#and art in general does. so much worse when it's actually the artist posting them

[deoidesign]

"what do hands mean about a character?"

Their hands mean they love eachother

(webcomic)

[osamucide]

DAZAI HCS! ⊹

LAST UPDATE: DEC 19

cw: talk of mental illness and substance use/abuse, speculation about Dazai’s f’ed up past+trauma, Dazai-typical references to suicide, references to self harm, probably a lot of projection on the author’s part

reid: i feel like yapping about Dazai tonight so here’s a non-exhaustive list of general headcanons i have about him. no word count because i’ll probably update this periodically lol

he does not listen to music from this century. he just doesn’t. not that he goes out of his way not to, he’s just drawn to a certain sound that only older music seems to have—I think The Smiths, Blondie, Tears For Fears, The Smashing Pumpkins, King Crimson, and Led Zeppelin are among his favorite artists

I think he also really enjoys classic jazz/blues/bebop music—Charles Mingus, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, etc.

he’s anemic. I’m of the firm belief that Kunikida buys him a 100 ct bottle of iron tablets every 100 days which Dazai always graciously accepts. however, he only actually takes them when he gives enough of a shit to (which is not often) so the bottles are just accumulating on his bathroom sink/in the cupboard beneath

nail biter, cuticle picker, hair twirler, thigh bouncer, etc. I don’t think he really sits still unless it’s absolutely necessary

children love him, much to his dismay. they think he’s entertaining. he thinks they’re like puppies (and he canonically hates dogs). he won’t treat them badly, but he’s just not super interested in interacting with them. unwilling older brother vibe when faced with them. shithead kids can stoke his rage much faster than Chuuya ever could

he cannot take care of a fucking plant. has one succulent in his apartment. it’s surviving out of pure unadulterated spite. he hasn’t watered it in over a year

wearer of funky socks. his favorites are either the ones that say "I love my job ha ha just kidding" or the custom ones Yosano got him as a gag gift one year for white elephant at the office christmas party (they have Kunikida’s rage face on them)

really sad that, despite his criminal record being scrubbed clean, he is still banned from driving in the nation of Japan for the rest of his life because he wants a Ford Explorer so bad

PROFOUNDLY SOUND KNOWLEDGE OF MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY

he’s fluent in Japanese and English, proficient in French and Italian, and learning Russian

I think he also enjoys learning math/researching random shit/reading anything he can in his free time when he feels up to it. he never received a formal education and his IQ is through the roof—his yearning for academia is almost like an itch he has to scratch every once in a while. also, he just likes knowing things

he never learned how to ride a bike. wahhhh wahh

BPD king. look at him. my beautiful princess with a disorder. I doubt he’s diagnosed but he strongly suspects it seeing as he’s so self-aware; if not borderline, he just assumes he has severe PTSD. either way, he really won’t do anything other than what he already knows about how to manage it

along the same lines—he’s been a functional alcoholic since an alarmingly young age (I’m talking 16-17). I think it probably got a lot worse post-defection when he was underground, but he hardly had to function then anyway; he gets somewhat better after joining the Agency but still has a dependence, it’s just not severe enough to debilitate him

has a bin of art supplies in his apartment. he only ever pulls them out once every few months, but he rather enjoys painting and wouldn’t mind getting better at it

master at darts. don’t take him to a bar where there’s a dartboard. he will stand in front of it all night and obliterate everyone who challenges him

insatiable sweet tooth. he especially loves anything maple, butter pecan, or butterscotch he’s a grandpa

UPDATE.1

I love to headcanon that he has a glass eye!!! and that the bandages around his head in the dark era were some legitimate injury. he likes to pop it out as a party trick/to weird Kunikida out

he feeds the stray cats and kittens that linger around the ADA dorms. he probably spends some of his grocery money on the fancy wet canned food and leaves it out with a big plastic bowl of water. sometimes sits and watches them eat and likes to give them little scratches if they trust him enough to come rub up on his legs. they’re sort of to him as the orphans were to Odasaku, and it makes him feel closer to his deceased friend

on the note of grocery shopping—he only goes when Atsushi or Kunikida drag him along. keeps his list relatively the same from trip to trip: canned crab, cigarettes, bandages, a few cases of beer, sake, instant ramen, ice cream (particularly butter pecan), paper towels, and 3-in-1 shampoo when he needs it. Kunikida forces vegetables upon him (“put it in the ramen so you don’t die of heart disease”) but they almost always end up rotting to mush in his fridge. he steals his toilet paper from the ADA bathrooms/supply closets or bothers Atsushi and Kyoka for spare rolls when he’s out

religiously orders drinks from the cafe on his way in and out of work. on mornings he usually gets a latte with plenty of sugar and some sort of flavor; in the evenings he probably gets an iced flavored tea to mix or chase his sake with when he gets home

always has a pocket knife on him. probably one he got in his mafia days, or, it’s at least a habit/security he picked up from then

takes a lot of night walks. he doesn’t sleep well, so I think he probably wanders out tipsy with his pack of cigarettes in the wee hours of the morning and scuttles around to tire himself out

UPDATE.2

two words: medical trauma. I know some people get iffy when it comes to speculation about what Mori did/didn’t/may/may not have subjected him too as a young teenager (and believe me I have a lot of thoughts) but I definitely headcanon that Dazai was used as a little bit of a lab rat/sedated and coerced to some degree when it came to turning him into a killing machine. as a result, he’s got a fear of medical settings. after his surgery during the cannibalism arc? I know he got that phone back and was like “Tanizaki get me out of here right neow”

I think sweet little old ladies probably love him and he loves them too. always feels like he strikes up the best small talk with them. will help load groceries into their cars for them. he gets all smiley and stuff when they call him “sweetheart” “honey” “dear” or remark how handsome he is and about his hypothetical girlfriend must be so lucky

he can throw knives with pinpoint accuracy from a pretty impressive distance. he’s a little less accurate with his handgun at long range/with moving targets but HE’S GETTING BETTER

has like a 3.5 ft vertical jump at his best. like why are you a detective when the Lakers need a center

UPDATE.3

lowkey a god at shoulder massages? he’ll meander behind Kunikida at the office and rub his shoulders like a boxing coach trying to warm up his athlete mostly to try to piss him off but Kunikida totally just melts into it after smacking his hands away a couple times. does the same thing to Atsushi but Atsushi just starts fucking purring and almost passes out

I was talking about this with Kal a second ago—but I think he and Ranpo love acting so gay at the office also to piss Kunikida off. they also ask him if they can be allowed to go outside and play

cigarette of choice is a Marlboro Black. I think someone has said/alluded to this before but I can’t remember who. if you’re reading this you’re right

on top of his overflowing piles of iron supplements, I think he also has an unreasonable amount of reusable water bottles. reason being Kunikida again because I just know Dazai doesn’t drink enough water and Kunikida’s always buying him a fancy new cup to try to keep him enthusiastic about being hydrated. it doesn’t work but his favorite one to date is his orange hydroflask (sometimes he brings a vodka soda to work in it. Kunikida is thrilled until he realizes his partner is tipsy) (Kunikida wishes he could fire him)

on that note—other than sake, I think his liquor of choice is vodka. I do not think dark liquor agrees with him but ultimately he will drink whatever gets him drunk. and so ensue the Sunday scaries (and the every other day scaries)

[madfantasy]

To fan art and fiction enjoyers:

Please excuse my rage slipping if it happened over having to address this literal mediocrity of a subject in comparison to endless things that actually matters in real life. Because this would be at the scrapping bottom of it, but since the occasion presented itself, here we are:

Do you know there are some, let's say, manners, being in fandoms, and/or in using social media in general? NOOO? 8U

Well, Lets start somewhere!

Like it or not, YOU NEED TO ACTUALLY READ STUFF PEOPLE WRITE. Before you follow, before you comment, before you interact, because if you come across something you don't like, or you started to assume things— that's a you problem and not the fault of the poster.

If you DO NOT enjoy a character, a pair of ship, or a certain head cannon, filter the tag it's used for, Google has free tutorials on how. Most social media have these settings and most decent posters tag their posts correctly. If you keep seeing that pair, you can block the people who create it. You are free to do so ofc but WHY WOULD U come on main and air that out? Personally I find it so bizarre and it could show the type of person you are to other people — a toxic company over fictional substance — and I'd say that is not a flex, more like showing your dirty nappy in public. Those characters you love are not real and so not effected by your high ground stance, but actual humans that share you that love notice and get that impression, and it's a weird one. You SHOULD, of course, set your boundaries, and usually where that is be in your profile, on your bio or a pinned post.

Loving bizarre, villainous, creepy concepts DOES NOT EQUAL morality, nor loving good sunshine and flowers does. It's what a person does in real life what counts, not what they consume in entertainment. In fact, it is not a sign of a good person those who be shaming humans who like different fictional concepts. Or when someone keeps using ai generators knowing full well it's based on constant data theft of all sort of human creators across generations and can not exist without the continuance of this theft. Or those supporting creators that they know did irl crimes. Or those who are Policing what's can and cannot go into fiction as if the fickleness of preference have never let alot of things survive its judgement. And I can go on with the miniature examples. You are forgiven if you did not know before, some people learn through experience, but not anymore when you continue this behaviour. And maybe if you can't differentiate between reality and fiction, and what's more important than what, maybe, just maybe, you shouldn't be consuming fiction.

DO NOT POST WHAT YOU DID NOT CREATE. Do you like it when people keep posting your selfies that you only ment to share for funsies and what not? Isn't worse if you did not post that selfie in the first place or never wanted it to be used like that? It's the SAME FOR ART. This is the artists work just as much as your face is yours. Social media at the baseline is about who ever the poster is, their posts are theirs. So you posting an artist's drawing, with no permission, no credit to them, no nothing, is not allowed and people can report that. Don't be an ignorant thick fig and play the victim when schooled like this precious dear\s .Reposters disconnect so many content from their creators and this is how alot of beautiful things in life die, by simply not knowing they are loved, shoved into the over consumption machine..

