#i would redraw the entire thing in comic format if i could

[danothan]

.

#everyday i think abt drawing fanart for that midlife crisis hb fic #the ‘hey.’ ‘hey.’ hallway scene replays in my head every night. if i draw anything from this writer it would be that #i would redraw the entire thing in comic format if i could #i just don’t have the guts. i have to hone my art skills first i have to do it justice #don’t even get me started on patchwork good lord. #we’re whispering bc i’m being vulnerable rn #danbles

[clutchpowers]

Sooooo... i wanted to stick this little rambly thing at the bottom of the redraw but it would have made it look UGLY so im doing this separately... just wanna talk about the whole thing and What Not.

TLDR: its been a slash positive ride thats been worth it to try "something new" every year and my favorite piece out of all of them is the 9th. also for the curious heres the comparison of the 5th anni piece to the recent one (2018 -> 2023)

anyway. personal post time.

oh where to begin *rocks on my rocking chair* i guess it would be with the 5th anniversary piece...at the time it had been a long while since i did lineless art and i thought it would be cool to try it again for that one so i did by redrawing an old piece from 2014... that was the first "finished piece" i made of Them. i think i even made it into a wallpaper for myself lmao. anyway after i posted it i was like "aw man i should draw something every year until the 10th" but i thought yeah right. im going to forget next year like the idiot i am. but i Some How managed to do one every year... th worms got me... i honestly didnt think id make it all the way to the 10th but i did!! AND WITHOUT MISSING A DAY EXCEPT FOR THE 7TH WHERE I WAS A WEEK LATE???? UNREAL especially when fun fact! every year i had no idea what i wanted to do! all i knew for sure is that i wanted each piece to be out of my comfot zone to push me to do something a little different. unfortunately the subjects tm where always the same so it feels a little. samey. but these are my celebratory posts I GET TO ONLY POST ABOUT THE OTP SUPER BLORBOS OF ALL TIME

the 6th anniversary was a redraw of that one scene. you know the one. the helicopter one. fucking hate that scene btw it actually causes me psychic damage i cant watch with the audio or ill scream. but it is my favorite scene of mine despite all the horrors it causes <3 and i wanted to redraw it as if it was a cartoon... like i had taken screencaps from the lcu cartoon in my head. i still remember the backgrounds being such a pain in the ass. honestly id like to go back and redo this one one day too or do something similar to the concept because its a fun one that i always saw done growing up and i wanted to try it myself.

for the 7th anniversary you can see the turn.. no more humans... return to lego... i was getting a little more confident in drawing them in the lego form so i did another redraw this time with the ending!! honestly i still like this one and how it looks even with how late it was but i wanted to test my confidence and do a real True and Finished piece with COLORED LINES and EVERYTHING!!!!! im glad i ended up taking the turn because for the LONGEST TIME i wanted to try and draw them as lego so bad because all i did was draw them as humans and its funny because now its the exact opposite. glad this piece was kinda the solidification in my head that yeah okay im a bit better at drawing the stylized lego toy now i can keep drawing them like this without feeling like im going to want to delete this in 2 weeks.

the 8th anniversary one is so weird. somewhere toward the beginning of the year it got into my head that i wanted to do a comic of them but time/school would have gotten in the way so i ended up opting for a page. another redraw of the ending scene which honestly out of all of them this is my least favorite one and its solely because its all so off. i def could have formated it better so the background shot doesnt take up the entire fucking page but then again im not a comic guy and this was my first time so the layout was bound to look HORRID but this is something id like to come back to ive had the idea of making like a genuine short comic about them since FOREVER and now that im a bit more experienced (lying) i would like to make one day!!!! just gotta stop getting caught up in my scripts!! and going in circles!! Because im obviously not a writer and i keep getting first-hand embarrassment from these!! but ill get over it one day lol.

OH THE 9TH ANNIVERSARY PIECE MY BELOVED. ONE OF MY FAVORITE PIECES ACTUALLY i love this stupid thing so much you have no idea.i know its re-using lineless but i just loved the idea of what it would look like lineless AND IT CAME OUT SO PERFECT I LOVE IT SO MUCH obv it needs a few touch-ups so the main issues dont stand out to me but god. i love this piece so much. idk what came out of me to make this but its so good ill never get over it. and the little lego them as a cake topper ITS JUST SO CUTE I DONT HAVE MUCH TO SAY OTHER THAN I LOVE THIS SO MUCH SORRY

finally. the 10th anniversary piece. oh my god. okay. i need everyone to understand this. i had woken up with this fucking Unbearable pounding headache that was trying to kill me. my body the entire day wanted me to stop and lie down, but last night i was already done with a good chunk of it and all i had to do that day was finish some lines and the coloring?? i literally don't remember all i remember is my body actively trying to shut down and force me to stop and sleep which i took a nap? didnt help. so i said fuck it im finishing this. i was. an entire goddamn corpse arched over my laptop. i was so delirious the entire time its a fucking miracle it even came out as good as it did but honestly. i still hate how it fucking looks. like you can TELL when i gave up (the shading) and it sticks out like a sore fucking thumb to me and it pisses me off because i knew i could have done so much better if i wasnt being stricken down by gods hand and his every attempt to get me to rest. idk like im generally proud ot it, with this one i wanted to go out with a bang tm so i tried to draw every important and relevant character instead of ALL of them like I was originally planning LMAO but ah well. maybe one day when im faster at drawing. this one i defiantly wanna go back and touch up but i everytime i open the file i can see 40 more things wrong with it and it drives me nuts. so ill just have to wait for when im ready. i guess.

