WcWd: This OC I introduced but refused to elaborate on a couple weeks ago
I should start by introducing him: his name is E'lim! I chose it because it sounded partially like "Eli" with a bit of the word "limb" mixed in. TBH I just mash random syllables together when coming up with names (this was moreso the case back when E'lim here was made, but that's still part of my naming process sometimes)
I mentioned that he usually wears a more plain attire when he appeared two Wednesdays ago. Well, turns out that I never settled on consistent shoes, either. Here's a couple more pixel art drawings I found of him:
There's quite a few more (probably unfinished) drawings of this fella hidden within the containers for nigh every medium I used around 2019-2021. After that? Not sure what happened, but suddenly I didn't like him. Like, I think he'd be more appealing as a character if his arms were noodley but I always drew them so stiff as though they had bones and it looked weird.
Looking back, I didn't have a good enough grasp of how to make this type of character: noodley limbs that definitely don't connect to the rest of the body in an anatomically correct way, oversized shoes that will inevitably result in cursed imagery if taken off, gloves that are likewise over-inflated and never to be removed... huh maybe I should do a character design study on Sonic characters
I also constantly gave him that stupid-looking smile. It reminds me of the Dreamworks face meme now and I hate it. Now, if I were to redesign this guy? I'd embrace the fact that he's supposed to be stylized, and NOT worry about whether or not he appears to have bones because it seems like that's exactly what I did every single time I drew him and, poor guy, that's not a good look for him 😔
...I wanted to end the post with that paragraph, but then I started typing up the other two-thirds of this post in the hashtags. So here's my rant about the canvas sizes: the "Halloween" one was WAAAY too big for starters. There was this whole era of my drawings where I wanted to be able to capture the details that other mediums offer, but I also didn't want to use other mediums because pixel art was what I was best at. I ended up just taking an unnecessarily long time on massive pixel art canvases, all because I had concerns about working in a software like ibisPaint or Procreate. "Pixel art doesn't require brushes, so how would I know which brush to use?" "What on earth is a 'blending mode'?" "I can't draw a straight line for the life of me, and you want me to add weight to them now??" I'm pretty sure most self-taught artists have struggles like those, though; I was just a bit late to it because learning those things wasn't needed in my pixel artist skillset, oddly enough
Anyway. Those two drawings of E'lim with a clipboard are actually some of the last I made, both of him and in oversized pixel art. You might can tell that I was beginning to address all of the problems I've brought up in this post already; the scale on it is smaller than the Halloween drawing, and the face isn't just a widened smile peering directly into the viewer's soul. Regardless I still wasn't proud of how he kept turning out in my drawings (and also didn't fit into my shifting ideas for worldbuilding) so I lost interest in drawing him and he fell out of being one of my main OCs.
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atsushi!!!!! I think it'd be cool if he had a little bit of an undercut sort of deal happening.
fukufuku. is it gay to smile softly as you have one final hojicha with your bro? yeah it is fukuzawa. also lately whenever i draw fukuzawa he looks like he's got the Scene Hair lol.
tainted sorrow! you know how in the light novels chuuya's ability was described as being the color black? black like black holes, black like the absence of light. Well honestly i think that is SUPER FREAKING COOL compared to the usual old red glow. i was wondering how to translate that in a weird black space-outlines negative 3d way
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the webcomic can have one (1) funny "earnest moment interrupted by comedy" joke. as a treat. but also because it is so in character for them ajkshdjkas
yes they will say the most earnest shit to each other and then immediately try to cringe out of their own bodies. they are best friends but they would rather jump out of a window before admitting it. they are incredibly devoted and grateful to one another but you could not water board that out of either of them.
the only thing that can get either of them to admit how much they care for each other is if the other is in life threatening danger and not a second before aakjshdks
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no joke but what I really want for Buddy Daddies as a fandom is to make fanart and fanfic post present time ep12 where Rei wears an arm orthosis when working.
I think varied disability aids being represented would be fantastic, and personally would write Rei as someone being deeply proud of something he's done for his family, but also understanding with time that using an orthosis also helps him at work and in raising Miri. with a giant portion of mobility/motorics aids being represented by prosthetics, seeing more variety and exploring it in fiction would also help making a step in normalising disability treatments.
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Something that is an example of good character writing in Princess Tutu is how Fakir and Duck have little incompatibilities in their personalities (you know. Beyond the obvious). It makes it a little harder for them to get along and understand one another but you get the sense that they’re both putting the effort in. It’s sweet and it makes the relationship feel all the more real.
