#it's like female is round and male is a square and I'm a triangle

[eschergirls]

And after a few days break, here's the third and final part of the "Let's Draw Manga Sexy Gals" posts (here are parts one and two if you missed it).

These pages are just kind of strange: the arbitrary distinction between "anime" and "manga", apparently anime girls are all just little children compared to manga girls, the differences between male bodies and female bodies, that women apparently just vanish after age 40 (and they become space aliens as teenagers).

But my favourite is the "coke bottle" page where a) that's not what a coke bottle is shaped like, but also 2) the actual woman drawn there is the OPPOSITE of the shape they depict (which again, isn't what a coke bottle is shaped like).

The bottle they drew is wider in the hips than in the chest/shoulders, the woman they drew is wider in the shoulders than in the hips. xD

This feels like another situation where the person writing the text (or who drew that coke bottle) wasn't on the same page as the person doing the figure.

I also love "women can be depicted as four circles", that should be a meme. And the four circles woman looks kinda like a bunny.

Anyway, I hope everybody learned a lot about drawing manga sexy gals.  I know I did.

For those interested in the uncensored versions of the first 2 images, there are links in the EscherGirls.com post.

(Cover and snippets from Let's Draw Manga Sexy Gals by Heisuke Shimohara)

I've included descriptions for text readers in the images, but the longer commentary on each page is too long to fit the description boxes, so I'm including the transcription of just the text below:

Transcription of image 1:

Depicting Softness of Form - Part 1 The bottom line for drawing an attractive woman is to effectively project the softness of her body. No one likes a rock-hard body on a girl! Here are some techniquest o use for bringing out a soft form. The curves of the female form can be represented as four circles. The "coke-bottle figure", long used to describe the ideal female form, is characterized by a small waistline and rounded buttocks.

Transcription of image 2:

Differences Between the Male and Female Form - Part 1 The male and formale form exhibit several distinguishing features. These differences are often exaggerated in drawings. Generally speaking, the male form is based on an inverted triangle, while the female form is based on an upright triangle. Shown below are the three body parts that most distinguish men from women. Shoulders Give this portion some mass. (pointing at male shoulder) Make the neck thin and long. (pointing at female neck) Chest The male chest should have a square, rigid appearance while the female chest should be curved and soft. Waist and Leg Bones Straight waist (pointing at male waist) Slim down the torso for a pinched-in waistline (pointing at female waist)

Transcription of Image 3:

A comparison of Manga and Anime Characters - Part 1 There are too many differences between the two artistic styles of manga and anime to describe all of them here, but we can examine each through erotic illustratoin. Here are some examples typical of this genre.

Transcription of Image 4:

Manga: Mature facial features with realistic eyes, nose and mouth Anime: Eyes are comparatively large in relations to other features. The ears have a simple shape. Comparing Body Proportions: Always keep movement in mind. A typical anime character is designed with simple lines, making it easier to draw in action poses.

Transcription of Image 5:

Facial Differences in Women According to Age A conservative hairstyle with somewhat subdued facial features 30 to 40 years old: Sharper facial features with a more provocative hairstyle. 20 to 30 years old: This face is borderline anime style. Notice how the unnaturally large eyes extend further down the face. 10 through teens: Like an anime character, the eyes are unusually large and positioned just below the center of the face.

[tea-kitten]

@pangur-and-grim DDDD': I cannot roast the boy! He is a precious baby sweetie and I'll start by saying healthy, happy, and the cat you needed are always the most important things you should be looking for.

I scoured your blog for photos to judge because I have been hungrily shoveling all your updates into my face but I'm not in a position I can make demonstratives or draw arrows on his photos or anything, so sorry! I shall try to be descriptive and use pictures of my own cats as demonstratives.

HEAD: The ideal shape of a Devon's head should fit neatly onto an equilateral triangle drawn from eartip to eartip to chin, with ears set more toward the sides of the head and a nice wide "landing strip" between them. Belphie looks a bit like my very first devon, Jasmine, who had more upright ears than the breed standard aims for. His ears are nice and big though and they should stay that way, which is good!