can i just say though. the improvement is crazy. it always catches me off guard because tbh i uh. dont like my own art. im getting better at not fucking hating it because i can pinpoint everything wrong with it but whenever i see the side by sides it always surprises me. i always dont think im improving but then i see it and its like wow i really am getting better! i still suck at 3000 things but im getting better! and its overall just a nice thing to see after having drawn them for as long as i have... the power of the worms is strong and has ruined my brain...... speaking of i know ive said a few times that i fucking hate certain pieces, not just LCU related ones but almost anything i post, but if you love them and are able to look at them with a twinkle in your eye then thank you. genuinely. i honestly love looking over the tags of people exploding and saying nice things. it warms my cold little heart and im glad there are people out there that genuinely love some of the things what i do! even if its just fanart and its just their blorbo. thank you for sticking around even tho all i do is draw my otp super blorbos :'^) this game means the world to me and im glad like more than 2 people wanna spread it around.

to wrap back around to the anniversary stuff and speaking of big love to the people out there THE FREAKING EPIC ZINE i was just a small thing but it came out amazing even for how small it was thank you to the contributors and thank you to everyone whos downloaded it!! its still getting the occasional and i love getting the notif in my email about it. i love that there are still people out there who wanna see it and all the hard work everyone put into it to celebrate the games 10th just thank you again i really does mean alot to me ALSO IF YOU HAVENT CHECKED IT OUT PLEASE DO IT IS 100% WORK YOUR TIME AND ITS DIGITAL WITH PRINT AT HOME STICKERS AND YOU CAN KEEP IT AND LOOK AT IT FOREVER

uh to end this off....would I like to do this again..... I mean I kinda am? by that i mean ill do the big numbers (15, 20, 25, 30, 40, etc) till the day i freaking die!!!! but yeah no countdown stuff ever again!!!!! sorry :^( it was super fun to do though!!!! and im glad i did it that piece is the conclusion to the whole thing but that doesnt mean ill stop drawing them. duh. theyre my characters now! but heres to many more anniversaries and to hopefully another game! or to just see them again in any other lego media! or even better... a mischaracterized cameo in ninjago!

#long ass post lmao congrats if you actually read it all and made it to the bottom :'^) #i typed this all out yesterday thats how i got it out so quick lol

[substituted-shinigami]

Writing Update: Creative Corner April 2023

Welcome back to “Writing Updates”, which I’m thinking of renaming to Creative Corner, but uh we’ll see! (I tend to go back and forth on these things😅) My thought process is that instead of doing the “Good News/Bad News” format I’ve done in the past, I’m going to do a “Writing Corner” and an “Art Corner” instead. I’ll try it out and see how I feel about it. Anyway, let’s get on with the news!

TL:DR Version: I’m taking this month off…kind of. Last month was busy, but really fun!😁 This month was busy, but uh, not at all fun…long story.😅 Anyway, so no new one-shots this month. However! I did find some RenRuki fluff drabbles that I think you all might like, so I put them together in their own series. They’re perfect for a rainy day when you just want to feel good!🥰 They should be out later this month!

Read on if you want the long version:

Writing Corner: 

*Sighs heavily* Alright, I’m gonna be honest, this month sucked. Between burnout, family stuff, and depression, I barely wrote at all. I have a nearly completed piece that I could try to rush edit and finish in time, and would at least come out okay. But I thought about it, and realized that while I do like the piece, it’s not at all what I felt like reading right now. I don’t read a “hurt/comfort with a bit of angst” piece when I’m sad, I read fluff, lots of fluff. In fact, I had a google doc with a couple of fluff scraps that didn’t fit anywhere else that I would sometimes go back to and read whenever I was sad just because it made me feel good. And then I thought, what if this month was bad for other people too? Would these pieces make them feel good? So I’ve decided to release these instead in a brand new collection I’m going to call “Soft Moments”. Admittedly, they are more like eating a sugary sweet dessert than having a hearty protein filled one-shot meal, but that’s exactly what they are for! They are there for people who need to read something nice on a hard day. Anyway, they aren’t exactly a one-shot, so that’s why I decided to put them in their own collection, rather than adding them to “We Can’t All Be Winners”. In the end, I’ve decided to release the “hurt/comfort” piece another time. This also works out well for my new (ever changing😅) schedule for WCABW, where I am going to do 3 months on, 1 off, 3 on, and so forth! 

Art Corner: While I haven’t done much writing this month, I have gone back to my roots on this blog somewhat and started working on comics again. If you saw one of my earlier posts, you will know that I’m taking a crack at human based comics. They…are absolutely not proportional. But um…variety is the spice of life, right?!?! Anyway, hopefully they will at least be funny, but uh, we’ll see! That said, I'm thinking of eventually switching to digital art so that I don’t have to redraw backgrounds and unmoving characters, but that requires me to figure out how to draw with photoshop on my mini touch screen laptop so uh…………..

