#my whole problem is probably just my art style

[fried-manto]

King

[minakoaiinos]

Me when I think my dad is cool and admirable

[frog-in-a-dew]

A detective trying to uncover just what exactly is going on and where did all these magical girls come from VS his niece and her group of trouble making friends who are a tad bit too obsessed with an old cartoon for their own good, following him around like ducklings

[exopelagic]

sudden realisation that the thing holding my art back is that I never had an anime phase

[lewisvinga]

fashion help | charles leclerc x fem! reader x alexandra saint mleux !

summary; how charles, y/n, and alexandra came to be all because of y/n wanting to help a clueless charles in a mall

warnings; ?? none i think

word count; 635

all works taglist; @goldenmclaren @namgification @c-losur3 @minkyungseokie @lavisenri @ollieshifts

note; requested !

masterlist !

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“Alex! These are cute too, no?” Y/n questioned as she ran over to a pink dress and a matching red one beside it. The couple were searching for a matching outfit for an art exhibit event which led them to the large department store in Monaco to find outfits.

“These are quite cute, amor.” Alexandra quietly says. One hand was interlocked with her girlfriends and the other ran down the fabric of the dress. “The fabric isn’t the greatest but-“

She turned to look at Y/n but she was seemingly distracted, staring at the men’s side of the department store.

“Why is he grabbing those blue pants? They’re hideous.”

Alexandra followed where Y/n was staring and saw a confused brunette looking through the racks of clothing. He held up a pair of patterned blue pants which the Art student had to admit was hideous.

“Maybe he’s shopping for a friend?”

“Then I have to help him! If someone gifted me those pants I’d be offended.”

“Y/n, no-“ Before She could finish her sentence, Y/n was already walking towards him.

Alexandra loved her girlfriend, she truly did. She just hated sometimes how extroverted she was and was willing to go up to a stranger to tell him about his poor fashion choices. She hesitantly shuffled behind. She was already preparing to apologize to her girlfriend when she suddenly heard the mystery man thank her.

“Honestly, I don’t even know what I’m doing here. My friends always say I’m bad at this.” He says with a chuckle, causing both Alexandra’s and Y/n’s hearts to skip a beat. “But thank you. I didn’t quite catch your name?”

“I’m Y/n and this is my girlfriend, Alexandra.”

“Charles, it is a pleasure to meet you both.” He smiled as he shook their hands. Any other man would’ve probably been shocked at Alexandra and Y/n’s relationship, which was common because men always hit on them, but Charles was different.

Both girls were bisexual, so they weren’t new to romantic feelings towards the opposite sex. But they had been dating for a few months and only had feelings for each other. Until the confused-looking Monegasque caught both of their attention. Even Charles felt intrigued, noticing how Alexandra stared at him or how Y/n’s touch lingered for a second too long when shaking his hand.

There was a tension that fell over the three of them and neither could quite decipher what it was. Y/n cleared her throat after a few seconds of silence had passed.

“Good thing Alex and I have good fashion taste.” She said with a smile. With one hand she holds onto Alexandra’s hand and with the other she grabs Charles. “Now, looking at you, I think these would fit well.”

Her girlfriend gave the Monegasque a look before they both laughed at Y/n’s enthusiasm about what pants style and what color looked best on him.

Hours had passed by the time the girls finished picking out a whole new wardrobe for Charles, although it felt like it was just a few minutes.

“I’ve got to thank you both. I really do appreciate the help.” Charles said with a smile, the three of them walking out of the store with bags in hand.

“Oh, it’s no problem. I’m a fashion major so this is kind of my thing.” Y/n said with a smile.

“She just really likes to help people.” Alexandra nudged her girlfriend’s side as she chuckled.

“Are you two busy?” Charles suddenly asked, “I’d like to treat you both to lunch as a thank you.” He wore a hopeful smile as the two girls shared a glance.

Y/n being the most straightforward one, linked one arm with Alexandra and the other with Charles. “Well, lead the way!” She exclaimed with a laugh and the rest was history.

[arcadia345]

Astro observations🌺

FYI I’m not a real astrologer, just my observations :) TW🔞

The cancer moon men I know are pretty chill and laid back + funny, but the women are so bitchy and moody😭 with a big sweet tooth

Every twin I know either has Gemini or Pisces placements

You ever meet someone and their neck just stands out for some reason added points if they smell good, most likely they’re a Taurus rising/ mars. Good example is Megan thee stallion her neck is so cute to me hehe

Aries in the chart can show you the things you were introduced to at a very young age, the early memories that you think of and say ‘That was wild lol’

3rd: could’ve started learning way before you started school(like flash cards and things) siblings and cousins, music, having access to electronics early

4th: erratic home life, the woman around you could be go getters

6th: could’ve got a lot of injuries when younger, probably couldn’t have a peaceful day even if you tried, bad experiences with animals

7th: domestic abuse, might have seen people having affairs, lots of disagreements between couples

12th:paranormal events, you could’ve had a lot of deja vu moments without even knowing, tend to have strong spiritual gifts,people having ill intentions towards you

Aquarius moon or degree/ moon in the 11th tend to have a “second mom” a person that treats them like their one of their own children, sometimes even better than their own mother does. 🌚

The people with mars in the first house I know have so many battle scars on their body

Moon/cancer in 3rd love changing their voices, and they have a bad habit of not telling the whole truth / white lies

Water sign on the descendent- people are always wondering what you’re up to, no matter how much you show them they’ll still wanna know what you’re hiding

Your first house correlates to how you came into this world, I have Chiron (ruled by Virgo) in my 12 conjunct my ascendant, uhm she said she almost d*ed having me😀 and I was a C-section baby. And the hospital did her so dirty(you know much they hate black women) they didn’t even stitch her back up correctly or drain her fluids and to this day she still has problems. The also gave her extra dosages of drugs just cause she’s a plus size woman- honestly I could go on and on but it really correlates with my cap rising and Neptune/Uranus in 1st

Mercury ☌ Sun, these people voices are just💋💋 they sound so sensual and unique ugh hard to explain it but 🥴 ex. Jungkook , Tupac

Gemini/ Libra in 2nd love collecting things like figurines makeup clothes candles plushies, could easily be a borderline hoarder tho

Ives noticed that sun in 10th have a strained relationship with their father, but their later years in life their relationship gets better, or not could really go either way, also could have money issues in their early years but ends up climbing the corporate ladder. It may take you a while to tho but just know it’ll be worth it in the end :) also they always stand out at their work place in some way, the coworker that you’re glad to see clock in at rush hour cause you know they gonna handle shit

Venus- mercury positive aspects love giving out nicknames to their favorite people 🥺if they’re always calling you cute names just know they really care about you lol

Sag moons and degrees have no chill😀 like calm down bae sag anything tbh🚬

9th house ruler in the 11th could go to the same college with their old friends or could become very popular in the area they’re in, I think they’d make good bloggers

Air signs or degrees in 5th are trend setters.

