#feels so weird to post about them after so long

[buttastic]

so over the past few days I read this comic called mary tyler moorehawk by dave baker and I think I have to talk about in a more formalized sense but I don't want to do it on a platform where I'm connected with actual comics people so here you go tumblr. there's gonna be a lot of spoilers for mtmh here (and to a lesser extent of house of leaves and rant: the oral biography of buster casey) because it's impossible to talk about this thing otherwise

here we go

the first thing I will say about it is that it takes rather a lot from both mark z danielewski's house of leaves and chuck palahniuk's rant: the oral biography of buster casey.

this is not a problem for me. if anything, this is the opposite of a problem for me. I love those books. I've been wanting more comics and specifically more big published graphic novels that do the kinds of post-modern structural weirdness that these prose novels do. but that kind of gets to my problem with it:

there are completely vanilla straight-forward comic pages and then there are hol-esque prose sections and never do the two intertwine.

the story is this: à la house of leaves, a journalist writes about the production of his favorite canceled-after-9-episodes tv show, mary tyler moorehawk, in an alternate 5-minutes-to-a-hundred-years future dystopia à la rant. this leads him to try and track down the original creator of the characters, where he discovers that mtmh was originally based on a comic. the structure then bounces back and forth between sections of this comic from plot points long past where the show cut off and journalistic sections where the narrator interviews people and does a bunch of junior detective stuff. that is the Plot and Structure.

the Premise is that dave baker, the actual author/cartoonist who lives in our world, receives a package in the mail that contains the manuscript of the book we're reading, that was delivered to him by dave baker, about his quest to find dave baker. I wish I could post screencaps of the intro, but alas hoopla doesn't let you take those so I'm stuck with what other people have posted.

but so anyway this entire book revolves around dave baker doggedly extolling the singular genius of dave baker while dave baker kind of shrugs at the camera. it's breathtakingly narcissistic in a way I almost respect.

the dystopian future that this takes place in is one where owning physical objects has been made illegal--for environmentalist reasons?? we'll come back to the bonkers politics in this. but so the primary entertainment is either fascist propaganda films or hologram web streaming videos with no stories where you watch people do mundane activities that I have to imagine is some kind of dig at tiktok. the only option outside of that is the way of the physicalists--people dedicated to the cult of illegally hoarding physical art objects from before such things were purged. the only people who are allowed to own anything are corporations, who can own anything including people, but honestly if we think too hard about what it means to live in a world that truly owns nothing this whole story starts to fall apart.

like it seems like mostly it's illegal to own art? but people are described as drawing several times so art SUPPLIES are at least acquirable, somehow? but whatever, not what this is about.

but so anyway somebody gets the bright idea to revive the old ways of tv shows (except they have to broadcast them onto dishwashers instead of tvs, since dishwashers are one of the few things people are allowed to own. also, somehow, broadcasting is meaningfully different than streaming) but also along with this she revives all of the evil predatory shit tv companies do verbatim, which feels really weird.

like the book is about dave baker (the journalist)'s quest to figure out why his favorite tv show was canceled and he lives in this dystopia where art is illegal and he managed to illegally watch this show because his uncle knew a guy who knew a guy and he has to dodge police raids to even talk about this stuff--

--but the reason his favorite show was canceled is because a tv ceo tried to claim perpetual rights to someone else's comic characters and that person left in a huff?

like idk! do something interesting with your setting! I actually do not think trying to combine the approaches of house of leaves and rant is a bad idea. they both feature people talking Around an object/person that is never directly depicted but still shines through anyway, and both have elaborate metanarratives running at the same time. there's a lot to work with there!

so I think the mistake here is trying to combine the Worlds of hol and rant. hol takes place in a world that is basically identical to our own to try and get you to wonder if the navidson record actually happened, or at the very least if johnny truant actually found someone writing about it. rant takes place in a scifi near-future to continuously bait and switch you with wondering how far removed this reality actually is from our own. both of these are extremely Core To What These Books Are About.

mary tyler moorehawk, on the other hand....seems to just be using these as a fun aesthetic to explore?

mtmh makes extensive use of hol-style footnotes, but they never really go anywhere. they're extra set-dressing but they always immediately resolve themselves and are almost completely ignorable. every once and a while one will loop back around, but never in a way that's plot-critical.

