#It's difficult for me to render I need lines but I will practice more
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I'm having fun with them
*goes insane in the most chill way possible*
#14 days with you#14dayswithyou#14dwy#14dwy ren#14dwy oc#14dwy fanart#It's difficult for me to render I need lines but I will practice more#the two of them can be silly and normal... as a little treat...#THE CHESS ONE I HAD TO PLAY WITH A FRIEND TO PLACE THE PIECES AND NEITHER OF US KNEW HOW TO PLAAAYY CRYING EMOJI#okback to my enclosure 🍖#I have to make a tag for Eli I don't know how much I have revealed about them I keep forgetting
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The World in Deeper Inspection UPDATE
Read: (Chapter 1: Pages 1 to 4)
About the comic
TWIDI IS BACK!
To celebrate its 10th anniversary since launch, I'm remaking the first chapter and posting pages every Friday, accompanied by my thoughts on the original pages and a breakdown of what I've changed or improved.
Analysis under the cut.
PAGE 1 and 2
It’s March 31st, 2023… exactly 10 years since I posted the very first page of TWIDI!! I haven’t done much to celebrate TWIDI’s anniversaries the past few years (due to general Busyness – yes, yes, check out the forever “TWIDI isn’t dead” sign up on the front page), but the official 10th anniversary is a special unignorable event.
Initially I wanted to make a simple remaster of Chapter 1 – better copyediting, fixing egregious lettering and art errors, alongside a retrospective author’s note… then long-time reader Caracan suggested, why not do a full remake? That’d be fun to see. And I agree – it would be fun to see! I’ve grown my craft and sensibility as comics artist since TWIDI’s debut, and I was so curious to see how 28 Year Old Me would interpret the material that 18 Year Old me produced.
So yep!
This first page used to be so cool-looking to my 18 Year Old eyes… I can definitely see what I was trying to go for, but wasn’t quite able to reach then.
A thumbnail from 2013, with notes to myself regarding the composition. In my mind I wanted the wolves to have a James Jeanesque rendering – I was really into his Fables covers back then (still am tbh).
For the remake, I leaned further into the graphic-designiness of the composition: every element had to sweep the reader’s gaze down onto our protagonist. The wolves are expanded to actually take up half the spread and simplified down to only white lines. The trees and sky are shaped like teeth pointing down to Grimsley. The intent was to evoke a sense of claustrophobia, of the wolves catching up to Grims and driving him into a corner.
Small improvements: the energy and line of action are clearer with the new running pose. Definitely a better silhouette. And a lot more angularity with the limbs which adds to the sense of movement.
PAGE 3 and 4
This spread is one of the most drastic rehauls in the remake. Here’s the original for comparison
It’s not very good! (Sorry @ 18 Year Old Me) I remember struggling real hard with the dynamicism required out of this sequence…
Fortunately after 1000s of double-page compositions and 10 years of practice, I’ve finally cracked this once-difficult composition.
This new page does away with the concept of grids or caring about whether anything is read linearly. The sequence is supposed to evoke chaos and panic as everything is happening everywhere all at once, so it doesn’t really matter if everything can be read or arranged in a neat grid. That was the problem with the original spread: it was too beholden to the grid.
(You can see how in the original, each page was (top row: left to right; bottom row: left to right))
The new page is like this:
The page is horizontally railroaded. The main action sweeps from top left to bottom right.
The AWOOO sfx is the anchor which leads the eye from left to right. As the eye travels it may glance up or down at the panels – there’s no real need to pay attention to them; hopefully the improved clarity of Grimsley’s emotional and body acting + me actually depicting the wolf biting his neck + the spiky graphic design elements instantly conveys that he’s in trouble without much or any processing.
The newest panel – the pink grass and canine paws – is a call back for later when we catch up to this in media res.
#the world in deeper inspection#comics#webcomic#GOSH HAS IT BEEN THAT LONG#anyway yall who like reading up on process will enjoy this
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It's way past my bedtime ans my cat is sleeping-purring next to me but I thought I'd post the process of the @ailani-reillata Ailaniversary art I made today just to talk a bit more about it
Disclaimer: doing traditional art is cool until you need to scan it or post a picture of it 😂 also kinda long post below so ofc no obligation at all to read it!
Phase one: Sketching the Idea
My inspiration for the posture was a Yara Flor comic strip I found on Pinterest. Yara looks over her shoulder and her hair falls on the side of her face, and I loved the way it framed her face and thought it would look great with Ailani's hair.
I drew a little doodle on the page to help me visualize how the hair would be divided, and focused on 3 main parts (the lines, the bubbles, the empty space) which would - supposedly- help me during the lineart stage. Below are images of the final sketch.
I was hesitant on adding details to her arms, such as the folds of a dress, but I was so anxious about ruining the drawing I abandonzd that idea. I was considering adding her tattoos and was still not decided at this stage of the drawing.
Phase 2: Line-ing the Art
Is that even a real word? Idk, I'm too tired to English properly so we will say it is. Following the sketching phase was naturalle the lineart phase, which is one of my favorite stage when drawing. I bought new inking pens too so I was able to test them out, and it went quite well!
As you can see, the ribbons, outline of the skin and facial features have been done with my new pens, and i was quite happy with the result! It gives a more natural look to the whole drawing in my opinion.
At this stage I decided not to add her arm tattoos and consider this version of Ailani as the one you would find in the early chapters of Begged and Borrowed Time, so before she would get her tattoos.
Phase 2.5: Line-ing the Hair
This stage has it's own part because it was really fun to do! The inspiration for the way I draw hair comes from @/ssavaart (aka Scott Christian Sava on Youtube). I've been following him for a while now and I'm trying to push my art beyond my comfort zone and try new stuff thanks to him, and having fun with drawing hair is one of these things!
Look how beautiful these curls are. I'm not trying to toot my own horn or anything, but I'm really proud of the drawing at this stage 😂 it's the perfect moment where the inking went well and I have not yet ridked myself with the watercolours - so I always take a long sight (and tons of pictures) to celebrate reaching this stage without incidents.
Phase 3: Watercolours
Here comes the difficult part. It always makes me nervous because I always fear ruining my drawing and all the efforts I put into it by doing the watercolours. But I love the medium too much and if I want to get better I need to practice. So, testing the waters, I finally dive head first into this crucial stage.
The watercolouring goes well, I'm overall satisfied enough to take some pictures and even try to scan it, with the hope that the scanned rendering will be better than the usual "photographing and editing" I do with my phone.
Spoiler alert: the scan was NOT better than the pictures, and no amount of editing could change that. (Or maybe I am just very bad at editing.) So, back to my "photographing and editing" habits, I somehow managed to get a good enough result:
I still feel unsatisfied as I find these digital versions do not properly render the visuals I have on paper, IRL. With the digital versionsw the hair is either so dark we don't see the details, or too bright, the colours are too warm and light... And while Ailani looks light-skinned, the paper version has these visible brown tones that I struggled to find on the digital version, even when editing the pictures. The closest I got is the tone you see on the first picture, but the image is not lighted enough so the overall quality of the picture is a bit lessened by that.
Still, I won't complain too much, because overall it was a very fun drawing to do, I enjoyed every stage of it and I would love to do another piece like this! But for now I will go to sleep because it is Way Past My Bedtime 😂
If you've made it this far, thank you for your attention, feel free to let me know which stage is your favorite and what you liked most (or disliked most) about this drawing!
