#themes that hasnt changed since the beginning of times part 5: end times

[grandparomeaskblog]

Carthage should be destroyed

[sikereviewdotcom]

strawberry shortcake s2 ep1 - horse of a different color

this one was suggested by someone who couldnt keep their mouth shut and not sing the strawberry shortcake intro theme in the middle of our economy class

no one wanted to hear that, but they  went ahead and then i actually followed up on that train of thoughts i remembered about the fucking cartoons and i knew it pronto: its a must-see shit its like slightly above the level of magical school bus series, but the final rating is for the fin not the beginning so lets begin this horseshit:

were reviewing “horse of a different color”, it focuses indeed on strawberrys horse, honey pie pony (its her entire damn name, how sweet right? like all of them, i got diabete from this review but its the cost of maintaining this blog anyway, the kids are playing together on a that tree having fun jumping around like chimpanzees hooba hooba but sadly our filly quickly realizes she cant play king kong with them and keep falling on her ass,

yet since theyre all retarded or young (id say its a fifty-fifty case for them kinda normal ig, i mean they ARE literal 6yo) they try several ways of getting her up on that tree, not thinking how to get her down if they ever were to succeed (good for them: aint happening) its child labor too btw, from an horse still same deal what if honey pie fell down on them? crushing them corpses with her mighty pounds? the findus company would be delighted to hear such news, im sure its some quality (sweet ass) horse meat

once it all fails she understands a horse isnt meant to climb a tree, too big too fat its four legged, not even entertaining the relationship giraffes have with trees

but it aint over, then (after a talk with herself) hp hears the laughters of a bunch of kids which catches her attention, it always does who can ignore that sorta noise? although she aint annoyed by it shes just into the idea of riding a bike now, shes even gonna get a go at it oh yea thats it we finally found her human hobby gogdamn shes a backward furry

of course it fails aswell since she has no hand for the handle and shes heavy so i guess its the reason why she rides into w/e and cant stop? because otherwise she couldve also just.. actually it makes no sense does it? i mean she couldve easily stopped the ride actually how is that kid bike even holding her? ive never tried putting a pony on a bike for 6 y/o but i doubt about its capacity in not being crushed aswell as i doubt in the kids bones not being severely damaged after a visit under honey pies horsy buttcheeks

but all of that really makes her sad: she cant play with her human friends and shes the only horse around strawberry land or whatever see me tearing it for her, theres so much emotions in this episode especially after that filly trynna get kids to get into some horseplay horseshit like dude theyre only 6, lets go easy on them, might have a problem with the parents of the kids watching this episode no one even thought how fucked up this one part is? sure horseplay isnt only sexual or w/e but it still is the visual of 6yos on all four jumping around and neighing together with their ass a little bit too exposed wow im going on a dangerous road here? aint i? not gonna sue the writers im sure it was their subconscious speaking probably got issues from their childhood, eventually got them sorted out since 2004 what do i know? aside from me not caring

back on track : after seeing horsey being so sad the kiddos decide to get her a horse friend but where the fuck? they got no idea, they are proud nonetheless and go tell honey the good new until they are like “wait but we have no idea where to find horses!” ofc we get a big reveal, some serious strawberry shortcake lore: actually all the horses, ALL OF THEM FROM THE ENTIRE FUCKING PLANET are on one (1) single island: ice cream themed to diversify it all they are just chilling over there in ponyland and for some reason this one here got lost or idk guys she took the boat and checked the rest of the world out as an even younger filly, found strawberry and her friends and decided now she was a centaur  slash humanrry furry human, idk you get it but shes their friend and so on to introduce the concept of an AWESOME island full of equestrian activity and ofc ice cream but its kinda lame because who cares? everythings already made out of food, also why isnt the ice cream melting? its one water? nevermind for the introduction as i was saying, hp sings an horrendous sounding song it deteriorated my ear drums they got pierced or something  or maybe im exagerrating? either case horses cant sing:

so to the ice cream land they go, huh

of course it wouldnt be a big adventure without an almost broken bridge oh no whatever shall we do? could we possibly cross it safely? lets try it out  guys: yay it worked good for us little stress and suspense it was wack how they got honey pie out of the hole her big ass hoove made im mesmerized by the power of friendship and sugar at this point, just in full awe for the rest of the episode probably over dosed on all the ice cream flavoured horseshit, i got some all over my mouth its dripping on my desk i gotta clean that later

