#top one is ref for a comic I did

[moony-2001]

The real-world impact of Lore Olympus

i.e. do your research Rachel

Trigger warning: racism, fetishization, appropriation, mentions of SA

Long post ahead

A while ago, someone told me that Lore Olympus was just a silly little comic written out of boredom. That it was made to be "funny". They told me that "[I] can't hope [for] an extremely [well-written] story when it was just made with the intention to make something goofy" and that if Rachel actually wanted to make something serious like I had, she would write a book and not a comic.

At the time of this exchange, it was past 1 a.m. and I was exhausted. I did not want to argue with this person and it simply wasn't worth my time or energy in the moment.

But looking back at that (mostly one-sided) interaction, I can't help but think that there is so much wrong with that point of view. Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion about Lore Olympus, whether good or bad. But Lore Olympus isn't just some silly little nothing comic about nothing important. It is a comic that actively appropriates and erases Greek Culture. It is a comic that has no respect for the actual stories that have been passed down over thousands of years whether by word of mouth or written text. It is a comic that perpetuates a false narrative and harmful stereotypes about characters or certain groups of people. So, no, it's not just a silly little comic.

Incorrect information

Here’s an example of what I mean:

When I was doing research for my post about the 10 year time skip, I looked up Leuce to reconfirm the little information I knew about her. Wanna guess the first thing that popped up about her?

A Lore Olympus Wiki article.

Okay. How about Minthe? Hundreds of pictures of her from Lore Olympus and a LO Wiki article as one of the top 3 results. Both character are horribly represented in LO and unfortunately there isn’t really any documented stories or records that can refute how LO paints them. Because of this, other characters in Greek Mythology like Leuce and Minthe, whose stories have little to no documentation, stand to suffer the most harm from deliberate misrepresentation on Rachel’s part.

Of course well-known and better documented figures in Greek mythology face slander as well. What about Thetis or Leto? How about Apollo? All of their portrayals in LO are HORRIBLE. I have seen people online absolutely drag them to filth not because they're upset about how the character is portrayed compared to their mythological counterpart, but because they have no knowledge of how they are actually portrayed outside of LO. They just assume that's how the characters are. Similarly, people who have either very little or no prior knowledge of Greek Mythology and Culture would look at the comic and go "Yep, sounds legit. It must be true." and go about thinking that what is portrayed in LO is accurate to what was transcribed thousands of years ago.

Creative interpretations and racism/fetishization within LO

Don’t get me wrong. Creative interpretations and artistic liberties can be great. When they’re done tastefully. I personally think if done correctly, a Greek myth spun in a modern way has the potential be very good. But that's not what we were given.

Characters like Minthe, Leuce, and Thetis (all nymphs btw) are portrayed as trashy tramps who put out and are used as a foil sabotage Persephone and/or her relationship with Hades. Compare that to Greek Mythology where in the Iliad, Thetis is very well-respected by the gods, particularly Hera. Unfortunately, other similar characters like satrys (and basically any character that isn’t a god) are usually portrayed as a low-class POC that can be easily exploited, manipulated, or used as a temporary villain/lover/pawn to “get back” at Persephone, our white-coded protagonist who can do no wrong.

Additionally, there is a clear race/class bias against characters like nymphs in LO. We see many cases scattered throughout the comic of gods like Hera or Aphrodite referring to nymphs as "trash" or "low class" or the idea that nymphs do not belong with gods being heavily implied if not outright said. I cannot tell you how often I've seen Minthe be called some variant of "cheap" by the readers of LO. Even Persephone (who created the flower nymphs) treats them with such disrespect. She frequently calls them some variant of "stupid" or "simple" like saying how they're not the sharpest crayons in the box even though she's the one WHO MADE THEM. However, it's so odd not really to note that nymphs like Echo, Amphitrite, or Psyche (who was previously disguised as a nymph) are not discriminated against. This is because they are liked or trusted by the gods they are around and ergo are often portrayed as the "good ones", which is a disgusting mindset to have.

We also see the fetishization of nymphs in the comic that is disturbingly similar to the fetishization of women who are Black, Asian, or Latina. It is a known fact that Hades has a flower nymph fetish. Not only is this implied in the comic, but Rachel stated it outright in an old Patreon post. Nymphs are also generally treated as sex-symbols, disposable, and as a lesser-than. Zeus frequently displays this behavior by abandoning nymphs he knocked up in the mortal realm.

For example, when Persephone finds out Apollo is dating Daphne, she isn't upset he's dating her friend. She's upset he's dating a flower nymph, beings that are generally considered to be "rare", "dumb", and objects of sexual desire. Ew.

Even on the Lore Olympus website (loreolympians.com) nymphs are regarded as "beautiful", "desirable", and "very exotic". And when they're not described in a sexual manner they're say it with me now regarded as "low class" or "workers" for some kind of god/goddess.

Final thoughts

So not only is the characterization of characters like Minthe or Thetis harmful to Greek culture and the stories that are so ingrained in their society, but it is also perpetuating harmful stereotypes about people of color and women who are confident in their sexuality.

Of course, the characters within Greek Mythology had their own issues. Zeus was a serial rapist, many of the goddesses deemed to be "feminist" by today's standards were actually horribly misogynistic looking at you Athena. But 1. that's just how things were back then (but that does not make it right) and 2. all of the good, the bad, and the ugly is still there in Greek Mythology. They're not denying how fucked up it is, but they're also not changing their history to better fit their own narrative or the narrative of the modern world. It exists, it happened, but now it is studied and called out by historians.

Rachel, on the other hand, is doing exactly that. She is actively changing the Greek's cultural history to better fit her fic's narrative. She is constantly sweeping things under the rug or going "No this is how it ACTUALLY happened". Lore Olympus is marketed as a "feminist retelling" yet somehow, it takes allllll the ugly parts from Greek Mythology (rape, incest, problematic age gaps, dubious consent, etc.), mixes it with a majority of the issues we have in the modern world (white feminism, rape-apologists/rape culture, grooming, fetishization of certain minority groups, etc.) and then amplifies the concoction to 20. Lore Olympus cannot be a "progressive, feminist, retelling" and also have characters that are morally apprehensive/come straight from the ancient myths. It does not work. In fact, IMO it makes all the problems from both eras worse.

News flash: actual cultures that are still thriving today are not your toys. They are not "made up". They matter. Do better.

#anti lore olympus #lore olympus #anti lo persephone #anti lo #lore olympus criticism #lore olympus critical #lo critic #lo critical #unpopular lo #unpopular lore olympus #appropriation #greek mythology #if anyone who is actually Greek wants to comment on this or share their thoughts please feel free #I'm not Greek but I have a deep love for mythology/Greek culture so this is just my take on things

[marsoid]

BIG fan of "tracing 3d models of cars to avoid having to freehand them" do you have any other good shortcuts? Honest question. I wanna do my comic projects one day but I have chronic pain & bad eyes so I need all the help I can get

literally take every shortcut you can.. trace photos and 3d models or manipulate them to complement your style

save frequently used color palettes, char references, etc somewhere so they can be pulled up quickly (like in materials folder in CSP)

make a doc with all your chars refs in one file and keep it open in the bg so u dont have to open 20 separate pics

figure out character outfits ahead of time

do not spend extra time trying to make one panel perfect. ppl will only look at it for 10 seconds tops and nobody cares if it's not a masterpiece

color-pick environment/background colors straight from a photo of a similar area

dont like drawing something that appears frequently in comic? download or make a brush for it (i have a glasses stamp brush bc i hate drawing them more than you will ever understand)

my entire life motto is halfass everything and cut corners as often as possible. never put 100% effort into anything. i did very poorly in school btw

#weirbeast #ask mars #im also a bitch who cares more abt story than making the art nice so not everyone will agree #i spend like 2 hrs on each comic page bc i put all my skill points in speed and nothing else LOL

[riallasheng]

Good day, Sheng I hope you've had a lovely day!

I was curious to know if you had any information on what the TB TOS boys studied and specialized in? Were they awarded with anything?

Hello my lovely anon! I apologize for the delay, but I was out visiting friends until late yesterday. ^^ I'm home again, which means I can dig through my novels and comics to answer this as best I am able!

Of the various sources, the official bios (there's at least 3 versions there of), the TV21 comics, and the Fleetway comics are the ones that are most likely to give the answers. There are also bits and bobs scattered around the various canon sources. Overall, I'm pulling mostly from the Fleetway for this, as it actually went the most into depth for what you're asking and while Fleetway / complete Thunderbirds Story DOES have some continuity / canonicity issues the education and specializations parts overall are solid.

Going in my preferred age order (because there's actually more than one XD )

This got long, so readmore deployed! ^^

Scott:

Given the ages involved, Scott skipped grades to one degree or another, because he seems to have graduated high school at 16-17 rather than 18. (Spoiler Warning: Gordon is the only Tracy that didn't skip grades. TinTin and Brains skip grades too, although Penny did not)

Scott seemingly went to a 'normal' college / university for ~2 years (Fleetway puts it as Tracy University, where Scott specialized in astronautics and got his astronaut wings, which at minimum DOES explain where / when Scott GOT his astronaut wings, which he DOES canonically have as all his official bios mention he is a trained astronaut and he is one of Three's canon pilots with a fair amount of knowledge / skill in space) as he doesn't start Yale until 18

At 18, Scott went to Yale for 2-3 years and finished his formal education at Oxford for 1-2 years (these numbers bounce around a bit in the various bios/mentions - though it being ~4 years in total is constant across all of them) and graduated top of his class - though not valedictorian or salutatorian, simply in the top 10 / top 5 - specializing in aeronautics / aeronautic engineering, mathematics, and navigation. We know he does have SOME education / degree in engineering as he the one that helps in designing / engineering / etc alongside Virgil. We also know he was heavily involved in the design of Thunderbird 1 and 2, with some refs to him being the primary designer on One. Scott definitely has a Bachelors and might have a Masters in one / two / all of his three degrees, but there's no indication that he has a Doctorate in anything. He seems to have had aeronautics / aeronautic engineering as his primary.

All of Scott's bios state that he served in the Air Force right out of College (so he would have joined at 22 to 23 years of age, then would have served 4-6 years). He was an officer, rather than enlisted, although his stated final rank ranges between Captain (of-3) to Colonel (of-6) so you likely can go with what you please there, although Scott IS referred to as a 'commanding officer' in the Air Force, which usually means Major (of-4), Lieutenant Colonel (of-5), or Colonel (of-6) though. We've no idea what his callsign would have been, though some fanon ones I've seen are Flyboy, Ace, Scooter, Falcon and Eagle. I use Mercury myself (Mercury Seven, and it refs his speed AND 'silver tongue'/communication skills)

There's multiple references to Scott serving in 'the War', although what War that is is VERY vague and hard to pinpoint. (Oddly, Fleetway using the 2020s timeline DOES make IDing the war in question easier... With Scott serving in his 20s, that would make the war in Fleetway the Global Conflict / WW3, which took place ~2010 and was how the Global Government / World Government formed.) For the most common 2060s timeline, it's really unclear what 'war' Scott would have been fighting in in the 2050s. outside of the confusion of 'what war', Scott was at minimum an 'ace' (5 kills in aerial combat / dogfighting), might have been an 'ace ace' (25+ kills) although that one MIGHT be a misprint where the word ace was accidently doubled, and there is a passing reference in either the novels or comics (I forget which ^^;; ) to him being 'War Ace', which is a title awarded to the 'best pilot / most skilled ace' in a war. So 'War Ace' is a potential accomplishment for him

He is officially a 'test pilot', and can fly pretty much anything / everything. It's mentioned he CAN fly the Tiger Moth so he can mange bi-planes, he apparently flew a stunt plane (so propeller), he's helicopter (and apparently helijet) certified, and he's flown a wide array of jets, rocket-planes, and space craft. (He has a pilot's license, helicopter / helijet license, and astropilot license). He has a Class-D (standard driver's) license, and he apparently knows how to drive a motorcycle so a Class-M license too. He might have a Class-B (farming equipment) license, and would have had a military license that functioned as a CBL (commercial) Class A/B/C license and might have gone through the work to get that again as a civilian. We do see Scott driving heavy equipment and the like when not 'IR' so he might have the commercial license. He has a non-commercial boating license, and miiiiight have a civilian submarine-craft license. Seems to have a diving license. Definitely has a sky-diving and paragliding license.

