#John Chicano

[carlocarrasco]

John Chicano wins Powerman Malaysia 2024 elite male duathlon gold medal, teammates win medals for Philippines

Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games) multi-medalist John Chicano led the Philippines to the top of the Powerman Malaysia 2024 by winning the gold medal of the Elite Male contest yesterday which was an improvement over last year’s race, according to a Manila Bulletin sports news report. Chicano also has teammates who won medals as well. The official results can be viewed by clicking here. To put…

[switchkick]

John Valadez, Couple Balam, 1978/80

[beatles-luvr]

Meet Cannibal and The Headhunters, a Chicano opener for the Beatles in their second US tour in 1965. This post will just be brief information about their presence on the tour, if you’d like a full fledged post in regards to Cannibal and The Headhunters and their history please feel free to know.

Cannibal and The Headhunters had gained popularity due to their remake of Christophe Kenner’s “Land of a 1000 Dances”, which reached No. 35 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1965. This was huge for a young Chicano group. from East L.A. They had the iconic “na,na, na” which is still referenced to this day.

In 1965, The Beatles embarked on their second US tour. At the time, Paul had had asked the east Los Angeles group to join them on their tour throughout August 15 to August 31st— he saw them on a Hullabaloo episode and requested them which tracks because Paul loved TV.

As of today, there is no available footage of their performance online especially their Hollywood Bowl performance, as fans were cheering “We want The Beatles!” throughout opening acts.

May Frankie Garcia RIP.

Image above to the top left: Paul Mccartney with Frankie “Cannibal” Garcia.

Image to the top right: Cannibal and The Headhunters band image.

Bottom: Promotional poster for the The Beatles US 1965 tour.

Listen to their cover of Land of 1000 Dances here:

[theaskew]

John Valadez (Mexican-American b. 1951, lives and works in Los Angeles), Car Show, 2001. Oil on canvas, 76 x 96¼ x 4 in. | 193 x 244.4 x 10.2 cm.  (Source: Luis De Jesus Los Angeles Gallery, Los Angeles)

[bookwyrminspiration]

have you ever read aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe? its quite cool :)

I have! I haven't read the sequel yet, but I intend to at some point. I'll have to borrow it from my sister; I own the first book and she owns the second.

I thought it quaint and enjoyable, a sweet quick read. Of course I loved having queer mexican american main characters, as I'm a queer mexican american. Though I grew up a little to the left geographically, so some differences there--the decade as well. Ari had an amusing internal voice and narration given how dry and morose he was.

Not what I usually read, but pleasant nonetheless! I think I'll have fun with the sequel too :)

[contemporaryartla]

Triste and Dreamer, CA. 2022

John Valadez

Edition of 100 + 10AP

Copyright ©️ Eastern Projects Gallery

[illarian-rambling]

Hey happy WBW! I'm invading your inbox with a music ask! Is there a particular artist or genre or even song that gets you really in the zone for writing/your world/your story?

Taking a break from studying to finally answer this!

I would call myself a lover of music, generally. I have playlists for all my characters with various instrumental songs that fit their vibe, since I can't do lyrics when I write. These are all quite the hodgepoge of video game and movie soundtracks, classical music, jazz, and other weird stuff I find.

Besides that, I have a few songs with lyrics that I think fit my characters quite well! Let's go through the list :)

Izjik: The Invasion From Within by Tsunami Bomb, Bet my Brains by Starcrawler

Sepo: Psycho Killer by Talking Heads, Soup is Good Food by the Dead Kennedys

Twenari: Idea/Intent by The Beths, Oh! by the Linda Lindas

Djek: You Are Going To Hate This by The Frights, around the world by m.o.v.e

(Growing Up by the Linda Lindas is a bonus Djek and Twenari song because they really are siblings)

Astra: Night of the Living Ted by The Hillbilly Moon Explosion, Supersonic by Bad Religion

