#maybe I'll post the storyboard sometime

[goggleghost]

DCA Celtic AU idea

Celtic Woman's "The Sky and the Dawn and the Sun" got me imagining a whole animatic. Currently storyboarding it as we speak.

[scoobydoodean]

I was wondering if you, as a Dean fan have opinions about the different writers? Mostly because I see a lot of Dean fans really strongly dislike Dabb for some reason and I don’t really understand why. I’ve never seen a concrete explanation beyond “he can’t write Dean/doesn’t understand Dean/actively hates Dean” but with no examples as to what he does that’s so bad. And I see this in every shipping lane. I don’t have a strong opinion about him as a writer one way or the other.

I'm exploring this more as I rewatch the show (currently on season 6) so I'll speak mainly from that perspective on my most recent thoughts. I am not a big fan of Dabb or Loflin, but have tried to be fair about things so far when talking through each episode. I am a fan of "Alpha and Omega"—it's my favorite finale (it's also... a finale for a season Carver started as showrunner? So I don't know what the implications are there as far as storyboarding). Also points for having demon Dean stab a guy through in 10.02.

I'll focus on the negatives you asked about in this post, but in the links you'll find me moving the narrative this way and that toward much more charitable readings... I think. (I do have a tag #dabb disk horse which you can either peruse or blacklist at your leisure). What I can tell you is something almost always strikes me as a off about Dabb/Loflin episodes so far in this rewatch in terms of character work.

Dabb/Loflin's first ever episode was 4.06 "Yellow Fever". In the aftermath, Kripke felt the need to release a definitive interpretation of their episode to the public, stating, "Dean is not a dick... he's a hero." The whole episode toyed with, to an extent, the idea that all the victims of the MotW were bullies. You can take this other directions—for example, queer meta, or meta about Sam as the real bully. However, the story a lot of fandom latched onto was that "Dean is a jerk and deserves to be humiliated and punished for that" which obviously didn't make Dean fans watching live in season 4 happy—and this theme of Jerk!Dean continues into their next episode, "After School Special", where they once again parallel Dean with a bully literally nicknamed "Dirk the Jerk" by Sam, and throw what I think is transparent shade at Kripke's issued statement from before the Christmas break (post here)... or maybe they mean to throw shade at the Dean fans who got angry. In this episode, they also make illusions to Dean wanting to have sex with barely legal high school cheerleaders, which also did not ingratiate them to Deanfans at the time. I said on my last rewatch, "In After School Special, Dean seems more unlike himself than any episode ever in the history of Supernatural up to this point" (post explaining that here). I carry similar sentiments about portions of 5.06 "I Believe The Children Are Our Future". Yes—I am aware of performing Dean meta. I just... feel like they try a little too hard. It feels hamfisted—desperate. To the point it doesn't feel like Dean anymore sometimes. In 5.06, they also have Dean (guy who is generally very protective of kids) suggest to Jesse that he'd be good to have in a fight???? I can see how they got there, but again—it just feels... off. The last episode I rewatched that they authored, 6.04 "Weekend At Bobby's", also leaves a bad taste in my mouth—not in what it's trying to do with Bobby or what it's trying to do on a meta level—but once again, with dialogue from Dean that just makes me think "he would not fucking say that" (post here). I think looking at all of these, you can probably see deangirl ire toward Dabb has a long history. It's been around as long as he's been around, whether he deserves as much ire as he gets or not.

I haven't circled back yet on this rewatch, but Dabb and Loflin also penned season 7's "The Girl Next Door"... do I need to say anything specific? Maybe I'll just link my entire #amy tag. What narrative did they want you to get from that episode? Who the fuck knows. And that's often the problem:

When you watch various episodes I've mentioned, you can work around to a meta that tells you something different than you might at first think the page conveys—something hidden and maybe contradictory. The thing is... you could also... not do that? And that wouldn't be so bad, except that sometimes the two narratives you can most easily grasp completely contradict each other. "After School Special" can be an episode that points to Sam's envy of Dean and John deep down and foreshadows Sam becoming a bully, but on a meta level, it also just as easily says Sam becoming a bully is somehow Dean's fault, and Sam is some poor captive baby. Dean is a creep and a bully and a cheater but we should all coddle him because he saw his mom die when he was a child and he's sooo sad. "Yellow Fever" can be a queer meta story and might also foreshadow approaching Bully!Sam in 4.14, but it also very much does call Dean a jerk (should we take that seriously? should we not?) and implies Dean should be punished for the outcome of three decades of reality-bending torture. Even if it's a queer meta underneath... it's just as easily one about how closeted men should be humiliated for cowardice or how being closeted turns you into an asshole.

Jumping way ahead, I have to mention 15.10 "The Hero's Journey" just because. Yes, it is full of jokes and Garth goodness, but also tries to sell you the story that nothing about Sam and Dean is real, to a degree that feels like you are being flipped the bird for ever watching this show. And again—you can make meta that it's all a ruse! But is it? Or is Dabb actually just telling you to go fuck yourself? Like he totally wasn't when, after the SPN finale when fans were Not Happy™️, he tweeted a sign reading, "Don't feed the baboons"? Yet again—we play into the motif of the "hero" who isn't a hero at all but some pathetic loser who deserves to be publicly humiliated, bookended with Dabb's opening episode in his opening season. I'm not saying that's what it is on purpose—but I am saying you can make these arguments easily, and that leaves me consistently annoyed with Dabb for being fucking sloppy and leaving me to deal with some of the most insufferable meta imaginable that carries little support outside of episodes written by Dabb or the Dabb/Loflin writing team.... Yes—I am in fact saying that Dabb and Loflin's hamfisted episodes (regardless of their intentions) are largely responsible for some of the most insufferable, loathesome fandom metas about Sam and Dean's relationship around.

Look at 5.16 "Dark Side Of The Moon", and 7.08 "Time for A Wedding!" and 8.14 "Trial and Error", 11.17 "Red Meat", and 15.20 "Carry On". Along with 4.13, while they might or might not say something deeper or contradictory on a meta level, on a surface level, every single one of these episodes sows the narrative that Dean is needy and clingy and needs Sam more than Sam needs him—something I intensely disagree with for a multitude of reasons... but I'll just link this. Many of these episodes also follow a surface level narrative of "normal life obsessed Sam" (and here I'll link my entire #sam the hunter tag and #in which sam is not a helpless little waif with his hands cast over his eyes being carried along by the tides of the immutable sea). When I look at this episode list, I also don't find it at all difficult to believe that Dabb wanted Dean to die in the finale. There is nothing at all shocking about that. And yes—you can argue he's pointing to the opposite—that this fate should be subverted and that's what makes 15.20 the dark ending, but I think you can just as easily argue that yes it's a dark ending and yes Dabb has always dreamed of this ending. A "tragic" ending where Dean dies and Sam goes on to have a white picket fence... while also leaving you little hints along the way that maybe it's all a big ruse because how could he not? He never has to explain anything. Someone else will pick up the story and make it make sense. He's already fucked off to piss all over fans of Resident Evil.

That said, when I mention what I feel is off character work, I mainly mention Dabb/Loflin episodes from my recent rewatch, which suffer from the two of them being newer to the series (coming onto the writing team in season 4) and also leave questions about whether, perhaps, they had conflicting ideas about characterization. Was Dabb the one penning these lines? Was it Loflin? Was it both? Did they trade out who took the lead? I didn't really say anything negative about "Sam, Interrupted" or "Jump the Shark"... (though "Sam, Interrupted" also calls Dean "codependent") who wrote those? Is it possible that the messiness of the meta comes down to two writers at war? I have to imagine though, that they got along, or else they wouldn't have written together for four fucking years. If they didn't get along...? My mind always comes back to their first solo episodes, right after splitting up in season 8. Dabb's first solo episode is "Hunteri Heroici"—the only episode to lend any perspective to season 8 Sam's reasons for abandoning everyone—paralleling him checking out with Fred's catatonia, which Sam has to save Fred from. It is the only episode that lends Sam sympathy in the early part of the season. He follows it up with "Trial and Error"—where Sam promises to save Dean from suicidal thoughts. Loflin's first solo episode is what I would regard as the most scathing solo episode commentary on Sam in the entire series—"Citizen Fang". Then he writes again right after Dabb's "Trial and Error"—penning "Remember The Titans" where Sam tells Dean to get over the promise Sam so passionately made in Dabb's episode and face reality.

This is why we're exploring this rewatch.

DISCLAIMER: Now I just devolve into bitching because I'm writing at 3AM. Proceed at your own risk.

It seems like these days, everyone demands an explanation for disliking Dabb (something about some sort of destiel battle... I don't know what that flamewar is and I don't give a damn tbqh.) I guess I've just been wondering what's actually so great about him. Because it feels like people have overcorrected to basically acting like he's god's greatest gift to mankind. People point to how meta his episodes can be, but I think other writers easily best him on that front on multiple occasions (particularly enjoyed by me so far on this rewatch: 3.10 "Dream A Little Dream Of Me", 4.04 "Monster Movie", 4.12 "Criss Angel Is A Douchebag"), and without leaving their meaning so up in the air that you don't even know what the hell they were actually trying to tell you because there are two different completely incongruous narratives you could just as justifiably claim were the intended one. Some people may find that duality praise-worthy. I don't. I find it sloppy—and when I add in mediocre character work, I just land on the side of him being, at the very best, mid.