next thing we know: horses its all this episode is about (aside from labor) but you see, so far hp would switch between normal human language and neighing well turns out her other fellow equines can only neigh and so they just neigh together while our english well-spoken mammal translates to the moronic kids who just smile smuggly

of course the animals are having a welcome party then, dancing around while the morons are just bored, harsh one being a cartoon character isnt it guys? w/e theyre gonna ask for honey pie to come back home now, convinced that her natural habit isnt her place and she loves them too much to just leave them and never come back and break any plans they ever had together- oh shit looks like shes leaving forever huh? what a plot twist mark that on the bitch quota for today

the first one to leave is the little boy btw, important thing to note: hes the biggest pussy he cant even face reality: oh no, no more pony back time before sleep thats quite a bummer, downer and man how are they going to survive now they got no animal to watch over them? jesus theyre soon, on the boat (idk where they got it from idk why suddenly theyre on a boat because then theyre once again gonna cross that bridge but ok) anyway yea theyre having a relationship crisis during that ship trip yada yada ah and the bridge, because (see i do not call them morons for now reasons obviously they deserve this title not only because theyre 6 but also because they are just daft:) they proceed, once in the middle of the bridge all 4 of them, to stop and wonder

“will the bridge be able to hold all of us? wont it break? damn i wonder if it will crack” and they talks without moving until vlam: a tree comes and breaks it (dont ask) so now theyre in trouble:

back to ponyland: bitch pie realizes how much she misses her actual friends and that she can speak english which her other horse friends cant do so she is special and probably abnormal, shes a big outcat of the pony society and has no other reason but to escape her incoming death sentence for fraternizing with the humans of course none of the second part is true, she just wants to see the kids again so she says asta la vista baby to the neigher team and runs away see, she hasnt taken the boat and yet also arrive to the bridge? why a boat sequence then? i will skip this for now but it WILL play in the rating, imagine im the parent of the youngster watching this crap and i have to endure it

if it sucks this bad and is this illogical i might just get bored and change the channel, idc my progeny aint gonna be watching this in either case, ill make them watch political debates then interrogate them on what they learned after what but it wasnt actual political debates just random furry youtuber venting with their fursona sprites animated and thats how you make your kids retarded, the kick of this joke is that i aint planning on getting any kids but totally gonna make them watch classics too such as the attack of the killer donuts as soon as they reach 6 so they wont be dumb and probably not getting diabete or w/e in their adulthood

then honey pie saves the kids btw all of them, heavy shit

and they all go back to strawberryland, happily after a big “wow i missed you sm, you are my real friends w/e if you dont look like me i aint speciest guys really!” theyre all vegan too btw so this works for them i havent watched enough strawberry shortcake episodes to know if they ever eat meat but i have doubts seeing how theyre into a very cannibalistic diet which include eating dessert when obviously thats what they are at least half part, this cartoon raises a lot of political questions it may have a deeper value than i first attributed to it

the end: another terrible song plays about horseshit and how tasty it is

thats all folks

so the rating: big 6/10, so you know 5/10 if its a decent kid show where im highly eager to click on the x and get back making jams but nah

surprisingly enough, i only wanted to stop watching half of the episode and not the entirity of it so credits for thats since im an adult and not a kid, imagining kids enjoyed this sweet childish cartooness or w/e now why +1? its because of how many political questions it raised, how it made me think about our society and cakes yknow its more than kids having a conflict with an horse it talks about veganism, specism, handicap, cannibalism, the management of the limited ressources were exploiting and so on yea really makes you think, its subliminal messages to make kids smarter: they watch their dessert-imbecile counterparts doing bs and then get it right irl: good  ah- it also makes it better for you when youre watching this with your kid, you suddenly transcend to another level of spirituality, existential crisis activated or at least reasoning mode or w/e youre willing to name this the point is you arent bored still despite all of this i rated it quite low for such a serious kid cartoon what couldve possibly made me tic? 1) kids are morons and cant understand all of this, not clear enough for the targeted public 2) projection onto the characters/dialogues from the writers of their childhood traumas (the horse play event didnt go unnoticed, karren brown) 3) my little pony ripoff 4) its controversial, our society, especially in 2004 couldnt understand the depth of this shit and finally 5) i got so much ice cream flavoured horseshit all over my desk god help me this is so filthy what a fucking mess i would totally recommand it to anyone who feels like being blown away by the statements made in this work of art 6/10 but really we all know in the future, itll be a 9/10, some ahead-of-its-time-crap

tg, out

[kosmicdream]

hey!!! i just read to the most recent update of ffak (my favorite webcomic ive ever read tbh) and i kinda wanna try making my own. did you have the whole story planned out before you started or is it an ongoing thing? also how did you make the website for it? thank you for making such a cool comic!