I for one really had fun doing Ailani's lips, as well as filling her hair, and colouring her eyes! 😊
#ailani#ailani art#I'm tagging just in case you wanna see more but again no obligation to read all of that or anything!#this post is mostly here to show the early stages coz I was so prouf of how smoothly it went!!#until the colours#it's always the colours 😂#but I hope you enjoyed the drawing anyway#I've actually been working on it last weekend but couldn't finish it until this saturday because of my exams week#which is over btw which means i finally has time to read Begged And Borrowed Time!!#and I'm really excited about that!!#so yeah that's all for me now is time to sleep because it's like 4:19am right now and I am huu tired 😂#once again happy Ailaniversary 💕💙#also yes we can't see my signature on the drawings I cut it out by accident when i cropped the pictures and was too lazy to retake pics etc#please pretend like you see my name signed next to her hair x)
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Hey millie! Do you have any advice or tips on someone who has no idea where to even begin getting commissions? I love seeing all your stream art on my dash n thought you might have some ideas
Hi! I have a few pointers. And thank you, that is very kind :)
You'll need a payment processor. Paypal is pretty defacto in the art community. I always send invoices and it helps the transaction go smoother and gives you some control over the details and is better for recordkeeping purposes. You'll also need a platform to advertise your commissions on. Ideally this is just the same place you post your art and you have established yourself with a decent amount of art and some time on the platform to build an audience. There are artist-for-hire forums and the like where commissioners can seek out artists but I find the ratio of artists to commissioners tends to be astronomical so getting commissions on there can be difficult (I've never used them for that reason, if anyone has and wants to chime in it'd be appreciated!)
You'll need some way to advertise your commissions and organize the information. I use trello, I love that I can have my prices, TOS, examples, queue and finished pieces all in one spot. When you advertise your commissions an image that leads potential customers to your information helps. Some people make an image sheet with their examples and prices and TOS all included but honestly I've found that's more work than it's worth. The less digging customers have to do to find your commissions, the better.
You'll need to know what sort of commissions you want to offer. I see a lot of artists newer to offering commissions offer options for sketched, lined, colored, and shaded pieces that are also split by headshot, half-body, and full-body, so that's already 12 potential commission options, and then throw on options for backgrounds and props and such... less is more. Excessive options can be overwhelming and generally people will gravitate to one end (sketches if they're low on funds) or the other (fully rendered if they really like your work and have the cash). I try to keep it simple, I had my sketch headshots at $10 and lined fullbodies at $50-$70. Finding a "niche" is great! I did psychedelic portrait commissions and that was my best selling commission option for awhile.
As far as pricing goes that is a personal decision with a lot of variables. With digital art material costs are hardly a consideration but time spent making the piece, your skill level, and demand all are. I always start with an estimation of how long it takes me to complete a piece and go from there, I start at $20 an hour because that's how much I need at a full-time job to get by. If I think something will take me about 3 hours that's a $60 commission. Sometimes that does bite me in the butt and I end up spending something like... 16 hours on what I estimated would take me 8. Personally I always just eat the difference because I care more about providing a good experience for my commissioners than getting every penny :P I also charge up-front so it would feel unprofessional to go back and ask for more. Your commission prices should really be more of a rough estimate than a guaranteed quote, subjects can vary greatly in complexity, you don't want to charge the same $50 for a fullbody if some characters can be drawn in 2 hours and others take 6. Personal advice... if you are struggling to sell your art for say at minimum $10 an hour, it is either your skill level or your marketing / visibility. If it's the former, I really recommend stepping away from taking commissions for the time and spending a couple months or so working on developing your art skills. You will thank yourself later!
It's also important to know where your strengths and weaknesses lie. If you struggle with drawing backgrounds it's better to find that out in practice rather than on a commission while you're suffering through trying to figure out how to make rocks look like rocks or incorporate lighting and that sort of thing not that I would know what that's like, haha no wayyy.
You'll need a terms of service and there's a lot of considerations that go into that:
will draw / won't draw (can you draw xyz species? backgrounds? technology? etc)
turnaround time, queues (how long will it take to finish, a week or two months at most? do you finish commissions in a certain order?)
slot limits (how many outstanding commissions will you take at a time? it's important not to bite off more than you can chew)
payment options (how will they send you the money? also, when? up front, 50 now, 50 later?)
refunds (how will you refund if you can't complete a commission? do you offer refunds if requested by the buyer and at what time? if so, are they partial refunds determined by progress completion?)
work in progress images and revisions (do you offer WIPs? at what stages? how many revisions will you make? do you charge for additional revisions?)
usage rights (what will you do with completed commissions? just use as portfolio pieces? what can the buyer do with commissions? can they draw over them, crop and color filter, use as icons, print off, use commercially? if commercial applications is a considerations you need additional terms on that)
contact methods (email, discord, the same platform as posted, etc. how often will you reach out to them?)
anything else you can think of that would be relevant.
Having a public queue is good so people can see how much work you've done on their commission and/or where in line they are.
When working with commissioners it's important to be clear on what they're looking for. Have a character reference if applicable, know a bit about their personality and maybe how they want them depicted. Also things like time frames and resolution might be important.
And social skills is an obvious one. Be corteous and all that. Not much advice I can offer in that area. Be transparent, don't be rude, and you'll probably be fine lol. Overtime, you get practice with some less obvious things like commissioner personality types and vision and are better able to tailor your approach to what works best for the client. Some people just want to see their character in your style, others have a specific vision in mind, that sort of thing.
There are a few other things I can think of like, I really recommend you give yourself a month minimum turnaround time as breathing room for commissions (and if you finish it faster, hooray!), also I generally recommend charging 100% upfront (or something like 50/50 on larger commissions), I could go off on a few different things but that's more personal advice and opinions and this is getting to be a long post already :)
Also, take a look at a few different artists that offer commissions and what their process looks like and go from there!
If you have any more questions don't hesitate to ask and I'd be happy to help ^^
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Question: Is the "basic theory of the force of law" mentioned in Isotope & Isolation the same thing as the Theory of Magical Science (魔法科学論, if I have the kanji right) mentioned in GGWorld?
Asuka is stated to have worked on it, and it feels a little strange to have him already be a trusted disciple of the Original so early in the timeline, but he is also stated to be a "young genius scientist" in the same story, so I suppose he's just that much of a workaholic.
While I'm here, I wanted to say thank you for all your translation work! I'm new to the franchise but the lore is super interesting, and the effort to compile it is very much appreciated!
Ah, I'd put off answering this until after I got done with work for the day because I was expecting to have to go digging through old manuscripts and JP>EN dictionaries, but it turned out Past!Me had the foresight to include the kanji for "basic theory of the force of law" as a footnote in my English translation document!! (I need to find a way to get the footnotes into the Neocities pages... hmm...)
Anyway, it IS a different kanji: 法力
This was an entire pain in the ass to translate into English. I'll copy-paste the full footnote I wrote for it:
The kanji for “force of law” here are 「法力」which translate to a Buddhist concept relating to a “mysterious power” obtained by practicing Buddhism. This term also appears in Dr. Paradigm’s story, Introduction To Metaphysics, so I reused the translation I went with there for consistency. It does not have a satisfying agreed upon English translation and I chose to render it following a similar “feeling” to the term instead.
