#c: quickman

[red-nyalert]

They're family, your honor.

[ihopesocomic]

hi hello, been following the comic for quite a while now, decided to give it a read after discovering your MP review (i was still a MP fan when i first watched it LOL, pretty embarrassing.) and ive been in love with the comic ever since, i absolutely LOVE how everyone is written, but i really want to talk about the difference between vicious and powerstrike.

both showed the mothers being nice (to some degree) to their daughters, but powerstrike's sudden abusive behavior towards nothing never made sense because, frankly, theres no reason for her to be acting like this other than that shes an ableist turd, and she has a perfectly normal relationship with said person that hurt her daughter... vicious' relationship with jasper on the other hand has been shown to be abusive, and even though vicious is horrible, shes is a victim of jasper's abuse, and her repeating the abuse onto her children comes off as her trying to maintain control over things.

i hate powerstrike, its not even like a love hate thing, shes horribly written and doesnt deserve redemption. on the other hand, i love and hate vicious, she has so much more depths and UGHH the writing in IHS really tugs at my heart, its just so good.

apologies for the ramble, im really looking forward to see where this story goes <3

Thank you so so much, anon!

And yeah, even though Powerstrike was "nice" to Nothing for all but five seconds, we just had to have the insinuation that having a dead kid is better than having a disabled one.

And then there's a whole damned speech in Episode 5, which would absolutely be indefensible in any other circumstance but, for whatever reason, MP fans seem to somehow think Powerstrike's speech somehow translates to her being a victim as well, even though whatever victimhood she has is never explored. She's only shown being quite content with the so-called 'cult' she's stuck in, having positive interactions with Quickmane and so on.

She never defends her disabled daughter (because if she truly cared about Nothing, why didn't she defend her from Quickmane in Episode 5?) nor her remaining son. She also never mentions her dead mate and son once, even though she's shown mourning for her mother, who had not only lived a full life but treated her family as ruthlessly as she did by being a religious zealot.

While the show also portrays Sharptongue as being loving and supportive to the point it completely slips under the viewer's radar, including those who say they don't like the show. Honestly, fuck both Powerstrike and Sharptongue. I can't express that enough. lol

But I feel that's purely a consequence of My Pride trying to make its characters complex and two-dimensional but thinking that a way to do that is to have character motivations that cancel each other out be present at the same time. You can't have a character be an abusive parent and be portrayed as somebody automatically worthy of redemption and 'aww, she loves her punchbag really!'.

You can't have a religious zealot who was cool with a murderer strolling into the family home and kill several members of said family "bc Pride Law lol" while also being portrayed as supportive and kind. It's not only poor writing, it's just weird as all hell.

Instead of being insecure about having 'deep' characters and trying to cram so many things into a character so that your audience doesn't 'miss the memo' (which a lot of them won't because they're not unintelligent), a lot of things can just be left unsaid and the audience can figure it out from there. Like Vicious being an abuse victim. Abuse causes a lot of psychological issues and can warp a person over time. This is very well documented. Boom. We don't really need to say or show anymore.

So, thank you very much for taking a notice, anon. It's always appreciated when these methods we use in the writing pay off! c: - RJ

[dwarfstardroid]

red dickwad starter pack

[megamanrequests]

Very tiny robot boys, because you can’t go wrong with tiny robot boys.

EDIT: I also came across these two losers.

[andr01d-artblog]

I've really been feeling QuickRock lately and I have no idea what brought it on.

This is from a couple months ago, actually. They’re just camping out on Wily Island, away from prying eyes.

(Right there on Wily Island, to be specific.)

[red-nyalert]

at some point whilst the wilys were in hiding, quick decided the best way to help out was to pick up a job... unfortunately, there aren't a lot of options when you want paid under the table without anyone asking any questions.

[red-nyalert]

a while back i started doing pin ups of various mm characters and had to kick it off with my favorite yeehaw. quick man u are real in my heart.

[red-nyalert]

you ever become overly attached to an extremely specific and nonsensical headcanon? anyways, i've decided that quick man is southern. thanks.

