#anyway making comics in this format>>> its so easy

[kosmicdream]

Hello. After drawing webcomics for 10 years and making about 10,000 pages of comics, here are some things i have learned/observed in that experience..

1) making comics does not get easier.. Not really

Making comics is a tedious and slow process and with so many different facets of the experience to learn - you’ll never run out of stuff to learn or weaknesses to work on. I’m not saying this to discourage but to just give the frank reality that it really takes a lifetime to understand. Be patient with yourself and try to set healthy expectations. 

2) Read your own comics after making them.

I don’t know if this is as important to other people as it is to me, but I do think that sometimes its easy to not re-read your own work and just go from your own memory of it, or maybe you’re tired of looking at it because of all the flaws. I don’t personally get sucked into the “rewrite/remake” cycle that I know is common with comics, as I sort of just accept things as they are, but re-reading my work does help me see where I have come from and where I need to go to next. I personally don’t like to lose sight of that, and I think re-reading helps ground me in the planning process of my work and gives me a better perspective on all aspects.

3) A lot of comic advice should be taken with a grain of salt, because its the person talking to themselves. (including this)

I see a lot of advice that never would have worked for me, or just simply wasn’t something I was ever going to follow. “Dont start with your big epic long stories”! Is a common one. I don’t think that’s bad advice exactly, but how many young artists are going to listen, especially if they’ve never told a story in the first place? Yes, the advice to start small and build yourself up with experience sounds great, I’m sure people do it, but if you’re an artist you’re probably not gonna be that responsible. And for me, when i tried to do this with eggshells, my house burnt down and i kinda gave up comics for a while because i lost a lot of work. 

Writing short stories is still something I struggle with, its just not easy for me. I have gotten better at it but i don’t think that makes me less of a comic artist because I haven’t gotten good at that particular format, or that I jump around on my projects. Is it more impressive to have more completed work under your belt, sure. But I also think that.. Idk.. what is the advice actually saying, because with that one it sort of feels (often times) as a warning that you’re setting yourself up for failure/embarrassment by attempting a comic like that. I don’t know how to tell you this, but comics are gonna be embarrassing no matter what you do and there’s no guarantee you’ll be more successful/not experience failure by avoiding your passions. Something to think about anyway. 

4) Don’t draw every leaf. Unless you really want to.

I’m the kind of comic artist that kind of doesn’t care about the art as much as the whole package of the comic. When i see a very impressively drawn panel/page, with laborious detail that is well drawn and maybe even colored ect.. That usually is kind of, I guess, a turn off for me as part of the reading experience. The thing is, when i encounter that, it usually signals to me that someone has poor planning skills for comics. It says to me that comic is probably not going to see its end or that artist is overworking themselves in an unnecessary way, that ends up concerning me about how they’re doing. Because i know how hard it is to draw comics. When an artist phones things in a bit, or has a limit on how much they work on a page, its a relief for me to see! because I understand they have healthier boundaries and expectations, and the art itself usually is less stiff too. This is all an overgeneralization, but I think with a lot of webcomic artists we are usually drawing a comic for the first time ever, so it makes sense we want to do our best and try as hard as possible - that just usually isn’t the smartest plan to put all the stock in the visual department. This also kinda frustrates me to see because most comics (professional or not) will also (generally) not reel the art in ever or make a more simple style. Generally I see it always trying to outdo itself, which leads to burn out. I personally only work about 1hr on each page i draw, that hasn’t changed in the 10 years I have been drawing comics, but i used to spend hundreds of hours drawing detailed lineart for eggshells and it didn’t even read well and i’d be disappointed with the results, feeling more lost with my goals than ever. PLEASe.. Just draw worse, its usually better looking in the end too. (because you wont have the experience to judge visual clarity until you’ve been drawing comics for a while imo..)

5) Don’t draw ahead, draw those inbetweenies.

“Inbetweenies” are the pages for the “boring” ones. They are also usually the most common KIND of page. Its the pages that are necessary, but “inbetween” the action. The impact moments in a scene, ect. You gotta draw them. They’re always gonna be there. They’re the pages where maybe, the character is walking somewhere, thinking, ect. The after impact from an action.. There’s a million examples, but hopefully you’ll understand what I mean when I say they’re both necessary pages/panels, sometimes so mundane/redundant, but also required for telling the story.. As a comic is a sequence of images. This is why, the previous advice is also important IMO- because if you really want to “draw every leaf” - maybe you should save that energy and effort for those impact moments that you want to impress the reader with.. And not for the inbetweenies, which are the foundational support, but also not the most important moments. If you conserve your energy a bit, the contrast OF that effort will also pop more. I personally find it funny when I put more effort into a page and end up tricking my readers into thinking I got better at drawing, when really i just have been able to draw better and only save it for moments like this instead of always.

Also, when I say don’t draw ahead.. I mean I draw each page at a time before going to the next one. I have no idea if this is an unusual practice or not, and I know a lot of people will draw their chapters/episodes/whatever in sections like sketch/ink/color/ect.. But I personally draw and finish page by page, unless its the thumb/sketch stage. Even then, i don’t go ahead much. I think that you can control flow/pacing better by doing chapters all at once of course, I see that as a benefit. But i also think that makes things very overwhelming and can also result in a lack of flexibility if something isn’t working. No matter HOW much planning you do- comics are always going to have an aspect of IMPROVISATION with the result you get in the end. There are way too many factors in play to be in complete control of all of them and always know the result of the reading experience. SO for me, this technique is easier and has been something that continues to get me to working effectively. Plus, rumiko takahashi said that’s what she does. And i think she has some of the best visual flow/compositions in comics. So that’s what I do.

I could write more personal advice or rules that i follow..but I think those are the ones I find are the most important to me anyway. Of course, comics are a strange medium and not everything that works for me will work for you. That’s all for now.. Bye bye…! 

Oh by the way, my comics are here: feastforaking.com nastyreddogs.com https://kosmic.itch.io/ Support me on patreon! https://www.patreon.com/kosmic

[ihopesocomic]

Sorry for the mini-essay but I think people massively underestimate how much hard work and dedication goes into a Passion Project. People think that creators who make free content, who do their work as a hobby and not as a job, must only get enjoyment out of it.

That’s not how it works. Doing it purely because you want to doesn’t automatically make the more challenging, frustrating, or (gasps) TIME CONSUMING parts of the project any less burdensome. If anything, it makes it worse because you aren’t being paid for all of that labor. You’re just doing it for the sake of doing it, and as rewarding as it can be, it can also be demanding.

Im finally publishing a fanfic for the first time and don’t get me wrong, it’s been great to get feedback on my work and interact with a community. I love that there are usernames and profile pictures I can actually identify because they’re regulars on my work.

But does that mean I don’t have to constantly redo work because I don’t like how it turned out? No. Does that mean I always update on time? No. Never get burnout? No. I still very much go through all of the things paid writers do, because the Creative Process is difficult and demanding no matter what they paycheck is or isn’t.

And all of that is just if you guys WERE missing updates, which you’re NOT. So like… these complaints are not only very entitled and ignorant, but also just confusing. People really just be mad for the sake of being mad, I guess?