Mashal: My Name by Noah Floersch, Call Me, Call Me by Steve Conte

Ivander: Dear John by I Monster, Black Lipstick by Chicano Batman

Elsind: Little Sister Song by Kid Sistr, On Melancholy Hill by Gorillaz

Avymere: Alone in Miami by Remi Wolf, I Kill Spies by Agent Orange

(Bonus Astra/Mashal songs with credit to @mk-writes-stuff and @sableglass for the suggestions: The Reckoming by Dom Fera, Punk Rock Girl by Streetlight Manifesto)

Faalgun: Dead Man Walking by Brent Faiyaz

Nyda: superiority complex (big noise) by illuminati hotties

Kaulakri: Horseradish by Small Fools

Pash: Kim by POM

Anarac: The Night has a Thousand Eyes by Paul Desmond, Private Life by Oingo Boingo

As an aside, all of the choices were purely vibes based. Lyrics play a minor role - it's mostly how the song makes me feel.

Thanks for the ask!

(I will be putting my taglist with this because it is my sworn duty to indoctrinate people with my music taste)

@amandacanwrite @elsie-writes @riveriafalll @kosmic-kore @kaylinalexanderbooks

@bard-coded @carrotsinnovember @patternwelded-quill @somethingclevermahogony @whatwewrotepodcast

@the-angriest-author @mk-writes-stuff @frostedlemonwriter @vyuntspakhkite-l-darling @watermeezer

@leahnardo-da-veggie @mr-orion @televisionjester @ray-writes-n-shit @evilgabe29

@trippingpossum @tragedycoded @halfbakedspuds @ominous-feychild @cain-e-brookman

@wyked-ao3 @thecomfywriter @mysticstarlightduck @rumeysawrites @the-golden-comet

@cowboybrunch @gioiaalbanoart @theink-stainedfolk @sableglass @thelaughingstag

[doomerpatrol]

Comic Log: March Reads

Stuff I read in March (minus things w/ existing or forthcoming effortposts, as usual).

Do a Powerbomb by Daniel Warren Johnson: A young wrestler gets the invite of the lifetime - get to the top of the heap in an otherdimensional tournament and resurrect her mother, a pro wrestler who died on stage years ago during an accident. But to succeed, she'll have to tag team with the man who fumbled the move that killed her all those years ago.

As I mentioned on my main blog, this is a very fun action series that I found pretty thematically played out and a little rushed in its pacing. Still definitely worth a read to get a sense of a rising talent, and I am interested in seeing where DWJ's work goes from here.

Doctor Strange by Jason Aaron and Chris Bachalo: Doctor Strange without his full magical repertoire - relying more on magic tools than spells - and having to pay up for a history of extensive arcane overuse.

I like the interpretation of Strange as a supernatural physician burdened by the uncognizable, as well as the cosmic-horror angle. "The Empirikul" is the kind of ridiculous concept that I love in comics. And I always enjoy Bachalo's art style. But despite those positives it left me a little cold: Strange seemed to have been reinterpreted as Tony Stark meets John Constantine, Bachalo's depiction of Crazy Magic Stuff got repetitive as it went on, and it's all in service of very unexciting character dynamics. I had no idea that Wong has basically exited from being a primary supporting character for Dr. Strange since this series.

All-New Ghost Rider by Felipe Smith: After being gunned down by a paramilitary, Robbie Reyes has to navigate school, auto shop work, taking care of his disabled little brother Gabe, and exacting vengeance as the serial-killer-possessed Ghost Rider.

Genuinely revolting, extremely racist particularly against Latinos/Chicanos, visually hideous - I respect Tradd Moore as an artist but his style simply did not work for this book, and his character art outside of the titular character's transformed state was bad to look at, uncomfortably elongated and cartoony for an ostensibly dark book. Every time little brother Gabe ate ice cream I legitimately felt sick to my stomach. However, Moore is definitely the superior creative partner here - based on how reliant on stereotypes this story is, Smith strikes me as a complete hack and I'm shocked he got the gig.

Doom Patrol by Gerard Way: The Doom Patrol are drawn back together in response to various corporate bodies trying to profit off their existence, centering around Casey Brinke, a fictional creation of classic Patrol character Danny the Street.