Aquarius you inspire people, they could take things and make it into their own like art

With gemini here people will “copy & paste” ur looks. But no matter what it just looks like a knockoff version of what you did lmao it just never look as good as yours

Libra here people are very opinionated on how you express yourself either in a good way or bad, neither less you guys get a lot of compliments on your style

Every time I see a Capricorn rising with Neptune in the 1st it’s like their skin is see through and fragile😯makes sense tho since caps rule the skin and Neptune fogs things up. A good example is Ariana Grande her skin looks so delicate

Pluto/Scorpio in the 11th/11th house ruler in 8th, your friends could hate each other🤺 also they could have a rough life/childhood, trauma bonding or just experiencing traumatic events together is common here

Chiron in Aries (honestly any Aries placements it just depends on where it is), most people didn’t pay attention to them in their childhood in some way so they learned to be independent because of their lack of support cardinal things fr

That’s all for today! Give me a follow if you enjoyed💕

[autisticandroids]

i've been seeing ai takes that i actually agree with and have been saying for months get notes so i want to throw my hat into the ring.

so i think there are two main distinct problems with "ai," which exist kind of in opposition to each other. the first happens when ai is good at what it's supposed to do, and the second happens when it's bad at it.

the first is well-exemplified by ai visual art. now, there are a lot of arguments about the quality of ai visual art, about how it's soulless, or cliche, or whatever, and to those i say: do you think ai art is going to be replacing monet and picasso? do you think those pieces are going in museums? no. they are going to be replacing soulless dreck like corporate logos, the sprites for low-rent edugames, and book covers with that stupid cartoon art style made in canva. the kind of art that everyone thinks of as soulless and worthless anyway. the kind of art that keeps people with art degrees actually employed.

this is a problem of automation. while ai art certainly has its flaws and failings, the main issue with it is that it's good enough to replace crap art that no one does by choice. which is a problem of capitalism. in a society where people don't have to sell their labor to survive, machines performing labor more efficiently so humans don't have to is a boon! this is i think more obviously true for, like, manufacturing than for art - nobody wants to be the guy putting eyelets in shoes all day, and everybody needs shoes, whereas a lot of people want to draw their whole lives, and nobody needs visual art (not the way they need shoes) - but i think that it's still true that in a perfect world, ai art would be a net boon, because giving people without the skill to actually draw the ability to visualize the things they see inside their head is... good? wider access to beauty and the ability to create it is good? it's not necessary, it's not vital, but it is cool. the issue is that we live in a society where that also takes food out of people's mouths.

but the second problem is the much scarier one, imo, and it's what happens when ai is bad. in the current discourse, that's exemplified by chatgpt and other large language models. as much hand-wringing as there has been about chatgpt replacing writers, it's much worse at imitating human-written text than, say, midjourney is at imitating human-made art. it can imitate style well, which means that it can successfully replace text that has no meaningful semantic content - cover letters, online ads, clickbait articles, the kind of stuff that says nothing and exists to exist. but because it can't evaluate what's true, or even keep straight what it said thirty seconds ago, it can't meaningfully replace a human writer. it will honestly probably never be able to unless they change how they train it, because the way LLMs work is so antithetical to how language and writing actually works.

the issue is that people think it can. which means they use it to do stuff it's not equipped for. at best, what you end up with is a lot of very poorly written children's books selling on amazon for $3. this is a shitty scam, but is mostly harmless. the behind the bastards episode on this has a pretty solid description of what that looks like right now, although they also do a lot of pretty pointless fearmongering about the death of art and the death of media literacy and saving the children. (incidentally, the "comics" described demonstrate the ways in which ai art has the same weaknesses as ai text - both are incapable of consistency or narrative. it's just that visual art doesn't necessarily need those things to be useful as art, and text (often) does). like, overall, the existence of these kids book scams are bad? but they're a gnat bite.

to find the worst case scenario of LLM misuse, you don't even have to leave the amazon kindle section. you don't even have to stop looking at scam books. all you have to do is change from looking at kids books to foraging guides. i'm not exaggerating when i say that in terms of texts whose factuality has direct consequences, foraging guides are up there with building safety regulations. if a foraging guide has incorrect information in it, people who use that foraging guide will die. that's all there is to it. there is no antidote to amanita phalloides poisoning, only supportive care, and even if you survive, you will need a liver transplant.

the problem here is that sometimes it's important for text to be factually accurate. openart isn't marketed as photographic software, and even though people do use it to lie, they have also been using photoshop to do that for decades, and before that it was scissors and paintbrushes. chatgpt and its ilk are sometimes marketed as fact-finding software, search engine assistants and writing assistants. and this is dangerous. because while people have been lying intentionally for decades, the level of misinformation potentially provided by chatgpt is unprecedented. and then there are people like the foraging book scammers who aren't lying on purpose, but rather not caring about the truth content of their output. obviously this happens in real life - the kids book scam i mentioned earlier is just an update of a non-ai scam involving ghostwriters - but it's much easier to pull off, and unlike lying for personal gain, which will always happen no matter how difficult it is, lying out of laziness is motivated by, well, the ease of the lie.* if it takes fifteen minutes and a chatgpt account to pump out fake foraging books for a quick buck, people will do it.

*also part of this is how easy it is to make things look like high effort professional content - people who are lying out of laziness often do it in ways that are obviously identifiable, and LLMs might make it easier to pass basic professionalism scans.

and honestly i don't think LLMs are the biggest problem that machine learning/ai creates here. while the ai foraging books are, well, really, really bad, most of the problem content generated by chatgpt is more on the level of scam children's books. the entire time that the internet has been shitting itself about ai art and LLM's i've been pulling my hair out about the kinds of priorities people have, because corporations have been using ai to sort the resumes of job applicants for years, and it turns out the ai is racist. there are all sorts of ways machine learning algorithms have been integrated into daily life over the past decade: predictive policing, self-driving cars, and even the youtube algorithm. and all of these are much more dangerous (in most cases) than chatgpt. it makes me insane that just because ai art and LLMs happen to touch on things that most internet users are familiar with the working of, people are freaking out about it because it's the death of art or whatever, when they should have been freaking out about the robot telling the cops to kick people's faces in.

(not to mention the environmental impact of all this crap.)

[dragengyrr]

"Lose the jacket"…

More Alastor in dress from this post because I am completely normal about it (I’m not).

@prince-liest : answering previous asks, let’s establish now that if I mention you directly in my posts, you are free to link the art to your fics without asking (after all, it wouldn’t have existed without them). I’m pretty sure I’m not done with them. Cheers <3

Artist’s little side note (because I feel like rambling again): so Hazbin gave me two life improvements (well, three, if you add the music) - one was stepping foot into the unknown aroace territory and being hit on the head with realisation that it was my home all along, making my questionable behaviours and reactions in the past a whole lot less… weird. At least for me, the allos probably still thought I was weird af, but that’s their problem now.

Second improvement was discovering a cartoony style that just sits right with my hand. I’ve always loved cartoons, had a little nostalgic era at the end of high school where I went back to the stuff I’d watched as a kid (Jake Long, Ben 10, Kid vs Kat, Samurai Jack), then I was discovering shows that were made quite recently already as an adult (Over the Garden Wall, Gravity Falls, The Owl House), I loved them for various reasons… but every time I tried to play with their style, I couldn’t get past a few drawings.

I also never truly worked out my own cartoony style, so I thought I’d be stuck with realism for all eternity - which is not bad by any means, it’s just that added pressure of your own artistic ego whispering into your ear that if you misplace one tendon or muscle, or get the proportions wrong, you’ll likely burn down in some special part of hell, specifically for artists that are too lazy to check their anatomy atlas for every single drawing they make. Or maybe that’s just me.

The point is – I don’t remember the last time I produced so many drawings in such a short time, and it’s a blast. And I can focus on posing and emotions more than anything, thus learning new tricks, and it might improve my realistic art as well, right now limited by my fear of it somehow looking incorrect (because that would surely mean the end of the world).