Scott somehow was given the Medal of Valor and quite possibly Medal of Honor as well. both are EXTREMLY difficult to achieve medals, almost always only given out in wartime, and we never are told what he did to achieve them

Scott retired in his 'late 20s' (probably around 28) 'with honors', which would mean an Honorable Discharge. That's right about when IR would be in the final set up stages / Tracy Island buildings and silos being built and the like.

It's strongly implied in the comics that Scott was a POW at some point, but nothing officially states it flat out. There's a vague refence to him having been shot down at some point in the comics as well. These have lead to the widespread fanon that Scott was a POW, usually in Bereznik. If this is the case, Scott would have a Purple Heart Medal and a Prisoner of War Medal. It also would explain why no one finds it odd that he retired as young / early as he did.

John:

Rather like Scott, John seems to have skipped grades, as he graduates High School at ~15 years of age (there's a VAGUE hint in TV21 that it might have been as low as 14. It's also implied to have been that low in Fleetway because John is only around 21 when he starts at Tracy University, AFTER finishing 6 years at Harvard).

While John has always been deeply interested in manned space flight and the heavens in general, his real passion (and career) is canonically in communications.

John starts attending Harvard University, and graduates as Valedictorian (he's top of his class, but there's a mention to him giving a speech at his graduation, which usually goes to Valedictorian) getting his degree in electronics and laser communications / communications in general. Since he wrote a thesis, he must have gotten a doctorate in ONE of these fields (likely communications)

John was HEAVILY involved in the design / building of IRs communications gear and might even have been the lead in it. both the 'listening in' and the 'communicating between each other' parts. He also seemingly was very heavily involved in the designing of TB5

He created a laser communications device that was 'revolutionary' and won him awards and accolades. (An achievement that was later stolen by Lt. Green in his bio... Spectrum bios had a VERY bad habit of stealing accomplishments of previously existing characters. In further example, Green also stole 'best communications officer / specialist WASP has ever had' from Phones, Harmony stole 'best pilot alive' from Scott, Grey stole 'back messed up and 4 months in hospital after a sub/high speed boat crash from Gordon AND 'first captain of the Stingray' from Troy, and Rhapsody stole quite a few of Penny's spy achievements)

John also located a previously unknown quasar, which became known as the Tracy Quasar System.

He's published at minimum 4 astronomy and outer-space textbooks, and at least 1 book on communications

After getting a doctorate in ~6 years at Harvard at 20-21 years of age, John then got his astronaut wings / became an astronaut. Fleetway puts him at Tracy University for this as well. (He might have been Valedictorian again, as he's referred to as being such for his astronaut training in... Countdown? I legit forget where the ref is. There's an implication that John was Valedictorian more than once, basically). All of the Tracys are genius level smart, but John seems to be the brightest star of them all

John worked on a civilian (or at least non-military) space station / space program for at least a few years. What group and station is debatable. It could be NASA, the World Space Program, etc. He further could have been on the International Space Station, Freedom Station, etc. The only things off the table are military groups, and he CAN'T have served in the World Space Patrol (Fireball XL5)

John has his pilot's license and space-pilot / astropilot license. He likely has a rocket-plane license (ie: a atmospheric craft that can escape the atmosphere and is space capable). He MIGHT have a helijet license, but he doesn't have a helicopter license. He has a Class-D (standard driver's) license, and he apparently knows how to drive a motorcycle so a Class-M license too. He might have a Class-B (farming equipment) license. He has a non-commerical boating license, and miiiiight have a civilian submarine-craft license. Seems to have diving license. Might have a sky-diving and paragliding license.

John also is a highly skilled athlete, having achieved many awards and records. We only know about him being involved in running, but WHAT KIND of running varies between sprinting (rare), long-distance (more commonly reffed) and cross-country (most commonly reffed), or trail or obstacle course (middling)

I'm not sure how John left his space career / stopped working on the space station without attracting attention, oddly he's the ONLY one that doesn't have an easy excuse for joining IR! Scott apparently had SOMETHING happen that gave him an honorable discharge and had no one questioning him retiring from the Air Force, Virgil apparently intended to work as an engineer FOR Jeff's company once he graduated, Gordon had the hydrofoil crash and an Honorable or Medical Discharge from WASP, and Alan was only 19 and hadn't really STARTED a career. TinTin either was just finishing her University education and/or like Virgil was working for Jeff's company as an engineer. Brains started working for Jeff at his company while Brains was still in college. John's the only one with a career outside of Jeff's company that DOESN'T have a coinvent 'stop working there' excuse.

Virgil:

continuing the running theme, Virgil seems to have skipped grades - more than Scott did, but less than John, graduating High School at 15-16.

Virgil started higher education at 16 at Denver School for Advanced Technology, but he's sometimes put in Yale or another Tech school. What his degree was varies. Fleetway has it as 'Advanced Technology', but he's also had Engineering / Nuclear Engineering listed in his official bios. He usually took art classes and music classes, and sometimes he has a degree in art or music mentioned, so he likely minored in art and/or music alongside his Advanced Technology / engineering major. He seems to have graduated at 20-21 with a Masters in Tech/Engineering and a Bachelors in art/music. There's no refences at all to him having a doctorate (only John and Brains have that), and while he seems to have been 'top of his class', there's no indication he was Valedictorian or Salutatorian. So, like Scott he would have been in the top 10 or top 5, but not the number 1 or 2 slots.

Fleetway claims that Virgil was on the Denver Football team and was a good player on it, but that is the only reference to it or sports in general. Something to remember is that Virgil is actually NOT the heaviest / buffiest in build of the brothers in TOS. He's well built, but Scott and Alan are both heavier /buffer in build than he is, as is his father. Virgil isn't LEAN, but he'd be a Middleweight, built sort of like Tony or tom Cruise or the like. Muscled, but not a brick house. Scott is consistantly referred to as 'powerful' in build, and is drawn as heavier / bulkier in muscles than Virgil. Heavyweight class or something like the traditional 'superman' build like Cavill or the like. Alan and Jeff are a bit more powerful / bulky in build than Scott, so upper end of the Heavyweight. Not modern day Body builder / the Hulk bulk, but say Hulk Hogan, Dwayne Johnson, Arnold in Terminator / Predator type build. Gordon is about Virgil's build / a swimmer's build. John is lean /lithe but not lanky. Built like a runner.

Virgil HAS sold art and had it on display at galleries, possibly even at a museum or two, which is quite the accomplishment. He's also played music semi-professionally, although I can't find or recall an refences to him winning awards or contests in music.

Like John, Virgil got his astronaut wings / went to a second school after his primary (Fleetway again puts this as Tracy University) and he seems to have gone to this second school when he was ~21. Fleetway has a fun incident where, while at Tracy U, he used his advanced technology degree to service a faulty space capsule during a training space-flight.

So far as I can tell, Virgil's plan was to graduate and work for Tracy Tech / Tracy Industries / whatever version of the MULTIPLE names that Jeff's company has you'd like to use XD upon graduation. He likely DOES officially work as an engineer for his Dad's company (his brothers as well) on top of IR duties.

Given when IR got started (September of 2065) and Virgil's age AND his graduation date(s), Virgil would have been working at Jeff's company for at least a couple of years before IR got started.

He has a Class-D (standard driver's) license, but no Class-M / motorcyle that we're aware of. He ABSOLUTELY has a Class-B (farming equipment) license, and has a CBL (commercial) Class A/B/C license. We know he has a pilot's license. While he has his astronaut wings, he might not have an astropilot license, but he would at least he have a 'limited' one - equivalent of a 'student driver' where he can be a co-pilot but not a solo. He has a helicopter and helijet license. Seems to have both a commerical and non-commerical boating license. Seems to have a civilian submarine craft license. Might have a diving license. Probably has a skydiving and paragliding license.

Gordon:

Only one of the brothers NOT to skip grades, as he goes straight from High School to WASP Academy at ~18.

Gordon was showing skill in swimming at only 3 years of age, and joined a professional swim team as early as possible (13 or so, though he would have been on school swim teams / training prior to that)

Gordon was one of, if not the, fastest freestyle swimmers in his prime. We know he won Gold in the Olympics for the Butterfly Stroke at 16 (Considering his birthyear, he might actually have been 17 given the years the Olympics fall on). We know he also got other awards / medals, but we can take it as fact that his only Olympic Gold was this. He might have gotten Silver and Bronze in other races. However given the 4 year gaps, this would have been the ONLY Olympics Gordon took part in - he would have been too young for the previous, and the ones after would be either after his hyrdofoil accident or IR.

Gordon went from high school straight into WASP. He probably was 18, buuuuuuuut there are hints that Gordon might have served in whatever War Scott and Phones and Troy and others in that age group fought in, so Gordon MIGHT have been able to sign up for WASP at 17 and basically before he graduated high school. To quickly explain, while you can sign up for the military at 17 with a guardian's permission for most branches… submarine service (and thus WASP) is not one of them, as it's strictly volunteer and 18+. You have to VOLUNTEER to be on a sub, and outside of wartimes you must be 18 or older. Thus IF, and only if, there was a 'War' on, Gordon could have joined WASP at 17.

Gordon was put in command of a bathyscape, which means he was an officer. You usually have to be 19 to become an officer / begin officer training BUT you can start at 18 during wartimes so... Gordon would have started his officer training at 18-19 and become an officer at 19-20. We've no mention of what rank Gordon was at his retirement, but to command a submarine, even a bathyscape, he has to have been a Lieutenant-Commander (of-3) minimum, but he can't have been more than a Captain (of-5) as he wasn't part of the admiralty. I make him a Commander (of-4) because I am an old geek woman and I love him having the rank level of 4 XD

While in WASP, Gordon came up with a revolutionary and unique underwater breathing apparatus... it's implied that the scuba gear we see used in Stingray are the ones that Gordon designed. Gordon later improved these for IR.

Gordon was in a high speed hyrdofoil crash (I know it says 400 mph, but I honestly would prefer it to have been going FAR slower... 400 km/h maybe XD ) that almost killed him, injured his back, and left him in a WASP hospital for 4 months (note that is his FULL TIME in the hospital, including his initial / in hospital Physical Therapy). The crash happened VERY recently, btw, like two years MAX before the pilot episode, but no less than a year and a half prior to the pilot, so it would have happened no earlier than Sept 2063 and no later than Mar 2064. A lot of fans give him lingering physical issues from this (heck I'm one of them), BUT it's important to remember that we see Gordon getting up to fairly normal physical activities in all canon material (even Fleetway where his accident is directly mentioned / shown), so he is not HEAVILY impacted by this. If he has chronic pain, it's mild for instance. If he throws his back out on occasion, it's rare and he recovers quickly, etc.

He has a military boating and submarine license, as well as a non-commercial boating license and civilian submarine-craft license. he miiiiiight have a commercial boating license, but he's never shown with commercial craft so *shrug emoji*. he ABSOLUTELY has a diving license. He has a Class-D (standard driver's) license. He might have a Class-B (farming equipment) license, and would have had a military license that functioned as a CBL (commercial) Class A/B/C license and might have gone through the work to get that again as a civilian. Likely has a piloting license, might have a helicopter and helijet license.

Alan:

Alan was interested in both car racing and space from a young age (and unlike TaG, it looks like he actually had a stronger interest in CARS than in rockets). He seems to have skipped grades, as he was in college by 15 years of age as he was far enough into his astronaut training to be in space at 16 as one of Alan's accomplishments is that he is the youngest astronaut / lunarnaut known, having been either in space OR on the moon (or at minimum he got his astronaut wings) at only 16 years of age AND he still holds the record for highest number of passes and holds the current record for graduating in record time.

It looks like Alan went first to college for his astronaut wings (Fleetway has it as Tracy University) and likely got a Bachelors, graduating at 16 years of age.

