#it lets you use the yellow to shade his blue hair and clothes really evocatively

[team-frightfur]

Unstoppable, unshutuppable, jk you can block me. But Tumblr the site is Powerless.

I like how the grey on her shirt still has that faint cyan edge to it to add vibrancy + how well the blue and pink shadows go with her hair. Colour theory or something. Also, again, this'll sound weird but I especially like the shading on the hair at her neck and how warm and saturated it is. But I also super love how watercoloury the shading on her white shirt feels. Its so soft. She feels so pastel its beautiful. Finally, her blue background contrasts with the white/blond so well, while the shading of white/pink/blue on the blue part of her clothing also desaturates the blue so it doesn't blend in. Oh and of course her face is great too. Do you headcanon her as using makeup? Because she has some really luscious eyes and lips compared to the boys. it's pretty.

Anyway, the thing I like a lot about these is how they show off the diffs/strengths of Yugioh's style vs Yours. You still translated it really well, ofc, and I honestly think yours is better (even if too high effort for a weekly show.) Anyway, yugioh's anatomy is kinda cartoony and some of the shapes can get a lil out there. Plus, the hair is like knives. Your anatomy is more realistic and detailed (like how you translated Syo's weird little eyes and made them not weird). Also impressed by how you made Asukas nightmare of a pose work, too. The most amazing bit imo though is the hair. Yugioh hair doesn't really have strands or roots (unless ur a yuboy) so its really interesting to see how you rebuild it with recogniseable strands, crowns, roots and inclines. It not only makes it much softer and cuter, but means that you can shade with a lot less straight lines (which really nails the feeling of shading a fiber/thread/hair). Plus, the swirl of asukas hair (which isnt really possible in ygo's style) looks Incredible here!

Hnngh I love ur shading so much. Anyway. Amazing pics. Made my day.

redraws of their stills from Precious Time, Glory Days

[its-btrz-blog]

Caraval (by Stephanie Garber) Book Review

Caraval is the first novel of author Stephanie Garber, published in 2017 by Flatiron Books.

What made me want to read it:

It's a new book on a genre I like and it received a lot of promotion. I've been seeing it everywhere and it seems like everyone has been reading it and enjoying it.

What is it about (no spoilers):

Scarllet Dragna lives with her sister Donatella under the tyrannical roof of their father, who has arranged a marriage with a mysterious count for her, with whom she corresponds.

She has dreamed, ever since she was a girl, of visiting the magical Caraval, a performance that happens once a year. This year, Scarlett receives an invitation, and along with her sister and a mysterious sailor, goes to Caraval. Once she gets there, her sister has been taken by the master and finding her is the way to win this year's game. At the same time, her wedding day approaches and so she has to find her sister and return home as soon as she can.

What I thought about it (no spoilers):

If you read the book's summary, you think you're going to be swept away to a magical world where you can get lost in. That's hardly true. I'm going to start with the world besides Caraval.

The protagonist lives on a colonized island and her father is the governor. The world seems basically some version of 1800's Britain, in terms of technology, fashion (more or less, basically the girls just wear pretty dresses anytime), morality (I guess? Since propriety and virginity seem so important). For some reason the colonized island and the island where Caraval takes place are Spanish-inspired. We get some vague mentions of continents and other colonized territories but it's barely there. There's a religion that is basically some modified Catholicism: angels, God, saints, heaven, novices, priests and a version of  a confession. You can see there wasn't much effort put into this. I guess what really mattered was the magical Caraval so the rest of world was just some slight modification of a vaguely inspired historical setting.

As for Caraval itself, it seems a weird mix of Oz and Wonderland, with colorful and odd-shaped architecture and a touch of Venice, with travel by boat in the channels. It is exhaustively described with so many metaphors and pretty words and adjectives that it gets overwhelming. However, you don't really get a grip of what Caraval is. There are magical shops, selling magical objects for unconventional paying (secrets, fears) and it's said that many people go there just for that. But the magic itself is left unexplained. Supposedly magic doesn't exist and it's simply a myth of Caraval, but you get there and that's actually not true. But we never get a hint or an explanation of how this magic works, or how it is acquired, who possesses it or not. In this way, it feels lacking because it's just used as it is convenient.

Moving on to our protagonist, Scarlett. To put it simply, she is stupid, selfish, shallow, and a hypocrite. That's not how she describes herself, or how other characters see her, but it's what you get from reading the text. Let's start with stupid. She jumps into the cold sea fully clothed and with shoes. She is told specifically not to do that, but she is oh so modest that she does it all the same (one of her more irritating traits is her obsession with being a proper young woman – points for being shallow). Guess preserving your modesty is more important than preserving your life, oh, and others' lives too, since she ends up having to be saved by someone, putting their life also at risk (selfish, no?). Then, at some points in the game, she is given clues to find her sister. One of these mentions a very specific trait that one of the 3 people she's met has. Instead of figuring it out, like someone with a normal intellect, she spends a chapter or three after the wrong person. I find it very hard to relate to dumbed down protagonists and seeing them chase after clues that we know are obviously wrong is not entertaining. She is so obsessed with an informed trait of the master of Caraval (people say he wears top-hats) that she thinks that, of course, he is in a top-hat shaped store and everyone else didn't figure it out because she is so much smarter than them (oh, it's so obvious they ignore it). What's worse is that she think she's smart:

“She knew when she was being deceived”.