Bloodlines Corner (because let’s be honest, it gets its own spot at this point): 

Me: *glares to some far off corner in my google docs* You do realize it’s been months now, right?

Bloodlines: *shrugs innocently*

So I’ve realized I haven’t actually explained the premise of this story to most people on this blog, so here we go. Originally, Bloodlines was a one-shot in its own series of one-shots based on the idea of “What would happen if Rukia got Hisana’s illness?” However, I realized that I hadn’t really thought it out well enough for an entire series. So then I was going to make it a one off one-shot in a series of one off one shots, thus spawning WCABW. However, it clearly needed more editing, so I decided to release “prestigious school au” instead. Fast forward several months and not only am I still editing it, but that one-shot turned first into a multi-part and eventually a multi-chapter fic, all the while the events of the story still staying within the same time period, and therefore taking place over the course of one day. It is… utterly ridiculous. 

So anyway, it’s pretty long now, (well for me anyway, it’s almost 30 pages), which makes it take forever to edit. Unfortunately, I think that has caused the back chapters to suffer a bit, because for some reason I always prefer to edit things in order, so by the time I get to the end I’m pretty mentally exhausted. Therefore, I’ve decided to divide it up by only editing one chapter a day to make it easier on myself. Hopefully this will work out, and I can have it out by like August or something, but we will see! (Not being done until December is unfortunately still probable! 😅)

*Sigh* Welp, this has gotten long, but this month has been even longer so I guess it’s appropriate. In any case, thank you all for reading! The new fluff-filled anthology series should be out by the end of the month. Like I said earlier, it’s more like having dessert than dinner, but sometimes that's just what you need! See you all next month! 😊

#writing update #art update #writing update 2023 #creative corner

[1ore]

im not backtracking on my request, but TO START: 5, 11, 12, 32, 38

5. If you could make only one of your OCs popular/known, who would it be?

Sinuk. Sinuk. God it would have to be Sinuk. I put her through the Mary Sue litmus test last night recreationally, and it says all that needs to be said about her

There is not one self-indulgent thing that I left out while writing Sinuk and I think the people need to know.

11. Is there any OC of yours you could describe as a "sunshine"?

morgan morgan morgan morgan morgan m

Basedt is really like. what if there was the saddest man in the world. and he found love in the ash tundra :) the amount of joy that he has brought me over the years is impossible to quantify and i just think he;s neat

12. Name an OC that isn't yours but who you like a lot              

this one’s in an atypical format because it’s MANY. But I met my friend Moon through his comics+character art on dA, and I like to come back to them a lot because all of his characters are very good at articulating the things you can’t articulate. He writes like this Xin Qiji poem that kicks my ass. the implied space speaks volumes. Anyway look at this comic and this comic !!

ok but if I have to pick one character... Well. I’ll do two. Volir and Moebi are very soul-balm characters. Volir especially is like a warm hug shaped like a rosin-voiced, ageless count. Like prof layton and the baron but Cooler. He is a big comfort and you can’t help but feel a little bit of your own hurt and heartache dampened whenever he soothes Moebi’s hurt and heartache.

32. Which one of your OCs would be the most suitable horror game protagonist and why?

This is the funniest fucking question because none of my kneejerk answers are correct.

Reyes, for exactly 2 minutes when the Chief first turns into a funny gorgonopsid, and she’s just a little unhinged because of the blood loss and the narrative uncertainty of whether the Chief is The Same in there or Changed, but Reyes believes, maybe against material proof, that that;s still the chief :) and you know what. she’s right.

Redmond for none minutes because the first thing she does when she sees The Canonical Devil, Jesse Cauldwell, is punch her in the face. I guess she has some          psychological horror nightmare sequences after that but it’s. hmmmmmmmmm.

The only nightmare of Sinuk’s existence is what happened in that black hole, and the fact that she could debone your entire body with one hand if she wanted to. But she would never do that. if a containment breach happens, it’s because Brun is in containment breaking her out.

Morgan is.        too worn down for Basedt to

sorry actually hold that thought. I know who would be the most suitable horror video game protagonist

Makame Asanttu doing this 🤝 James Sunderland sticking his hand in the toilet in Silent Hill 2

38. Which one of your OCs would be the best dancer?

Canonically, Ashe was taught traditional Sarikote circledancing by one of his moms and there IS a scene in Basedt (The Stageplay In My Brain) where this becomes plot relevant.

I need to redraw this piece with Ashe and Morgan so bad, actually

#the unkillable lesbian that they cant delete from moribund or the game crashes #i am literally out of control thank you for enabling mesnoodls thosewhowentmissing #sinuk vauntariaq tag #brun tag #morgan tag #ashe tag #research associate tag #chief tag #redmond faraday tag #jesse cauldwell tag #makame asanttu tag #cinte tag #he's there. its his heart. he's there in spirit #uhhh oh god #content warning: blood -- #content warning: gore -- #content warning: cannibalism -- #dont worry about it

[l-a-l-o-u]

ohh i haven’t done one of these in ages!! @sabertoothwalrus​ (check her out, gr8 content) tagged me in this art thing

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 8 (ish) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome work!  