the scifi setting is completely incomprehensible unless you've also read rant and know kind of what it's aping. in rant there is a big cultural divide between upperclass people who do their media consumption by plugging sensory recordings into jacks in their brains to feel things second-hand and lowerclass people whose brain jacks have been rotted out by exposure to rabies (listen it's chuck palahniuk) who have to actually experience things in person if they want to feel anything.

like, I feel like this is what mtmh is gesturing towards with the divide between hologram tiktoks and Real TV but it feels sooo telling that baker decides to replace palahniuk's focus on real sensation to one about....watching better tv

I don't want to get too in the paint of defending chuck palahniuk here because I am on record as hating that bastard (and I do. even if I do like the book rant for the most part. it's complicated) but rant is at least a book About something. rant is a book about feeling everything you can and defining who you want to be when other people have already made up their minds about what you'll be and also the AIDS crisis. house of leaves is a book about love and grief and obsession and rampant un-checked obsessive-compulsive disorder.

so what's mary tyler moorehawk about? that's easy: comics! sort of.

at least, it wants to be about comics. mtmh is trying to weave you a tale about how discovering the right piece of media at the right time in your life can Change you and make you realize how wonderful art can be. problem number one with this is that in mtmh the medium that touches people is a tv show, not a comic, but we'll come back to that. problem number two is that this revelation doesn't Do anything for these people except teaching them that they like art now. nobody except genius auteur dave baker attempts to actually Fix anything about their situations or society, and a constant throughline in this is is that fictional people are better than real ones.

I just think that's really sad? that's really sad. in the end of the book dave baker the journalist takes back his own findings and dave baker the comic genius' loose pages back in time to deliver them to our world dave baker, who is apparently the younger self of the coolest guy who ever lived. (I found This whole plot weirdly derivative of the scott pilgrim anime but what's another one here, right?) dave baker the genius tells dave baker the journalist (these ones are actually different guys) that he needs to make sure mtmh gets published as a comic, not as a highly corporate work to get butchered, and to foster a future where art and artists by extension are protected by society.

well that's all well and good, but what does art Provide in this universe, exactly? mostly, it seems like the primary functions are escapism and validation, the two most toothless things anything can provide. in the face of this horrible dystopia we must endeavor to Feel Better About Ourselves In A Way That Makes Us Feel OK About Avoiding Other People. great, awesome

I know I'm avoiding talking about the comics thing once again, but let's circle back to what this dystopia actually is. oh god tumblr is eating my shit let's see if I can reconstitute this

so things are described as fascist and corporate in mtmh a lot but the actual things that happen—loss of private property for environmentalist reasons, a focus on communal experiences instead of private ones, the death of consumerism—feel pretty unambiguously leftist. it's not enough for me to call this comic right wing, but it IS enough for me to call it centrist hand-wringing about how art won't be able to exist under communism. but whatever. this book is not really interested in making grand political statements.

so if there's no point in a better future, let's imagine a better past. finally, let's talk about mary tyler moorehawk's relationship with comics.

the climax of mtmh occurs when journalist dave baker finally tracks down auteur dave baker and discovers that mary tyler moorehawk—the beloved, deeply flawed, and obviously meddled-with tv show he dedicated his life to—was originally based on a much longer, infinitely more nuanced and elaborate series of comics.

this is the crowning achievement of this entire book. the world opens up under our protagonist and he learns to no longer be content with shadows and to walk out of Plato's cave. everything this book was trying to do crystallized for me at this moment, because of how much it mirrored my own entry into comics. for me, it was the feeling of discovering my favorite anime were based on manga. it was hearing that the guy behind invader zim also made comics. it was learning who jack kirby was and how hard he had to fight to make his art. it's the Core Thesis of not only this book but all of cartooning—that indie comics are a beautiful realm of possibility that are one of the few modes of expression that can exist completely divorced from corporate oversight and executive meddling. it's beautiful!

and it's maybe 3 pages out of this 250 page book?