Anyways yeah, free content creators are still content creators, and passion-driven hard work is still hard work. You two are cranking out absolutely STUNNING visuals, compelling characters and engaging worldbuilding every single week and that’s amazing. Thank you for your hard work and I’m sorry about the twerps that don’t appreciate it enough!

Ah the price we pay for being human and having a brain, amirite haha

It's to be expected, to a certain point, that people simply don't understand that things like comics and cartoons take time. General impatience is something that can be ignored. If people asking for updates bothered us, we wouldn't post anywhere ever haha You gotta have at least SOME backbone if you want to do a comic. Or anything really.

Comics are a TON of work, and I knew this going in cuz I've done shorter comics before. It is not to be treated as if its easy. (Well, its easier than animating a whole series by yourself LOL) There's a lot of pre-comic planning that people don't tell you about. And that's just the stuff you have to do before you even start drawing. Of course this only applies to long-form storytelling, there's different rules for different kinds of comics.

And I won't even get into what it takes to making the comic itself, there's a lot of parts that need to be considered like formatting, time-management, what shortcuts you have to take to save on labor, and getting across as much information as you can in a short amount of time, while using mostly visuals. It's a skill, so it can be learned haha

A lot of doing comics is on-the-job training. Which I know can be frustrating for perfectionists, but from a reader's perspective, part of the joy of webcomics is seeing how far the art has come. And you can't exactly get out a webcomic if you keep redoing things over and over. You'll burn yourself out even faster. This is why it's important to have a plan lol it just makes it easier to adjust if you have to change things, than if you have no plan at all.

Even if RJ and I for whatever reason no longer felt passionate about this story, and wanted to move on to something else entirely, we wouldn't leave everyone hanging. We'd tell everyone what happens one way or another. Because too many people just abandon a story just to tell another one, and that's not fair to people who were here to read a story that appealed to them.

But the entitlement of people sucks, the constant heckling, the fact we can't moderate our own comment section, and more importantly Webtoons just sucks as a site anyway. - Cat

[dirtreally]

Hiii I was wondering what your like. Take is on the longstrip/webtoon/whatever format is.... Like I get that its kind of like. Not great for anything not optimized for mobile and features mostly pulpy kinda stuff but idk..... I'd thought I'd ask....

Webtoons suck more ass than manga in basically every way for the tradeoff of demanding less viewer participation but likw theres so much money being poured into thwm now and like so many people reading them now that its like. Whatever i guess. Regardless of this i cant help but think of webtoons and "real" manga/comics as having two fundamentally different target audiences cuz even shit instagram 4koma nerd and jock type things hit different than webtoons which to my understanding arent really great at forcing audiences to read them? Like, if you want to read a webtoon you have to make an active decision to do so over the course of several minutes as opposed nerd and jock type going down so easy that you read it almost involuntarily qhen it comes up on ur feed you feel me. Which almost makes the sucess of webtoons feel even more insane.

Anyway im tempted to believe that in the end, love n manga will win bc in my dreams i can imagine a scenario where like. People become interested in making their own webtoon but then get even kinda into panelling/comics theory and realise that you can only do so much to create engaging work with the long strip format. Which i understand is an incredibly self serving fantasy but what i want 2 say is i guess no matter what its hard to seriously imagine manga and comics as art forms being "threatened" by webtoons in any meaningful way outside of shit like Webtoons The Organisation being shitty and a lot of long strip publishint houses driving their creators ineane to pump out more shit which are literally problems manga and comics have also had for ages so lolllll.

Uhhh hellper fuckennn rocks and i kinda like the green tea bitch one but if there are any other good webtoons out there i would like 2 know akongside peoples thots n shit

[scarletwitching]

If you could rewrite several things about Wanda, what would they be?

I think I have rather basic preferences in terms of which comics are Bad and Should Not Have Happened. Certain things are obviously offensive and published during times when Marvel editors were letting writers do whatever, and that sucks. John Byrne? Sucks. Do not like him. I'm not the first to point out that continuity, for all its joys, negatively impacts female and minority characters in disproportionate ways. Beyond the big, obvious answers though, I don't especially want to erase much. It's all part of the tapestry, and the pick-and-choose nature of the canon means I don't have to care about most of it anyway.

My unique-to-me answer is that Marvel has done some reprints of old Avengers comics where they recolored Wanda's hair from black to red, and that should be stricken from the record. Stop this redhead propaganda! Give her her black hair back!

I realize that's not a rewrite, strictly speaking, but...

Maybe a more satisfying way to look at your question is, if I could start over from the beginning, what would I do? Tom Brevoort said in a recent newsletter that writers frequently pitch a do-over/restart of the Ultimate Universe (see also), so if I were to pitch a fresh reboot of the Marvel Universe, what would my pitch for Wanda be?

There is not much from the original Ultimate Universe that I consider worth keeping. This, maybe, if only for laughs. I don't love the probability powers, mostly because they don't make sense and not in a fun magic way, but I am amused that they accidentally make her a math savant. I wouldn't care about keeping that aspect one way or the other. She can be a math genius. She can not be a math genius. I do not care. There's nothing else worth even mentioning in Ults (and I'm not getting into rewrites for The Movies, even though any actual comics reboot would naturally be influenced by them, because we don't have time to get into All That), so that leaves us with the main universe to pull from.

First rewrite: The Brotherhood of Mutants are not evil. They're not villains.* They've just separated themselves from human society. I am so tired of "the villain has good ideas, but they've got to kill a puppy to prove that you shouldn't question the status quo TOO much." They can be a foil to the X-Men. They can be allies with ideological differences (maybe leading to the formation of Krakoa or some other island nation at a later date). But no more of that same fucking villain plot. It's tired. Do something different.

If you're introducing a new version of Wanda, she should start out as a teenager by default, and personality-wise, I think 70's Englehart is the way to go. Strong personality. Not a wallflower. Kind of bossy, not the biggest fan of humans. She can change over time, but that's a good starting place. Be creative with her powers, however you define them. No omnipotence shit. Let the inventiveness take the spotlight.

That's a good foundation to go off of and potentially launch into stories about the Avengers and whatnot. I'm not so worried about the precise backstory details (I wouldn't get rid of Django, but the specifics are not too much of a concern). I guess my overall rewrite is digging into the mutant separatist thing from a more modern angle, emphasizing creativity over raw power, and giving her the Englehartian personality from the start, along with the easy stuff like more respectful portrayal of her background and not doing the truly awful mental illness/trauma portrayals. There's a million other little details to get into from there, but this answer is already long.

*If I have another pointless rewrite to add to the main universe, it's that they have to stop saying she started out as a villain. No, she did not. Abused children are not supervillains. Stop saying this nonsense.

