#i now have a least favourite art tool

[the-fiction-witch]

Favourite Nurse

Media The Artful Dodger

Character Jack Dawkins

Couple Jack X Reader

Rating Sweet AF

I stood in the surgical theatre sweeping, scrubbing and cleaning the place down in the early morning light, my cheap scratchy nurse dress around me as I tried to remove blood stains from the table. I heard the door creak open and a voice spoke up.

"Humm... There's my favourite nurse." He slyly smiled,

I looked up seeing Doctor Jack Dawkins leant on the wooden door frame that led into the prep room, in his usual brown trousers, white faded shirt with blood-stained sleeves, blue waistcoat and tattered green tie, his blonde hair dusty and dirty as usual. His arms crossed smugly over his chest and that stupid sly smile on his lips. 

I turned on my heels to face him moving a strand of hair out my eyes and setting both hands on my hips, "Ah Doctor Dawkins,"

"The Very same my darling," 

"Just the man I've been looking for, I have a bone to pick with you,"

"ohh really?" he smirked as he moved his hands behind him and swaggered over with an air of teasing playfulness, "Umm... Go on then my darling, But I think we both know what bone I want you to be picking at," 

"You left the surgical theatre in an utter abhorrence!" I complain, "Tools used and all over the place, floor blanketed in blood, if you are going to do surgery in the middle of the night you could at least tidy up after yourself!" 

His tone soured, "I don't have time my darling," He rolled his eyes, "If I hadn't acted quickly the man would be dead by now. So I had to perform an emergency operation late last night or early this morning... not confident which it was."

"That's not an excuse not to clean up after yourself."

"But I was tired," he pouted, 

"I am not your maid Jack, as much as you like to think I am," I told him as I took my bucket out with me to the courtyard, but he followed me. 

"I know you're not. I just needed your help. We are the only ones working round the clock here. It's not my fault my body won't let me stay up past 10 anymore."

"That doesn't mean I'm your maid," I told him as I tipped my bucket over the stairwell and set it down with the others, but before I could scamper back inside he wrapped his arms around my waist.

"But you're a brilliant cleaner you get all the spots I'm too blind for."

"Or too ignorant for." 

"Both," he chuckled, "I like you being my cute little maid girl,"

"I am not your maid." I told him poking his chest with my finger, "As much as you may like it."

"And how did you know I had a maid fetish?" he whispered,

"Because you have an everything fetish," I glared as I moved away and cleaned off my hands, "You're a very horny boy Jack."

"Well yeah? You spent ten years in the navy where you're lucky to see one woman per six months, You can't help getting excited for every girl you see." he smirked sitting himself on the edge of the stairs, "And how can I help it with you running around my darling? "

"Some days I really do wonder how you are such a smart doctor, your brain rarely gets any blood it's always down your trousers." I sighed as I began to hang the washed sheets on the lines in the courtyard, 

"I can't help it, you're too captivating," 

"Umm... You're lucky you don't get a damn slap. Escpaily after I caught you peeking down my dress the other day."

"And up your dress," he muttered,

"What was that?" I glared,

"Nothing my darling," He cooed, "You're such a little smart ass, aren't you? The girls at the cat and bagpipes don't give me such sassback."

"That's because you're paying them jack they have to pretend to like you,"

"They do like me."

"do they? do they ever actually want to talk or be near you before you hand them a pound?" 

"Sometimes," He lied, "They like my stethoscope, and hearing stories about work."

"AHH yes your stethoscope I'm sure all rottys girls at the cat and bagpipes just love your... Stethoscope"

"Well and because I'm so handsome,"

"You good looking I think you're very handsome just... Too confident for your own good sometimes" I rolled my eyes as I finished hanging the newly washed sheets and gathered in the dry ones from earlier, 

"Oh? you think I'm handsome My darling?" he teased, 

I finished gathering all the dry sheets and headed back towards the door, "You can be when you have a bath and some clean clothes Jack" I said tugging on his stained sleeves and giving his hair a tussle as I walked up the steps seeing visible dust fall out of it, 

"So you're saying I'm attractive? Like you are actually attracted to me and you think I'm handsome" he gave chase of course following behind me like an excited puppy, 

"If it makes you feel better. Yes," I rolled my eyes kissing his cheek before I headed into the storage cupboard to start folding the dry sheets and putting them away, 

"Wait. You're actually serious, no joke and you're not just saying that to make me stop bugging you?"

"I'm very serious you can be very handsome sometimes," 

"Ohh? Well, what makes me so handsome then my darling?" he cooed leaning his elbow on the shelf, 

"you're a very handsome man Jack. You have a toned slender body, you're tall, you have very handsome soft blonde hair, deep chocolate brown eyes, a striking jaw and a very cute smile and you're are adorable when you get mad or jealous and you frown all pouty, so yes I do find you attractive and the times when you clean up have a hot bath and some clean clothes I admit your very lovely" I explain as I fold sheets, 

He smiled and slightly blushed at my compliments "So... if I had a bath and some fresh clothes I wouldn't just be cute I'd be... sexy?"

"Perhaps,"

He smirked and grabbed my hand spinning me around before pulling me into his chest, "So? how would I rate all clean and lovely?"

"Out of ten?"

"Yep," he smirked not letting me move in any way,

I smiled and set my hands on his waistcoat moving on my tip toes to be inches from his lips as I spoke, At the moment eight. When you have a bath eleven."

"A-an 11? So you're saying once I've had a bath and worn nice clothes, I'll be stunningly handsome and an 11 out of 10?" he blushed, "You... really mean that Y/n?"

"I do, You're a slender little smart-ass jack. And I think you're the most attractive man in the hospital... I mean, that's kind of a hollow complaint though given my options for doctors are you, Dr sneed and Prof. And prof is in his 60s and Sneed looks like a snail" 

"Well, it's lucky for you that I'm so good-looking and have such a captivating personality," 

"It is," I giggled,

"I always knew I was your favourite nurse darling," He smiled stroking my cheek and pulling my lips to his own.  

#tbs #thomas sangster #tbs imagine #tbs imagines #thomas brodie sangster imagine #thomas sangster imagine #thomasbrodiesangster #tbs smut #thomas brodie sangster #thomas brodie sangster smut #jackdawkins #jack dawkins #jackdawkinsartfuldodger #jack #the artful dodger #theartfuldodgerjack #thearttfuldodger #theartfuldogger

[veilantares]

Puppet Mastermind

A puppet seeks a Master's mind, wherever in the dark it goes. But when it moves and shakes untold, a madness, a vision, a chaos unfolds, like a blossom aflame in the void

alternative title: Boneka Mastermind. This puppet is its own master, it's strings as strong as soul, when it moves its silent steel, sings as loud as the void.  When I made this I was consumed by the thought of how I could never quite get the crown to align to the mandala without it looking at least a little bit off. I also completely refused to use the symmetry tool even knowing it would have made this type of piece way easier to make... 

Recently I’ve been spending what little free time I have going through back catalogues of my favourite artists rather than making art myself, its really cool to see how some peoples art looked one, two, or even five years ago, the steps they’ve taken to reach their current style. I think it’s also the main reason I haven’t yet wiped most of my instagram and twitter of some of my older stuff, the contrasts are pretty vivid between then and “now” - when I eventually get to looking good it will be pretty interesting to see the many steps that lead up to it.