I've been talking almost exclusively about the prose side of this book so far. the other half is the actual comic Mary Tyler MooreHawk, the one the show is based on.

it's a fun, cute pulpy adventure comic about a family of do-gooders repeatedly trying and failing to save the world.

it gets bleaker and bleaker as it goes along. where the prose half is potentially the more interesting half, I think the comic half is the more compelling one, where a recently aggrieved bunch of adventurers keep losing more and more but decide to pick up and keep trying anyway because it's all they can do.

the style is fun, both visually and in terms of genre. it's kind of a pastiche of all kinds of adventure comics from different decades and different countries, though this does mean it dips into some pretty racist tropes near the beginning.

it, like the prose, is much better on emotionality than politics. unfortunately for it, I think it gets bogged down in what the other half of the book is doing. it's a petty simple and compelling story but elevating it to being The One Story That Will Save The World shines a lot on a lot of its inadequacies, some of which I don't even think are actual inadequacies.

pinning the entire media revolution on what appears to be a flimsy children's serial is summoning my inner "read another book" guy and I don't even think it's a bad children's serial. I think if the prose part had talked up more about the parts of this comic that we don't get too actually see at all instead of presenting a small section of it like a mic drop it would've gone over better.

because at the end of the day, mtmh is just a pretty conventional comic. even in-universe it seems like the thing that was novel about it is that no one else was making comics. this kinda gets at my big picture problem with this whole book:

I have been talking about the structure and maneuvers of this narrative purely in comparison to prose novels.

part of this is on me. I could really easily compare the included sections of comics in this book to the black freighter sections from watchmen, for example. but that's not really the most interesting part of watchmen, is it?

I see in mtmh a deep and abiding desire to do something different with comics as a medium, or at the very least a desire to do something different and also showcase comics. but the problem with that is that it derives most of its big maneuvers from and expresses them through prose.

I found this comic because I was reading through reviews over on solrad the other day and found this one by elias rosner. I was getting annoyed about 1) this book being an obvious house of leaves pastiche and then not getting talked about by someone familiar with house of leaves, and 2) the assertion that this book was more about tv than comics when it seemed obvious to me from the premise that this a book about the way comics are devalued.

but the more I read of this thing the more apparent it became to me than while it has massive respect for comics as a cultural heirloom, it either doesn't know or doesn't care about the interesting structural and narrative maneuvers unique to comics and defaults to drawing from prose.

grant morrison has been churning out bizarre post-modern comics since the 80s. we live in a post-homestuck world. pick up a michael deforge comic. read even just a scott mccloud book on the possibilities of comics? read anything. read shoujo manga with brain-breaking panel setups. read webcomics interrogating what it means to be a comic. read abstract comics. read weird comics. comics comics COMICS! there's so many of them!! they're all so interesting and weird!!!! come on man!!!!

anyway. I think there's a part of me that really wants to like this book. in a lot of ways, I feel like I was the target audience. but I also think it had ambitions that were not at all matched by the level of skill and effort baker could put into it. idk. I've only ever read one other book by dave baker, everyone is tulip, which struck me as a solid but weirdly copyright-dodging retelling of real life musician poppy's real life abuse. maybe I'm just destined to always be frustrated by this guy.

[iron-sides]

Oh This Is My Moment (guy who likes reccing fics almost more than reading them)

ok this is just kind of a dsmp grab bag from my bookmarks so it swings wildly around the length & vibe spectrums but its pretty much all tommyinnit centric. uh. so heads up lol altho theres a lot of bench trio I Think (also warning a fair bit of sbi for sure possibly more than bench trio so if ur like I Dont Read Sbi Anymore uh. sorry) also i tried to avoid like huge fandom faves like passerine/butterfly reign/devil town/event horizon just bc the liklihood u havent read them is Small-- also superhero aus for similar reasons. ok no more disclaimers i prommy fic time now!

in all their bashful glory

2.5k words of pure cclingy fluff. its beautiful. its so good. complete. i love her.

humans are space velociraptors

series incomplete but work one isnt! ur lookin at a little under 200k words of space au that really utilizes the language barrier in some really cool ways!! ALSO! human tubbo :D this one tends slightly angstier but i personally feel its pretty well balanced out- it functions similarly to a Humans Are Space Orcs tumblr post but like a bunch of them that go together? one of the more popular fics on this list but i reread it recently and its still so good !! mostly sbi but Also really really good clingyduo (you will notice there's a lot of that)

ours poetica by @zeeskeit-writes-sometimes

another long, angsty, fairly popular one, but this time it's tragically incomplete at 77k words :( BUT i can never say no to slam poetry au ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ this is another sbi one but not like Happy Family sbi its like. angsty. warning the poems are GREAT but it does get super dark tommy attempts suicide onscreen iirc (its been a few years BUT i cant do a dsmp reclist without ours poetica i think about her All The Time)

