#guy in the middle: clearly just a skinny guy in a fat suit

[pepsinister]

sitting at a desk for nine hours a day means I’ve reverted to A Doodler

if I don’t participate in a figure drawing session soon I am going to explode

[hazbincalifornia]

Hazbin Episode 1 Liveblog

In order to avoid this post getting Way Too Long, I'm going to make one post for episode one, and one for episode two!

I will say, I'm kinda sad we don't have a 'proper' theme song/intro, just the little jingle :( I do get it, but ah well.

Oh my god the commercial is even better in full.

How the fuck did he get Charlie to keep the name if it was still him???

Al's so fucking offended they're making him use a camera he made it one giant middle finger. I love it.

The voices are definitely going to take a bit of adjustment. It's probably because I've rewatched the pilot a zillion times, though.

I like how Alastor didn't even look at Angel. "Never going to happen!"

Awww, Charlie's ringtone for her dad is cute.

I DO really love Keith David as Husk right away, he suits the role perfectly.

"I like being forced!" and I love you, you weird little gremlin. Hoping for some good CNC stuff with her now, tbh. She'd be fun for it.

The flat delivery of 'crack is expensive' made me wheeze out loud.

Aaaa and here we go, full animation for Happy Day!

Why... why is the 'shoving barbed wire in your hole' guy an imp. Is that, like, his job or something. Is he just an asshole?

Ooooo, that was VAGGIE singing the 'bloodthirsty and deranged?' line? More fodder for her being a fallen angel/exterminator.

'Helluva post' for the mail. Ha.

This just made me fully realize how much the cannibal colony probably considers the post-extermination like a feast day.

Awww, the music note background is a fun touch.

Something about the fact that the 'touch my parts!' guy is a completely shapeless slug-creature instead of just keeping the dick offscreen makes it funnier.

Oh, I love Adam. The fun kind of punchable prick.

The animation seems a bit... overacted? I've noticed it all along but with Vaggie in the scene where she talks about making a new commercial especially. It sort of felt like they wanted to match the pilot's very snappy energy but weren't quite sure how, so everybody makes kind of... aimless motioning instead of moving with purpose, if it makes sense? It feels more like 'moving body parts for the sake of moving things' over 'moving with intent'. It's sort of awkward and distracting. The shifting proportions don't really help, but I just know people are going to be Fucking Annoying about that when it's unfortunately part of the package of making a whole season at once by a regular animation studio.

Oh yeah, Blake's perfect for Angel, lmao. It was more of a change than I expected from the few lines we'd gotten since they sounded more like the original, but he's got the energy.

Charlie didn't know Adam ran the angel army? That seems like the kind of thing she should have known. I wonder if she was relatively sheltered growing up.

'Call me dickmaster' why do I get the feeling the Chaz fans will like him, lmfao.

Since I'm on Adam though, another little groan to myself about the lack of fat characters in the hellaverse that aren't either gross stereotypes or background characters. Adam falls into the misogynist type, (like, the 'redditor', you know the one, just sort of mixed with a sleazy rockstar) Mammon's literally Greed and a talentless abuser, the lady at the pound was gross/uncaring and ugly, and I still think the Nurse was the only one that really broke the pattern and I've seen approximately one piece of fanart or mention of her ever (despite her clearly-developed positive relationship with Barbie!) and it was porn. I'm allowed to bitch on this after people were so fucking annoying about how wanting Bee to be fat was wanting her to be a 'gross ugly blob' and then saying other people were being fatphobic for pointing out everybody's skinny. Somehow. Anyway.

Well, at least they got the vagina joke out of the way early.

I love how his deal isn't for anything that would genuinely screw Vaggie over, he's just pissed they want him to deal with TV.

The fact that the pilot's still 'soft canon' makes sense with how Angel just immediately starts admiring his new clothes without any surprise, since it's happened before. Also, Niffty with the Marilyn pose is cute.