The GG2Overture Material Collection short stories have a lot of complex kanji (like 法力 and other Backyard-related terms) that don't have firmly defined official translations in the English localizations or are otherwise wildly left up to interpretation. I think anyone that wants to challenge themselves with a bite-sized, yet difficult, translation project should take a swing at these stories. Having multiple interpretations can only make them easier to understand.
As far as I can tell, only two translations of ISOTOPE & ISOLATION are out there currently: mine and one by Suzaku. Here's the original JP line, my translation, and then Suzaku's translation. This is the very first sentence of this story:
法力の基礎理論を完成させた人類は、休む間もなく様々な分野への理論の応用研究を開始した。
My translation:
Having completed the basic theory of the force of law, humanity began researching applications of that theory in various fields without a break.
Suzaku's (Evernote link to full story):
The human race had completed a basic theory of magic, and without rest began applied research of the theory in a variety of fields.
Honestly, Suzaku's line is much more elegant haha Though, I'm not entirely sure that "magic" should be the word used there, but also I'm confident how I ended up translating it is accurate either. "Magic" is very plainly used in 魔法科学論 (those first two characters) and 法力 DOES contain one half of the kanji used for "magic" so I can see why Suzaku went with that. In the end it's just an annoyingly vague term all around!!! Awful!!
I noticed a (very minor) error in my translation of Paradigm's story the other day, so I think I might touch up all of my GG2OMC translations in the near future. When I do, I'm gonna sift through some more recent (>2014) JP GG documents and see if I can find an instance of 法力 and how the official localization team translated it. When I first translated these stories, I didn't have as big an archive of both Japanese and English Guilty Gear documents as I do now.
Welcome to the GG fandom, too!! This series' lore is insane, but it's so much fun. Glad you're enjoying it so far. Thanks for the compliment!!
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How I Draw With Borderline Aphantasia
~Preamble~
Hi! I’m Dr.Orbagels, and even though I have been drawing for most of my life, my brain is a near black void where any images are very hard to make out. This is a condition I would come to know much later as Aphantasia. As you might guess, this was extremely difficult to work with for a very long time. Anyone with similar experiences can relate to needing piles upon piles of references, doing fan art when you felt like you were incapable of something wholly original, and a whole heaping helping of imposter syndrome. So, here I’ll detail my own experience overcoming this massive hurdle in the hopes that it will help others who are having the same struggles!
Important Note:
I am not claiming to speak for everyone who has Aphantasia, nor will my methods work for everyone. As I will get into later, even though i absolutely do have this issue on some level, my case is not nearly as bad as some have it. These are more or less oddly specific tips from someone with an oddly specific condition.
Also, I’m not necessarily the best or most technically proficient artist out there, but I’ve come a long way.
~why “borderline” and what my condition is like~
I think the easiest way to get across how I think is through the most common example of what level of Aphantasia you have:
When you think of an apple, what do you see?
Well, if I were to answer this, it would be something along these lines
Yes, I can see some level of silhouette and almost get a complete image, but it feels like the smaller details and overall outline are very hard to see when thinking of the full picture. However, things become clearer the more I focus on certain parts over others, sort of “zooming in” on what I’m thinking about.
~what I did about it~
This is the main reason I am bothering to post anything about this at all: it took me nearly 15 years of trial and error and struggle after struggle to figure out what I’m doing, and I can’t help but feel that if I was able to just tell past me how I did it, I would have progressed so much faster.
Anyways, first off is even starting a drawing in the first place. I don’t know how relatable this is, but things like anatomy skeletons just do not make sense to me when you can’t really make out the entire image in the first place. So, I much prefer to just zoom in on the image in my head, so to speak, and start with the line that is the most clear. This line is often either towards the top of the image, the part most in the foreground, or whatever feature is most prominent. To use the previous apple example, I’d probably start here:
From there, it’s easier to work your way downwards as you go.
And then start working on where certain details will go
Admittedly, i don’t really specialize in super detailed/realistic shading and rendering and I am completely self taught, so I don’t really have a choice other than to concede that my ability to explain my process kinda ends here. However, I found that tumblr is an amazing place for art tutorials and just getting this far is enough to get the whole train going.
Here’s the part that’s much more difficult to swallow:
The only was I was able to develop this method was from YEARS of freehand copies (i.e. replicating the works of other people as closely as I could). No, this doesn’t mean literally trace other people’s art, nor does it mean that you should even post your freehand copies or hype yourself up for doing them. Freehand copies should be purely for practicing techniques and exploring your art style. Nothing more, nothing less. However, again, this was just how I was able to make things work for myself and eventually do things that were original.
~conclusion and more disclaimers~
This does not mean that I have negated my need for references entirely, nor did it mean I felt the need to abandon making fan art. This method just made it so I was able to make anything original at all. If this makes sense to literally even a single person like me, then I’ve justified posting this.
Finally, I need to reiterate that I am NOT the best artist in the world, nor the most technically skilled. I just know what I know and I’m still getting better.
Here’s some of my most recent art that I’m most proud of. Two finished pieces (Pumpkin Rabbit, being my first digital drawing ever, and the monster with 4 left hands I have named “Windmill”), two WIPs (the MC of a story I’m making and fan art of an old creepypasta i loved as a kid), with two being originals and two being fan art.
#artist on tumblr#trans artist#aphantasia#tutorial kinda but mostly just saying my story and process#digital artist#small artist#self taught artist#neurodivergent#autistic things#actually autistic#i am absolutely going to edit this later when i think of better ways to further explain lol#long post#my wips
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Koyomi Kyan 🍓🛹
Close-up of her face (the high ponytails have made it very difficult for me to place the side and back views 😖💦)
Full body view
The second daughter of Kyan family and Reki's first little sister.
I had a lot of fun making Koyomi as I got a bit stuck with the other projects I was doing (for other sims). Now I just need (when have inspiration) to make her bedtime hair, not counting her pajamas and the other day to day outfit plus accessories/shoes and a custom skateboard made by his brother Reki (from now invented until there is an official one) so that from now on she can appear in the story with clothes she want the most of all official ones that have been shown so far.
Tho still debating whether to use Reki's skateboard as a base and make a different design or to get inspired by a smaller skateboard, like Miya, and make it from scratch so I can practice more. (But first I need to finish skateboards of the greats of S 💝)
Later I will post Koyomi's before and after, since her change from last year to this one has been huge
This are previews I make of sims I use in my edits/renders/videos, in my dear friend @lea-heartscxiv’s Twitter gameplay or writing on Twitter [#SK8_TS4Lea] and in our Blogger when we finally have it as we wish to publically show it.
My SK8 sims compilation 🛹 | F.A.Q. | MY OTHER SNS
When I took scrunchie's photo she looked so beautiful from this point of view that I can't help but show it now here so everyone can see how cute her cheeks look from this view 🥺💗 (But as i's only for privileged ones who enter this post, I've put it below the cut line)
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Week 5 Studio Tutorial Exercise – Sketching Drills
In class, we practised drawing straight lines, circles, and line-connected points as a warmup for sketching exercise. For this part, we need to use our shoulder to drive our hand, it can’t be just using the wrist to control the pencil, or the line wouldn’t be straight, and we should draw it fast for better line control. I recognized that I need to more practice drawing straight lines and circles.
Part 1: 2D Orthographic Thumbnails
I browse the website and design the look of my bottles by using the inspiration on the website to express it in my own way. This part stimulates our imagination. I try to use different shapes to express different feelings through lines, but I find that I am easily imprisoned by existing designs and find it difficult to be creative, so I need to browse more of other great work to improve my aesthetic and creative skills.