Add him in as showrunner, you have... at least two of my least favorite seasons (13 and 15). Add that he's a one-trick pony in terms of the Sam and Dean conflicts mentioned above that he continuously rehashes rather than come up with anything new or fresh, and the same conflicts between Dean and Cas being played out until they both die (shut UP I'm not talking about canon destiel as the alternative—I am literally just asking for more diverse conflicts). I can't say I understand what I''m supposed to find so impressive.

(Before anyone so much as breathes this near me, Berens also sucks and I am going to tear off your nose hairs if you start bringing him up as if disliking Dabb for some reason means wearing rose colored glasses about Berens. Berens can eat a whole cactus raw over "The Trap" alone.)

[bladekindeyewear]

Beyond Canon 2024 October and November Artist/Writer Commentary

So the new Artist and Writer commentary for this month's latest upd8 popped up on Patreon, and even though I've been working (pathetically slowly) on a draft post that goes back through the commentary in order from the past where I left off, I feel like the last two updates have been HAMMER BLOWS in terms of the seriousness, hopelessness, et cetera and I feel like everyone wants answers as badly as I do, and the teaser we got at the end of the last upd8 to whet my excitement can offset the bad news only SO much on its own. So even though I'm kind of too sick to be doing this today, I want to help myself and others cope by liveblogging the last two months' posts of Artist and Writer commentary each so we get some more... words from the word of God on why they're subjecting us to this.

As much of this is Patreon exclusive content I won't be quoting everything, I'll be making just a couple out of context quotes and summarizing or paraphrasing things that I find important to point out about what I'm reading.

I'll put a TL;DR here above the cut once I'm done-- ahem: "Oh yeah Rose was even more doomed to feel fucked in that sort of situation than I realized, and also there's a hiatus because an animation is coming to kick off the End of Act 1 / Start of Act 2, holy shit. Maybe I’d have known that already if I’d read the news posts, oh well".

10-24 Artist Commentary

This is the artist commentary for the update I liveblogged starting here.

They mention how it contains a lot of standout moments, "things are coming to a head in the story"-- there was indeed a climax between this update and the one that followed it, I certainly agree. Since this is the artist commentary, they talk about their appreciation for proposed pacing, the jaw-dropped yelling of some on reading the proposed script... there's a shot of the story board, of course.

They go into some interesting detail on how they went about devising how they wanted Jade's "Space force fields" to look.

Everyone loves Jade's paw-print gloves, as they should.

Haven: this panel showing “how rose ‘sees’ things now” was added late into this update's production and floral didn't have a description other than “haven go wild” 

Yes I can certainly believe that. Nice touch in retrospect thematically coloring Rose's blood with her color instead of the literal red it'd be.

"generic troll soldier bumps into a god"-- nice how they're lumping Kanaya in with the god-tiers when referring to the Gods of this world.

Oh I never actually noticed the rebellion's "massive crab tanks" in the background of all these other shots, no wonder they surprised me the following update.

The full hemospectrum of Blood around them grasping hands:

Haven: sometimes very blatant symbolism is the way to go.

exactly, noted, noted...

Some notes on how they did up Jane's office and her bridge, and the storyboard for that BRUTAL scene with Jane and Jake, ow.

Practice the different artists had at drawing Jane and Jake in "Guardian Mode", which is the new clearly adult sorta-hero-moded silhouette term that I probably would have gotten from reading the other artist commentary in order.

Nice thoughts on how even the framed photo of Tavvy next to the blaster button is a distant shot-in-passing photo that doesn't communicate a close family.

The shot, the heal, the turnaround and beatdown.

I got storyboarder brain and I love the excruciating anticipation of making people hold their breath between panels... When you know something’s coming but you can’t help but clasp your hand over your mouth like, “OH NO…”

Yeah, no kidding...

Nothing too concrete to note in this artist commentary, the writer commentary's probably going to be richer. So to save my sanity I'm going to do the next Artist Commentary first:

11-2024 Artist Commentary

This is the artist commentary surrounding the most recent upd8 i liveblogged.

Oh holy shit, this one has some big news I wasn't aware of!

Chumi, hoping you guys had a Happy Thanksgiving: Welcome welcome! 🎉🎉 We’re really getting into the holiday season with this one! Unfortunately, this is our last update until the Flash Production break. Look forward to the Flash guys, we’re working really hard!

I didn't expect them to start off our new session with a big flash, but if they're going to bust out some Animation to really emphasize any new stepping stone in Beyond Canon, the introduction or pre-introduction to The New Session™ is probably the time to do it. I'm pretty busy and/or sick lately (the annoying sort of sick not the dangerous kind) so I'll be glad if it takes a little longer before the next upd8 than it did this one.

They talk about how they carefully gradiated the sky over past updates to reflect the danger closing in, much appreciated.

Tavvy writes with something called "Magic Link" handwriting apparently; they go more into it here.

An Andrew-embossed-seal reference, huh? I'm not gonna elaborate on that but it is funny.

Rose covering the kids' eyes before the shot:

I thought I was so clever putting a bit of shadow underneath her hands… Because her aspect is Light… She’s blocking the Light / knowledge from reaching the kids…That’s why she’s a silhouette too… Heh…

Yep.

Kim: This particular bit gets me every time I think about it… Jade loves her child!!! The way it completely throws Jade off her game when the most precious thing in her life right now is suddenly in the middle of a freaking battlefield of a WAR. These kids just can’t stand still for one minute can they!!

Gahhh, it just tears my heart out. Rose could have stopped this with a word, earlier, but didn't... why not?! What does she KNOW where she sees this path being the better path forward than others?!

Jade getting shot...

Floral: I can feel how much this hurts, it’s so good.

Guhh my heart. Owwwwuch. Can bad things just stop happening to Jade Harley for once? Can some good things start happening where she gets to be cool and not shoved out of the way unceremoniously by the narrative? :C

Okay there's something interesting here.

Floral: I did a single panel for this update too, featuring Dirk’s bell tower and the rest of the human city that stands between it and the meteor site. So much to parse. Wonder what the significance of it all could be.

Implying this has some significance... does it have something to do with what's brought into the game session? With how much IS and how much isn't? Or are dramatic things happening at "Dirk's bell tower" repeatedly being themed to be brought home by something else happening there later? Hmm.

Oh:

The impact is also knocking over whole tanks and the trees around the area, so the Rebellion guys near the meteor are totally vaporized. Sorry fellas. The two peeps in front are just some random soldiers to fill the empty space HEHE.

This explains my confusion around the explosion. The crab tanks I hadn't noticed earlier that they helped point out above, and these indeed being two random soldiers and PROBABLY not a stealth inexplicable Aradia appearance. PROBABLY.

So the "End of Act 1" bit:

Chumi: We are not done with Act 1 just yet…

I was wondering how much the "psyche" meant, if it meant psyche regarding our place within the story, how much was left to go, whether this was a real act ending et cetera... apparently the end of Act 1 is coming somewhat soon from the sound of it, and that gives us an idea of what exactly is planned for this lovable clusterfuck that is Beyond Canon. Is this a three-act tale we're planning, or effectively one, sort of like our three most major build-ups and climaxes across the six acts in the main story (Descend, Cascade, Collide)?

A slight preview sketch of the computer exploding in GC's face you can see if you opt for the Patreon commentary, and that closes out that. Now we'll have a look at the really, REALLY juicy stuff for the last two updates, the WRITER commentary. I'm dreading seeing them drill down into the dread these last two updates gave us before the hope of a new session with our favorite new kid-kids in it, and I'm desperately hoping that as they explain their choices they sprinkle in some EXTRA hope they hadn't given us with Rose's twisted hopeless perspective, because I could use the positive reinforcement.

10-2024 Writer Commentary

Been so excited/apprehensive for this update to drop!! It’s been months and the entire time we’ve been going back and tweaking and playing with things to perfect it and it was worth it. Super satisfied with the response.

Any writers getting ready to write such meaningful dialogue and traumatize their audiences are going to be chomping at the bit to, I've had the taste of that in my mouth before as someone on the writing end and the twists you're ready to unleash can have you salivating even when you know they're going to cause suffering. ESPECIALLY when you know that. It's the entire author's curse that is essentially THE ENEMY in the form of Dirk Strider in this narrative.

And I was inspired to handle it in a way true to a Seer or Light, heavy in lore and reminiscent to Rose’s GameFAQs Walkthrough of the SBURB Beta.

That's a very good inspiration for putting most of Rose's predictions in her narrations below her walking away from that conversation.

They go a lot into the idea of her creating a Spatial shield, whether it would fall into the confines of her powerset. I like a lot of the keywords used here:

A stray missile comes towards them and the shield won’t bounce it off but manipulate and control the space around it.

Note the keywords 'manipulate and control', the change/control/manipulate keywords we've always held so central to the theorized Witch role and possibly the Heir role by extension.

And ultimately:

I think in general, a lot of aspected powers are limited only by the user’s imagination!  But even putting that aside, it makes a lot of sense to me that she’d have the tight control necessary of a spatial perimeter necessary to do something as basic as maintain a shield.  We’ve seen her do way crazier shit before.

--who could disagree?

FLORAL: There was a lot to explore with this conversation between Rose and Jade, the first one they’ve had privately since fucking… ACT 5, 2011?

Yeah, they barely got STARTED with the unpacking. And Rose refused to continue it because she foresaw that it'd be ultimately pointless.

Many thoughts of how their dynamic could be and how their dynamic would evolve under current conditions went into it and it was so fun!! Writing two people that obviously understand one another so well while feeling completely misunderstood and frustrated because they’re not being empathized with is complicated! But exactly how you show a character's specific perspective the best in my opinion. Rose and Jade share a lot of experiences, especially considering their Aspect switcheroo fake out, and have taken such completely different lessons from them. I love their friction! 