Jasmine on her 17th birthday; probably a decent approximation of Belphie's adult head shape (note: Devons either age gracefully like queens or slowly morph into Gollum and there is no in-between, embrace the madness with them).

My parents' cat Jubilee is a good example of the ideal head. She was a retired show queen we were beyond lucky to provide a forever home for once her mothering days were done. MUZZLE: An important but hard to explain feature is the Devon Rex's "nose stop", the angled portion of the nose bridge. Where Pangur and many breeds like hers have long convex noses without stops and Persians are bred to have almost no nose bridge with a very severe stop, the Devon nose stop should be well-defined and ideally form a right angle from the brow ridge to the muzzle. The chin should be just about flush with the upper jaw. Belphie's got a bit of a weak nose stop and an overbite/weak chin that makes his nose look a little bit long for the standard. The nose stop is one of the most difficult features to get right, so this is a pretty common fault (Jasmine also had a weak nose stop). You'll see Devons with too sharp of a stop sometimes as well, which taken too far starts straying into brachy breathing problem territory. If I had to pick an incorrect muzzle, I'd go for the weak nose stop over a severe one every time!

On the left is my girl Ripley when she was a little under a year old, and on the right is my old boy Vitas (he'll be 14 next Saturday!) when he was about 3. Both of them have a decent stop just shy of that desired 90 degree angle; Ripley's jaw set is correct, while Vitas has a heckin puny chin under a proper-length muzzle. Belphie's chin is somewhere between theirs but his nose stop is quite shallow.

BODY: Cats of course come in one of 3 basic shapes- square, round, and triangular. Pangur is triangular and so are Siamese, Cornish Rexes, etc. Cats like the British Shorthair and Persian are round. Devons are very much in the square category and Belphie fits that to a T. Good straight back, skull is boxy when viewed from the side, good square hips, and his forelegs seem to be properly straight and under him. Bulldoggish elbows that stick out from the body can turn into arthritis in senior or overweight cats. Devons are not large, with females often ranging from 6-9lbs and males ranging from 8-11lbs. My mom's cat Lacey is tiny and is a super-fit 5.5lbs. Jasmine was a healthy weight around 9-10lbs and Vi is right around 11 at his current age. Ripley weighs 6.5-7lbs. COAT: That magical mystery box element that takes 1-2 years to grow in! There is no actual standard length for the breed and I've seen a couple of medium-haired cats, but most Devons are short-haired. A breeding queen will often have a much shorter coat than the same queen will grow after she has been spayed. Curls can be wavy or poodly, as long as there is curl. Texture can be cottony/fleecy or silky. Because they are missing a coat of fur, certain areas will nearly always be bald or sparsely furred, such as the top of the head, the neck, and the underbelly. Judges aren't supposed to deduct points from a kitten for having a sparse coat since most Devons molt at about 3 months, but they will definitely favor a kitten WITH hair over one without (>.>). They also aren't supposed to fault an adult for a sparse belly and neck, but they will still favor a cat with better coverage (again, >.>). The whiskers are also affected by the gene that causes the curl, so they are often brittle and prone to curling and breaking. Whiskers that curl up near the eyes should be trimmed short just for health reasons. You probably won't know exactly how Belphie's coat will look until he's around 2 years old, but here's Ripley at 5 months vs Ripley at 2 years old.

You can see her belly is still naked at 2. At 7 years, I can assure you it is still naked. Jasmine and Vitas have much closer to full body coverage.

I hope this was informative and I love Belphie, especially all his many faces and all the wonderful art! Belphie content is holding me over until I bring my own new kitten Fable home in the fall.