[red-nyalert]

exhibit a

Ive gotten like six followers from that Quick Man art and I want all of you to know that you are all safe in my very capable cowboy robot loving hands

[ihopesocomic]

Another way I think IHS is better than MP that I don't think anyone else has mentioned yet is the comedy. You guys certainly do a far more competent job at placing comic relief at the right and appropriate moments. Moments like Adamant's flashback to how her head got stuck in a meerkat hole and Quiet sang despite the former being annoyed. Or when Fade the squire freaks out like a little cat when Diamond gives him a good swipe! You guys do it well and it doesn't interfere with the comic's tone.

To be fair, it's very easy to be funnier than MP. It had no idea what it was doing for drama, and comedy is WAY harder to write. Which is why I'll never write a comedy LOL I know my limits. But thank you! I ask for all kinds of input on it, so it's good to see that people are enjoying it for what it is. Using humor sparingly in something like this helps to break the tension. Which is really all I need it to be.

I know comedy is subjective but there's still basic rules to follow, based on context (and geography). So it's really important to establish early on what kind of mood you're going for. So it's not jarring when there's humor later. This is like. Basic shit about genres. It's not forbidden knowledge, this is just stuff people know without realizing, so I expect people in the industry to know this better than anyone.

I know some of you might be thinking "What humor?". First of all, exactly. Second, I'm talking about A) Hover's ableist jokes at Nothing and Quickmane. B) Hover's near-constant deflection every time she opens her stupid mouth in episode 3. C) Shit like after Feather makes his big anime protagonist speech in episode 6, Nothing is all "How aboot we start with getting some sleep tonight before fixing the whole world?" like not only was that not funny, but it was literally after this kid broke down about his family being killed and hating Pride Law, like read the room Nothing, jfc. D) In episode 7 Powerstrike being like "I know she did (love me). Only Sunce knows why." And she laughs about it, like was that meant to be funny? Was it tongue in cheek? I still don't know. But all I could think about is how abusive she was to her daughter right before she disappeared. So whether it was meant to be funny, or her coming to some sort of realization about herself, it doesn't matter because she's trying to find humor in her being an abusive fuckin parent while her kid still cares about her.

Then there's Ghost in episode 10, where we presumably hear (from Ghost) Tangle's last sobs of desperation before getting mercilessly killed by someone he trusted. Whether or not you feel Fire deserved psychological torture or not isn't really the point. The point is MP thought that after Nothing gets the shit beaten out of her, and tells Fire to kill her, it was a good time to lighten the mood. Which is just disturbing. Or as someone tried telling me "It's a dark comedy, it's supposed to be disturbing". Like yeah, I know what dark comedy is. Some of my favorite movies are dark comedies. But that's the big difference here isn't it? MP isn't a dark comedy, it's barely a comprehensive story. I know what it was trying to do in the scene, and it didn't work due to the scenes leading up to it, I dunno what else to tell you.

It's fine if you find it funny, I find lots of unfunny things funny. I still think this is funny. I could honestly go on about this scene, it pisses me off in a way other scenes don't, but I've already rambled too much.

Like there's a fewwwww places I could probably fit in humor if I was writing MP? But I would start by having Hover know what fuckin tact is. But I'm not a professional. - Cat

[ihopesocomic]

Adding my opinion on the ‘realism’ of My Pride. I started watching lion videos because of my own lion story and almost every video I’ve seen of a male lion trying to take over a Pride: they immediately get attacked and/or chased off by the lionesses the second they swiped at the cubs. Heck, one video showed a lioness snapping at the bigger cubs of her own pride when they started playing too rough with her smaller cub. Another lioness leaped to attack a crocodile while her cub was swimming. Lionesses will even raise their cubs’ first months away from the pride and not let any members of their pride get too close until they feel ready to introduce their cubs to the pride. Lionesses are extremely protective of their cubs, even going as far as snapping at their own Pride members.

So realistically Waterhunter and Powerstrike would have fought hard for the safety of their cubs. We even see Powerstrike protest and being horrified during her and Sharptongue’s talk- ‘are you saying I should just let him kill my other two cubs?!’. Her expressing anger and hatred at Quickmane just make this whole topic all the more disturbing and ridiculous when it’s revealed she had his cubs. Then there’s Farleap hinting that Powerstrike was grieving this whole time with ‘I’ve seen that look on my mother’s face since I was a cub’. What? 0-0

And like you said with more than one male lions being in a Pride- I watched a video of two male lions in the same pride, watching two lionesses care for both their cubs. Another video of two male lions trying to take over a pride together.

