#awesome fighting style

[turtleblogatlast]

Thinking about how Leo says he uses his jokes to cope and y’know, thinking harder on it I think it may very well be because of what else uses one-liners and puns and that type of humor.

Specifically, 80’s action movies and campy sci-fi. Even more specifically, the protagonists of these.

So I can imagine why, exactly, Leo leans toward this brand of humor. It’s directly linked to things he loves! But even more than that is why I think it’s used as a coping mechanism.

In these genres, these quips tend to be said by the winner - or, if not a winner, then someone who will stay alive. So there’s a confidence behind them, an assurance, almost, that even if things go wrong, things aren’t ever too serious. There’s no bad endings here! It’s all good fun, even if the stakes seem high.

Leo canonically has been known to steer his brothers away from the more brutal villains and toward more fun, lighthearted activities and not-so-dangerous criminals. So for Leo, these jokes definitely make things less heavy, make the situations they find themselves in less intense.

It’s kinda not just coping, but also can be seen as a form of escapism. A safety blanket. A way for Leo to defuse the tension of knowing just how dangerous their lives are and replace that with a levity which implies that things will be okay.

Unfortunately, levity alone does not alter reality.

[cryptidclownz]

HEY!!! i finally got out of my art block and ended up switching to a drawing tablet instead of my phone! i have one pretty big thing being worked on currently, but here's some lamb to hold you over for a few days ^^

[tentacledwizarddraws]

rose: STRIFE!

[deletedelight]

DAVEKAT YURI BEAAAMM

[marlynnofmany]

Exciting update on the "Making the House Awesome" front:

(The cat has already tried to use the mock-stonework as a scratching post, but not the door, which actually looks like wood. Cat logic.)

Anyways, this is looking great, and we're very excited.

[struggling-jpg]

Yanqing and Feixiao (2.5 Spoilers)

Generally, I have a lot of thoughts about the quest but one thing that stuck with me are the two mentioned in the title.

I loved their interactions! The way she was able to teach him and ease his worries really added to this neat dynamic of theirs. Also the small teasing and the trust they put in each other!

The ongoing thing Yanqing has where he meets mentor figures and he constantly learns from then—it's really awesome to see that keep going! We constantly see him learning and later often referring to those he's learned from, and that's such a awesome thing they've done with him! He constantly quotes Jing Yuan, he constantly refers to his meeting with Jingliu, his fight with Dan Heng and Blade, he learns from the Trailblazer, he takes Jiaoqiu's words to heart and reflects on them, he takes in Yunli's style and quotes her (and vice versa), and now, the same has happened with Feixiao. If you check his voicelines about her, he literally talks about what he's learned from her.

I feel like they share some parallels to an extent. Both are fast-paced and impatient, it's just that Feixiao's had the years to not act so impulsively. She makes for a really notable teacher due to their similarities, and as a result, it made for a fun experience to witness throughout their quest.

Seriously, when she handed him her weapon and left it up to him to enact military protocol she went to consume the crimson moon, I was losing it LOL. I didn't fully expect to get such an interesting dynamic between them, but I'm so happy to receive it!

(TLDR; HSR is the universe where Yanqing has positive female mentor figures (I want to say "jokingly" but...))

[bestworstcase]

This is probably outside of your purview, but do you think the fights in RWBY have gotten worse, or just different from what came before?

i think there has been a shift away from tightly-choreographed showcase fights toward a more naturalistic approach prioritizing setting and character over rhythm and composition. whether or not this is aesthetically preferable is a matter of taste, but it is absolutely to the benefit of the narrative as a whole.

there’s this beat during the group fight vs tyrian in volume four where tyrian kicks ruby and her aura ripples out from the point of impact in such a way to create the illusion of deeper motion: it looks like her ribs buckling as that force moves through her body, it feels like we’re seeing this formidable new adversary break her fucking ribs after throwing JNR around like ragdolls. it isn’t shot with any particular artistry or stylistic finesse; the shot is instead lined up to emphasize the violence.

that serves a more important narrative purpose than aesthetics: it makes it believable that ruby just cowers in dread after taking this hit, it viscerally drives home how dangerous tyrian is, building tension, setting the stakes for the upcoming fight with qrow, and thus it also underscores the contrast between tyrian’s wild brutality and qrow’s discipline when they fight and qrow tips the scales not because he’s stronger but because he doesn’t let tyrian rattle him… it’s doing quite a lot of work for a mere handful of frames.

compare, say, the nevermore fight, which is beautifully shot and choreographed but doesn’t have a lot to say: ruby can plan elaborate tactics on the fly and communicate them to her team well enough to execute the whole thing flawlessly, and… that’s kind of it. RLR2 does all the narrative heavy lifting. and that’s fine, to be clear, because this is a point where the story is still setting up the board and introducing us to these characters.

but the nature of rwby as a story is that the fight scenes cannot stay that way. and this isn’t even a “monty/not monty” thing, you can see the experimentation with using fights as a medium to develop character and theme starting early in volume two: ruby calling out team attacks and narrating yang’s semblance during the mech fight, splitting up the team on the train so wby can each duel an opponent who represents their personal struggle*, doing the battle in breach as a sequence of character moments, etc.