Although.... theres a strange paralysis that comes when I take too far a dive into the art I enjoy. It’s a feeling that “well, theres already so much of this good stuff, I now feel no need to add to it” - almost as if everything that can be expanded on for whatever idea has been said. This isn’t true at all of course, but I think recently whenever I have free time, this rationale stops me from pushing forward and finishing that next piece. 

I’m hoping to get at least a couple of finished pieces out  in the next month just to explain certain moods and ideas that were on backburner, but we’ll see what time and mood permits. 

#veilantares #digital art #my art #art #Illustration #OC #mech #mecha #biomechanical #voidpunk #knight #character design #monster girl #monstergirl #cyborg #warrior #demon girl #demon #robot girl #robot

[sakasakiii]

hi!!! how long does an average panel of one of your comics take??

i love your work so much!! it got me into silmblr hehe

HI NONNIE!!! thank u sooooso much for checking in and for ur lovely ask! it means a lot to hear that my silly ol scribbles were what introduced u to the glorious landscape that is the tolkien fandom! on tumblr no less!! i hope you stay a real long time, and have a blast while you're at it 💖💖

now onto your question! that's some good food for thought uhhhh i can try to estimate?? its been a while but i shld have some rough ideas abt each that i can share! the time frame each comic/panel takes is highly dependent on WHAT kind of comic it is. i hv two kinds of comics I usually do: 1) full-length, and 2) goofy/4koma.

i have a few full-length comics laying about in my archive, but my most recent one/best example is Ghosts which was around uh.... 7 pages excluding the bonus panels! in terms of the process, i usually divide it into 5 stages:

Drafting: this is either the fastest stage OR the slowest depending entirely whether i know what im doing LMAO,, if i have a set idea for what i want to happen, i might get drafts done in a few hours, but if i flounder, it can take a few days 🤔

Lineart: relatively simple enough once i hv the draft down, so id say anything ranging from an hour to half a day if theres nothing else going on irl

Block colouring (main actors): there are DEFINITELY easier and more professional ways to do this with mass-selection and the lasso fill/bucket tool, but idk how to do that on SAI (my art program) so i colour everything by hand HAHA which makes the process longer.... half a day to a day?

Shading: THE WORST!!! definintely my least favourite bc i find it tedious due to all the details/prettification of elves that i am legally obliged to pour into this stage 😭😭 as a result, it can take days!!!

Background + Lighting + Final Rendering: similar to the previous stage haha it just depends on how much effort i wanna put into the final product looking nice. roughly a few days? it kind of meshes with stage 4 anyways haha

just for fun, i hope this process gif for page 6 can illustrate that 👇

these are just rough estimates, bc all in all, the time it takes so finish a page is really dependent on how free I am hahaha. Also, I usually work on full-length comics like Ghost which have more than one page all at once, which means I drafted all 7 pages at once, then did the lineart for all 7 pages at once, coloured at once, shaded rendered bla bla bla 😚 iirc, i think it took me 11 days in total to finish Ghosts before the end of June last year!

For goofy/4-koma, its usually just one page with less detailed/more cartoonish/chibi character styles so it takes a day or two days at most! again, it all boils down to how free i am hehe

YEAH SORRY THIS ENDED UP BEING AN INFO DUMP but thank you so much again for asking and letting me ramble! <3 i ended up having a lot of fun looking back on my drafts n thinking back on my processes.... theres defininitely room for improvement, but thats another worry for another day heheh 😎

#rin replies #anon asks #silmarillion #yeah sorry again this turned into a yap fest 💃💃 #i never knew all those wips wld come in handy but maybe its a good thing i like sending myself things hehe #cannot reiterate enough how much i HATE colouring :(((( #thank you again for ur kind message nonnie <33 #silm #silm comic #wip #behind the scenes stuff

[ominoose]

𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐧 𝐊𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐒𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦 𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐟𝐭

Characters: Steven Grant, Marc Spector, Jake Lockley x Reader Blurb: What each of the Moon Knight men would be like playing Minecraft.

☽ 𝙎𝙩𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙣 𝙂𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙩 - The Builder

× Expect your Minecraft world to be 100% vegan. No animals are allowed to be harmed in this world because "There's enough of that in the real world!". When you first spawn in Steven will be off destroying all the grass in sight for seeds, leaving you to start breaking trees. If you gather any dropped saplings and apples to give to him he'll be endeared, promising to plant several trees at your future base in your honour.

× Building an actual base will take ages. Steven will be extremely picky about where you settle down and will force you to wander several biomes for several days to find somewhere worthy, somewhere with a view. His favourite place to set up camp would be next to a pyramid or sand village, but you'll have to force him to move on on account of there being no actual resources or places to grow the farm he's insistent on.

× When Steven's finally found somewhere worthy of a base, he'll get to building without asking, silently expecting you to go take care of everything else. If you've managed to convince him not to play on peaceful, your first port of call should be mining for coal to make torches to keep mobs away at night, then craft sheers because, again, no animals are allowed to be harmed ever (he will know and you will be hearing a loud "Oi!" down the mic).

× If he so much as clocks any sort of non animal or villager mob at any distance he'll be startled and shutting himself inside, shouting at you to "Kill it, bloody kill it!", his pacifist streak temporarily gone. When he's not under threat of zombies sitting under trees 70 blocks away in another biome, he'll be decorating your base with all the flowers he can find, covering every single block ("No, it's not a mess, it's art. You know the Egyptians believed-").

× He will not go into any caves, ever. You managed to coax him once, piquing his interest with the prospect of glowstone that he could decorate your shared home with, but the moment he heard a cave sound he got such a fright the headset fell off. Steven has never went back.

× When you're out doing literally everything else to keep both of you going, Steven has secretly moved your Minecraft bed next to his and adopted ten dogs and seven cats.

"What? What- No love your bed was always next to mine, remember? Yeah! Yeah, totally- totally always been there. Why are the beds dyed red and blue? Well... Well it's British, innit?"

☽ 𝙈𝙖𝙧𝙘 𝙎𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙤𝙧 - The Fighter

× Minecraft with Marc is serious. It's tactical. His aim is to have the Ender Dragon gone within five minecraft business days. That goal has never been obtained in that time frame but he's insistent that it's possible. When you first spawn in you're expected to be gathering wood and killing any sheep in sight, he want's a basic base of dirt created before night down and if you haven't at least got a set of stone tools, beds and torches he'll be brooding, "If you actually took things seriously, we could've been in The End right now.".

× If you don't like fighting mobs like zombies or skeletons Marc will be teasing you for it, for a good while at that. However, the moment you get hit by even a baby zombie he is charging over with an enchanted sword, full armor set, jumping and swinging at the enemy mob. From that moment on he will demand you to put on a full armour set if you haven't already, "I don't care about your stupid skin, put on the helmet now."

× Tries to be a red stone engineer every now and again, making automatic farms and tries to calculate how to properly take advantage of the villager economy but fails every time without fail, sending him into a huff. The only thing he can truly manage is carts, so if you can sort out some red stone contraptions for him he will be genuinely impressed, maybe even leaving some cool loot in your chests when you aren't looking.

