#reading this was suffering

[the-saltiest-duck]

Salty Comic Review #1: Eeveelution Squad

[DISCLAIMER: PLEASE DO NOT ATTACK OR HARASS ANYONE MENTIONED IN THIS REVIEW]

Introduction

Eeveelution squad is a DeviantArt comic made by EV-Zero, previously known as PKM-150 which started in 2016 and ended in 2021. This comic was very popular gaining a dedicated fanbase, with many fandubs, art, fanfiction and even fan songs! I know I personally enjoyed it back when I was young, so it holds a lot of nostalgia for me. The author started a reboot of the series but quickly abandoned it, since he was understandably burnt out after working on the comic for 5 years.

Review

As much as this pains me to say, this comic is NOT good. For one, the characters are very basic. I did not care for any of them in the slightest. This problem only gets worse when later in the comic there are way more characters introduced and all of them have the combined personality of a slice of bread. Because most of the characters in the story are eevees or eeveelutions, it becomes difficult to tell them apart at some points. The characters are written in such a way that they don't feel like actual people at all. The best way to describe the writing of this story is, person watches too much anime and shoves every annoying anime trope possible into their story. Many "senpai"s and "baka"s are dropped and it reminds me of those cringey anime kids in high school. The worst offender of this is Glaceon, who has a running bit of harming Jolteon when he does absoloutely nothing wrong. I shouldn't have to say why this is bad. Though this might be partially my personal preference, I hated all of the romances which ranged from vaguely abusive to boring as plaster. If you want to reread the comic for nostalgia purposes, only read the first few chapters, once you get to the special chapters, just stop reading. This comic was such a painful read of 1020 pages, not even including all the extra content. The lore of this story is so unnecessarily complex for a story about which elemental dog is going to smooch who. I could not tell you a single thing about all the lore in this story except there are evil shadow monsters and parallel universes. The lore isn't even important at all to the story. The most irritating thing is that at one point it just starts alternating these long ass exposition dumps inbetween the actual story. The Eeveelution Squad was enjoyed by so many people because it was cute and simple, if it had kept to slice of life it would still be cringey but it would be bearable. But having all this lore literally nobody cares about and pages of long ass textboxes it just not going to work with the kind of story ES is. But no, it had to be dragged out for an unbearably long time because fuck you!

Conclusion

Pros

+ Cute artstyle

+ Simple and shippable cast

Cons

- Bad writing

- Complete disregard of show don't tell

- Boring characters

- Horrible pacing, especially at the end

- Overdone anime clichés

- Waaayy too many characters

Overall rating 1/5

#eeveelution #eeveelution squad #eevee family #comics #comic review #review #pokemon #eeveeevolution #eevee #reading this was suffering #aaugggh i want to die #salty reviews

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

#every time someones like ''AI will replace u" im like. u will have to fucking KILL ME #there is no replacement here bc i am not filling a position. i am just writing #and the writing is what i need to be doing #writeblr #this probably doesn't make sense bc its sooo frustrating i rarely speak it the way i want to #edited for the typo wrote it and then was late to a meeting lol #i love u people who mention my typos genuinely bc i don't always catch them!!!! :) it is doing me a genuine favor!!! #my friend says i should tell you ''thank you beta editors'' but i don't know what that means #i made her promise it isn't a wolf fanfiction thing. so if it IS a wolf thing she is DEAD to me (just kidding i love her) #hey PS PS PS ??? if ur reading this thinking what it's saying is ''i am financially capable of losing this'' ur reading it wrong #i write for free. i always have. i have worked 5-7 jobs at once to make ends meet. #i did not grow up with access or money. i did not grow up with connections or like some kind of excuse #i grew up and worked my fucking ASS OFF. and i STILL!!! wrote!!! on the side!!! because i didn't know how not to!!! #i do not write for money!!!! i write because i fuckken NEED TO #i could be in the fucking desert i could be in the fuckken tundra i could be in total darkness #and i would still be writing pretentious angsty poetry about it #im not in any way saying it's a good thing. i'm not in any way implying that they're NOT tryna kill us #i'm saying. you could take away our jobs and we could go hungry and we could suffer #and from that suffering (if i know us) we'd still fuckin make art. #i would LOVE to be able to make money doing this! i never have been able to. but i don't NEED to. i will find a way to make my life work #even if it means being miserable #but i will not give up this thing. for the whole world.