Since she is deceived by everyone and their brother, over and over again, I think it's safe to see this as a blatant lie. She accepts sleeping in a stranger's room because he's handsome, too. Life-saving skills here. Then, we are constantly, and I mean constantly, being told how much she loves her sister and how it's the only thing she can think about. Except… it's not? There is more than once instance in which she has a choice to take an action that will help her find her sister. You know what? She wastes the effort for a guy she barely knows, the first time, because he's handsome and maybe he's her true love! She can feel something special in him. The second time:

“She felt as if it shouldn’t even have been a choice. But it was a choice, which made her feel like less of a sister. Or maybe (...) mattered even more than she realized.”

At one point she says her biggest desire is to find her sister and a truth-telling device doesn't accept it. So, honestly, trying to make her this altruistic character who loves her sister so much was a very poor choice, being obviously contradicted by the actions but enforced by the narration.

We are also told she never really cared much about how she looks, but we get a detailed description of everything she wears (and others, for good measure). When meeting someone she doesn't like, her immediate reaction is:

“She imagined her to be sullen and unattractive.”

As for her hypocrisy, there are two glaring instances of it. The first is when she tells a guy that they should both turn around so they can't see the other changing clothes. After securing her modesty and her proper lady status, she then proceeds to turn around to admire his back with its hard muscles or something. He didn't ask for privacy, but she insisted on it and then does this. The second one is more hilarious, since, she is absolutely in love (and thinking of a possibility of marriage) with a person she has known for 5 days, more or less. When her sister tells her she is engaged to a man she has known for the same amount of time:

“Tella, this is wrong (...)You can’t be in love with someone you just met.”

OK, I'm going to stop talking about her. The other characters are: her sister, who cares as much for her as she is cared for, since she makes plans for both their sakes and thinks keeping her in the dark is a good idea; their abusive father, whom at last she recognizes for what he is and stops blaming herself for the abuse; her mysterious suitor, whom she never met but who sends her loving letters; the dark, handsome, mysterious stranger who is love interest number 1; the dark, handsome, mysterious stranger number two, who is the decoy and serves to complete a pseudo love triangle, or at least to create jealousy; the more mysterious Legend, whose face is unknown and who is the mastermind behind Caraval and Donatella's abduction. There are some more characters who are mostly part of the background.

About plot and narration. The plot is more concerned about Scarlett's love life than about her sister, although it tries to disguise it by repeating five times a chapter how much Scarlett loves Tella. It also keeps telling us (and everyone else) about her fiancée and how she can only stay 2 days because of her marriage. It's supposed to be some sort of obstacle for the romance but it only occupies space. Authors need to understand that their readers can retain a piece of information, even it is only mentioned once.

Also, this protagonist has a very interesting trait in that she sees her own emotions as colors. However, colors are used to such an extent, along with some nonsensical metaphors, in descriptions that sometimes I didn't even know what I was reading anymore. I get it that it's trying to be different and deep and beautiful and magical, but there are limits and this crosses over to the ridicule.

“She felt five different shades of berry-colored foolish.”

“ (…) yet she felt… disappointed. It came in cool shades of forget-me-not blue, which wrapped around her like evening fog”

It's a bit silly, but could be excused if not used to exhaustion with some very elaborate and idiotic prose. Her sister's smell is “Sharp molasses and wild dreams”. Other things are “smelling of flowers and flutes and long-lost love.” And then:

“Death was the color purple. Purple wallpaper and purple temperatures.”

“Cerulean blue. Apricot orange. Saffron yellow. Primrose pink.”

We also fall on the ridicule and end up with redundancies like this one. Cerulean is a shade of blue already, isn't it? It's not evocative of a specific shade from an object, like the other elements, so it destroys the effect. This is trying too much.

To finish, the handsome men have “a look made of lies and sinful things”, “smile turned seductive, all shameless curves and immoral promises”, and are  “made of polished boots and neatly tied-back hair.”  and “all kinds of tragic and lovely”, with eyes “two hungry pools of liquid amber fringed by dark lashes” and “Light brown, the color of caramel and liquid amber lust.”

Enough of these, then. I'm only going to add (without spoiling) that the story itself ended with little impact and that the recourse to some events for shock effect and angst and dramatic declarations followed by making them inconsequential the next chapter is a cheap recourse that I personally hate seeing used.

Conclusion:

As a fantasy it is a lame attempt and as a romance or as a compelling story it is equally mediocre. If you like easy reads and simplistic stories that make you not think and are a fan of elaborate senseless prose that is good for pretty quotes, and some splash of instant romance (I wouldn't call it that) with handsome strangers, maybe this is for you. It wasn't for me though, and I rated it one star.

[My review of this book is also here.]