× Marc complains when you bring a single dog home, and only further complains when you bring home a whole pack, "I'm not feeding them or looking out for them when you get yourself blown up!". However, given some time, he will feed them and die for them. Marc is the first to name them, giving them cliche names like Buster, Lucky, Oreo, coupled with a few Star Wars themed ones like Chewy. If you draw too much attention to it he will deny it, but if you don't, and you're traveling together, you might hear him mutter a "Good boy." when he makes the dogs sit. What you won't hear is him speaking for a good ten minutes if one of the dogs die, and trying to get him to talk will only get you snippy responses.

"No. I'm not sad. No, I don't miss Woof2D2. Drop it."

☽ 𝙅𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙇𝙤𝙘𝙠𝙡𝙚𝙮 - The Miner

× Jake is the most casual Minecraft player. Nothing scares him, nothing startles him, it's almost uncanny how relaxed he is with the game. When you spawn in he's just ambling around, whistling as he breaks some trees, maybe even picking a few flowers, "Do a twirl amigo." as he throws them at you like he's at a strip club. When he passes some mobs he'll casually mutter greetings, "Hola vaca, hola oveja, hola enredadera," before he starts attacking them, still whistling. He'll be perfectly happy to build a 6x6 dirt base and live in it permanently, so you will have to take over base building.

× Whatever you want to do, Jake will go with it. You want to follow a treasure map? He's stocking on food. You want to fight the Ender Dragon? He's crafting arrows. You want to go fishing? He's overjoyed, already at the nearest body of water and singing a little tune. When you don't have a particular to-do list ready and you're both just hanging around, he'll be in the mines, and he will stay in the mines until you need anything. Unless you call him out, asking for supplies or wanting to go somewhere, he will be in there for days on end, crafting chests to empty his ever growing inventory. Cave sounds and creepers don't scare him at all, if you ever join him in the caves and get a fright he'll be letting out a full belly laugh at you, and every now and again will creep up on you shouting "Boo!" to spook you, giggling mischievously to himself.

× The plus side to him constantly yearning for the mines is your endless supplies of ingots, diamonds, obsidian, etc. By the fifth day in you are fully decked out in armour, compasses, shears and could power a working, life-sized, red stone television. It seems to sooth him, just being able to mind his own business wandering the caverns while hacking at stone with his pickaxe, so if you ever need a single thing from the caves he will be chomping at the bit to do it.

× Jake only has beef with one group of mobs, and it's the Pillagers. The first time he saw them scouting nearby with a flag he was confused, "¿Qué? Why are the ugly squid men here?", thinking they're stray villagers as he goes to trade some emeralds. For the first time ever he is startled when they attack him, thinking they are out to avenge all the Villagers he secretly bullied when you both found a village. Jake fights back viciously, for the first time in some sort of huff as he plays and cusses out the screen when he dies.

× It will take a bit for him to get back into his relaxed mood after the ordeal, if he comes back to the game at all. Coax him with some foods other than meat, like a cake, cookies, baked potato, etc and he'll cheer up as if you've actually baked something for him in real life,

"Oh? Gracias. I will use this as fuel when I go back to murder the rest of those calamares bastardos."

#steven grant #marc spector #jake lockley #moon knight #the first gif is steven when you tell him he he can't start placing dirt blocks in the house for flowers #(he hasnt figured out about pots) #second gif is marc when you bring him dog 7 #third gif is jake seeing the pilligers 10 days after they first killed him #love how i dont write for a year then when i first do its mk minecraft what the flip #omiwrites

[risingoflights]

i’m not burned out on art because there are still lots of things i consider fun to draw, but i’m very burned out on the self-promo aspects of being a social media artist

it’s always been running just to stand still. it has to be constant or people trickle away faster than they trickle in. and it’s not and never has been anybody’s fault - i know folks are eager to support the creators they love. but while you might have a dollar for a handful of your favourites, you don’t have enough dollars for them all. that’s just the way it is

what’s discouraging has been the sharp dive of social media reliability recently, and the rise of certain artist displacement tools. now, those tools in and of themselves are... scope for a whole lotta discussion which more qualified people than i are doing... but one overall result of the tools existing and being used has been further undervaluing of artists’ skills. furthering the view that artists are just fodder to be consumed

so what if a bunch of artists are out of work? there’s always more that are willing to do more, for less. and worst case scenario there are the machines

but i’ll say - most people who appreciate artwork don’t feel that way. they do care about artists. but people who appreciate artwork are also not most people. outside in the world ignorance reigns. again, not anybody’s fault. it’s harder than ever these days to see past our own immediate problems

to be honest i’m surprised i’ve managed to get this far at all. when i quit the stable career i trained so hard to get into to pursue this lifestyle it was mostly from desperation - at least, no matter how stressful things are as an artist, nothing’s going to die because of error or incompetence or negligence on my part. but i have a safety network that allowed me to try, and stick around when things got tough. i’m already one of the lucky ones. no wonder so many others are leaving art fields for good

i’m hoping to find a full time art job, at least for a little while. though seeing very successful freelancers say it’s the toughest it’s ever been, and seeing how professional industry full-timers have been treated to meet expectations and demands in this emerging world... it’s not really a happy prospect either. but it might help dispel some of this gloom from appealing to the social media gods

the thing is... regardless of how shitty things are for professionals now... people are still always going to make art. people are always going to love making art. which is why there will always be artists to exploit. which is part of this whole... misery of the situation.

but no job is without its miseries, right?

nice to just vent once in a while

[stxleslyds]

Day 2. Favourite Nightwing issues.

I believe that my first contact with Nightwing comics was actually with the 1996 run, I read it, of course much later on but I vividly remember the beginning of Dick's job as a cop and the introduction of Amy Rohrbach. I do understand why so many people aren't fond of that particular carer choice for Dick but at the same time, there was this enormous sense of accomplishment and self-destruction (for the greater good) that now I relate with Dick and his job as Nightwing.

Issues #48 to #50 might not be my actual "favourites" but they left such an impact on who I believe Nightwing truly is that mentioning them here doesn't seem too outlandish for me.

There was a lot to enjoy, a great "villain", a new and very fresh new side-character (in Amy), and a whole lot more to develop in terms of Dick's characterization.

He was intrepid, smart, charming and an incredible actor too. Watching him go from one version of himself to another was fun and exciting. He didn´t necessarily act dumb, he just adapted to what others thought he would be like and acted the part to keep his identity safe.

Another thing to bring up about these issues that makes them so special is the art. Greg Land really set up a high bar... He did not only drew Dick in a flattering way but he also drew Nightwing's fighting style and elegance in a perfect way. His movements are clear and clean and you can visualize it with ease, it is quite the visual experience.

Going back to Amy's introduction... I believe she was a tool to really drive in the why Dick was joining the Bludhaven Police Department. She was interesting in a way that not many characters have been able to be, at least to me.

So, yeah. Nightwing #48 to #50 (1996) are my choice for the second day of 31DOD.

#31DOD #dick grayson #nightwing

[fushiglow]

sooo... 245 huh?

some thoughts about the chapter leaks under the cut!!

the cursed tool??? for real???? higuruma seems way too switched on to get caught out by something like that, especially after all the build up with their plan for his domain. i did NOT like that. (also does that mean yorozu's choice to make a binding vow in her final moments was meaningless??? did my tsumiki/megumi theory just crash and burn????)

i hope there's a reason we're following the hakari vs uraume fight. hakari vs kashimo is one of my favourite fights, but i am simply not interested enough in hakari or uraume at this point in the story. hopefully gege does something cool with it — maybe something to do with the "human nature" comment?