Unconnected Magic Fics

also 70k words BUT this is a benchtrio magic hurt/comfort series (tommyinnit centric im an inniter what can i say)! tommyinnit can now read minds! (hurt/comfort ensues) tommyinnit can no longer lie! (hurt/comfort ensues) beeduo can now read tommyinnits mind! (hurt/comfort ensues) etc etc

Rewind/Remix by @a-non-ymouswriter

this series is THE clingyduo bible its THE dsmp time travel fic its THE protegee tommy au you dont understand its SO GOOD ‼️ tragically abandoned sitting @ 290k words (idk why all the long ones r first i prommy theyre not ALL rlly long) BUT its so good. like its so good. future protegee tommy and former president tubbo are from EGGPOCALYPSE FUTURE which is awesome and IN eggpocalypse future nikis president. it rocks. its so great. dream has like tattooed the loyalty enchantment on protegee tommy like its CRAZY its so good. but again incomplete very incomplete :( idk if thats a dealbreaker for u but it is for the irl i usually am reccing to so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

talk to me by @doodlebloo

ik everyone knows and loves doodlebloo but im reccing this anyway its so good. its so good. i love them (cclingy) 5k words, complete

treatise on sin and vice

you dont understand it goes SO HARD. 7k word screenplay, complete. just trust me okay just read it its so good just trust me. take me my hand. its so good.

the snow king

SO GOOD!! ok so u know hit fairytale the snow queen? what if the snow queen was philza minecraft and the two friends were tommyinnit and tubbo underscore. 135k words, complete, another cclingyduo classic that i think about constantly. the worldbuilding is SO cool

i no longer know if i wish to drown myself in love, vodka, or the sea

ok self promo time :)) I have!! a beeduo fic!! shes 592 words! its about how crazy weird it must be to live with the ghost of someone you used to love :) i dont remember why i thought tubbo and michael moved into ranboos house after he died but i promise its a good fic anyway ! :D

can someone reccomend me dsmp fics. I just rewalized i cant remember the last time i read a fic

[henry-fox-biggest-stan]

Finally continuing my fanfic analyzing every chapter of rwrb, please check it out

(The fic)

(By the way the analysis below is part of the next chapter, still in my drafts)

When he’s tired of being touched by strangers: Come back to me when you’re done being flung through the firmament, you lost Pleiad. (Page

Who’s the lost Pleiades? Merope.

More Hellenistic polytheism.

So, Merope had six sisters, she was the seventh. They are the Pleiades. They said than she is the one who shines the faintest, and some people said than it was because she was ashamed of having married a mortal. She married Sisyphus, famous for his punishment of pushing a rock up a hill, again, and again, and again.

Henry calls Alex, the lost Pleiad, so he’s referring to him as Merope. Which makes Henry Sisyphus.

The thing with Merope is, than she was perfectly fine before. Only when she died, she became the lost Pleiad and hid with shame because of her husband’s crimes. This is Henry implying than eventually, Alex will regret and be ashamed of Henry and what happened between them, it was only a matter of time. Merope is still in the sky, still a Pleiad, just ashamed. If their relationship ever made public, Alex would be ashamed of it. He would try to hide it and he would regret it, and everyone would only remember him for their relationship, not for who he was.

Henry is Sisyphus, forever pushing a rock uphill. Several rocks. Rock one, monarchy. No matter what he did, the weight of monarchy is something than he would always have to carry with him, or at least, he believed so in this moment. Rock two, the weight of being famous and having such little privacy, he can’t change that. He was born famous and will die famous, he can’t gradually get out of the public eye, there will always be (sometimes more, sometimes less) attention on him. Which doesn’t happen it’s Alex. He wasn’t born famous, so if he ever chose on the future to step away from the public eye, he could. Being in a relationship with Henry meant than he could never have that choice. Another reason than would make him regret and be ashamed of their relationship (even if they broke up, even if it wasn’t actually a relationship and just a situation). Rock three, being gay. He could never change that, and, as Henry believed during this scene, would never be able to be himself.