[blairpfaff]

edward teach, a girl's girl ♡

#how many of ed's 'phases' has jackie had to suffer through #our flag means death #ofmdedit #edward teach #mary read #anne bonny #spanish jackie #zheng yi sao #edits

[fandomsandfeminism]

I'm begging people to not be afraid of OTC pain meds.

OTC pain meds are not a devil’s bargain or a moral failing. They are a tool to reduce unneeded suffering. They do not destroy your organs if taken correctly, and there is no reward for the people who take the fewest pills in life.

Take what helps, and take it safely! If you have prescription meds or other health issues, always check for possible interactions/adverse effects. 

Edit: the upper limit for paracetamol/acetaminophen is actually more like 4g for most people! :)

#pain meds #ableism #pain management #some of yall are real catholic about pain #suffering isn't good for you #yeah dont chug a bottle of Tylenol #but if you read the labels and check with your other meds you are gonna be ok #better than ok actually because you wont be in as much pain

[vriskan8or]

let her go

#homestuck #vriska serket #terezi pyrope #vriska #terezi #vrisrezi #mic_art #screencap redraw of that one utena scene woohoo #vrisrezi and utenanthy dont share many similarities but there are some interesting parallels that can be drawn #like theyre all characters who are devoted to the respective roles they think they have #utena needs to be a prince and vriska needs to be a hero #terezi needs to cast vriska as the villain so that she can be the one to bring her to justice while anthy #is resigned to her role as the rose bride and is cast as a witch by others (and herself in a way...) to justify her suffering #im too tired to put into words all the other shit rattlign around in my brain but something something vriska society violence princes utena #something interesting to note is that in the rgu stabbing scene utena is walking to the left while is hs vriskas walking to the right #which i think is mostly a cultural difference due to english being read left to right while japanese is read right to left #changing which direction is percieved as forward #which could be read further into but could also just be the natural flow of the scene or whateevr #idk i need to peruse ohtori.nu again i looooove reading utena essays

[janedoe297-art]

HELLO???? I'm OBSESSED with their reunion scene 😭💘

.

.

.

((this is also availabe as a print!!))

#and at the end of act 2??? #after all that suffering #this??? #I'm gonna need 4-5 business days to recover #bg3spoilers #baldursgate3spoilers #dame aylin #night song #isobel thorm #isobel bg3 #bg3 #augh #i want to be isobal so bad ngl #not the crazy dad part but #you know #you still reading the tags?? mwah kiss on the forehead #janedoe297 art

[hidiu]

hi i brought some memes based on fourth wing

and i also created a playlist:

#thank you for your attention #now we can continue to suffer in waiting for the second book #this is the first book that made me make memes #i'm no good at it #but i've tried. #fourth wing #xaden riorson #xadenviolet #violet sorrengail #violet and xaden #rebecca yarros #tairn #andarna #books and reading #Spotify

[prahacat]

when the horrors catch up and you take an evening off to batch-process

#obi-wan kenobi #anakin skywalker #ahsoka tano #maybe obi-wan just read the outline for the next wip #why do i love to torture him so #one of my fav fanfic genres has to be meta fic horror #just imagine. how deeply disturbing it must be to find out you're a fictional character #somebody has *intentionally* written all those horrors onto you #and it wasn't even the guy who created you #he did his part. but the ppl who love it most to ruin your life and see you suffer are your fans #it's not enough that there's prob a lot of jedi rpf around in the gffa already. scarred obi-wan for life #lmao drawing anakin like this gave me so many flashbacks to my old ocs where almost every male character had that hair #also i have a job interview in one hour dsdsfhjgj #my art #prahacat draws

[ex-jock-enthusiast]

Tommy winkler is my favorite unintentional gainer

An excellent suggestion anon!