And lastly, You don't have anything nice to say to OP? Don't say anything! It's not your misguided duty to educate people on how embarrassingly self centered you are, it's okay to be a basic #&★— I promise. It okay to feel out of place in a niche that doesn't concern you. It's okay to realise other people have different perspectives of the fiction work you enjoy. You can sit down.

And I'd like to add, Mani is a safe space for au and ships even if I don't like em, cuz they are only FICTION and will remain FICTION no matter how much I loved them or hated them.

Good day, dears🍀

[lakesbian]

Very curious to hear you elaborate on your thoughts of dungeon meshi anime sucking! Most of the folks I’ve seen talk about it have been pretty positive, and while as a fan of the manga I dropped out of the anime partway through I can’t really articulate why I stopped watching

this is gonna be pretty unformed but maybe @haunting-hole could add more if she wants. to phrase it to the best of my ability (unfortunately sans picture examples because i don't have time to dig them up):

it looks bad. or, well, the issue is actually that it just looks okay. the lighting is extremely washed out and sterile feeling. the manga has 1. gorgeous art and 2. extremely strong usage of light and shadow to convey tone, and the anime drops the ball both on fully conveying the atmosphere of those environments via their color (because the lighting is sterile and ubiquitous) and on using color in more subtle ways to convey the tone that the manga was initially striking for certain plot beats, whether that be horror or humor or emotional closeness. good example of this is comparing the first fawin fight in the anime vs the manga--in the manga, there's really stark use of light and shadow that adds an immense sense of emotional gravity, and the anime Does Not Have That

i think it in general lacks the artistic nuances that make the manga good...like first fawin fight as an example again. when she rips her shirt off in the manga, she's extremely bloodsplattered with a horrifyingly slackjawed, unfocused, animalistic look--she looks like a predatory animal. in the anime, the expression is altered in a way that makes her appear significantly more in control of her faculties than she actually is. or directly compare delgal's birth in the manga to delgal's birth in the anime--the one in the manga feels extremely personal and intimate and human, and the one in the anime has absolutely none of that weight because of how the scene is designed and drawn

i understand that things have to get cut out oftentimes in adaptations but i cannot fathom why they decided to cut namari explaining how resurrection works because it's literally Critical context for understanding the plot event of why everyone is so horrified when they find falin's bones. the sense of dread is so much more significant in the manga...i remember seeing a big post having 2 explain why this was a big deal 4 anime-onlies bc they were just straight up missing the critical worldbuilding detail that Resurrection Doesn't Fucking Work So Good when someone is just Bones. like please. that's importance.

the manga does comedy, horror, horror-comedy, extremely convincing character-focused emotional intimacy, etc. the anime has like. i don't fully know how to articulate it, it tries to recreate panels one-to-one but it ends up coming off as awkward and jarring instead. toshiro and laios' fight is particularly dire for this. i haven't watched the most recent episode myself but my friend whom i trust to be so right about dungeon meshi reported that it completely shits the bed on giving senshi's backstory the same compelling gravity as the manga. and also they put one of those overly cheery shiny yellow backgrounds over a group hug scene that's incredibly cozy and intimate and not at all humorously played up or lighthearted in the manga.

like, i think it really just boils down to the fact that the manga is a solid 5/5 with broad appeal, and the anime is a 3/5 mediocre sort of situation you just kinda drop without really thinking about why. just starkly milquetoast compared to everything the manga does. the anime being this popular is like watching people flock 2 outback steakhouse when a michelin star restaurant is right next door handing out free meals. it's Fine, it's Perfectly Serviceable depending on how distinguishing your taste is, but it's distinctly worse in comparison to the manga, and i don't care about seeing the same story rehashed in a diminished quality

[vergess]

sorry if this is an odd ask to send out of nowhere but i thought your mlp post was really interesting! could you go further into detail about what you think the show does wrong in later seasons? you don't have to, i'm just curious since i really like the show and it's been one of my hyperfixations for a very long time & you have really interesting takes/meta on things in general

thank you for your time!! :3

It very much gets "less about girls" as it progresses. People's background friends/family are suddenly almost always male, for example, with Fluttershy getting a brother, Rainbow Dash's other school friends being male, her dad being more prominently played than her mom, things like that.

This isn't even a bad thing!

While I would argue, and have before, that a show almost exclusively about women is an important thing for the media landscape compared to the glut of All About Men shows?

The reality is that any artistic lens that focuses exclusively on a single gender is going to be worse for it, if for no reason other than where are the trans people.

A truly "gender neutral gaze" would be the ideal, but to be honest I don't even know what that might look like. I can at least conceptualize the female gaze out from existing, limited examples of female led production for a female audience.

But in terms of, IDK, a trans-led production for a genderqueer/neutral audience, I don't even know it that kind of thing exists. It must, because well, trans people are everywhere in the indie arts, but I have never seen it.

Certainly I've never seen it around a kid's show. And one of the things that makes kid media so easy to analyze is, the "allowed" topics are fairly limited. When sex is off the table, you can devote that time to deepening friendships. When men are off the table, you can spend that time deepening female characterization. etc etc.

So anyway, while I would say a female gaze is preferable to a male one in this male dominated society, both have their deep shortcomings. The way MLP handled male characters in S1 by either not having them, or having them be kind of the butt of the joke (Spike) isn't actually a good thing, just a very different one than is common. And there are plenty of ways that the show mistreated Spike particularly for Being A Boy that would make me hesitate to suggest season 1 to, say, trans masc viewers.

But then there are some ways that I can safely say later seasons are just worse.

The fat jokes, for example, were Not A Thing in S1 and as a fat viewer that was a huge relief at first, which became a sharp slap in the face as characters began making fun of heavy eating or using obese background ponies as gross out gags, etc.

On the other hand, the racism very much was present from the beginning, as evidenced by Over A Barrel's portrayal of native americans as literally another species. And that's before we get into the sheer racism of pony colonialism in the first place. Also Zecora the Zebra's... situation. Which was okay as a one off bit in S1, trying if not succeeding at the message of "different=/=bad."

But, like many of these early flaws, the later seasons magnify the problem, especially when the show tries to approach real world issues. Just off the top:

Zecora becomes the magical negro whose mystic knowledge transcends that of the pony gods.

Gryphons become antisemitic stereotypes, obsessed with cash hoarding and isolationism.

Yaks live in technologically inferior wastelands of Yakyakistan, where they are loud, rowdy, and even dangerous.

Dragons are... just... really fucking bad, like by nature, with rare "good ones" going to live among ponies to become civilized.

The fucking saddle arabians apparently just Not Having Perfomance Art and needing to be taught by Trixie.

The kirin being very literally silent to show how zen they are, needing Westerners to give them back their voices.

The sheer audacity to bring Little Strongheart back in the fucking finale and "assign" her as Applejack's token buffalo friend (not even RD???) after AJ and her family nearly wiped the buffalo out and fully never fucking apologized

There's definitely more. Basically every single non-pony species shown to be sapient ends up some kind of a racist mess. At least cows are just like... white people from wisconsin so there's less racism inherent to their depiction but even then...

There are also ways in which the attempts to cater to a male audience weaken the show's overall presentation. Ponies with adult men's human meme images as cutie marks started popping up, for example, which is again not a bad thing, but weakens the overall fantastical world building.

Likewise, the attempts to modernize the setting are... um. Let's go with uneven.

In S1 technology is firmly pre-industrial Euro-Fantasy. I'd put it around 1770-1800 in the human western world.

By S2 there is an electrical grid even in "small" towns like ponyville, something which in the human world didn't take place until about150 years later, with another 50 years to roll out things like video games, which also start appearing.

But only for ponies.

Never for the other species.

I get why they did that. It's a "have your cake and eat it too" scenario where they can keep the pre-industrial fantasy tech level sometimes, but use a modern tech level at other times. It opens up more storytelling options. And it's not like the magical horse universe needs to obey our physics and timelines.

But then why only ponies.

All that does is deepen the racial division between ponies and other species. Which the later seasons LOVe to do. Deepen racial divieds.

After all, in S1 most other species (cows, gryphons, etc) were shown to live in equestria too. But in later seasons, are revealed to live in cloistered ethnostates nominally self ruling but in practical terms subservient to the equestrian state if they want basic rights like the fucking sun.

Which acts to retcon Spike's hatching and adoption from something very heartwarming into something very horrific.

Honestly, the "male gaze" is not the issue I have with late seasons of MLPFIM. It very much comes down to "this show got SO fucking racist SO fucking fast what the FUCK."

And that probably would have happened with all female writers and directors, too, if they were mostly white.

This all makes me sound like I hate MLP, but I promise you, all of this criticism comes from a place of utmost love. This show is really, REALLY good. It is charming, beautifully animated, excellently directed, with passion poured into every aspect of the visuals, the audio, the stories, the characters...

That's what makes these constant missteps so painful to encounter.

Because the highs are so high!

I mean, the movie easily constitutes the best 2D animation out of the western world in DECADES and every track on the album is a banger, and that's just the movie. Cartoon movies aren't exactly noted for their stunning quality, but MLPFIM sure as fuck stuns.

And when the highs are that high, oh man, the lows look lower by comparison.