And rock four, maybe the saddest one. The weight of knowing how it was to love Alex. Here, Henry believed Alex didn’t love him and could never love him, and than he would eventually leave him, so he was fully prepared to enjoy it while it lasted and live the rest of his life with just memories of what it was and what it could have been. Survive only of memories of what he once was able to do. How it felt to love Alex, not from afar, but to have him right there, just an email away, right in front of him. Carry the boulder of his love, since he wasn’t falling out of love anytime soon.

When he’s tired of being touched by strangers: Come back to me when you’re done being flung. Being flung implies it wasn’t his choice neither he did it, but someone else did it. Alex and the public eye again. So the firmament where Merope hides away, embarrassed, and Alex was being flung, is the public eye, the world. Again, Alex never chose that. I’m not gonna repeat myself saying again what I been saying in every chapter, so you get it. Specially the line before, when he’s tried of being touched by strangers. When he’s tired of not being treated as a person, of getting so much attention, of being on the whole world’s vision the time, he can go back to Henry.

Also, if the firmament is the public eye, and the lost Pleiad is well, lost in the firmament, it also is Alex being lost in the public eye, between all the attention. Maybe he likes it, but he was forced into it, and specially in those days were he’s tired of being touched by strangers, he’s lost. But he can go back to Henry. Which implies than being with Henry is not being lost, and coming back to Henry implies than Henry is some sort of full time ��home”, a place to rest, where he can go back after being lost.

[ghostofsnails]

so did you guys know theres this character called tristan vik disventure camp and

[al-luviec]

compiled whatever this is (and I run out of tag space)

meh HoT gifs (3/?)

[laurmaus]

all my pdh s2 doodles i need u guys to keep in mind i didnt know All That was gonna happen😭😭😭😭

[javierduffy]

“uh … it’s a bit girly … no?” javier examines himself in the reflection of his knife’s blade, looking this-a way and that, the dark blue of a large silken bow now peeking sheepishly around his neck as it sits gently in his hair. next to him, kieran clams up a smidge, hands still held close to his chest nearby his completed ribbon project on javier’s head. he finds it in himself to wring his hands a time or two rather than immediately undo his work as javier seems to continue to formulate his final opinion. “you … think so? look at me?” kieran asks, politely as a mouse. javier easily complies, turns at his hips and looks behind, up at kieran where he sits on the stump above him.

kieran, as he peers over, can’t help the meadow of flush that blooms over his neck, then his ears, then his nose and his cheeks. he can tell javier is deep in thought by the look on his face, mouth twisted just a might sideways, cocking his mustache awry, and the deep wrinkle sat between his brows. the ribbon he used matches javier’s vest perfectly, and the shine of the silk warms bright in the sun, just like every piece of jewelry and metal javier has adorned himself with. with this ribbon, javier’s hair sits lower on his head, ponytail draped down his nape and more hair framing his face in his bangs. kieran resists an urge to tuck one side back behind his ear.

kieran thinks that he looks like a painting, a muse, a love letter so heartbreakingly full of adoration that the only language it could be written in is bright swipes of pigment on a canvas. as he makes eye contact with the silk squinting around the red of a necktie, he thinks that javier may be right, if ‘girly’ could sum up ’poetry written in effeminate reverence’.

kieran always did think women made better art, wrote better books- found a better way to love. softer. warmer. prettier. like javier.

the world sounds like it’s underwater.

“i think … it’s very pretty. it suits you real well.”

earnest to a fault, the look in kieran’s eye dances gingerly with javier’s internal voice. it dips and sways him, and javier, despite his instinct, finds himself charmed by its rhythm.

“-b-but! i could take it out! if you don’t-“ javier looks down at himself in his knife again, the sunlight filtered through the leaves glinting a yellow green around his dark features, and kieran hands him patience on a silver platter. a rich blue makes friends with bright green quite easy, javier thinks. this is how he must look through kieran’s mossy lens.

“pretty … yes. you know, i think you may be right. i’ll keep it. gracias.”