Part 2 Perspective Sketch
In this part, we need to draw a 2d perspective sketch Render of our sketches from Task 1. Firstly, I draw a perspective box like last week we did to keep it consistent in a angled view and 1:1 scale ratio. Perspective box can make me understand how is the 2D point perspective easily. To refine the design of the moisturiser according to the properties of the cream, I drew my concept in the perspective box with a pencil. At the end, I used Procreate to put the colour on.
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Birkin Bag Replica
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Birkin Bag Replica
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“...A lone woman could, if she spun in almost every spare minute of her day, on her own keep a small family clothed in minimum comfort (and we know they did that). Adding a second spinner – even if they were less efficient (like a young girl just learning the craft or an older woman who has lost some dexterity in her hands) could push the household further into the ‘comfort’ margin, and we have to imagine that most of that added textile production would be consumed by the family (because people like having nice clothes!).
At the same time, that rate of production is high enough that a household which found itself bereft of (male) farmers (for instance due to a draft or military mortality) might well be able to patch the temporary hole in the family finances by dropping its textile consumption down to that minimum and selling or trading away the excess, for which there seems to have always been demand. ...Consequently, the line between women spinning for their own household and women spinning for the market often must have been merely a function of the financial situation of the family and the balance of clothing requirements to spinners in the household unit (much the same way agricultural surplus functioned).
Moreover, spinning absolutely dominates production time (again, around 85% of all of the labor-time, a ratio that the spinning wheel and the horizontal loom together don’t really change). This is actually quite handy, in a way, as we’ll see, because spinning (at least with a distaff) could be a mobile activity; a spinner could carry their spindle and distaff with them and set up almost anywhere, making use of small scraps of time here or there.
On the flip side, the labor demands here are high enough prior to the advent of better spinning and weaving technology in the Late Middle Ages (read: the spinning wheel, which is the truly revolutionary labor-saving device here) that most women would be spinning functionally all of the time, a constant background activity begun and carried out whenever they weren’t required to be actively moving around in order to fulfill a very real subsistence need for clothing in climates that humans are not particularly well adapted to naturally. The work of the spinner was every bit as important for maintaining the household as the work of the farmer and frankly students of history ought to see the two jobs as necessary and equal mirrors of each other.
At the same time, just as all farmers were not free, so all spinners were not free. It is abundantly clear that among the many tasks assigned to enslaved women within ancient households. Xenophon lists training the enslaved women of the household in wool-working as one of the duties of a good wife (Xen. Oik. 7.41). ...Columella also emphasizes that the vilica ought to be continually rotating between the spinners, weavers, cooks, cowsheds, pens and sickrooms, making use of the mobility that the distaff offered while her enslaved husband was out in the fields supervising the agricultural labor (of course, as with the bit of Xenophon above, the same sort of behavior would have been expected of the free wife as mistress of her own household).
...Consequently spinning and weaving were tasks that might be shared between both relatively elite women and far poorer and even enslaved women, though we should be sure not to take this too far. Doubtless it was a rather more pleasant experience to be the wealthy woman supervising enslaved or hired hands working wool in a large household than it was to be one of those enslaved women, or the wife of a very poor farmer desperately spinning to keep the farm afloat and the family fed. The poor woman spinner – who spins because she lacks a male wage-earner to support her – is a fixture of late medieval and early modern European society and (as J.S. Lee’s wage data makes clear; spinners were not paid well) must have also had quite a rough time of things.
It is difficult to overstate the importance of household textile production in the shaping of pre-modern gender roles. It infiltrates our language even today; a matrilineal line in a family is sometimes called a ‘distaff line,’ the female half of a male-female gendered pair is sometimes the ‘distaff counterpart’ for the same reason. Women who do not marry are sometimes still called ‘spinsters’ on the assumption that an unmarried woman would have to support herself by spinning and selling yarn (I’m not endorsing these usages, merely noting they exist).
E.W. Barber (Women’s Work, 29-41) suggests that this division of labor, which holds across a wide variety of societies was a product of the demands of the one necessarily gendered task in pre-modern societies: child-rearing. Barber notes that tasks compatible with the demands of keeping track of small children are those which do not require total attention (at least when full proficiency is reached; spinning is not exactly an easy task, but a skilled spinner can very easily spin while watching someone else and talking to a third person), can easily be interrupted, is not dangerous, can be easily moved, but do not require travel far from home; as Barber is quick to note, producing textiles (and spinning in particular) fill all of these requirements perfectly and that “the only other occupation that fits the criteria even half so well is that of preparing the daily food” which of course was also a female-gendered activity in most ancient societies. Barber thus essentially argues that it was the close coincidence of the demands of textile-production and child-rearing which led to the dominant paradigm where this work was ‘women’s work’ as per her title.
(There is some irony that while the men of patriarchal societies of antiquity – which is to say effectively all of the societies of antiquity – tended to see the gendered division of labor as a consequence of male superiority, it is in fact male incapability, particularly the male inability to nurse an infant, which structured the gendered division of labor in pre-modern societies, until the steady march of technology rendered the division itself obsolete. Also, and Barber points this out, citing Judith Brown, we should see this is a question about ability rather than reliance, just as some men did spin, weave and sew (again, often in a commercial capacity), so too did some women farm, gather or hunt. It is only the very rare and quite stupid person who will starve or freeze merely to adhere to gender roles and even then gender roles were often much more plastic in practice than stereotypes make them seem.)
Spinning became a central motif in many societies for ideal womanhood. Of course one foot of the fundament of Greek literature stands on the Odyssey, where Penelope’s defining act of arete is the clever weaving and unweaving of a burial shroud to deceive the suitors, but examples do not stop there. Lucretia, one of the key figures in the Roman legends concerning the foundation of the Republic, is marked out as outstanding among women because, when a group of aristocrats sneak home to try to settle a bet over who has the best wife, she is patiently spinning late into the night (with the enslaved women of her house working around her; often they get translated as ‘maids’ in a bit of bowdlerization. Any time you see ‘maids’ in the translation of a Greek or Roman text referring to household workers, it is usually quite safe to assume they are enslaved women) while the other women are out drinking (Liv. 1.57). This display of virtue causes the prince Sextus Tarquinius to form designs on Lucretia (which, being virtuous, she refuses), setting in motion the chain of crime and vengeance which will overthrow Rome’s monarchy. The purpose of Lucretia’s wool-working in the story is to establish her supreme virtue as the perfect aristocratic wife.
...For myself, I find that students can fairly readily understand the centrality of farming in everyday life in the pre-modern world, but are slower to grasp spinning and weaving (often tacitly assuming that women were effectively idle, or generically ‘homemaking’ in ways that precluded production). And students cannot be faulted for this – they generally aren’t confronted with this reality in classes or in popular culture. ...Even more than farming or blacksmithing, this is an economic and household activity that is rendered invisible in the popular imagination of the past, even as (as you can see from the artwork in this post) it was a dominant visual motif for representing the work of women for centuries.”
- Bret Devereaux, “Clothing, How Did They Make It? Part III: Spin Me Right Round…”
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Hey nez! Ive DM'd you before and you opened my mind to re-examine how I think of design! My thought process about character design is still a work in progress, so for now I'm trying to just up my technical skills and I have to ask... how tf do you practice/do studies of things and not want to cry? I'm so tired of doing realism studies but when I see your beautiful sketches or inks of characters with beautiful faces and details I wanna learn everything! How do you do it?