[sashasylva]

This is a bit stupid but im kinda proud of myself. For context: For my Comics class, we made single panel joke comics, 6 of them on one page and a cover and back, formatted on a page so that when you fold and cut them in a way they fold together into a little book. I drew the panels with traditional media, scanned it in, edited a bit and formatted things and then had to print 26 copies to then fold into books for the class. Now I'm sitting here, and after folding 3 of them noticed that due to the printer adding margins (because I originally accounted for margins but then it added margins around my margins creating way too much white space, so I just. removed the margins and went with whatever the printer did), this made it so the panels on the left and right werent perfect lined up when you fold it twice, so I had to add the extra step of trimming the margins off the side of each piece of paper before folding them. Not a big deal normally, but I have ADHD. I'm here with 9 mini books folded and telling myself I'll go to bed after I get 10 done... and then I just... don't. I executive dysfunctioned I guess. Just the step of having to trim off the margins first is insurmountable all of a sudden. I'm not great at folding super neatly so they arent perfect, but good craftsmanship is important (Which is why im going through the trouble of trimming them so the folds line up in between the panels properly) and I'm just Stuck. Now here's where I'm proud of myself - after about 45 minutes of refreshing tumblr and stuff, not even continuing the video I was watching because I was watching it 'as I was working' I recognized I'm stuck and I just... Wasn't awful to myself. I'm going to go to bed. I didn't get that 10th one done, and its okay. I'd still have 16 more to do tomorrow anyway, so I'll just do it then. Its so easy to get stuck on a task that you've told yourself you have to get done before you can do something else, but I've been making so much effort to recognize when it happens, and be able to be kind to myself. It's NOT a moral failing on my part, my brain just bugged out. And I need sleep more than I need to torment myself over this damn little book. And I can recognize that. And I'm proud of myself that I can. There once was a time where I might have just sat here until 4 AM just frustrated with myself for being too Stupid or Lazy to just DO it, leaving me both upset and sleep deprived. This isnt constructive or helpful. I can step away now, I've given myself permission.

[your-local-uwu-artist]

its fitting its kirby day cause today my animation on youtube reached 1k views <3 i really dont have the words to describe how thankful i am~

anyhow some sketches i got and bits from my curretn wip video essay (im more then halfway through my initial draft!!!) the fic "being a knight is easy" by @/azzie_tangerine under the cut

anyway i wanna talk more about my process on my curretn wip, bassically to make iteasier on me i diecided to just do a re-read taking notes of litterally whatever comes to mind along the way, some of it is complete unrelated nonsense, some of it is just noting a specefic thing i liked, some are vague start ups for something to think more into, and others are more fledged out paragarpahs of anaylsysis, bassically i was just typing in the notes app but now im switching to google docs cause it keeps lagging sdafnksd anyway once i finihs the main first draft then ill start working on organizing everything and cutting out the side rambles, after its more organized i can work on more actual anaylsisi writing, decideding when an excerpt or quote is needed or not and actually making it a script, im not sure how many drafts ill have

anyway, heres the snippets ive found that are more comprehensive

"we've reveiewed hw the battles are written this one is very different as kriby is feeling confident now but there is a snippet of text in it i want to bring to attention

"Fluff said it was okay to be forgetful, it was a part of him. And sometimes, accepting something won’t work is better than trying to force it… right?"

i would like to note the word acceptance and the phrase "it was a part of him" sense are other protag has a part of him he needs to accept, its small and aubtle but it really neat how are 2 povs segments are so intertwined" (note on battle scene in chapter 15)

"okay also this part is very much a me thing but i really want to point it out because it would be a fun scene to adapt to a visual medium, probably animation rather than comic but i love a challenge but there's a scene or two where metaknight talks about knight stuff to kirby while they like, go through different stances, the point is it would be super fucking fun to adapt to animation, if i do ever adapt this fic as a comic or something than i do thing the dialogue of this scene would probably be one with more changes sense in a written medium this had more writing to like, start the scene where as in a visual format it would be more seamless for the act to have less words to start it and expand and shorten some parts of meta's dialogue to match with the comic flow, as word bubbles are very much a part of comic art" ( i didnt note what chapter it was form god damn im gonna have a lot of editing to do later)

"i think one thing this whole fic does really well BUT ESSPECIALLY helps scenes that need more tension in them is the variety in length of paragraphs, okay i really hate when people complain about fanfics without paragraph gaps cause like, i get it the writer is just tryin to get their ideas down and share them and honestly fuck it i know im in the minority here but ive always found that often these fanfics arent at all bad because i can feel that the author cares aout it and had an idea and all that, BUT.... i do think that paragraph gaps are a storytelling tool on their own. its like an extremely watered down version of panel layouts, emphasis on extremely watered down because panel layouts are a LOT like a LOT a LOT, so much more than some people realize but it has a similar effect in the sense that it impacts the sense of the passage of the time and it creates a sense of rhythm but most of all it can create emotion and communicate through the empty space" (on the first battle scene i think)

[nerves-nebula]

dramatically slides into frame

ahaaa hi its me again the lil nerd who analyzes ur art a tad bit too much

soooo i just wanted to say (and add onto my last ask) that i love how like, shape-y all your art is.... OHHH AND AND AND your comics too!! they r so well formated and EXTREMELY easy to read and understand and i LOOOOVE IT!!! the shapes the style, all the colors just... being so well with each other... like like in ur current active comic ab leo n mindscape stuffies, the colors or soosos pretty!! AND AND IDK HOW TO DESCRIBE IT BUT THEEE THE WHEN THE LIL MINDSCAPE DRESS LEO DOES THAT "ZIPPPPP" (or was it a different word..?-) THINGY, i love how the colors of that POP OUTT!! ITS SO LIKE, it kind of reminds me of something being suddenly disturbed, almost likeee like a ripple in a pond? or a sudden wind throwing it'self against a tree?? IDK HOW TO PROPERLY DESCRIBE IT BUT ITS SO !!!!!! YES!!!!! anyway nerd moment over (for now) hshfgh sorry </333

awww thaTS SO SWEEETT AGUADSDGH. i try, but tbh i still think i have a ways to go when it comes to choosing color palettes for my comics :')

and im just using my accumulated knowledge of techniques comic artists employ to make reading easier, but im glad its paying off haha.

i was going for a kind of "ripping a tear through space" vibe so a ripple in a pond is basically right. like the surface of the mindscape has been disturbed.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #613

Top Ten Moments in Jurassic Park

So for no other reason than I want to get it done before the end of the year, this week I’m talking about Jurassic Park. This year is the thirtieth (thirtieth!) anniversary of Jurassic Park. And Jurassic Park is one of the most important films of my lifetime; so important that I genuinely think of my life before 1993, and after 1993. It really was a year.

Jurassic Park is when I fell in love with film. I was always into watching films and stuff like that, but there was something about the synthesis of so many of my interests: Steven Spielberg, the guy who’d been involved in some of my favourite films, from E.T. to Back to the Future to Roger Rabbit; dinosaurs, which were cool; science fiction in general; “grown-up” novels and fiction; blockbuster cinema; special effects; and the whole filmmaking process in general, amped up by all the “making-ofs” I consumed, and especially the fact that I devoured issue 50 of Empire magazine, with its big ol’ T-Rex on the cover. All these things came together, the hinterland between a childish enjoyment of entertaining pastimes and an adult appreciation of an artform; the moment when I dived headfirst into something, wanted to peek behind the curtain, wanted to examine the human beings who’d made all this possible. I’d had a bit of that with comics, learning the names and of writers and artists on Transformers, but now my love of cinema exploded.