(*weiss feels disgusted by what the SDC has become and wants to reclaim the schnee name -> she faces a white fang officer who loathes her for being a schnee; blake is torn up about not knowing how to solve all these big social problems and reeling with the emotional fallout of leaving adam’s white fang -> torchwick tries to push those buttons; yang feels rootless and hollow and worried her current outlook is unsustainable -> she has to fight somebody she literally cannot touch and her increasingly frustrated attempts to punch through get turned against her the instant she overextends.)

in early volume two it all feels a bit clunky and uncoordinated in part because the mech fight is still so stylized. the fights on the train and the battle in vale are less so; you still get those tightly-choreographed sequences, but balanced out with moments that are more raw and real—the fake-out “slow-motion killshot” that turns out to be just weiss’s time dilation catching up, followed by the lieutenant grabbing her face and yanking her out of the air, is a particularly effective example with the grapple being shot with the same intention as tyrian kicking ruby in the chest—and also just more grounded in who the characters are (weiss gets in trouble trying to be fancy, yang’s frustrated determination is both a strength and a weakness, blake takes torchwick down with brutal efficiency because she’s used to fighting people but she also lets him say his piece before knocking him out because that matters to her).

so like—waves hands—volume two sets the course that is followed in the latter volumes where the fights become increasingly less about style and more about substance. the style is very much still there, it’s just not The Main Event anymore. it’s garnish on fight scenes you can write robust character analysis about.

[damian-lil-babybat]

There's this kind of hybrid artstyle in comics lately that I wanna learn how to do (i just wanna stare at them coz its too pretty). Would it be an insult to call it hybrid? Hybrid in a way that its more anime-ish/cartoon-ish...but still very much in comic artstyle. It's very stylized too, and it's more softer and expressive on the face, and I love it.

I don't know if its a real thing, or I'm just seeing things in my fave artists in comics

Jorge Jimenez (Super Son Vol. 1)

Simone di Meo (Robin 2021 #16)

Belen Ortega (Batman 2016)

Yasmine Putri (Robin 80th Anniversary)

For chibi, theres

Dustin Nguyen (Lil Gotham 2021)

Juni Ba (Boy Wonder 2024)

Other notable artists that I like: (1) Patrick Gleason for giving us RSOB & for drawing kids who look like kids; (2) Joelle Jones for lineart; (3) Christopher Mittens for inking and panelling; (4) Otto Schmidt for character dynamic & fight scenes; (5) Gabriel Picolo for nostalgic DCAM feels

[vxmpire-vxlle]

First tail.

[not-poignant]

Hello Pia how are you? Not really an ask but more sending thanks and love for all of your writing. I've been a reader for over a year now and am still in awe of your skill (and speed!). I've been getting back into writing and struggling with feeling inadequate or like my stuff reads childishly, as a result I can barely get out 5k aha, but I'm working viewing it as a lifelong dedication to improvement. (On a side note: your work got my teenaged self to snap out of purity wank, forever grateful!)

Hi anon,

It is so awesome that you're getting back into writing!

Honestly, it is a sign of a kind of growth to notice the things you don't like in your writing, because if you feel it reads childishly (and I bet it doesn't all read like that, or most of it doesn't), that means you have skillsets already to aim towards. You can see how you want to get better. This is a skill!!! It's a more painful skill, and it's not a good one to listen to all the time, but it's a good skill to have.

When it feels dispiriting you can balance it out by intentionally looking for and writing down your strengths as well, and writing more of those. It might be only a few lines, or it might be all of the dialogue, or it might be the descriptions, but there will be strengths too!

Also 5k is impressive! Everyone writes differently. It took Mark Z Danielewski 10 years to write House of Leaves, and I love that book a very great deal. Quantity =/= quality, and you also have to remember I've been doing this in a pretty focused way for 10 years! Trust me, if you did this in a focused way for 10 years, you'd be in a different place with your output (which isn't obligation to do this for that long, just that...things take time <3 )

I'm glad you were able to snap out of the purity wank mindset anon, it's a tough one to be in, because it makes you feel like you're not safe in your own mind, and after a while it shuts down curiosity because it feels like everything you're interested in has to be examined just in case it's a moral trap or says something 'terrible' about you if you show interest in it. And that's really hard! It makes sense to me why so many antis kind of really lock into what they think and believe, because they've gotten so used to treating themselves with paranoia, how can they not treat others that way?

And that's a miserable way to live. It's the opposite of benefit of the doubt.

So being able to separate from that is incredible! And that's a tribute to your own curiosity in the world, and interest in exploring different ways of doing things, and I think that's really cool. :D

[sysig]

Bitter breakup rivalry (Patreon)

[starleska]

look at all this AMAZING art i received for Art Fight this year!!!! 😭💖💖💖 i am so, so happy - thank you all so much for drawing my silly little OCs 🥺✨ credit to @/soyuzms, @lyra1584, @barnables, @henarikat, @toymakerfan05, @nb-n0v4, @starlingharley, @starbow-dreams, @/CrowFeathers, @ghoullerr, @/viski, @minareee3, @the-1-foxy, @fandovers, and @/crowlychaos 🥰 go give these awesome artists a follow - the names on the art are their Art Fight handles!! 🔥 and for the lovely artists themselves - prepare yourself. i fully intend to revenge every single one of you in due course…Art Fight being over doesn't mean you're safe 😉

[ceruleanterrapin]

Tying ur mask tails into a bow

I'll allow it this once

[thedrotter]

re:kinder goofy (for the most part) doodle dump !!! last two are from. five months ago when i was barely starting to draw these characters but i found them amusing 😊 enjoy snacks

[carruni]

quality control re:stylization in sparklecare got way more intense since v2 (some pages are, i am so sorry to say, straight up bad) so v3 and v4 are way sleeker and more consistent. what this means is you can't tell at a glance who's done which page. we're all trying to make it look seamlessly like kittycorns art

BUT. as you guys may know. things like unis eye blood aren't present in sketches. it's something the inkers colorists get to just sorta eyeball. that's the modern era of where you can identify different clowns stylizations

from pages 6 and 7 respectively

there are other small examples of style variations too. again usually things not present in the sketch, like gown spots and sometimes markings and stuff. it could be as minuscule as pen pressure. just some interesting details to look out for!

[scatmaan]

i will say storming moonrise towers with just 4 lunatics is hilarious