1 - Korra with Raava staff

this was super fun to finally draw!! i had this idea of an AU where benders use staffs to control their element over 3 years ago (i think) and its great to finally see it beyond random doodles i did in class back then. i really want to design some other staffs too at some point!

2 - Just some gays in a field

This might be the only thing I posted this year that wasn’t fanart... I rarely get motivated to draw original stuff but I somehow finished this one. yeehaw

3 - BoTW Midna

a little before Age of Calamity came out, i started a new BoTW file and as i was replaying & thinking about the Lore, i kept thinking about the love of my life, Midna Twilight Princess..... and for like a week i was obsessed with the idea of a Midna reincarnation showing up in the sequel. my Midzel loving ass immediately shipped this dumbass teen version with Zelda, of course,

4 - My tabaxi child

I started playing D&D regularly this year!! it’s one of my favorite things about 2020!! i absolutely love this character too, druid is my favorite class so far and playing an impolite 13 year old with a bad french accent is SO funny. every other player immediately adopts them its great

5 - The background map & front page art for the Critical Role Wiki

I finished catching up to all of CR earlier this year, and since i had a tendency to zone out and miss stuff, i would look up a ton of stuff on the wiki, and i always thought it looked so bland! it was still using the default theme and i thought it deserved something nicer. so i decided i would just Do That Myself! and since then i started editing the wiki super regularly, it’s one of my main hobbies now (ranked 19th out of the wiki editors babey)

the map i can’t take full credit for, as it’s only a traced version of this map. the original wasn’t big enough to fit the wiki, so i thought, why don’t i just. ya know. trace over the entire thing by hand. that way i could also decide on the colors and font, etc (plus i love drawing lots of lil tedious details). later on i also made this graphic to put on the front page! both of these had to be WAY downsized to fit the wiki formatting but at least i can share the full size files on here

6 - “Human” Raava 

idk who remembers but I used to be OBSESSED with the AU where Raava looked like a human, and became younger as she lost power. i suddenly wanted to redraw the concept after all this time and reworked my old design a bit. twas fun

7 - The unfinished Pearl/Rose comic

in the end I only colored this single panel, but i did post the first 8 pages (which is as far as i got) of an old comic idea from over a year ago. its kinda crazy how hard it is for me to post unfinished stuff.. but in the end i’m glad i did. its very validating to read the tags on that post and see how many people got mad/sad after reading it hehehe

8 - Mighty Nein redesigns

i started this series of character sheets almost exactly one year ago! so far i only finished Jester and Beauregard (altho i need to update with her winter outfit), but i’m actually nearly done with Caleb, idk why i haven’t posted it yet... in my heart i believe that one day i’ll finish them all. but that might be 5 years from now. special shoutout to all the other CR art i made this year!! i actually got featured in the slideshow a couple times which is pretty unreal

Honorable mention -  New Nameless designs

this is the only one i posted, but i actually spent quite a bit of time this year developping a webcomic idea. i made a good amount of concept art and wrote a lot about it. it still feels way too ambitious for me to consider starting the webcomic any time soon (i want to make at least one other comic before) but the idea really grew this year!! anyway this is Nameless and her funky animal companion, they are travelling around a fantasy continent and uncovering mysterious lore

im blanking on who to tag uhhh @officialrocketjumper​, @cadetheespeon​ and @butchlinkle​

#thank u for tagging me!! #lalou yells #i rlly didnt draw that much this year but what little i did was pretty nice #im slowly starting to get my creative juices back #burnout? dont know her

[littleeyesofpallas]

Was chatting with a coworker the other day and two things crossed my mind...

that I've been at this weeb shit so long that I forget what I just sort of take for granted and what might not be commonly known little factoids, and

that VIZ's attempt at a monthly Shonen Jump magazine has been gone so long most people probably never saw them. (nevermind the old RAIJIN Graphic Novels that tried the same thing)

So, here's some fun little things you might not have known about manga if you've only ever read English publications and/or digital scans...

For one, there's the matter of print formatting... In general, Japan actually uses their own standards for print that tend to differ from those in the US; The JIS(Japanese Industrial Standards) series A and B. Magazines like the typical anthology format manga are printed in JIS B5, which is comparable to the US Letter standard, or the ISO A4.

This was the same format that RAIJIN Comics printed in as well, and although I don't have a copy of the old English Shonen Jump for reference, if memory serves they printed in the same format as well in an attempt to really sell that "authentic" manga feel. Sadly, I don't know that the effort or attention to detail was much appreciated. Neither published a volume comparable to a Japanese weekly or even monthly serial magazine, though --not by a long shot. But this might not be the most practical for comparrison, since there actually just isn't much of an English language equivalent format. (unless you count actual magazines that happen to include comic illustrations or miniscule comic strip segments)

Despite the mammoth size of a serial magazine, Japanese tankoban are actually smaller than the North American equivalent. But notably the Japanese small book format isn't just a matter of contending with nearest print standards... What I believe is the JIS B40(although I could be wrong) tends to be the standard print size of small books in general, not just manga, and it's a print size that is only marginally smaller than VIZ's standard size manga, but with the very particular benefit of being deliberately portable. The small difference in size is the difference between a Japanese manga fitting in my coat pocket where as the English equivalent can't.