[plusultraetc]

I was so so proud of myself for remembering to post the thing on one website that I forgot to post on the other; here's a new old Shinsou expansion pack fic I finally uploaded <3

[thedrotter]

not-yet-dead-person

silly comic of a conversation in-game i thought was too funny not to make something proper for instead of a doodle ww

(timelapse + wip images (thus silly process commentary in read more if you like artist commentary :3)

i think the sketch looks silly and goofy and funny so i find it important to share with you the mere presence of the faces i drew on it. i drew it on top of the boxes without staying inside its borders because i find my proportions can get wonky if i draw them cropped in a restricted space. and I feel trapped otherwise and i will draw BAD!!! give me spaceeeee to go wild!!!!

the head circles are there for emotional support

very low res speedpaint because truth is the canvas was much bigger than the space where my comic was placed. i didnt account when exporting my timelapse in 720px that that tiny space would look so pixelated ... but it's able to be percieved, so its okay.

(i will now comment on my process and it is not brief sorry)

usually i would try to clean up my sketches and figure out what goes on top before jumping into linework, but since there are multiple panels and drawings i chose to jump into inking right away for the sake of brevity. i just went in with a brush that uses pen pressure and drew what was needed. i added extra line thickness and contrast in areas around the face because it helps direct your eyes there more easily that way.

according to her equipment rei has a chain belt but i only remembered it existed once I was going to color, and i did not like that discovery... I chose to ignore it to maintain my peace. i already have the color palettes for these characters figured out, and i didnt really want to think about a new element at the moment www I tend to overthink those things a lot so i skipped it

the rest is rather straightforward! not that anything else wasn't, but in here i could turn my brain off and sing. linework and sketching require mumbling so i cannot turn my brain off. just block in the characters with a solid color so i can have a mask (something along those lines,) where the color can stay inside. then just color in !!!

Base colors just had slight cell shading on the skin, and for the hair i airbrush a bit of the skincolor in low opacity near the forehead... I'm not sure what it means, but i can look at the faces easier with it somehow. i like the gentle subtlety it adds even if you cant really tell. it makes things look nice.

background was just me blocking in the color of the wall and floor, shade the wall a bit, then slap a noise and free use wood texture on top. work smarter not harder ! yet it took a bit to make it look stylistically fitting with the characters, and even now i think bottom middle panel looks odd. whatever!!!

for the middle panel i thought itd be funny if the background was a solid silly and colorful one to contrast the next panel's sketchy black one. a contrast to how the word widow is seen. on that note my handwritting is not pointy. i gaslighted my hand into thinking that it was indeed pointy in that moment so i could write "not-yet dead person" in letters that didn't seem cute. my hand did not fall for it but it complied anyway

that's basically it! I'm not sure what else i could say that doesn't feel barebones because it really is that straightforward. if you're curious I used clip studio paint for this. only special brush used was for linework (a brush named Lemon Brush), the rest used were just the default. my computer gets the least credit. it was trying to convince me a 20mb file was going to nuke it all the time and hardly let me save multiple times so i do not appreciate it

[pixxelcatt]

Happy Valentine’s Day to AstroMae specifically, my favorite one sided enemies to lovers

[retros-artandstuff]

vriska + a transmasc dave doodle

[haru-chi]

Now that Miharu's arc is done and I gathered my thoughts and my strength, I feel like talking now for a bit ...

-contain manga spoilers-

Firstly, what the anime has done wasn't so bad at all, in fact I think they did the best they can without changing much which's I'm kinda surprised with for this season overall, it has the least changes out of all seasons so far (?), even the production value is far better than the last two season which was something I worried about tbh yet was pleased in general despite few little things 👀

With that being said and out of the way .. what come next isn't "hate" at all, so don't mistake it so :)

I found the anime version just lacking something .... it just didn't feel the same for some reason ... maybe the perfect word I find to describe what I feel is "detachment" ?

I don't know, was it because they simplify things which made things lose its gravity? Was it because they omit certain lines which had moved me the most in the manga ? Or was it that their interpretation of certain scenes was different than the manga vibe I got ? or they put emphasize on not what I thought they should've been ?

It's like, I felt Seiji/Miharu's burden, longing, wishes didn't hit that heavily ? Even Natori's inner struggle and action ... It's like I'm detached in certain way from their emotions which I don't even know if that's the perfect word to use but can't find a better word for what I felt ...