I like the first volume well enough. Way's approach is very obviously influenced by the metafiction of Morrison and Pollack - most notably in that it brings back most of Morrison's breakout characters - but barring some inspired moments, it's a much less subtle work, and is far more intensely a "comic about comics" in a way I find overbearing and less interesting. (One of the antagonists is literally a sanitizing corporation called “Retconn.”) However this literalization is compatible with the expressive cartooniness and thick lines of Nick Derington's art - which is why I think the run suffers when Derington is less of a presence in the "Milk Wars" crossover and the "Weight of the Worlds" miniseries. It's got its charm and I love the lesbian baby-making stuff (albeit not its lack of real resolution).

Power Man and Iron Fist by David Walker and Sanford Greene: The reunion of Luke Cage, now a devoted family man, and his best friend Iron Fist, who he is slightly embarrassed by. The two of them get embroiled in various gang wars and mystical hijinks as they try to uncover who's been getting ex-cons wrongfully locked up.

I adore Greene’s art and this is a creative team that collaborates often - I will have to check out Bitter Root. The series draws upon blaxploitation and adapts it to be tasteful without being totally neutered. My main issue is that it was cut short very abruptly; it really deserved a longer ongoing. This is predominantly a Luke Cage book but I’m kind of an Iron Fist hater so I’m okay with that, and there were actually some pretty great Danny Rand moments throughout. The series weathers the storm of Civil War II reasonably well - though Captain Marvel and her allies come out of it looking pretty awful - as well as Brian Michael Bendis independently throwing a wrench into the plot by temporarily estranging Luke and Jessica Jones. But it definitely feels like it starts very strongly and then had to wrap up quickly.

Far Sector by N.K. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell: A Lantern with a unique ring sent to act as diplomat and power-balance for a Dyson swarm populated by three very distinct species, investigating the first murder to take place there in five centuries.

The science-fiction and noir-conspiracy elements of this story are really fun, I think there were some really creative ideas, especially in the setting and worldbuilding. Protagonist Jo Mullein's backstory - inspired to make a difference after 9/11, she joins the army and wages war in Afghanistan (she explicitly mentions Kandahar) and then later joins the NY Police Department, where she witnesses her partner do a police brutality and then gets fired for being tagged in a Black Lives Matter post - was made in a lab to annoy me. Hard to fully recommend because for every aspect I like there's another I found rather grating, like the bad politics or the constant (plot-critical!) references to memes.

Iron Man by Kieron Gillen: Iron Man takes leave of his company and, after cracking down on an assortment of different criminal groups making use of the Extremis virus, heads into space where he tries to take down a lifelong alien conspiracy to mold him into a weapon, making use of a new modular armor designed to adapt to different situations.

Shockingly, the section where Greg Land is the predominant artistic contributor is the better half (though credit is due to Planet Hulk artist Carlo Pagulayan for a lot of the cool designs). Unfortunately I think the last eleven issues - say it with me now - spin their wheels and then end, despite introducing a few different fun concepts (that ultimately do not pan out). Iron Man has no business getting into a dust-up with the dark elf Maliketh. But the first seventeen issues are very strong and work well as their own story - it's a continuation of the character work from Matt Fraction's Invincible Iron Man but has its own distinct "knightly" spin on the character. And I really liked the "modular armor" gimmick, it made for a lot of fun surprises and twists.

[mariacallous]

Scared Shitless in Seattle didn’t know how to cope. In 2022, consumed by the dread of climate change and the shame of their sexuality, they wrote into ¡Hola Papi!, the popular online advice column. “Ultimately, you’re right to be afraid. I’m afraid,” Papi responded, lovingly and precise. “But fear isn’t the only thing.”

Like every ¡Hola Papi! column, it was unflinchingly candid, incorporating all the hallmarks readers have come to enjoy: humor and pathos, love and sincerity, the occasional food reference. If you’ve ever read one of his columns, you know that nothing is off limits for Papi: threesomes, friendship drama, what to do when you are the weekend boyfriend, energy vampires, even, yes, our sometimes shared existential doom.