-End of ramble-

[kozachenko]

[Click image for better quality]

I FIGURED OUT A WAY TO FUCKING MAKE THE IMAGE SMALLER FOR POSTING ON TUMBLR WITHOUT SACRIFICING THE ACTUAL QUALITY OF THE IMAGE OH MY GOD

Ok so, what I did is go into the clip studio paint file, make a new file, copy and paste the group in the original file, merge everything, get rid of the extra stuff outside of the canvas, and then make the flattened image smaller and crop the canvas. Once you have that, export it and you're done. This helps maintain the actual quality of the image and also helps shrink the file size down to something actually postable (if anyone has a better way of doing this please tell me)

[Edit]: Ok I guess posting something to Tumblr just naturally compresses the image a bit more somehow because I'm looking at it now and zooming in too much makes it a bit blurry so I'm still gonna have to futz around with image quality for future pieces oof

Artist's Note:

I'm so glad I figured out a way to do this because I like working on a big canvas so I can get as much detail in as I possibly can. Only problems are how laggy it gets while drawing lol.

I had an idea for a drawing with Reimu and Zanmu because I really like thinking about their potential dynamic a lot. I also wanted an excuse to draw Zanmu again but in my normal rendering style because last time I drew her she was in my more sketchy style with generally flat colours so I wanted to draw her again. Speaking of, looking at the sketch for this is a jumpscare that I never enjoy seeing, like, man am I glad I didn't use those for my final piece.

Also about her spear. I was originally gonna make it like the ones she had in game, but it kinda threw off the whole piece. It was too big, too blue, and too flat, so I just went "fuck it" and gave her a different one instead. My headcanon justifying this is that the ones she uses in game are for danmaku battles whereas in any other fight she just uses a proper yari, or she still uses the yari and just makes it all glowy to power it up, maybe both lol. I pulled as much inspiration as I could from Sengoku era spears, and even put in some blue into the decorative part of the spear and also added a little skull to pay tribute to the original spear. Also, in my research I saw some art of izanami and izanagi making japan and saw that the yari izanagi has had a little decorative tassley thingy on it so I took some inspo from that and just made it one of Zanmu's tassles (Idk when that art was from or if the spear was still accurate to Sengoku period Japan but hey, probably the same reasons Eirin puts little bow ties on her arrows, it's just for personalization purposes).

I love rendering hair and clothes so much omg, while I like the super curly hair Zanmu, the longer, wavier hair suits her better for this drawing (I imagine it only does that like how Ghibli characters hair moves when they feel angry lol). I love making Zanmu's hair all messy and crazy, as well as giving her grey hairs, this woman has aged like a fine wine. Also, if the hem on the ends of her sleeves, top of her shirt, and her pants look like gold to you, that's because it is! It's fairly light so she's not collapsing under the weight, but it's gold! (I don't care how impractical it is, it's just cool). Not the undershirt though, it's made of a gold fabric. I had a cute idea with Reimu's hair to make it have a red shine to it. I also changed up Reimu's outfit so it isn't just a blob of red. I like it a lot when Reimu's skirt and outfit is segmented into different layers, so I wanted to incorporate that.

I tried to draw their hands differently as well, but IDK how noticeable that is. Also, I am super happy with how the side profiles for the two of them turned out, I used to struggle a lot with how to make the side profile of a character actually look like the character, so I'm really happy that they actually look like themselves.

Also added in the tree and rocks in the background as an homage to Zanmu's character art in Touhou 19, just because I was getting kinda stumped on what to do with the background lol.

In terms of a story idea with Reimu and Zanmu, idk why but the potential plotline of Zanmu wanting to ascend to godhood is so fascinating to me. Like, it is very possible that if she just convinced everyone she was a god (which would be very easy for her to do), she would become one in a heartbeat. Also, if she were to become a god, with her ability to return stuff to nothing, could she hypothetically get similar abilities to (Jojo Part 5 spoiler btw) GER? Like, idk about the death timeloop stuff, but the concept has been haunting me every night as I have been trying to find loopholes in GER's ability for a while now ( for no reason in particular). Back to the main topic, I imagine that she would probably tell Reimu that if she were to become a god she would take over the Hakurei shrine since the god there might as well be dead, and Reimu just says to her, "Over my dead body bitch." Like, I have no idea how to summarize their dynamic but like, it's the type of hero-villain dynamic where the phrase "We're not so different, you and I" would definitely be a phrase said during a fight. I think that if another IN style game were to release, Reimu and Zanmu would be in a team together. They could also have an interesting mentor and pupil kind of dynamic. Can you tell that Zanmu has been charging my mind rent these part few months? Like, instead of living in my head rent free, she kinda just uno reversed the whole situation and now she's the one charging me rent. What happens if I get evicted from my own brain? Actually, scratch that, I don't think I wanna know.

[chiscribbs]

Updated Future Donnie Concept Art!!!

So, I've been hesitant to try my hand at designing an Apocalyptic Future version of Donnie for a while, for a number of reasons - mainly that I just didn't have a clear idea of him in my brain yet and the thought of attempting to update his already pretty perfect design was highly daunting - but I finally caved and decided to take a crack at it. A couple months and several revisions later, I'm actually genuinely happy with the result. I'd still consider this "concept art" more so than a final design, elements of it could definitely be improved, but I really do like the concept as a whole - I think it could work!

The main goals I had in mind while working on this were: A. Must fit the character/look like something Donnie would canonically wear and still be easily recognizable. B. Must work in the Rise world & style (i.e. not be overly detailed or have too complex a silhouette.) C. Must fit in with the other (canonical) Future Rise designs.

I was also thinking about what problems Donnie might be trying to solve, which is what inspired the belt (more info on that below). All-in-all, although there might still be a few kinks to work out, I think I managed to come up with a pretty solid base design for my favorite Warring Warrior Scientist (Jr.)

Some additional character tidbits under the cut.

Also, I can't draw mechanisms to save my life, so just pretend those vague ninpo-gun-things make sense lol

Donnie has a mechanical prosthetic leg. How'd he lose that leg? Up to interpretation - my working theory is that it was a minefield accident that occurred when he was trying to blow some Krang dogs to Timbuktu. Naturally, since it's Donnie and they are in the midst of an alien apocalypse, he designed the leg to do a whole lot more than just help him stand without falling down. It's a multifunctional tool that contains a plethora of secret uses - including, but certainly not limited to, sawing off ugly Krang faces. It's essentially his new tech bo.

Bonus leg tidbit: Casey Jr. saw him deploy the saw blade in battle once when he was little, he then proceeded to beg for a saw-leg of his own to fight the Krang with. Donnie, realizing that amputating a perfectly healthy child's leg is probably not that most morally acceptable option, instead made him his own "sawing stick"(AKA, his motorized hockey stick)...which the others then made him wait until Casey's 10th birthday to give him.

The belt that Donnie's wearing here is a prototype of his latest invention. Its intended purpose: to deflect the Krang's mystic-blocking attacks, allowing them to use their ninpo in close combat. It took a lot of risk-taking to collect the necessary information to create such a device, and he experienced a number of way-too-close calls (one of which may or may not have resulted in that large gash across his plastron), but he finally managed to crack the code and pinpoint the frequency of the Krang's sound waves. He's testing it out right now to make sure that it works and is safe to use, but once it's out of beta, he plans to mass-produce them for every mystic-wielder in the Resistance to use in battle. He believes it could turn the tides of the war...unfortunately, the device never makes it out of beta, as he dies before its completion.