Hmmmmm, it's like, in the anime you feel like an outsider watching those people's story and struggles while in the manga you're an insider seeing all of this firsthand because of those little details etc thus you'd feel/understand it all better >>> don't know if this is a perfect example ><

I wondered if this was because they didn't do an extended hand before it, but as a manga reader this doesn't matter much for me so that's not it ...

But then I realized that this actually an on-going anime issue I always noticed and felt ... I even experience it firsthand being an anime-only way back then in the distant past ....

I feel the anime treat Natsuyuu's stories as standalone more than they should .. like aside from big arcs (mostly exorcist) then it doesn't matter what order everything else goes to ..maybe most fans think so too .. they don't realize that there IS a seamless story-flow under it all .. not all story follows it yet most stories can rely on it for building up be it on-going issues or questions and answers around it be it indirectly or directly (take an extended hand and Miharu's stories for example)

I was under this same misconception too back then, which's why when I jumped to the manga I was shocked by its depth and way of storytelling that genteelly indirectly connect most of its stories, which's why it resulted in Natsume's growth ...

His growth wasn't because of that certain story you just noticed it in it but was a result of the small ones before it which you thought was unrelated yet in fact it was a build-up and added depth to his character (maybe I'll talk in depth about it in different post?)

What I'm trying to say is, most story's order is important than some people think, and Midorikawa pay close attention to that and it's part of her storytelling and style which I really admire and love ... how there is an unspoken rule or something that put into attention few details or add more depth to the world/characters without directly saying so and that easily to miss ....

Do you remember how Homura's arc was something she wanted to do from early on yet because Natsume wasn't ready so she withhold for a very long time ... or how she didn't reveal Seiji had a sister before revealing that Taki had a brother (Seiji's sister arc was the next vol from Taki's brother reveal if no one noticed btw which's something I love and always wanted to mention and talk about)

That's why I said the anime treat Natsuyuu's stories as standalone more than they should and alot of things can gets lost ....

Miharu's arc didn't happen until an extended hand story happened before it .... and those stories are too important to each other ...but since I talked about this in a different post, I won't go about why that is here...

But this anime mindset results in Miharu going first which even after watching it I still find it a weird decision since there was room to do an extend hand then finish the season with Miharu's arc ....

I'm here thinking how such a simple thing can change your perception of things greatly or how can omitting or putting emphases on certain thing can change your view of them... I find that interesting but in the end that's why because of this the anime can never reach that same depth, that same unspoken indirect beauty ....

I really wonder why ? I feel like they had an idea or certain view about Natsuyuu which isn't wrong per say but can be harmful or a hindrance in the long run ?

Miharu's arc in the anime had me just setting here thinking and trying to understand why I find it lacking or feel this detachment and absent of gravity or weight from it that I felt in the manga ....

I'll stop here, it just I don't get it and kinda feel disappointed ? Sad ? Tbh I really don't know what I should be feeling other than I wanted something more for one of my best arc, it wasn't the worst yet wasn't that great either :)

[alchemiclee]

i know this has been said 473773474833 times by the kavetham/haikaveh shippers and probably even nonshippers, but i'll say it again. I finally finished the genshin summer event and did the little after quest in sumeru and.....every time kaveh is sneaking around trying not to be noticed coming out of alhaithams house it's just such a gay vibe. he's basically screaming "I can't be caught being gay in a homophobic society!" even if that's not what the game writers are *actually* saying. that's just how it comes off and they can't make it come off any other way. with hoyo's gay history, it makes me wonder if it's on purpose and all a cover-up to have a technically different reason for it so they can get away with it lmao but we will never know.

[sysig]

2024 Art Purge (Part 1)

Original Edition again! Another year of too many doodles between original and fanart that didn’t make the full cut over the course of the year - off we go!

I made some concept art for smol early in the year of a mushroom girl she had a dream about a while ago that she wanted to try making as a low-poly model sometime. Pretty sure we've narrowed it down to the original DS-era style of 3D models

And so some angular low-poly style doodles were also called for! She's so tiny haha

Around the same time I was thinking about ZEX's “Kissing Strangers” meme, I started considering what Charm's reaction to that one might be - I'm always trying to think of animation memes for her, I'd love to animate her sometime ♥ In the end, it was all a bit too weird! In a way it’s fitting, as the meme is all about Looking and not finding the one you want to kiss til the very end lol, but who would that even be! Who would Charm Want to kiss, I don't know...