(I realize I photographed a copy of Shonen ACE, and not Weekly JUMP, but I measured a copy of Weekly JUMP for the thickness and not the copy of ACE; the copy of JUMP was around 506pg, while the copy of ACE was 570pg. Those are both older though, and the most recent digital copy i have of Weekly JUMP actually had around 520pg)

And I don't think it's always addressed just what a difference there is, culturally, in how Japan approaches the print medium. It's kind of an old cliche by this point, and I don't know how accurate it's remained in the past decade or so, but the quintessential image passed around between comic nerds has always been the Japanese bullet train; A place packed with commuters all passing their transit time with isolated preoccupation with music and/or reading, with manga being the king of this time killing arena. And its not just about sheer popularity driven by interest, American comic vendors have long envied the sheer accessibility of manga in Japan.

Here in the U.S. we used to have a thriving newsstand retail scene for comic books, and a kind of similar ease of grab and go comic purchase, rather than the explicitly niche interest driven "direct market" model that has been slowly but surly strangling the comic market ever since. But in Japan serialized manga has remained in relatively quick, impulse friendly, arm's reach of readers on the go. And what lubricates that business model more than anything is price.

I still remember a time when VIZ dominated the English manga market by offering at $7.95(and am I crazy or am I remembering a time when it got down to $6.99?) but now'days it's settled on a low end of $9.99. You know how much the recent vol.29 of My Hero Academia goes for? ¥484. That's less than $4.50.

You know how much that big ass magazine with 500+ pages and 21 different series goes for? Do you think it's more or less than the little pocket-size tankoban? Did you guess something close to ¥290? That's less than $2.75. But how does something bigger in both page size and page count managed to sell for less???

There are a few secrets to that, but one is that the things are packed to the gills with ads. But that's the boring answer. The other feature contributing to keeping an accessible cost on weekly/monthly manga is something we don't think about much in the U.S.; it's the paper and print quality.

The nice little books are printed in what you might expect as far as starch white paper and clean black inks, but those big honkin' phone book(do people still know what phonebooks look like??) size magazines are printed on cheap recycled pulpy newpaper with typically rough print jobs. This is most noticeable in the quality of solid blacks, and when scanning the texture of "white" space.

(I tried to take individual photos of different series chapters to show off the fact that the paper is differently colored... but my phone's camera seems to be smart enough to auto balance that kind of thing when there's no other context to anchor it to. (It doesn't help that it's night and my lights have a harsh yellowing glow to them.) but on th left you can still kind of see the different paper colors; this particular issue alternated every 3 chapters between pink-ish, green/gray, a kind of off-white/gray, and sepia, but I've also seen blue-ish, oranges, and a different shade of yellow different from the sepia-ish one.)

Back in ye olden days when it came to fan scanlations, more slapdash teams and projects would often stumble over levels in photoshop (too much black and the pulpy paper texture shows up as grainy shadows, but too far white and the edges of lineart get crunchy and ugly) but those who had more robust readership and a regular streamlined flow of work, we'd actually go in and touch up the solid blacks and whites by hand. We'd also redraw art to erase overlaid text so the type setters could lay the new English in over top.

(Weekly Jump: Left, Bleach tankoban: Right)

They do however keep a few coveted color pages in better quality paper and ink. In contrast, the standard quality tankoban actually don't include color pages at all, and just print what had been color pages in grayscale. There are also all kind of irregularities between publishers and special editions and such, but on the most basic level this difference in quality both keeps serial prices down, while also incentivizing tankoban purchase.

In the U.S. we might still have the draw of an ad-free reading experience in our TPB, but the print quality between a biweekly issue and a TPB are basically the same. Incidentally, even though manga are generally drafted at a much larger scale than even the serial magazine proportions anyway, the scaled down size of the tankoban also serves to sharpen the image. When put side by side the nice clean tankoban print looks noticeably better than the serial.

Now'days the English scanlation scene seems to be conducted almost entirely through ripped digital releases (at least as far as I can tell with popular, regular weekly titles) which is great for quality, frankly, but it does kind of lack the charm and personal touch of a band of amateurs finding round about solutions to a convoluted bootlegging pipeline. But obviously I'm a little biased.

[edit]: Oops i posted this without really ending it in any sensible ro conclusive way... I feel like ive lost sight of the point since i first drafted this but I guess its mostly just me pining after if we could just get super cheap, disposable quality, bulk manga in that classic Japanese magazine model to work here in the states. I already tend to sell manga in big runs, even at $9.99+, and frequently I'll have customers put volumes back, or clearly want the next volume but just can't afford it and wait to come back. If I could sell these customers more volumes, and more importantly more titles, at the same price, I would love to. I would love to see these things fly off the shelves. I would love to see people keeping up with multiple series. I would love to see someone look at a 44vol long series and actually feel like that's a number of volumes they can afford.