Papi was born John Paul Brammer, and grew up a closeted Catholic school kid in rural Oklahoma, a town so small Brammer’s mother was his ninth-grade English teacher. He was, he confesses, “always a little bit desperate to get out” of his hometown. After college he landed in DC, where he picked up work as a blogger for “one of those content mills,” he says. “I did a lot of clickbait articles, like, ‘With One Tweet Nancy Pelosi Just Slayed Republicans’—that kind of thing. I was responsible for a lot of the junk that you saw on the internet.”

But the job had hidden benefits. “I learned what makes people click on things and how to snag people’s attention in the blurry digital sea of the internet,” Brammer says. “I figured out what a unique voice looks like.”

It eventually paid off. When an opportunity arose, in 2017, to author a column, he unleashed ¡Hola Papi! into the world. It couldn’t have happened at a better time, Brammer tells me. He was trapped in freelance purgatory, writing for half a dozen outlets but not really making a splash like he’d wanted.

“My clearest distillation of that timeline was, I'm on the M train going from Ridgewood to 30 Rock, and I am exhausted because I didn't sleep the night before because I was up talking to some Russian source over the phone about the gay purge in Chechnya and I could barely understand what they were saying through their accent, and I'm on train composing a Teen Vogue puff piece in the Notes app on my iPhone about how Kylie Jenner matched her dress with her fidget spinner, and I just want to die.”

It was during that period that a friend, who just so happened to work at Grindr, suggested he contribute to their just-launched LGBTQ+ editorial website, called Into, a cheeky reference to gay hookup app parlance. Before long, Brammer’s column established him as the Chicano Carrie Bradshaw.

Today, in addition to his column, Brammer is also an author, illustrator, and essayist. From his apartment in Brooklyn, New York, he opened up about navigating doubt, living with cynicism, and why he’s never quitting Twitter, er, X.

[carlocarrasco]

Philippines wins gold and silver medals across varied categories at the Powerman Malaysia 2023 Duathlon

Welcome back my readers and sports fans! The Philippines achieved victories in specific categories during the recent Powerman Malaysia 2023 Duathlon according to a Manila Bulletin sports news report reflecting the official race results published. The Filipino duathlete who won the silver medal in the Elite Men’s race was John Chicano who previously won medals in the Southeast Asian Games (SEA…

[innervoiceart]

ON THIS DATE (54 YEARS AGO)

September 23, 1970 - Santana: Abraxas is released.

# ALL THINGS MUSIC PLUS+ 5/5 (MUST HAVE)

# Allmusic 5/5

# Rolling Stone (see original review below)

Abraxas is the second studio album by Santana, released on September 23, 1970. It reached #1 on the Billboard 200 Top LP's chart and #3 on the R&B Albums chart. The single "Oye Como Va" reached #13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #32 on the R&B singles charts. In 2003, the album was ranked number 205 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Abraxas was deemed "culturally, historically, or artistically significant" by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in their National Recording Registry in 2016.

Consolidating their live success at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, and the interest generated by their first album the band took some time to issue a follow-up. Abraxas mix of rock, blues, jazz, salsa and other influences made it a classic that defined Santana's early sound, and showed a musical maturation from their first album.

Abraxas features a mixture of Latin influences with familiar rock themes such as overdriven electric guitar, organ and heavy drums. The album also demonstrates Santana's stylistic versatility, including tracks such as "Samba Pa Ti" (a classic slow-burning piece) and "Incident at Neshabur", both being instrumentals. The latter has several rhythm and time signature changes consistent with its jazz feel. Latin percussion — congas, bongos and timbales, as well as a conventional rock drum setup, make this Santana's first foray into true Latin rhythm.

______________________

COVER

The album cover features the 1961 painting Annunciation by German-French painter Mati Klarwein. According to the artist, it was one of the first paintings he did after relocating to New York City. Carlos Santana reportedly noticed it in a magazine and asked that it be on the cover of the band's upcoming album. The cover is now considered a classic of rock album covers.