Donnie's gloves are fashioned after the ones his dad used to wear in his Lou Jitsu days (with some modifications, for comfort and to make working with screens a little easier and less annoying.) The material they're made out of is far more durable, of course, since he's working with them near-constantly and under varying conditions. But maybe he designed them to look like this as a way of keeping his dad's memory close, similar to Leo's sword hilt?

Ironically, Donnie uses his ninpo probably the most consistently out of all the brothers (even though Mikey uses his to the greatest extent, hence his rapid aging). He's constantly using it to check on the base's security status and multitask while working on other projects. Because his ninpo takes a good deal of brain power to operate, it puts a significant amount of strain on his nervous system and this causes frequent complications. Seizures, spasms, and blackouts become a semi-regular occurrence - especially in the latter part of his life. Donnie does his best to manage them, but the workload makes it almost impossible to do so properly. Mikey is able to help with these attacks when they happen, but Donnie - not wanting his brother to overuse his powers any more than he is already - usually opts to just ride it out and save the mystic healing for people who need it. The exception to this rule being when he's in the middle of an extremely important procedure and can't stop long enough to let the attack pass naturally, then he has no choice but to accept Mikey's aid.

This is probably needless to say at this point, but much like Leo and his other brothers, he is a giant. Equal in height to Leo (if not slightly taller, even without the goggles.) The doodle in the top-left corner of the sketch page where he's next to April is meant to be them sitting, so don't take it as anywhere near an accurate representation of their height comparison. It is not, he dwarfs her by several feet, lol.

[machveil]

Beautiful, cute, dulzura, A quick question, do you have any advice for drawing? I see your drawings and I just fell in love with them, I just started drawing again but it's difficult...

I don't know, sorry, English is not my first language, using translator jiji 🤎🍁

(note: this post is long, grab a snack lol) ah! no problem, don’t worry about the translator haha (pinterest link - this is my masterboard for human references! I’ll talk about it more below)

I think my best advice for anyone wanting to draw is to break down your piece into shapes! (also, depending on your style, using different line weights)

from my experience, while looking at the whole reference is good, it’s easier to break down individual parts! while some parts can look complicated, a lot of things can be broken down into triangles, squares, and circles (or half circles)

I focus on character art, so I’ll be speaking about that - but it can applied to scenery and objects too. a lot of characters clothes are broken up into colored articles already - in the top reference, Ghost has a red bandanna on his arm! that bandanna helps break up his arm: the top near his shoulder is triangular, the bandanna itself is overall rectangular, and the bottom of his sleeve is a square

of course, depending on how you’re posing the character it can change the angle of what we’re seeing - there’s also an accommodation that your art probably won’t be a 1-to-1 copy with your reference. Ghost’s right arm (bandanna) has a white rolled up sleeve - while the model’s sleeve is square, I prefer to draw rolled sleeves more triangular

I think line weight is also important depending on your style! I prefer thicker lines around the entire character, and defining qualities also get thicker lines

I like thinner lines inside the character to help define dimensional shape and form. I use thicker lines on the inside of the body if there’s a shape/area that’s more in the foreground - example: König’s chest and midsection have thick line art to help differentiate from his left arm (behind his body)

I know a common piece of advice is to use real life references, and I agree… but, I never hear people talk about how to use references in a way that actually helps (“just draw from real life”, or “drawing with a reference is good practice”). I experienced that and wasn’t able to take anything away for years!

within the past year or so I seriously took a look at how using references can help me, so I want to try and talk about that - if I had trouble learning from references I’d wager someone else has

here’s my best example of using a reference because I actually remembered to! I labeled the figure to make it a little easier to follow

(1) my first tip is using a reference to figure out how the body ‘flows’. the human body has a lot of soft, rounded lines when you look at a picture - very few things are legitimately straight and sharp. I used the reference specifically to figure out how men’s pecs are shaped (of course, this is just one reference… because this is my headcanon for König’s body type haha)

(1) looking at references can help you understand how muscles move. in the reference with the woman, you notice how her right arm (down) muscles are layered - the shape portrayed by the reference lets you see how an arm’s muscles might be laid out in that position

(2) my second tip from the König reference is to look at negative space! the highlighted red portion between the arm and midsection is roughly the same negative space as the reference. if you’re using a reference and something feels off with the placement of what you’ve drawn I’d recommend looking at the space your reference takes up

(2) the negative space trick helps me line up where proportions should meet up - the distance between her arms lets me gauge how the rest of her body should be proportioned

(2) while it doesn’t match up 1-to-1 with the reference when layered overtop, it doesn’t have to! the negative space between the arms was enough for the sketch to mimic what the reference looks like. art doesn’t have to be a 1-to-1, but negative space can help you figure out ‘why does that arm look funny?’, “that arm looks funny because, compared to the negative space of your reference, it’s too (far away/close) to the body.”

(3) my last tip is the simplest, so I’ll just be referring to the König figure! when using references I look to gauge the distance between different body parts - it helps me get more realistic proportions. the bit I specifically compared to was the man’s stomach placement compared to his waist. I didn’t copy it 1-to-1 because I like the idea König has more of a tummy, but the reference allowed me to figure out an anatomical placement for where König’s stomach would be compared to his waist

I hope my advice wasn’t terrible haha everyone’s art journey is different, but these are tips I would have liked to know a few years ago (specifically the reference material ones lol). I wanted to focus more on the reference material because when people say ‘just use a reference, it’ll help’ it didn’t do it for me

I personally needed a more in depth explanation on why I would use a reference, what should I be looking at - because just drawing a person doesn’t necessarily help, and how should I be learning from it - I accidentally taught myself negative space before I knew what it was

but uhm… yeah, I hope this wasn’t awful! good luck on everyone’s art journeys, just remember that you’re allowed to take your time and try different things

if you guys have any other questions about my art feel free to jump into my inbox; process wise, inspiration, etc - I’ll answer anything I can<3

[drawnfamiliarfaces]

Does Gwen get along with the girls? I imagine she'd at least be friends with Kim and Jun over martial arts and magic

Well, they do get along and are good aquintances and occasional teammates, but I wouldn't call them super close friends? They are more friends through friends type of deal??

I admit, its probably not what most of you would want to hear, but honestly I'm not the biggest fan of the whole 'girls in different fandoms getting along because they are just sooooo similar'. I think its a bit boring, if it makes sense? xD I like a little bit more spice and conflict in my friendships!

I did not touch on every single detail/small aspects of their relationships but I did get a little carried away, so a bit of text underneath:

Gwen & Kim

So, like many in these fandoms, I like to think that Gwen and Kim have very similar personalities (and no not just because they are both red-heads xD) and traits, but it would be precisely why they would not make the best of friends! Both of them are seen as sort of an over-achieving type, the type of people that have a lot of control over their lives and their goals. They also tend to be a bit bossy? And let's be honest, both of them are also critical of themselves enough to see that sort of trait in another person and absolutely hate it.

Gwen would see how absolutely perfect Kim seems, she is a superhero who started her own business as pre-teen and somehow managed to flourish and make so many connections and achieve so much, all the while going through school and making it look so easy that literally everyone knows Kim's name - the girl that can do anything. Gwen, who was explicitly shown in UA how much she was struggling with balancing her life and all the stuff happening with aliens and Ben, and Kevin and Plumbers - she would freaking hate the little Miss Perfect Kim Possible at first. And NO amount of Ben and Kevin pointing out that Gwen is exactly the same, handling so much and yet she also appears perfect in the eyes of others. I mean she was literally attending university early in Omniverse, because she was an outstanding student, while Ben, while being a hero, I (think) dropped out of school?? OR at least, he certainly put a cap on school, unlike her. I think it will feed into Gwen's insecurities about not being perfect enough, of not achieving enought, when she first meets Kim.