[grimmjowjaegerjaquez]

so. ach’m. he is an amphibious alien character thats been with me for a long time and i havent had the feeling for him in YEARS. but i have to talk about him because hes still got a special place in my heart despite my uh... abandonment of him. 

this is really long so it’s under a cut

first things first: his name, Ach’M Raten, is pronounced, Ahk-mm Rah-ten. it has a meaning to it because apparently those are names derived from words in his people’s language, which you’ll find out about more later. 

he was someone i made when i was RIGHT in the middle of my Alien phase, and was also just starting my OCT xDDD phase on deviantArt. (i was. not good at octs bc i had no concept of cohesive storytelling in a limited timeline comic format and also had really bad add that made it impossible to ever finish anything.) the OCT he was apart of was Tapestry of Horror, which, honestly i think my audition comic for that was the only good one i made for that entire tourney. this was his reference for it: 

ahh, look at that. the nostalgia is all coming back to me. the amount of “:U” which was a go-to face for 13 year old me. this was posted back in 2010! wow!

the reason the 63 on his age is crossed out is because THIS IS NOT ACTUALLY THE ORIGINAL REFERENCE I HAD FOR HIM! i had to redraw him because his original reference (which unfortunately has been lost to the annals of time) was too human looking? and tapestry of horror was an anthro/alien/no-human-faces tourney, so they told me i should probably change his face up some and then he’d be fine, and ORIGINALLY, ACH’M WAS AN OLD MAN. I DON’T KNOW WHY I ALSO CUT HIS AGE IN HALF BUT IT’s PROBABLY BECAUSE I WAS THE INDECISIVE BASTARD THEN THAT I STILL AM TODAY.

supposedly he used to slink around in shadows and laugh and speak in rhymes, and im pretty sure that was a side effect of edgy 13 year old interests? like, i think i tried giving him kind of a creepy serial killer vibe? and then just never executed it? he had an epithet of, The Laughing Cyborg, which is still relevant in later versions of him. 

oh and here, have some TOP SECRET ACH’M LORE COURTESY OF THE IMAGE DESCRIPTION OF HIS REFERENCE:

i don’t believe i was lying. i think i did originally make an amphibious alien woman character that just later evolved into ach’m. i’m sure if i had any of my sketchbooks from that age physically with me i would ABSOLUTELY be able to find it and show you guys but i dont so, rip. 

because i was trying to be coy and ~*~mysterious~*~ i never originally explained his backstory on his reference. it was planned to be something revealed overtime through ~*~dramatic~*~ flashbacks and dream sequences that i did not have the ability to execute. its always followed the same beats, though: ach’m and his younger brother were child refugees from a civil war on his home planet. in their initial escape, ach’m is caught under a crumbling wall and loses his leg, and they’re later found and adopted by a retired opera singer of another species. through vague never-established family issues, ach’m leaves his adoptive mother and joins a travelling circus. 

this is his adoptive mother: 

her name is (and i’m sorry) Nippeteranulzenkodelonio. You can just call her Nippy, though. Please just call her Nippy. 

god, her species used to be called draconae? what the heck. in future designs, those religious symbols are obsolete and replaced with other symbols relating to a galaxy-wide secret society that has NOTHING to do with ach’m and i never figured out how nippy was involved in it, so we’re not delving into that. 

they both come from a planet called Naruviie, which in his language just means, “Land of the People,” “naru” being the part that means people. i never like, fully fleshed out their planet aside from very vague allusions to it being mostly swampland populated by cute little amphibious animals like this fun guy: 

pictured: a gold Yarlian, which is basically the Naruviian equivalent of a dog. 

SO BACK TO ACH’M AND THE TAPESTRY OF HORROR: i only won the first round because my opponent had to drop out, and i lost the second round. it didn’t really matter though, because ach’m remained an incredibly popular character to followers of the tourney, and No, It Was Not Because Of Me. it was because one of the other competitors who i was friends with included him in her rounds, mostly for jokes, and i thought it was the best thing ever. the problem with that though, was that even though in every entry for the tourney she would say IN THE DESCRIPTION that he was NOT her character, everyone thought he was. because she was just a more well-known artist in that community, and i was just. some 13 year old. 

but anyway, she was a more competent storyteller than i was so she actually like... gave him more character than i was capable of at the time, and she would ask me if i characterized him wrong and i would always be like, “NO ITS GREAT HES PRETTY MUCH WHAT I WANTED HIM TO BE BUT JUST COULD NOT WRITE FOR WHATEVER REASON!” not that i ever expressed it like that because... from what i remember about my 13 year old self... i was very Virgo in all of my statements. yikes. 

im not close with that artist anymore, and our interests have diverged a lot since then, but i always think back to that time with fondness. for my tween mind, having an artist that i looked up to see my character and actually like them enough to do that absolutely had a profound effect on me at the time. 