Oh, I'm definitely going to like Lute. I still like my idea she used to be close to Vaggie but when Vaggie was cast down, she stuck tighter to the rules.

Adam's song is fun!

So season 1 takes place over the course of six months? Huh. I'm guessing we'll have some time skips if we only have eight episodes.

I wonder what the Heaven Embassy is for? I can't imagine it's only for meetings like that considering there's couches in the lobby and stuff. Can sinners communicate with loved ones in heaven or vice versa, maybe, just using the holograms?

Oh my god the Katie voice IS basically just Brandon's Bryce voice. Amazing.

Ohoooo? VERY curious who managed to pull off killing an exterminator, and 'can't let them catch on'... hmm.

[serendipitous-magic]

⭐ that brief Billy POV in RS3

(For the “writing commentary” thing)

Hoo boy, I gotta get inside Billy’s head again. I’ll have to take a shower afterwards.

Here goes.

-_-_-_-

Chlorine is a shitty excuse for saltwater.

Billy is very water-oriented. I feel like he would miss the ocean a lot - and that’s even before the flashbacks we got from that-one-season-that-never-happened. It makes perfect sense to me that he would be drawn to the one place in Hawkins that’s even marginally similar to his old home (that being the pool).

Like everything else in this town, the Hawkins Public Pool is a pathetically small, second-rate, wannabe imitation of the real thing. But it’s the closest thing they have, and he’s stuck here.

Anyway, it does have its perks. He gets paid to work on his tan and play the hero, doesn’t he? And the lifeguard chair provides a splendid view of all the best sights that Hawkins has to offer. 

Here comes one such sight now.

Again, it makes perfect sense to me that Billy would be drawn to the pool and enjoy his job as lifeguard. He clearly sees himself as a Big Fucking Deal (see: the Halloween party scene in S2), and he likes to believe that he’s some suave, macho, big-deal Big City Guy who’s the main character - the hero - in his own story, where circumstance has trapped him in this less-than-ideal setting. But he’s the hero. Specifically, the manly, handsome, cool action hero - someone who should be drifting around LA in a car chase scene or saving the damsel in distress with his shirt artfully ripped from the climactic showdown near the end of the movie. That’s where he should be, in his opinion. But the thing is, he’s stuck here, in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere, with a bunch of hicks and nothing to do and nowhere to go as far as the eye can see. So he’s doing the best he can with the circumstances he’s stuck in.

Heather Holloway is a sweet little number. Nothing to write home about, and her cherry-red lifeguard suit does her figure no real favors. But she smirks at Billy as they pass each other, twirling her whistle around one finger, and her tits jiggle just slightly in her suit as she sweeps through the crowd towards the locker rooms. A wave of coconut sunscreen and some sparkling, expensive perfume washes past him in her wake.

She’s the kind of girl he would have taken for a midnight swim, back home. 

Objectification. We’ve seen Billy do it several times, and what better place to do it than at the pool? He’s a shit person. (But then, we all knew that.)

Then again, maybe she’d be interested in a midnight swim here. They’re staff, after all - and Billy just happens to have a key to the pool. Maybe she’s into skinny dipping. He might just find out what’s under that shapeless swimsuit.

I needed to slip in the fact that Billy has a pool key and might come here after hours. You know. For reasons.

Billy sticks the whistle between his teeth and gives a sharp blast.

“Hey, Lardass!”

@the-angry-pixie pointed out that this might be a Stand By Me reference (in the actual Netflix season, not the fic), which would be cool. Or, rather, it would be a The Body reference (the novella by Stephen King on which Stand By Me was based), since The Body was released in ‘82, while SBM wasn’t released until ‘86 (a year after S3). I’m not sure if Billy is the type to have read The Body, but I liked the reference all the same, so I kept that little piece of dialogue.

The tubby kid on the far side of the pool screeches to a halt, eyes comically wide. Like a deer in the headlights. A fat, fat deer.