Kim on the other hand would get annoyed as fuck about Gwen's bossiness. We all know that Gwen likes to take charge, especially with the two bumbleheads of Kevin and Ben around. AND we also know that Kim despises being considered/called bossy. I think I recall in a first few episodes, Ron called her bossy, and Kim vehemently protested that she wasn't. It's a trait that Kim KNOWS she has, and obviously dislikes that people consider her as, and if she sees it in someone like Gwen who is a lot like her, it would annoy her immensily. And its very unfortunate, because the other part of 'the need of constantly being perfect' would be very relatable to Kim, but the bossiness problem would just undermine most attempt to relate to each other.

And a lot of that would also reflect in the mutual interest of martial arts that you mentioned! Which is like a whole separate clusterfuck, because their fighting styles? Are surprisingly different. Kim is a defence fighter - she is patient and calculative enough to wait for an attack and turn the tide on her attacker. Gwen on another hand, is clearly an offensive fighter. But Kim fist fights her opponents and Gwen has shields! - i hear you say and you are right, but Kim is also rarely the one pressing an attack first (its usually a countermeasure) and how does Gwen uses her shields? As freaking projectiles lol.

If they ever fought or sparred - those two very in control personalities - all of that would translate to a very annoyed by Miss Perfect Kim Possible Gwen pressing attack on defensive Kim, which would annoy Kim in turn by Gwen's bold and bossy attempt to control the fight. I dunno, it just feels like their fight would escalate into a bad one or an argument if that does happen, so I don't think they would spar or enjoy their mutual love for martial arts much.

Also, forgot to mention but there is some difference in their teen personalities that amuse me - Gwen is a book nerd and Kim is basically a cheerleader jock! You don't usually see Gwen hanging out with popular crowd or going to parties - she is basically either studying for school, learning mystical/magical stuff or busy with alien stuff. Meanwhile we rarely see Kim really slaving away at books, and while she is smart, she is clearly not the 'constantly nose in book' type of smart. She is probably one of those people who only had to sit at few lectures to retain information kind of person, that lucky girl. (It would probably be another thing that would infatuate Gwen, considering how annoyed she is with Ben's eidetic memory and how much potential he wastes with it. xD) And Kim has a surprisingly rich (for a working teen hero) social life! She goes to parties and events, not a whole lot but certainly more than Gwen. Of course its funny that Gwen is sort of a little bit mean nerd (like, that girl is not a bad person but she would absolutely put a fellow classmate in place) and Kim is a kind jock (not that all jocks are mean, but you remember that main girl in cheerleaders who was not Kim's biggest fan?).

Also ALSO, in HoM, Kim is older than Ben & subsequently Gwen. And while I am not saying that either Kim doesn't respect people younger than her, or that Gwen have problem with authority. But I am saying that it doesn't really help, because younger bossy Gwen would remind Kim heavily of her own teenage self, and Gwen would feel a little bit talked down to, if Kim tries to relate to her 'need to be perfect' thing. Their difference is not huge, but when they met, Kim was already an adult (as in her 20s+) and Gwen was still in late teenaged years, so there is that.

Of course, over the years of their acquintance, those initial feelings and dislike would fade, and they could be friends but I don't feel like they ever would be very close. They have a similar work ethic, which would make them pretty good teammates tho! But as close friends? Nah. Though that's also why I consider them both of them get along with Ben better than with each other! xD

Gwen & Jun

Jun and Gwen get along a bit better than Gwen and Kim. Being closer in age, from a big families with older and younger (behaviour wise for Ben lol) brothers and sharing not only interest in martial arts but also in magic, gives the more stuff to relate too. Their personalities don't rub each other the wrong way too much either! While they both have strong personalities, there is a much more easier flow between Gwen's bossy and controlling, with Jun's stubborn and independant.

The thing is, since its a crossover, I made a few choices about how their worlds interact, so while magic gives them something to relate to, it is also a VERY big thing between them that causes a lot of clashing.

You see, its not explicitly said in Ben10, but its obvious to fandom that magic we first see in the show and that Gwen later uses when he is 16 are different. How different? We have no idea. But its obvious that originaly the magic Gwen discovered was Earth sort of magic, while later in the show she is using magic based on her alien - anodite origin.

I won't go too much into detail right now (because its too complicated and vague in my mind and i will literally go crosseyed trying to type about it rn lol), but the basic explanation that magic on Earth has a lot of variations, but Anodite powers/magic is completely a different beast. And since Gwen appeared to have decided to veer more to her anodite roots, her use of magic differs a lot from how Jun uses magic. While on the surface it barely matters, especially in practical use or fights, academically/philosphically/etc? - both Gwen and Jun had arguments UPON arguments about it. And they can never quite reach a middle point, that isnt just basically agree-to-disagree.

It's not like friendship destroying type of constant arguing, but it is something that is intimately intricate to BOTH their lives in very complicated and different ways, and its kind of hard to be best friends with someone who constantly opposes your existence/way of life?

So, I could say that Gwen and Jun are more of okay type of friends, maybe even academic (in same academical/interest circle) type of friends. Surprisingly, unlike with Kim, its harder for Gwen to work with Jun because they could start an argument that would last (because Gwen is bossy and Jun is stubborn), and it sort of prevents them from getting along? xD Does that make sense? And their work ethic is a bit different in approach too, tho in battle itself they work well.

Gwen & Jenny

I am a little surprised you did not mention Jenny, but I guess I might have sabotaged the whole thing by constantly showing that Jenny has beef with Ben! xD And I guess in some way you are correct, since Jenny's annoyance with Ben would either sometimes translate to annoyance with Team 10 or to Gwen being annoyed by Jenny's hostility towards her cousin.

But in reality, they actually get along pretty great! Better than Gwen with Kim, and slightly better than Gwen with Jun! If only because Jenny and Gwen do not tend to argue about intricacities of magic! xD If anything both Gwen and Jenny, while not fully understanding how the others work, fully respect each others abilities in battle. They just kind of accept, that one can do this and another can do that.

Personality wise, I actually think they mesh together well. Jenny has lived with a controlling personality all her life (her mom) so she knows how to navigate that, and in turn, I actually think Jenny's a little bit silly personality (which is a little bit like Ben's) is a great counter to Gwen's more serious one. Even the difference in their ages does not really matter, despite Jenny being closer to age to Kim.

The surprising thing that I think would really allow them to get along, is the feeling of alienation and some discomfort in their own skin. Look, we all know about Jenny's desire to be like a normal girl, but she isn't, because she is a robot, and its something she's been coming to terms to her whole life. And Gwen recieved a great shock when she discovered her anodite roots, and if THAT didn't give her a reason to feel like she doesnt quite belong to humanity right now, i would eat my shoe. Technically both of them are aliens amidst human race from very different kind of spectrums, but I feel like it would give them a starting point to relate to each other.

And basically they are space collegues!!! Like literally, they both operate in Earth-Space area of protection, and I feel like despite Jenny's general annoyance about that and Team 10, she would respect a fellow Earth protector from aliens.