Hey!
Studying from reality is important, yes, but unless you want your art to look incredibly realistic there is no need to place high expectations on how close the result looks to your reference. I rarely do realism studies myself.
Before starting a study you have to ask yourself what are you trying to improve. Don't answer 'everything' because it will overwhelm you. Pick something to focus on. If you want to study facial proportions, focus on the face and don't place expectations on how the hair looks like. If you want to study dynamic poses, draw them without bothering much with the accuracy of anatomy. If you want to study rendering, trace your reference (more on that later) and shade it from there.
Doing a study for the sake of a study is tedious and wont bring results just as fast. Now...
HOW I DO STUDIES WITHOUT EMOTIONAL PAIN
-Studies don’t have to be a copy
When I do studies, I oftentimes seek to capture the atmosphere the picture gives off rather than make it as accurately as possible. Here, my focus were facial proportions, meaning the rest could be improvised. I didn’t focus on the hands, nor the hair, nor the clothing, nor the anatomy of the arms/shoulders. Just the face. By making this study I also discovered her eyes are uneven in my drawing... Allow your studies to have mistakes and don’t let them bring you down! Drawing a mistake and recognizing it is a lot more helpful than not drawing anything at all.
-Testing things out is fun
Which artstyle would fit your drawing best? Try it out in your sketchbook! Many times, if needed! Don't overthink sketchy and unfinished lines. If it doesn’t suit you, you can leave it (or finish it later) and move on. This also serves as practice for drawing faces (in my case) and to once again find your mistakes and weak spots. I personally seem to have trouble making even eyes. But now that I noticed it, I can fix it.
-Small and fast
When things are particularly difficult for me, like anatomy or facial proportions, I usually allow myself to make those drawings smaller than usual. It allows you better control. I also draw them fast and don't focus too much on accuracy. With that method I can make many in a short period of time and eventually understand how to better approach it in bigger drawings. This counts more like practice than study, but it’s important.
-Not everything is for social media
It’s easy to make people believe I’ve got it all figured it out! I control what I post and not everything makes it online. Some things are only here as an example, and even behind that content there’s messier work. Don't be discouraged by other artists seemingly beautiful studies. Allow your sketches and studies to be ‘ugly’ sometimes.
-Trace things
Connecting to the point above, these usually shouldn’t be posted on social media. Sometimes when I see a face I like, I re-draw it or trace it. Real or drawn. Below I traced a frame of Milleniunm Acctress from Satoshi Kon. I admire the artstyle a lot. After tracing it, however, I came to the conclusion that while it’s pretty it doesn’t fit the atmosphere I’m looking for. Hence why I redrew it again by myself to the side.
I know tracing is a controversional topic but it’s extremely helpful in studies. Not only will it make you understand the shape better but also allow you to discover what works and doesn’t for the art you want to make.
This one is difficult to recommend for beginner artists, because you’re scared they might become too reliant on it or won’t know where to draw the limit.
Don't post it online (unless you have the permission from the artist)
Don't use the result as base for your own work.
Don't focus on one artist alone (try different approaches from several people)
Don't rely on artworks too much (you might pick up their mistakes)
That seems to be all! Having fun while studying helps a lot to keep your enthusiasm going, so draw characters you like as well. Even if they don't fit the style you want. Put it in your sketchbook and experiment, it counts as a study aswell.
Good luck, hopefully this reply isn't too long!
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a few days ago on twitter you said you love discussing art process, pleeeaase do! i find your art so inspirational, i'd love to hear what you have to say about really any area of the process if you have time! if thats way too broad a question maybe lineart..?
yaaay i love art process :)
lineart!! one of my favorite things to do in a piece, and much to consider. this is just my personal approach-- i have a fairly specific approach to lineart, and lineart is fairly polarizing in that some people find processes like mine VERY tedious and restrictive, while others enjoy it the same way i do. it is by no means the only way you should be doing lineart, it's just insight into how i do lineart :)
so, some things to consider first:
-do i want a textured brush or a smooth brush?
-do i want loose lines or tight lines?
-do i want thin lines or thick lines?
-do i want to stylize my lines?
TEXTURE VS. SMOOTH:
-TEXTURED brushes make it easier to hide mistakes in your lines. your strokes won't have to match up flawlessly.
-SMOOTH brushes may show inconsistencies where you pick up a stroke mid-way through, for example, which bothers someone like me a LOT when doing lineart!
-TEXTURED brushes add unique character to your lineart
-SMOOTH brushes leave room for other techniques to do the talking, such as your coloring. it will steal less attention
-TEXTURED brushes can be difficult to do flats under, because it limits your use of the magic wand/equivalent tools
-SMOOTH brushes have fewer crevices, so it's much easier to do flats under them using automatic processes
-TEXTURED brushes can become so grainy when working on small areas that it's difficult to achieve fine detail
-SMOOTH brushes are going to be pretty discernible even at high zooms
-TEXTURED brushes do not translate well when you're enlarging images
-SMOOTH brushes can sometimes help you get away with enlarging an image using waifu2x, photoshop enlarging, or illustrator's live trace function (to an extent)
i will say i typically use a textured brush. SU brush (able to be found on the clip studio assets site) and evolve brush (for procreate) are some of my favorites, as well as one i modified myself that i won't post because it was me heavily editing someone else's brush and i don't wanna take that from them lol
LOOSE VS. TIGHT:
-LOOSE lines can capture the dynamic feeling of your sketch much more easily
-TIGHT lines can feel much more rigid, with less movement
-LOOSE lines are much harder to do flats under, as there are often many gaps in your lines that need to be filled
-TIGHT lines can be easier to do flats under, because the magic wand tool will work more easily
-LOOSE lines can capture a sense of nostalgia, friendliness, calmness, tranquility, et cetera
-TIGHT lines can capture a sense of decoration, symbolism, and intricacy
-LOOSE lines *can* be less time consuming, but may require specific skill and practice to get their energy feeling "right"
-TIGHT lines can take more time, but can achieve greater detail and may be more "impressive" to some viewers (entirely subjective!)
-LOOSE lines can sometimes get away with "implied" detail
-TIGHT lines sometimes suffer if you "slack off" in some areas compared to others; it'll be much more apparent
i typically use very tight lines! that means they're very exact, have a lot of detail, and not many gaps. personally i find that when you make your lines very neat and exact, they become the 'star of the show', so it makes it much easier to 'get away with' having less of an emphasis on rendering, for example. you can let the lines speak for themselves.
THIN VS. THICK:
-THIN lines draw less attention, allowing other parts of the drawing to take the spotlight
-THICK lines command attention
-THIN lines allow for greater intricate detail
-THICK lines are much more reliant on having a good sense of form and shape
-THIN lines can feel more delicate and soft
-THICK lines can feel more dynamic, solid, or cartoony
i'd say my lines are somewhere in the middle! i personally usually use 2 brush sizes, 1 for "main" lines and 2 for "details" (such as small lines separating pieces of hair, blush lines, clothing detail...)
STYLIZATION:
this is just a list of a few more ways you can stylize your lines!
-MONOLINE vs DYNAMIC WIDTH: you can turn off pen pressure and draw with a mono-width pen for a cool effect! you can also vary how much line pressure you have; very thick lines contrasted with very thin lines can give a very dynamic energetic effect
-HATCHING: look up guides on ink pen drawing and see how they use hatching, stippling, et cetera; it may help inform how you decide to use your lines
-ANGULAR VS. FLOWY: experiment with only drawing with straight lines combined to look round! experiment with doing no straight lines at all!