Dunno if I like that little section, looking back. That last sentence may not have been necessary, and I’m not sure if I think it adds anything, but oh well. The chapter has already been posted, so I’ll let it go lol.

“No running on my watch,” Billy says, sternly. He doesn’t even need to yell. The pool has gone respectfully quiet. “I gotta warn you again and you’re banned for life. You wanna be banned for life, Lardass?”

The kid’s head shakes back and forth.

“Didn’t think so.”

Another blast of the whistle, and the chatter starts up again. Beach balls bounce high into the air. Pool floats knock together like lethargic bumper cars. Some kids near the shallow end are playing chicken, and Billy feigns casting a protective eye over them as he passes the row of lounging middle-aged mothers. They adore him. They think he’s just the sweetest young man, always keeping an eye out for the kids in the pool, playing big brother.

Again: Billy certainly views himself as A Big Deal. 

He climbs into the lifeguard chair with a practiced hop, settling in to survey his domain. It’s his last hour on shift, before the pool closes for the day, and the sunlight slopes through the chain link fence, tinted ruddy-gold from the approaching sunset. 

He despises this town. But he’s practically a king here, so what can he say? There are worse ways to pass the time. 

A bike bell draws his attention away, through the fence, to the street beyond the parking lot. 

Well, whaddya know? Maxine. He’d recognize that tangled mess of hair anywhere. She’s coasting down the street beside her hick friends, the wheels of her dumb little-kid skateboard roaring obnoxiously in the middle of a small crowd of bikes. He dares her to look his way. To meet his eyes through the fence. But she’s oblivious to the death threats he’s beaming into the back of her skull, and after a moment they swing around a curve in the road and vanish from sight.

I originally planned for the Weathertop scene to flow more contiguously into the Billy POV scene, by having the kids bike (or, in Max’s case, skateboard) past the pool, and then have the “camera” kind of pan over to show what was going on inside the fence and transition into Billy’s POV. However, the pacing of that transition just wasn’t working very well. It felt too slow and bogged-down to cover the kids leaving Weathertop and biking to the store to buy candy, even if I covered it very briefly, so I ended up abandoning that idea and just having Billy see them ride past at the end of his POV here. 

He turns back to the pool.

Somebody oughta knock that little bitch down a peg. He’s tired of her running around town like she owns the place.

Irony much?

(Also, foreshadowing much?)

-_-_-_-

Aaaand, that’s that! Phew, I can get out of Billy’s head again. Ugh. 

[cicadacreativemag]

Scoring ugly babies across art history

Anna Dunn, Managing Editor

Anyone visiting an art museum or studying art history has probably encountered a weirdly shaped baby at some point in their life. These long-limbed babies, resembling a small man or wrinkly sock puppet, are a common staple of art from the Middle Ages all the way up into the Renaissance. It seems that no matter the style or medium, European artists could never quite get babies right.

These weirdly rendered babies were inspired by the concept of the “homunculus,” meaning little man. Depictions of one baby in particular, the infant Jesus, was especially prone to be depicted as a little man because it suggested he was born as a perfectly formed man rather than as a inadequate chubby baby. 

In order to determine the most cursed baby, I’ll be grading them on a three-part scale.

Proportions: Is the baby like a tiny little man? Or does it, disappointingly, look like an actual baby. We’re going for the most cursed proportions here for five stars. 

Attitude: Does this baby look upset? Serious? Or curious, like an actual baby? The more theatrical of an expression or pose, the more attitude stars this cursed baby gets.

Style: Does this baby have a unique flair that only this baby can pull off? Does it radiate je ne sais quoi? We’re looking for star quality here.

Albrecht Dürer, Virgin and Child. 1516.

Proportions: 0/5

Attitude: 5/5

Style: 2/5

This baby looks very normal. He’s chubby, proportioned well, but he’s got the expression of someone who just overhead someone else diss him from across the room. His alertness is a little unsettling. Final score: 2.3/5.

Hans Wechtlin, Virgin and Child. ca. 1510.