"he's a gloomy kouhai, but he's a man who speaks when necessary and takes action when needed" this felt like shade to gojo and i thought that was funny

ino is here and i pray that "ino has something to say about nanami" amounts to something significant. PLEASE.

i just really miss kenjaku and takaba tbh

on a positive note, the art this chapter was gorgeous. sukuna looked majestic and i think this might be my favourite panel of yuji ever????

but i can't lie, i'm starting to lose my enthusiasm. i still believe it's possible for gege to deliver a satisfying outcome to some of his more questionable choices since gojo was unboxed, but the story keeps taking unexpected turns without any set up or pay off, at least in the short term.

gojo's death, kashimo's death, kenjaku's death, and now yorozu's cursed tool and higuruma's domain... these all feel like things that should have been given time and development, but instead they were almost glossed over for the sake of shock value.

it's been 20+ chapters since that enormous time skip and we're still none the wiser about the answers to the many questions it brought. i really hope i'm wrong and gege is going to tie up all of these loose threads into something mindblowing, but that seems like a tall order. i'll be super impressed if he manages it, i guess!!

#jjk #jujutsu kaisen #jjk 245 #jjk leaks #jjk spoilers #jjk manga leaks #jjk manga spoilers #jujutsu kaisen spoilers #jujutsu kaisen leaks #jujutsu kaisen manga leaks #jujutsu kaisen manga spoilers

[xenonmoon]

Have you thought about trying to draw different versions of his costumes from the comics? Or maybe an evolution of all his different costumes?

Took me a while, but it turned out to be a great idea! Drawing the same subject over and over with different tools helped a lot getting a bit more familiar with the new program. I've ended up doing one sketch / drawing for each costume moonie uses in the comics I've read so far, starting with: 1. Werewolf By Night

(original: Don and Howie Perlin)

The debut costume! While I liked the slim cape tied at the wrists, the collar always felt a bit off ad silly to me. Loved the silver knuckles and braces inspired by cestus gladiators though!

Fun fact: it was apparently meant to have red eyes at first, as we see in the cover of Werewolf By Night #32. I remember him popping out with red eyes 2-3 more times even in later comics, one for sure #24 from the Moench run

2. Moon Knight (Volume 1)

(original: Bill Sienkiewicz)

When Sienkiewicz joined the team it was requested (I think the editor? I've read it a long time ago) a small design change on the cape, making it more like Your Average Superhero Cape(tm). Doug Moench didn't quite dig the idea at first since he found the previous design more unique for the character, but he ended up liking a lot how Bill made it flow in his panels.

(original: Bo Hampton)

After Bill Sienkiewicz left the series there were a number of different artists taking up his pencil, but two in particular (Keith Pollard and Bo Hampton) unexplainably made him forget what the "under" in "underwear" really meant. Loved how no one quite understood if the suit was of a heavily shaded white or a glossy black, so sometimes it's black with lots of reflections and sometimes it was plain white, lol

3. Fist of Khonshu

(original: Mark Beacham & Geof Isherwood)

I refused to draw this costume in its entirety and just went for a rendition of my favourite panel lmao

Like really, who thought that golden braces / ankles and wrestler-style belt were a good idea. And the ankh instead of the moon in his chest? Ah well. Didn't last long anyway.

4. West Coast Avengers

(original: Al Milgrom & Joe Sinnott)

Basically the same as Fist of Khonshu's but THE MOON IS BACK

There is a big gap from here on since I've only just started Marc Spector: Moon Knight and know little to nothing about what's between here and the 2014 run

5. Moon Knight (2014) - Mr Knight & Moon Knight

(original: Declan Shalvey)

This is actually the first comic I've read. I believe this was the first or one of the first appearances of the Mr. Knight costume? A way to keep helping around (esp. with the police) without Moon Knight's reputation getting in the way. I've forgot a lot about the overall plot, perhaps for the best - I'll read it again eventually, this time knowing what happened before!

(original: Declan Shalvey & Jordie Bellaire)

I absolutely LOVE this version of the MK costume. It's simple and effective, more than just a skintight suit but less than a full armor so to make it believably flexible to wear, at least to some extent. The black-and-white contrast makes it less flat and easily recognisable. I'm glad it was carried over to later runs, along with the "classic" one.

6. Moon Knight (2016)

(original: Greg Smallwood)

I'm a sucker for Smallwood's art. I can't help it. I'm almost glad Marc spends a lot of time without any mask in this run, his faces and expressions are just *chef kiss*

(original: Greg Smallwood)

Did one even for the improvised costume in the asylum, since the other MK suit that appears in this run is identical to the classic one (if I remember well?)

7. Moon Knight (2021) - Mr Knight & Moon Knight

(original: Alessandro Cappuccio)

I've read the first 3 issues of this run and peeked into some of the later ones for now - I'm not a big fan of how he draws Marc/Steven/Jake's face but the apart from that the art in this run is bloody gorgeous.

(original: Alessandro Cappuccio)

Ok this took me a bit more than the others. #2 gotta be one of my favourite issues so far.

I saw Moon Knight's costume doesn't change much from the earlier runs and Mr Knight's basically identical, it seems they've reached a bit of consistency lately? I'm still missing some of the runs

Anyway, thank you sm for the ask! I had fun drawing these! Some of these deserve their own post, I'll probably do that later.

#moon knight #moon knight comics #moon knight fanart #mk fanart #mk #fanart #ask sketches

[chaikachi]

Hello Miss Chaikachi, I just wanted to tell you that I love your art, It is always very cute, and I want to ask how in the world can you draw so fast? Like it take me a full day to draw half a sketch. You don't need to answer this if you don't want to. I just want to let you know that I appreciate your art, and It's a little bit scary with the speed you can draw.

Awwwwe thank you so much! 🥺🌸

To be fair, I think different pieces take different amounts of time. The recent bee drawings were relatively quick because they're not super detailed and I had a clear reference to work off of for both of them. But original compositions with full backgrounds can take me AGES (especially because I don't use a lot of fancy brushes that would make things like leaves easier to put on the canvas).

The recent Oscar one I'd been chipping away at very slowly for weeks before posting aha. (process shots under the cut)

First sketched it back during v9c2 (you can tell because the other rough Ruby sketch is right next to it).

And I redrew it, no joke, four times before I was satisfied enough to start colouring 💀

the second one was close, but i tried to line it differently than usual and it just Did Not look how I wanted it to so I had to go back and try a different way. Am currently in a style shift phase which makes it very tricky aha.

The only other big thing that helps with speed is practice. Which is everyone's least favourite word, I know. I've been drawing for a long time so I'm very familiar with both my tools (shortcuts and program) and how to draw the things I most often do. So the biggest hurdles I run into now are just if I am trying to do something new or that I don't quite know how to execute. But even in those instances, I have habits for what to look for and how to approach so I usually can overcome them fairly easily.

Being borderline obsessed with something you wanna draw also helps tho. I started drawing fanart for RWBY at the end of 2020 and drew more than 60 fully rendered pieces in 2021 alone. Which is something I'd never done before. Not just your style improves with that amount of practice.

But even if you're not super fast, there's nothing wrong with that!!! We live in a time where art is seen more as content than it is art which makes it seem like speed is something to prioritize... makes me sad.