It helped that Jurassic Park is an absolute blast, of course.

So as this is the film’s thirtieth year, I wanted to celebrate before the year was over. And it feels apt to go back to a very early format for these Top Tens and list not just my favourite moments, but my favourite moments as represented by a line of dialogue. This was incredibly hard, and not just because there’s no easy line to represent the bit with the kids in the kitchen. But like life, I found a way.

That’s funny coz it’s like a line in the film.

Anyway, unlock the gate, don your yellow poncho, grab a spoonful of jelly and join me as I welcome you… to Jurassic Park. Make sure you’re back here in 2027 for the sequel! More of the same but with Pete Postlethwaite this time!

“I hate being right all the time.”: surely the centrepiece of the film is the barnstorming, paradigm-shifting T-Rex attack. We can talk all we like about the slow ratcheting of tension; the rain, the goat, the goggles, the claw on the fence, “He left us, he left us”, and – of course, of course, of course, the ripples in the water. But as the beast snaps (that sound!) through the fence, and strides purposely onto the road, Ian Malcolm – famous naysayer and doom-monger – regrets so many of his life choices.

“Clever girl.”: probably the film’s most famous line? We’ve been told all along how smart the raptors are (it’s basically the first thing Alan Grant does); they open doors, they move in packs, they solve puzzles. So when they get the drop on park warden bloke Muldoon, it’s little surprise, but he still has the decency to celebrate their success.

“I think we’re back in business!”: Jurassic Park is a sci-fi adventure movie, sure, but it’s also a horror film. There are moments of sustained tension and outright terror, and then there are also jump-scares; and this is the daddy of them all. Ellie has a moment’s reprieve before a bloody big raptor head smashes through the wall behind her. Famously made Princess Diana jump in the cinema.

“Unless they figure out how to open doors…”: another of the showcase CGI scenes, the fidelity of the raptors as they stalk the children in the kitchen was something unprecedented back in ’93. It’s another masterclass from Spielberg, as we have multiple moments of ramping fear, culminating in the frantic dash into the walk-in freezer. And don’t forget, the sequence really begins with that excellent shot of the jelly on Lex’s spoon!

“I’m gonna run you over when I come back down.”: pour one out for Dennis Nedry, the big slobby oaf who’s greed got everyone eaten. Including himself! In a rather gorgeously wet scene full of mud and rain, he insults a tiny, weird dinosaur before it opens a huge, terrifying neck fan and spits big horrid gobs of phlegm at him. It’s a really creepy scene with a freaky jump-scare at the end. In the book he gets disembowelled! It’s well rad.

“Shoot her!”: the opening scene is, I think, rather undersung. It’s a combination of the misty, sweaty jungle setting, and the businesslike routine of the workers. “Loading team, step away.” It all seems mundane and peaceful until the raptor attacks and we instantly see the power of this beast, even if we don’t see the beast itself. Really spooky.

“Welcome to Jurassic Park.”: so many of these moments are terrifying, but the film also has a great sense of awe and wonder. Yes, part of that is the characters seeing dinosaurs for the first time; but it’s also the wonder of this new CG technology that is able to render the animals in such stunning fidelity, like nothing we’d ever seen before. The way the first brachiosaur is revealed, looming gracefully high up in the frame, merrily chewing on a tree, is stunning.

“You didn’t say the magic word!”: I’ve already singled out Nedry for his wet, messy demise, but he’s a great character throughout, his greedy brand of sarcasm undercutting the serious technical wizardry. Arnold trying to break into his code (whist chewing through dozens of cigarettes) culminates in the cheesy animation of Nedry wagging his finger.

“I’ve decided not to endorse your park.”: this final line is a nice zinger as we see our heroes on their way to freedom and safety, but really it represents the entire denouement of the film. Originally, Hammond was going to come in and kill the raptor with a bazooka; but once they knew they could really deliver on these CGI dinosaurs, we have a return to the film’s true hero – the T-Rex (hey, she ate a lawyer; as Weird Al said, it proves they’re really not all bad!). bursting in out of nowhere like the Close Encounters mothership (seriously, how did no one notice her?) she bites a raptor mid-leap, tosses the other one through a skeleton, and gives a big ol’ roar.

“That is one big pile of shit.”: yes, another moment of levity among all the running and screaming and being digested. They stop to find out what’s wrong with a poorly triceratops, and it results in Malcolm staring at, frankly, an enormous bit of poo. It’s funny.

Really disappointed I couldn’t find room for the dinner conversation (“Condors!”), the intro to Nedry (“Dodgson!”), Lex hacking the park (“Unix!”), or sadly anything from Mr. DNA. But what do you expect? It’s a fantastic film.  

[mothpile]

you know what honestly i think making a comic is fucking awesome. i see so many things of people being like “AHHH suffering” for comics i feel like theres rarely anyone just being like.         it is fucking awesome to make a comic.

like you can just start making a webcomic. if youre on tumblr you can just make a side blog and look up “webcomic tumblr theme” and bam. you can have a site just like that for making whatever you want. and you can customize the site as much as you want entirely because it’s a fucking tumblr sideblog. it has a built in easy to see archiving system. and if you dont want to use tumblr thats fine theres also comic fury or whatever its called from what ive seen its prettygood as well with freedom for doing whatever you want...

and you can go at your own pace and make a story and get to tell it and it’s so awesome to put the world in your brain out into art. you can update 2 times a week 1 time a week 1 time a month literally whatever the fuck.

you can do whatever. you can plan out as much as you want you can script as much as you want you can also just go fuck it we ball ! you can leave shit to be figured out later because making a comic takes time anyways! you dont need to make everything 100% figured out all them time... fuck it we ball!

and and and you dont need to care about “sticking to an artstyle” you can adapt overtime the artstyle can evolve it doesnt need to stay static forever. you can learn paneling overtime with experience as well to make things more interesting and just a ton of things to make it awesome and ou don’tneed to stick to a Specific paneling format the way smthing like webtoon or whatever would because i didnt tell you to go to webtoon i told you to use a tumblr sideblog that you will be able to customize even as much as you want. it is YOUR webcomic it is completely. YOURS! you can do ANYTHING! its so fun.

literally. making a webcomic is so fucking awesome peace and love to all webcomic artists btw its fucking awesome

[livingroombeat]

Living room beat progress update 12\16\23

Hi gang, are you ready for your scheduled progress update? I sure am the worlds most consistent writer. well anyway ive been doing some planning for a4 and im gonna kinda explain my current roadmap here.

-do end of a3 animation

Yeah i havent done it yet, ive just been procrastinating. Anyway though its gonna be a short one and it wont take long so this isnt like a major deal or anything.