What's also unsaid here is how their Aspect switcharoo fake out was also secretly potentially paired with a REAL class switcharoo in the form of role inversion that they BOTH underwent, Jade getting a distrust of Seeing and Rose gaining a distrust of Witchcraft in making any ultimate difference as this wasn't the way they were best meant to operate as themselves, but can't help but project onto each other when stressed.

We know from Meat that even without all of Candy’s baggage they aren’t close. So why? There are very probable, passive answers and then there are equally probable drama answers, that actively communicate parts of these characters we never got to see clash.

Really interesting. And yeah, we DID get to see that from this update.

MILES: I think, and this is something that we’re going to touch on later in this commentary/update, part of that is that they really aren’t that compatible in terms of their interpersonal problem solving styles. 

We talked about this in a great deal of detail surrounding the update in question, and I'm glad they were intentionally provoking us to think about these things!

Okay there's a section here that I'm going to quote in FULL from the Patreon commentary, and it also outlines a divide, a HUGE rift between Candy Jade and Candy Rose that Meat Jade/Rose wouldn't have experienced, and the tragedy of its basic inevitability because of how events turned out:

MILES: And speaking of dear, sweet Yiffy, and the way Rose and Jade’s attitudes differ, there really isn’t a better example of their incompatibility than the two entirely polarized attitudes they take towards Yiffy’s existence: Rose’s detached view of Yiffy as amounting to nothing more than an inconvenient favor she did for a friend, as part of a cosmic obligation she barely even understands (more on this later), spits directly in the face of Jade’s knowledge that Yiffy is, without question, the most important thing in her life.  It’s arguably “right” that Rose chose to completely sterilize any feelings she might possibly have had (but probably barely even ever did) for Yiffy in terms of maintaining some modicum of emotional fidelity to her Actual Wife and her Actual Daughter, but obviously that’s going to chafe Jade.  Jade’s a lonely person!  Yiffy was a way to fill that void, and although having a daughter has absolutely brought some purpose, companionship, and stability to her life, the complications that came along with it have absolutely served to isolate her even more in other ways. 

:'(

With all the setups being given to us like Dave's stuffed corpse falling out of Jade's pocket, or the idea of Kanaya finding "new love" before Rose is saved that she refused to Foresee (I'm still banking on that Light Between Space OT3, you can't stop me), I'm really hoping that Candy Jade can both live through this and come to a MUCH LESS LONELY peace than she's come to in other timelines we've been forced to witness. I don't want Meat Jade to be the only Jade that comes out of this healthier and happier than she went in.

The commentary gets into Jade and Rose's debate on what Truth means, from a Light perspective or a Space perspective almost...

That’s why it was felt important to comment on Rose’s estranged relationship to Roxy too, in her ramble. Really cementing questions that were hinted at before, can you find closure in another, younger version of your dead parent? How does that evolve over the years?

I really hope that we get a version of Rose and Roxy out of at LEAST one of the two ongoing timelines that end up MUCH closer than this update implied Rose's parental relationship had forced them to stay estranged rather than get closer like they could have, possibly should have. I want them to come to terms with each other because they could be SUCH good sisters to each other. And maybe in the Meat timeline when they're put into direct conflict, when Roxy achieves some sort of victory over Rose, Void over the gaps in Ultimate Light, that it finally punches through her emotional barriers and lets that version of Rose accept her essentially-sister the way her Candy Self never let happen.

And now we get to that horrifying future-sight screed of Rose into the narrative text zone...

FLORAL: Everything Rose talks about in her monologue was so, so nerve wracking to write, to take so many points of what makes this character who they are laid out for the reader.

Yeah, it made so little sense why she'd say such callous things to Kanaya earlier unless she had been DELIBERATELY trying to push her away... which as it turned out in this monologue, she absolutely had been, having foreseen her own coma.--

Which is hard for serialized media because you guys don’t get those answers the way you would if you were watching a movie or a book, there’s real time waiting completely out of your control. It’s anxiety inducing! I’ve had a good deal of Homestuck induced anxiety myself lol.

Hell to the fucking yes. We're all feeling that incredible anxiety and only the writer knows, for sure, that it's all going to turn out okay, but we the readers have to wait in limbo with our anxieties gnawing at us all the while.

MILES: I totally get where you’re coming from, on that.  This bit felt like a part we really did need to write, partially for that exact reason; taking the readers on an exciting voyage to the twisted shores of Rose’s nihilisthmus is a peek behind the curtains that hopefully DOES serve to contextualize just how checked out she is and provide some more clarification on why it is she’s acting the way she does.

Instead of taking individual text blocks, Miles is going to give us the whole shebang summary, so I'll pull it straight out of the patreon commentary wholesale since anyone suffering like me probably ought to hear it with me:

Overall, as a Light player trapped in a universe/timeline/whatever-you-want-to-call-Candy devoid of “real” narrative consequence (and thusly, devoid of any “real” fortune that might seek to inform her Light-aspected guidance), she’s been sort of adrift!  Imagine having access to a cosmic intuition that points you towards what’s “best” and then, one day, you notice it’s broken.  Still trying, but broken nonetheless.  Rose is already predisposed towards existential malaise; she’s always needed action to fill that void, and when the little voice in your head suddenly starts telling you that you live in a world where action is fundamentally meaningless, coping with that reality probably... fucking sucks!  She has nonetheless done an admirable job of trying to keep herself anchored with a wife she DOES care for and a daughter she DOES love, but fighting the creeping thought that none of it means anything at all?  Having what you believe is objective cosmic confirmation of nihilism woven into the foundation of the reality you inhabit?  That’s scary shit.  Honestly, it’s kind of a wonder she’s even as sane as she is, but Rose, for better or worse, is quite the badass. Not great for the people around her, though.

I'm starting to see, that's useful additional information. Rose's Seer of Light powers aren't just telling her that this timeline doesn't matter, they're also almost broken to the point of uselessness by the fact that so little 'matters' in the entire world. And those malfunctioning powers have been reinforcing her nihilism just as much as the message that this is a Doesn't Matter Timeline is. Gosh that's depressing... and I hope what Vriska, the Plot Point, and the New Session pulling in their children does manages to eventually shake her out of it, even if she needs to get miraculously saved from a coma first.

Moving on...

Karkat and Kanaya clasping hands being awesome, yeah.

Jake and Jane's confrontation. As much as they wanted in their hearts to give Jake a win, they had to make him lose here because Jane is just too wildly powerful to fall to him when he'd only just turned around, and had to make it sentimental and personal instead of doing something cold and unloading enough lead into her to kill a God of Healing, which wasn't something he'd prepared himself to do, doing something more Jake and "cinematic" instead.

Then we cut back to the kids, and the next update:

11-2024 Writer Commentary

Okay, here we go. What are you going to give us from that last update that was such an emotional whiplash of impacts?

FLORAL, loving some bacon: THE HOMEWRECKER IS DEAD!!!!!!

God damnit XD You fucking jokesters.

Some comments they have about Jake's letter here, which seems unintentionally tailor made to provoke Vrissy into a frenzy:

We’ve been trying to give him a little shade of passive aggression, just a hint of spice, and I think this letter was a fun place for that.  “Sorry but you guys are kind of weak as fuck, can’t do a single backflip, and so you need to sit here and eat these considerately provided packages of snacks while a real gymnast handles shit.”  It’s a flex, but I think it also demonstrates his caretaker tendencies.

I'm trying to dissect what they're saying about him and more could mean about, like, his potential Class and Aspect, but I'm coming up with bupkis aside from all our previous scattershot analyses. Gymnasts can be Breath, Breath can be Provokers, and plenty of classes can be Caretakers, but... I'm still not entirely sure where Tavvy is going to land on the hero spectrum.

MILES: Unfortunately, he probably should have accounted for the fact that these two aren’t really inclined to listen to him.  When Tavvy flips the script on their established relationship dynamic, as he has quite a bit these days, it rubs at least Vrissy the wrong way. 

Yeah it didn't seem like Tavvy was TRYING to provoke Vrissy to run out in rage and try to do something heroic to keep her kismesis from showing her up, but he definitely had that effect unintentionally as hard as it possibly could have been, and any variety of Breath player could have unintentionally managed that, even a Bard. The Caretaker thing is being reinforced by the soda and snacks though, and this writer commentary... is it pointing to a specific caretaker class like a Maid of Breath? Hmm.

On Jade dying right in front of them:

Clearly shit is popping off a bit more flagrantly than the kids imagined.

To put it mildly, yeah.

Tensions have been building for a while, but blood’s been definitively drawn now.  It’s been a lot of setup to get to this point, but it’s super satisfying to see it all reach a boiling point here, even if it comes at the cost of poor sweet Jade’s cranial structural integrity. 

Everything this entire-- well, "Act", now that we KNOW it's an Act, has been building towards THIS climax in particular. A moment where so much shit goes down that we can officially say in every way that Shit Has Gone Down, and they had to herald it in with SOMETHING shocking I guess... especially if they want to neutralize the lingering macguffin that is Candy Calliope's spare Ring of Life if I had to guess from the hints they've been dropping.

The act curtain drop, the psyche, and...

MILES: You’ll notice that, with this little gag (which felt so fun to do, by the way), we’ve returned to the ACT structure, abandoning the CHAPTER format HS^2 utilized before the production change.  This was a point of a lot of thought, for us, but ultimately we think that the Act structure makes more sense for the story it is that we’re trying to tell, for a variety of reasons that I’m not gonna get TOO into here.

With a new session on the cusp of starting, I can really imagine why.

