What is your url a reference to?
So in the days of ye olde internet the name I most often chose for my accounts was maxwellsdemon, a reference to Maxwell's Demon, a thought experiment by the physicist Maxwell about how a magic being could theoretically negate the second law of thermodynamics.
When I joined tumblr the name maxwellsdemon was not available. I choose my name because I identify with the himbo: I too thrive to be kind, stupid and (at least somewhat) strong. And I can magically sort particles by their temperature.
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Hey here's an angle on the Jiang family dynamic and its impact on Wei Wuxian that I haven't seen discussed:
Wei Wuxian grew up seeing Jiang Yanli routinely having her agency cut off and denied in both large (betrothal) and small ways. That were largely tied up in her gender, sure, but this was also a family containing Yu Ziyuan. A daughter in this household had every chance of having her gender treated as of secondary importance.
She just had to earn it.
The way Jiang Yanli was hemmed in and her potential as an independent actor dismissed was at least as strongly correlated with her failure to be a powerful sword cultivator.
So Wei Wuxian's total refusal to let anyone know that he'd lost access to his cultivation and his violent reactivity against being diminished or condescended to during his Sunshot-to-death period, when before he was pretty immune to being looked down on, could have a lot to do with having been presented with this clearly labeled diagram of how your personhood gets stripped away when you are, by the standards of your society, disabled.
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What was the point of Scrooge's trip with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come? On a structural level, it makes sense--three is the fairy tale number, and you can't visit the past and present without also including the future--but on a character level, it doesn't quite seem necessary. Showing a man that he'll die alone, unloved, and unmourned seems like the strategy you take as the last-ditch effort to convince a guy that he needs to change his ways. But that situation doesn't apply to Scrooge. He started softening immediately after he first arrived in his past. By the time he finished with the Ghost of Christmas Present, he was fully onboard with the need to reform, so the Ghost's vision of his future seems like unnecessary cruelty. Why show him all this when he was already planning to change his ways?
A few things come to mind. One is that this vision of the future wouldn't have affected Scrooge unless he had already changed his ways. A cold, hard businessman could have seen his lonely death as just the way of the world, might have viewed the people who stole the clothes from his corpse as just people doing what's practical in this world. He needed to relearn the value of the intangibles--human connection, respect for others--to see the true horror of the lonely death and the vultures who defiled the dead man.
But why the horror? Can't he reform without being threatened with doom? It's possible--but it's also possible such a reform would be temporary. After all, Scrooge started as a friendly, loving young man, but retreated into himself and his business out of fear of poverty and fear of the way the world looks down upon poor people. Even if a reformed Scrooge started on a course of Christmas charity, there was always a chance that the enthusiasm would fade, and the worldly fears would start creeping back in. The only way to beat those fears is to give him something to fear that's even worse than poverty. He needs to see the horrible end that his selfish ways would lead to, so he won't be tempted to slide back into them.
There's also the fact that seeing his death makes him ecstatically happy to find that he's alive after the Ghost is gone. Had Scrooge been spared the vision of his future, he might have been happy to find himself on Christmas Day, but his joy would have been nowhere near the manic glee he experiences after coming back from the future. Now, he doesn't just get a new start--he gets a second chance. Coming back from his own grave makes him mindful of his death, but it also makes him hyperaware of the fact that he's still alive. He isn't in the ground yet. He still has time to do good and make connections with others so he doesn't die alone.
Seeing the past reminded him of the innocence he'd lost. Seeing the present reminded him of the people whose lives he was missing out on. Seeing the future reminded him that death is waiting, so it's important to live virtuously while we can. All three are important because all three brought him outside of himself and taught him to value the wider world, just in time to live through another Christmas Day.
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I was wanting to try doing an art piece in the style of the signature spell poster art pieces you create. But I’m not really the best at coming up with a composition for such a thing.
Do you have a process for how you come up with the compositions for them?
oh, awesome! it is an INCREDIBLY enjoyable style to work in; I hope you have fun with it! :D
I'm not great at putting my thought/art process into words, so my apologies if this doesn't make a lot of sense, but I'll try! my first step is always to do a LOT of thumbnails to figure out both the idea and how I want to show it; not trying to do a real sketch or anything, just little doodles to figure out what exactly I'm trying to portray. (I also call these "garbage passes" because they're not meant to be any good, they're just there to throw things out. aha. ha. ...anyway.) I think it's important during that first stage to really focus on the idea and the layout and not to get too bogged down in the actual drawing yet!
I tend to save my final thumbnails, so I'll use 'em as examples (I posted the ones up through episode 5 here if you're interested!) (and, uhhh, spoilers through episode 5 also in this post, hopefully that won't be an issue!)
the main thing I try to think about in composition is balance -- not necessarily in terms of symmetry, but in where each element is placed and how much space it's taking up. remember, empty space is still space! it's also really important to think about the parts that don't have anything in them, as much as the parts that do!
personally, I like to divide things up roughly by both halves and by thirds -- there's a lot more in-depth info out there on why the "rule of thirds" in particular works well visually, but in short, our brains tend to focus on things that are placed closer to imaginary division lines, instead of in the exact center of an image. so even when I'm doing something that is very centered and symmetrical, I try to keep that in mind and generally aim around those for landmarks like faces/eyes (or...where they would be, anyway) and other focal points.
it's not a formula of "the character's face should be in this division of this grid" or anything, more like "our minds like to focus on these areas, let's think about how to use that", if that makes sense! and of course rules are made to be broken, art is lawless anarchy, and so on. but it can be a good starting place for deciding where you want to put things!
(blue - thirds, red - half)
and against the finished versions, because they do usually end up changing a lot (including the empty space of the border):
(...these actually lined up a lot better than I thought they would. :') it makes me look like I do things way more intentionally than I do.)
other stuff I just try to keep in mind is that our eyes like following arcs and paths, which can be a good way to guide the eye:
and frame and control the focus:
honestly, composition is one of those things I feel like I struggle with a lot, so I'm not sure how much of this is helpful or actually makes sense outside of my head. but hopefully it helps a little! it's all just stuff to think about while drawing and not anything hard-and-fast, so don't, like, stress out about making sure things are lining up exactly on the thirds or anything. again, it's more "our brains think these are the dopest parts of the rectangle" than anything else! take advantage of the cool parts of the rectangle!
NOW GO HAVE FUN DRAWING seriously though, it is always super cool that other people like this idea and style enough to want to do it themselves and for other/their own characters! thank you! ❤️❤️❤️
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