Belphie looks so handsome today

[iamthestrangerinmoscow]

[gender stuff... yeah guys you know I don't have a gender therapist] I've been thinking about testosterone again. I know I have been adamant about not taking it in the past, mostly because I was hella scared of getting facial hair and male pattern baldness, but now I kinda changed my mind. I'm still not sure if I'd ever want to be on HRT for the rest of my life, but I have read a ton of nonbinary transition stories and now I'm pretty sure that going on then off once won't mess you up. You can do it, and your body will readjust eventually. The main reason why I'm considering going on T then stopping is my voice. It gives me so much dysphoria that I'd do anything to change it. The nice thing about voice changes on T is that they are permanent, so once your voice drops, it stays that way forever. And judging by all the videos I have seen, as much as 3 months can be enough for a significant change. Typically the voice drop happens before facial hair, but tbh I have reconsidered my opinion about facial hair. I still don't want it but I don't think it would be a problem if it happened. So I can see myself taking testosterone for long enough to get the voice drop and then stopping and not taking it ever again. There is also a possibility that I will like the other changes so much, I won't want to stop it. The idea of being dependent on it all my life is not nice but if I'll start passing as male and realize that it actually makes a difference, hell I'm not going back. There are two issues. First, I'm not sure anyone in Poland, even in a private clinic, will allow me to do this. They expect the textbook trans person story and if I tell them "well I'm male-aligned genderqueer and I wanna be on T for like 3-5 months" they'll just laugh and tell me no. I guess I could lie about it, but then what will happen after I stop? Can I just... stop showing up for the shots, or stop using androgel? Will the doctor get in trouble for it? And the second issue is keeping this a secret from my extended family. If I stop taking T before I get facial hair and stuff, they probably won't suspect anything. However they will obviously notice the voice drop and... how... do I explain it? There is of course the bigger problem in persuading my parents cause if they won't be on board with it, it won't happen. Previously my mum said "you can't transition as long as your grandparents are alive" and she was generally pretty nasty about it. I'm waiting for her to accept me but how long will I have to wait? Now I don't question my actual gender anymore, I just jump from "I wanna fully transition" to "I won't do anything apart from top surgery" multiple times a day. It's fun. Not really. I wish I knew a doctor who I trusted and who I could discuss this with. I wish I had anyone in my family who was on my side about this! My dad is like "you can do whatever you want if it makes you happy" but it doesn't really change the opinion of other family members, does it? So anyway I'm a bit stressed out about this because I feel like living with dysphoria gets harder every day and I *need* to do something. If you have any thoughts, advice, experience, words of encouragement, etc, please share it.

[norgestan]

I'm going back for seconds! Viri/Hugo, Nora/Miquel, Lucasim, Emma/You. Lol tbh I just want an Emma ship and I feel like we haven't properly settled for one. 😔 Who should end up with Emma, Mia excluded since you haven't watched Druck yet?

ardi round 2, i loooove this :)

VIRIHUGO:

i think at the end of the day i’m just resigned to virihugo’s existence. do i hate that they just Start pining for each other with no setup at all? yes. do i hate that their relationship was a noorhelm+vilde esque get-together where dylan is the one who ends up alone? yes (imagine if noora had told william something like “oh lol vilde is just some slut that goes for every boy around her, she’ll get over it soon and she doesn’t really care about us being together ;)”. bc that’s essentially what virihugo did LOL). do i hate that half of their clips are they just standing still and monologuing about each other? oh yes. do i care? not really. i would resent them a lot more if viri had been the protag of s3, but eskam had really compelling couples with noriquel and norandro so i just spend my time focusing on them and not the lesser part of the season.

viri is an endearing character, and although i didn’t like most of her subplot in s3, i do think eskam made her an interesting character with what they had and i’m happy she got a nice boyfriend that she has lots of fun with. moreover, norandro was lacking the enemies-to-lovers snarky interactions (too busy being a really compelling couple!) and the trope was picked up by hugo and viri. which i kinda dig, because those interactions were the only things that i enjoyed about various noorhelms in the skamverse - if most of them were like that and less bad abusive boy feminist girl jerk-fest, i wouldn’t loathe noorhelm as much as i do. although this also makes me wish viri and hugo had been that kind of dynamic from the start, and just gotten a lot of will-they-won’t-they glances from their friends throughout the show until they finally got into each other on s3. but i guess that would’ve made it impossible for eskam to use dylan just to *checks notes* make every person in the love triangle insanely infuriating, oh well.

tl;dr: they are allowed to exist.