ALRIGHT NOW FOR THE NEXT VERSION OF ACH’M, 2015: 

see i told you his name had a meaning. and look, i even gave his language a name! wow! such developments!

his backstory didn’t really change, except this time instead of a wall falling on him and crushing his leg, he was just born with a bad leg that had to get amputated. apparently. i also changed up his personality more. instead of him being this one dimensional jokey boy that talked in a bad accent, he became more of this like... roguish bardish type of character? he’s more flirty, more prone to being pride and false bravado, tells ridiculous stories of his life to appear more dashing, and, get this: i literally put in his updated backstory that he used to work more Colorful Jobs (ie: he was a prostitute at some point) 

his brother also has more of a presence and an actual character? i think i planned on him being dead in his 2010 iteration. Orith in this version is a grouchy mechanic/space engineer with a prosthetic eye. oh yeah that’s right him and ach’m were like. attacked by giant birds at some point in their childhoods? i think i had it that the giant birds were a natural predator of his fucking species????????? and thats why ach’m is missing an arm and an ear

moving on. 

LOOK WOW I GAVE ACH’M MULTIPLE OUTFITS!! WOW!!!

big himbo energies. i knew what was up. 

and that leads us to the latest ach’m that i’ve drawn which is these sketchy things from 2016

his cybernetic arm looks completely different now, he doesn’t have the robot ear anymore and his brother (wow an actual picture of his brother!) doesn’t even have a robot eye, and nippy now looks actually old and is like. completely blind now. i didn’t even realize my art style changed THAT much in the span of like, one and a half years until like.. JUST now. wow. 

he definitely looks like more of a scumbag now, and i don’t think i ever made anymore drastic changes to his backstory. i’m probably going to take another crack at it though because uhhhhh i dont like a lot of the implications i made in his backstory lmfao.

anyway yeah that’s the story of ach’m! 

#my ocs #ach'm #< look he has his own tag now. do apostrophes even work in tags?

[logh-icebergs]

Episode 15: The Battle of Amlitzer Starzone

October 10-15, 796/487. To the surprise of absolutely no one with any common sense, Reinhard’s admirals make quick work of several of the Alliance fleets, killing a bunch of redshirt admirals in the process. Unable to swallow the humiliation of withdrawal, Lazzll orders the remaining forces to gather in the Amlitzer starzone, where with their powers combined they can...I dunno, kill slightly more people on their way to defeat I guess. Any lingering dreams of a miraculous turning of the tides are crushed when Kircheis uses the newfangled technology of directional Seffle particles to destroy a minefield and bring his fleet of 30,000 ships to the battle as reinforcements.

Poplan!

Olivier Poplan showed up way back in “My Conquest” in the role of a rather dopey comic relief character, one of the tools the movie used to show us a variety of perspectives on the ongoing battles. We’ve glimpsed him once or twice since, but in this episode for the first time we get to focus on him a bit more; and the first thing that the OVA wants us to know about Poplan is that he’ll take any opportunity, even the twenty seconds before his Spartanian fighter is about to launch into battle, to flirt with a cute girl:

To be fair, she is indeed really cute…

There is a lot to say about this incredibly brief interaction. What Poplan actually says is “na, ii darou?” which translates most literally to “hey, isn’t it okay/good?” There are a couple factors that make this incredibly vague phrase feel like a flirtation or come-on: the way he leans toward her with a slight smile; the lowered voice. Her response reinforces this read by treating his actions as inappropriate to the current situation. (What she says is “komarimasu, tai-i, konna toki ni”—”that would be troublesome at a time like this, Lt.”) Is she reading him correctly? Could his question have actually just been about the progress of the repairs on his ship?

Well, yes, it could have been, but the accompanying body language and tone are flirty enough that at the very least there’s innuendo built into his words. Of course as she points out, this is a ridiculous time for him to be propositioning anyone; their interaction is immediately interrupted by an officer berating him for being the last plane out, Poplan takes off, and (spoiler!) we never see this woman again. What on earth, then, was the point of that twenty-second scene?

I’ve mentioned that Cazellnu plays an important role in the show by embodying some of the heteronormative structures of Alliance society: Not only does he himself have a picture-perfect wife and kids (we’ll see them soon I promise!), but we’ll also hear him explicitly voice views about the righteousness of marriage and procreation. Poplan plays a similar and complementary role, giving voice to another side of heteronormativity: the pressure for men to constantly pursue women as sexual conquests. His introduction in this scene emphasizes that sex is so constantly on his mind that he can’t resist flirting even as he flies into battle—and of course that very idea, of men as sex-obsessed and unable to control themselves around women in any situation, is another widespread norm. True to this introduction, Poplan discusses sex constantly: bragging about women he’s slept with in the past; teasing other characters about not sleeping with enough women; pontificating about the virtues of sleeping around (with women). This potentially puts characters who don’t relate to this sort of hypersexualized straight masculinity in somewhat uncomfortable situations.

There’s another angle to Poplan’s strange timing here: The fact that his ambiguous proposition is guaranteed not to go anywhere at the moment makes it entirely performative. In fact if you pay close attention to Poplan (and we will!), something around 95% of what we see involves performing or projecting heterosexuality rather than, well, actually enacting it. Obviously that doesn’t mean that the stuff he says is insincere or false, but ambiguity is always worth keeping an eye on in this show.

...and Konev!