-do a4

I have the events of a4 planned in detail already in a text file so all i have to do is write the dialogue and turn it into comics. Ive said it before and ill say it again: a3 was WAY too many comics. There were so many comics that were just a couple of words and thats just completely stupid. A3 couldve been like 100 comics but instead ended up at 300+ because i did it like an idiot. But im not gonna do that with a4, it will be pretty short in comic number but each one will have loads of dialogue. It will be super efficient.

-post

I might actually post a3 before finishing a4, but again a4 is going to be super short in page count so it probably wont take TOO long to actually make, so waiting til after its done isnt completely unreasonable.

-do new website

Blogger sucks, its a terrible platform, so im gonna make a new website and host it on github pages. It will be made so that it is super easy for me to bulk upload LOADS of new pages at once so that i wont keep putting it off like ive been doing with the rest of a3. It will be all automatic and everything so i dont have to spend multiple hours on it lol. I will also be able to do bulk changes to the page format so i dont have to go individually through each post and change it. Maybe even a back button????

-do a lot of the story

This is a super vague bullet point but i just kinda want to make my way a fair chunk through the story before doing the next point because it would be kinda annoying to just be halted after a4 for ages.

-go back and redo a0 through a3 (and maybe a4, well see how that turns out)

Ive already said it in this post but a0 through a3 kinda just suck, theres loads of changes i would make now if i made them, so i plan to go back and change them. This would also make lrb more accessible for new readers because they dont have through over 100 pages for it to get 'ok'. I also plan to have a summary page to catch people up on the story of a0 through a4 quickly so that they can get into a5 and beyond. I will probably only keep that summary page until ive finished remaking a0 through a3, but i will post it after a4 as a4 is a good break off point in the story (youll see).

-do rest of the story

This is pretty self explanatory. Theres loads of story to go.

Among all of these points is also planning a5 and beyond as what i said before isnt true. I originally wasnt going to change the actual story i had planned but i changed my mind on that, the main story is being changed quite a bit.

The thing is i noticed the problems with the structure but didnt notice the ROOT cause of those problems, the fact that the characters act as too much of a conglomerate and have literally 0 independence.

Ok what do i mean by that. Well basically all of the alternate reality versions of streve and brian, and even streve and brian themselves, could be compressed into 1 character reasoning their decisions out with themself. They have 'disagreements' but they dont have any REAL disagreements, they always come around and end up acting as a group in the end.

Now is this because im a bad writer? Probably but i can (try to) fix it in future parts of the story. So im gonna do that.

I also plan to make more social media for the comic rather than just tumblr and reddit. Like a twitter even though that site is dying.

I also also need to come up with a name to sign these posts with. All webcomic authors have some name they go by, i dont. So ill come up with one. Anyway thats all i have to say for this progress update. This one ended up being super long so hopefully that makes up for me missing so many. See you next saturday.

[darkmarkets]

The Horrors of Proper Manuscript Format

In my wildest dreams, I'm the shadowy robed figure at the head of a writer cult plotting to take over the publishing world. But instead of chanting "Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn...!" we'd all intone "Twelve point! Times New Roman! Twelve Point! One inch margins...!"

Okay, so I have awhile to go before I'm good cult leader material, but that doesn't mean we can't all keep the chant. Proper manuscript formatting is the single most important thing a new writer can do for their career. It promotes professionalism and displays your writing in the most clear, most readable way possible. A crap story formatted correctly will be much more agreeable to an editor than a genius story that's formatted like crap. It is sheer eyeball-exploding terror to be faced with nine point Papyrus font crammed on the page in single space with half inch margins. Chances are, an eyeless editor isn't going to be sending out any acceptances.

So, how can we, as writers, put our most professional foot forward? In most circles, the agreed-upon manuscript format contains these elements:

twelve point font

Times New Roman or Courier New

one inch margins

double-spaced

It's also good to include the writer's name and contact information in the upper left hand corner of the first page, as well as page numbers and the writer's name in the header. Easy, yes? One would think. It's shocking how often writers do not follow these rules.

What proper manuscript formatting does not contain is:

any bizarre artsy font that looks like a first-year design student's creative seizure

any font color other than black (that means you, purple and turquoise!)

eyeball-exploding single spacing

creative writing class designations (IE, no Miss Jenkin's Intro to Fiction 291!)

margins thinner than piano wire

hostage demands scribbled across the headers

Also, no sixteen point font. I'm sure there are kindly elderly editors out there that prefer large print documents while they wait on their cataract surgeries, but I doubt many of those editors work for a Tubby's House of Gorefest Magazine. (Sidenote: someone named Tubby needs to start this magazine, because it sounds aaawesooome!) Anyway, my point is: keep it reasonable size.

If anyone feels like a visual aid would be helpful, I highly recommend Nebula award winner William Shunn's article on proper manuscript format. He even goes so far as to detail dialogue formatting and the eternal burning question of scene break markers (Pound signs? Asterisks? Lesser folk have been driven to the brink of screaming madness contemplating such things.) Courier New is best for snail mail submissions, because the monospaced font makes it easy to manually tally up word count (make sure to kill your widows and orphans, though. Man, sometimes the jokes just write themselves.) And, surely these days the more modern incarnations of Times and Courier won't be looked down upon; Cambria and Consolas are fine-looking Word 2010 alternatives. When in doubt, clarity and ease-of-reading is key.

Of course, there's always going to be slight variations. No one will burn you alive if you put the page numbers on the right instead of on the left. Writers don't always format exactly the same way, and most editors understand that. What they don't understand is why a manuscript written in pink Comic Sans thinks it's going to be published.

At the end of the day, follow the guidelines. Follow the guidelines religiously. If a market says they want their manuscripts single spaced with no indents, do it. If they say not to include your name on the front page, don't do it. But, if there are no specifications for formatting in the guidelines, its easy to assume editors will want to read a story in the most professional-looking format possible. That means repeating after me: "Twelve point! Times New Roman! Twelve Point! One inch margins...And don't fooorget dooouble spaaaced."

Got it? Fantastic. Your shadowy robe is right over there on the table. We'll be taking over the publishing world next weekend.

Lorna D Keach

[jakethesequel]

Yeah, I'm not even against it in general, I'm just tired of it overtaking all other literary analysis. Like we do need the wiki editor types, they play a crucial role.

It is important for someone to collect all the little details that you forget over the course of the text, so you can go and make sure your criticism is valid and there's not a crucial detail you misremembered, or to keep your fanfiction canon-compliant or whatever. Plus overall it can just help lay out a common understanding of the storyline, so you don't have to do multiple rereads to catch everything, and so you don't have people arguing and debating questions that are actually answered in the text but easy to overlook. Even without a secondary goal, I understand the impulse. I'm pretty autistic I get the desire to categorize and present the information you've collected in a nice organized format, to map out all the connections and whatnot. God knows my working notebooks for my own writing projects are massively full of lore details that may or may not ever make it into the final product, but they help me keep my thoughts organized and act as reference material to keep me from contradicting myself (did I say this town was destroyed the year before or the year after this scene?).