He then went to another school (Fleetway lists Colorado Tech / Denver Tech) and got a Masters at 17 (maaaaybe 18). WHAT he got it in varies wildly across canon sources though. He's got astronatical engineering, space travel, CAR engineering / design, and communications listed. So likely pick and choose as ye please. I personally go for Vehicular (car) and astronautical engineering. To be totally honest, I'd replace the Tech school with a Racing Academy and have it where Alan got a Bachelors in astronatical engineering at Tracy University at 16, and a second Bachelors in Vehicular Engineering & Design at a Racing School at 17, then went from there to join the World Space Patrol Astopilot Academy for 1-2 years before going back to his racing career for the 1-2 years before he joins IR

Alan then joined the World Astronaut Patrol Academy... aka the military branch that Fireball XL5 is part of. Alan was in the Astropilot program, but for unknown reasons in canon, he left WSP / Astropilot program before graduating when he was still 18. To solve this issue, I replaced one of the astronovices in the Fireball comic story 'The Astronovices' with Alan, as that would have given him a General or Dishonorable Discharge. Alan DOES hold the record for youngest Astronovice as he joined at ~17 or so, and he apparently was pretty likely to be one of the few to pass the grueling requirements and graduate (seriously, out of an intake of 200 potentials, less that 25 graduate for each 2-3 year training cycle).

Alan started his racing career while still in college, likely starting driving at 16-17 as it's said he's been racing for 'a few years' when he wins Pararola at 19/20. He probably paused the racing career for the 1-2 years he was in the Astronovice program, then resumed it at 18 when he left WSP (for whatever reason he DID leave). He apparently has a few wins / medals in racing under his belt and left a successful racing career to join IR, although he WAS young enough (only 19) that him deciding to join Jeff's company as a vehicle engineer who occasionally tests the vehicles the company makes likely wouldn't draw too much attention. (Alan was a 'champion' race driver and officially a car designer by the time he joined IR at 19.)

He ABSOLUTELY has a Class-D (standard driver's) license, and seemingly has a Class-M / motorcyle, and obviously has a SCCA (racing) license. He might have a Class-B (farming equipment) license, but that's debatable. We know he has a pilot's license. He might have a helicopter license, but we never once see him piloting a helicopter. He's a bit more likely to have his helijet license. He ABSOLUTELY has an astropilot license, even if he didn't get the military / Fireball craft license. Seems to have a non-commerical boating license and a civilian submarine craft license. Has a diving license. Probably has a skydiving and paragliding license. Certainly has a rocket-plane (aka astmospheric craft that can escape gravitational pull and is space capable) license.

If anyone wants, I'll do these for TinTin, Brains and Penny - I'll even try it for Jeff, Kyrano, and Grandma Tracy, although we have FAR less to go on for them

[traincat]

Ms. Cat, Ms. Cat! You've talked about how great the Waid and Hickman runs are before, so I wanted to ask: what are some things about these runs that you didn't like? Is there anything you would've added, dropped, and/or rewritten, if you were magically granted the ability to do so?

Ooh okay NEGATIVITY. my actual favorite. and I can do it off the top of my head! (I found the 2018 copy of my refs folder, but not the hard drive I know has a 2022 copy.)

So I have talked a lot about what those runs do right, and I think Waid especially is a really good beginner run, like, if you want to start reading Fantastic Four comics, his run is as close to a perfect modern starting point as we have. (I was talking to someone recently and the conversation segued at one point into how, for a lot of comics, there's no such thing as The Place Where You Start Reading, you kind of just have to hop in.) Hickman... is not an ideal starting point, but if you want to read an interesting, coherent Fantastic Four story that's plot heavy, the first half of his run is excellent for that. (Note I said first half. I'll come back to that.) As opposed to, say, Claremont's run, which is completely incoherent in terms of plot but has the best character work in probably any Fantastic Four run ever. Just don't pick it up if you want the story to, you know. Make sense.

Waid's run -- I would never say Waid's run is perfect, although I do think it's good, which is sort of all you can ask for a lot of the time. The beginning of it definitely falls victim to what I kind of privately call the Johnny Effect: I think a lot of writers have trouble writing Johnny at the start, whether because they don't entirely understand his character or because they're less interested in him than the other three. I literally have a rule where I'll give a new Fantastic Four run like, seven or so issues for the writer to settle into writing Johnny, because a lot of people will fall back on these very shallow perceptions of him, namely that he's irresponsible. (I also think Hickman fell victim to this a little bit at the start of his run, although like with most Johnny Effect cases I'll let it go because both Waid and Hickman wrote incredible Johnny-focused stories that absolutely nailed everything about the character. Whatever Happened to Johnny Storm? and Storm Rising are two of my top Johnny story picks, so they do both get him. It just takes some time sometimes.) Waid's not that bad about it, and he did attempt to spin what I think are traits Johnny doesn't really possess (the playboy nature, the emotional immaturity) into a character arc that does have some good payoff, but if you compare Johnny at the beginning of his run to Johnny in, say, Claremont's run, there's a big difference in terms of characterization. I also don't think Waid is anywhere near the top ten Doom writers -- he goes too hard into utterly cartoon villainy. (Waid's run is, after all, the origin of the Childhood Love Skin Armor of infamy.) His Doom lacks the nuance of Hickman's take, or even the iron willed commitment of Miller's. (I will say whatever I want about the rest of that run but Doom getting eaten by a prehistoric shark and then pulling himself back together atom by atom out of sheer spite is just so fundamentally Doom.) So his characterization can be shaky. He can also pull out really strong moments! I think his depiction of Johnny and Reed's respective grief over Ben is really powerful stuff, although I don't like, love the "journey to heaven" arc. (God is Jack Kirby is pretty funny, though.) If anything, I think it's the juxtaposition of the really strong moments that make the weaker characterization more obvious. I think the Doom characterization is probably my biggest criticism of Waid's run, overall. (I also didn't like his recent Invisible Woman miniseries like, at all. I thought it was boring! Sorry! I wanted to like it!)

Now Hickman, I'm going to complain about. So Hickman's run comes immediately after Mark Miller's run, which I never recommend for the simple reason that it's not good. It's not a good run. Miller deserves his general reputation as one of those overly bro-y comic writers who mistakes sprinkling in sexism for hard hitting realism. Do I kind of want to reread the run right now? Yeah, sort of. Despite it being Not Good, I think there's genuinely interesting stuff in it. Hickman spends the first few issues of his run utterly trampling on Miller's run, like, Godzilla on a miniature city style. It's a little amazing to watch, honestly, like I admire the spirit of spite -- that's what I want to do to both Spencer and Wells' ASM runs -- but it has some intensely negative side effects, namely when it comes to Alyssa Moy.

Alyssa Moy is a character Claremont created back in his run -- she's Reed's old college friend/sometimes flame depending on what writer you ask (they kiss in greeting in Claremont's run, but it could be viewed as a friend thing -- and she's pretty blatantly romantically interested in Ben in Claremont's run), a super genius adventurer who can intellectually hold her own against Reed. In short, she's SUPER fun. Every other writer since Claremont, save for Peter David in Before the Fantastic Four: Reed Richards, has been really fucking weird about her. Whether it's making Sue jealous of her because she's so Intellectually Compatible with Reed (this is nowhere in Claremont's introductory run, where Sue and Alyssa get along really well -- Alyssa was LIVING with the F4 for a while) or having her comment on how she and Reed would have intellectually superior kids while she's married to The Most Boring Man Ever Created, Ted Castle (Miller's run). Hickman is NOT immune to being weird about Alyssa. Where Miller's run leaves Alyssa with her Boring Fucking Husband on Planet Future or whatever (it's dumb, it's a dumb plot), Hickman's opens by saying Alyssa is now... a brain in a jar. A talking brain in a jar on robot spider legs. And then she gets murdered like five pages later. But don't worry, because her Boring Fucking Husband creates a robot version of her, and everyone is fine with this and it's cool actually and we don't have to look too closely about the problematic elements of replacing an Asian woman with a robot version of her built by her freak tech guy husband. And then they blast off to space and have not been seen again. I would SO BADLY love to retcon everything that happened with Alyssa post-Claremont because she's such a fun character and the way she's been treated since in the main book is disgraceful. That's my top pick for what I would fix if I had unlimited editorial power: Alyssa Moy solo.

(Is Hickman great about the depiction of women within the sole context of his Fantastic Four run? I think his greatest triumph with any one female character is Valeria, where he took Miller's depiction -- of a super smart toddler -- and honed that characterization into what's now very solidly Val, with all of Reed's intelligence and a lack of his emotional comprehension, with her strong emotional bond with Doom, with her pragmatism. Can I say he did equally for any other female character, again, solely with the context of his F4 run? Not really.)

I'm not gonna address the renumbering/retitling issue with Hickman's run because I don't think it's fair to put that on the writer, but I do think it's detrimental to the run overall, considering how you need a GUIDE to figure out how to read it. I will say that I think Hickman's run falls off HARD after he wraps up the Negative Zone plotline. And I LOVE the Negative Zone plotline, I think it's really a crowning moment in Fantastic Four canon, but Hickman doesn't seem to know what to do with his run after that point. And I love the roommate issue, it's given the Spideytorch community so much, but I genuinely do think we would have been better served exploring Johnny's emotional state after his two year long death and resurrection cycle, and that was mostly left for other writers to deal with after the fact. Which is kind of the flipside of Hickman's greatest strength -- Hickman is just, like, utterly great at blowing stuff the fuck up. You cannot hand that man a fictional universe he wouldn't gleefully explode and it's great, I love that, I love watching him blow stuff up. I think he really gets into the destruction of fictional realities in a wonderful way that gives you lots to think about. But in the case of his F4 run, there's this weird period between wrapping up the Negative Zone plotline in his first Fantastic Four run and his other Fantastic Four comics (his New Avengers run and Secret Wars (2015) are Fantastic Four comics) where he doesn't quite seem to know what to do, emotionally, with the fallout of everything he set up. Which is disappointing! His depiction of grief in the wake of Johnny's death is so powerful, and I love the message about LOVE (what saves the Fantastic Four and by proxy the world? LOVE) in his FF runs, but he doesn't seem to know what to do with it in the in between issues. That being said, I think the last issue of his FF run, the one with Franklin, is just a triumph. It's hard to be overly negative about the pacing problems in the wake of that, but they are there and I do think they should be addressed.

#*replies #traincat talks comics

[vanilladraws22-blog]

This week and the 2 weeks after will be hectic for me.. and i think i cant make much doodles from that time frame bc finals be coming. So… munch on these while im gone.. i might be active in some day here,,but lets wait an seee :)

Also small comic here ;3

Soft and googly eye artstyle Xd

Pls like how tf did the color pencil drawing turned so good????

Also some uh… introducing to you one of my SilvAze fankids

The first pic: the one on the top left is Prism and the one on the top right is Azzy.

Also shipping - prism x sam

I still haven’t started to work on their ref sheets lol

#sonic the hedgehog #sonamy #amy rose #sonic fandom #sonamy comic #sonamy fankids #silvaze #Silvaze fankids

[drawnaghht]

Yuichi Usagi is [SURNAME] [given name]

lol I've written abt it before going into more specifics & making theories, but this post is just to clear it up again as a general ref for newer fans reading old or new posts abt it and finding themself confused... edit3(15.1): rightfully so! if you've ever watched more than 5 anime or just read some manga, you might recognize that Yuichi is most commonly a given name in Japan. Even viewers familiar with japanese would have made the same assumption. But the show itself uses it as a first name, so it becomes confusing. After jan 6th we found the behind-the-scenes lore for that too.

- clearest tell in the show itself that Usagi is his first name - his auntie calls him Usagi. What auntie calls their sole nephew or close family member by their family name? ... which would have to be her own family name then too...???

Secondly. He introduces himself as Usagi the more he's in the city. First as Yuichi Usagi, but then after a few chases, he gives up and introduces himself to Kitsune as "Usagi"in the 1st episode. boy wants to be known as Usagi haha.

edit 2 (8.1.2024): as of 6.01 we have official confirmation that this is fact + a little backstory! Yuichi is the boy's surname

the whole show, all the other characters use japanese naming convention - e.g. Gen introduces himself as Murakami Gennosuke to the Bat Squadron. it seems the other younger characters call each other by given name basis because they're either all around the same age or don't feel like using family names for each other. Often characters don't have family names because they're orphans (Chizu, Kitsune, Hana). Or it's the only name they go by in general (Tetsujin, Lady Fuwa).

it's that simple! you can headcanon whatever but at least know the show itself has named him this way.