Also, Gwen could always appreciate another person that helps to keep Ben's ego in check. Though, if she'll get particularly annoyed by Jenny's comments, she would definitely let her know. ;)

-

so ye this is basically it for now xD i dont think i have many more other details, but i hope you enjoyed and were entertained by this nevertheless ;)

[nho-jungle]

giving gillion a tail: bug's thoughts on triton anatomy

yeah im writing a full thing about this okay let me autism lazerbeam in peace.

so the thing with triton anatomy is that one would assume theyre just human anatomy with some extra bits like gills n stuff. and tails, but we'll go into that in a moment. the problem with this is bone structure. not all fish have bones. sharks don't have bones. instead the support structure of their bodies is made of cartilage. which isnt too different, considering parts of human anatomy are made up of cartilage, but it poses some interesting questions. im no scientist, but i am autistic as hell. so im going to pose a couple of options that are fun to rotate.

the most common depiction of tailed tritons (which i myself have drawn) is some variety of fish or shark. this is aesthetically fun bc of the variety within fish and sharks, in terms of colour and shape, that allows you to get funky with it. anatomically speaking, this would probably be achieved via the tailbone being there, like a monkey, but with the muscle and flesh around it being shark or fish-like. this would all lend to a tail that moves side to side, which would lead to an interesting swimming style that probably wouldnt involve much movement of the legs.

the second thought i had for tailed tritons was seals. seals have very short tails, but as mammals they have the same bone structure as humans. due to this, my initial thought was a second set of hips, so the triton bone structure would look like it had four legs, but the second set of legs would be the tail formation. this would lend itself to a tail that moves up and down, which could probably be utilised in tandem with the legs to create a very efficient swimming style.

however, neither of these ideas take into account one very important thing about tritons:

they're amphibious.

oh but bug, they can have human lungs and fish gills with nothing to do with the tail- silence voice i made up purely to disagree! we are not here to do arts and crafts! we are not gluing random creature aspects together with whimsy and magic! this is real science!

so amphibians. frogs and newts and salamanders and the like.

the amphibian life cycle, in most cases, involves eggs being laid in water and larvae being adapted to an aquatic lifestyle. frogs, toads, and salamanders all hatch with external gills, and develops lungs to breathe air as they grow up. amphibians are very adaptable to their environment, and there are many possible variations among individual species purely caused by outside influence and the area they grow up in.

but what does this have to do with tritons and their tails?

tadpoles

unlike most amphibians, frog tadpoles dont look like the adults. frog tadpoles start out fully aquatic, with external gills. as they grow and develop, they get gill pouches to make their gills internal. they have cartilaginous skeletons (which later develop into bone), lateral line systems (found in fish, used to detect movement, vibration, and pressure under water), and large tails. their lungs develop early. their front legs develop first, and then their back legs soon after.

(oh what about axolotls- axolotls dont have lungs. they are functionally the same as salamander larvae but they never get past that developmental stage. theyre amphibians that arent amphibious.)

im running out of steam for this post but basically what im trying to say is that triton are froglets. this would also make sense for the fact that triton have webbed hands and feet. frogs do too so it would be implemented into the swimming style. bone structure is a whole nother things, especially since both 'mordenkainen presents: monsters of the multiverse' and 'volos guide to monsters' are cowards whos triton designs are just blue people. but working from 'mythic odysseys of theros' designs, who have at least a little bit of flare, i think it's safe to assume that their bones are a little funky. some fun mix of bone and cartilage to have those interesting shapes.

all that being said, i am a big supporter of doing whatever you want forever. i am also just a massive nerd and like to think way too hard about these things.

(shoutout to my dad for assistance with bouncing ideas around, and for being the one to suggest the tadpole thing.)

[atwas-gaming]

People who complain that Sonic's character is "static" must have never played Unleashed or Black Knight. Or they did, but they didn't understand them.

I think one of the reasons why Unleashed and Black Knight are such fan favorites and stick in our memory so well is because the entire theme of both games is about taking Sonic out of his element, taking away things that he has relied on for so long- speed, jumping, spindashing, boosting, homing attacks- taking all those things away from him, and seeing how he does.

And he still shines. Even without all the abilities that he has relied on throughout his entire life, he still manages to beat the Big Bad.

(Please note that I haven't finished either game yet and I'm just drawing from what I've been spoiled on.)

As the werehog, Sonic is not able to curl into a ball at all (we're ignoring the mobile games for this post), and his greater height and weight, probably due to a larger bone structure, as well as heavier, thicker fur, keeps him from being able to run as fast or jump as high as he's used to. He now how to resort to fighting styles he has never used before, including several forms of martial arts (aided by his Dark Gaia-powered stretch abilities). Perhaps the most unusual of all is how he has to get down on all fours to run.

In addition, Sonic describes his werehog form as "pretty ugly." Sonic thinks of himself as good-looking, and this is a part of his personal identity, which is part of why he was upset that Amy didn't recognize him (no matter what feelings he may or may not have for her). The werehog form also seems to be physically uncomfortable and taxing on Sonic's body due to the heavier weight, as the werehog idle animations include Sonic stretching in an exaggerated way and forcibly rotating his shoulders (motions I, myself, have learned to use after years at a desk job that has ruined my neck and upper back). Sonic's idle animations also include him being jumpy and looking around every few seconds- basically, the werehog never fully relaxes.

All in all, Sonic is very uncomfortable as a werehog, and prefers not to be seen in this form. But the reason why is not fully evident until he thanks Chip for protecting him and keeping him from turning evil. To this, Chip replies, "I haven't done anything, Sonic. You're too strong to lose yourself."

On top of this, Amy doesn't have a problem with Sonic's appearance. She still loves him. Tails also doesn't care what Sonic looks like. Neither does Professor Pickle. Neither does ANYONE. Even if they're startled by the werehog's appearance at first, they all seem to go, "Oh, it's just Sonic. This is just what he's like at night."

The entire story of Unleashed was about Sonic coming to realize that he is not who he is because of what he looks like or how he is built.

Black Knight takes this a step further. In Unleashed, Sonic wasn't able to run, but he was still able to use his body as a weapon. In Black Knight, Sonic can run again, but nowhere near as fast as his normal speed. All of Sonic's abilities to fight with his body are stripped from him, and he is forced to use an actual weapon, instead. And Sonic hates this. He even says it: "I wish I didn't have to use this dang sword!"

Sonic has never used a weapon before in the games (as far as I am aware, anyway). His weapon has always been his own body: his feet, his fists, his whole body via spindash and homing attack. Now he's having to train himself to fight with something outside of his own body. This requires not only the creation of new muscle memory, but also a complete shift in the way his brain processes information to fight. He always has the option to just crumble and say, "I can't do this, it's not what I'm used to, I give up." He never does that. He complains a bit at first, but eventually rises to the occasion and excels at swordfighting.

Please bear in mind that I haven't ever gotten past the King Arthur battle. I presume Sonic is forced to kill him, and then I believe there's another half a game after that. But so far, it seems that Sonic's character arc in Black Knight is about him learning that he is not who he is just because of what he can do.

What makes Sonic Sonic is not what he looks like or what he is able to do, but about who he is inside. Sonic is someone who cares, someone who is strong, someone who doesn't give up, someone who sees a difficult situation and, no matter how much of an inconvenience it may be, turns it around and finds a way through.

[thingsidrawgohere]

I just finished my first run of DA4 and let me say- I probably got my money's worth. If one wants to view the experience via a purely mercantile lens. I found many bits of cheese and touched the insides of many angry creatures. But if one wishes to frame the thing as Art- Hell, if one wants to solely discuss it as the Fourth in a series of lore-dense, narrative RPGs, then, Cousin, We've Got Problems. Three interconnected niggling ideas that kinda all lead to the conclusion- for me, at least- that modern design practices simply do not trust the player. News flash, right?