It gets exhausting when it becomes the primary form of engagement, though. Like OK, great, this Youtube video can tell me the name of every unit in the Fictional Imperial Army. Can it tell me why any of them matter? Which ones have interesting and emotionally impactful stories? Why one unit got a successful spin-off story and the other got forgotten midway through? How do their individual stories reflect the greater themes and narratives of the Fictional Empire Franchise, yknow?

The WORST is when lore-obsession actively gets in the way of literary analysis. You say "this plot hole actively detracts from the story's narrative consistency and pulls you out of immersion in the universe" and then some geek pops up to say "actually at a convention in 2013 the author fully explained that plothole, and the explanation was later made into a spin-off comic," as if having lore patching the story up somewhere changes the fact that the story doesn't work on its own. Or saying that a story was very disjointed and its story arcs were hard to follow, then getting attacked because actually if you map out all these hidden references that the fans have painstakingly collected over five years, you can piece together a somewhat passable narrative. I think the toxic side of it is just because it makes it easy to displace blame: It isn't a failure of my beloved author that the story required three supplementary stories to patch things up, that's just you failing to be a good fan and invest in the lore.

Anyways I'm yapping but like. Lore-keeping and wiki-editing and the like serves a vital role in literary analysis, particularly of complex and/or long-running and/or multimedia works, but it's gotta be a tool for literary analysis rather than an obstacle or an active hindrance. Sometimes it can be tempting, the complexity of the lore fooling you into imagining there's a secret better story hidden underneath, like how sometimes a sketch looks way better than the lineart since the sketchiness lets your brain imagine its own lines. But lore can't be allowed to overtake the actual story-telling, and lore-delving can't be prioritized over literary analysis.

being a fan of berserk or evangelion (or I would dare to add any piece of media that talks about "dark" themes) is hell cuz both haters and fans think that the authors endorse that stuff just cuz they wrote about it

[mk-wizard]

Big Hero 6 The Series: It could have been better

Hello, friends. Today, I will be analyzing a TV series based on a movie that I fell in love with for its colourful themes, deep plot, compelling characters, great CGI and memorable messages. Before I get into it, I want to take a moment to say that I have quit doing videos. They are too big of a pain in the petunia to make and I write better than I speak, so I will stick to writing essays, reviews and more. Anyway, onto the analysis.

All I can say about Big Hero 6 the series is that it had a great concept, it presented some great ideas and tried hard to be a cartoon of the times, but it could have and should have been a lot better. The show’s downfall all centers around trying too hard to be kid friendly which makes the shame sting all the more because Big Hero 6 was already kid friendly even with its dark themes, sharp edges and intelligent writing. If anything, even the brightest kid friendly cartoons (Steven Universe, She-Ra, etc.) had those things and actually benefitted from them. By needlessly trying too hard, character development got scrapped, the edges were all smoothed out, storytelling was subpar, the humour was too silly and the executive meddling in the end produced a dismal final season. However, I don’t want this analysis to be one lengthy negative rant about how awful the series was because in its defense, awful is an unfair word. It did have potential and ideas which are worth carrying over to a reboot that I hope will be done someday in the future. Also, we should root for a reboot because Big Hero 6 would not be the first story that needs it before striking gold. Just look at how many times Spider-Man was rebooted in film before MCU found the version that worked. Anyway, I will list all the things in Big Hero 6 that could have been better in my opinion;

1- Go easy on the laughs and be more generous with the action. - I love adding comedy to my own writing because I think a good sense of humour makes everything better, but Big Hero 6 is not a stand up comedy routine. It is a superhero story where we expect action, suspense and life or death situations that are to be taken seriously first. The comedy should be for relief and with the right timing. Also, the chibi cutscenes and having characters act like fools aren’t funny. Ren and Stimpy are the exception not the standard and their way of making you laugh doesn’t fit an action series. In a show as big as Big Hero 6, real life physics and danger matters.

2- Make the villains menacing and gritty. - I admit that after having a movie villain like Yokai who was the stuff of nightmares, it is going to be a challenging act to follow, but it was obvious that the writers were trying especially with some villains who could have easily gone into some dark relatable territory. For example, Mr. Sparkles (the gentleman in the photo above) embodies social media and Internet personalities. Right off the bat, you have a long list of things which embody the dark side of that like scams, fraud, using social media to dox or harass, driving people to suicide, online predators, the Internet personalities being very depressed people in real life, and much more horrifying things. When you stop and look at it, Mr. Sparkles even looks like the Joker which hints how dark and scary he could have been if the stops were removed. The same goes for enemies like Hardlight who embodies online gaming, Liv with cloning, Obake an amoral and insane scientist, and Trina and Noodle Burger Boy (more on him later) being evil robots. Globby especially should have been painted and written in much darker colours rather being played off for laughs because he has many parallels with Clay Face. The only two villains who I can say were supposed to be campy, charming and comical were Baron Von Steamer and Supersonic Sue because they were a satire of the Adam West style villains.

The rest of them needed to be dark and threatening including Mr. Sparkles. In fact, I would love a rebooted version of Mr. Sparkles who gives me the heebie-jeebies. Going back to Noodle Burger Boy, I must confess that I was actually excited when I heard that he was going to be the main villain of the final season because I thought he was going to fulfill his master’s final wish and as a reminder, Noodle Burger Boy was based on a super robot for military purposes.

It would have been fantastic if Noodle Burger Boy was upgraded into a full military war machine with a new threatening look. For that, I think all of the villains deserve to be rebooted and have their full potential unlocked for better or for worse.

3- A show about geniuses merits genius level art quality. - I am usually forgiving towards art styles, but in the case of Big Hero 6, the oversimplified style with minimal details and lack of textures did not suit the show. The characters blend in with the background which makes them look flat and the special effects were extremely dulled down. I also know for a fact that Disney can do a lot better than this because I saw how superbly Tangled the Series was drawn.

You can see and almost feel the difference in quality, the number of layers and level of detail between the two styles. I think there was no excuse Big Hero 6 was not done in the same style and at the same level if not better as Tangled.

3- Don’t dumb down or flanderize amazing characters. - I absolutely detest it when characters are flanderized because it makes them one dimensional and grating. For example, Go Go is tough as nails and extremely calm, but she is not cold or hesitant towards helping her friends. She doesn’t require very special episodes for us to know that. If anything, the movie version of Go Go reminded me a lot of Garnet in how she deconstructed the broody character. She isn’t cold or emotionless. Just calm and mature. Another good example was how Honey Lemon was rewritten to be overly positive to the point of toxicity, naïve and oblivious with a juvenile obsession with stickers. Then you have poor Fred who was rewritten to be an incompetent fool. The spark that makes Big Hero 6 shine is that they are a team of geniuses meaning they are all intelligent. Even Fred is genius in his own way just not a scientific one. He has a vivid imagination, he is resourceful and can get himself out of tight spots. Please, don’t turn characters into dummies especially if their intelligence is a part of them. It doesn’t make them better or funnier. It ruins them.

4- Tadashi needs closure and honour. - I am all for Hiro making peace with the loss of his brother, but Tadashi is to the Big Hero 6 team what Uncle Ben was to Spider-Man. His loss was the catalyst if not the reason. He should never be forgotten. Moreover, there was never any true closure to him especially with the possibility that he may still be alive up in the air. After all, like Callaghan, his body was never found and it turned out that Callaghan was still alive.