[Purple Text] only got a very little bit of screentime this year, but they're just as weird and possessive as ever - once, forever and always, at least according to how they see things

Smol and I tried out a few different creative games over the course of the year - my favourite probably being the Crossover Wheel where we each put in our list of fandoms, including ones we share, and then imagine what a crossover would be like haha. House Hunted is one of hers, and she tossed the idea my way of looking at Zillow Listings (specifically this group) and imagining them as Realtors! I got the Sunflower House - you'll know it when you see it haha

Bit of a random one, but I thought the sheep from this little scene was hecka cute and needed to study her. Good shapes! Very adorable! I like her covered eyes quite a lot, and her spindly little legs, funny to me hehe

I also wanted to study her "Leg of Lamb" posing - can you tell this is memory vs. references lol. S'why references are so important! The original's delicate posing is very lovely! The soft positioning of her knees and ankles and the way she's fully reaching across herself with those fluffy "sleeves" are probably my favourite parts, it's a good pose!

Haven't done any Halfway Autumn concept art in a while-while, so why not come back with Diana's bathroom lol. Still a bit of work to be done, moving the door is probably the biggest point - having the leftmost wall lined with counter space is clearly the correct play here. I really like the shapes that naturally occur from isometric, like the way the shower curtain rod connects to "nothing" but it still reads as stopping at the wall! :D

All of this floorplanning just for some flavourtext about Diana's preferred style of hand soap haha. Foaming soap dispensers are the best! Makes everything much much clearer, definitely not just because I prefer it, it's totally objective! Haha

More bathroom flavourtext, either at the schoolhouse or the train station, or both! Since so much of the game is centered around Diana's needs, little things like what soap she uses actually impact the game! I wish something so simple wouldn't affect my day, but sensory needs are called needs for a reason :P

Started a Charm comic that unfortunately only got as far as the first panel haha - she's taking a class! Off to improve her skills at something in a group environment! Good for her :)

Or not, the sads are here :'0

Did a bit of Tsumtsum studying while drawing the Helix boys as such haha - I have one of those little Vocaloid not-Tsumtsums (they're only Tsumtsums if they're Disney, right?), and one full-sized Iron Man one that I studied the approximate shapes of the pattern from, they don't Look complex and they're probably not Actually that hard to make but there's still a good bit to them! 3D shapes, I swear

The 4th Wall group! Their poses and expressions changed a bit from start to finish, Cory once again looking at Bar - I don't think he's actually "seen" Bar's new design before this point! :0 They're all generally aware of each other but "actually interacting" is a whole other thing haha

The two stragglers, made Tala way too tiny here haha. And forgot her bow here, no wonder I forgot it for the full version too! Pfbtl, next time :P

A traditional version of the Just Desserts map! :D Made after putting the digital version together, just kind of loosely studied, general shapes good for mapmaking :) I quite enjoy the little mountain texture here over the one from the digital version! S'hard to make nice-looking shapes without my tablet but I really didn't want to use it Just for that haha, so nice shapes here! Gives me DQIX map vibes, just a little bit... All those little islands to sail to haha

Snake, snake, snaaake, it's a snaaaake ♪ Made for smol's Christmas exchange ostensibly, but really more of a spacefiller and to get into the swing of drawing snakes, the cute lads

Ball python in the style of a ball of yarn! I wouldn't mind wrapping up a plush snake, but the way real ball pythons curl up into a ball is too cute haha

Here was the Actual snake I ended up making for smol - as a bookmark! I printed a few different versions, coloured one like this with extra-dark spots for the scales, and glued on a ribbon-tongue, cut down the middle for a forked look! :D She liked it, and I like it! Double victory :)

A little sticker concept while my laptop was out for attempted repairs - can't save 'em all I suppose. I do like that the head mirror is a disc, the stethoscope is a mouse, cute little details even for an unfortunate set of circumstances

[nobodybetterlookatme]

Okay time for me to 🥰 in the tags real quick lmao

[icewindandboringhorror]

Baby boy brother birthday photos from last year that I just realized I never uploaded!