-PIXEL: using pixel-based tools can give a super fun effect on your lineart! i've been playing the game "yuppie psycho" recently and it has some cool examples of pixel-based art in its title card and cutscenes that aren't necessarily "pixel art"
-COLORED LINES: try coloring your lineart! this CAN match the color of the lines inside, or you can play with a totally contrasting color. helps give a lot of life.
GENERAL TIPS:
-test out the stabilizer in your program! it helps achieve much smoother lines. in procreate this is called "streamline," in csp it's called "stabilizer" (you may have to turn it on using the eyeball in certain brushes), and in clip studio it's "stabilizer" at the top
-this isn't something i did, personally, but try out using traditional tools. it'll help you get a smoother hand even when you're working digitally. try sketching traditionally in pen and marker; the inability to go back on your lines will help you gain confidence in your strokes
-adjust your pressure curve in your program, or the hardness/softness of your lineart brush, such that you can get a wide range of thicknesses without pressing too hard. learning how to control the delicacy of your hand's pressure will save your wrist in the long run.
-personally i haven't thought about this much, but i've heard that focusing on drawing with your shoulder rather than your wrist can 1. help dynamism and 2. be easier on your body
-speaking of which, in general, TAKE STRETCH BREAKS PLEASE
-for my style of lineart: god i love the undo button. wear that baby out. i'll do a line like, 6-7 times then still go back in with liquify or an eraser to touch it up. you're allowed!
-MAKE MULTIPLE SKETCHES. maybe this is just for me, but i like doing a sketch that's essentially "rough" lineart-- i solve ALL of the details, ALL of the problems, i just don't do it neatly yet. EVERYTHING is laid out completely for me. my lineart is then mentally much easier and quicker-- i don't have to problem solve AND line, i just have to line. it actually saves me time overall!
anyway have fun :)
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attempt #37
This was the 52nd formula that Lena had come up with, the 45th solution that she had to wait several hours to synthesize, but only the 37th time she was injecting her shoulder with the resulting concoction.
It was bright green this time, which only made it seem all the more promising.
There’s a rush and some mild nausea that Lena had come to expect with the experiments, but everything else felt the same. For now. Setting the syringe aside, Lena called out, “Hope, think of a number between one and a million.”
Then, for the 37th time, Lena tried. She cleared her own mind, practiced the meditative mantras, stared intently into Eve’s eyes, bright blue yet blank with Hope’s quiet disinterest, and... nothing. Not a single digit came to mind.
No matter how hard Lena tried, the only thoughts in her head were her own.
With an exasperated sigh, Lena rolled her sleeve back down and directed Hope to log their latest attempt as yet another failure before storming off to start her day.
//
Lena emerged from the laboratory with wrinkled clothes and dark circles sunken around her eyes, which was probably why the first thing she heard as she stepped out of the elevator was her personal assistant’s hushed commentary of, Oh sweet Jesus, she looks tired.
“Oh, I’m well aware, Hector,” Lena said, lofty and without much malice. “Nothing a little coffee can’t fix though.”
Hector stared at her blankly. “I’m sorry, Miss Luthor?”
“Never mind,” Lena said, rolling her eyes. She took the outstretched coffee in question as she walked by the assistant’s desk. “Just hold all my calls until the afternoon, please.”
This time, when Hector grumbled under his breath about wow, she must be grumpy too, Lena ignored it. There were better things for the CEO to tackle, after all; as for example, some fitful sleep on her couch, perhaps?
Hours later, Lena was relatively well-rested, so she pored over her notes again, trying to pinpoint the exact variable she must have overlooked in her carelessness. Because by all accounts, the formula should have worked—Lena had been certain of it. But then again, she’d admittedly thought that of almost every attempt thus far.
When Hector walked into her office at some point in the late afternoon with a handful of contracts to be signed, Lena felt no closer to the solution and a slight headache coming on.
“Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“Another coffee would be great,” Lena said, as she sifted through the documents.
“Oh my God, if she takes in any more caffeine, her heart’s going to literally explode...” Hector muttered to himself. “Well, maybe she won’t notice if I get her decaf instead...?”
Lena dropped the papers onto her desk with a scoff. “You know I can hear you, right?”
Hector appeared startled, which seemed rather appropriate until he slowly said, “So... was that a yes on the espresso?”
“What?”
Hector maintained his slow cadence, carefully enunciating every syllable as if he were repeating himself, “Did you want to stick with your usual order... or maybe go with an espresso... because it’s a little stronger?”
But in a normal cadence, also in Hector’s voice and somehow clear as a bell in Lena’s head came, “If this woman doesn’t get another nap in pronto, she is going to drop dead, and everyone’s going to think I poisoned her coffee, because she’s always in—”
Absolutely stunned, Lena continued to stare up at Hector in silence, eyes narrowing as the assistant’s slightly panicked voice droned on and on in her head. Until a louder remark broke through the reverie.
“Whoa, did she just fall asleep with her eyes open?”
Lena blinked quite obviously, and her mild shock was accompanied with a loud and clear, yet unspoken Oh, thank God! from Hector.
But the Hector standing before her hadn’t moved his lips once, only watching the bewilderment play out on Lena’s face with some polite concern.
“The usual’s fine,” Lena interjected before her assistant could press again. “Or the espresso, or whatever. I don’t care, as long as it’s still hot and caffeinated.”
“You got it,” Hector said.
“Definitely getting her decaf,” Hector thought as he turned to leave, but Lena hardly minded. She was too busy restructuring the rest of her day around this most exciting realization.
After some quick bit of arithmetic in her head, Lena set a timer on her watch for five hours, which was presumably the amount of time it would take for her body to break down the serum and render it useless. Then she logged on to her private interface and happily directed Hope to re-record attempt #37 as a success.
//
The ability to read minds was, quite simply, quite the advantage.
Though it wasn’t so much “mind-reading,” as mind-receiving. The serum seemed to have granted Lena access to the loud and active thought processes of everyone around her—their inner monologue, if you will, everything put into words but left unsaid.
Lena had been hoping for more, to be able to break into other people’s minds so as to hack secrets, determine why supposed close friends would ever betray her, and the like. Maybe that would come with time and practice.
But as it turned out, there was rather plenty to be gleaned from the forefront of someone’s mind, as people often thought about the things they weren’t supposed to say before choosing more palatable means of expression. Which made the rest of Lena’s workday somewhat informative, if not a little fun.
For one thing, Lena found out that a lot more of her employees enjoyed working for her than she had thought. All of them respected her, several feared her, and quite a fair few entertained invasive thoughts about her décolletage before swiftly directing their attention elsewhere.
She also found out there was one board member in particular who liked to fudge the numbers during meetings, and that his face took on a very unappealing shade of off-white when Lena could inexplicably confront him with the actual results of his findings.
But most importantly of all, what Lena found out was that... she actually enjoyed this heretofore inaccessible sense of control this ability afforded her. She had taken on the experiments for a very specific purpose, but now, it was difficult to even imagine going back to how things were, even after the fact.
//
Lena walked into the DEO, and for the first time, the outpouring of distrust attached to the Luthor name was all but imagined. The disparaging thoughts followed her, even as the people who had them smiled or averted their eyes as she passed.