My Pride mainly goes on outdated lion beliefs so yeah, the it’s meant to be realistic’ falls flat and fails to make the characters sympathetic. Their actions will always be seen as disturbing to me. 0-0

Thank you for taking the time to actually watch a factual documentary or two about lions so that the butthurt MP fans don't have to, anon. c:

But yeah: all of this. I'm just not gonna take anybody who says 'yeah, suspend your disbelief when it comes to all this inaccurate shit and lions like Hover having earrings for no discernable reason but also don't mind the baby killing because that's how lions actually vibe irl' seriously. You can argue otherwise until you're blue in the face: that's just not happening with us. lol - RJ

[ihopesocomic]

Hope: Has to convince loving protective Storm not to kill her parents for hurting her

Nothing: Pleads with Hover to help her whom just says all of it is Nothings fault after Quickmane hurts her

Why are Hover and Nothing so much more popular? Lol this world makes no sense

There's also fact that Hover and Nothing only have perhaps ten minutes of wholesome screentime in the series where Hover isn't being an ableist, victim-blaming pissbaby but details, details. c:

As for why they're so popular: people are just that desperate for sapphic representation (even tho there's far better options, these days and even before MP came out) that they'll resort to whatever table scraps they can unearth, I'm afraid.

My personal favourite thing about all of this is the punchline that Nothing and Hover were never intended to be a couple and it was hastily added because the fans shipped it. I mean, this couple that had zero development put into it turned out to be more toxic than a waste dump? You don't say. lol - RJ

[ihopesocomic]

Since we're talking about everyone's "fav", Hoover, who really sucked any enjoyment there was out of the main ship. This thought popped into my head the other day after I misread a question in the discord XD oops

But in all seriousness, Hover makes fun of Quickmane's facial scars (which I guess we're meant to side with and think is funny because he's awful...until the writer tells me I should've been sympathizing with him cause he loves his kids and isn't a homophobe) RIGHT AFTER she makes fun of Nothing's name and asks her "what's wrong with your leg :c".

Ignoring the obvious, maybe we shouldn't reduce one of the mc's to making fun of another character's disability even if it's the villain, in our "positive disability representation" show, part. Excluding the fact that he's blind (which Hover also makes fun of) Quick has the exact same facial scar as Nothing and Hover just casually calls him a "meat face" right in front of the poor girl. Like, this character is a hot mess and a horrible girlfriend to be. It doesn't help that Nothing looks sad in the shot where Hover's saying all this too. I know it's meant to be because she's uncomfortable/upset about what Powerstrike is saying buuuuuut. If I were in Nothing's shoes I know for a fact my brain would've instantly been like 'oh that's what she sees when she looks at my face too I guess' if that were my crush...or hell, if anyone did that. Maybe that's just a me problem but still.

Anywho, [insert Storm chucking Hover into a bin here].

All of the above. Yes. It also yet again contradicts what the previous anon was talking about where the My Pride Wiki states that Hover admires Nothing's scars. First of all, she doesn't and secondly: why does the above with Quickmane occur if that's the case?

It just seems like a lazy attempt at disability positivity that was not only not implemented in the final product but also carried a lot of contradiction like "it's OK to be ableist as long as the person you're being ableist to is somebody you personally dislike".

Like Hover didn't know about Quickmane's history with Nothing? It still wouldn't be OK even if she did but she just went off at this random dude with a disability and mocked said disability for no good reason so the squealing Hover fans could be all 'go off, queen!"

And this is the confusing thing about people worshipping Hover's character for me. She's not a great character by her own merit. Her most praiseworthy moment is when she's being awful to other characters around her and building herself up off their shortcomings. Except what the fans don't realise is that the characters she's making fun of are both abusive and one of them kills babies with a giant smile on his face. It's the lowest of the lowest hanging fruit to try and make your "good" character seem good in comparison to the villain.

It's really sloppy and lazy characterisation. Especially when people like justifying Hover's ineffectiveness as a supportive spouse by saying 'she was too scared to stand up for Nothing, she made a mistake' when she ultimately ditched Nothing for these characters.

And what the fuck was stopping her in the above scenario if that were the case? If anything: she was in a more dire situation here because she was on her own and there was no guarantee anyone - even Nothing - had her back. But she still mouthed off at an entire pride of lions before turning her back on them and calmly walking away.

But I guess because helping Nothing involved her not being a wisecracking ableist comedian, that's where the line on her effectiveness was drawn. What an icon. /sarcasm.