I've already written about this b4 too but Yuichi can very rarely be a family name (apparently). there might be other reasons the show crew gave him Yuichi as a family name, but if that doesn't cut it, you can always adopt my theory that he has a rare two given names.

But yeah, the show makes it clear that Usagi is his first name. It's a spinoff based on Usagi Yojimbo and some of its stories and ideas, and made by fans of the comic and Stan's work. They decided to give him this name, for whatever reasons, and it's his name used in the show. There's too much much work in the show itself for them to give him a random name either, "just because they're ignorant" or even just bc they didn't research. They clearly did or the show wouldn't have some surprising elements to it as a spinoff or as a past+future combo of japanese aesthetics.

Him and the comics' original Usagi, Miyamoto Usagi can share a first name. I know it looks confusing coming from other shows where evryone has specific names. I know it's just generally confusing as a tmnt fan... but their names and tags can co-exist as-is. maybe i don't get out enough into other shows but I've never seen a fanbase stretch themselves so into a pretzel over characters sharing their first name. also Miyamoto Usagi is based on a famous historical samurai, more precisely - Miyamoto Musashi. His movie depiction was what inspired Stan Sakai in the 80s... ppl in real life share first and last names very often so it just doesn't bother me personally that they share one name, but not their family name. So I don't get anymore why ppl are upset that his name is a combo of two first names... I believe there's also a irl children's book author named Usagi Yuichi (maybe pseudonyms being animal names is more common in japan?idk) so I wonder if the crew knew about that 🤔

clearing this up again bc every time I see someone say smth about this show and it's some misunderstanding on top of a misconception, I just wanna make a simple chart to explain things lol. but i don't know if ppl would care even. I know ppl sorta dislike this show or don't care abt it anyways. but then... why talk about it? why share info like a fan who knows or cares about it... and then it's false info... so idk, if they're not a fan, don't take them at face value, but even if they're a fan, it's easy to share info without a source and have others think it's real. Be ready for info to change or your first impressions to break. I've mostly only theorised or drawn from the show itself so far, but even things I say might change if other evidence is provided. So... lol lets all just read into this show calmly I guess.

edit (7.1.2024): lol another thing to add that I didn't think about: there's a 1000 years between the generations of Miyamoto Usagi and Yuichi Usagi. so them not having the same surname would be considered quite normal (and so far, no evidence to conclusively say that M! Usagi is a grandpa... the scene between Usagi and his auntie in the evening in ep 1 also seems to allude that there are many generations between the og era and the future era and that Usagi's auntie is speaking of her own direct great grandfather and Miyamoto Usagi separately...

Anyway. That's all! Hope this is helpful to newer fans.

#yuichi usagi #srtuc #samurai rabbit the usagi chronicles #usagi chronicles #samurai rabbit #samurai rabbit: the usagi chronicles #aghht srtuc post

[ruthytwoshakes]

oh,,,, oh my god……… do you ,,, do you hear that???.?.,,, is it?…?? Is it really time for ANOTHER TF2 SKETCH DUMP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!??!!?

let’s go babey B)))) oh ,,, yeya,a yeaaa h wooooooooo 🔥🇺🇸🇺🇸🦞🫡🫡👻🇺🇸👍🇺🇸🫡‼️‼️🇺🇸👍🫡‼️🎃

WOW PAPER!!! SO COOL!! Alright the first two are some pyro ships, Missfire and Merasmus + Pyro respectively,, because I am insane,,,. Wanna turn some of them into full illustrations some day!! The third is an unfinished comic where Scout and Glider talk about top scars and Soldier one-ups them with his top scars (he blew off his tits rocket jumping). Final one is my boy, my man, my little guy Glider with another big ole brown eyed loser man,,,, Nimona ws a very good movie.

Some thumbnail sketches for a huge project I’m working on! When I finish these I’ll hold a poll and you guys can vote for which one is your favorite and I’ll make an amv with that one of MissFire! So be on the lookout for that one lesbians,,, , B)

Ho boy uhhhhh,,,,, tired to turn them into Pokémon.,, did not go too well?? They just look like Human Men, which don’t get my wrong I love that type of Pokémon design ,!!!but these aren’t it. If I have the time I’ll try again, any tips would be appreciated!

WOOOOOOOO LETS GI BABAYEYYY!!!!!!!!!!!! HERES THE SKETCHES FOR MY TF2 SWAP AU!!!!!!!!! I found out while drawing these that I FUCKING LOVE DRAWING GUNS so much fun what!!,! Anyway,, expect these to be done soon!M really happy with how they’re turning out. Just now realizing that Scouts legs and arms are Not Correct oopsies

Miscellaneous!!!!!!!!! Hell yeah,,,! First one is some fanart of these adorable gifs someone made,, I’ll link the post if I can find it later! Second is demoflowers but like for everybody.,,,,, swag. Third is my guy dude!!!?! The Glider. I’m working on his ref and bio. I’ve never rendered lineart like this before!! Real fun. Last one is SECERTT SECRET BUG SECRRET !!!!!! SECRET GIFT FOR FREIBD!! you cannot tell them or else I will find y

Oh MAN I’ve been workin on this project for like,,, 4 months off and on. Is it worth it???. hhhhmmmmmm???,,,,, And yes the tf2s are dressed as mlp. But I will not show until I finish this hehehehegehdjsdj.

THAT IS ALL LADIESS AND. OTHERS !!!> UNTIL NEXT TIME oooOoOooOoOooooooOoOoOoo~~~~~~~~ (the [lesbian] ghost)

#tf2 #tf2 fanart #Missfire #pokemon #mlp #tf2 whole team #tf2 pyro #tf2 glider #daffys drawings #merasmus tf2 #Need a ship name for Merasmus and Pyro #literally my second favorite lesbians they’re crazy #RAAAAAAAHhhahahahHHHHHHH

[sothasil]

Hi! You're one of my favorite artists ever, and I would love to do some studies of your art! What are some of your favorite pieces that you've done, and how do you pick your colors? There's a lot more questions that I could ask, but figured you wouldn't appreciate an entire list of questions XD

Hello and thank you, I am honored! Feel free to send me all and any questions! I'll answer these two, starting by:

How do you pick your colors?

As I change art style with pretty much every illustration project of significance, this varies a lot. Here are, from most to least common, ways I pick my colors.

Eyeballing it. Unfortunately my most common... What I will do a lot digitally is lay down a color background, and flats of a few colors, then manually adjust each until they look good together by selecting by color and using adjustements. I then paint over it all.

Using a limited palette, eyeballed. Same as before, but this time I force myself to only use a few colors. It helps me, as constraints do.

Using a reference, eyeballed. This happens a lot when I mimick an art style. My medieval drawings for example, are often done by looking at images of actual medieval art to get an idea of what colors to use to look medieval.

Using an existing image, pipetted. Rarely, often as a challenge or if I'm super stuck, I'll just take a pic with colors I like and pipet from it. This website automates this if you want a good easy starting point!

These can be combined around. I'll post examples now, explaining how they use each.

This is a sketch for a drawing I ended up doing way different. This is the first method - I used a flat layer for the characteres and three colors for the sky to test out atmosphere. This is how I plan out most full paintings, just trying to nail down a mood I have in my head. I fiddle around until I like it or, like in this case, fully give up and iterate further. Here, the composition was to be redone too as I did not like the body language. I was going for "bright hot sunny day under a weather that feels wrong".

For this comic, I combined a very limited palette and a photo ref to pipet from. I was looking for the stark cold/warm contrast of a mid-season bright night by a fireside. I took a google image photo of a campfire at night that was already edited. The photo itself looks unnatural but conveyed what I wanted. It's still on the file itself! From it, I pipetted a few colors I found "summed up" the palette and did all with them.

While my own habits make me prefer painting as you would in traditional methods, with directly picking the right colors, I will often digitally alter with overlays and layer blending modes some colors and gradients, etc, to alter a drawing to fix it's color palette. The following is a quite egregious example, because I first drew the character in flats before putting him in a full scene. Here is a before/after summed up.

The shadow is a layer, the bright yellow light zones also, and the orange "transitions" of light zones on the skin a third. There's also an overlay over the full character to blend him in. I do this by...making a full flat color of a layer, fucking around until a blending mode does what I want, and adjusting hue/brightness/saturation and opacity until it looks good.

Another WIP where I was struggling with the overall palette. I was going for late 60s psychedelic. You can see in the top right the original color. I thought it looked too...new, so I added a yellow layer on top, and fiddled with it. Final choice was the following setting. I then put it with my sketch and color blockout in a folder and painted over it.

For this sort of adjustement, the "Color Balance" modifier in CSP, Photoshop, and others is also a godsend - but one I often use for fine tuning a finished piece.

This being said, there's some rough rules to coloring which are...born from studying color theory and doing studies. I am guilty of doing very little studies...so I'll just sum up the basics of the color theory rules I use.

For "default" shading, I use a color that is darker, more saturated and with a slight hue diff. This is my "don't shade with black".

Using a shadow that's cooler will make the light look warm.

Vice versa.

There's a bunch of stuff to remember in how colors relate to each other and pipetting images who's atmosphere you think is interesting really is the best way to learn... It's learning how to black-blue/gold-yellow dress in your own art for the lack of a better word...But the basics will be:

Don't trust numerical values, but look at your colors in context. A same hue, brightness, saturation can look so much different. This is how Rakkan's beard looks whiteish here despite being a light very grey brown.

All this but...colour is such a wide topic, I can't really say a lot but can also type for hours... if you have precise questions about a piece in particular I can explain :') I hope this wasn't too vague and was instructive!

Speaking of particular pieces, answering your question last under the cut:

What are some of your favorite pieces that you've done?

In no particular order, illustration only.

Including this in another poast bc staff's new post editor limits the amounts of pics I can put in response to asks. Insert colorful language here...

Frankly twas hard to pick I am rarely fond of what I draw

#ask

[a-really-good-lawyer]

Time for another Ableism In America (US) rant inspired by Daredevil 🎉

Such a random thing, but I stuck a little moment in my fic where someone tries to give Matt a 'tech'd-out' billy club he doesn't want and he points out the little recorder inside (just for a fun comics ref) and the person was like 'hey you're a lawyer aren't you all about evidence?' and Matt shoots them down by explaining how NY is a one-party state but that means even if it's legal to record someone without their knowledge that's only the case if you are party to the conversation yourself, and if not the recording would not only be inadmissable in a court of law but having made it could make you subject to criminal charges.

Do I know shit about the law? Nope. But as great as the ADA (americans with disabilities act) is, a lot of 'day-to-day' violations never get followed up on without the person whose civil rights are being violated doing a lot of the so-called legwork. That often means collecting documentation of the violation yourself - often multiple times over time to show that this isn't just a matter of 'oh they stuck that display in that aisle while in the process of moving it' sort of thing - which you then include in the complaint you file with the DOJ. And even then the odds of the DOJ doing something with it are...dishearteningly low. Usually, your best bet at seeing the ADA enforced in a lot of instances is to bring a suit against the entity (generally, a business) yourself. Which of course costs money many disabled people don't have and...you get the picture.**

Where voice recording can become helpful particularly is when dealing with the ACAA (air carrier access act), which is a tricky motherfucker. A lot of airline workers are NOT as trained up on the ACAA as they should be - as they're legally required to be. If an individual files a complaint with the DOT the general rule of thumb is for the DOT to require the airline to do an internal investiagtion of the incident/staffer, and oh, wonder of wonders, they usually go back to the DOT to say they didn't find sufficient evidence of a violation for which the airline would be fined if they did >.>

(this is the part where normally I'd get into a rant about how common it is for airlines to damage wheelchairs, even injure disabled passengers, but this rant is already long enough lol)

SO of course one of the better ways to keep this from happening is to have evidence that yes, this violation occured. For example: did you know that US-based airlines can't make you stow a wheelchair in cargo that would otherwise fit in the wheelchair closet or an overhead compartment? If there isn't room, they are required to strap down your chair to a seat or seats, even if that means bumping someone from the flight. But it's very often the case that they won't do this, and a lot of the time it's because the airline workers involved don't even KNOW about that aspect of the ACAA (this is very much not a down-on-airline-workers post just FYI).