No discussion of Poplan is complete without talking about Ivan Konev, the other star Spartanian pilot of Yang’s fleet and Poplan’s constant companion. When Poplan discovers that the firing sights on his Spartanian are misaligned, Konev covers for him to help get him back to the relative safety of the ship, leading to in my opinion the most intense scene of the whole episode.

We’ve seen Poplan and Konev deal with the stress of battle by treating it like a game: betting on the outcome back in “My Conquest,” and generally keeping up a running tally of their respective kills for bragging rights. But these are in fact life and death battles, not some video game; and faced with malfunctioning equipment that put his life and the lives of the rest of his squadron in heightened danger, Poplan’s fear and frustration come out as anger against the officer in charge of maintenance. It’s Konev who intervenes. 

Poplan’s expression and posture soften the moment Konev puts a hand on his shoulder. Just that one instant establishes Konev as a grounding presence and someone Poplan has a deep connection with.

The unguarded fear that flashes in Poplan’s eyes for just a second here gives me chills.

Shit has gotten serious, and Konev’s words don’t soften that reality; but his steady expression and touch quell Poplan’s rage and help him channel his emotions into renewed focus on the battle.

Interestingly, this exchange comes to us entirely courtesy of the anime team. In the novels it’s Schenkopp who pulls Poplan off of the other officer, in a much more abbreviated version of the same scene. (Poplan actually holds a grudge against Schenkopp for stopping him before he could more thoroughly teach the guy a lesson.) The anime writers made a specific choice to change and expand this scene to show us this different side of Poplan and Konev’s dynamic. Of course we’re not here to catalogue all of the slight deviations from the novels; but a change like this suggests to me that Poplan and Konev’s relationship is one they’re particularly interested in developing, so we should be paying attention.

War

This sentiment echoes Yang’s tea speech from episode 6; finding themselves in this battle, his main goal is to find a way for as many people to survive as possible.

Zooming out from Poplan and Konev’s struggles in their little corner of the fight, the overall battle seems to go exactly how Reinhard drew it up and exactly how Yang and some of the other Alliance commanders feared. Yang places himself on damage control duty as much as possible, knowing from the beginning that their whole fleet is at a huge disadvantage especially after Reinhard’s successful strategy to tax their supplies.

During the various scattered battles we get some fun peeks at the different fighting styles of Reinhard’s admirals, for example when Mittermeyer swoops so swiftly into the midst of an Alliance fleet that he actually has to back up a bit before they can effectively fire at the enemy ships...

...While meanwhile Kircheis just stands on the bridge of his extremely red flagship like the badass he is and calmly encourages any Alliance forces that come near to surrender.

After retreating to minimize losses against Kempf’s fleet, Yang finds himself facing Kircheis and outnumbered four to one; avoiding the temptation to surrender, he concocts some sort of plan involving a U-formation and trying to attack Kircheis’s forces from three sides at once, but since he’s ordered away to Amlitzer in the middle of that fight we’ll never know what the outcome of this tactic would have been. 

This gif is interesting for two reasons: one, everyone’s utter shock at Yang admitting out loud that if it weren’t for concern for the other remaining fleets he’d be tempted to surrender; and two, the ridiculous redraws that keep switching back and forth—Yang’s character design, as well as the entire background, change repeatedly in the course of these few seconds. What the hell.

The main point I want to make about this battle is, well, actually how uneventful it is. LoGH is about understanding cause and effect, inevitability, ways of thinking that lead to different outcomes. We’ve known for several episodes that the Alliance went into this invasion underprepared and for the wrong reasons, while Reinhard has carefully taken steps to weaken the Alliance forces and give himself even more of an upper hand. There are no shocking twists here: The invasion is a disaster, as it should have been, and Reinhard’s (and Oberstein’s) strategy is rewarded with a convincing victory.

Right, Bittenfeld, that's...pretty much what I said.

Stray Tidbits

This brief interaction between Reinhard and Oberstein near the end of the episode is a nice microcosm of the dynamic we’ve seen develop in previous episodes: Oberstein being kind of baffled by the concept of Reinhard fretting about one of his admirals more than the others. Hang in there Oberstein, maybe someday you’ll underst—nah, actually, probably not. Reinhard’s “damn you caught me” expression as he tries to claim he was “just checking” is too cute. 

Don’t worry Reinhard! Kircheis just has to gaze at Alliance commanders with those calm blue eyes and they surrender to his every whim, you know that.

If you’re watching on Hidive, I hate to say it but for once I’ve got to score one for the fansubs: As far as I can tell what Yang says here (after Frederica reminds him that Julian has told him to cut down on drinking) is just “so you two have joined forces?” (The verb is 連帯する, rentai suru, “to have solidarity/share responsibility.”) Cute (if a bit weird) as the Hidive version is, it's a definite stretch.

And while we're at it, here's the original laserdisc version, complete with random blue tube in the background.

Hidive subbers, I would read your fanfic but for the official translations let's stick to what they actually say...

Am I a terrible person if this gif just makes me laugh? 

#Legend of Galactic Heroes #Legend of the Galactic Heroes #author: Rebecca #Amlitzer #battle #war #Poplan #Konev #heteronormativity #whoops