[ihopesocomic]

While watching your My Pride review. It made me feel that Nothing, and the legend characters like Rain, Ghost, Kyoga, Karabi, and Lite, are the only characters that actually have a purpose in the show. Everyone else is dumb filler and further motivations for Nothing. (For pretty bad reasons I may add.) I feel your characters are more well rounded and have proper arcs to them. A lot of people already mention that the writing just sucks but the thing is just that when this happens, it also affects how the characters are. Giving out a cast of bland one-dimensional characters that offer nothing to the show but reasons to hate them.

Thank you for your kind words about our cast. c:

And I certainly feel My Pride suffered from "too many characters", especially when a lot of them were duplicates of each other. Feather and Farleap could've easily been the same character and - boom - you have a decent arc there, which is what we did with Adamant. Same goes for Quickmane and Proudmane. Ghost and Rain: ditto.

My Pride's creator knew that they wouldn't be funded after Season 1 and they should've accounted for that imho. Unless you fully intend on bringing something that has a grand scale to fruition, you need to be generous with your cast and only introduce those who need to be introduced so your story flows better and you're not trying to cover so many bases at once because you have so many characters and their deal going on.

To sum it all up: the series went through draft hell because of the 10 episode limit and it shows. - RJ

[ihopesocomic]

Wiki Anon.

I wanted to say more but I was out and my phone was messing up due to low battery.

But yeah, you basically said in your response to me what I wanted to say. I don’t really believe that piece I got from the wiki because like you said- it’s either false information or it’s from the original story, therefore, fans want it to be considered canon. Especially since it could be someone trying to put Hover in a good light. You and the other Anon about what Hover says to Quickmane was just spot on.

The information just stuck with me because it puts Hover in a worse light for me if it has been confirmed to be true in the show. Were we supposed to see her making fun of Nothing’s leg as her way of flirting? Just highly concerning if any of the Hover fans thinks that.

It also just annoys me that Hover could be a great character and she’s meant to be Nothing’s girlfriend/ally; she could have been a great escape for Nothing and the one to call out on Pride Law, which she has before, but they wanted so desperately to make her the snarky, rebellious type of character and fails badly so she’s just insulting everyone around her. Then that ‘snarky, rebellious’ character dies for the sake of Nothing being left alone besides Feather. All it did was make Hover worse.

I do believe we were 100% supposed to see her actions in Episode 2 as flirting, yes. Nothing being enamoured with her at the end of it just confirms it for me.

But yeah, I certainly agree that people were too quick to automatically like her because she was snarky and rebellious. Especially when she was SO much worse in the original story, where her "snarkiness" is actually borderline verbal abuse and she calls Hobblestep (Nothing) the c slur just for being slightly confused by her name.

I feel like Hover is generally how a lot of people online would like to behave if a punch to the face or a call to the police was not a distinct possibility. Just mouthing off at anyone for the smallest infraction and showing how 'cool' they are. Except it's not cool. It's downright embarrassing.

I'm only saying this because I went through a similar phase when I was a young adult. But you grow up and realise how cringe that behaviour is. I feel like Hover serves as a normalisation of such behaviour because she's from a story written by a 14-year-old and was barely modernised. It is fine to like such characters, don't get me wrong, but to shamelessly defend her and write her characterisation off as non-problematic and actually awesome is where I'm going to have to do a hard disagree.

There are just far better ways to write a character who is rebellious and non-conforming and this wasn't one of them. - RJ

[ihopesocomic]

in your my pride review you mentioned how one of the show's main issues is having too many characters. i hope so also has a rather large cast, i was wondering what exactly you meant by that comment in your MP review, as well as how you plan on juggling all of the different character arcs in IHS? i'm writing a few stories with large casts and i'd like to know how to get it to work without making everything too crowded and jumbled

What we meant by our comment is that the most of MP's cast hardly had shit to do. All they existed for was to either dogpile on Nothing or to die. Which is mainly all the show itself was about: just Nothing and people beating on her. Not to mention a lot of the characters could’ve been combined, such as Proudmane and Quickmane. Silentstalk and Farleap. Feather and Farleap. Rain and Ghost. And so on.

We've made sure our characters serve a purpose before creating them. They haven't been conjured up "just because". A purpose was drawn up before the character. c: - RJ