[mostspecialgirl]

i dont think i can do “artist spaces” anymore because i’m really stupid. - ramble post with no point or central focus aside from making myself feel less weird

like…. i’m stupid. and i like it! But every artist i meet is like some kind of super genius and irs kind of nuts, everyone’s got such vision and intelligence and honed skill and all these interesting things about their lives and practice away from the arts and i’m some kind of inert orb who doesn't have much soul in her work aside from "isnt this cool like a animes" or "this is how im feeling". at least when it comes to Drawinf a Pitures.

i can deal with spaces where everyone’s just hanging out and Some People Happen to be Artists but spaces primarily composed of people steeped in the arts actually remind me that i'm a socially inept cavewoman who barely knows how to use the microwave. sufficiently talented artists ('sufficient' referring to people who have labelled themself an artist and have been online for more than 2 years) who i end up talking to online are 80% of the time some kind of Art Student Med Student Math Prodigy or Mentally Ill Genius Socially Inept Outsider Artist with insane Honed Unique Skill and when you apply that 80% to a whole lump of people in a GC or a Discord Server where the other 20% don't really talk there it gets real mentally exhausting as someone generally quite unimpressive and classically unskilled.

i dunno. I just kind of find it interesting that people with such talent, skill, wit, and (as ive repeated endlessly) intelligence are always drawn to the arts. a lot of my friends ive made who are very smart people ive learned 3 years into the friendship they used to do painting studies and are some kind of closet picasso while ive been showing them my meager collection of shale and sediment. is the pursuit of the artistic a mark of something deeper? what must one’s character lack to not seek creative self expression? what separates a creator from a consumer, and the blind from the perceptive? is creating art for the simple purpose of “cool and fun” shallow? does that answer change with ones talent? what is shallow art? is there truly such a thing?

cough

anyway. i’m just kind of a dumb baby, and it makes me sad that i never really feel like i can talk about art with most people because i don’t know anything. i’m not looking for construction or anything, i just want to be able to say “isn’t making something fun” without being reminded of my own inadequacies. i feel like art shouldn’t have to be this “smart” thing, and it isn’t, but art itself draws in the smart, and so like in many other spaces i feel a bit outcasted. obviously the solution here is to talk to MINORS from TIKTOK (gets cancelled)

but i really dunno. i feel stupid a lot these days and i feel like there aren’t any spaces that fit me, even when on paper these should be the spaces i should be in. even off the paper, anywhere i go i can’t help but feel like a bit of a bump on a log. like an erroneously flipped bit. i’m the stray ray from the sun beamed into the nintendo 64. that’s how i feel among other people, no matter who i’m with. it’s strange, because i really do like myself. i’ve passed a lot of the self deprecation and self doubt that used to chain me, and is it strange to say i believed casting those aside would help me find a bit more belonging among other people?

it hasn’t! life’s the same! maybe worse? i’m not self actualized or anything, but i think i’ve really grown as a person, so it’s sort of sucky that i fit better in place as a problem child. well i suppose as the Old Ones spoke, every group needs The Rick Friend. meeting people is hard. wanting to stay among people i’ve met is even harder. i like to blame a lot of it on the Modern Internet and the sheer amount of how many people have invaded my once cozy corners. with The Net these days being less of a space for Niche Freaks and instead being Grandma And Your Little Cousin Just Saw You Post Your Wiener On Instagram i’d think it’s only natural i’m running into less likeminded people. but i dunno. i feel like some of it’s my fault. i’m a weird little giblet of a girl, aren’t i? and man do i EVER hate people. I’m a big hater.

everybody i meet these days just makes me drool because everyone’s some kind of Valorant Edater or Reddit Object Show Minor or The Hypersexual or Someone I’m Too Intimidated By or Someone Who Does Not Want To Be Talking To Me. where’s Literally Anything Else. Everyone i meet these days fits into those categories. Give me anything else. What is wrong with my Spaces

i really don’t know how people make friends online these days. i’m always posting these days about Haha I Need Friends and Haha I Need A Wife that falls endlessly into the empty infinite void (much like now) for a reason. no matter where i seem to go, i walk dragging my feet, half-lidded and unengaged with a soft scowl on my face. i’ll figure it out, right? i’ll certainly make new friends, right? because i have to, right?

i dont wanna go to work tomorrow dude

[magicalyaku]

I wrote this weeks ago and forgot to post it, oops. uAu March was hard with work and con preparation so I didn't read much. I thought it'd get better afterwards buuut ... it's even worse now. xD Oh well. That's for later! Here's what I read in March:

The School for Invisible Boys (The Kairos Files 1) (Shaun David Hutchinson): It's been a while since I last read something by this author. Missed it! Though, this one is middle grade, so it felt a little different. A little less strange. Like, for once, the monster is an actual one instead of just a metaphor (not that it isn't connected to one. I also wonder if that whole Catholic setting is intentional because the Catholic Church and young boys don't have the best history together …). So, yeah, I like his other stories better, but this one was pretty good as well. I really liked the main character, because while he was timid of some sort, he also was easily brave and bold when he had to (that whole "he was mean to me, so I set his project on fire" is obviously not something to encourage in real life, but it is badass and I have respect for it in a a story xD), and he was able to apologise when he realised he made a mistake. I wonder what the next volume will be about.

Gallowgate (K.R. Alexander): So apparently, 'gay boys and ghosts' is a thing I'm into. The other two series I read, Oracle of Senders and Sixteen Souls, I like better, but this one is also middle grade while the other aren't, so they're not that easy to compare. Gallowgate starts out really dark, like really dark. Poor kid. It gets more whimsical afterwards with the school being run by ghosts and a general morbid decoration of which I've never been a fan, but most kids probably eat this up. Some story decisions are a bit questionable in my eyes like when the adults tell the protagonist to tell them anything strange that happens to him, but when he does they go "oh, that's not possible, you must be imagining things" … How did they think, that would solve any problems? It is addressed in the story, so it's not too bad, but still. Other than this, it was quite fun and I wonder if there's going to be a sequel.

Skater Boy (Anthony Nerada): What can I say about this one other than I liked it? :'D It's a pretty basic story: delinquent boy falls for someone who is like his polar opposite, in this case a ballet dancer, and wants to get a grip on his life for him. But it's done well, doesn't feel stale or anything. All of the characters are nice, even if they aren't, the protagonist is likable, even if he isn't the type of person one would like to hang out with (for most of the story anyway). Friends and family are just as important as the romance part. Hm. It's probably like this: There's more to the protagonist than meets the eye, and it's the same for the whole story? Sounds simple, but there's an honest heart in it.

Icarus (K. Ancrum): By chance, here's another one with a ballet dancer. :'D This one starts out really strange. The chapters are so short, at the beginning they felt a bit disconnected. It took me a while to find my footing in this. I had to ignore all the headlines to not always get taken out of the flow with every new chapter. Which also means, I probably missed a lot of the layers of the story, that are implied by the chapter titles. But it's worth it! It's kind of a strange story, but it gets really warm (there's romance, but the friendship part is also pretty strong). It has things to say (there's intersex rep for instance, and a genetic disease (was it EDS? I don't have my copy at hand to look it up, sorry) and the writing invokes that eerie feeling throughout. If you put it in a visual medium, you'd probably have to be very careful about the framing because it's about art (among other things) and everything feels very artistic and intentional. It's good!

[weaving-knightmares]

the way marvel dropped not even fumbled, dropped all the Bucky Barnes character development and actual 3-D character work and just gave him that ugly little white cat as a personality trait instead 💀

and his "fans" who lowkey hate his actual character I feel dgaf abt that b/c they just wanna see some random white guy with long hair to call babyboy and to just do nothing but show up sometimes to be screenshotted for "pretty art" and praise his appearances even when his writing gets somehow worse b/c L&K lawl

I don't even get the ones who put up w/ the worst writing ever while saying the art is "pretty" b/c his (& Steve's) character designs in that creative team are SO fucking bad, it's like the force of "MCWA" make Cap white again manifested in this Super White Writing & propagandistic historical references era's designs. Feels like it's only the crowd who likes ugly capital-W White men that doesn't think their new character designs aren't shit.

idk what to add to this tbh - you've pointed out pretty much everything that's fine wrong with bucky in recent comics. I feel like that atp they need to bring brubaker back or kill bucky off because they seem to have no good ideas for him & the writing was so weak in #that run that I have no idea what's going on with his motivations, morality etc. I think "cap-fam" fans in general don't really seem super concerned about mischaracterization for some reason. A lot of them seem content posting the "pretty art" on social media.

I liked alpine at first when she was just a cat he adopted but she does seem to be #those writers' way of making him more loveable or whatever for his fans. I feel the same way about the art & their designs - the artist did a much better job on captain marvel.

I doubt that fans of #that run can identify the propagandistic references or even the whiteness that is so prevalent in their work.

I just found out there's another cap issue by them coming out this Wednesday & we have thunderbolts to look forward to as well 😔 I wonder when bucky will be free & when his actual character will come back....

[toyherb]

re this ai art post going around and ablesim/accessibility.................. if you used to draw or paint or sculpt and developed a disability that made it hard or impossible I dont see how written prompt generated art would give you the same "making art" experience that you previously had. and I don't just mean well obviously it's different because your body changed. I mean you didn't actually make anything. as someone who makes art and loves art, that would suck everything I love out of it, everything that makes it gratifying and worth doing. I would literally rather be making picrews all the time. customizing a picrew is genuinely more of an art to me than using ai. (but also keep in mind this is still using other people's work, it just is useful as a creative outlet)

but anyways forget that for a second. when you have a disability that makes creating art difficult or impossible, what do you actually DO? there are plenty of disabled artists today and in history who have done everything possible in order to make their art, but what about people who can't do that? no disabled person is the same. what if they don't have the money for the equipment that could assist them or the tools that could help just don't exist? or there really is no way to make art? I personally have a hard time thinking of such a person but they probably exist. I just wish I could know more about what that situation is in order to know how this person might be able to make art, though I'm sure they might have tried everything.

but like, if there is a way for you to use a computer or phone I feel like there's almost definitely a way for you to make art, you know? it doesn't even have to involve ai art. if there's a way for you to control a mouse or something similar in any way, there's definitely a way to draw. and if you can't draw, wouldn't there be a way to make collages or something? If you can't do visual art, is writing out of the question?