You can then inform them of the requirement, but a lot of the time that's not gonna help, and generally having to fight the airline every time you fly makes it pretty much impossible for a lot of folx to fly - myself included - because the very disability that warrants a wheelchair makes expending that kind of energy ON TOP OF all the other stressors and difficulties of flying while disabled just too much to handle. And, as is often the case with civil rights violations, the threat of legal action - particularly when you can show you'll have evidence of it, e.g. overtly making a record - is your best bet at having those rights respected (at least in the US - can't speak for elsewhere).

An easy way to do this is make an audio recording of these conversations, accompanied by video or not. But the STATE you are in at the time matters - if it's two party (which requires both parties in the conversation being aware of the recording) or one party, and while the obvious answer may seem like 'then just tell them and maybe that'll get them to back down anyway' a lot of people...really, really do not like getting called out on their ableism. Especially when they don't think they're being ableist, but that's a whole other thing. It has bad optics - a big aspect of ableism is objectification of disabled people, particularly of the infantilization and inspiration porn varieties. No one wants to be the asshole who shouted down that poor, pitiful person in the wheelchair (*pause for eyeroll*).

So you'd think that'd make em back down, wouldn't you? Unfortunately, a lot of people will end up getting more agressive instead. Violent, even. And, in this particular instance, marked as being disruptive and getting kicked off your flight. Getting the airline in trouble after the fact doesn't change the fact that you ended up stranded somewhere, or couldn't get where you needed to, or (etc etc).

ANYWAY this is why I'm aware of a number of laws like this one, and as someone who is both disabled and A Really Good Lawyer I hc that Matt would be 100 percent on top of that, hence why I felt this weirdly-niche need to bring it up in a few lines of a super long fic lol.

**Addendum for those it could help: if the violation is perpetrated by a big corportation, like part of a franchise - e.g. Starbucks, Target, what-have-you - these companies often have a person or department that is dedicated to ensuring accessibility, and making a complaint to them can often be easiest AND be more likely to get the issue fixed. This is because the DOJ generally is more likely to go after big companies like that, and they know it, so they'd rather have a representative who will offer and apology then get that particular grocery store/restaurant/whatever to clear the aisles their displays are always blocking or stop using the accessible bathroom as storage or whatever it is.

(PS - my info on all this could be a little out of date so if anyone reading this sees a mistake here or something I left out please feel free to add!)

#daredevil #accessibility #disability #matt murdock #cripple punk icon matt murdock #ADA #ACAA #civil rights #riker.talks #meta sort of

[toyotacorolla2008]

hi!!! i was wondering if you could do a tutorial for how you draw transformers? i can never simplify them like you can. do you have any tips?? also love your art sm <33

hi ヾ(•ω•`)o

I WILL TRY MY best to explain what i do… i don’t actually have a very structured system but this is vaguely how i got started and how i simplified the process

1. look up and compile a whole bunch of references

this will be useful for EVERYTHING– transfomos come with lots of shapes and gizmos and details and stuff so a variety of references from different angles and in different poses is really useful because you can see the shapes they’re made out of and also understand how everything connects with each other

trapezoid town! this is a mess but it’s a quick example of how by looking at everything you start to notice trends or details like what moves with what or how flexible some parts are

there are a whole bunch of resources very nice people have compiled on the web like here here here here and here (mainly MTMTE) and there is a discord server (this is a link to a tumblr post about it and not the invite link itself) for it too but you can always look through the source material and just start screenshotting and pasting shit into a folder. 

you don’t have to do humongous in-depth breakdowns if you just want to be able to quickly doodle robots (god knows i don’t!!) but having the references on-hand makes it easier for the times when you’re like This pose is going to be challenging and I’m not sure how all of the cuboids will be positioned.

references also help break you out of thinking of it as just drawing blockier humans because the proportions and shapes vary a looooooot

2. draw draw draw

at first i drew a lot using refs heavily to get an idea of the shapes then i got lazy and just started drawing anime girls and smacking rectangles and kibble on top BUT as you draw more and more you start to pick up on the Salient Features as well as their General Silhouette.

drawing from memory means that what makes them look recognisable will become more emphasised in your mind so you’ll naturally pick up on how you can simplify them without losing what makes your guy Look Like Your Guy. so if you want to simplify the robots just be incredibly lazy like me B)

i'm kind of horrible because i don't even do like Basic Shapes i literally just eyeball it

for poses i rectangle it out while thinking really hard

anyway when i first tried to draw transformers but Something Didn’t Look Right it was either a) the level of detail across the entire drawing was inconsistent and threw it off balance or b) proportions weren’t right and these things only got better with me finangling and doodling and learning by iteration.

of course sometimes i don’t give a fuck because no cops in transformers doodle land but yeahhhh i’m the kind of guy who only gets through stuff by throwing a lot of rocks at it. i don’t have a Method to offer you unfortunately but what i did do was

3. experiment and exaggerate and experiment!!

The First Rule of Gun Safety is to Have Fun and Be Yourself! i took a lot of liberties and rarely stayed on-model when i doodled and waffled around (and i still do…) but it helped me figure out how much i was willing to draw lol and consequently how i would stylise them.

i would play with how big or small or exaggerated or expressive they'd be… even my most detailed drawings are nowhere near comic-detail but my least detailed ones were. turquoise triangle that’s vaguely brainstorm-shaped. having fun with it and just doing it to make stupid jokes makes the practice seem like not practice.

so yeah tl;dr i started by reffing what bots actually look like, would trace comic panels to get an idea of the shapes and details and then start drawing side-by-side → drew billions of perceptors from my diseased mind and played around with lines → ??? → upgraded from goofy-looking rectangles to goofy-looking rectangles

that’s it for advice! (i don’t feel qualified to say that much)

below are just examples of stupid doodles i’d make on my ipad in class or in the margins of assignments lol, you can tell the last one is from when i still didn't understand brainstorm's build very well because the wings are placed wrongly... But i grew.

hope this was somewhat helpful! there are other tutorials from other artists that i can direct you to but this is how toyotacorolla2008 got to shitposting on tumblr dot com

#anonymous #ask #thanks for liking my art and thank you for this ask! #If you wanted me to talk about something that i did not touch on imma sowwy.. you can send another ask and i will respond and go deeper #i typed up this post really fast so i hope its coherent #local blogger too Freaken busy with school to draw detail #going to class like Im ready for my hard days work of drawing cuboids stealthily #bonposting

[lowkeyclueless5137]

Doodles dump! Digital edition >:3c

Bcs on the sketchbook I did references for my current comic and thus I won't spoil u yet :3

This time is a lot of Jade for sum reason :v

We starting with the new au i didn't explain: the fight club au

The premise is basically MK meets Streetfighter, meets twst, meets real world. With Epel trying to get around New York and attending the prestigious NRC school for mages. He uncovers a secret fight club and gets recruited by a misterious fighter in order to uncover a secret drug ring.

The magical girl au :D

This was more of silly doodle time, but there are a few hints of the au's plot :P

Lowkey I didn't know how Ace was gonna look like at first, but now I know EXACTLY why he turned out like this. Parkour I guess :'3

This is from the lettler exchange p5 x twst au :v

Noting how I confirmed that the velvet room attendees are siblings, I HAD to make a few shenaningans in between them :3

Lavenza and Floyd are the ones who get a new fusion method, thus Igor(the deemed parent), Had to instruct Floyd first so he could tell Lavenza as well. I really like how the uniforms turned out tbh.

And yes, this implies that all the attendees are mers. Lavenza, Theo and Elizabeth are eels, while Margret and Azul are octopuses. Might draw those one day :v

For context, it's this spuerhero au. :'3

Ace is the funny lil guy that has and absolute TRAINWRECK of a backstory. And Riddle as well, but I wanted to practice a bit on backs and side profiles, but I also wanted to add sum context ;3

TWO :D

I tried to get around model references, because GODDAMN some of those peeps look like sum bones are in the wrong place :v

also colored vgs, bcs I saw some using those and I do enjoy sum complementary color sumtimes :'3

And what better au than jjba au? The first one is ur hint at the main plot idea of this au, while the latter is a ref for Azul and his stand: Dark Side Of The Moon. I tried to also see how realistically his stand would resist against things, seeing how it is made out of bulletproof glass, also a lot of Drag inspo for his stand tbh. :'3

You know it, I know it, WE AIN'T ESCAPING THE MLB MILD AU<3

It's a sort of tease of what happens during the mlb specials, which all happen post the main 4 seasons ya'll read and saw me losing my shit abt. :'3

YES, THERE WAS A REASON I TEASED MALLEUS'S FAM DRAMA!

Think that NY and Shangai Specials happen at the same time, but each of the our main 2 heroes go through sum self discovery post all that chaos with Madame Moth. Riddle with accepting the flaws of himself and coming in terms with his new family dynamic, while Malleus comes in terms with the tesnsion and the chaos around himself and the fact that he cannot ignore changes he doesn't like anymore.

And the other miraculous au, this time the maleidiazu hard au version.

Since Jade got the butterfly miraculous, I thought that the twins would be ABSOLUTE MENACES to Azul.

For Jade's design, I saw those very pretty butterfly decorations photos and I fixated on Gabe's butterfly tending hat. I also wanted to allude to his eel form, so I imagined a long, sleek, trein, reminescent of a cocoon, that can flare up and reveal it's true shape of a half wing, the top vest part acting as the 2nd part of the wing. He looks pretty aloof, the kind of person you'd assume would be nice, but the veil is like your warning sign, with the butterflies always sitting on the outside, all alert. I really liked how he turned out and probably is one of my favorite designs in this au tbh.

And again, Jade for the last one: the Jjk mild au. damn, I can't find the post

I knew right off the batch that I wanted this mf to get some inspo from Nobara's uniform, just because I think Floyd-pre curse era would have a more yuji insp uniform and since in cannon jjk these 2 were like besties and up to shenaningans at first, I thought it would be a fun and subtle reference. :3

The reason that yellow overall is shown, is bcs underneath the jacket, Jade has a top of a similar shape, mostly to accomodate his brother.

It's fun to think that Jade's so reserved and acts humble, but in here there's literally the truth. He's thrown in this world with 0 knowledge, trying to gather up the disaster that was left behind his brother and just fix things that he isn't responsible for in the first place, all for his own selfish reasons. It's fun :D

and that would be all for now :3

#twisted wonderland #twst #twst jade #a lot of jade in this one tbh #Treyjade for the jojo au too #miraculous mild au #jjk mild au #p5 x twst au #I ain't tagging the rest #too lazy ;'3

[cattyanon]

He's finally here... Scrapnik Sonic!

(Make sure to read my notes at the end! Or at the very least the last one...)

Undamaged Version

Scrapnik Version

To get something pretty obvious out of the way but that I want to clarify for peace of mind: these are two different drawings so they won't be exactly the same in places. Anyways on to the design notes!

Design Notes

One of my first worries was about the size of certain parts. But then I remembered/realized that these are literally a bunch of scrap parts. They could've been scrapped for any number of reasons. Maybe something just came out wrong.

Now you're probably wondering what's up with that one ear, side of the muzzle, and small rectangular spot on the head. Well heres the final part of Sigma's Theory... It's actually non-robotic parts. That's right, the robotcizing process didn't 100% complete! More info on this in the general notes.

For the drill foot theres actually three things I want to say. First is that Sigma actually filed (ik theres a better word I just can't think of it) down the end of the drill to make it more flat. Second is that the covered up part on the leg is cause two of the ball points were damaged and didn't connect right so they had to improvise. Third is actually the second of my worries. This was about why Sigma would use something like a drill (or wheel) as a makeshift leg and not something more actually flat. But I eventually realized some reasons as to why. It's the fact that parts are limited and that the two sides need to be as even as possible. It might take getting used to but it's better than having to walk somewhat sideways.

The bit of metal on the chest is due to a hole.

While I'm still not entirely happy with the gear it's much better compared to my first attempts...

The thumb is a bit damaged but it still mostly works.

You can probably work out most of the colors yourself but I will say that the lines at the tip of his legs are white. Well technically they're silver and more metallic but whatever.

DOING THE EYES WAS AGONY. But not for reasons you may think. You might've assumed that I just had trouble with drawing the eyes but no no no. It's a fucking design choice I made. I tried to give his eyes a slightly sharper edge to them while still mostly retaining it's original shape. And then I had to do it 3 more times. ;-; I am not going to be applying that to future drawings. Since these are his ref sheets they get special treatment but I'm not subjecting myself to that hell and I reccomend yall do the same. It's not worth it, trust me.