Nothing she wasn’t used to though.
Alex’s voice slid into Lena’s head in a whisper—... the hell?—one whole minute before she actually greeted her, “Lena, hey... Well, can’t say that I was expecting you.”
“Yes, that’s what it sounds like,” Lena mused, and Alex gave her a slight frown.
“So, did you need something?”
“Where’s Kara? I want to talk to her.”
Alex’s carefully composed face betrayed no emotion, but her thoughts sighed heavily, “Of course...” before ebbing away into something entirely indistinct and indecipherable.
Lena blinked. She hadn’t encountered anyone whose thoughts weren’t immediately accessible to her before. But here Alex was, giving directions to Kara’s current whereabouts, all the while muttering some underlying commentary in tones so hushed that Lena couldn’t quite make out any of it.
“... Is there something on my face?” Alex swiped her sleeve across her forehead. “What are you looking at?”
“What? No, nothing,” Lena said brusquely. “Thank you for telling me where Kara is. Bye.” She turned on her heel, headed for the hallway that would eventually lead to the training room.
“Well, that was weird...” Alex’s voice drifted after her, a literal afterthought. “But I mean, I guess she has a nice ass, so—”
Lena shot a dirty look over her shoulder, but Alex was already back on her computer, mind rattling off coordinates and running through tactical drills like a well-oiled machine.
//
Kara was wearing short shorts and a sports bra, panting, and absolutely drenched in sweat when Lena stepped foot into the training room. She looked over at Lena, her skin glistening against the dimmed green of the kryptonite-lined walls, and smiled wide.
“Oh, hey! What are you doing here?” Kara asked, giving the punching bag one last jab before tugging her gloves off. "Did something happen or...? I mean, not that I’m not happy to see you, of course.” She flashed Lena another bright grin before pressing a towel to her face and neck and chest.
It was enough to stop Lena in her tracks, and almost enough to put a damper on her plans. Almost.
“I need to talk to you,” Lena said evenly, eyes glued firmly to Kara’s forehead.
“Yeah, sure! Jeez... I’d give you a hug, but I’m like sweating in places I didn’t even know existed. Alex says that this is the only way to learn proper form and all, but wow. I can’t believe there are humans who actually do this for fun—”
“Kara,” Lena cut in, lips pursing in exasperation. “I’m serious. We need to talk right now.”
Kara blinked, then slowly nodded. “Okay, yeah, let’s talk... You wanna sit down?”
“I prefer to be standing.”
“Okay.” Kara remained standing as well, towel now crumpled in her hands. “So, what’s going on?”
Lena took a deep breath, quickly running through the meditative techniques meant to keep her mind clear and open, then asked, “Why did it take you so long to tell me that you’re Supergirl?”
Kara’s shoulders slumped. “Lena, I...”
“No, why did it take three years? Why didn’t you trust me?” Lena continued, her pace steady and firm just like she had practiced. “I trusted you. I trusted you with every part of me, which is extremely difficult for me to do, and you just... didn’t care, I guess.”
“Of course, I care. Lena... I never meant to hurt you,” Kara said insistently. Her voice was loud, emphatic, and at the moment, the only thing Lena could hear.
“Don’t!” Lena snapped when Kara started to approach her. “Don’t come any closer. And stop talking! Just listen.”
Kara exhaled sharply through her nose and raised her hands in tentative surrender in absolute, utter silence. Lena even paused for a beat or two, just to see if any of Kara’s thoughts would breach the surface, but none did.
“Why couldn’t you just trust me, Kara?” Lena asked, and regrettably her voice trembled on the last syllable. “Why did I have to hear it from Lex?”
Kara’s eyes widened. “Lex? Lex told you before I did?”
“Shut up. Do not talk,” Lena hissed out, waiting for Kara to snap her jaw shut before continuing with a bitter laugh, “Do you, do you even trust me now...?” Kara stared, gaze hardening. “And how do you expect me to trust anything you have to say for yourself now?”
Lena’s questions—all of the above and beyond—were met with silence, strained only by the sound of Kara’s heavy breath and Lena’s own thoughts.
Scoffing, Lena threw up her hands. “Do you even care that you hurt me?”
“... Can I talk now?” Kara demanded, seething like she had any right to it. But when Lena shook her head furiously, she held her tongue and apparently everything else as well, because Lena couldn’t hear a single damn thing.
When the alarm on her watch went off, Lena left, slamming the door on her way out. She contacted Hope through their private channel and had her re-log attempt #37 as just another failure.
Back to the fucking drawing board.
(next part here)
#who's ready for attempt 38 n' 39?#and did i honestly start another ficlet series when i already have so many ongoing?#WACK!#also wtf; why is this 2k words...?#my words.
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Analysis of Kite's conflicting moralities, relationship with death, and the toll reincarnation may take on one's psyche
So, today I decided to compile all the thoughts I have had about Kite's interesting worldview since the first time I saw him into one post, mostly for my own sake, really. If you're familiar with the few posts I've made, you know it's gonna be a mess, but hopefully a comprehensible mess.
A heads up, this is going to be spoiler-heavy, and very much deal with subjects of death and dying as a whole. Also, some of these conclusions are drawn from my own experiences and close brushes with death, I'm not going to go into much detail but it might get personal and definitely dark. I'm not even sure if I can call this a meta-analysis, and I'm obviously no expert, so mayhaps take all of this with a grain of salt.
Been getting into drawing lately, and during the more simple and mindless part of the painstaking process of dotting every single star in this, I let my thoughts wander through the latest part of the fic I'm writing, and I got a better grasp on what exactly made Kite such an elusive character to me.
I'm not quite sure why I got so attached to Kite. Perhaps it was the air of tragedy surrounding him, how despite his sordid past he remained still open and gentle even if outlined by a healthy dose of cynicism.
But sometimes, I think it's the fact that he is so paradoxical. He's brave, yet fears death to such a degree that creates a whole Nen ability around it, is a pacifist yet will not hesitate to spill blood for his own sake or someone else's. Despite the many ultimatums and warnings of 'I will not protect you', he gave his arm and then his life to save Gon and Killua. He approaches each hunt and battle with a clear plan of action in mind, but his Hatsu takes the form of a roulette that gives him random weapons which are never what he wants, but what he seems to need for that exact situation, which he cannot dispel without using. When he draws a weapon, the decision is locked in and his or his opponent's fate is sealed. That's why each time he dubbs his weapon a bad roll. Every time he has to gamble, he sees himself as having run out of luck. When it comes to having to choose between himself and somebody else...well, there had never been a choice. In fact his aversion to using it may feed into its sheer power that we, unfortunately, saw too little of.
Let's go over his very first appearance when he saves Gon from the mother Foxbear.
It's not hard to see the strain searching for Ging has put on him; he's rash, prone to anger and punching a child for daring to get into trouble. In his mind, he's failing at his most important task, has not yet earned the right to call himself a hunter despite being in possession of his very own hunter license.
After killing the mother Foxbear and raging about having done so, he says this interesting line:
So yes, he finds killing for any reason rather irksome as most would do, yet I think something deeper caused him to absolutely lose it in this scene:
He had not been aware of Gon's identity, and despite being an animal lover and a naturalist, he made a choice to save the human instead of allowing nature to run its course. In fact, he says: 'No beast that harms a human must be allowed to live.'
How does one weight one life against another? How is the worth of it determined? The value of life... an impossible choice he's faced with and a choice which he seems to regret to some degree.