That said, we’re coming up to the climax of what we consider... I don’t know, the “setup” period of the plot?  It’s been a long, long road, and it’s tough to say what final percentage of HS:BC this whole saga is going to represent, but capping it off all under the purview of one Act feels appropriate.  Everything, from the beginning of HS^2 to now, has been dedicated to fully selling the transition from the Epilogues to what has become Homestuck: Beyond Canon.  It’s been just over a year of updates on our end, and it’s so crazy to see this arc getting ready to finish!

That confirms a feeling I was getting but wasn't sure whether to confirm. That the entire time we've been experiencing HS^2, interrupted by that long hiatus in between, was meant to be a setup for THIS moment where we realize a new session is starting, and we're dumped fuck deep into the Game Session format with all the establishing situations and incoming vectors and player collisions to come laid out like bullets streaming in converging on a single point of impact.

And to finish it out, they analyze our new Dark Purple Text Friend!

HAVEN: “Negging” this is new! And again with this 108 number pattern, how curious.

I genuinely forgot they did that 108 earlier in Vriska's plot point. Read back on my Homestuck Liveblog tag for people pointing out the significance of that as HS:BC's act number.

This person seems to drag on each sentence... Before snapping back to finality.

A trait I hadn't noticed besides the bombs, but a trait one bomb-and-fuse oriented could be reasonably said to have without indicating to us which Doom class this obviously-Doom-player is.

HAVEN: A lot of information here! TC and AA, who are curious characters and what could their roles be? (well I suppose you could guess their upcoming roles.)

There probably ARE hints to TC and AA's literal hero roles, their classes and aspects (such as Oracle being listed there), but we don't have enough of them on hand to tell the wheat from the chaff just yet beyond that. I'm sure we're going to be getting piles of hints in the coming pages both up through and after and possibly within whatever flash-like animation they're taking extra time to cook up for us to celebrate the miracle of this new beginning.

They point out GC's "and we did spend a lot of time on it..." meaning they're the ones that must have coded this new incarnation of The Game out of the Ruins codebase.

HAVEN: Here I think there was going to be a line specifying they had “47 friends lined up” but it got switched out.  JAMES: I wonder if that's important. I guess we still need to be sort of coy about it.Which is horseshit. HAVEN: Yeah, that IS horseshit! Anyway our coyness continues.

I like how they wanted to make at least a JOKING reference to a 48-player Squiddle session that isn't going to happen, because I'm still betting that somewhere between 8 and 16 people is the most we can comfortably fit in a new plot like this, not to mention the Gene pattern that seems to be being followed so far, but we'll have to see.

Alright, that's the end of four posts of commentary. I've gained a LITTLE bit of meaningful information and some expectations on the upcoming timeline, and I hope you have too, and I also hope I didn't pull so much out of the Patreon exclusive info that y'all don't feel discouraged to chip into Homestuck Beyond Canon too like I'm doing if you have extra dosh to spare (but only to spare, don't impact your livelihood if you need the money for important/life things, that's advice they and anyone else would give you).

I'm feeling slightly less sick by luck now that I've rammed all this typing out of my fingers, and hopefully y'all feel a little less of the ominousness that can't help but hang around recent in-canon events. Phew.

I see in the Patreon comments some commenters are extrapolating from that cut "48" that Dirk wants to create the session that made the TROLL session (with the trolls' 48 star signs) to complete a solid loop, which I concede is possible, but I doubt his goals are really all that pedestrian, that wouldn't make him the most important the way he's aiming-- you already have my counter-speculation in hand that Dirk intends to create the session that gave birth to the chess game ITSELF, that gave birth to the Prospit/Derse system and the very seed session for the propagation of Paradox Space. Alt!Calliope seems like they're practically in alignment with him on the goal, wanting to tie Beyond Canon back down into a neat self-causing loop excepting that Alt!Callie's intending to ensure he doesn't get to make himself the Author Of All That Exists, no matter who it hurts when she forces the issue, which makes Alt!Calliope not much different from him. And between these dueling forces, we have the ever-underestimated plans of Calliope and Roxy across both timelines, the Muse of Space and the Rogue of Void, who seem to have SUCCEEDED in collaborating knowingly or unknowingly across the timelines to use Vriska as a shunt to SOMEHOW get the Candy Kids to be important friends and players in this new Game, bringing things all full circle in a way not even Alt!Calliope thought would save their home timeline but quite possibly can. How exciting!

It hurts, sometimes, but gosh do I still love Homestuck. See y'all whenever that next hiatusy bombastic probably Flash-animation-like update goes up in a month or two or however long it takes them, bless their diligent crazy hearts.

[rebouks]

Idk if you’ve already done this (newer follower and still catching up) but would you ever do a post on how you plan a post? Like what your planning process looks like with shots, poses, etc? You’re one of my favorite storytellers and I hope to get on your level one day but no idea what goes into a true story telling post

Ooooh hi hello, welcome! I don't believe I have ever gone into my process, no! but how interesting.. what better excuse! let's take yesterdays post as an example, shall we? 👀

First of all, we start with the premise/notes, which are very rough n' look like this in a word document...

Camping – the twins are fiiighting/being a pain, Oscar loses temper with em n almost says why can’t u be like ur brother?! throwing him into memories of Salton saying that to him all the time :[ he catches himself like no wait ur perfect I just gotta finish this, twins like wtf?? But robin ofc knows what’s going on with his pappy.. Oscar wanders off later n Robin sits with him, ur not like them u kno, what? Grandma n grandpa ur not the same, OUGH ;-;

2. I suppose this step changes depending on what I feel like, sometimes I'll make the poses/take the screenies first, then write the dialogue, other times I'll write the dialogue first.. I try for the latter since I can make more accurate poses, but time is usually my enemy here cos dialogue needs a nice quiet period to write lmao (let's call this step dialogue for now though)

3. Rip sims for blender, make poses, then head in game to dress everyone, set dress and take screenies, I take a LOT and choose the best ones but here're some unedited examples for you... In this case cos there was a flashback, I also had to remake Oscar/fam as a child n' whatnot, but luckily I have their old house saved so I plonked them all in an alternative save to take those.

4. Now we have our dialogue/screenies, it's time to throw it all together in photoshop, I usually edit the screenie first to fix any clipping etc, fix the lighting, sharpen it up a bit maybe.. but that's about it! Then I press my handy lil (custom made) storyboard action and end up with smth like this, to which I add the text! (this step takes the longest prolly.. cos it takes me forever to pick the screenies I wanna use my GOD 🙈)

VOILA! Once I've chosen all the screenies in the right order I go thru each of em in PS one by one to edit/add captions, then we're done! \o/

I realise this probably seems quite quick/vague or even streamlined if u wanna toot my horn lmaooo but I've spent a while doing this by now so ig I've kinda figured out the quickest way of doing it - still tho, I'd imagine the above still taking between 4-5 hours from start to finish! I usually spread these things over days/weeks in advance tho like.. during the week I mostly make poses/take screenies and write, then at the weekend I'll usually edit a bunch n' throw it all together, so it doesn't rlly feel tedious since I'm switching it up all the time/doing what I fancy.

[elderwisp]

hi! Im so sorry if this is the wrong place to ask, I've looked for answers for this before so I'm just not sure,,

i absolutely adore your sims and your story! Its completely inspired me to create a story w/ my sims as well! the only thing is I'm quite overwhelmed with it all and I don't know where to start :(

do you have any tips? Whats your process? there's so many things to use and I'm just curious what you use! Thanks in advance and no pressure to answer if this is the wrong place :))<33

HAI :D OMG EXCITING <3 no worries! my inbox is always open for assistance and i'd love to help! here's a bunch of tips ranging from writing to technical to artsy stuff:

the start:

⟡ i should preface this story did not begin as one typically would which is say following the example of how to write a novel in a year. my writing style for this project started out with my interest in the characters created. my desire to wanting to know why certain oc's acted the way they did and that's where it all began. what started out as short stories of certain individuals reworked into something much more authentic. this was the hook for me so you gotta find that one sliver of interest and run with it. you can most certainly utilize tools like character sheets, pinboards, storyboards to assist you but i find that if i'm not connected to the story, it's difficult to use them

⟡ with that being said LOL invest the time in fleshing out your character because when you understand how they work, when you believe in them, the easier it'll be in creating scenes and writing dialogue. for me, it's almost intuitive writing for characters to the point where i will easily check myself and rewrite a scene because it didn't align with a certain character

⟡ while the influence of your own ideals/experiences eventually bleed into an oc, it's important to identify that, otherwise a cast of diverse characters eventually feel the same. this was something i struggled with for years which is why i could never really begin until now!

⟡ it's good to ask yourself what sort of story do you want to create. the best question is is it plot driven or character driven? what sort of tone do you want to set? do you want to blend them? i think there's a huge stress on just doing things for fun and not taking things seriously but i do want to challenge others to consider what that might look like for others. sometimes people like to create grand posts or fun slice of life posts and neither is more valid than the other. it's truly up to the author

technical stuff:

⟡ i'm gonna be honest with you, i'm not as organized as i once was in how i go about plotting things however! in the beginning, i would utilize sticky notes with ideas written on them and then shuffle around how i wanted things to play out. now i use a dingy little notebook LMAO but i've heard good things about milanote! as for dialogue, i do use google docs but i do think they're under fire for using your things for ai training or somethin O_O

⟡ i do use photoshop to edit my photos and that usually looks like cropping, color/contrast enhancing and sharpening. i do add dialogue last because when i sharpen it all together, the font looks cwispy! there's this mini tut by @/stinkrascal on how to format the text so it's all even if that's the style you're going for! anyways it changed my LIFE lmao! right here are some free alternatives. also this is an older post in which i shared my process and it includes some tips and tricks with photoshop (you can also see how i used to format text lmaooo)

⟡ knowledge is power. if i find myself really struggling with certain aspects, like maybe the logistics of a character, i'll set aside some time to learn from certain authors, commentators or directors. even if it's a short clip of seeing how they approach something as simple as their thought process behind how a scene supported a character to something as small as the significance of Isha's hat from Arcane

misc writing tips:

⟡ ooh! because tessellate is such a large group of characters, it can be challenging to structuring a plot. so i started off by slowly introducing characters rather than all at once. i also break up character plots into arcs but with that comes filler episodes to help space out big moments. i like to utilize filler episodes as bite sized pieces that introduces the readers to newer characters while also allowing there to be breaks in between. those filler posts highlight certain events, ways of living, etc that might influence how things play out in the future. a good example is kai, we're nearing the end of his arc but all of those little moments in between really helped shaped how things played out!