(as for ai art, when it's trained on public domain or permissable art, I definitely can see it being used as a tool in art, but not as something to make art itself. like a step in the process. you didn't create what the ai gave you, but you can do whatever with the resultant image in order to do more creating.)

ANYWAY, I know I simply don't have the perspective to understand the topic fully. so I'm really sorry if I'm asking stupid questions or questions that seem annoying or antagonizing. but I really want to know. even if I dont understand it or disagree with it, I know I can't say "oh actually you finding a creative outlet in feeding this ai prompts to get visual art back isn't rEaL ArT and you should feel bad" because, what if it DOES give them that Making Art Feeling?

measuring things by how much effort they take is a form of ableism. measuring effort is impossible because it differs from person to person. I want to say so badly oh but you can tell when someone didn't try, and that it sucks to have something you worked hard on - either on an individual piece or your entire career as an artist - compared to or grouped with something that someone didn't prepare or train for at all! I want to think that so so bad. or worse winning over your work in a contest

but like, what does it even mean to try? what did making that piece actually mean to that person? did they have fun making it? were they engaged with the process? this whole effort angle makes me wanna rip my eyes out.

[depressedhatakekakashi]

Have you also had the misfortune of looking at the Naruto meme subreddit, too? My word, like once a week, there's a "Sakura's useless" joke posted somewhere in there.

Oh! Another excuse I hate people tossing around is, "It's a shonen written specifically for boys, not a shojo for girls, what do you expect? 🙄". Or another "great" deflection from criticizing the sexism in shonen: "Well, shojo has poorly written MALE characters, and THEY'RE not called out for it! ✅♟️". (That's not the checkmate you think it is! Everyone finds poorly written characters in general very annoying, that person just isn't looking for them.)

No one even get me started on the people who bring up Fullmetal Alchemist either! They bring up FMA as their ONE example of an anime with well-written female characters; like that anime's existence alone completely negates the dozens upon dozens of terrible ones! Bad writing is bad writing, no matter the genre; and it's baffling to me how weird some folks are about gender...

I do not have reddit but i do have Facebook and dear GOD is it a shit show. Arguments over who’s more ‘useless’ between Sakura and Hinata. Comments about how Tsunade is trash because she didn’t return Jiraiya’s feelings (URGE I HATE IT), and then every single thing is about propping up character’s like Itachi and Minato and shitting on EVERY SINGLE OTHER CHARACTER.

I loath it but i check facebook for family and the f***ing algorithm got me because of one drawing i shared

And wholey crap, ya no. One anime with good female character’s does not at all negate the other bad ones. Like ya, talk about it so people watch it but people should still be calling out sexist (or racist homophobic transphobic or other terrible writing). Like, i love dragon ball. Grew up on it. Will NEVER shit up about how they did all the girls dirty except Bulma (who was always used as the ‘sexy girl’ joke in dragon ball for all the pervy guys. Especially master rochi). Like one girl choosing family over continuing her martial arts carrer is ok (and something i hate about naruto fandom is that they refuse to recognize that s sexist as the writing is not all the girls are housewives. Hinata is which makes sense for her character/arc, but the only other two we can assume are housewives are Karui and Temari which i think is BS. Nothing in their stories say’s ‘would be happy being a housewife’ to me. Sakura and Ino are both working mother’s, with Sakura (as much as people may hate her) seeving a sort of single mother role since sasuke is never home.) but when they made Videl do the same thing with her only fighting being as a team with gohan i got annoyed. She’s my fav dragon ball character alongside gohan and i think she deserved to be a top martial artist among regular ass people. Like krillian level.

Aa for ‘useless male characters in Shojo’ i only remmember a few anime’s but like… not really? Tuxedo mask could be maybe the best example but he’s also constantly showing up to help and support sailor moon. In card capture sakura i recall the main male character being quite useful and having a great character arc. So i’m calling bs on all Shojo having terrible male character’s

It’s Shonin that is by far worse with treating the ‘non dominent sex’ as a secondary thought instead of actual characters

[mrwiseandshine]

Sharing the core strategy is helpful and positive, and it speaks well of Automattic's leadership that they're willing to maintain the kind of transparency we've seen recently. But yeah, there are good reasons for people to be concerned about several of these goals. Basically everything in this strategy is compatible with a healthy Tumblr that retains its current userbase, but it also feels like the writing is on the wall for core features that long-time users love.

Some comments on each principle:

Improving conversion rates generally means making the experience worse for logged-out users. That does sometimes matter for logged-in users. It used to be that webcomics sometimes used Tumblr for hosting, so Tumblr users could follow them directly on the dashboard but the comics were still accessible for anyone. I recently sent someone a link to a blog and they had trouble accessing it because they didn't have an account. Moving away from conversion rates would make the user experience better on both of these items, but yeah, it's basically a lost cause. People screenshot content when they want to share it these days. It sucks but there isn't much room to make things worse for current users by requiring login.

Prioritizing non-chronological feeds in development is, as sabakos says, equivalent to relegating the chronological dash to a legacy feature. This makes users nervous, literally. It puts me on edge, makes me worried about Tumblr's future. It's certainly possible to maintain the chronological dash as a first-class feature alongside an expanded "Best Stuff First", but retaining trust about it actually happening requires taking active steps to show the chronological dash remains a priority, even if they're a little silly or wasteful.

In particular, a lot of this talk about improving conversations sounds like it can work great on the chronological dashboard too. In particular, deduplication of posts on the dash would be great, I'd love to have a chronological dashboard where the first appearance of a post has a number with how many times it shows up in the last 24 hours of my dash. Adjacent identical reblogs should be collapsed into one, and later identical appearances of posts I've already seen should be minimized or hidden. This should be optional, but I'd definitely like deduplication. It would also be great to be able to see all comments from anyone I follow on a post, so I can know I've got the full context on the most recent addition.

Creators already like Tumblr, so changing core features to prevent users from avoiding content they don't follow is super dangerous. Using language like "the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs" is terrible, don't talk like that about core features central to the value the site provides to current users. That said, yeah, there's lots of ways the site could work better for creators. Revenue sharing with users that generate significant original content is an obvious but expensive one. The ability to forcibly put source headers linking back to the artist on posts by other users would probably be popular. A dedicated feed or dash config slider for "art I'd like" would be neat, there are probably people who'd appreciate extra art even if they don't want generic non-chronological content.

Maximizing attention and engagement is also dangerous. On other websites, this generally means "make the website more addictive to make your users' lives worse". Tumblr knows that, of course, but it's an obvious point of concern for users.

No disagreement on the importance of stability, though. Tumblr bugs have often been fun, they're a part of the local culture, but clearly stability improvements ought to be a major goal.

I'd also just be really interested to know how much a user costs Tumblr, on average. Does an ad-free subscription pay for a whole user's costs?

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

[theelf-art]

Anyways the OG Kayayoko art from 2021 I swear to god I thought I had posted this but apparently not??? Anyways pose from the first one is ripped straight from this artist's work on twitter (@m_o_g_m_o_g_555) and I do mean straight from it I won't even try to pretend I didn't trace it (nor do I want to). Rambling under the cut about the two of them

Anyways like I said in my last post, Kayayoko was Kariya's original game partner. I actually have a whole bunch of lore around the two of them mostly because I'm driven insane by the fact Kariya knows so much and yet the game refuses to elaborate. This is basically my answer to that. Why does Kariya know about the taboo noise when not even Joshua does? Why is he aware of the higher plane when that's usually restricted to high ranking reapers? Why can he somehow recognize on some levels what the O-pins do? Simple, because he encountered it in his home game. Also I kinda lied, Kayayoko was not Kariya's original partner. His original partner got killed by noise leaving him in a really bad position. Luckily, or unluckily if you're Kayayoko, their partner broke their pact to team up with someone else and betray them. The other person's partner had already been intentionally killed by the noise nearby too, so Kayayoko's partner ditched them hoping they'd also die. Anyways the two ended up forming a pact together out of desperation and were able to continue to survive despite loosing their first partners.

My home grown Kariya lore is he was a pianist before he died (he just has the vibes I don't know why), and his entry fee was his work ethic. Kayayoko was an art student and got killed by a campus bus, and their entree fee was their sense of normalcy. Neither of them ended up getting their entry fees back before they became reapers. Not sure if it was due to loosing the game, or the game being invalidated, or if the last composer got overthrown and so there was a whole restructuring, who knows even if it's my lore I still haven't decided.

Their relationship is tense and complicated to say the least. I tagged my last post "#not really oc x canon I'd argue they're something worse though" and that's for a reason. They're not romantically involved, but calling them friends doesn't really fit either. Like they know the fundamental depths of each other's souls and trauma but also haven’t talked in several years and both kinda changed but also not really, and they've gone their own ways and mostly moved on but there’s still that longing to say what was left unsaid because it didn’t end particularly great but they would still die for each other and care deeply for each other... like I said. Complicated. Also Kayayoko calls Kariya "Bean paste" or "Bean paste boy" similar to how he's called "Lollipop" by others because of his lollipop either being actually bean paste, or bean paste flavored (depends on how you see the manga canonicity).

Kayayoko however had bigger plans than staying a harrier after becoming a reaper, similar to Uzuki. But they ended up transferring out of Shibuya to go back to their home city where they would very quickly rise up the ranks there, possibly to the role of conductor IDK I haven't really fleshed that out tbh. But after the events of the TWEWY's, they get called back to help support Shibuya due the lack of reapers. (Originally it was just post TWEWY, most of this is from long before NEO came out, but it's been stretched to accommodate both). Most of my brainworms about them are just about Kayayoko's interactions with the other reapers and silly stuff like that. Oh and the reason their wings are visible? A fuck you to Kariya who still keeps his wings visible even though with his power level he probably could hide them and chooses not to. They usually don't have them visible on the day to day.