Anyways, I think I'm going to have some thoughts on this subject to avoid other thoughts, thank you.

Full-Throated Spoilers Beyond. And a lot of them. It's long.

Idea 1: DA2 is my favorite of the series. That's not the problem; it's the setup. I know what I'm about and it's interesting characters interacting over time. Flawed characters. Abrasive, opinionated, STUPID ASS ANDERS characters. The story was scaled well for a handful of total losers and it was political. The most humanly political of all the games, I think. That's a very low bar, particularly for AAA, but it felt better to stand in a street, to be personally effected by events, than to look at a literal map of icons and notes and distant decisions as in DA3. It's important, I think, for DA to be about Being, Getting Dirty. You aren't a king. You shouldn't be.

Side Note 1: DA2 is a fucking miracle. The old gag that FO New Vegas, blessed be, was made in 18 months is trotted out to display Can-Do Attitude and DEEPLY unethical labor practices. DA2 got less time, fewer reusable assets (due to a different art style), and had to rebuild most of the engine. A. Miracle.

DA4, on the other hand, has a series of supportive, well-adapted people who have all worked very hard on themselves in therapy and know all the fucking right words to say. They chat with one another with kindness and sober fondness. In the One Instance of interpersonal friction, it is resolved with grace and speed. I find this Horrid. They fucking forgot to give these people negative traits. It's likability slurry. They experience no hard growth, hold no horseshit ideas, suffer no lingering doubts. It's not only unnatural but it's lifeless. It becomes Written. I can see the fucking author waving at me. I've got a note from my run that reads 'Rook told the man who is forcibly living inside his head "Thank you sharing that" and I want to scream.'

And that would be bad enough except the ideas are there. You've got a reluctant father story. Someone trapped between two cultures. A older man, already terrified of aging, of death, taking a Much Younger lover. That's Fucking Meat. I can see the writers straining against something but what they deliver is still person-shaped missed opportunities that repeat, that repeat, that repeat. It's So Frustrating. There's flashes of Good Writing. Of good character beats. But Also- from my notes, a character had just held her brother as he died, inexplicably for a second time, and Rook gives her a little pep talk that ends with him asking "You good?"

And the fucking woman says "I'm good" in response. She seemed to mean it.

How does one- react to that as a viewer? I told a man who wanted to be a lich more than anything to Not and he was cool with it. He never brought up being a lich again. He wasn't even upset. I let a man's city die and he's like I Get It, Bro. No Harsh Vibes. It rings hollow.

Talking over Solas' memories, collectively pulling out the meaning behind them- that was some of the best characters-interacting writing in the whole thing. And it's HOURS into the game. A shame.

Side Note 2: A lot of a loved-one death as motivation in this old refrigerator. If you get a name and one line, Oh Boy Brother, you are prolly gonna die bad. Lazy.

If I'm going to talk about Emmrich, let's talk about his romance. I honestly thought it was bugged. I Am playing through another run as a comparative but Wow. Larian and BG3 absolutely reconfigured what's acceptable in these types of story beats. This particular romance felt regressive, in a sense. Like a last minute addition. The very definition of love coins. No charisma or honest affection between the characters. Nothing allowed to percolate (more on that in a second). Just- now you are ROMANCED. Which means on the Blue Moon instance he has anything to say regarding being in a relationship, the best you can get is a 'dearest' at the end of a sentence. I was Excited by the idea of Emmrich really struggling with a May/December situation but he Doesn't. He has a few lines implying that he Could but it leads nowhere.

And they fuck in a coffin (???) and it's not even hot (!!!). Unforgivable. Double Unforgivable. I heard there was spice in this game? This is baking soda.

Related, a few lines awkwardly dodged the question of Emmrich's previous relationships and I have an inkling, without experiencing the other romances, that this is the world's largest case of gun-shy after the backlash with DA3's non-playersexual romances. This man can not be confirmed to be Anything but Into Rook, whatever they might be. There was also a throwaway line with Taash how she prefers women and that's as much as I saw of explicit preferences. I don't envy anyone trying to address the rabidity of fandom but it feels like unnecessary acrobatics.

Side Oh No: It's so bad that I'm honestly thinking of doing a fixit fic regarding the romance/character writing. And God, I can't right now. I have to finish my other project first.

Idea 2: The pacing. That's what ruins so much. There was a scene of a gnarled, fucked-up gate, torn from its hinges. And my guy says "Something Big must have torn apart that gate" all ominous, building a sense of- Nope. The very big darkspawn is standing ten feet away on the other side. I hadn't even swung the camera around the hall to see it before my guy goes "That big darkspawn must have torn apart the gate!"

Yes, I know there's an issue in open world games these days wherein devs are allergic to a player's millisecond of not knowing where to go but this feels applicable across the whole game. A problem isn't allowed to fester. It is brought to attention and then swiftly dealt with. If there's a locked door, a difficult decision, a feeling beyond Protestant determination, it will be dealt with, Post Fucking Haste. It's like the game doesn't trust the player to hold tension.

This happens not just in barks or small set pieces. Whole arcs work this way. Like Harding's longterm personal quest. She gets a handful of lines about feeling vaguely angry or perhaps thinking she Should be More angry about Lore Dump Retcon and then at her culmination, she's fighting her own anger. A vicious, hot, searing thing- and it wasn't earned. At all. There was room to telegraph this theme, bury it in the dirt to let grow roots. They didn't. One Line was given about her people pleasing tendencies And she's not really shown to be people pleasing to her own detriment. This is Chekhov's Gun in running shoes. It doesn't work. It feels like it comes out of left field.

Hell, there was a mission that was like SURVIVE IF YOU CAN and it was like- literally a long hallway. The Pacing is all Off.

Idea 3: I don't like that I must do this but DA4 doesn't understand its own flavor. The One Thing you Cannot Do is have Minrathous, the city of slaves and blood mages, seem nice. Particularly in the poor parts of town. You Cannot have the Crows be a lovely dovey band of scamps. You Cannot have the Blight be reversible. You Cannot CANNOT say "elves have it pretty good" as my Elvish Rook said with his face flaps. No. NO. You Cannot side-step the politics of this setting. These are the bones on which these characters are hung. To lessen the world is to lessen, to decomplexify them.

You know what my elf didn't hear in the town that canonically trades in bodies that look his? Knife ear. Eh to fantasy slurs but my point is no one said a cross word to my guy. The Qunari living in the town that had been warring with the Qunari for Centuries seemed totes fine. There were no alienages. There were no proper templars- even from other regions. No Mage Circles. No mage issues at all. Hardly anything whatsoever regarding the Chantry or Andrastianism, even as the game takes place in the Super Anti-Pope town. I had a literal demon-possessed man in my party and the world did not react.

I had a friend describe this Thedas as feeling smoothed out and Yeah. It feels like all the nasty bumps have been deemed undesirable. I don't know what to make of it. Is this simply taking the world in a different direction? Is it a mandate to tone down the unpleasantness, for sales? A shift in design ethos? Is this a sign of a very troubled project as it was with Andromeda?

I don't know. Is this still a Dragon Age game without its politics? There's enough here for me to wonder if Bioware is even Bioware anymore. There's a TREMENDOUS amount of work, of skill in DA4. Just Absurd. The environments are thick, Thicc. But work alone is not a virtue. Have we ship of Theseus'd so far that the people- the real people, not the logos- who have interests aligned with what made DA1 special are no longer there? Something went wrong with this project, narratively. Something I don't know how to fix without addressing basement level assumptions I'm clearly not privy to. I hope they can.