⟡ when i think of conflict, i think of it a lot like a boiling pot. it starts out at a neutral temperature (your foundation), before bubbles begin to form (minor annoyances between characters), steam hissing (the lead up) to an eventual lid popping off (the conflict). the build up is the most important part to the pay off!

⟡ my best piece of advice for darker themes is really understand the topic and stray away from stereotypes as it diminishes a lot of depth in certain subjects as well as does more harm than good. recognize that at the end of the day a weakness does not define a person as they are a person through and through. approach it with compassion rather than judgement.

⟡ i know i know everyone says to read your dialogue out loud and that is incredibly important however while doing that, think about the flow too. as a writer, because we are goal oriented, sometimes dialogue can be turned into what will progress the plot which makes things feel a bit unnatural and sometimes lacking the proper flow. remember to consider the personality of a character. how is a line delivered through a character who is brash versus one who is a bit more reclusive? also! here's a great video about the stiff dialogue in veilguard that shows what unnatural dialogue can sound like.

⟡ remember, comparison is the thief of joy. it's easy to get caught up in recognition and likes. there was a time where i consistently got 3-5 readers and that was it. there are moments now where certain posts are incredibly inconsistent in engagement and sure, it can be disheartening but then i think about the handful of individuals that consistently comment, the specific asks about how a certain post made them feel seen and interact and i remember why it's i chose to write. it isn't the recognition i seek, it's the connection. it's important to have that one thing that gives you the strength to continue because truthfully, things can be inconsistent and that's okay.

the artsy stuff:

⟡ i am a huge fan of cinema, animation and photography. i think consuming a lot of media and art has helped train my eye especially if i feel as if my screenshots are becoming repetitive. it's good to see how different directors go about framing dialogue. comic panels are amazing as well since artists find new unique ways of captivating an audience through levels like coloring, framing, posing and such! it's honestly why i introduced some vertical shots to black out bars in story posts because of that unique angle! remember, media is meant to inspire you! after watching the latest season of Arcane (haven't finished it yet tho) it genuinely relit a fire under my ass LMAO

⟡ different angles, lighting and positioning can help elevate a story. the aesthetics of a story can really add another layer of depth however it's important to remember that it is a supporting role, not the entire role

⟡ i do use my own reshade and i've formatted it to have similarities of a film camera as well as my preference of color correcting. i lean heavier towards contrast, colors and shadows however i always encourage for people to look into what supports their vision the best! the lightroom shader by quint and pd80's contrast/brightness/saturation shader help with color grading in game as they do have sliders that tweak certain colors. the sepia shader is great for adding a cinematic tint but it can conflict with relight and the way the lights are presented. relight of course can add those shadows in lighting. i'll sometimes have two presets, one for up close shots to further shots because sometimes zooming out can create inconsistencies in your preset as things might look to muggy or like a disco ball LOL (ps what helps with that is adjusting bloom if used and messing around with shadows/midtones/highlights/saturation with that lightroom shader)

last but not least, a story is a labor of love, it's a tool in which authors can utilize the pen to their own manner whether it's to communicate ideas or to simply tell a tale. don't be afraid to dive deep into the layers of your story and remember each piece can be important factor but it's entirely up to you as to where you want that focus to be. it does take a lot of courage to start but i truly believe if it's something you cherish, it'll always be worth it!

i do wish you the best of luck! thank you for trusting me enough to give you some tips and tricks! i tried to lean more into the more finite details as i felt like this is what truly helped me throughout the years! <3 also here is a complimentary meme i made:

[tiny-vermin]

I want to know more about the m9 artist au!! I remember reading a post or two about it a billion years ago (and would love to read them again) 💜

hi jess!!!! thank u for being interested hehe :")

so ever since i drew that lil thing of essek painting a frank stella inspired painting (or even before), ive been thinking of what kinds of art each of the m9 would do. essek ofc is inspired by a minimalist show that i went to here, all the big names from that movement were shown, but those really dark, sinkhole-like paintings are speaking to me. another artwork of boxes made of mirrors also seems like the thing he would do too

there's a kiln here that we visited which was huge, and surrounding it were artists' studios and some other ceramic sellers, i imagine the clay family having a place like this in the middle of nowhere amongst the trees, and caleb would do his work there

anyways because at heart im a shadowgast luver its centred around them,, they meet at an artist residency or something like that and its an incredibly slow burn that involves talking and not-talking and looking and not-looking. in the end i am but a simple wong kar wai fan so. that kinda vibes would definitely influence this, i would describe it as a quiet burning i guess?? time skipy and words that are not said

i think im gonna rant a bit more about their different mediums and styles so i'll keep it under the cut

i think caleb sculpts figures and portraits, but in a sad, kathe kollwitz charcoal vibe. maybe some funky looking animals, perhaps some pots and vases to look at the pretty glazes. he's interested in using fire to burn texture into different mediums, like ive seen it being used on shellac to make a really cool net of ink looking structure.. but yknow, just seeing the aftermath of glazed ceramic from the kiln is enough, and probably better for him to keep his distance anyways

the clay family produces most of the ceramic to sell, vases, pots, plates, cups, teapots, yknow just a whole array. and its really colourful too, depicting every family members different style. i think caduceus would do some matte glazes with a lot of different colours, theyre all a little wonky but theyre better off that way anyways. he does some really mean ink calligraphy and painting though

jester definitely does,, everything, whatever her heart desires kinda thang. she makes pastel textile installations and lighthearted cute paintings, but theyre always so contemplative and soothing. she gets m9 a lot of work cus her mom has connections, etc etc. i really love the idea of jester creating works that talk about the female body and femininity (definitely not projecting no)

beau is a printmaker and photographer who's really experimental, she loves cyanotypes and printing flowers (for yasha), idk she seems like she would put fabric and rocks into the washing machine to see what would happen. u would probably catch her in someone elses studio learning about what they do or in the library learning about what old people did

veth works in a museum as a curator, getting beau to help her sometimes with gathering artworks and artists etc. she probably organises community art projects for kids and public art installations. her house is full of m9's artworks and various other artists shes worked with.

yasha does bouquets as her post-retirement part time job, prior to that no one really knows what she did ("she probably murdered a bunch of people and is now hiding from the government"). fjord draws comics for fun but is also not a job for him, molly is a question mark for me. but these guys probably wont be in it as much anyways

im still not sure what format i wanna do this in, im actually having fun just writing it in my notebook now (digital does not facilitate the creative juices) but i do want to do some visuals like fake movie stills or storyboards. maybe they will work together well???? dunno. working on the other shadowgasty thing im doing made me realise how much easier it is to draw when there's a script already there, so im writing the script for myself

im definitely not as practiced in writing as i am in drawing, but idk im just gonna have some fun and see where that takes me, meanwhile try not to feel too bad that its fanart HAHA (very bad habit)

edit: i just saw my previous thoughts on beau being an art journalist, but i kinda like this better.. but maybe she can do both muah

[heatherhpogson]

10 years ago, I drew Alan Wake! I have grown so much as an artist, and if I had one thing to say to the aspiring artist, it is this, keep going. You're GOING to have bad days, but you will also have days where you are so proud of your work. Ignore social media. It's just a distraction that sometimes boosts the ego. I'm NOT saying, don't post! When it comes to posting on social media, I post so that one day, I can see my progress.

I went from an inexperienced artist to somewhat professional in 10 years. I'm still working on growing, hence the reason why I'm doing 52 weeks of Good Omens fan art. Choose something you love and challenge yourself frequently. That's how you grow as an artist.

I'm self-taught. I started learning art late in life, and since then, I've been trying to find my groove. Two kiddos later, I realized that the message I want to pass on to them is that you're never too old to chase your dream. I'm still trying to figure my dream out. Where do I go after 10 years of learning?

Well, I hope to write my own stories and illustrate them. As a volunteer librarian, I see so many books with beautiful art. I think my future lies somewhere in that direction. Maybe I'll create cover art. Maybe I'll create a graphic novel, or maybe I'll try storyboarding for TV shows and movies. I have so many avenues of life to explore. I'm excited and scared at the same time, but if your dream doesn't scare you, then is it worth it to pursue?

Anyway, I'm starting to ramble on. Don't give up because you didn't do well today. Keep going because tomorrow you might impress yourself. 😉

[kittythegengarmonarch]

15 questions for 15 mutuals

One of my close friends (as well as mutuals) @cadaver-moss tagged me in this! Gracias mi amigo! Now it's my turn! ^^

(There are some questions that reveal a bit too much for me, so I will try my best to alter them.)