If you're looking for more content on this guy, @jake-is-still-drunk made a great post a while back covering him in more detail. But yeah holy shit the only two constants in life are twink death and taxes huh

#bulk #bulking #ex jock #exjock #hunky to chunky #fittofat #male gainer #belly #gay gainer #weight gain #i would say #i don't think its unintentional 😉 #unfortunately his followers suffer from chronic 'dont understand the concept of a kink' disease #like jesus christ people #take a walk #read a book #call your parents #stop commenting mean things on influencers' instagram pages

[arunneronthird]

i wanted to draw tim in white cause its such a soft color in contrast to someone who suffered so much, then was immediately told he looks like hes in a 90s boyband

#tim drake #robin #red robin #batman #dc comics #injury #i was reading 19 days and having feelings about guys who suffered wearing white #but no i cannot dream so fuck my drag i guess #jk i think he looks cool anyway #my art #ladies. gentlemen. you have eaten well.

[hualianschild]

saw this on my tl and oh op is so right

credits to @/melondenden on X

#I've been saying he's such an artist since I first read the book ?? #like please give me an ounce of that creative streak my king I'm suffering here #and the way i call the cave of thousand gods his secret studio lmao #paradise manor was just him being bored and silly to the point he decided to do an interior designing project #and i want to take him with me to go jewellery shopping #and asking for styling and makeup tips #gosh WHY ISN'T HE A REAL PERSON ??? #tgcf #heaven official's blessing #hua cheng #san lang #tian guan ci fu #mxtx

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Danse Macabre

[Commission]

#dungeon meshi #dungeon meshi spoilers #marcille donato #winged lion #better drawn mdzs #<- art tag I really need to change. #Turns out the secret to drawing better was having someone offer you money to draw. #I jest. I just had a blast with this prompt and I seriously appreciate the commissioner for letting me have the chance to push myself. #And for giving me permission to post! Hi! If you're seeing this: thank you again! #Let me be clear: no I don't quite know where this came from. It just happened. My chakras unblocked for a few hours. #You too can unblock my chakras with money and commission me to draw cool art B*) #We are so far off from when this is relevant so this one is really just for the manga readers. *****Spoiler notes ahead: #So...As someone who read dungeon meshi monthly for many years....I admit to not seeing Marcille becoming the dungeon lord coming #Hilarious too; re-reading and watching the show made me realize that this outcome is pretty strongly foreshadowed. #Ryoko Kui distracts you by putting the focus on Laios being the 'one to break the curse' but nope! #This was the culmination of her goals and desires. #And - for those who did not have to suffer as us monthly readers did: #YES. WE NEARLY ALL THOUGHT THAT MARCILLE HAD TO DIE. #The last 20 or so chapters were a constant spiral of: 'Oh this story isn't going to have a happy ending is it?' #She just keeps losing herself! The winged lion plays her like a puppet and she is his perfect doll! So full of conviction!

[inkskinned]

the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.

capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.

now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.

and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.

and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.

and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".

it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"