Final Thoughts: Game development is a fucking hole into which one pours one's relationships, time, and health, physical, mental both. It gives satisfaction very rarely. They shipped. In that way, huge success. It's not even, fundamentally, a 'bad game'. But it is a victim of a modern philosophy of pre-chewed ideas and player distrust. VGs are ultimately a business and, in these last few years, there's been a unimaginable devastation to the workers in the industry- even as the money flows ever upward. The desire to sell well has morphed into a NEED to sell well, even among the 'kept' studios. Big studios, Grand Dame Studios sitting on top of past critical and financial successes, been killed by their overlords recently. No one is safe. It's suddenly quite dangerous for large studios to make anything remotely niche, remotely unclear and Bioware has both Andromeda And Anthem under its belt. They're probably feeling the pinch. They needed a hit and hits, these days, are increasingly smooth. And DA4 is very smooth.

That's just my feeling on the matter. I'll see what a second run yields.

Smaller thoughts:

I don't care about the combat but that was- odd. The illusion of depth with all the skill trees and types of damage and subsystems of attack- all boiling down to a one button push. It's odd. I played rogue on PC so perhaps it's different for other classes, on console. But I pressed the button at the man and when I got a halo, I pressed another button and then pressed the first button again. No matter where I was on the skill tree, it never changed, never felt different. I don't know. It felt. Odd?

There was a Honest To God "It's quiet- Too quiet" and it just Happened. I would have pulled out every one of my teeth to avoid that. I get the jokey-okey but fuck, man.

Where's the chest hair? WHERE? Body hair? ANYTHING? Davrin has plastic chest. It's freaky.

Gloom Howler Gloom Howler Gloom Howler. Frankly, that whole storyline had a large gulg of the farcical. I laughed my ass entirely off when, upon her defeat, the Gloom Howler said "I'm sorry" and took a nap so hard that the scene wiped to 'some time later'. That was insane editing. PACING. And- naming. Gloom Howler. Gloom. Howler.

Teeth. Dear God, the teeth.

The devs were in a real pickle here, no doubt. My great sympathies. There's an Overwhelming abundance of world states that DA3 could have left on the board and I understand the balancing act between acknowledging the events of older games and staying generic enough DA4 could apply to All of them. Is Cassandra the White Divine? Or is Leliana? It's a nightmare of choices. Any of the people that Could be Divine can not be mentioned without lore issues. Who's on the throne in Orlais? Ferelden? Where's beloved so-and-so? Dorian canonically did return to Minrathous so he can 'safely' appear in game- but he fucking can't talk about Iron Bull, who may or may not be alive. Isabela canonically goes back to piracy but she can't talk about events in Kirkwall because she may not have been there for them. Oof. That's not a lot you are Allowed to acknowledge. The Poor Bastards.

Watched a braid slip off a person's shoulder, organically, as they were talking. Started at the bottom and look where we're at, technologically. And speaking on the technical, a lot of textures didn't load right. For the entire game, my guy's left shoulder armour thing had a much lower rez texture than the rest. Three hard crashes, which isn't the worst. One Wonderful mission wherein Lucanis' hair and his knives were the only bits of him to render.

I'm not touching the non-binary storyline. It was clunky, for sure, but the greatest sin was using Our words. There is canonical words for NGC/NB people in fiction and to not use them shows a fundamental distrust towards the source material and the players both. It's the linguistic version of the quest marker or the barks telling you where to go.

I still don't know how I feel about the dead Varric twist. Feels goofball but he got to hang out in his little pajamas. I wish I was in little pajamas.

Solas was pretty fucking tight but I think a lot of that was due to his VA. Something about the voice direction, in general, felt- flat? But old Solas was doing it good.

Ending. God, I get it. People are tired and satisfying endings are hard. And DLC exists, more cynically. But Hells Bells, I'm getting to the point wherein even the slideshow is annoying. Give me a fucking Ending to the Choice Game. Don't you fucking 'Spider-Man Will Return' at me, you bastard. I'm a child of fucking god.

Yes, I got the secret ending. I know. That was Also bullshit.

I feel better getting that all out of my system. Thank you for sharing that.

[ashirisu]

hey, everyone!

My name is Ley (pronounced like "Lee," she/they) and I'm a fiction writer/editor based in the PNW. I haven't done a proper writeblr intro in a while, so I figure the new year is a great time to reintroduce myself to the community!

— about me

An important thing to understand about me and the way I talk about writing is that this stuff is literally my entire life. Even outside of work, I don't think I have a single interest or hobby that doesn't relate back to storytelling in some capacity. I'm an avid media consumer and critic, and will hyperanalyze just about anything that catches my fancy for more than a minute.

I love science fiction and fantasy, and my goal as a writer is to take all the genres I loved growing up and create stories that are a little more diverse, inclusive, and queer.

— about the blog

I came to writeblr mostly to share my work, but also to find an active community where I can get excited with other writers and talk shop. Marketing is obviously a really important part of the publishing industry, but I get tired of having to filter every thought I have about my work and experiences through the lens of aesthetic micro-trends just to put it out in the world. Sometimes I just want to pop off about scenes I'm proud of, you know?

Above all else, I really just want to connect with more writers like myself, ones who got their start in fandom spaces and are working to take their writing from a hobby into a career. I see you, I am you, I love you, let's be friends!

You’ll definitely see me posting and reblogging a lot of stuff that isn’t necessarily related to writing, so be ready for that. My art exists in the context of my personality and the world as a whole, and I simply do not have it in me to maintain a whole separate blog for silly nonsense and memes. Just consider it a way to get to know the writer as well as the writing!

— about my writing

I write a lot, though most of it is disconnected nonsense. Flash fiction and short stories are where I really thrive as a writer. I don't tend to commit to long-form projects, but I have a few projects that I'll occasionally share details about!

I like to describe my style as "earnest and character-forward," which is a fancy way of saying that I like driven protagonists who think too much and are emotional to the point of it being a character flaw.

My goal is to share more of my original writing moving forward, so hopefully you'll get to see all of this for yourself. If I'm totally honest, though, you'll probably see more of me discussing my work than actually writing it.

— about my projects

Here are the things you'll most likely see me posting about:

Agnomen: A sci-fi retelling of Hamlet and Coriolanus, currently in its very preliminary stages. It is literally my Roman Empire, except it's set on a moon of a planet that I'm calling Jupiter as a placeholder (but please note that it isn't actually Jupiter, as Jupiter is a gas giant and therefore a scientifically impossible setting for large sections of the plot).

Alter Ego: A superhero fic in which not-so-mild-mannered reporter Drew Derrick fights for mutant rights and can't seem to get his act together when it comes to keeping the complicated parts of his life separate.

Untitled Fantasy Project: The very first project I ever wrote, and the piece I return to every so often when writing is feeling more like a slog than a fun hobby. I set a lot of one-offs in this world and follow a few key characters around without them having a real plot.

D&D: I write a lot about Baz, my Wild Magic Barbarian. He's a regency noble with a lot of problems, and I care about him very much. I also have various other settings and characters, but he's my most active PC at the moment and therefore gets the most attention.

Short Stories: Sometimes I write these, and sometimes I like them enough to share!

— tag directory

ley rambles: my (often wordy) opinions about things

ley writes: not necessarily my writing, but talking about my writing

my writing: stories, blurbs, and other content I've written

not my writing: reblogs and creative writing that I liked, shared, and sometimes commented on