Are you named after anyone. I'd say there are 3 answers. Legal name I will change: Yes Real name I use today: Depends. It's a noun that I would describe myself, but in a different language. Also turns out, I learned about a year after I got the name, that the word comes from the name of a spirit! Persona's name: A grandmother's dog (she's a sweetheart)

When was the last time you cried. The last time I actually cried was during a meltdown. The last time I almost cried was when another close friend said he would block me if I sent him a clip of Toad's voice, and because he said that I had a shutdown (he knew what he did was wrong though, and luckily, we made up).

Do you have kids? My sona does (in reality they're my Gengar plushies), but irl, no. I don't plan to have coitus with anyone else in any way, shape or form. (Adopting or fostering kids though, I would say otherwise).

Do you use sarcasm a lot? Depends on my mood, really.

What sports do you play/have you played? Have I played? Kick ball! I made a homerun (after I slid) and ended up getting filled with energy and pride! ^^

What's the first thing you notice about other people? I honestly don't know. I have social anxiety, especially with most other teens (a reason why high school is very stressful for me) and I often prefer to be alone.

Scary movies or happy endings? Happy endings. Easy answer. The King's Game, SCP-5254, Squid Game and SCP-001(WTDB) are perfect examples of why I prefer happy endings, as they have caused me depression and sometimes paranoia. It wasn't pretty. (There is also more media like them that have caused me depression and/or paranoia.)

Any special talents? If drawing counts, yes. Other than that, if it counts, algebra, and most other academic activities.

Where were you born? My sona: Alola Me irl, an southeastern state in the US (Currently living somewhere else, and I will not say the name of either place)

What are your hobbies? Drawing, surfing the net, watching YouTube, napping, shaking the lamb sauce (don't ask. It's a secret), listening to music, car rides (at times), word searches, and other things that are out of my mind right now.

Do you have any pets? The namesake of my sona, Kitty, and Highly [Maybe Confused]. There are some pictures I took of them recently at the bottom of the post. Check out other videos on Tumblr to check them out. Update: We got another bulldog, and his name is Uhtred.

How tall are you? What's 3^4-36+9x2+0? That's your answer. (And no, it's not a _'_ deal)

Favorite subject in school? Art. Other than art, math.

Dream job? Character designer, like James Turner and Ken Sugimori, or an illustrator, like Anne Fitzgerald. Or a storyboard artist.

Eye color? Go outside, and stare at a tree trunk. If not, stare at my dog.

Highly is the tired one(left), and Kitty is the desperate one(right). Update: The puppy below is Uhtred.

I'll tag @liamthemarowak @ghos-tea @tiny-brain @destinylightsup-2006 @leothewtf @andythepurplebird2k5 @alter-ego-cole @boongusbongus and @artsymii

(As it's most likely required. Lmao)

[determunition]

hi gang!

it's been a while but i just wanted to sort out my progress on everything i'm working on rn ^^ especially since i've been getting quite a few new followers recently! welcome welcome to you all btw, i'm super happy to have you here ^w^

OLD_FOLKS HOME: as you might expect i've had a bit of trouble getting back into writing for OFH, but i'm finally on my way! chapter 23 is fully drafted save for some minor edits, and i've just cracked into chapter 24. the tournament arc will be four chapters in total, and once those are done i'll drop them on a biweekly basis! thanks so much for your patience on OFH, it's far outgrown its original scope but i truly do love working on it and can't wait to show you guys all my ideas ^^ if you've not checked out OFH or if you wanna catch up, now's a great time to do so! you can find it right here on ao3: [Link]

=====

Storyboards: i'm on my way to being finished with a pretty big inscryption-based storyboard project! it's about as long as the digital affection animatic, but it's far more silly than cinematic. with any luck i'll have it out by next month! i'll be dropping it on youtube first, so if you'd like to subscribe or otherwise keep an eye on my channel for that you can head over to my channel right here: [Link]

=====

Prints: if you're new to this blog or missed my recent announcement, i started selling some prints of the canon scrybes and my swap scrybes on etsy! they're $15 each and i'm all stocked up, so you won't be waiting too long for delivery ^^ huge shoutout to those who have ordered so far! shipping is still within the US only but i'm planning on changing that sometime soon, so i'll keep you posted. in the meantime you can check out the prints here if you're interested!: [Link]

=====

Misc: Until these projects are done (especially the boards), it's gonna be mostly sketches on the blog proper! i've been in a massive scrybeswap mood lately so that won't change anytime soon, but you can also expect some retyrement and maybe a couple wildcards here and there; hope you enjoy every silly lil doodle i throw up here! i certainly enjoy sharing them haha

==========

and that's basically it for now! a lot of inscryption as you can see, so if you're here for that, lovely news all around! but for those of you who like a bit more variety, know that i've got plenty of shovel knight and a bit of deltarune in the oven too...well, maybe not in the oven; more like uhh cold proofing in the fridge lmao

thanks for reading my lil ramble if you made it this far and another big welcome to all the new folks on the blog! happy to have you here and hope you enjoy yourself ^^

[softausterity]

Don't Take Art Advice from Strangers on the Internet - Art advice from a stranger on the internet

(i'll be discussing drawing within this post because that's my oeuvre but i would like to think it applies to a lot of things. really it's more 'advice on how to take advice' but i couldn't resist.)

If you are anything like me, you have made a thing or two in your time, and 90% of your knowledge on making those things was gained by looking up "How to (blank)" on the internet. There are many excellent resources available for free online! but who's making these resources? Usually, people -- people who are biased and don't know you personally.

Let's say you find a tutorial online telling you how to improve a part of your art you've been struggling with. The person making this tutorial has great art, and they explain the points in an easy-to-follow manner. before you pull out your sketchbook or tablet, (because you should be immediately practicing advice as soon as you see it otherwise it will slide directly out of your brain) you need to think about if you should actually follow that tutorial.

How can you tell? It's not about how good the person's art is, or even if they're a good teacher. What you need to be thinking about is if the tutorial is right for you, specifically.

Almost all "art tutorials" are tutorials on how to draw more like the person making them. it's something beginner artists admit to pretty often with titles like "how to draw this thing in my style" where instead intermediate artists will throw around "the better way to draw this thing!" or "stop drawing this thing like this!"

I'm not saying that's a bad thing! it's how art is, right? Good artists copy, great artists steal, so it makes sense that an art tutorial would simply be a guide on how to steal from the person making it. but it's something you need to be aware of.

people tend to raise a stink about tutorials using language like "this is the wrong way to draw something - this is the correct one" and in a lot of cases i think it's a valid complaint, but what's happened is that it's just resulted in changing the phrasing to "this is a good way to draw something, but this is a better way." which is just a nicer way of saying exactly the same thing.

since this language is so common, if you're going to find art tutorials online, the onus is on you to figure out which tutorials are good or bad for you and your art.

When you're looking at someone who's a professional artist, they're usually going to be clearer about who their advice is for. Take Ethan Becker, for example. His videos are excellent and i'd recommend him to basically anyone asking for visual art advice. However, as you can pick up on pretty quickly, his advice is for people looking to get into the animation industry!

If you're, say, looking to get into illustration, maybe more painterly stuff, his advice is still helpful, but you need to pick and choose what you need. The point about not wasting time learning muscle groups is great advice if you're only focused on working as a storyboarder or concept artist for an animation studio, but if you're interested in pretty much anything else, learning human anatomy is one of the most helpful things you can do. this doesn't mean he's wrong, of course. he's teaching the thing he knows, which is working in the animation industry.

If someone is saying that their way is "the better way to draw this thing" you need to look at their art, and what they're explaining, and figure out what they actually mean. is it "the better way to draw this thing for webcomic artists" or "the better way to draw this thing if you want to be popular on instagram"? what are your personal goals with your art?

this does not transition into my point about learning the fundamentals as well as i wanted it to and this post is already too long. more posts sometime soon because i love listening to myself talk. watch ethan becker.

[kidrest]

Sweet @aigoos tagged me, so here we are.

If you are tagged, post a picture or write out the names of your fics/WIPS as they are in your computer/phone. (Explain the names if you think it's necessary)

I kinda cheated and showed you only my 'Obikin' folder. It hides in the 'SW related' folder in which there are 2 other WIPs (that will probably never see the daylight lol):

- 'SW what if something': Vader didn't die and Luke hid his father on some lost planet, but has to ask him for help after Leia and Ben are being kidnapped. I wanted a very angry Ani rampaging the entire galaxy like "What do you mean you've taken my daughter and grandson???? You are so gonna die". This with Luke who follows him like a happy golden retriever puppy and Han who wonders why Vader is scarier as their ally than as their enemy. All this under the very amused eyes of force-ghost Obi-wan who throws Ani in battles like Ash throws Pikachu. Oh and they all hug at the end bc my mental health needs Ani to hug his children.

- 'SW something I wanted to keep (Ani and Padmé divorce)': I like to give long names to my documents lol. This one is quite self-explanatory x)

To go back on the Obikin folder, you have an insight of how I'm working:

1) I try, as much as possible to have a 'storyboard' bc it's way too helpful. They mean nothing, I love it.

2) then, well, I write the fic lol. If it's a long one, I like to have another doc on which I only have the chapter I'm working on. This is because it allows me to focus on one thing at the time and because my laptop sometimes has issues opening +20 pages docs so I go easy on it x)

I'm not going to explain them all because this post is already too long, but...

- 'Obikin because I need therapy...' is actually the very first Obikin fic I started working on. It wasn't even that bad so maybe I'll finish it one day x)

- 'Dancing with the waves' is actually the WIP I'm really working on and, unless I post OS, will be the next fic you'll see on my AO3.