__________

RECORD WORLD, October 3, 1970 – PICK HITS

ABRAXAS SANTANA—Columbia KC 30130. Santana's second album will break them up all over the place. These first truly successful exponents of Latinrock (plus extra secret ingredient) interpret the work of Tito Puente, Gabor Szabo and themselves on this sizzling, cooking handsome package.

__________

ORIGINAL ROLLING STONE REVIEW

Carlos Santana is one of the three new guitarists who border on B. B. King's cleanliness. His only two contemporaries are Eric Clapton and Michael Bloomfield, but Santana is playing Latin music and there are no other Latin bands using lead guitars. The paradoxical thing about Santana has been their acceptance by a teenybop audience that digs Grand Funk and Ten Years After when they should be enjoyed by people who are into Chicago and John Mayall.

The heart of Santana is organist Gregg Rolie and bassist Dave Brown, who hold the rhythm together over which the percussion unit can jam and bounce. Timbales, congas (Puerto Rican) and drums take off on Brown's rhythm and then Santana himself comes in to make his statements on lead guitar.

Carlos Santana is a Chicano and he loves the guitar, which has always been used heavily in Mexican music. He has perfected a style associated with blues and cool jazz and crossed it with Latin music. It works well, because the band is one of the tightest units ever to walk into a recording studio. Of white bands, only Chicago can equal their percussion, but Chicago is held together by horns, while Santana is held together by timbales and congas.

"Oye Como Va" is the highlight of the album. It's only weakness is that Roli's fine organ has been mixed too low. This is a different trip for Santana, much more into the styles of the younger Puerto Rican musicians in New York, like Orchestra DJ and Ray Olan, and farther from the Sly trip that dominated their first album. Unless you really dig Latin music or some of the middle period work of Herbie Mann and the Jazz Messengers, you may not enjoy this cut or the album at all.

Abraxas is one of the new independent productions for Columbia done at Wally Heider's studio, and bass player Dave Brown did much of the engineering. The album he has helped to come up with may lose Santana some of their younger audience, but is bound to win them respect from people interested in Latin jazz music. On Abraxas, Santana is a popularized Mono Santamaria and they might do for Latin music what Chuck Berry did for the blues.

The major Latin bands in this country gig for $100 a night, and when you see them, you can't sit still. If Santana can reach the pop audience with Abraxas, then perhaps there will be room for the old masters like La Lupe and Puente to work it on out at the ballrooms. But for now, Abraxas is a total boogie and the music is right from start to finish. (RS 73)

~ Jim Nash (December 24, 1970)

TRACKS:

1. "Singing Winds, Crying Beasts" (Carabello) - 4:51

2. "Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen" (Green/Szabo) - 5:22

3. "Oye Como Va" (Puente) - 4:16

4. "Incident at Neshabur" (Gianquinto, Santana) - 4:57

Side two

1. "Se a Cabo" (Areas) - 2:50

2. "Mother's Daughter" (Rolie) - 4:25

3. "Samba Pa Ti" (Santana) - 4:54

4. "Hope You're Feeling Better" (Rolie) - 4:11

5. "El Nicoya" (Areas) - 1:30

[sdpubliclibrary]

The workers of Chicano Park.

Barrio Logan, San Diego

John Dishwasher's Zine #20

[theaskew]

John Valadez (Mexican-American, b. 1951, lives and works in Los Angeles), Drive-In, 2014. Acrylic on canvas, 103 × 128 in. | 261.6 × 325.1 cm. (Source: Robert Berman Gallery, Santa Monica, CA.)

[krispyweiss]

Song Review: Los Cenzontles feat. David Hidalgo - “A Rainy Night in SoHo”

Los Cenzontles’ recording of “A Rainy Night in SoHo” is both quite similar to and radically divergent from the Pogues’ original.

This is the brilliance of the track, recorded with Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo on vocals, accordion and percussion, as both a tribute to Shane MacGowan, who died in 2023, and for Los Cenzontles’ forthcoming Covers 3 project.

“It is a glorious song,” Los Cenzontles’ Eugene Rodriguez sid in a statement. “Now we have a Chicano version.”

