant a tree is today” and remembering that I’ve got a long time to learn to do all the things I want to do. It’s not a race, and if I can’t get to something now I can try later.)

You’re great. You’re great and you’re trying hard and if you wouldn’t yell at your friend for not learning a skill or being good at something you shouldn’t yell at yourself either.

B

So when I was like, 17, I wrote a bit of poetry that went like this:

I’m a casual cynicwho prays for optimistsbut it’s hard for me to be onewhen I’m talking with my fists.

I am a very, very negative, pessimistic person. Optimism and positivity irritate the hell out of me.

The frustrating thing about positivity is that it largely feels like criticism. It feels like “if you can’t do X, Y, or Z it’s because you choose not to.”

And I sure as fuck can’t blame people for being negative. I’m negative and the world is shitty and everything is difficult and expensive. I really, really don’t think that people are choosing not to do what they want to do.

So when you hear “you can do it!” it’s a very natural response to go “yeah, easy for you to say, you don’t have a million things preventing you from doing it.”

Part of this is that your brain is a filthy liar and it thinks that skills are easy to acquire. Your brain is going “if anyone can do it and I haven’t it’s because I’m lazy and I suck.”

I would like you to remind your brain that it is a filthy liar.

(I would also like to remind people that negativity that exists to the point that generic positivity posts upset you or make you angry is a symptom of depression)

But the other thing is that you probably DO have a million legitimate things that are keeping you from Doing The Thing and when you’re seeing someone else say “Do the thing!” you’re just seeing the shiny thing, not their million things that were in the way too.

Doing shit is HARD. It’s exhausting. It involves opportunity cost. If I want to make fanart I have do dedicate time to that that gets taken away from somewhere else and you know what sometimes it’s just better for me and more in line with my desires to re-read a 100k slow-burn than it is to make a drawing of the characters.

But it’s also really important to recognize which kinds of positivity actually contain criticism.

My initial statement in the Gru comic was “Talent is bullshit, nurture your skills with practice & make the content you want to see in the world.” This was in reaction to a simply-drawn comic that expressed that you need talent to make fanart and not everybody has talent.

A lot of people have seen that as criticism.

I am. Really, really not attempting to criticize people with these posts.

But also, yeah, being told “woah, hey, just calm down” when you’re already pissed isn’t going to make anyone’s afternoon any better. And there’s not much I can do about that (and I know you don’t want me to, you said you were just venting).

C

“You hate positivity and yet you make positivity posts, interesting.”

So the brand of positivity posts I hate are the “If I can do it anyone can!” posts and here’s why:

Not everyone can be on a Roller Derby team.

Breaking my back and having to quit roller derby made me reassess a lot of my attitudes about the world.

If you point to a specific activity and say “if I can do this anyone can do this” you are wrong. There are a lot of people who aren’t going to be able to do a thing. If you say “If I can lose the babyweight within three weeks of giving birth anyone can” there are a lot of people who can’t do that thing and there is a kind of implicit criticism there. “If I can get over my scoliosis and lift weights anyone can,” is kind of saying that the people with scoliosis who can’t lift weights just aren’t making an effort.

“If I can do this anyone can” is wrong. It ignores the fact that people are all in unique circumstances and have different limitations. No, not anyone can. Not everyone can be on a Roller Derby team.

But what I’m saying in my posts isn’t “anyone can draw” it is “if you practice a skill you will improve at it, so if you want to improve at drawing you need to practice.”

And I’ve been very clear in admitting that not everyone can do this, due to time constraints and low energy and physical limitations.

The one deviation I’ve made from that is to come pretty close to saying “anyone can do art” and again, I consider that a bit different because “art” is a very broad category and I do believe that pretty much anyone can create things that I would consider art, even if that art isn’t traditional visual media. And again, any of those kinds of art would also improve with practice.

D

The joke was on all of us all along, by the way. While I’m being pretty positive about the idea of practice and the fact that it will improve people’s performance at all skill levels there’s a secret:

That Gru post isn’t so much positive about practice as it is *incredibly* negative about the concept of talent.

Talent IS bullshit. There is a variable range of innate abilities that people can have that may jump-start a particular skill but proficiency in that skill is always going to be down to practice, not talent.

Talent was made up as a cover to explain the “brilliance” of people who had armies of laborers supporting them. I bet I’d be able to invent a lot of shit if I didn’t have to do laundry or worry about whether I was going to be able to afford both food and rent next month. Talent is a myth that pairs nicely with great man theory in that it is crap and I want people to understand that sucking at things for a long time is a part of not sucking at things eventually and also that you’re going to get a lot more done working with a group of motivated people than you are if you wait for one “talented genius” to change the world.