What people post and how often they post it isn't necessarily indicative of how quickly they work. A lot of styles, especially more painterly types, can't even be created that quickly. And most artists have lots of unfinished WIPs and things they struggle with too that their audiences never see. There's no one right way to do anything. In my opinion, the most important part is just to make sure you enjoy the process. Any reward that comes outside of that is just a bonus 💕

#i rambled again ehehe #thank you for the ask!! #ask #asks #anon #anono

[wastelandhell]

Thank you so much @bokatan and @h3raklion for the tag!

I can tell this is going to become a patented Furby wall of text™ so I'll just throw in a cut now. tl;dr: I love you all and i draw danse way too much

This has been an interesting year mostly in that its my first time posting personal art online in, what, 7 years? I stopped doing this kind of drawing shortly after high school. I picked up painting flash and have been focusing on my tattooing since then. In that time I never did any digital drawing or character drawing until 2 years ago this month, when I drew Val for the first time.

I was terrified to post anything anywhere, I think I posted one piece to reddit, but besides that I kept everything pretty private until April of 2022. I originally made this blog as a place to silently post my drawings and screenshots while providing a sort of devlog of my mods for my own records, and didn't think I would be noticed. I didn't realize people tracked the paladin danse tag, lol!

I'm really glad for all the people I've met through here, I never would have kept this blog up if it weren't for the wonderful messages from all of you guys. So much of my art, both in subject and execution has been influenced by the other users I've had the pleasure of interacting with and I hope to keep it up this year!

You all know I mostly just draw Val and Danse, and this is the palette I use for most things:

These are all pretty drab, I use different of blending layers and photoshop adjustments to get the colours how I want them at the end.

I usually try to use different brushes in each of my drawings, but these are the ones I come back to most often. The first one is a variant of one of these brushes, I modified it to change size based on direction and tilt. I used the brush almost exclusively until august and its still my favourite for quickly laying out forms and values. I use this one for freckles. The rest are some of my top picks from True Grit Texture Supply, mostly from Chromagraph and Monomania.

I'm glad I was able to really get into drawing this year, and going through my folder I'm pleased with how my anatomy and faces have improved. However I am disappointed in how much of it is just the same ginger fuck. I'm really stunting my growth by not varying my subjects, and now that I'm more comfortable with the tools I want to push myself to actually. uh. try. Put in the effort to make art that says something, tells a story. Less single characters floating in blank voids. More people interacting, scenes, environments. I also really want to get back into digital painting, I used to be really into digital painting and in theory know how to do it. I'm going to try and dig out that old knowledge lol.

Despite being bit bland, and having some glaring errors that still bug me, that Danse drawing is still one of my favourites. I think I spent at least 8 hours on it. I was dealing with some personal issues at the time and just really wanted to scratch that brain itch that the bos knight uniform gives me. It's stupid, I hate it, I can draw it nearly completely from memory by how often I'm looking at it.

The 'tried something new' panel is difficult because I feel like a lot of my recent work has been pretty stagnant. It's all done with the same technique, same palette, same boring cel shading, same layer order, boring. This is one of the few times I did any proper digital painting, and tried to adapt the looser style that I use when I'm drawing in analogue mediums to my digital work.

I just talked about art here and not mods because that would be a whole other wall of text. But it would boil down to: love to do it, no time, and expensive.

Also, if anybody is interested, I do my drawing in Clip Studio Paint and Photoshop on a Surface Laptop Studio.

#i do not expect anyone to read all that i just like hearing myself talk #er...you know what i mean

[neon-ufo]

How do you come up with color schemes? they are so cool everytime!!

Thank you very much!! <3

I talked about my colour choice process before here and here! I think this more or less answers your question, but i'll talk some more about it anyway, take it as a little update+tl;dr lmao

One main thing that changed since those posts is that I started looking more into colours that are dull but still colourful, so i will occasionally make a piece that either has mostly dark colours, or colours that are not heavily saturated, but still make the piece look vibrant in its own way. I like to shift my go-to colour types every so often, to keep exploring new palettes! Like, recently I realized that shading with grey can give a really interesting effect!

My main goal with most pieces is to basically make a palette that's at least a little bit unusual. I do "natural" pieces now and then (mostly with like character designs and such), but for my usual art, I like it to look at least a little bit odd.

I think some of the most important tips I have are;

Limited colour palettes are a great tool for your colour composition and force you into some fun problem solving

If you work digitally, keep every colour on its own layer and keep changing the hue until it looks cool! Save several versions and compare! use the perks that digital art provides you with!

Distance yourself from your regular palette a little. You'd be surprised how much of a difference a very small change in colour can make. Give some attention to colours you don't often use; be it with a hue shift or with a saturation change. That's how I discovered my favourite shade of blue! (which is my go-to colour for things that would realistically be white lmao)

#chat #art tips #tutorial

[fortanreviews]

Big Bad Fortrant: Discord

Hello, I’d like you to welcome to my very first blogpost of my new blog, where I talk about things and share my thoughts regardless of whether anybody gives a fuck or not.

There will be many types of blogposts each with their own tag. And naturally, since Thursday is my least favourite day of the week; Thursdays will be saved for rants. The name of this tag came from an old callout post somebody did for me over 10 years ago.

I originally wanted to go on a rant about my least favourite website in the whole world, Twitter, but I believe I am still struggling to properly put my grievances into sentences without coming across as a rambling lunatic. So, I’ll save it for another time. Instead I will be ranting about my second least favourite website in the whole world, Discord. Now Discord is different from Twitter because I have it on all the time, yet I still despise many aspects of the site and it’s culture.

Discord has more or less become the modern MSN, however the difference between that and Discord is, MSN didn’t have any servers, it had group chats yes, but these group chats were kept to one chat only, there were no multiple channels or threads or anything like that. When MSN fell, Skype became the next popular chatting tool, and when that fell, Discord stepped in to fill in the gaps.

The multiple channels idea was great and it prevented chats from being too crowded. Back in the dark Skype days, a large group chat only had one place to talk in and many topics ended up getting buried by eachother. With Discord, you could create multiple channels.

Unfortunately, over time, this has led to some questionable decisions. Many people have started to use Discord as a substitute for forums. This includes archiving material in said servers, the problem with discords are, you have to JOIN them in order to see them, they’re not public, they’re all very much private. This has led to many people insert download links in their discords for projects such as fangames, game mods and even archived works. Use Internet Archive for that you nimrods! 

And the privacy of Discord has led to another problem, the creation and distribution of echochambers. In my other blog, goddamnwebcomics, there are now two cases of webcomic creators locking themselves in a Discord chat with their rabid fans where nobody is allowed to criticise them. Anyone who raises their voice in any form will be either banned or put in a struggle session. And this is just two examples off the top of my head, there are so many communities that are used for echochambers and even inappropriate behaviour. Yes, Discord’s private nature allows sexual predators to find new victims easier than ever. A lot of people don’t use the old internet etiquette of never showing your face, address or real name. It shouldn’t be done in public but it ESPECIALLY shouldn’t be done in private.

Discord has recently gained more open critique lately from their users, but my main problem is really with the culture of it. The name change update is stupid, but I don’t see a reason to leave the site over it. However, I can eventually see another live chat program replace it as the Discord developers make more and more asinine decisions that make the site more irritating to use. At least users have an option to leave unlike the poor YouTube community. Until then, many people, me included, will continue to use the site despite hating it. Don’t worry, I have no plans of buying Nitro anytime soon.