This “SoHo” remains a languid waltz. But the new version is transplanted from Ireland to the U.S./Mexico boarder, with Hidalgo at the fore and a Mariachi arrangement that marches with Hidalgo’s snare drum on the outro.

Due in June, Covers 3 will feature Los Cenzontles’ interpretations of songs by Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, John Prine, the Rolling Stones and others in what’s described as an album “celebrating cross-cultural connections.” If “A Rainy Night in SoHo” is any indication, it’ll be a joy to hear.

Grade card: Los Cenzontles feat. David Hidalgo - “A Rainy Night in SoHo” - A

4/16/24

[formeroklahoman]

LEGENDS OF GUITAR: The Man . . The Myth . . The Guitar. Johnny Winter was the first white Texas bluesman to make it on a big scale. In 1968, he released his first album, The Progressive Blues Experiment. Soon after Johnny met the Chicago Blues guitarist Michael Bloomfield, who invited Winter to join him and Al Kooper on stage at the Fillmore East during a December 1968 performance. Columbia Records officials at the show were very impressed and signed Johnny to a very large advance, $600,000. Johnny Winter’s first Columbia Records release was logically titled Johnny Winter and included the same personnel as The Progressive Blues Experiment; bassist Tommy Shannon, drummer Uncle John Turner, and Edgar Winter on keyboards and saxophone. It was a major success. Second Winter followed in 1969 plus great success in concerts – and an affair with Janis Joplin – that led to an historic Madison Square Garden concert. Winter went on to play in the Muddy Waters Band and paired with just about every top Blues artist of the 1970s and 80s. Three albums produced by Winter for Muddy Waters, Hard Again (1977), I'm Ready (1978), and Muddy "Mississippi" Waters – Live (1979) have won Grammy Awards. Several of Winter’s own albums were also nominated for Grammy Awards and in 1988, he was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame.

Decades on from his death, Stevie Ray Vaughan is still being discovered by new generations. In the decades since his passing, SRV’s impact on the music scene has become more and more pronounced. His influence – his searing guitar style, eloquent songwriting and consummate musicianship – is undeniable on the new generation of blues rockers like Joe Bonamassa, Philip Sayce and John Mayer, while his classic albums such as Texas Flood and Couldn’t Stand The Weather are now justifiable stalwarts of the blues canon. His music seemed to unite everyone: tattooed Chicano bikers, besuited lawyers and crystal-carrying New Agers. The sound of Stevie Ray’s stinging Strat and gritty voice went directly to the hearts of the huddled masses. You see, that old blues adage is true: What goes around comes around . . May their memory endure.

www.ChicagoSlim.com

#ChicagoBlues #ChicagoBluesExperience #ChicagoBluesSociety #ChicagoBluesTV #ChicagoBluesNews #MaxwellStreetBlues #ChicagoBluesAllStars #bluesAllstars #ChicagoSlim #BluesToday #AzureMusic #LegendsOfGuitar #ClassicRock #RockBlues #BluesRock #JohnnyWinter #StevieRayVaughan #SRV

[biggreenstache7]

what's the lore behind nick's creation? are there any other woodpeople?

So, basically, (or not so basically because I can take a while talking about this), Nick came from a huuuge domino effect where if basically anything that has happened didn't, she wouldn't exist.

I'm probably gonna lose my thread here so sorry if this doesn't make sense at some point. But, to figure out where nick came from i first have to go back to when i realized john was a Cool Character (to say the least) to me.

so i've been a siiva fan for about 4 years now (if you really want to know, since Exactly january 31st 2019) and i quickly grew to be a fan of the lore. and my favorite character was woodman, and you don't really need to know this because this story starts in 2020, but it sets it up a little, probably. i've always Liked woodman and at first he was the only real character attachment i had to siivagunner.