I debated also making a different side view for his face before posting but you guys have waited long enough. I appreciate the patience btw.

Shoutout to @boom-fanfic-a-latta and their friends with helping out with the design process!!! Specifically with the claw hand idea! <3

And finally, the front of the ear. With the scar somewhat visible depending on which version you're doing:

General Notes

If you guessed the reference to be to the makeshift brace Sonic gets in the comic then you've guessed correctly! I just thought it'd be a neat little nod to it...

So some essential about the non-robotic parts. Those parts don't feel pain. At most it'll cause him a feeling of intense pressure and immense discomfort (the amount he feels increases the worse the injury) but that's it. The pressure thing also applies to any form of touch.

Speaking of feeling things, his sense of touch is very lacking. This especially goes for parts that weren't originally a part of him. He can only feel a slight amount of pressure when he touches things. In fact the only reason hes able to feel anything at all is due to some coding that registers the touch. It's why the scrapnik parts are much more lacking in that area. Sigma did try his best though!!!

Sigma is really trying his best with Sonic. That's it, that's number four.

It might be kinda obvious but he has the most trouble adjusting to the drill foot and claw hand the most. Of course that's also on top of everything else. Poor Sonic.

Also did I mention how much he hates all of this? Because he does.

I know I kinda covered this already but he hates that everyone insists hes just some weird Metal Sonic prototype.

Theres definitely some tension between him and Mecha for a while. I'll probably make a post further detailing his relationships with characters on the island.

And for my final note, if you have any design questions or are confused by something I said dont be afraid to ask for clarification!

#God I'm so nervous #Yet excited #I've been working away at this for days and my efforts are finally gonna pay off #And once again shout out boom-fanfic and their friends for the help #Sonic #Sonic au #Scrapnik Sonic au #Sonic the hedgehog #Scrapnik Island #Ref #Time to psych myself up to pushing the post button #See yall on the flipside of when I do! #Scrapnic #(New tag for the boi!)

[pine-niidles]

Looking Back on 2023

Heyyy folks! Long time no news from me huh. 

I'm struggling to think of what to even say about my silence. I've not been doing so bad I'd call myself depressed, but I'm doing a tad worse than just a slump. It's been a rough 6 months, not because of one big thing. Instead, a bunch of medium-sized reasons all piled up on top of each other to leave me extremely drained. I've mostly been working on the two commissions I still had in my queue (thank you to my commissioners for being so patient with me, I'm so sorry to make you wait so long <3). I've done a little personal art other than that but didn't have the leftover focus to keep up with sharing it on social media or writing up any updates about my situation. I've pretty much only been active sharing things in my art discord. I'd like to say I've been doing better in the last month or so, but I hesitate to make any promises at this point! We'll just have to see how things go :)

Artfight

So you were promised a more in depth artfight review but I think I missed the right timeframe for that... instead have this look at 3 years of unfinished artfight thumbnails from my new year's wip clean-out!

Year of Art Summary

All things considered I made a lot of art this year, and I'm really happy with how most of it turned out ☺ I did a bunch of experimenting with more playful techniques and color schemes and I think they suit my style a lot. I want to try and much those limits even more next year to see what kind of fun art I can create! Something with colors specifically really clicked in my brain after that witch drawing I did in April, before then I would spend a long time figuring out the perfect color scheme and doing a bunch of adjustments but ever since that drawing things have really been coming together super quick? I'm not sure what changed but no complaints from me. 

Life Drawing Summary 

I rarely post my life drawing but I've been keeping at it! Actually, I put together a few pdfs showcasing all my life drawing going back to 2022, you can download them for free in my itch or ko-fi shops! :>

I also put together a yearly art improvement comparison going back to 2015 that I was planning to put here. However, seeing how long this is already getting... I'll make a separate post for it.

Commissions

I've been gearing up to open commissions again after that unintended hiatus. I don't want to open slots until I'm sure I'm back to being able to finish them in a reasonable timeframe, so I've been using that leftover energy I do have to think about revamping some things and new styles to offer. Back in November I ran a survey on what people want to see from me (it's still open if you'd like to fill it out and help me get more stats!) 

here's a preview of what's to come based on that & my whims:

- stamp commissions were super well received so they'll be added to my main repertoire

- A combo of me reading too much dun meshi and wanting to offer some kind of comicky commissions led to this idea of comic pages of characters eating together, I have a couple examples in progress, when they're done I'll add this style to my main offerings!

- I'm still not 100% set on sketchpages but I like the idea of them so if this test goes well I'll add them as an option

Onward to 2024! 

I already completed my new year's resolution on day 1 of 2024, it was to pet a cat. I've made a second one which is to get a library card whenever my visa is approved and I move back home. It's been something I've been wanting to do for a while but never got around to, hoping this will be the excuse I need to do it.

Art-wise it's not a new goal, but I've been trying to focus on improving my rendering! Though I've also been playing around a lot with screentone... the two don't have to be at odds 🤔 

I'm dedicating this year's personal art time to making new references for as many ocs as possible with nude bases so I can easily design new outfits for them whenever I want to without fully making a new ref from scratch.

Otherwise I'm just trying to take it slow, work on things one at a time and see what happens from there.

#year in review #2023 #project updates

[rappaccini]

arachnophobia notes; chapter 2

chapter title:

from 'ivory tower' by nova twins.

preface quote:

from james m. barrie's peter pan. hobie's nickname for her being both a ref to her nickname from peter in the main comics (... a pet name used by her boyfriend. which 👀), and a ref to wendy of peter pan-- also a girl who flees her home to avoid dealing with a difficult situation, who is the only girl among a group of flying mischievous boys, who is connected romantically to a peter who she does not end up with because she's capable of growing up and going home to face her responsibilities and he isn't.

the peter could be peter parker, miles, maybe even miguel. all three, in my book.

it's clear that the movies see miles as her peter pan. makes you wonder if the writers remembered how peter pan ends. or if they think that changing the ending so wendy and peter end up together will improve the story instead of fucking up its purpose.

the quote in question refers to wendy after her return home. it's okay that she outgrew peter, just as it's okay for gwen to have outgrown miles in their time apart.

processing

timeline notes: we've synced up with where gwen is chronologically in atsv. seventeen months after itsv, five-ish months into her stay with the society.

stages of grief: this one's about denial, in both definitions of the word. gwen is in denial about how angry and upset she is, and that she doesn't want to solve her death problem by being miles's girlfriend... then she denies miles when he tries to start that relationship.

it seems like noir and ham don't get invited into the society in atsv, since they don't appear until gwen's assembling her band at the end.

had to make some mention of gwen and peni seemingly having no strong relationship, which i guess follows since peni's a bit young to hang out with her. peni only turns up for miles in both her appearances in atsv.

tiny divergence here: in atsv, gwen isn't actually keeping hobie's shoes, even though external material for the film calls them a gift from him. based on their dialogue in mumbattan it seems like she threw them on in a hurry when she was leaving his place that morning (which has very 👀 implications regarding why exactly she was sleeping over, in need of a quick redress, and why their clothes were mixed up together). in this fic, presumably that still happened, but she just kept them afterwards. the chucks are great and i'm so happy 65b gwen finally gets to have them.

gwen's age is a bit hard to pin down. we know she's fifteen months older than miles in the movies (and 3-5 years older than him in the comics, but the writers are being slippery with both their ages to try and hide that), but since we're not sure how old miles is, we can't pin gwen's age down any further. my best guess was if miles is a little into fourteen in itsv, gwen's about 15 and a half. plus seventeen months is sixteen-and-ten-ish-months (further supported by rio thinking gwen looks old enough to vote, so if she's 16, she's going on 17). and gwen would be counting those months, because birthdays would mean a lot to someone who knows they'll likely die at nineteen.

time did canonically keep moving in gwen's world. so on 65b she was a missing person for months.

ballet academy: idk if 65b gwen's at a formal ballet school or just does it as a hobby, but it felt relevant to include.

in the comics, when gwen goes missing, the mary janes do actually put up missing persons posters for her. however in the comics gwen and the janes are friends. in the movie that doesn't seem to be the case; maybe they wouldn't.

in the comics, gwen's identity is guessed by the janes well before she reveals it. because it is quite obvious. probably even more so in the movies, because on top of the captain stacy connection, she's literally running around wearing a distinctive set of ballet shoes they'd probably see in gwen's bag all the time, and both disappear at the same time.

as in the film, by this point gwen is regularly crashing at hobie's. since hobie lives in a fascist dystopia, is involved in the resistance movement there, and has a history of squatting, he probably doesn't have a reliable address and it isn't always a good idea for him to invite someone to sleep over at his.

also, i needed a reason for gwen to have late nights with miguel. that felt like a good excuse.

gwen's creep-o-meter deja-vu goes off because she has been here before, actually. 65a and 65b gwen both get pressed into joining shadowy organizations led by a conflicted-but-antagonistic older man (with the first initial m) who has a, uh, vibe with her. it's an interesting constant in their narrative.

in case it isn't clear, miguel hit gwen with his mug. if he was throwing shit at her in atsv in full view of hobie and miles and she was unfazed, then 1) he does that a lot and she's used to it. and 2) he probably does worse when they're alone together. (with that in mind, hobie not wanting to leave gwen alone at the society, and specifically hanging around in the background as she speaks to miguel, probably has something to do with that. he knows she's in a situation where physical abuse is likely and wants to get in the way to deter it before it happens, or at least be there to comfort her afterwards.)

for the purposes of this fic, miles had to be able to join the spider-society. trying to skirt canon here by playing up gwen's own anomalous status-- if she's one, yet miguel let her in, he should be willing to do the same for miles.

anyway the moment gwen gets to reunite with miles in the film is roughly what happens in the fic, except she is allowed to see miles, and is here to recruit him.

(maybe the spot exists at this point, maybe he doesn't. idk. he can't be here for this fic due to the timeline so i guess he just fell through a hole in the universe and hasn't found his way back yet.)

miles arrives

gwen knew miles for literally three days. that isn't brought up enough. she knew him for three days, and hung out with him for one of them. then she spent seventeen months apart from him, and five of those months were spent hanging out with other spiders, two of whom she becomes closer with than she ever was with miles in the first place. she and miles don't actually know each other well. if anything, they're more interested in the idea of each other than the actual person.

(so gwen having a crush on him so strong that she risks her life to see him again even after spending far more time with other guys who are her type and clearly interested in her... makes no sense. gwen would not do that. nor would any teenage girl.)

and to gwen, the idea of miles does matter a lot to her: he's the first other spider-person she met, his world's the first other one she explored, and hanging out with him (and peter b) made her want friends again. he opened that door for her.

and she does sincerely respect and admire his abilities as a hero and find his personality appealing. also important to acknowledge.

... she just ultimately does not know him that well, and has more history and bonding experience with pav and hobie. so in this fic, we're actually gonna acknowledge that and explore the implications.

which means when gwen reunites with miles, she's over her crush on him. and her opinions about him throughout this story are going to often be completely wrong: she has no idea what he's actually doing or thinking.

miles morales is spider-man. that's marvel editorial's stance on him, that was his creator's stance on him. he is, unquestionably, a spider-man who is/will be peter parker's equal. he is the next bearer of that mantle and is the friendly neighborhood teen spider-man of anyone under 25. as much as atsv implies that miles is unwanted, that simply isn't entirely true, and has to be taken more as meta about the fandom perception of him, because right from the start, miles had editorial's support and at this point his momentum is undeniable.