Thank you so much!! And let me try to figure out a way to answer this properly. My process is a bit complicated to explain because it is very organic. Its almost like I am never done writing it, because I am always letting it grow/stretch and explore as I think about ffak every day, and every night before sleeping I’ll try to brainstorm things I havent thought of. So spending that much mental energy on something, you never really get ‘done’ with writing a story. Even when i eventually finish ffak, im sure i will be still working on it (or things I would have wanted to do.)

However!! Before i started working on ffak, when it was just called HELP! i established many things narratively that I stuck to and have not changed about the story. So I think the process of this comic, in a simple way, could have been broken down like this in.. stages?

1) I laid down the basic framework of the world, such as the functions of king worms specifically, the aiguille family, helpers, several characters (some havent even appeared in the comic yet!), king leadman, as well as antony/rome’s narrative arc/dynamic. that way their character arc was already figured out before the comic started and I knew it would be the central ‘root’ of the story. I knew how i wanted Rome to be introduced, and how he would meet canary, not knowing the connection between canary and his brother. I had a rough idea, even from here, how their character arc would come to a point (and basically what sorts of things the story would likely eventually close on) I also knew the general setting was on moons and how the humans got there, and how advanced society was, and what the red lights “really" were and what they meant..i figured out what ‘vein’ was here.. ect.. many worldbuilding things!!!It might sound intimidating, but this process happened very quickly. I basically figured this out in the.. day? before i started working. I have had a lot of experience with roleplaying so i think that helps with me making quick decisions. I knew i had enough to work with that I didn’t feel intimidated to start actually drawing it out-- especially because i had the rome/antony thing already set down. 2) Then when I actually started to work, things started to develop very quickly. I knew basically all i needed to for Hekatons before i got to introduce knife (their origins, history, involvement in present day politics) and before ch6 i also wrote all of the “supporting cast” (at the time) which included dylan, fork/spoon/knife, paper/scissor/rock. So i ws able to write Thumb and Heel, and set up the overall dynamic of what the world was like in the present day. (also Spoon/Scissor’s connection.) Cash was actually written in the first batch of characters oops, but her design really became more detailed during this stage because of scissor. 3) then things got more complicated as i dug deeper into the past, and wanted to include crimson. So!! I fleshed out the origin and true history of this world. basically as soon as crimson appeared I had everything in place and felt comfortable enough to include crimson, who borrowed many things narratively from a character i roleplayed for years. Anyway, i figured out all of the deep past of the world and decided to draw it out since it was so interesting in ch 9/10. I think this was around in the 2nd chapter when i figured this out, but my memory is fuzzy. I know by the time i did the flash forward scene in ch2 i had decided many things and so all i had to do was get to them in the comic to cement it in. 4) I forget when exactly (maybe around in chapter 5 or 6) , but i decided to bring in a very old story i wrote in 2009 for good leadman’s origin story-- as i thought it would be cool to make good leadman the protagonist for this old comic i wanted to do, and that helped make the background for heel and thumb more “believable” to me because they were already symbolizing this old story i had written the entire thing of. Oh that’s something else to mention, because that world was part of a collection of stories- i was able to develop DMTIA that way because i already had this cast and just decided to merge the stories into the FFAK setting. I think when i did this, it pretty much was the final big thing to make me understand everything i needed to know about this world. All the story arcs felt pretty realized and I could see how the ending could go at this point.

I guess to summarize, is that i let things grow but also had things planned from the start and once i commit to an idea, it doesnt change. Even if it might appear somewhat frustrating to work with, i like to use them to make my next decision. sometimes that means i dont get to do all i want to do, but i still have a lot of flexibility in this setting like i wanted to have from the beginning.