With that said, who is to say that Tadashi was not secretly still alive and just hiding or being hidden? This is something that Disney really needed to clear up if not for the fans, then at least as a service to such an important character. Never just forget about them.

5- The format can only be episodic with a deep plots, continuity and character development. - Random episodes with a mere monster of the day is an outdated format which doesn’t fit Big Hero 6��s modern and bright setting. In seasons 1 and 2, when the episodes were plot heavy with character development, the series shined brightest. It also helped move the story along, but with the final season, plot was removed, closure was abandoned or poorly written if any was given, and characters were disallowed from growing. A good example at how plot and character development could have made this series and its characters better was the relationship between Hiro and Megan. Would it have truly survived or would they have broken up?

Would Richardson Mole have eventually lost interest in his obsession with besting and bullying Fred or would his obsession consume him compelling him to become a super villain? I do see quite a few similarities between Mole and Reverse Flash.

Then you have Karmi who is in my opinion, the biggest wild card of the bunch. She was intentionally introduced as an arrogant, prickly and unlikable yet complex character who rivaled Hiro bitterly.

Yet had a huge crush on his alter ego and as time went on, started to grow up and even form a friendship with Hiro. What would have happened further down the road with her? Would she have become a super hero herself? Or maybe even another love interest for Hiro kind of like how Black Cat is for Spider-Man?

Is Obake really gone?

What does the future hold Diana (Liv’s clone), Liv herself or the Sycorax the genetics company?

Is Alistair Krei going to become an ally to Big Hero 6 or an antagonist? There is also the issue at how little we know about the other Big Hero 6 characters other than Fred, Hiro and Baymax. What are Honey Lemon, Wasabi and Go Go’s backstories? These questions matter and while not every mystery can be solved, leaving none of them solved is lazy writing.

6- Executives, kindly stay out of the writing and any other part of the creative process. - I’m sorry, execs, but there is no nice way to say it. History itself proves that every time executives got involved in the creative process of any media, it got worse not better. Leave the writing to the creative team and the execs should only handle the legal stuff. Please. We understand that TV is a business, but writing itself is not. It is an art which you just don’t have a talent for. Let the creative people do their thing with the freedom necessary and you do your thing, deal? Deal.

7- Focus on Hiro and Baymax. - The are the main characters so keep them at the heart of the series no matter what happens around them. That is all I can say.

And that sums up all the things that could have made Big Hero 6 the series better, but this is all just my opinion. What is yours?

PS: I am well aware that the Big Hero 6 series is being retconned because a new series called Baymax is in the works as well as the long awaited sequel to the first movie. I am looking forward to both with an open mind. PPS: I also am aware that some people liked this show the way it was including the art style and I am cool with that. An analysis for art that includes cartoons is never right or wrong. It is solely based on opinion. I may have thought this series could have been better, but there are people who make arguments that it could have been worse.

[aro-comics]

Fashion Analysis (Part 5: Aromanticism & Fashion?)

[Note: This post is a part of a series analyzing self-expression, fashion, aromanticism, and how they interact with other parts of identity. For full context please read the whole thing!]

Aromanticism and Fashion?

Now that we have gone through LGBTQ+ History with fashion, and the importance of self expression - I think we’re in a good place with all this context to discuss how aromanticism and fashion can intersect. (and again, as a disclaimer, all of this is purely speculative!). 

Personally, I think there may be a few philosophies on how Aromanticism and Fashion may interact. You can look at it a few different ways, either considering the influence amatonormativity may have on our methods of dress, but also the context in which Aromantic communities are forming (online). 

On the influence of Amatonormativity

Up until this point I’ve been side-stepping the consideration of amatonormativity – but it does impact self-expression, I think, and it’s worth discussing it’s relation to aromanticism.

I had a discussion with one of my aroace friends about the idea of wanting to avoid “attention” in the romantic and/or sexual sense growing up. There is an inherent tie-in with wanting to appear desirable (as shown in the beginning of the comic, and also reinforced through many pieces of popular media), with romantic outcomes. In both of our experiences, I believe it made the idea of being seen as conforming to beauty norms an uncomfortable activity. 

And looking back to lesbian fashion history too, we can see this subversion of heteronormative expectation is tied into a lot of their community’s means of dress. Which leads me to wonder - will we also see this with an emerging Aromantic sense of fashion? How could this impact clothing choice, and general expression as it relates to an amatonormative society? 

I want to note that personally, outside of professional contexts, I like to dress femininely in a subversive and “alternative” way. I LOVE the idea of being hyperfeminine as a performance, being a living, breathing, work of art, while simultaneously creating an aesthetic that would not consider “attractive” in an amatonormative context. And another aroace friend has confirmed feeling this way with me too! She mentioned she likes to dress in a way that will make women go “wow, we love this outfit” but at the same time cause *conservative straight old men* go “what are you wearing” (to paraphrase our conversation). 

I think some good examples of this from my personal experience would be the following:

1. I love aggressive, graphic liner - generally makeup is thought of as something that feminizes the face, something that softens. But I also like to use it to create the angles and shapes that adorn my face, something abstract for the sake of being beautiful. Like mentioned before, I don’t want to appear romantically attractive to anyone, and I think that for me, at least, this is a part of using femininity to subvert these expectations. 

2. I love ethereal-looking, avant-garde sheer dresses, not in the sense that they could be romanticized, but in the way they again make me feel detached from the idea of beauty for the sake of appealing to anyone else. Instead, for me it feels like beauty as a wild, untameable form of nature and being. 

But … maybe I should mention the unconventional tastes are partially tied to the fact I spend a lot of time in creative spaces because of my degree, and overall I am exposed to more diverse ranges of self-expression to begin with! Either way, though, I am curious what other aros have to say, so feel free to let me know your experiences with this. I’d love to provide an update with thoughts from other aros! 

Forming Community Online and its Possible Impacts

The online nature of the development of Aro Culture leads me to wonder if this medium of interaction will influence the development of our fashion, much like how it influences the development of fashion overall.  For example, with tiktok, the app is often credited for its major influence on modern fashion trends (and leading to the emergence of microtrends). 

Most visual designs are being affected by the way social media algorithms work too. The “allegria style” created by facebook, otherwise known as the “flat gangly limbed drawing style beloved by tech companies”, has exploded in popularity. Regardless of how one might feel about the widespread adoption of this style of illustration, it’s clear that it has significant advantages that have led to its popularity, one of which is its ability to be “consumed” or visually understood at high speed due to its graphic nature and simple design. Basically, when people look at things on their phones, and they’re scrolling quickly, they’re more likely to understand what they see and interact with what they see if it’s easy to visually “read”. And I truly believe that this is influencing most forms of design, including fashion (which subsequently, will influence aro fashion). If you’d like to learn more about this subject, sources 14, 15, and 16 provide more insight into how social media algorithms have influenced design and visual culture at large. 