Anyways to end this off, a TWEWY version of their meeting from the previous post. Using the TWEWY Message Generator (doesn't work on firefox) for Kariya.

[misswabit]

B R O ok Ive posted the same 2 pieces of art on my insta and on my art blog and the differences are so crazy For a little background I've already fully given up on insta tbh im just posting on there for artist alley juries to see my work easily (which is liberating to post on there and not care how things do at all) and I have just over 120 followers on there which is real real low, ive truly never succeeded there and each post at most gets 12 likes maybe? 20 if my face is in it which i hate posting lol (honestly not even trying to brag a little insta just loves faces more in general i am an average person) Insta also does this thing where if you share the post you just posted on your stories (a thing you MUST do if you want your followers to actually have a chance at seeing it) it shows you exactly who viewed said story, and therefore outs the friends of yours who saw it and did not like your art making you feel 10x worse lmao like just don't show me that p l e a s e. Anyway! From the 2 art posts i made during the "rush hour" on insta, and after sharing it to my stories, I got a combined total of 11 likes, 4 on one 7 on the other. Insta showed me that all my friends saw and almost no one liked it. If i wasnt just posting now for artist alleys i would have probably been really hurt by that news like i was every time before because it feels like im just left to drown and never grow on there when that happens. But now i have a different motive on there so it wasnt emotionally bad at all! I just brushed it off and i know that theres more to look at on my portfolio now! But I also recently decided to start posting on my art blog more. Mostly just for me because practically n o o n e follows it. I have 12 followers, of those most of them are friends i know arent on tumblr anymore. and what do i get from posting the same 2 things on there? 16 reblogs, 2 of which have comments telling me my art is "peak" or their "favorite" and 46 likes. Now I know that these are still low numbers, but when you think of my following on here its pretty impressive people got to see them at all! much less leave supportive comments. compare that with my supposed 120+ followers and 11 likes its really flattering. I hate meta for many reasons but wow i really genuinely like tumblr

[capriciouscaprine]

okay, ex roommate post tiem to get it out of my system

(feel free to be nosey that's why I'm posting about it on tumblr)

first of all, why not just TALK to someone about this? bc I don't like social interaction and I'm too busy to see anyone, but also bc my ex roommate is a self-employed traditional artist, so if social opinion about them tanks, that could genuinely jeopardize their income, and they didn't actually do anything worse than be a kinda crappy friend on the whole and a shitty roommate in their last few months of living with me

me obsessing over them and using them as my secret competition is bc I'm mentally ill, not bc they 'deserve it' or 'need to be taken down a notch' or should be 'cancelled' or anything

so, my ex roommate had a shit life growing up, right up there with being any given social worker's average case of a low income child who's dealt with physical abuse, neglect, and bouts of homelessness; then, they graduated high school and used student loans to go to university to get a degree in fine art, and finally experiencing reliable housing while they had that student loan money; they pick up food service jobs while in college, start building their social media presence, and take home every classroom art supply that isn't nailed down, just like any professional artist does at the start of their career

fast forward approximately five years after graduation

they're still only just building up their online presence and they've never held down a job for more than about 10 months at a time; all of their previous living situations have imploded and they're living with a family member who doesn't help them do anything and expects them to magically get a good job and move out any day now, even though they don't have a car and they live in the suburbs

enter me, the person who owns a crappy little house that (eventually) has a bedroom open up so they can move in and a job to recommend them to

(I'm cutting out a bit here to maintain plausible anonymity)

they start out strong, decorating the room, cooking and sharing meals (not a routine in our house, just something nice they do), and building up their art income while they make money from the job I helped them get; they even manage to get a car!

but then, as a year at the job approaches, they have a harder and harder time getting along with their boss, and it's unclear if the job really sucks that bad or if my roommate isn't communicating well; they also seem to be failing to balance art, their other job, and general life, doing things like going on art binges only to crash and get an hour of sleep and be late to work the next day; eventually, they experience a significant health event, and they get fired for being absent from their job for a month

they focus on their art business, talking about how they're gonna explore more types of social media promotion and showing off how much their income has grown since they were at their relative's house; I've started my masters degree at this point, and then the pandemy hits, so we spend more time hanging out, especially since my other roommate had moved out by this point so it was just the two of us in the house

over time, the cracks start to show; they're so positive and cute and bubbly when they have the energy, and they talk a bunch about effective communication and boundaries and all that, but when they talk about their other friends, it's like a constant stream of criticism about their life choices

oh, one friend has openly wept about being fat and not fitting into the cute clothes they both want to wear? well, sure, body positivity and all that, but then my roommate gets annoyed that their friend is annoyed by the regular attempts to invite them out for hikes or to a gym my roommate goes to, and is further annoyed when this friend won't 'just' tell them they don't want to go and that the friend simultaneously still talks about her dissatisfaction with her body; my roommate is flat out making 'pick a struggle!'-type comments about this 'friend'

another friend struggles with money; they were low-income, and now they make relatively decent money, and my roommate is FULL of judgement about how they spend their money and how they socialize at work and try to turn all their coworkers into their friends even tho that just isn't appropriate

any time they go to someone's house that is messy, there are several comments made about why they don't 'just' clean up as they cook or do stuff around the house, and if they see a roach that person is absolutely getting judged hard core bc my roommate 'has ptsd (jokingly)' about all the trashy places they've lived (we live in the southern US, btw, we have lots of thriving insects and small mammals all over the place)

they complain about how someone keeps talking about wanting a better, higher-paying job, but won't put in the time to get required certifications to get that better job

they constantly talk about the importance of 'open' conversation, harping on how they're happy to have a frank conversation about anything without blowing up over it

and yet

they do

ALL OF THESE SAME THINGS

they talk about wanting to lose w while binging on snacks with friends and eventually a new partner, complaining about wanting to go to the gym but also how sad they are no one will go with them and that's why they go less; their savings starts running out at the pandemy impacts their art sales so they go get a job after talking about it endlessly (another complaint about a different 'friend') and tries to make friends with all their coworkers and starts a room overhaul even though they admit they have no budget for it; they don't wash up after using a TON of bowls and pans to cook a single meal and even leave out tidbits 'for the cats' on the FLOOR that they never go back and pick up; they don't actually do any training on their own time to get promoted or improve their art business; and trying to give them advice and feedback or talk about something that makes you uncomfortable with them results in a near-immediate grumpy cold shoulder, let alone that they dominate nearly every conversation with their own personal interests and check their phone when you talk about yours

(I have to go to work rippp I don't want tumblr to delete this in drafts so I'm posting it now and will continue later)

[primetimes-primetime]

alright. so, i know ive already made a post about this on my main, but im stupid and went to the original tweet and just made myself angry again.

TW// T-CEST UNDER THE CUT

alright, so a couple days ago i rbed a screenshot of a certain story board artist's tweet about being the one to put tcest in the show.

i dont know why or how, but i found my way onto twitter and to the original tweet that this guy made.

for context, sheldon here was a storyboard artist for Rise and the scene they are talking about here is this one from the Lair Games episode-

i partially explain again why this is horrible and disgusting and partially why i dont believe or accept sheldon's... i dont even know what to call it. his response (the top post in the first screenshot)

part one

since i literally just rbed something about this, im just going to copy/paste my rb and add onto it a little.

" no but when i found out that some of the artists who originally worked on Rise were t-cesters and proshippers i was actually so fucking pissed off.

there are part of this community that are actually god damn disgusting, and im not afriad to say that tcest is fucking rancid and if you support it i dont want you near the content that i create.

first of all, it is literally incest. it says so right in the name. which, i really hope i dont have to explain why incest is bas in the ripe year of 2022. I don't care that they arent "blood-related". They were fucking raised as brothers, treated like brothers, and think of each other as brothers. No matter how hard you try to spin it, no matter how hard you argue that they arent technically related, you have to understand that they see and think of each other as brothers, which should be enough to make this incest.

this show was amazing when it came to family dynamics and brotherly love/trust/bonds. i can say with confidence that the brothers in Rise are much more brotherly/closer than any other previous versions. it's obvious to see that they love and care and want to protect one another. to turn platonic and love for one's family into something so gross and vile is taking all of the healthy emotional bonds between these characters and throwing it out the window.

i cant fuckung believe i have to say this every time i come back into the tmnt fandom, but-

THEY ARE MINORS.

sure, with the recent Rise movie we saw an adult leo, but heres the thing- that version of leo is fucking dead. he literally got fucking beamed out of existence.

the fact that every one of these brothers are under the age of 18 and i still see so much nsfw art is absolutely horrid.

finally, it's a kid's show. sure, many of us in the community are teens, later teens, and grown adults, but that does not change that this show was originally created to bring the tmnt franchise into yet another generation of kids. again, i sincerely hope that i dont need to explain why implying incest in kids shows (or really any TVs shows, for that matter) is morally wrong and vile.

literally yesterday me and some of my mutuals had to go through a lot of our content to re-tag a whole bunch of our posts tagged with "tcest dni" because tumblr's tagging system is actual shit. there shouldnt even be a tcest community, outside of it impeding on the rest of us Rise fans.

sorry this is such a long post but im so tired of seeing / hearing about tcest. its gross, disgusting, icky, etc etc. it is 6:30 am and i woke up and saw this and decided to fucking say something, because tcest has actively made my experience coming back into the tmnt community and fandom worse. "

and i still stand by that. seeing so much tcest- and from the artists on the rise crew, no less- is making my journy back into the tmnt fandom so, so much worse. it is actively hurting a lot of people- which brings me to one specific tweet from this thread.