- 'This FUCKING picture' exists because there is a picture of Ewan MacGregor in a kilt that lives rent free in my head and when I saw it I thought "damn... Anakin is so going to rail him" (I'll post it once it's done, yes I promise)

- 'The will of the Force' has nothing to do here because it's not an Obikin fic even though these two idiots are concerned x)

The 'Dance with the waves (title?)' folder simply contains each chapter, one by doc.

The last folder contains:

- 'I'll thank my car', first OS with smut and I'm still very fond of it;

- 'I'll thank the empire 1.0', this one disappeared in a fire;

- 'I'll thank the empire 2.0', this one will disappear in a fire;

- aaaaaand... soon enough, there will be 'I'll thank my/your desk' because I have very strong feelings about Obi-wan fucking Anakin on a desk, don't ask.

That's pretty much it.

I have no idea of who to tag so if you want to do it feel free, you can blame me x)

[television-overload]

Get to know your fic writer (no pressure):

1, 4, 13, 16, 22, 25 (add link if you want), 40, 54, 56

Ooh yay! Thanks for the ask! I think I copied these all over correctly. I was bored so I went in-depth 😂 Here we go:

1. Do you prefer writing one-shots or multi-chaptered fics?

I've been sitting here for like 5 minutes trying to figure out which I prefer 😂. I find myself coming up with multi-chapter ideas more often I think, really grand plots that I definitely don't have time to devote attention to. I also run into the problem of not knowing how to fill in between the parts that I do I have ideas for, so true multi-chapter fics are a rarity. I've had a few times where a one-shot turned into a multi chap, and THOSE tend to work better and are way more cohesive. One of my favorites is one I wrote for Star Wars (wrong blog, oops 😅) but both chapters were a lot stronger than my usual stuff, and it performed way better on AO3 which was really gratifying.

I've always wanted to write a true masterpiece where readers are anxiously awaiting the next chapter, like so many I've read, but I don't know if I've ever gotten there yet. Maybe a few when I used to write NCIS stuff on fanfiction.net.

4. Where do you find inspiration for new ideas?

Songs, a lot of times. They hit me in the feels. Sometimes a line in a fic I'm reading will spark an idea, something I haven't thought about, a new interpretation of an existing scene from the source material. Gifsets, Tumblr meta analysis, movies I'm watching. So many places. I feel like half of them come to me when I'm at work, which is very inconvenient. The aforementioned Star Wars two-shot was half written on the bus ride home from work in the notes app on my phone. I've written several in the aftermath of particularly good or bad episodes/movies. Fix-it fanfic is always great, I feel like I need to write more of it.

13. What’s a common writing tip that you almost always follow?

I haven't done this for very long, but lately in my adulthood (as opposed to my teenage fics *shudders*) I've actually been pretty good about writing out an outline and going back to edit later. I used to just spew everything in a word doc and barely go through it before posting, but now I reread it to death, mostly to make sure it flows well. My outlines are, shall we say, extensive. The Star Wars fic I'm working on now had 20 chapters outlined and it totaled over 20,000 words. I've basically storyboarded the whole thing and then I go through and convert that to actual scenes. Important dialogue moments I want to hit are included, cause I know I'll forget them if I don't write them as they come to me. It helps me to be able to see the big picture, so that I don't give up on the project halfway through. But for spur of the moment fics or most one-shots, I still mostly write as I go. Occasionally if I have a thought that I want to make sure to include in a later scene, I'll just tack it on at the bottom of the doc and delete it once I get to that point and I put it in writing.

16. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Share one of them.

They're scattered all over the place so that's a good question that God probably only knows the answer to. Some are barely even ideas but take up a line or two in my notes app on my phone. Some probably live only in my brain, forgotten until something triggers me to remember that I was thinking of writing it 😅.

I'd love to do something with @irish-trish 's prompt to fill in the scene from NCIS "She mentioned you at the funeral, I could see what she felt." It sounds right up my alley, but there's a Star Wars fic week coming up in September that I want to actually do on time this year, so I can't allow myself to shift focus to NCIS quite yet 😭

Other than that, I want to write a second chapter to my X-Files fic "Field of Dreams" where Mulder gets to play catch with his son. I really loved writing that fic.

22. Are there certain types of writing you won’t do? (style, pov, genre, tropes, etc)

Nothing spicy. I don't think I'd ever write in first person unless it was in the form of a letter. Other than that, I think I'd do pretty much whatever. It's just a matter of what I have the skills for I think 😂

Not a fan of AUs, except canon divergence, obviously. To me, the way the characters meet is so integral to who they are that it can't be changed much or it just doesn't feel like them. I've read maybe one fic that changed how characters met (Mulder and Scully) but that was the result of time travel and all sorts of things that warmed me up to the idea, plus the characters as we know them were still there. Alternate universe in the truest sense. I got distracted, what were we talking about?

25. What fic do you wish you got more of a response on?

The two fics I think of as my comfort fics, ones I found really peaceful and natural to write, would have been nice to see get more attention. I've been writing on and off for like a decade now (😳) and I've only ever really had one fic truly pop off in terms of kudos and comments. Which are literally my life blood 😂. But a lot of my older stuff I look back on and I'm like, yeah, that wasn't that great.

My Star Wars (Obi-Wan and Satine) one shot "this could be such a dream" I found really emotional and relaxing to write. I was kind of surprised it didn't go very far, but it was part of a weekly challenge thing so I suppose it makes sense in a way.

To get back to the TV shows I write for, though (since that's the focus or THIS blog), I really really loved my X-Files fic "Field of Dreams", in large part because I love that movie which inspired it, and I love a domestic, peaceful and content-if-not-happy happily ever after for Mulder and Scully. The movie itself makes me cry and feel so many feels, and I thought the connection to Fox Mulder was a really good one.

40. If someone were to make fanart of your work, what fic or scene would you hope to see?

I would welcome anythinggggg, that is my dream!! I haven't really written anything I'm super proud of yet in the NCIS fandom that I feel would warrant art, but maybe someday! I'm working on a Star Wars "Sound of Music" type looooong fic rn and boy, the amount of work I've put in, I would die if someone were engaged enough to be inspired by it.

54. What’s your favorite part about the fanfiction writing process?

Honestly, I get so excited to post it. I hope people will enjoy what I've written. I've read so much great fanfic, that I just want to contribute my 2 cents to the fandoms. Getting comments (as rare as it often is) literally makes my day and makes it all worthwhile to me. Any form of engagement, interaction here on Tumblr, that's what I strive for. But I also write for me. Exploring ideas I've never seen done before, filling in gaps in the fandom, I love it. Those comfort fics I was talking about, I love to just go back and read. It doesn't really matter, in the end, if they touched other people like they do me. I like them and that's what matters. The fics I'm not so proud of? I've been transferring them over from Tumblr and fanfiction.net anyway because some of them have received really lovely comments and people might enjoy them despite how I feel.

56. What’s something about your writing that you pride yourself on?

I hope I'm improving on descriptive language. I want to bring out emotions in my writing, and I think there's been definite improvement since I started. I'm also thankful that I have a grasp on grammar and spelling and all the typical writing conventions. That can be a turn off to a lot of readers if it's a complete mess, so luckily I was always a pretty harsh editor throughout my schooling 😅

Get to know your fic writer

[madamemachikonew]

54. What’s your favorite part about the fanfiction writing process?

I find it easy to immerse myself in your work, and wanted to know if you had a technique for consistency haha ( ´ ▽ ` ).｡ｏ♡

Aww, firstly thank you for the compliment! I'm so glad to hear you enjoy reading my work! And thank you also for the question.

Hmm, so I guess I should start with a broad overview of my process. My fics usually start with some kind of favourite scene that will then lead the concept and plot. Or there are certain dialogues that I want to happen and it's non-negotiable that they are cut. It's completely ass over backwards, I know. I will then often work backwards to plot the route of how we get there, sometimes by several chapters. Some of my fics are more episodic, so this doesn't really count because each chapter is almost like a stand alone one-shot but with continuity (e.g. my Enjou and Baizhu longfics). For the episodic fics, I usually keep a list of ideas or scenes for chapters that I want to include but the order is somewhat flexible because there's no real overarching plot as such.

But the Pants fic requires a lot more advanced planning (though I still keep a list of ideas for scenes). So with that one I plot a broad framework using the key scenes or dialogues as the markers and then flesh them out, not necessarily in the chapter order. For example, I have a chapter already written that is plot vital but won't occur maybe for another three or four chapters from now. It can't happen any earlier, but I needed to get it out of my system. And now I have a firm anchor to work towards. It also means I can make sure the intervening chapters are consistent and have subtle foreshadowing, etc. because I know for sure what is going to happen. I like to think that some of these details and foreshadowing also give the fic extra mileage on a reread, because now the reader can spot them (eg Pants's meeting with Signora and Zhongli with the gnosis hits different once you know his life story, which comes in a later chapter). So then I'll go back and forth fleshing out the interceding chapters little by little. I rarely sit down and write a whole chapter in one go or consecutively. The ending arc of my still ongoing Enjou fic was fully drafted around the chapter 10 mark - it's at chapter 39 now and over 100k, but I already know how it will end. But like any chapters I write in advance, I come back constantly and refine them before I hit post. 