I think another factor to consider here is the effect of seeing the whole world at once - having the influence of all different media, visuals, and pop culture at the same time has created a very unique environment for development. As one example, the wider aspec communities have developed with the existence of our flags (which are purple and green centered for ace and aro respectively). This would be knowledge that wouldn’t be so easily spread through the whole community in a pre-internet era, and I personally (THIS IS ONLY MY THEORY) feel this is part of the reason there is a far stronger connection to these colours within aspec culture. It’s something that unifies us and was one of our first introductions to the community (since most of us probably looked up the definition of aromantic, or asexual, online), and I think for this reason these colours hold special significance and are present in a lot of of our means of self expression and communication with other members of our community. 

Obviously, the formation of symbols and ways of self-identification will occur anyway (many symbols exist for other members of the LGBTQ+ community too), but I do think being online has a particular influence on the ways community symbols are communicated, and create a different context in where these cultural symbols take shape.

[Note from Author: For Part 6, click here!]

[falst]

Tell me about Jekyll

Okay so Jekyll is a nice Scottish lad with issues

He has always had a huge interest in ~arcane sciences~ and very much idolized Victor(ia) Frankenstein, who in the TGS universe wrote a book about her life in the same format of the actual irl book and had to have her gender changed in the in-universe book bc of publishing shenanigan's and turns out to be a mean lesbian that calls Jekyll a poser when she first meets him and I think that's such a fun take and much more interesting than "these two gothic horror mad scientists exist in the same universe while their Main Story is going on" (this can work well but I think it can be very easy to make bland) but anyways

Jekyll wanted to pursue ~arcane sciences~ in his career and went to some fancy university that has either never been named or has been named once and completely forgotten by me, where he met Lanyon- the two became quick friends and started rooming together shortly thereafter. Lanyon, coming from a high class family taught Jekyll how to be posh and properly Victorian, mainly so he could bring Jeykll to parties his dad forced him to go and make fun of people at the parties, but Jekyll ended up flourishing at these parties, making himself very liked bc no matter what magic potions he makes his true specialty is charisma

Him and Lanyon had a Thing going on throughout university which is explored in Sad People Dance, Too, short explanation of it was Lanyon had commitment issues with his past relationships which led Jekyll to believe Lanyon wasn't capable of deeply loving someone then plot twist Lanyon deeply loved him and got into a relationship but Jekyll didn't know that and Jekyll ended up with frankly kinda unhealthy views on then broke apart when Lanyon was forced into a marriage whoops

Jekyll viewed this relationship as scandalous and secretive which like this is the Victorian era but bc of this he thought it was morally wrong also he didn't think Lanyon wanted the kind of relationship he wanted also Victorian guilt about base desires or whatever the fuck and internalized homophobia- he views queer relationships as impossible to end happily bc of the scrutiny against them. He accepts they exist and is okay with their existence he just thinks they're doomed which is picked apart by Jasper at the end of Sad People Dance, Too, in possibly one of my favorite scenes in the whole comic so far

ANYWAYS after university Jekyll had like a career and shit, he spent years gaining social status and furthering his scientific studies, specifically his theory on human souls and how to chemically split them or whatever I. Don't. Remember nor care too much its all kinda an explanation on how he manages to split his soul into him and Hyde and cause conflict with Frankenstein oH AND THE WEREWOLF while he was out collecting materials he met this werewolf named Morcant who was injured and helped her heal and was also apparently a love interest but I can't attest to this due to the fact I haven't read all of the prologue Bleeding Heart bc it costs money and while its only five dollars all my money is cash and I haven't seen any of the printed copies around so like.

Anyways Morcant was briefly mentioned in the main story of TGS and she was a major inspiration for Jekyll in founding The Society of Arcane Sciences, a haven for mad scientists alike where they can do their crafts and not be scrutinized for it AND have legal protection of some sort when something blows up but only sometimes

His general personality is that he's a very secretive and cautious man, he's spent decades carefully honing to make scientists look not insane, and it is constantly at risk of falling apart bc of *gestures vaguely*, he values his reputation highly both for him and those who live at the Society, if he is exposed it not only impacts him but all the wide-eyed 20 somethings under his care, he isn't all serious all the time when he's in Polite Society, he can joke around but in a Polite and Acceptable way y'know. He is a mess who has carefully split himself into two identities, one Acceptable and Clean and the other one Not, both literally and figuratively

Anyways I'm so sorry this took so long it would've taken longer if it weren't for the fact my mother is kicking me off her laptop and it's extremely difficult to show specific cited examples if you don't remember the exact page everything is on

[letoscrawls]

hey, can i ask for some advice? i recently started posting my art and... how do i not get frustrated with the incredibly low reblog to like ratio? i feel like all my drawings go to die. people seem to like them judging by the initial likes but then nobody else sees it. idk why people just don't reblog art, because they absolutely do reblog my shitpots.... do you have any advice? is it because it's not good enough?

okay i can sense your frustration and please, i know it totally sucks but don’t stress too much about numbers on social media, your well being is more important! and this is coming from someone who feels bad for not posting proper content in two weeks, i just hate to see people stressing about engagement because artists should be more than that! and i blame this on social media of course!

anyway, i’ve been on tumblr since 2017 and even then the popularity of this website was long gone, let’s just say it’s not as famous as it used to be in the early years of.....the last decade. and i love it!!! i’m so glad i wasn’t on tumblr during those years, now it’s more of a dead land with people chilling and making hilarious posts and sharing art without the exposure of other platforms. and that’s exactly why you rarely see big numbers on here, i post on tumblr because it’s fun and i like the blog format, but obviously the place where i get most interactions is instagram. which isn’t always a good thing because you’re more exposed to negative comments (though i must say i hardly ever got problems with haters, my issue with ig is that it pressures me a lot when it comes to posting and engaging with people and sometimes it’s overwhelming). so my first advice if you want to grow bigger on tumblr is to post on other platforms too, twitter and instagram especially. my following here and on twitter is for the most part people who already knew me from instagram, so you have bigger chances to grow if you’re active there! 

tags are also very effective, always use specific tags for your art if you want more people to see it. and since you make posts too, have you tried drawing silly comics or things like that? people go absolutely feral for them and i can assure you that a drawing that you may think is ugly will be worshipped like a masterpiece by other people, we just tend to be overly judgemental with our own art! like sometimes i’d see posts of AMAZING artists complaining about a post and i’m like????? you need glasses STOP insulting your art like this it’s perfect okay!!!!!!!! 

and as i said before don’t worry because it’s not you, it’s not your art, a lot of people agree that tumblr isn’t the place it used to be anymore, in its early days the reblogs easily outnumbered likes, now it’s the opposite and it sucks, idk if it’s to blame on its users who don’t reblog posts anymore or the algorithm that somehow is encouraging this behaviour...i really have no idea. social media is such a weird phenomenon tbh. 

so anyway i hope this rant was useful somehow and please take care!!! i’m the queen of social media induced stress and i feel you. keep in mind that the beginning of an art journey isn’t easy. it takes some time but you gotta create for the joy of it and for yourself first! i’m sending you a hug and my best wishes for your art!!