so, to start- i do not, i repeat- DO NOT condone or promote sending death threats to people or telling them to kill themselves.

second- it isnt. harmless. reminder, again, that this is a

CHILDREN'S. SHOW.

you are talking about MINORS IN INCESTUAL RELATIONSHIPS. "harmless fiction" my ass.

part two

ok. so as you can see in the original screenshot, you can see that sheldon is passing this off as a joke. but i honestly cannot believe him when he says this.

why, i hear you asking. well,

look at the time stamp. 2020, nearly three years ago now, when the Lair Games episode had just come out.

why didn't he say it was a joke three years ago, when he first posted the storyboard clip? because he isnt fucking joking. either that or he is just really so fucking dense that he doesn't realize that what he's doing is not funny in any way, shape or form.

which brings me to my next point.

even if it is all just a joke,

why the fuck are you joking about minors participating in fucking incest?

its fucking nasty even if it is a joke. i genuinely shouldnt need to say anymore on why this is fucking horrid.

well. ive taken up enough of your time- i appreciate you reading to the end and i apologize for making this so long. a quick, final word in case you got this far and are a tcester or support tcest-

kindly fuck off, do not interact with me, unfollow me, and block me :] i dont want your nasty ass incest anywhere fucking near me or this blog.

thanks ! :D

[wildflowers-of-trolberg]

The Hilda Novels, Revisited

I didn't plan on making this. Anyone who's read my previous post on this subject will know that I didn't have a good time with the first three of the Hilda tie-in novels, and they put me off reading the Season 2 tie-ins. But, eventually, I couldn't help myself; I have now read all 6 books, and I wanted to go back in light of that and put all of my thoughts in one place.

So, I'm going to re-cover my thoughts on the first three books, and go over my opinions on the second set and what changed between them. I still have plenty I want to say, and a lot of it is still very negative, so a warning in advance; I am still not a big fan of this series.

Just to recap, Hilda as a franchise has three separate canons. The series started with the Graphic Novels, written by Luke Pearson, which were then adapted into the Netflix show; Nobrow/Flying Eye Books (the publishing company behind Hilda) then released a series of chapter books written by Stephen Davies, which re-adapt the events of the show. Each one takes a few episodes and combines them into a single plotline, moving things around and changing them as necessary, and these books form their own canon.

If I had to give my thoughts in a single word, after the Season 1 tie-ins, it would have been "mean-spirited". Now, though, it's "inconsistent". I'm going to break my thoughts on them down by topic, just to make this more coherent. So, to start with:

The Art:

I'm starting with this because it's the easiest thing to talk about. In a word, the art in this series is inconsistent; the quality varies from book-to-book, and the illustrations often don't match up well with the text. It feels almost like the artists were given a brief description of the plot, rather than the final thing, to work from.

The Season 1 books are illustrated by Seaerra Miller (the artist behind Mason Mooney), and while I don't want to knock her in general, when I'd finished them I really hated her work for this series. In hindsight, though, I've softened on the art in Hilda and the Hidden People. It has a distinct style that reminds me a little of the cover art to The Wilderness Stories, and I actually think it works; my favourite piece of art in the entire tie-in series is in this book:

That being said, her art for The Great Parade and The Nowhere Space really suffers in comparison (part of me wonders if she was asked to stick closer to the show's style); this is where we got Trev and the Boys (my least favourite illustration in the whole series) and the infamous image of Twig:

The art in these two doesn't help the general weirdness of the tie-in series; it's just not great, unfortunately, and it further suffers in the paperbacks I think. Miller's art was definitely done with the yellow colours of the hardback books in mind, while the paperbacks, which are pure greyscale, tend to look even worse. Thankfully, this is something the second set actually fixed - the art for the S2 books is done by Sapo Lendário (who are apparently a duo and not one person), and is much closer to the show, although it still suffers from inconsistency with the text (Johanna falls off a cliff at one point in the narrative but doesn't in the art) it does look quite a bit better:

EDIT: @remked pointed out to me that actually, Sapo Lendário only did Books 5 and 6; Book 4 (including the illustration above) was illustrated by Victoria Evans, who is a character designer on the show. I honestly didn't notice; either way the art for the Season 2 set is consistently good if not always consistent with the text.

The Story

Technically the writing in the series is fine; it's a little clunky in places, and definitely meant for kids, but it's fine to read. But the tie-in series in general just feels a lot stranger than the series. There are a lot of moments that just come out of nowhere, and bits of weird writing that just jar with each other or with the show.

The biggest example for me is still the three trials Hilda has to go through to see the Elf Prime Minister in Hilda and the Hidden People; he lives in a magical 'headquarters', guarded by three magical trials of which the rabbit cavalry charge is one. This is despite the fact that he's a bureaucrat who runs a country and presumably has to get to work with his staff every morning (and needs his army for things other than just testing the courage of anyone who wants to see him).

There's moments like this throughout the series; the forest giant who keeps Hilda captive tries to rap at the Woodman, Victoria van Gale's assistant gets named Moss Head Fred, the Bellkeeper is just, weirdly verbose at all times, and Tildy and the woman who Mr Ostenfield danced with have been split into two separate characters (both still named Matilda):

(for reference, this is Matilda Pilqvist, while the Tildy we know is Mr Ostenfeld's partner).

The first season books are worse for this kind of stuff than the second, which do feel more Hilda; I know both are almost certainly based on early show scripts (this is normal for tie-ins like this, to make sure they're released on time, and there are a few hints like Kaisa having green hair in Hilda and the Great Parade, which is a thing in her original concept art), so it's possible the S2 scripts were more complete when Davies got them, or it's possible he was just kept on a tighter leash this time by the publishers, but there is an additional point on that that I want to come back to.

The thing is, the weird moments and inconsistencies weren't really what got to me about the first set of books; I could have stomached all of that and the janky artwork if it wasn't for just how mean-spirited the first three novels are towards Hilda. Some of this is character related, and I'll come back to that when we get to that section, but fundamentally it just felt like this series was written by someone who didn't like or understand Hilda as a character.

The whole world feels like it's against her in these novels, and it's at its worst in Hilda and the Nowhere Space and especially Hilda and the Great Parade. Trevor isn't just a kinda-mean kid, he's explicitly the class bully and tries to drown the Raven purely out of spite; David and Frida actively cut Hilda out of their lives after their first adventure (which in this timeline is The Lost Clan); and her entire class at school and every authority figure she comes across seems to just hate or want to make fun of her.

Raven Leader is a pretty big example of this, but by far the worst is Ms. Hallgrim and the entire adaptation of The Troll Rock in Great Parade. Ms. Hallgrim is introduced sending Hilda out of her class for not listening, and for making a noise while she's talking, while the entire rest of the class is openly laughing at Hilda and she is visibly hurt. Ms. Hallgrim makes no attempt to stop them from mocking her, and she doesn't get angry with them for being disruptive, but she outright shouts at Hilda.

But the moment it really crosses a line is the 'Wonderful Trolberg Exhibition', which is what the novels call the parents evening where David brings in a troll rock. Due to the reshuffled plotline, Hilda is in the middle of trying to rescue Raven (Trevor has him caged as his exhibit) when the projector gets knocked over, and like in the show Ms. Hallgrim blames her. But in this version, Hilda tries to explain that she got up free the Great Raven, and this causes the entire room including the parents, to start openly mocking her.

For her part, Ms. Hallgrim's response is to scream at Hilda about how wrong she is. She doesn't ask to speak with Hilda and her mother afterwards, or take them aside to discuss her behaviour while the mess is cleaned up; she has a legitimate reason to think Hilda knocked the projector over, but it in no way justifies her screaming at a ten-year-old child who is already visibly crying by this point because grown adults with kids of their own are jeering and laughing at her.

It's genuinely upsetting to read, and it's not the only moment like this, but the other big ones will be talked about in the characters section, because they concern Johanna.

Thankfully, the Season 2 books largely tone this down. Partially, I think it's just that Hilda has fewer conflicts with other humans and especially authority figures in Season 2, but it also comes back to how I think Stephen Davies might have been kept on a tighter leash this time; Erik Ahlberg, an authority figure who is meant to be awful and who Hilda is meant to butt up against, is pretty much his show self and thus somehow significantly more likeable than Hilda's teacher and scout leader.

This new, lighter tone is more in line with the show, but unfortunately the Season 2 books also have a new, major issue in my opinion, and that's that the pacing is just bad a lot of the time. This is kind-of present in Hilda and the Nowhere Space, which adapts the most episodes of any book in the series at six (The Sparrow Scouts, The Nightmare Spirit, The House in the Woods, The Nisse, and The Black Hound), but that mostly gets away with it just by cutting out a lot from the subplots and turning The Sparrow Scouts into a brief flashback. Hilda still has a very eventful couple of days, but it just about works for me.

The same can't be said for Hilda and the Time Worm and especially Hilda and the Ghost Ship. They have fewer episodes to adapt, at five (including a fairly clumsy flashback-explanation of The Storm) and four respectively, but The Ghost Ship especially just tries to cover far too much ground from those four episodes. The result is everything happens at a breakneck pace, and none of the plotlines have enough room to breathe.

The Witch is reduced to one scene where Hilda and Frida wander into the Witches Tower, and meet Kaisa at the door to Tildy's maze, where she hastily explains everything; they rush in and fight the Triffid (the plant), and Frida realising the sword is a key is enough for Kaisa to decide she's witch material and promise to get Tildy to train her. The entire rest of the episode, completely ignoring Kaisa's arc, is dumped later as a brief explanation to David.