NORIQUEL:

ardi, you just want to see the world burn LMAO

to me it’s hard to dislike any pairing with nora on it because she’s a very good character and that just means she’ll always have great dynamics with other good characters. and oh is miquel a good character. in a lot of ways, eskam gave us two great williams in one season: my boy alejandro, who is the perfect candidate for a nora love interest, who earned his place and then helped nora earn her place as the best candidate to be his love interest as well, and then miquel, that has just enough characterization to be exactly what the narrative of the season needs him to be - not only a mustache-twirling antagonist who will punch out then smirk his way out of situations, but a real person.

see, they could’ve made miquel into a one-dimensional asshole that nora is stupidly into because he’s hot (does that sound familiar to you? LOL) but oh no, miquel is way more than that. he earns nora’s trust because he’s not an asshole, he resents olga for cheating on him and you can see how nora waits until the moment where he’ll call her a slut but it NEVER comes, he defends nora in front of his friends... he gives her what she needs, and he fits right where she expects him to. and that’s so important in a season where every other character is challenging nora in one way or another: alejandro doesn’t fit in her box of “incorrigible fuckboy”, viri doesn’t fit in her box of “helpless friend who needs my pity”, emma doesn’t fit in her box of “s/a victim”. being with miquel is easy, when he just humors her and spits out thoughts that nora agrees with all the time. it’s just REALLY great to watch. not only is her season a display of how emotional abuse looks like, but also her entire relationship with miquel showcases her shame, her flaws, the things she needs to work with to better her relationships with the people who ask more of her because it’s only fair.

i honestly never was in the miquel hate train. once you get the point of the character, it’s easy to love him for what he is. as i said before, miquel was also a call of attention because the conversations that he had with nora reminded me of talks with male friends i’ve had in my uni years, and it really put it in perspective and made me realize that i have been humoring numerous miquels by sitting through their “i’m actually a feminist, ya know” think-pieces and agreeing with the general feeling of it. and i don’t think a character like niko could EVER make anyone feel like that.

i’ve checked the middle square because that was my reaction every time eskam made a point to parallel noriquel to noorhelm. like YES. YOU DO GET ME. TRULY A SEASON FROM NOORHELM ANTIS TO NOORHELM ANTIS. what a skamverse treat. this relationship is good for the SOUL. that’s why i never got infuriated watching the couple, despite knowing what the point of their existence was: at the end of the day, i knew that the signs of abuse weren’t pointless and just fillers for an end-of-season sex scene, but they were actually going to do something interesting with them. and that’s exactly what they did. noriquel is actually a perfectly crafted relationship for what its message is and it deserves to be remembered as that.

LUKASIM:

oh BOY.

i just.... kasim is in this relationship. that already makes this REALLY difficult to tackle it. the thing about kasim is... if you only watched the season as the movistar+ channel shows it, kasim is simply a plot device. he’s not a character. he’s only there to introduce conflict and stir some shit and then fuck off to the sunset. he doesn’t have an og counterpart which meant that eskam didn’t have to actually try with him, and kasim is just what they need him to be: a way to introduce the main conflict, a reason for dounia to hate amira, boy on boy action for that sweet fanservice, misogynist microaggressions towards amira, a loose way to wrap things up at the end of the season and absolve her from any guilt or shame, etc. he just shows up when the plot needs him and then walks away very swaggily. and that’s why kasim is an essay kind of topic because to talk about him, you have to tackle the racism in s4 and all the ways they could’ve made a conflict-inducing gay muslim guy actually likable. which i won’t do here.