Let me end this rant on a personal story, because I want all of my rants to come from a certain place of experience. I feel like I’ve seen the enormous flaws Discord had way back when people still loved the site. For that we must go back 6 years. For privacy reasons, every name in this story has been changed. It has also been embellished quite a bit.

I joined Creatividia Discord server after my friend had invited me there, Creatividia was an art group that loved to work on art but also criticise art. The community was nice but they were too obsessed with perfectionism. The leader of this group was a man named Ruth Grondan. Ruth had demoted the co-founder of Creatividia years ago for not being critical enough. When I first met Ruth, I got along with him. I was able to rise through the ranks of the server, but overtime I started doing stupid shit because it was 2017. Other creatividia members weren’t happy with my behaviour, but their problem was, outside of extreme cases they NEVER told me anything. Creatividia was very secretive because a lot of things that happened inside were “confidential information”. Creatividia you see was part of a much larger group, and what happened in Creatividia shouldn’t be spread to the larger group because they often spoke and critiqued people behind their backs.

Eventually, my friend, Ron Mullet, joined the Creatividia Server. He was made fun of a lot behind his back which I didn’t approve of. One day I openly got confrontational with them for constantly attacking Ron, so I was kicked. Ruth told me that he still respected me and my art. My art here was a video editing project that I have been working on for 10 years now. I appreciated that.

However, with Creatividia gone, I never really got proper feedback that I wanted ever again. If I wanted to know how they really felt about me, I tried to ask Ron Mullet who was still in the group but he told me what happens there is confidential information. Later that year, I learned that a friend of mine, Geyeeh, had been invited to the group. I asked Geyeeh about his invitation and he told me “I’m not sure how I would tell it to you”. I thought this could be my chance to get back to Creatividia server because I knew Geyeeh would convince them to invite me back. So I waited and got really impatient so I kept bombarding Ron with questions. I was getting really anxious because I really wanted the feedback. Eventually I got a message from Ruth that I wouldn’t be invited to the group anymore. I was upset and asked Geyeeh and Ron what the hell was going on. For the first time I saw Geyeeh, who was previously optimistic and passionate, very upset with my shit. Yes, I had acted wrong, but I do feel that in a lot of ways, I was justified to be impatient because I had no idea what was happening in Creatividia. It was a fucking silly art group, not fucking Pentagon. I feel that people there were not honest to me and they wanted to keep me out. I do regret how I behaved and I feel I learned an important lesson about compassion and respect.

My friendship with Geyeeh never really recovered after that, we’re still good friends but not to the level we used to be. Overtime people made “smaller” Creatividia servers but in those groups the existence of the main Creatividia server or “Head Group” was a secret. I remember once asking Ron if one person I felt bad for was in head group and he told me “They aren’t, and never ask me anything about that group again”. Both Ron and Geyeeh are very defensive of Creatividia, even if Ron was a victim of their bullying in the past. Geyeeh’s more defensive though, I believe it’s because Geyeeh really has no other community to be part of. They’re his only friends.

The only time I got to see a post from the Head Group afterwards was when someone shared a post talking about me with the name cropped out. However from the way it was written I could tell from the get-go it was written by Ruth. Ruth’s opinion on me and my work had changed in just a few months, calling my work “odd and nonsensical” and he said I would never be allowed in the Head Group again.

I feel Creatividia situation perfectly captures the problem I have with Discord, if Creatividia had been made few years earlier and the group had a forum instead of a discord server, the privacy problem wouldn’t really exist and we would have a much more healthy community. I can’t directly call out Creatividia without burning bridges so the only way I can call them out is by using subtle messages in my art, the fake names I used in this story did come from a group of OC’s I had created that were a parody of the said group. I might deepdive into these OC’s in the coming blogposts, but anyways Discord is awful because it’s used as a substitute for forums, it’s a haven for echochambers and online creeps, and it makes even the silliest community treat themselves like they’re Area 51. That’ll be all.

#big bad fortrant

[haleyhylia]

Zelda, Princess of Hyrule ~ (The Legend of Zelda series) A reworking of a portrait of Alexandra of Denmark, Princess of Wales by Franz Xaver Winterhalter from 1864. Princess Zelda, sweet sweet Zelda. I was really proud of this portrait when I made it. Even though my happiness with it has waned in the years since I created this, I’m still flattered deeply by how much people like it. It was an early go at the whole classical portrait thing, and - like Midna - Princess Zelda is a character I would like to have a 2nd attempt at with improved skills and tools. My favourite story about this piece is that in 2019, Patricia Summersett (VOA for Zelda in Breath of the Wild) attended Auckland Armageddon where I was selling prints of my art for the first time. A supporter of mine took a print to her & the reaction was amazing. She loved it. I was so flattered. One day, I’ll do another Princess Zelda. But for now, this hangs in the halls of Hyrule Castle (at least in my mind)! + HQ art prints through my Etsy shop + More info & art in my DeviantArt gallery

#princess zelda #loz breath of the wild #legend of zelda #botw #fanart #fandom #loz fanart #loz fandom #parody #digital art #classical art #oil painting #hyrule #zelda #zelda fanart #hyrule warriors #portrait #triforce #historical fashion #gaming #video games #console gaming

[mareenavee]

For the ask game (if you haven't received these already) 💖

7. A popular fandom opinion that you agree with

16. One of your favourite tropes 

18. Something you initially did not like but came around to

Hello, hello! :D AH Thank you for being here!! And for these lovely questions.

Fandom Positivity asks from this game here.

7. A popular fandom opinion that you agree with.

Let's talk about something that, in some circles, may not be actually a popular opinion LOL because like, in the tag, some people certainly have problems with this situation. BUT. But. Art has always pulled forward things like this.

Let's talk about

✨Messy People Being Messy People ✨

Or, nuance in reading characters in TES.

I am not a fan of hard good vs evil in reads of media so when I see a large section of a fandom discussing nuance, my little heart is just so happy. It's because as a writer, I find the best kinds of heroes are often the ones that make all kinds of terrible mistakes and have to resolve them. And the best kinds of villains are the ones who are doing what they're doing because it is, to them, the only way forward.

Not everything has to be cut and dry, right? And I think TES does a fantastic job in a lot of ways throughout the series of showing that kind of nuance.

Just for an example...hmm. Yes, okay! Morrowind gives us Divayth Fyr. He's QUESTIONABLE on a good day, but how many good days are there really in Morrowind? Not many. Not many at all tbh. He helps the main character, sure, but there is just so much fucked up shit happening in that tower and in House Telvanni to begin with. So nuance. Nuance. And the fact that not everything has to be surface level.

Depth of character is important, both in the source material and in what we, as fanfiction writers, bring to the table in our own work. How do we show these mistakes? How do we redeem characters who need it? How does one come back from certain kinds of mistakes? Can they ever? Why or why not?

I think there's a certain kind of catharsis in analyzing text in this fashion and/or reading more deeply and so...people who are as in love with the nuance of TES's characters and worldbuilding as I am are always welcome here.

16. One of your favourite tropes.

ooooh. I love this question! Mostly because tropes can be such good tools! Hmm. It's difficult to pin down one favorite. But I think...

Yes let me ramble on about @paraparadigm's Always Read the Fine Print for two tropes I quite enjoy her hot take on.