The Foxbear cub.
Here, he's speaking from experience, a tangible loss he has felt himself, and a hard and bitter life he does not want to impose on the cub.
His backstory is exclusive to the 2011 anime adaptation but there are hints alluding to it in the manga, for example, the fact that he does not seem to know his birthplace, or:
The choice of words is chilling.
Reading between the lines, one could draw the conclusion that he is an orphan. Something supporting this hypothesis is how he visibly deflates after Gon tells him his parents have (presumably) died.
So we see he is willing to go against his own moral code of not killing as to not doom another living being to the life he led, a lonely, hopeless existence that could barely be called one. He saw it best to put down the cub rather than leave it to die a painful, slow death.
The reason Kite himself isn't as cynical and cold-hearted as one would be after witnessing cruelty in its rawest form is those small crumbs of human kindness which he may have found in Ging.
It was not only a chance at an honorable life being Ging's apprentice gave him, but it also 'saved' him from being broken and twisted into what he hated and worst of all, death.
If we take that one minute of backstory as canon to his character-which I find myself inclined to do- these quirks of his make much more sense. He lived on the run. He lived on the knife's edge between giving up or pushing forwards. He lived as so a wrong move could be the difference between survival and the end.
Between rock and a hard place creates a mentality of black and white, absolute good or extreme evil, this or that. Except in reality, it's much harder than that. Deciding who to save and who to strike down is a heavy burden to bear.
It's almost easy to see how struggling to keep surviving could lend itself to a crippling fear of death and subsequently developing a Nen ability which once more goes against his own moral code in order to give himself a second chance...yet something about it strikes me as unlikely when I look at it this way.
Living life knowing it could end at any moment has the opposite effect, at least for me it did. One comes to accept that it is fleeting and while not eager to let it go, when death eventually and inevitably does come, there is no fighting it.
Especially when there is no hope that tomorrow will be a better day than this one.
Frequent near-death experiences numb one's fear in a way, even if it drives them to take precautions that render it unlikely to happen again and results in c-PTSD, but still, it does. It sparks a certain nihilistic view of 'if it all can end so easily, then what's the point of it all?'
Unless there are things to live for, a sure promise of a better future, and Ging gave Kite that. When he faced the threat of losing his second chance at life:
Really, what else could lead someone to develop the ability of 'the hell I'm going to die like this'?
I think a separate event, an even more brutal near-death experience that almost cost him his life as the hunter he so strived to be set him off to develop the secret roll of Crazy Slots, what I call Roll No.0, Ars moriendi. Unlike other weapons, it cannot come up in random and is directly summoned by him, or better said, summon by his overwhelming will to keep going and hopelessness of fighting a losing battle. I don't believe roll No.3 was the weapon that allowed him to reincarnate. I've named that one Wand of Fortune, a sort of armor instead of an offensive weapon since I find it hard to believe Kite, a Conjurer, would not focus on defences as well, and I will go into both mechanisms of these weapons hopefully in his backstory.
Despite knowing this battle to be a pointless one and being acutely aware of his soon to be demise, he did not immediately draw Ars moriendi, no, he stayed back and fought for the sake of the boys, kept Neferpitou occupied until they could reach safety. We can see evidence of this in the aftermath of the battle that seemed to have gone on until dawn, a torn apart landscape only signaling a fraction of the devastation that was Kite's power unleashed. It still wasn't enough.
In the anime sub I watched, when Gon apologizes to Ging about Kite's death, Ging said a sentence that infuriated me, because it belittled the utter suffering of the NGL trio.
"He would not die in your place." (No screenshot, sorry)
And I remember practically shouting at the screen, screaming 'how could you possibly say that? Of course he did. He absolutely did die in their place. How could you not know your own apprentice? Why-'
It was only last night that it hit me why Ging would say that.
Once upon a time, maybe Kite would not have given his life for anybody under any circumstances, even if he had a way out of it all. He would still need to die to come back to life.
His Thanatophobia could be attributed to the (possibly untreated) PTSD of the near-death experience in his later life, being so certain of dying that finding himself alive afterwards drove him to never want to go through that again. He quieted his fear by creating a sort of a loophole, that even if he lost the battle he would remain. Ging remembered that, but as evidence shows, something changed. Maybe he healed a bit, perhaps growing up dulled his fear to a certain degree, but eventually when it came down to his life or another's, he didn't choose himself.
Now, I can hear you saying 'but he didn't die, so what are you going on about??' And so I reply: Yes, he is alive, but he did die. He experienced that painful, horrible moment of staring death in the eyes and thinking 'This is it, this is the end', went through the actual process of having his soul removed from his body. And that moment stretches into infinity, ten lifetimes condensed into the mere seconds before oblivion.
Dying isn't so hard if one stays dead.
It's not so easy to open one's eyes and find oneself alive again after that, no matter how much that is the heart's desire. It's difficult, nigh-impossible to reconcile with life and walk amongst the living when everything had been so final, when death had been accepted to its fullest.
So Kite awakens, the twin of Meruem and back from the dead, his mind and identity both intact and fractured. In that he is Kite is no mistaking, yet he is not the same gentle pacifist whose first reaction upon sensing a monster's aura was to shield two kids from it at the cost of his arm.
I don't think many of you are familiar with Zoroastrian ideology, but Togashi is known for loving his religious imagery, and it's not only Christianism he derives inspiration from (evidence of which can be seen all over Kite's character and resurrection).
In Zurvanism-a branch of Zoroastrianism- there is talk of the twin spirits: Ahura Mazda -epitome of all that is good- and Ahriman -epitome of all that is evil-, the parent god Zurvin decides that the firstborn may rule in order to bring "heaven, hell, and everything in between."
Upon becoming aware of this fact, Ahriman forcibly tears through the womb to emerge first. Sounding familiar yet?
Zurvan relents to this turn of events only on one condition: Ahriman is given kingship for 9000 years, and then Ahura Mazda may rule for eternity.
Meruem ruled for 40 days, his death leaving the throne vacant for ant Kite, wearing a dead girl's face and seeming to be brewing some nefarious plan. No more is there any sign of that unrelenting pacifism and the sanctity of life he held so high, losing his own may have only served to show him how meaningless the pain and suffering he went through had been, dying only to be reborn as a member of the species that killed him. It may be that he has no desire to rule over the remaining Chimera ants or create an army of his own-
Yet I dread to think what a broken mind possessing limitless power might do to the world.
And that's it. If you made it this far, thank you for reading! If you found it interesting, stay tuned, as I think a lot and I will make it your problem.
#Cw: talks of death and PTSD#When I say I unknowingly projected onto him#I can't tell if writing this was cathartic or torturous#and I gave myself heart palpitations so this is enough for today#And yes I refer to ant Kite by he/him pronouns because misgendering him on the account of his body being afab is just ignorant#even if I think skrunkly's genderqueer af and actually wouldn't mind she/her#still i wanna push the trans ant kite agenda#So yes this is how I unknowingly picked up Kite as a coping mechanism even if out attitudes towards death are practically opposites#don't mind your grandpa trauma dumping#What I'm saying is get ant Kite therapy before he sinks the world#I love reimagining Kite as a villain and I don't know why#Kite hxh#hxh kite#kite hunter x hunter#kaito hxh#hxh#hunter x hunter#meta analysis#theories#fic rambles#Icarus waffles#Kitkat#gon freccs#Ging freecss
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