And The Draugen, the episode the book is supposed to be about, gets two. Abigail just gives up after she loses the race back to shore, and the entire thing becomes a pointless detour that gets breezed through without amounting to anything. The actual load-bearing episode of the book is The Windmill, which is handled alright despite some weirdness surrounding Moss Head Fred and the nuance of Victoria's character being completely absent.

This is actually the additional factor I wanted to mention about why the Season 2 books might be less weird; according to an interview I read with Stephen Davies, the bizarre elf trials were added to Hilda and the Hidden People to fill a story that otherwise wasn't novel-length. I suspect as a result that these newer books have fewer strange moments because there was so much story already crammed-in that Davies didn't need to expand on things in his signature way.

The pacing is better in Hilda and the White Woff, which has less ground to cover and also blends things more organically (and guts The Deerfox to fit it in in a way that loses all of its emotional meaning but does actually make it fit the narrative - the flashbacks from it are now the story that scares David in The Eternal Warriors). The White Woff also does something else that I really like, more than the show even, but I'll explain that in the character section because again it relates to Johanna.

And it's not the only time this happens in the Season 2 novels; Hilda and the Time Worm suffers from the same awful pacing as The Ghost Ship, and nothing is really given the emotional weight it needs, but it also handles the plot of The Fifty Year Night in a way that doesn't stretch too far outside of the show's tone, which I think the episode does.

I've explained my issues with The Fifty Year Night before, but fundamentally it comes down to two things. I don't think Johanna's nearly as sympathetic as the show wants her to be (she's fundamentally the one at-fault in the whole Season 2 change to her and Hilda's relationship, and as much as they do show it hurts her too, in this very episode, it doesn't work as well as it should for me and it doesn't justify her mistakes), and I knew the novels were never going to fix that. But I also think the episode just goes to places that are too dark and distressing for Hilda, specifically with how the Time Worm is revealed and the deaths it causes.

And it's here that the novels are actually, genuinely better. The plotline doesn't carry the same emotional weight about the could-have-been of Ostenfeld and Tildy's relationship, and it doesn't really explain how the magazines work or that destroying them fixes things. But it does make two big changes that I like.

There are no child deaths in the book; by the time the Time Worm arrives, Hilda prime is the only Hilda still in the past (she waits and watches the dancing while the other Hildas from her previous trips - she makes one more than in the episode - go back to the present, and there is no "bad future Hilda" to sacrifice herself). And while the Worm does try and delete the various Mr Ostenfelds, they aren't alive when it does.

Changing the past causes all of the alternate versions of him, except the most recent, to just break as their timeline is erased. They just all freeze, stuck repeating the last thing they said like a skipping DVD, because they aren't real anymore; they're just shades left in time. And it's a moment that manages to be creepy and make it clear that changing the past was wrong, without forcing the reader to see Mr Ostenfeld screaming in blind terror as he's lifted up, still struggling while being devoured. It's just far less awful than the episode.

And finally, when Hilda makes it back to the present and meets the version of Mr Ostenfeld that married Tildy, Mr Ostenfeld prime is there too. He also escapes the Time Worm like Hilda does, and stays with her while his alternate self sacrifices his life.

Instead of just being cast aside for Hilda's development, he gets his own arc where he actually gets to move on from the past and accept that he missed his chance. It's a surprisingly heartfelt moment for a novel series where such things often ring hollow, and it ends with him genuinely comforting Hilda too. I would actually argue that he's closer to Hilda than the Bellkeeper is in this version.

But it doesn't make up for everything else; I wish some bits of that plot had been merged into the show's version, but I still can't call the book good, and I haven't even got into my real biggest problem with the tie-ins yet.

The Characters

Fundamentally, the characters are what ruined the first three books for me. That mean-spirited tone carried over directly to them, and I still really hate a significant chunk of the novels' recurring cast as a result. But the Season 2 books did make some big changes, and it would be remiss of me not to mention them.

I will briefly mention Alfur and Tontu, but only to say neither of them really get that much depth in the novels. Tontu invites himself into Johanna and Hilda's life at the end of Hilda and the Nowhere Space, but otherwise he's pretty much the same as in the show just, a little flatter. Alfur suffers more from flanderisation, and we don't get The Replacement or anything similar, or honestly that much of a sense of his bond with Hilda, even in the S2 books. So, with them out of the way:

I know some people think Novel Hilda acts out more and is less nice than her show counterpart, and I have mixed opinions on that. The only time I really think that rings true is during one moment when she gets upset with Alfur in Hilda and the Hidden People; her relationship with her mum is worse, and that affects a lot, but that's absolutely on Johanna in the novels. There is also the beginning of Hilda and the White Woff, where she is a little more like her comic self in that she lies to her mum to go camping in the wilderness alone, but it's actually handled pretty well and it's something I could see Show Hilda doing (more on that later).

The biggest difference for me is actually that Novel Hilda is more emotional; she's very avoidant of confrontation, and she's brought to tears by things that would make her counterparts angry. She has a lot stacked against her, and it gets to her in ways that it doesn't in the show or the Graphic Novels.

Which brings us on nicely to David and Frida. In the Season 1 novels, they are absolutely bad friends; the first adventure they share in this canon is The Hidden People, and, far from enjoying it, both Frida and David hate Hilda for dragging them into it and cut her out of their lives. The thing is, it's not wrong that Hilda convinced them to go near the wall when they didn't want to, but it doesn't really read as her being pushy or manipulative; they really don't take much convincing. And besides, she had no idea about the Bragga Clan (most of the reason Frida and David don't want to go is it's a long way away), so it all just reads as them being far too harsh on her.

There is ultimately a reconciliation, and David does apologise, but Frida never does. And this attitude continues into the next book, where David and especially Frida just get upset with Hilda for ruining their badge attempts, even when it's not her fault. David does eventually get one good moment, where he stands up to the marra giving him and Hilda nightmares, but it's offset by everything else, and by him being given Johanna's lines about how nisse can't be trusted. Since he never welcomes a nisse into his life, he never has any development about that.

Frida, meanwhile, is just consistently cold with Hilda; it feels like she wants Hilda to be her friend, but isn't really willing to be Hilda's friend in turn. Her last real moment of characterisation in the Season 1 tie-ins is her giving Hilda the cold shoulder for keeping her awake at night (to catch the marra), and that's it. Genuinely, Novel Hilda deserved better friends, which is why I'm glad to say the Season 2 novels actually fixed this.

It's not really done with any development (which is weird, because there's a way it could have been if the order of events was changed - David's standing up to the marra does give some continuity for him becoming a better friend), but Hilda and the Time Worm adapts Operation Deerfox Thunder Team straight and pretty drastically rerails the characters in the process, complete with Frida and David immediately jumping to help Hilda.

In fact, there's a moment in that book that doesn't happen in the show (and genuinely couldn't exist in the show), where Novel Johanna is talking about how Hilda is a bad daughter in her usual way, and David immediately jumps to her defence. It's a moment that I really love; it doesn't address things on any serious level, but I think it's the only time Johanna's awfulness doesn't go ignored and it's very much David at his full show self.

Frida is also better in this book; I was worried at the start of Hilda and the Ghost Ship that that hadn't stuck, because she is pretty mean to David behind his back at the beginning in a way that reminded me a lot of how she was with Hilda in the first season novels. But since this novel adapts The Windmill, it is sort-of addressed. Hilda is the one that apologises at the end, but she does earnestly apologise for both of them, so I'm iffy on it but it's not the worst thing.

It's also helped by The Eternal Warriors happening at the start of Hilda and the White Woff, immediately afterwards; the whole thing is again a bit brief, but the reassurance from both Hilda and Frida that they like David the way he is does get given, so all in all it's fine. By the end of the Season 2 books I like David a lot, even if I feel like his growth could've been handled better, and I think Frida's okay.

And that just leaves one more major character, the one I know a lot of people will have been waiting for me to discuss:

(I both love and hate this image because it just perfectly sums up their relationship in the majority of the novels)

Novel Johanna is still my least favourite character in the whole franchise; more than Show Erik, or the Committee of Three, or Trylla, or the Time Worm, I genuinely hate her. But there is a "but" there now, because the Season 2 books did something I never expected them to do.

I've said before that I don't think Stephen Davies went into this to write Johanna as an awful person; I think the intention is that she's the struggling mother of an often-difficult child. But that just isn't what's portrayed; in every book except Hilda and the White Woff, Novel Johanna is genuinely emotionally abusive.

The first time I read Hilda and the Hidden People, the one thing that stuck with me more than anything else was how Johanna handles the move. I went into the book aware that Johanna was a worse parent in the novels; I'd seen bits of Hilda and the Nowhere Space, and we will come back to that, but that first book got to me in a way I wasn't quite expecting.

Because the only word I have for the way Novel Johanna handles it is insidious. Hilda accuses her of wanting to move, of just using the elves as an excuse for existing plans, and the way it's handled makes me think that she's right. Novel Johanna is committed to it from the start, and instead of being honest with Hilda, she lies to her daughter's face about it.

When they first visit the city, Johanna tells Hilda it's just to look around, in a way that's blatantly a lie; she actually wants to choose their new home and get Hilda ready for school and everything. It's not like in the show, where she's transparent about what she's considering and doesn't commit to anything for Hilda's sake. And when Hilda calls her out on this, and is understandably upset as a young child having her life ripped out from under her, her mum doesn't try and comfort her or get her to see that the city isn't so bad. Show Johanna deeply understands that the move is going to hurt Hilda; Novel Johanna makes it about herself.

And that's the lynchpin that pushes Johanna into abusive in these novels for me. She has a daughter who she didn't talk to about this (the first time it comes up, she immediately shuts down any discussion), who is upset because she might be about to lose everything she's ever known, and all she says is "please don't be difficult". It genuinely reads as manipulative and it's awful, and what gets me is Hilda ultimately accepts it.