The first is Modern Girl In Skyrim / Isekai. I haven't really dove into the deep end of the trope, but the way Para has accomplished worldbuilding for Vera on TWO SIDES is fucking phenomenal. I am as invested in Vee's difficulties in Tamriel as I am in her past, her version of earth and the absolute t r a g e d y it was. Like. I don't want to give away any spoilers but holy hell, was it amazing. I'm rereading it now for the past timelines for ~clues~ in her sequel.

Next is Enemies to Friends to Lovers. This is specifically interesting to me because I don't usually see all three stages in full, or that slow change from each stage. And as it carries into GS, the nature of their relationship is just so fricken nuanced (that word again lol) and I just. I love reading it. I loved to see the entire progression so far. I can't say it enough.

18. Something you initially did not like but came around to.

Something, or someone?

Ulfric Stormcloak was one of my least favorite characters in Skyrim LOL. I think part of it was just the whole situation in Windhelm. The entire situation. He's supposed to be running the place and from the get go we get hella BS, we get a murder mystery with a serial killer on the loose and the guards just...what are they doing?? We get racisms said guards look away from, we get dilapidated slums in which they store actual people out of sight out of mind, and Ulfric is spending all the coin for ... a war? When his people are very clearly suffering? (Granted I do understand some of his point about the war. But the entire situation with the civil war is fucked tbh.)

That is but one read of this man, tbh. And I do, also, write him as a villain in World.

But you know who doesn't? And who shows a whole other facet to this particular character? @thequeenofthewinter. Oh here we go with more nuance :> I love it, I love it. Let me, for a second, plug her fic By the Light of the Moon, which is some of the first exposure I had to her work outside of WIP posts!

Here's a bit I loved about this piece:

If the Jarl is honest with himself, he has been awake more than he would like to be at this strange, in-between hour, and he has grown to both love and loathe its coming and going. On one hand, it is quiet, and it brings with it a type of clarity which helps him conduct his responsibilities in peace, away from the daily bother of the far too fast-paced cadence of his life. And on the other, well, he is tired, both physically and mentally. But this is his job. This is his duty. This is what is required of him in order to keep the people of the land he loves so fervently happy. He puts them and their needs first. His needs are always second because there is no time for Ulfric Stormcloak to be happy. It is very rarely that he indulges himself in thinking about his own happiness. I don’t deserve it, so why would I dare to dream? These types of wishes are for those who have more time on their hands and much less responsibility. When have I ever been allowed to be happy? He turns his head to look at the sleeping form behind him. If there was one thing— Ulfric shakes his head, chasing away the thought as he swirls a glass whiskey and drains it. He has no time for these types of thoughts right now. He has work to do. He turns back to the paperwork on his desk, watching the dark ink of his quill moving fluidly over the parchment he is currently looking over, a request for more supplies to be sent to the Snow Quarter. Ulfric sighs.

I just really love seeing the way things drift through this man's head. I love to see the anxiety. I love this sort of valor, of wanting to do better but already doing the best he can. It's so different from the main source material. But it's also possible. It's also possible. And that's the sort of nuance I do love, that he can be read in so many different ways. I used to dislike him. Hate him even for a myriad reasons. But now I find him relatively sad, except when I read Winter's work. Then I love him lol.

#AskMareena #Ulfric Stormcloak #An Invincible Summer #tes #tesblr #Positivity Asks #fanficblr

[goodbye-paycheck-hello-yarn]

Fibre crafts and Art History time

So for those of you who don't know, I'm majoring in Art History at the moment and came across some paintings I'd like to share with you fibre friends.

First let's take a minute to set the scene of the Industrial Revolution (I'll keep this brief). The Ind. R is mainly associated with Britain, but was occurring across Britain during the late 18th century until early 19th century. This time saw a complete overhaul of hand-made goods in favour of machine made ones with new technology of the time. As machines grew and got more complex, more people were needed to work them. People all over Britain flocked to the cities for work, overcrowding them and creating awful conditions.

The use of these machines to make previously had crafted items such as the powerloom and the Crompton Mule was revolutionary, but had some awful affects on the working class.

^here's a basic timeline that shows some of the other significant creations of the time.

The invention of these machines saw a lot of crafters and seamstresses losing work. These people were already living primarily on poverty, seamstresses often worked for 3 days straight with no breaks to make ends meet. Now the population were not oblivious to the plight of these overworked, exhausted and hungry (primarily) women. There were people who were anti Industrial Revolution for a myriad of reasons (destruction of 'the home', pollution, overpopulation of cities, long working hours, child labour and loss of localised industry to name a few).

The figure of the lone seamstress was a popular subject in art of the 18th century, but at this time took on a heavier feel to them. Still here? Lets look at 2 in particular.

The first is 'Song of the Shirt' by George Frederic Watts. However I've seen it called 'The Seamstress' as well. Painted in 1847, In this picture we see a tired seamstress with her head in her left hand clearly exhausted. Her sewing project lies in her lap with her right hand resting on top. She looks incredibly frail, almost like a withered porcelain.

G.F Watts was at times quite anti Ind.R and wanted to show the reality of the situation and the massive poverty it was bringing about.

Painting No.2 is quite similar but a little clearer.

This one is really striking. It's also called 'The Song of the Shirt' painted by Albert Daniel Rutherson in 1903. This lady, like the other looks a little like death warmed up to be honest. She sits on a rocking chair, a little hunched over with fabric in her hands and a sewing kit in front of her. Her attention is elsewhere. She looks a little like me when I have to knit sleeves. Even without being up close you can see bags under her eyes and sallow skin. She looks unwell. The composition is quite cool actually, the pale background kind of forces you to look at her. This may be one of my favourite paintings ever made.

So why have I brought this up. Why did I wake up at 6am with an urge to share these paintings. Well, I think as fibre artists we can sometimes forget our roots. Crafting these days can be so overpowered by 'buy this tool!' 'buy this yarn you will never use hurry its on sale!' (in my opinion at least). Personally, I knit and crochet to avoid fast fashion and to create garments I know I will wear and use. Fast fashion is everywhere nowadays. People are still working 16hr shifts for very little pay, at the same time, taking work away from artisanal crafters in favour of a cheap garment.

Not much has changed in the fibre community since the 18th century. Let's bring back the idea of criticising the industry. Let's show the world that these women did not over work themselves to death for nothing.

Thanks for reading I love you <3 (idk how to add emoji on laptop :,( .)

#fiber art #art history #industrial revolution #knitting #knit #sewing #seamstress #history #history posting #please feel free to add to this! i'd love to hear opinions! #knitblr #crochetblr #yarn #crochet #fibre arts

[autolenaphilia]

It used to be a cliché to warn that reading pulp fiction and other kinds of popular fiction would rot your brain. That kind of rhetoric have moved on to first TV and then video games. So now the cliché in reaction to pop fiction is “at least the kids are reading”. But I wonder if there is some truth to it.

Not that reading one or even a dozen YA fantasy books will rot your brain. It is that only reading YA and consuming other kinds of simplistic pop fiction might rot your brain. Or at least your literary judgement. A lot of people who do that seem to judge all kinds of fiction by what they want out of the YA/pop fiction books they read exclusively.