Proportions: 2/5

Attitude: 4/5

Style: 3/5

This baby features an exceptional page boy cut that suits his scholarly demeanor. I’m sure he could be more cursed, but I’d surely never like to see this sort of child in a library. Final score: 3/5

Joos van Cleve Netherlandish, Virgin and Child. ca 1525.

Proportions: 1/5

Attitude: 3/5

Style: 5/5

Maybe it’s the strangely mature reclining posture. Maybe it’s the little baby hand tightly gripping onto an orange despite the fact that this baby is very much asleep. But this baby overflows with some sort of latent psionic power that leaves me with a cold sweat. Despite his babyish body and calm face, this baby has got some great cursed energy. Final score: 3/5.

Duccio di Buoninsegna, Madonna and Child. 1290–1300 CE.

Proportions: 5/5

Attitude: 1/5

Style: 3/5

This baby has got those classic homunculus proportions, which complement his exceptionally grey skin tone. I would love to see what he’s capable of in a few years once he gains a neck and can access some foundation. Final score: 3/5.

Barnaba da Modena, Madonna With Child. 1367.

Proportions: 2/5

Attitude: 1/5

Style: 3/5

This baby is attempting some attitude, but it’s toned down by his babylike features and neutral expression. He almost looks cute. He may be a winner in his own right, but this certainly isn’t the kind of cursed baby the crowds go wild for. Final score: 3.3/5. Next!

Workshop of Dieric Bouts, Virgin and Child. 1475–99.

Proportions: 5/5

Attitude: 3/5

Style: 2/5

This baby looks like the artist only realized he should be fat after he already drew in the skinny little body. He’s got the little baby fat dimples over a skinny legend frame. However, I do appreciate his little forehead curl. Final score: 3.3/5.

Master of Guillaume Lambert, Virgin and Child. ca. 1485.

Proportions: 4/5

Attitude: 3/5

Style: 3/5

He’s blue. And maybe a bit stoned? 

Final score: 3.3/5

Master of the Life of Saint John the Baptist, Madonna and Child with Angels. Not dated.

Proportions: 5/5

Attitude: 5/5

Style: 2/5

By all accounts, this baby is an upgrade of Duccio di Buoninsegna’s. He may have lost that charming grey hue, but this guy excels in cursed long limbs and enough attitude to bat away his mother’s face. What looked almost loving in Buoninsegna’s baby’s posture looks upset and almost catty in this one. He’s got the diva energy, and we love to see it. Final score: 4/5

Maerten van Heemskerck, detail of St. Luke Painting the Virgin, 1532.

Proportions: 5/5

Attitude: 5/5

Style: 4/5

I want to give this baby a perfect 5/5 cursed rating right here right now. This baby has got everything: rippling muscles, a full head of perfectly waves hair, and an obvious predisposition for bloodlust. His mother is clearly holding him back from a battle he would most surely win. However, these chiseled bodies are a dime a dozen in early Renaissance art and that doesn’t exclude babies. As frighteningly ripped as this baby is, he’s not the only one, so I’m bumping him down on the style scale. Still, I’m giving this baby a near-perfect score because I’m almost sure he started - and ended - some European war. Final score: 4.7/5

Bartolo di Fredi, The Adoration of the Magi. 1390.

Proportions: 4/5

Attitude: 5/5

Style: 5/5

Absolutely OBSESSED with what this baby’s bringing to the table. I hope he touches my forehead with his clammy little, fully articulated hand. Final score: 4.6/5

Luca Signorelli (Luca d'Egidio di Luca di Ventura), Madonna and Child. ca. 1505–7.

Proportions: 1/5

Attitude: 3/5

Style: 5/5

I genuinely feel disgusted by the energy this baby radiates. It’s not just cursed but filled with intentional malice. Please don’t stare at this baby for more than 3 seconds at a time. Final score: oh my god get it away from me i don’t care about totaling up the numbers this is a 5/5.