In the moment when she falls off Illus (Jorgen's partner), she's momentarily sure she's going to die, and all she can think about is how bad of a daughter, how mean she's been to her mum, when really Johanna is the one who hurt her. There's even a moment in Trolberg that I'd forgotten until I reread this for this, where Hilda's reaction to the bells of the city genuinely seems uncomfortably close to a sensory overload, and Johanna doesn't even notice (it's right before more of her being determined to move).

And Johanna not caring is the theme in Hilda and the Great Parade. She doesn't even try and help Hilda adjust (there's one fond moment where Hilda complains over-dramatically about the city and her mum just hugs her and goes "oh you poor thing" sarcastically - it's a genuinely fond moment, but as the only moment where this is addressed, it rankled me), but the real problems emerge once Hilda gets rejected by David and Frida.

Novel Johanna hugs her when she cries about that, and about how much she hates the city and everything, but all she says to comfort her is that Frida and David's exhibit for the Wonderful Trolberg Exhibition probably sucks; it's not abuse here, but it's just not enough to make up for everything so far.

And then it comes out that Johanna put the Raven out; in this version, she's tricked into giving him to Trevor, who then tries to use him as his exhibit. And obviously Johanna didn't know that the raven was the Great Raven, or that Trevor is a bully, but she just doesn't care even after she finds out those things. In the show, Johanna apologises for putting the Raven out and does everything to help Hilda get him back, even though it's not fully her fault, but in the books she just sits there; there's even a moment where Hilda actually is upset with her for this, and the implicit message of the narrative in that moment is that Hilda is the one being unfair.

This leads straight into that scene I mentioned already from The Troll Rock. Johanna could have prevented it in the first place, just by telling Ms. Hallgrim that Trevor stole the Raven from her, but she doesn't; and when Hilda tries to get him back herself, and the projector is destroyed and the entire room of adults starts mocking Hilda, Johanna just glares at her, and then asks if she's feeling sick because of how she's acting. She's completely okay with her child being screamed at to the point of tears (and in the 3rd book, we see why), she has no moment of talking to Hilda's teacher, and the most Hilda is able to get her to do is to pass a note to Frida, which she does reluctantly.

She does get a bonding moment with Hilda on the wall at the end, overlooking the parade, but it's not earned and with the bad taste everything else leaves in my mouth it is unfortunately easy to read in a negative light too. Because there's still no moment of Johanna being sorry that they had to move or accepting that Hilda misses the wilderness, but there is a moment where Johanna hugs her close, after Hilda finally admits the city is nice. On its own, it would be a fine little moment, and even in the worst interpretation I don't think Johanna could be seen as malicious here, but with what we've seen of her it just gets to me that they don't get the bonding moment until Hilda caves.

And then comes Hilda and the Nowhere Space, and it all gets so much worse again. Because in this version, the reason Hilda even joined the Sparrow Scouts is because Johanna "loved the idea of Hilda following in her footsteps." Not because she thought it was good for Hilda, but because she wanted Hilda to be like her, and it's clear in this novel that Hilda doesn't actually enjoy it; she struggles with organised activity and Raven Leader doesn't like her, but she doesn't have a choice.

And all Johanna asks her is about badges; never about how fun it was, or how she's feeling, just if she's gotten any badges yet. The pressure she puts on her daughter is far worse than in the show, and feels uncomfortably deliberate, all while Hilda ends up tying her own sense of self-worth to scouting badges.

And when it all comes out, when Hilda sits there at the badge ceremony and gets nothing, Johanna comes and sits next to her, and berates her to the point of tears. It's another genuinely, deeply upsetting moment, and again the whole thing from start to finish reads as emotional abuse. Johanna does love Hilda, I don't doubt that, but she wants a Hilda who's just like her, and isn't willing to accept her daughter is her own person.

She does apologise for this, but it's just not good enough; because it's not an apology. It's "please forgive me. I was horrible to you" - it puts the onus on Hilda to forgive, not on her mum, and it doesn't even mention the months of pressure that came before. Show Johanna apologised just because her excitement made Hilda feel bad, but Novel Johanna doesn't care.

So I wasn't looking forwards to seeing how the novels handled The Fifty Year Night, where I think Johanna is already unreasonably harsh and not listening when she should be. And, unfortunately, I was right to be worried; in this version of the plotline, Johanna actually has more legitimate reason to be upset (she grounds Hilda for the sabotage from The Old Bells, which is an actual crime, even if it was justified). But the phrasing she uses is just as awful and manipulative as it was in Hilda and the Hidden People. Specifically, she accuses Hilda of lying specifically, knowingly to hurt her mum.

The reconciliation for this really doesn't work, either, because there kind-of isn't one; The Fifty Year Night leads straight into The Yule Lads, and the next time Hilda and her mum interact is Sonstansil (the gift-giving happens in the flat because Hilda is still grounded), and the whole book ends with Hilda being grounded for two more weeks.

In Hilda and the Ghost Ship, Johanna barely appears, but her only real moment isn't a great one. The climaxes of The Beast of Cauldron Island and The Windmill happen on the same day, and Hilda and Frida stop by Hilda's flat on their way to the windmill to save David, so that they can grab Tontu; Hilda lies to her mum to get away, but before she does, Johanna says that if she behaved like Hilda (specifically, explicitly, running off on adventures), her parents would have done something else.

She gets cut off at "would have", which suggests to me that it's more than just grounding her or being harsh; I genuinely think the implication is that Johanna's parents were abusive towards her. And I think that's already loosely implied in all canons, that she's at least somehow estranged from them, but it is a sad detail to me that if it is what the creators want to imply, then the thing that separates Novel Johanna from her counterparts is that she fell into the same pattern of abuse that her parents taught her.

And that's the thing; this whole thing is a pattern, where Johanna so often wants a perfect little copy of her and is willing to resort to genuine abuse to try and keep Hilda in that box. She loves her daughter, I don't deny that, but that's the thing; abusers do care about their victims.

I know it's not what Stephen Davies or Nobrow/Flying Eye Books intended, and it does rely on reading some neutral moments (like the end of the Great Parade) in a very negative light, but when there's so many moments that are just legitimately awful without needing to be specifically interpreted negatively, and that go almost completely unaddressed, I can't escape the conclusion. Novel Johanna is an abusive parent, and it's genuinely upsetting.

But there is that one "but" I mentioned, and that's the final book so far, Hilda and the White Woff. I genuinely don't know what happened here, but somehow it went the exact opposite way to the rest of the series. I was fully expecting the argument at the start of The Stone Forest to be so much more awful in a canon where Johanna is consistently harsh and likes to guilt-trip her own child, but that's not what we get.

I'm not going to go into too much detail here, because I think I've mentioned it enough times already, but I don't like the way Season 2 of the show handles Hilda and Johanna's relationship. And fundamentally, that's because it's Johanna's fault that Hilda stops telling her things. Hilda doesn't like hiding things, but she feels like she has to, because her mum has started getting upset with her adventures. She's become overprotective, and lost her daughter's trust, but the show wants her to be the one in the right anway.

So I'm really not a fan of how The Stone Forest goes in the show; I don't think it adapted well from the comics (where Johanna is consistently not great but not abusive), I don't like the parallels it tries to draw, and I don't think the reconciliation at the end was good enough because Johanna makes no apologies (besides for losing the guide, which is a great moment on its own but doesn't resolve things) or promises to be different herself. It's all on Hilda.

So I was very pleasantly surprised when the novels somehow fixed a lot of my problems with this arc. Because Novel Johanna in Hilda and the White Woff isn't the same as the Novel Johanna we've seen so far; the argument that kicks things off is worse (it's about on the level with the argument from the end of Cauldron Island) but here Johanna feels more justified because Hilda went camping out in the wilderness overnight without telling her (this actually leads to The Eternal Warriors in this version).

Now, that feels a little far for Hilda normally (outside of the comics), but I could see her doing it to help a friend (in this case, Frida) so I don't begrudge it. It also makes it feel less like Hilda's hiding what she normally does because she now has to, and more like a moment where she genuinely goes too far. It also does help that this series didn't start off with the relationship between Hilda and Johanna amazing, and then awkwardly retcon it to be worse; in the grand scheme of things, Johanna's actions in this book absolutely do not make up for how awful she is in the rest of them, but the inconsistency makes it feel less like the unsatisfying ending to a season-long plotline and more like its own isolated thing where the conflict starts and ends within this book. And in that way, it's nice to have a book where Johanna is actually a good parent.

And then the ending comes, and we get the conversation in Hilda's bedroom. And it's genuinely what I wish this interaction had been in the show; there isn't too much added, but Johanna does more than just say she doesn't wish Hilda was different, she also explicitly tells her she doesn't need to be better, and that she's not bad; she's proud of her daughter for being the way she is. If this had been the way the Hilda and Johanna falling-out arc ended in canon, I still wouldn't have been a massive fan (because of how it starts) but I might not have been so desperate to fix it myself.

Above all else, that just leaves me reeling; my only guess is that the major mother/daugher interactions in this book are lifted directly from earlier scripts (because they do contain a lot of the final lines too), because somehow, in the last tie-in, Johanna feels more like herself than she felt in half of Season 2. And I'm sorry, because it does feel bad to knock him, but I really doubt that's Stephen Davies' doing.

Either way, that leaves me with a weird conclusion, which is if you're going to read any of the novels, read Hilda and the White Woff and then ignore all the others; it's better standing alone. It does miss some of the strongest emotional beats that the show puts in The Stone Forest and The Eternal Warriors, but it makes up for it in my eyes by making the emotional moments it does keep genuinely better. I don't think any of the others are worth reading, and overall I still hate Novel Johanna as she's normally written, but somehow, out of all of that awfulness, there was one good thing that came of it

And of course, this is all my opinion, so please don't feel bad if you feel differently.