... and, gwen has rose-colored glasses about miles fitting in at the society. he DOES have an easier time navigating it than her, being that he's male and not the communal dead girlfriend, but he is not having a good time and his acceptance is full of caveats she is unaware of.

miles and margo's 10-second interaction in atsv was fantastic. in this fic, since he gets to actually join the society, he gets to befriend her. in my mind they get together in the end, but i don't think that'll be mentioned in the fic since gwen and margo barely interact.

gwen being incapable of telling miles important information that could hurt him (that he's an anomaly, that his dad will die, that something's Going On with her and hobie; she even skirts around going into detail about her death) is an aspect of her atsv characterization i like a lot. keeping it here.

and for the purposes of this fic needing miles to remain in the society, he can't flip out and go on his canon-destroying mission yet. ergo, he can't be told his dad will die right away, and he can't be given a specific time for it either. so here, he just finds out after a few weeks, and it's still unclear when it'll occur. ergo, bullshit dead dad math is the excuse to buy us a few extra months of time for the plot to play out before miles flips his shit. that's still coming.

the crush: it makes perfect sense that miles would fixate on gwen for seventeen months. (... just not that she'd be as attached by the time they reunite. she friendzoned him at the end of itsv. maybe she reevaluated her feelings and thought 'well, if it's him or being alone, i pick him,' but after a year that crush would fade. after seventeen months, she would not be hung up on him.)

and if miles is so fixated on gwen, why wouldn't he look her up in his world sometime after itsv? that's the first thing any modern teenage boy would do with a girl he likes: google her.

miles is a smart kid. even if he isn't told the truth early on, like in atsv, he would have figured it out.

another important thing about miles and gwen's connection: he saw her for her. most other spider-men see someone else first.

miles honey, not-like-other-girlsing gwen isn't gonna help

miles is spider-man. spider-man is optimistic, scrappy, and determined to beat the odds. of course he thinks he'll be the exception.

miles is miles. he wants to save his dad. he'd want to save gwen too. this conversation takes place under uncle aaron's memorial wall to give miles an emotional trigger for that promise.

miles is a teenage boy who's never been in a relationship or had his heart broken before. he's gonna go about this in a very earnest, but very flawed way.

and really, how on earth does atsv gwen, who knows that being spider-man's love interest gets her killed, not get worried or nervous when she realizes miles, a spider-man, sees her as his love interest?

(...because she's being written by straight guys who want Being The Male Character's Girlfriend to be such an overwhelming pressing need for gwen that she'd overlook her own life for it. no thanks.)

perfect gwen

earth-803 is the steampunk-inspired world of lady spider.

it's atsv canon that gwen and hobie hang out when not on missions. incorporating that here.

jess is the person handling gwen day-to-day, so miguel being the one calling on her means shit's real.

the vibe with gwen and miguel's relationship i'm going for here is that he's essentially her abusive foster dad. not too far off what's going on in canon-- notice how gwen's dad was redesigned to look a lot like miguel?

i can't imagine that miguel likes hobie, or that gwen is hanging around him. he doesn't respect hobie enough to think he's a threat, but he does regard him as a nuisance with some uses.

and he doesn't fully perceive what's happening between gwen and hobie. he doesn't see anything he doesn't want to. and he does not want gwen fucking around with spider-punk, because that's not the spider-man the society wants her to pair up with.

miguel's reasonings for his fixation on saving gwen will be explored in chapter 4.

earth-8 gwen, in the comics, is 38 years old. if we're assuming she became spider-woman at the same age as 65b gwen, at around 13, then she's been swinging for 25 years.

"the sensation surging through gwen" is a feeling of belonging.

recontextualizing canon is a thing made up for this fic. but it's gotta be in play somehow in atsv; how else do you explain how 'there's only one spider-man' is a rule, yet the insomniac spider duo of miles and peter are literally walking around in the background? how else do you explain gwen's foundational death being her crush instead of a relative? clearly canon can be stretched as needed.

miguel's presumably a single dad, given how his wife is mentioned nowhere in the film. he and gwen share that dynamic in common.

celebubration is the gwen 65a equivalent of instagram.

the challenge for miguel that he's been wrestling with is figuring out if spider-gwen is a spider, or a gwen.

'gwen stacy will always fall in love with spider-man, but can live as long as it's miles' is the conclusion i'm afraid the movies will come to. (which misses the point, probably intentionally, to make sure they get together.)

miguel does want gwen to survive. he's just going about it in a really shitty way.

gwen-8 comes from the comics. specifically, the miles-gwen shipping miniseries of sitting in a tree. my feelings on it are... negative. essentially, miles and gwen go looking for his missing dad in her dimension, and despite barely knowing each other, having an inappropriate age gap (he's in hs, she's in college) they're weirdly touchy-feely. oh, and the watcher/basically god swoops in out of nowhere to inform them that there's a utopian world where everything works out perfect for them, and they just so happen to be a power couple with a nuclear family, and come meet your sweet super-special kids, don't you wanna get together and have them? and that's the context in which those kissing panels exist. it's the worst story spider-gwen's ever been in. it is beyond creepy that a 16yo boy and a 20yo girl who barely know each other and are in a high-stakes stressful situation are being told they can only have a happy ending in a world that loves them if they make out and procreate.

so this entire section is sitting in a tree hate. that issue singlehandedly ruined comic gwiles forever. it doesn't matter if they get together as adults after the age gap problem becomes irrelevant, bc the basis of their relationship will always be 'we feel obligated to be together' and not 'we are acting on feelings we developed without any coercion or entrapment'

and full stop: it's worse for gwen. she's being told, in siat, and in this fic, that she still has to be spider-man's girlfriend (and wife, and babymaker) if she wants to live, and to be accepted by people. it very much feels like an arranged marriage miles's creator sprung on gwen for his character's benefit.

funnily enough, in siat, gwen-8 never actually appears. nor does her miles. their kids do. in the fic, i wanted gwen-8 to actually get to weigh in on the frankly gross situation she's being asked to take part in. (that's coming later.) thus, we meet her.

earth-8 gwen is everything people in-fic and irl want gwen to be. she's gorgeous, she's one half of a power couple with miles, the mother of a son and daughter who are both superheroes, she's the leader of a superteam and a beloved celebrity by her world. all that is from the comics. rant time! it was deeply shitty of the writers to dangle that version of her in front of 65b gwen and say 'this is what we wish you were. don't you want to be that? better get with miles'

earth-8 gwen being an interdimensional genius is a creation for the fic. there had to be a way for her and her miles to have met and settled on earth-8. thus, they did it themselves long before miguel. (which also blasts a hole in his own importance, necessary for later)

"we're the ultimate crossover" is what max and charlotte call themselves. bleeeeeeh. (also, 'ultimate' as in 'ultimate spider-man'-- aka who miles is in the comics)

in the comics, gwen curses a lot. she starts cussing in the fic when she starts following in her 65a self's footsteps. before that point, there are no expletives. after, gwen's got a sailor's mouth.

once more with feeling, it is unbelievably creepy that gwen had her potential future kids thrown at her and was forced to hang out with them. it felt very much like she was being pressured into wanting to have them. which she didn't.

something's wrong: fuck yeah it is.

a "brighter tomorrow" is how earth-8 is referred to. we get it bendis you really think you did something special there.

miles chatting with perfect miles will come back later.

in the comics, earth-8 gwiles aren't around because they're on that second honeymoon. here, they skip it to come meet their alt selves.

just as miles's story can be read as an allegory for how black and brown boys are treated by society and in fiction, the same's true for gwen and (specifically white) girls. comics gwen being lured in with promises of safety and protection from a big terrible outside world, and then told the only way she'll ever be accepted is if she marries the right sort of guy and reproduces with him very much plays into that narrative. that allegory is at play a lot in this fic.

earth-8 gwen can still see gwen clearer than anyone else here. that's coming back.

the unbreakup

jess is a bad mentor, but she's not as bad as miguel. she at least lets them have privacy.

the conversation happens on the clock tower miles takes gwen to in atsv. within the bounds of this fic, they went here when she asked him to join the society.

"they streamed their wedding to 300 billion people" literally happened in earth-8. ridiculous. and shady as hell: why would anyone do that, unless the wedding's more about attention than love?

when drafting this fic i debated if i was going to go with gwen being trans. i like the coding, but it's also not the same as clear representation, and i knew i wanted to explore the earth-8 situation; which, for a girl who can get pregnant, is a much more visceral and immediate kind of horror, because it feels possible. trans gwen can't get pregnant, so the horror had to be different. the angle i went with instead is 'she instantly knows that this isn't her' and we spin the anxiety from there.

('even if i could i wouldn't' needed to be here. spider-gwen is an ambiguously-queer punk drummer with no interest in domesticity. having kids is deeply out of step with her personality and her wants for her life.)

the more important test for a spider-person seeing gwen stacy isn't actually 'do they see her for her.' it's 'can they change their behavior so they can appreciate her as her own person even if they DO know.' miles didn't pass the test-- he never took it in the first place.

gwen being drawn to visions, now that we know that the gwen stacy death curse is in effect, is kinda horrifying. she literally cannot get away from the spider-man who's going to swallow up her life, even when they aren't on the same plane of existence. a 'soulmate' can be a terrifying thing.

"the universe is bringing them together. It’s cupping the backs of their heads and mashing their mouths together like dolls" .... did i mention i hate sitting in a tree?

in the comics, even the best case scenario for gwen means her homeworld rejects her and she gives up on ever returning to it.

for this portion of the conversation, miles is distracted by how excited he is about that future. he's a teenage boy with a crush who just had that crush validated by everyone, and he's a boy in love with a girl he's afraid might die, who knows it's possible to save her.

he is also a boy who has spent as of this fic, one whole month hanging out with this girl (and again, three days in canon). he doesn't know her well enough to be able to tell she's unhappy.

he is capable of picking up on it. just not quite fast enough.

important to note that even though miles is a sweet kid who wants gwen to be safe, his crush is entitled. he does want things from her that she doesn't want to give him.

refs to 65a: gwen's dad sleeps through his favorite show, dadcop. the mary janes are constantly bickering. the art style has a watercolor shine to it (... but only on the covers. not so much in the actual page art). the yancy street gang like to cause minor trouble with gwen. vulture kicked her ass and threw her on a trash boat once. and there are billboards everywhere advocating for her arrest and deifying peter parker.

even the crappier parts of gwen's world are worth missing, because they belong to her.

at this point gwen wants agency so badly that she's looking back at peter's death as a positive, because at least she was able to make that happen.

what's wrong, what's been plaguing gwen this chapter, what she's been in denial about, is that she doesn't want a relationship with miles. she likes him, but not enough to be with him romantically. and never enough to give up her personhood.

to reiterate: miles is a good kid who wants gwen to be happy. he just hasn't considered that to be happy, she can't be with him.

gwenandmiles: fandom salt. i hate how overnight, the gwen discourse shifted from 'i hope she gets her solo series back! can't wait for her to travel the multiverse and meet other gwens, or have more sexual tension with em jay, or play with her band, or fight jackal or man-wolf. how are harry and her dad? is the bodega bandit okay? when's cindy moon coming back, would love for them to face off! how's she going to defeat the storm siblings and be able to come home from exile again?' to 'gwen is soooo in love with miles! look at her pining after miles! sure do love how her arc in atsv is all about falling for miles and becoming worthy of him! miles miles miles! all gwen thinks about is miles!'

thanks i hate it! the fandom proved all my fears right! if gwen and miles get together, she'll never be her own person!

'gwen's going to end up in miles's world' is my big fear for the comics. if gwiles get together there, because he's vastly more popular than her, she's gonna be the one who has to move to his world and join his supporting cast, and abandon her own stories where she's the lead, to be a side character in his. it doesn't matter how sweet miles is to her; the imbalance is impossible to avoid.

(it's that kataang flavoring: it doesn't matter how sweet the boy is; the relationship will still unravel her because the writers pulling their strings will never treat her as anything more than his girlfriend. and the audience will follow suit.)

(plus some makorra: they look good together, and the concept of them is great, but in practice this relationship brings out the worst in them)

the arrangement also sucks for miles. i can't imagine a kid as kind as him being okay with her losing that much of herself to be with him, or being treated as an extension of him.

(but it is worse for gwen. unquestionably.)

however he also doesn't realize those are the consequences yet. he doesn't realize that gwen doesn't want those things for her life. and he's afraid that if they don't get together, she will die.

gwen stacy hated spider-man. but because she loved peter, that's what everyone remembers. which means she can never hate him for how he fails her. isn't that horrifying?

'miles cares so much' -- this is the gwiles ship assassination chapter. i didn't want it to be the miles character assassination chapter. gwiles is bad for gwen, but miles isn't.

however, there's no way she realizes that yet.