#this was much longer i had to cut it down for legibility #but i do want to say i am aware this post doesnt touch on human rights violations as a result of fast fashion #that is because it deserves its own post with a completely different tone #i am an environmental educator #so that's what i know the most about. it wouldn't be appropriate of me to mention off-hand the real and legitimate suffering #that people are going through #without doing my research and providing real ways to help #this is a vent post about a thing i'm watching happen; not a call to action. it would be INCREDIBLY demeaning #to all those affected by the fast fashion industry to pretend that a post like this could speak to their suffering #unfortunately one of the horrible things about latestage capitalism as an activist is that SO many things are linked to this #and i WANT to talk about all of them but it would be a book in its own right. in fact there ARE books about each level of this #and i encourage you to seek them out and read them!!! i am not an expert on that i am just a person on tumblr doing my favorite activity #(complaining) #and it's like - this is the individual versus the industry problem again right because im blaming myself #for being an expert on environmental disaster (which is fucking important) but not knowing EVERYTHING about fast fashion #i'm blaming myself for not covering the many layers of this incredibly complicated problem im pointing out #rather than being like. yeah so actually the fault here lies with the billion dollar industries actually. #my failure to be able to condense an incredibly immense problem that is BOOK-LENGTH into a single text post that i post for free #is not in ANY fucking way the same amount of harm as. you know. the ACTUAL COMPANIES doing this ACTUAL THING for ACTUAL MONEY. #anyway im gonna go donate money while i'm thinking about it. maybe you can too. we can both just agree - well i fuckin tried didn't i #which is more than their CEOs can say

[kitamars]

lovey dovey (alt ver of the first one under the cut!)

#HEEHEEEEE GINHIJI BIG LOVE #so refreshing that i can mess around and draw them to my hearts content….. #so domestic here……..im sick cough cough splat #i love them so goddamn much you have no idea #all the little moments that are possible are so fun to draw even if i mostly just draw them yelling and arguing most of the time #i’ve read too much fluff fic and now this is what i have fhdnnfjdjfn suffer with me #silly men are silly and in love #sakata gintoki #hijikata toushirou #ginhiji #gintoki x hijikata #hijigin #hijikata x gintoki #gintama #ok bye

[dailyboatboys]

[29] rotating the idea of chef joel in my mind

Bonus comic below cuttt

#daily boat boys #Can you tell i read dunmeshi by that bonus #Also that first one took me like an hour it was soo lazy #smallishbeans #Not maintagging etho #boat boys #hermitcraft #Also made these watching tango and zed suffer on the charity stream #Donated 10 dollars why not

[theriverbeyond]

Nona the Ninth is such an experience to (re)read because you spend just over 200 pages -- a full 40% of the book!! -- being deeply confused, thrust headfirst into a brand new world. there are familiar people, but none of them are people we've spent much time with Before, so even that familiarity is limited. and then not only is everything around you SO different, the narrator just doesn't care about anything that happened Before. Nona zones out during important conversations or is physically pushed away from having the type of information that could orient the reader, so for like 200 pages you have been aclimated to this very slow, drip-feed of information.

and then you get The Broadcast, which feels like a cold bucket of clarity, or like if you were inside a bucket (perhaps initially resistant but now growing quite comfortable with your predicament) and then suddenly dumped out of that bucket into a freezing lake. in 5 pages we get more direct information than we've been given thus far but it's so fast and so much and for half of it Nona's comprehension is hampered because it's just audio, no faces, that the reader goes from being parched to drowning. the slow drip turns into a fire hose.

Ianthe is here and, inexplicably (though of course later explained), a brunette. Gideon's body is here, and extremely dead. the girl Nona has been dreaming about is Gideon. Ianthe's biting commentary is both comfortingly familar as well as deeply disquieting; the enemies of the Empire's forever war no longer being mysterious, unnamed forces but Nona's friends and the city she loves so much.

and then the book just. does not let up from there. the firehose continues for 300 more pages. you've been lulled into complacancy by 200 pages of Nona's School Days Adventure, but Situations have come to call. this is still the Locked Tomb Series, and your respite is over.

#guess which part im at in my reread #tlt meta #nona the ninth #trb.txt #tlt thoughts #like the field trip to see we suffer kicks it up a little but the broadcast is still SUCH an intensifier #i remember when i was reading it the first time #at 12am when it dropped #i was like ill start it and finish it over a few days #and then i got to the broadcast and was like oh. i cant stop now #and then i couldnt stop for the rest of the book #stranglehold