Even now when i feel like pretty confident that I’ve explored every nook and cranny, I’ll decide to revisit a older storyline or facet of the world and strengthen or build on that. That’s why i ended up with so many fucking side characters because I’ll brainstorm for them for a day or two and suddenly have a lot of material i know wont even “technically” go into the story even though its there. (like, Spot for example was not meant to be so interesting, but i wrote a huge fucking story for him that obviously wont get really any attention.)

So.. its ongoing and it is also not ongoing and hasnt been for quite a long time now? (after two years of constant work it felt.. really complete and done in a lot of ways. we are now currently on year three, moving to year four!) I think the best thing to do is to keep in mind what kinds of methods for writing make you feel comfortable and is your natural brain-pace. I like working with an aspect of fluidity and room for growth and flexibility because i don’t like being boxed in or “outgrowing” my project too fast. So keeping that in mind, i designed ffak to be a comic where it could grow with me and change. that’s pretty much why i decided worms would be a great subject and theme to work with because they are characters that naturally, evolve and change based on what they eat and absorb. plus the themes in ffak just are so fun to work with i will never be bored of it. structuring a project with these things in mind for when i run into walls or feel unmotivated have kept me engaged. I think that is part of why i cannot let it go because I still feel really excited to write and contribute ideas to it.

However, Chapter 12 really feels like I’m settling back down to my original plans and taking my time and patience to communicating all the structured planning ive put into it. I’m not letting it grow the same way anymore because it doesnt need to. I feel comfortable with understanding its voice/style and pacing and im no longer recovering from the uhh.. shock of it existing? I promise that once you actually start making a comic, its a wholly different experience than just it being in your head. and it will sound, look, and feel different than what you thought it would be-- that in itself has influenced a lot of change in ffak because honestly at first i was not expecting to draw it so explicit. that was difficult to get used to but im happy to have embraced that aspect of my work.

So HMM.. I made a strong spine or foundational backbone in the beginning before i started, then fleshed it out as i was in the process of making it, and i always continue to leave room for it to grow. just not grow in EVERY aspect anymore. i also dont chop down branches, but i try to hone in on specific things to make them more clear. i think chopping stuff down and removing things is generally not the best to do because its easier to build up and work with what you have than make big retcons after youve already started or established. also the challenge of working with limitations makes you feel that needed bit of pressure to really commit to your work in the moment of making it and i feel like its helped make me more serious and confident about what i write about. I never feel lost on what to do because if I cover and figure out something, that’s how it is. I make it work regardless! 

everything is done with careful consciousness to the overall balance and product of the story, while also not suffocating it in a box of limitations of what it could be. i treat it like a living thing in my mind and heart and that means i work to have thoughtful conversations with it and myself about what its needs are, what my needs are, what i want to do with it and what it wants to be.. ect. its almost a spiritual thing really. i feel like its important to always reflect and engage with your art and art process to feel a stronger connection and purpose behind what you are deciding to do and what it means to you. i am probably repeating myself a little here but!!!!!! its worth saying!!!!!!!!! 

I also really think it adds to the interesting and fun “layers” to the story, as there has been different stages to its development and it brings in different feelings with each layer. But then the older or more ‘’foundational’’ ones pop in and they seem to give off a different atmosphere (antony and rome) vrs some of the newer additions (like jacket) who are more for shallow, fun decoration or an interesting potential to explore in the future. Like, Jacket is not a character that has a lot of foundational plot connected to him, but he’s an interesting development in terms of the potential of a worm and symbolizes that early-ffak-mindset of growth and experimentation. so i think it makes him a really unique and fun character because he embodies a lot of new and old aspects of ffak’s narrative and my journey with working on the comic.

I could go on and on, but I hope this sort of gives some insight to my process and how I write/work. because in a lot of ways, it isn’t linear. just like how my comic is! sometimes this makes ffak very disorienting for people to read, but if you keep in mind that ffak is very organic and personally tailored to my mannerisms  and with that in mind, it makes a lot more sense why it is how it is and the patterns in it become much more apparent. Anyway! thank you for reading and good luck working on your own stories! it can be challenging but i think it is absolutely worth the effort. 

Also i did not make the website, my good friend Tegan did. :3 i do not know anything about websites.