As for my favourite part of all of this...I guess the descriptions (as if that wasn't clear enough lol)! Once upon a time I wanted to be a cinematographer and/or director (Narrator: she did not become either of these things, though she did do a lot of arty amateur photography over the years) and I think my writing is probably a subconscious reflection of this in terms of its 'staging' and 'close up shots' if that makes sense? This will sound pretentious af, but since I'm not very good at drawing, I want to convey a vivid picture in the reader's imagination that correlates as far as possible with how I've visually imagined the scene in my mind and the arty background shots that aren't necessarily of the characters' faces. Imagine stuff like a close up of Pants's hands as he throws some ice cubes into a tumbler or a lower profile shot showing how the trinket on his glasses dangles and sparkles off the stage lights in an otherwise dark theatre. That kind of thing. The only way I can do that is through the descriptions as I can't storyboard it like I would a film or animation. I think these subtle descriptive elements bring it more to life. I enjoy imagining the scene from a purely visual basis as much as the content, as I think it's important when you're storytelling.

Another favourite thing of mine is showing contrasting inner thoughts of characters in the same situation, for example the scene where Pants is 'grieving' for Signora. If I was working to a more orthodox 'xReader' format, I could only show you what Reader actually sees or hears from her own perspective (as I did when she sees Signora getting into the rickshaw with Pants). But I also like to show the actual fic readers (as opposed to the character) the full story.

My other favourite thing is integrating lore nerdery. So I love researching tiny details from NPC dialogue or quest lore or whatever and making them part of the plot, to give the whole fic more depth from a world-building perspective and show how they weave into the main characters' lives. Since I normally write for NPCs (Baizhu pre-playable era, Enjou, Pants...) I have to extrapolate a lot from the tiny crumbs we get. A lot of lore goes unintentionally ignored as well because we don't understand the significance of it in the early game, for example, Landa's quest is now more significant than it was when it was released. It's so interesting going back and seeing how it all comes together.

[magpierrecanarie]

I seriously need to keep up with my schedule, this is the second time in the same week I've forgotten to post something on the day I said I would.

On another note, thanks for 40+ notes on the Technoblade fanart, it means a lot to me :D

TL;DR: I talk a bit regarding my plans for my Vocaloid AU's Piko Utatane, not very long since I've been slaving away doing a bigger project.

↓↓ Click here if you'd like to know more! ↓↓

Hello again! My brain and eyes have been dying on me these days, I'm so sorry I couldn't get to this earlier.

There's lots of things I haven't gotten to doing tbh, BUT I can happily announce that I've been starting on my portfolio projects for my college. I'll probably post progress pics of them every time I reach a certain point I'm happy with. The one I'm currently doing is more hands-on and less about drawing, which is why I've been running out of stock. (This is 100% an excuse to start posting WIPs)

In fact, one of the projects I've listed down is an entire animated PMV for this AU, with Piko as the MC!

I'll have to ask the person responsible whether I can send them that though, so it's still up in the air as of now. I have plotted a general storyboard of what should happen when and I'll be posting some of its pictures in... maybe a couple more days?

Anyways, back to the main focus.

I vaguely remember mentioning that Piko's a dickhead in the story in my last Oliver post, and that's absolutely true LMAO. I want him to be this little man who's incredibly cocky and mad, who had big aspirations but they were crushed by reality. He lashes out at people whenever his insecurity is brought up and he especially hates the people responsible for it.

His friends have been trying to get him to open up about it but it never works, sometimes it even backfires on them because he's just that stubborn.

Even so, all he's trying to do is protect his friends. In his perspective, he's just trying to make them stop associating with that gang because it won't do them any good. Just like what he went through when he first arrived. They'll only feel hurt when they realize the truth.

Which is why I've designed him with this concept in mind, like a floating jacket is cool as hell and I would love to have one in real life, (Even if it may be absolutely useless, it's for the a e s t h e t i c, okay?) but the implications of it is GREAT. He also has sharp as hell eyeliner because who doesn't like eyeliner? I think it makes him look really edgy and that is exactly how he is as a person so it works out kinda.

Okay, this is getting really long for just "a bit." I'll probably go into deeper detail once I actually ask about the PMV stuff.

See you soon! B) I can't explicitly say on which day because I know my stupid ass is going to forget somehow.

[dragonwysper]

I do a lot of the above currently, and I've done the rest (and more) previously.

I do traditional all the time, and that was the one I started with. Probably my favorite medium to work in.

I use all kinds of mediums in that too. I started with just an HB pencil, of course. But then that turned into all kinds of graphite, and that progressed into a brief charcoal phase (which I dropped and baven't touched because got damn that's a messy medium to work in), then I did Prismacolor colored pencils, then Copic Markers, then I tried watercolors, then acrylics, and now oils. I've done all kinds of other smaller things in other mediums, and not all of my previous phases have been fully dropped. I experiment and mix mediums a LOT. Copics are still my medium of choice when looking to draw something and color it, and I'll usually start with a pencil sketch, use a Gellyroll to line it, then use Copics to color, and then sometimes use Prismacolors for added depth and throw on some highlights with a Uniball. It's ridiculously fun to throw shit around and just... have fun with it.

Acrylic photo study | watercolor 'brellyfish' | pens and markers on my hand | Copics, Prismacolors, and pens | pencil doodle on an assignment

I have a nice screen tablet currently (and also use screen tablets in my animation class). My old tracking tablet broke.

I'm still really sad about that tracking tablet. That thing held strong for seven years!

When I draw with a finger on my phone, I usually do a sketch traditionally, then take a picture of it and bring it in as a base. Sometimes I'll do lineart traditionally and use the 'convert to lineart' feature on the apps I use. I'm actually getting a lot better at working on a phone!

Lineart scanned in from a traditional doodle, the rest done in MediBang on my phone. This actually isn't done yet.

And yes, when I was first starting out digitally, I used a mouse/trackpad. I actually made a full animation back then. In MSpaint.

Tumblr wouldn't let me upload videos, and the only way I could get this here was by making it a gif... which is extremely limited. But it's whatever. Enjoy the animation I made for an old Scratch project.

I used MSpaint until a year or two after getting my tracking tablet. Then I found FireAlpaca, and used that for a LONG time. Then that progressed to Clip Studio Paint, which I started using about a year or two ago.

Modern MSpaint drawing juxtaposed with a modern CSP drawing. Both WIPs that I need to finish.

In class, I use Photoshop, Adobe Animate (fucking hate Adobe though. Piece of shit company with unnecessarily complex toolbars/mechanics), and Toon Boom (Harmony and Storyboard). We were supposed to use Maya this year too, but we unfortunately didn't have enough time to get to it.

Toon Boom Harmony animation... that I also still need to finish lmao

On my phone, I started with IbisPaint, and now use MediBang.

This has become an art dump of a post, and honestly I so love it lmao. Y'all get to see some more of my art! Plus some really old shit! I'd share more if Tumblr didn't limit images to 10. Maybe another art dump will come in the future 👁

[joannaliangart]

Hello! this blog is an attempt to categorize all* the art I've ever done! (more details on that below the bullet points)

It's still a bit of a work in progress with uploading previous work; once I'm done with that I'll start linking this tumblr on my various other social media probably maybe lol

#Tagging system:

(all art is also tagged with their title+year of creation. you could use tumblr's archive view to sort by year, but at the start of this blog I was uploading a bunch of old art a lil out of order so that won't really work for most work made before 2024 lol)

Mediums

acrylic

animation

artist books

books (also see: zines / artist books)

comics

craft (ie kinda like more functional than conceptual, e.g. earrings or bowls)

digital

etching

gouache

illustration

linocut

markers

mixed media

photography

plants (when I use. dried plants etc in my work)

poetry

print (ie printed matter)

printmaking (also see linocut / etching)

risograph

storyboarding

textiles (includes if I paint on fabric)

video

watercolour

zines

Categories/context

amv

apple (my cat lol)

commissions

doodle sheet

fanart

fursona

ib art (also see: uni)

map part

me (also see: fursona / moss)

moss

oc (notably: bluebell littleears / candle light / caligo)

peppermint-moss (youtube videos/commission work will have this tag)

plein air

process (ie sharing thoughts on concept/creation process)

scribbles (ie doodles/quick work)

sketchbook

studies

uni

update later (a tag just for me; posts I want to write more on/add new photos onto later when i have the time)

wip (work in progress photos)

More blog context:

"but Joanna, you already have another art blog and an instagram and a portfolio website where you post art!" Yes I know I have also been agonizing over this lmao. I've been just kinda thinking that man I make art for SUCH different audiences sometimes and I've finally relented to the necessity of dividing that art up into different accounts and places in order to give my work more clarity to those different audiences. BUT for ME I'd love to have one place where I can kinda just see everything and talk about all my work existing together... So this is what that blog is! It's All* My Art. I do love archiving and organizing things haha

This blog will also be the place I share my thoughts and process about a piece! Really going into the more traditional idea of "blogging" with this one boys

(*all is not quite accurate because for work made before 2018/19ish I'm just choosing what I think was significant to me/interesting in my journey. also *all except for I'll probably only put digital art that i feel is significant on this blog. see my peppermint-moss blog for a comprehensive look at all my digital art/animation and wips)

OTHER ART ACCOUNTS:

@peppermint-moss (tumblr + youtube) 🌸 digital art, animation videos, fanart 🌸 also see: digital art commission website (which are attached to the peppermint-moss name!)

@ joannaliang.art (instagram) 🎨 zines, artist books, some comics..... 🎨 more "visual art world" kind of things because most people who follow me there are from my university/similar spaces. a more 'polished' surface level look at my practice. (the place where I'd say things like 'my artistic practice...' and 'conceptually speaking my intentions for the piece were...' and whatever else lol)

portfolio website 🌱 the thing I'd send for applications/fancy people asking to see more of my work

this blog 💐 an attempt at a holistic catalogue of all of those things! + sharing my process/thoughts on my art