but then if you look at the lucas extra clips... he’s actually LIKABLE. he’s a character: he has personality, he’s funny, he doesn’t take lucas’ shit, he will only be with him if lucas apologizes and changes first. and as someone who desperately wants to protect kasim from the shit characterization and treatment he got in the show, i treasure those clips immensely - which i don’t think a lot of people do, and i can see why. it’s just sad that the moments where kasim was a likable, real character were hidden behind a paywall, and drown in a convoluted plotline of outing people when they behave badly as a good punishment. the thing about their get-together is that their impact relies only on amira, and is meant to make her life a living hell. other than that, there’s not really a narrative or character reason why they’re both into each other. is it only because they’re conventionally attractive guys and the only recurrent mlm in the show? wow, that shit’s BORING.

sigh, anyway. in a slightly better world, kasim being gay wasn’t actually a nuance as it was presented in the show. rather, kasim was out and confident about it, close to his sister, probably a regular in las labass where he could also work with organizations of other queer muslims in madrid. this also means that lucas and kasim’s relationship wasn’t the typical hidden gay love story that they were in the actual show, but they’re just, ya know. typical gay kids who made out in the club and then became just friends. or lucas’ activism on s2 warranted some instagram dms and then they upgraded to acquaintances. it’s upsetting that lucas is the only eskild who doesn’t really get to hangout or be in queer circles like other eskilds are implied to, so it would be great for him to actually have gay friends that he enjoys just as much as his primarily friend group. like, their version of lucas’ queer lifestyle being going to bars and hooking up with older guys it’s so....................... why. they didn’t have the time to say anything interesting about it and so obviously they didn’t do it lol. at this rate lucas’ only platonic queer companion is cris, which is lackluster to say the least.

the decision of making kasim lucas’ endgame is just another one on the list of things s4 got so, so wrong. what for? why does lucas need (another) boyfriend, again? why does every queer person in this show have to be dating someone and also come out to their parents? again, their relationship is just another rushed hidden gay love story that i found interesting at 13 years old and then never again. they could’ve taken it into ANY other direction, please. i’m begging.

anyways, you had really nice headcanons of lucas being the only eskild willing to revert to date a muslim guy, so that’s the only reason why i’m open to the idea of them being a couple. in a better universe, eskam actually made a case for these two being a good couple, and i agreed with it. as it is for now, it’s just really pointless, and rooted on the fact that kasim is not a real character to begin with. so i’m OBVIOUSLY sending them to superhell <3

EMMA/ME:

standard wlw relationship that would probably get sooooo much backlash about how neither of the characters Really feel like wlw and the emma love interest being boring as fuck, tbh.

alright, now that we’ve covered all that.... should dear emma grace even end up with someone in the skamverse? maybe one of the skamau girlies, given the proximity? maybe she’ll hook up with the female eskild that i know so many people dislike? idk. emma deserves a nice love story, in the same wavelength as nora. she deserves someone who is patient, who communicates well, who establishes boundaries and asks for respect, who understands she’s not only the act of crazy party girl and there are really interesting, carefully placed layers around her. maybe someone who went through a similar situation or at the very least sits down with her and tries their hardest to understand all the things going on with her life. like... there’s something about emma dropping the accusations and then dipping to another country, away from her parents and even her hometown in the states, just to throw herself in a city as busy as nyc is, that is desperately asking to be explained and explored. in a lot of ways, emma’s story is the other side of the noora story that couldn’t be told through nora’s perspective. in a perfect universe, there’s a spinoff that takes place right between s3 and s4, where emma gets the news of how much of a shithead miquel actually is and she has to question all of that yet again, and break the sense of normalcy and comfort she had built during all those years. it would be great if that story featured her closest friendships, and a newfound love. yes i was serious when i talked about the emma grace spinoff @ movistar+