And that is a kind comfy escapist entertainment. The good guys are good and most importantly likeable, and the baddies are bad. Problems are solved by defeating the bad guys. Often there is a detailed fantasy world to escape into, which is presented with verisimilitude and consistency, no immersion breaking surrealism.

Like there is nothing wrong with it, but a lot of fiction tries to do something different. It’s not escapist, and even if it is fantasy the books discuss real-world issues. Writers write about unlikeable and deeply flawed morally and psychologically people to illustrate how people work, because people irl are deeply flawed and do bad things. All people are like that, everyone has flaws and think and do bad things. The writers do it in subtle ways to, using subtext to criticize actions rather than slotting the characters doing them into a villain role or having obvious consequences for bad actions.

A lot of fiction have flawed and bigoted people as main characters because the writer wants you to understand how these people’s minds work. They don’t expect you to like them necessarily, but to empathize with them and understand them. Hopefully you come out on the other end with a better sense of empathy or understanding of the problems us humans have.

Note that I’m not arguing against “fun” or think literature should be some kind of moral improvement literature for the reader. I agree with Thomas Ligotti that “writing is essentially a means of entertainment for both the writer and the reader. I don’t care who the writer is — literature is entertainment or it is nothing.“ It’s just that reading complex fiction provides another kind of fun than simple escapism. Reading about flawed unlikeable characters is fun in a different way from reading about likeable heroes. Reading critically and analysing fiction is fun, at least for me, believe it or not.

Like there are a lot of books out there which unironically expresses all kinds of bigoted and reactionary viewpoints. But without reading and seriously analyzing the work you can’t tell when the work is examining these views or advocating them. A novel like Dracula and a novel like Umberto Eco’s The Prague Cemetery both feature copious amounts of anti-semitism, but one is expressing it and one is critically examining it. One must also be able to see when a book is both being progressive and bigoted, because people and works of art are complex. And furthermore a book can be well-written and enjoyable while advocating bad viewpoints, and if you can read things critically you can still find enjoyment in books that express bigoted and reactionary viewpoints. I think The Shadow over Innsmouth is both a very good horror story and also a detestably racist text (I think the same of Dracula for that matter, one of my favourite books).

Most YA and similarly simplistic pop fiction don’t give you the tools to read fiction in this critical, analytic manner, at least not in the way most of its fans read them. Which is to enjoy spending time with its characters and have fun seeing them defeating the bad guys. It doesn’t feature the morally and psychologically complex characters that more complex literature have, so it doesn’t invite the same level of critical thinking about what you read.

And that is fine in itself, I enjoy media like that myself. But the problem comes when you try to apply the standards of escapist fiction to other kinds of media. YA and other pop fiction assumes that you will automatically like and agree with the main/viewpoint characters.

So chaos ensues when our pop fiction-trained reader comes across a book that doesn’t do that. And it explains so much of the disc horse we see. So people react to main characters doing or even thinking bad things without the book immediately putting them into the villain/antagonist role as the book agreeing with the actions. It causes readers to demand main characters be “likeable” instead of just interesting. And it’s very much a problem when you start judging people for liking books you deem to be morally bad. It’s the assumption that if you enjoy reading about a character, you also agree with what the character represents.

Purity and call-out culture has deeper roots in how people tend to fall into black-and-white thinking, but how this is applied to fiction definitely partially has its roots in how its practitioners refuse to read morally complex fiction.

So yeah, I do believe some people had their critical thinking stunted by only consuming YA fantasy and similarly simplistic escapism. Unironically not reading novels that challenge you to read critically at all is bad for you.

I blameHarry Potter. A lot of millennial/gen z kids got their start in reading with HP. The clichéd answer when people pointed out how mediocre the writing of HP is (which many critics did) was “at least it got kids reading books”. And the answer to that is that it got kids reading books like Harry Potter and apparently nothing else. And they seem to have continued doing that into adulthood. And as I argued previously, it has stunted brain’s critical capacities.

They were able to do some because publishers reacted to the massive sales of HP by pumping out tons of YA books of variable quality. A boom that continues to this day. Kids wanted more books like HP and to paraphrase Ursula K. Le Guin: “And the mills of capitalism provide them. Supply meets demand. Fantasy becomes a commodity, an industry.” In fact her musings on “Commodified fantasy” in the introduction to Tales of Earthsea explains Harry Potter and a lot of the fantasy book market very well.

It’s not the first time this happened to fantasy. The Lord of the Rings became a massive success in the 60s, and in 1977 the first massively succesful Tolkien epigone was published: The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. It’s a terrible book, but its success proved that writers could just copy Tolkien and simplify it and it would sell loads. So in the 80s and 90s publishers flooded the fantasy market with bad Tolkien epigone books, The Belgariad and The Wheel of Time and so on. It was the equivalent of today’s cookie-cutter YA fantasy books. Harry Potter is a product of that time, it’s a chosen one battling a dark lord story after all (all of those commodified fantasies had that exact story). But it also provided a new model for commodified fantasy that replaced TheSword of Shannara from 20 years earlier. Also the success of A Song of Ice and Fire and books like it pulled “adult” fantasy into grimdark territory around the same time, so YA fantasy fulfilled the needs of those into more upbeat fantasy.

So Harry Potter is partially responsible for all these YA fantasy readers who can’t read things critically. And it was not intentional, but I would argue J.K. Rowling’s lucrative hobby of writing mediocre derivative fiction provided support for her other hobby transmisogyny in an unexpected way. I’m not talking how she uses her fame and money from HP to support TERF causes, even if that is completely true, but in the expectations her fiction has created in readers.

For the book-reading culture of today that Harry Potter is partially responsible for intersects with the transmisogyny that Rowling is responsible for spreading.

Because of transmisogyny trans women are expected to be perfect examples of feminism and femininity or else rejected as gross perverted male socialized men. It’s a particularly virulent strain of the expectation of women to be perfect little angels.

For transfeminine writers, this works in a sinister conjunction with these purity culture expectations on fiction to be uncomplicated stories of good guys and bad guys. Transfems are usually the primary victims of call-out culture. So when transfem authors write fiction that is complicated and has messy characters, and god forbid messy and flawed transfeminine characters, the wolves come out for them.

Literally everytime a trans woman publishes a book these days and it gets mainstream attention, which happens rarely, there is a massive backlash and controversy over how problematic it is. Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters had it last year, this year it is Wrath Goddess Sing by Maya Deane.Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin had it inbetween. The call-outs are basically the same if they come from explicit terfs or social justice/queer people. It’s the same outrage over how dare a trans woman write a transfem character that is not a perfect feminist and has flaws. It’s the same purity culture bullshit, all founded in an utter inability to actually critically analyze what you read. The outrage over Reese in Detransition, Baby is typical. She was interpreted not as a character in a novel but as the mouthpiece for Torrey Peters which is objectively a shit way to read characters.

These backlashes against trans women writing uncomfortable books are the conclusion of so many shitty processes in our present-day society that it seems unreal, but its true. It’s the culture industry becoming even more profit-driven due to neoliberalism, publishing more safe and unchallenging media than ever before, media that teaches its audience to not think critically about what it is consuming. It’s Christanity-inspired purity culture having become so pervasive that it influences the mindset of non-believers. And it is the transmisogyny that is such a major part of our civilization’s ideological underpinnings. You can see all that in the backlashes against trans women writing.

#my writings #this ended up really rambly but its all interconnected in my mind