Ignoring anything that happened in between then and 2020 (very ironically, since those were the last appearances john ever had and i totally ignored them while they were coming out, lol), we flash forward to march 2020, where i started reading a book called the priory of the orange tree (this has NOTHING to do with siiva, but it's really important and nick wouldn't exist without it as i'll explain later, so bear with me. also really good book i recommend it thoroughly btw) this will be important soon enough

OK THE FIRST ACTUAL IMPORTANT MOMENT was. april 1st (2020). where harmony friends (aka hinchy) hosted a sort of character voice request thing on the siivagunner discord since it's john's VA and idk, probably just felt like it. And i was there, and i requested some goofy "be gay do crime" line, which she said, and idk why but i think that sort of meaningful-esque interaction caused me to go back and look at john's previous appearances and have him like, slowly become a meaningful character to me.

so we're around april to may now. i'm still reading the Book (which i'll shorten to tpotot for convinience) and thinking about john like maybe once every few days and, the thing about this book is that it has like, multiple character povs. and one of them, which is the main focus here, was this sorta cowardly sorta morally grey 60-ish year old gay man called Niclays Roos. Who i was mildly fixated with because his pov spoke to me Immensely, and still does.

so what i started doing was sorta projecting that sort of character onto John, with a few other traits i had picked up on from what little content she has. (silly interests despite being supposedly uptight and professional coming from her interest in eddie murphy's haunted mansion in spooktacular iii, etc) also the moment i became interested in him i Knew he had to be gay like that was almost an immediate click and maybe why i connected him to niclays in the first place, which brings us to our next moment.

so here's another thing about niclays. he had a lover. (ex-lover, but i don't wanna dwelve too much into it cause tpotot is cool and you can find out abt it on ur own) called jannart, who was a general contrast to niclays in the short segments he appeared in, being much more relaxed, much bolder and open about himself, and also. a painter. who took an interest in niclays because he wanted to attempt to capture the beauty he saw in him onto canvas)

DO YOU GET IT NOW!!!!!!! i saw this sort of almost relationship template, and when faced with the fact that john had no contrast funnyman in siiva that i could put together with him like a kid knocking dolls against eachother to make them kiss, well, you can imagine the rest.

so after a while of just thinking about it, on a 40 minute car trip on may 16th 2020, while listening to color my life by chicano batman on loop, i came up with nick, loosely and vaguely, decided that i wanted him to be a woodman too because it just felt. Right (did consider human for maybe a minute before shutting it down) and began drawing him the moment i arrived to my destination.

i still have the sketches which is cool but not on me rn and it might take a few months to get the notebook back but i'll remember to update this post when i do for a fun little snippet. it even has the word "jonnick" right next to them, which i believe i chose at the time because "johnnick" already had like, 2 results, and i wanted something original. i sorta regret it now because it almost sounds like a typo but i got too attached to change it lol

also nick's canon birthday is actually may 17 to me but only because that was the day i actually decided i wanted to pull through with this Very self indulgent thing (not as a bit) (real) and also the day i drew his ref (under a read more at the end of the post cuz its UGLY ASF)

so yeah, a few people already knew about this, but i don't think i ever wrote it out fully in a public space before yayyyyy.

tldr got attached to john in april 2020 for little reason and it spiralled and i projected part of another character's personality onto him and that character had a partner which caused me to give the same thing to john and then that went from being half joke to a fully realized character who's like a real living person in my head. yay! and it's been 3 years since their very stupid goofy beginning and they've grown to become almost an extension of myself with how much i've developed them and think about them. also yay!

to answer your other question (lol); i didn't make any, save for like one time where i made a woodsona as a bit, but according to my own fuckin story robots (including woodmen) are massproduced and only in rare occasions grow sentient but like, yeah it's totally 100% possible that there r other sentient woodmen out there just livin their lives n shit. you can make one if you want! i grant you my knight's permit 🫡

this exact drawing is still on my tumblr if you scroll far enough down, lol.

here's another one that came before it that i could find and that i reference pretty often as being the first (atleast digital) jonnick drawing. i remade it in 2021 and included it as a photograph in another painting i made last year. yay! that was so many fun facts just in one day. but now i have to get back to playing animal crossing new leaf on my nintendo 3ds