'break his heart'-- a motif from the comics. that's how harry refers to gwen killing peter. physically, and metaphorically.

hobie. naturally, miles is gonna jump to that conclusion. it's easier to assume a girl is rejecting you because she's with someone else than because she just doesn't want you. and he's still considering another guy's feelings over the autonomy of the girl in question.

also to be clear, she and hobie do have an intimate relationship at this point in the fic. we'll get into that more later.

in the amazing spider-man movies, gwen dies when she falls from a clock tower. very eerie that gwen and miles's convo in atsv is at one too.

miles did catch gwen. but that's not the point. the point is he never should have needed to.

it does not matter if miles isn't peter parker. he's still spider-man. even if she lives and is his girlfriend, she's still His Girlfriend. she still isn't her own person.

the seventeen month gap. again, so much happens in that time, especially for teens. miles and gwen do not know each other that well. they're more attached to the idea of the other, instead of the actual person.

the autonomy issue isn't just exclusive to miles. it's everyone. gwen gets her first taste of that realization here, but she's a teenager trying to dump a boy; she's kinda busy. she'll get there though.

end quote

from the 'sitting in a tree' miniseries of jason latour's radioactive spider-gwen. specifically, this is the moment gwen rejects a relationship with miles. sideeyeing the atsv writers hard for borrowing so heavily from siat, but seemingly missing the point: that this relationship is shallow and forced and should not happen.

#fanfic #arachnophobia fic

[animatedminds]

Catching up on "My Adventures With Superman"

I've been watching this one but doing it in the stints thing where I take a break for a couple weeks and then binge a few episodes at once. Just did one of those to catch up to the present and thought I'd share my reactions to the latest episode... seeing as it features my favorite of all of Superman's villains: the illustrious Mr. Mxyzptlk.

I know I'm Super late on this (ha), given that this is six episodes in, but I think I'll just give my thoughts on the two-parters coming up as they come/conclude and then my final thoughts on the show as a whole when its over. You can already get a bit of that towards the end of this, though. Episode 6: "Kiss, Kiss, Fall in Portal." So, this one reminded me of Spider-Verse. Not the movie. The original comic. And not in a good way. It has that same "we'll introduce the multiverse to give every bit of continuity ever made an established place so that we can homage everything... but actually devalue everything by forcing it to fit into a very rigid and contrived paradigm" feel.

For a while I've been starting to think the people who make this show don't actually see Superman's world and characters as especially interesting, which is why they've mostly been turning them into imitations of other things. The Legion of Lois'es, especially, really brought that feeling out: so the ultimate evolution of every prominent Lois Lane in every previous Superman property we've ever seen is... to cease to be Lois Lane and become Flash Gordon instead? It's such a jarring contrast for the primary Lois in this series to be someone whose main motivation is to become a reporter and help people by getting answers, only for the show to say "once you become the best you can be you won't even need to be a reporter anymore - then you'll be a cool sci-fi hero and do cool sci-fi hero stuff!" - and it then feels like Lois feeling insecure falls flat because none of these characters even do the things she or any other Lois we've ever seen cares about. I think it mostly hit me this way because this doesn't really get a resolution. The characters give the Multiverse Police the slip (which I do love, see below), but there isn't really a "I'm going to be the best I am because that's who I am, not what you think I'm worth" moment from Lois. She (and thus, the show) just kind of internalizes it.

I might be being harsh on it, I think. But it's comes off an idea that was intended as a homage on paper but ceased to work as one in execution - and instead maybe felt a bit like the opposite. On top of that "we love these characters and put them on a pedestal through nostalgia, so what if characters in-universe actually had the same reactions to those same characters and treated them the same way" is pretty much an idea I've never seen work out - it always just ends up turning characters into reflections of fan reactions, instead of allowing them to be... well... characters.

I'm explicitly not getting into the Clark implications, firstly because everyone overreacts the hell out any time an evil Clark or Clark-like character shows up in anything these days, second because the issues with the concept are evident even before Clark comes into it, and third because - due to the first - I think people are focusing too much on Clark specifically and not enough on how the concept as a whole wasn't great to characters involved (except Jimmy / Jalana because this show's versions of any Olsen continue to be a treasure).

And fourth because the "the characters discover some versions of their friend went bad" does actually line perfectly well up with the season's overall plot about Lois' dad being a paranoid nutter, but the Kryptonians maybe being evil and Clark being an unclear cog in the gears of this strange mystery. It's a plot decision I really liked in this show: I'm suspecting we might end up with something Iron Giant-esque, where all evidence points to the hero being a monster, but the hero refuses to fall into expectation as their friends refuse to fall victim to the fearmongering.

But... overall, all that is why I really liked how the main characters' ultimate response to the judgmental multiversal police squad was a "screw you guys, we're going home" without even a goodbye. Screw that noise. Presumably the Lois'es from other continuities who pointedly aren't among the Lois'es actually in the judgmental multiverse police squad did something similar. Live your life as yourself. Good message, though I think show could've been more overt about delivering it.

On the flipside, Mxy was fun. He was a tread to Lois & Clark's "more malevolent Mxy who wants to be a god" idea, which is... hate to repeat myself... fun. But being fun it what's most important where Mxy is concerned. It's a little less interesting to have a Mxy who needs power because he wants to be a god vs a Mxy who already has power and finds concepts like godhood boring, but I don't think traditional Mxy is in line with how this show envisions threats, and regardless he was delightfully tricky and - let's face it - is one of the two big things absolutely carrying the episode (the other being Clark and Lois' relationship, as usual).

All in all, the show continues to hit me two ways at once: I really love the way it's interpreting the characters and their relationships - again, Jimmy is fantastic and Lois and Clark's relationship is nuanced, adorable and continually keeps me invested - but the plot decisions that surround those great characterizations keep missing, often feeling like they're wasting good concepts.

I hope I'm wrong about the feeling I'm getting that the writers maybe have some overall apathy for Superman's world and characters, but bit by bit the show keeps making me wonder - I just wish the show would start feeling excited to reinterpret these characters rather than flippant.

Either way, though, fun episode. More Mxy is always a treasure.

#my adventures with superman #clark kent #lois lane #jimmy olsen #multiverse #mr mxyzptlk #kiss kiss fall in portal #episode reaction #animatedmindsforanimatedtimes #animation review

[xellandria]

Oc Ask Meme!!

7,26 and B for Alexander

(https://www.tumblr.com/xellandria/725141210645315584/uncommon-questions-for-ocs-and-their-creators for ease of access)

oh no this post is going to contain art from twenty years ago, run for the hills! Also this got long lmao whoops

7. What triggers nostalgia for them, most often? Do they enjoy that feeling? For a long time, Alex had a heart-shaped pendant necklace that belonged to his first love. They were in that "this person can do no wrong" puppy-love stage of infatuation that a lot of early relationships (especially between young people) get when she was murdered and he was forced to flee because he was accused of killing both Mephala (framed) and the town's sheriff/top law enforcement guy (valid, sort of). It was the only possession of hers he had to remind him of her, and the memories associated with it were intensely mixed (a: her, but also b: murder), and after Mephala's fridging he carried it with him for a long time (somewhere between 20-200 years, depending on how my timeline for other events that aren't set in stone yet end up shaking out).

Do you know that thing that you do sometimes when you're really depressed and feeling self-flagellating where you already feel bad, so you intentionally start thinking about a Bad Thing that happened so your life can suck extra hard? And how obviously thinking about it makes you feel worse, but there's a weird undercurrent of pleasure and satisfaction at the ability to hurt yourself like that? It's weird to think of him like this because in the "present day" he's a very happy-go-lucky kinda guy like 97% of the time, but there was definitely a period in his past where he was that kind of angsty, moody teen.

And then, fourteen pages into the comic, the doofus accidentally left it behind on a bar countertop while escaping from some bounty hunters :V

28. What is their preferred mode of transportation? Alex is a big fan of the persistence predator's famous "walk 'em to death" strategy! So are a lot of my characters, I'm realizing (because other methods of transport like wagons and cars and bicycles and scooters and such suck to draw I guess, lmao). I think Alex would be an indifferent equestrian; competent enough to stay on the horse (once he learned, which I'm not sure when he would have done), but very much a sack in the saddle. While he can fly, he prefers not to because he haaaaaaaaaates his wings; there ARE humanoid creatures with wings on Meir, but a lot of them don't interface well with most of society and have a bit of a Reputation, so there's a bit of a stigma there, and people tend to stare. Alex doesn't mind being the center of attention, but he definitely prefers it to be for the things he's doing, not the thing he is.

At some point recently I said (probably on twitter) that I'd only drawn him with his wings three times: once for a "sexy" wallpaper, once for a NaNoMangO pregame meme, and once just recently for the ref sheet I posted a couple weeks ago. While I was going through First Target again for this ask just now I realized it's actually been four: his wings came out when he was fighting Viktor (which, now that I've remembered, made me go "oh yeah, that was important cos people witnessed that he wasn't human which made them go after him extra hard," it's funny the kind of details you forget after twenty years, rofl)

Edit: FIVE times, actually: I forgot I did one of those "what's your god tier" memes in the height of my Homestuckdom and he got Thief of Life.

B) What inspired you to create them? In seventh and eighth grade, in the late 90s, my friends and I were all role playing on various portions of Yahoo!'s social outlets, both in their chatrooms (Aenye, aka Ayenee aka A&E aka the Arts & Entertainment section) and on their groups (okay in fairness that was mostly just me, I don't think my RL friends indulged in that bit). I "GMed" a lot of stuff for my friends in the chats, and we had a fairly expansive storyline going, but a lot of it was pulled from things we were invested in at the time and a lot of characters were straight up just whichever media characters we were crushing on at the time, sometimes with the barcodes sanded off and sometimes not. One of the characters I "mained" at the time, both in RP with my RL friends and in various RP groups (which were mostly mixed-anime isekai-style things or directly based in the world of the anime/manga Slayers), was Xellandria Butadientium.

Xellandria Butadientium, Xella for short, was heavily, heavily, heavily based on Xelloss Metallium from Slayers, a smiling "trickster priest" with a deliciously malicious side and very obscure motivations. She was in competition with every other Mary Sue OC in those groups for Xelloss' attentions, though even at the time I (and she) was less interested in romance and sex than in just Being There and I dipped out of several groups once whoever was playing Xelloss there indicated their interest in eRPing (I was like, fourteenish and assumed I would care less/more when I got older. That, uh, never happened :Y)

When we moved on from Yahoo onto our own private forums I started redesigning some characters to be less obviously derivative and wholesale replacing others, and Xella was one of the ones hit with a redesign. She kept some of the things that had become "iconic" to her by then, but I tried to move away from the rest.

The problem here was that there were five main characters in The Bloodraven Chronicles, and only three of us bay area girls RPing; I was responsible for three of the five. One was Xella, one was James (another character who started his life being based off Xelloss, at least visually), and the other was straight up just Xelloss. That wouldn't do if we were making this an original story, which we all* had it in our heads at the time to do (because that was Just What You Did, we were formulating Aslua Studios who were going to Make It Big doing Things related to this story!). So, as Xella was originally a genderbent version of Xelloss who eventually evolved into her own thing, I figured I would just do it again, but in reverse!

Thus, alleX, who evolved over the next couple months into Alex, and whose design was finalized in September of 2001, just in time for me to be noodling around with the idea of starting a webcomic, which I would start posting to KeenSpace in November of that year.

Alex's personality takes a lot of inspiration from those old Xelloss roleplayers, though it leans into the more "human" versions, where he was less inscrutable and more just kind of silly. Nowadays he's pretty happy-go-lucky, which you would not know from anything in this long-ass post, l m a o

Anyway to cap it off, have a bonus visual chart of all this, from one of those "1 like = 1 answer" things on twitter about his D&D AU version:

(* I am reasonably sure, in retrospect, that my friends were just going along with my own desire to Make It Big (With Art) and that they had no real stake in it. In fairness, this was the correct decision/response on their part, but you know.)

#xellafail #long post is long #alex #original characters #bowspirit's aim #boy these images aren't actually posting side-by-side in my draft preview #I hope they post correctly or this is going to be an even longer scroll than it is while I'm typing it rofl #TY BOGGIE RAMBLING ABOUT OCS IS THE BESSSST #edit sigh yup it doesn't wanna post the comic pages next to each other sorry for making you scroll extra far :(