Fakir is serious, blunt, and he doesn’t sugarcoat things. His words often come across as harsh, even when there’s real care behind them. As a result, Duck—who reads his tone but not always the intentions behind it—doesn’t always pick up on when he’s doing something nice for her. For example, when Duck starts to tell Mytho she’s Princess Tutu, Fakir startles her to interrupt her, causing her to turn back into a duck. She takes offense and only later realizes he did it so she wouldn’t reveal her identity to mytho before she was ready (and even then I don’t think she picks up on the full extent of it). There’s another scene where he tells her point blank if she doesn’t want to fight the raven she needs to stop being princess tutu. It comes across as quite harsh and seems to visibly sadden Duck, though he cares about her deeply and is only trying to keep her safe.
The other “incompatibility” that comes to mind is how Fakir is sensitive and easily offended while Duck tends to blurt out whatever’s on her mind. While there are many scenes where he does get upset (take the scene in the Wandering Knight where he takes her request to stop getting in fights as an attack on his character), there are just as many where he doesn’t take the bait. Watch the show a few times and you’ll notice Fakir has a habit of going silent when Duck says something insensitive. He waits for her to finish speaking and he either ignores her or moves on. In those moments, you can feel the conscious effort he’s making to not lash out. Duck’s earnest naïveté is part of why draws him to her but at the same time it causes friction between then when she’s overly hopeful about something delicate to him, like his writing.
Anyways tldr; Fakir tends to hide what he’s feeling and thinking behind a deadpan demeanor, which sometimes obscures his true intentions from Duck. Meanwhile Duck tends to trample over the things Fakir is sensitive about in conversation, and he often has to stop himself from getting upset. In these moments you see how these characters may not completely understand each other but they care about each other a lot and actively work to smooth out their differences. Also it’s very cute when Duck realizes after the fact Fakir did something nice for her and her face lights up.
These little quirks make room for natural misunderstandings between the characters. Honestly, I like how Princess Tutu doesn’t smooth out compatibility issues or completely rewrite Fakir’s character when he and Duck become friends. The same flaws and tendencies are present, we just see the characters taking more active, conscious steps towards getting along.
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i like to make fun of murderbot for being all "i hate everyone, i don't care about anything or anyone, fuck off" while simultaneously caring very much about the people around it and the situations it finds itself in. i love how it "accidentally" ends up caring quite a lot about the friends it makes along the way.
but i think something that i tend to forget is that murderbot actively decides to care - at least at some point in its story.
idk, as a person that struggles with depression, this paragraph from artificial condition really resonates with me. prior to all systems red, murderbot had contracts. it had routine and it had protocols. it knew what it had to do to just get by, how to perform so no one would notice it had disabled its governor module. it was deeply depressed, yes, but it was functioning (for lack of a better word).
in artificial condition, murderbot's routine is gone. it cannot go on in that state of numbly going-from-contract-to-contract, putting in as little effort as possible, consuming media to cope. that option is gone because it escaped (and note that escaping the company was not an active choice, it kinda happened to it). murderbot has two options now: it can either gather all its energy; actively do something new and difficult and distressing; change something in its life and try. or it can let the numbness and the emptiness take over and stop trying. if murderbot wants to survive as a rogue secunit, it has to try. no matter how difficult that is.
the wording in that paragraph really hits home for me. the way the non-caring sees an opportunity to slip in and to take over. does murderbot even care? does anything really matter? is anything really worth the hassle? wouldn't it be so much easier to just let your mind slip away a little, to go numb, to be passive, to watch media and wait for things to happen to you? wouldn't it be nice to stop thinking and struggling and feeling complicated things? to stop making an effort? you've been dealing with a lot lately and maybe it's time to just shut down. maybe you'll just take a little break. just slip deeper into this chair and start the show. time flies when you're not paying attention. trying is exhausting. who cares if you don't do the things you wanted to do, you were supposed to do. it'll be fine. let's just ignore those things for now. just let the non-caring take over. just stop thinking. you can deal with the aftermath later. just watch your shows. who cares.
but murderbot cares. it decides to care. it decides to fight with all it has and i think that is so brave. and i think in the later books caring is less of an active decision for murderbot. once you start caring, it's easier to keep going than to stop; and murderbot, for all its "i'm a grumpy rogue secunit, leave me alone" behavior, knows just how important caring is. so it's not that it doesn't know what's happening; rather, it lets itself care.
tl;dr: caring is not the default for murderbot, it's just the more difficult of two options. and it decides not to take the soft option. it decides to struggle. it decides to care. and so it does.
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I miss the era where Batman Dick would always freak out when he hears that Damian is fighting someone alone and everyone assumes its because he's worried about his safety, when in reality he's worried about the safety of the people fighting him.
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