🛼 🧃
(Thanks for the ones you sent me! Hoping to get to them after work tonight 🤞)
(thank you, too! what's the point of the bluesite if we aren't high fiving each other!)
🛼 describe your latest wip with five emojis
Uhh. Let me pull up the Windows+. keyboard and stare into the distance for a few minutes...
🏚️🥃☠️😭🛫
🧃 share some personal lore you never posted about before
[that feel when you've been on here for a decade+ and have to remember all the shit you've blabbed about in that time]
When I was little I sometimes went to boy scout troop meetings with my brothers, because my dad was traveling for work just about every week and my mom had to take them to the meetings instead, and I was too small to be just abandoned all night on a Tuesday. My mom had this horrible blue Chrysler van and would ferry like 6 boys 'into town' (we grew up very rural) for the troop meetings. This was the non-Mormon troop in town, which a) meant that they actually did camping and learning instead of just churning badges to Eagle, and b) these kids were fuckin' degenerates, lol. There were lots of pranks and assholery and vicious games of shirts-vs-skins pickup football and also good-natured teasing and showing up for each other and trying their best, sometimes, or trying at all if their best wasn't possible. A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. I don't know if they hit every marker -- I know for a fact that some of those boys didn't grow up to be the best men -- but it was a good thing in their lives, for a while, and sitting in the back of the meetings playing or reading or boredly watching was a good way to learn about the way that boys are. Plus there's this all-time quote, from my mother, after she bought Taco Bell for the neighbor boys and for some reason let Eric get an enchirito: Eric, if you fart one more time, I am throwing you out onto the highway!
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idk man i know times are hard but i can't help but feel that watcher putting all their eggs in the basket that is their own streaming service is a bad call. like sure i totally get wanting a platform where you have full control both creatively and financially but i feel they might be misjudging how much loyalty non-hardcore fans might have for what they're creating. in every internet fandom there's a subsection of people willing to pay with actual money to support the creators they enjoy, and that's what services like patreon are for. but to expect that casual viewers will sign up and pay a monthly fee to get access to just watcher content when a large portion of them were likely just watching the content because it was free and accessible on youtube assumes that someone who isn't a diehard fan won't just go "oh well" and find something else on youtube that IS still free? that seems like a miscalculation to me. the massive fanbases online content creators have may literally be only possible because the content is available to anyone-- it seems foolish to assume that every single one of those fans is going to stick around once you try to upsell them.
i hope this new venture goes well for the watcher crew. I really do. but i also know that a lot of brands and startups that bank on the loyalty they earned when their product was free or low cost and expect that to sustain them while they try to do something that historically has not gone well for the vast majority of businesses. at best, they'll have halved their fanbase by alienating those who can't or don't want to pay and made it much more difficult for remaining fans to create fandom products like memes or gifs that promote their shows on social media. at worst, they'll discover in the near future the independent streaming service model is unsustainable with only the fans they have left and by that point they'll have already deleted themselves from youtube and made it impossible to come back to the level of success they had before. any attempt to return to youtube will be an admission of a critical miscalculation and i doubt many remaining fans will tolerate the back and forth. they'll have crippled their credibility, relevancy, and fanbase loyalty over a very short period of time-- and i don't know if it would even be possible to come back and still be beloved after all that.
worst of all-- if the watcher streaming service crashes and burns after they've already removed all their content from youtube, all the watcher shows are essentially going to become lost media, only accessible via reuploaders willing to risk a copy strike or if you know someone who has a copy downloaded. given how genuinely good the watcher content is in the sea of lackluster youtube mush, that really seems like a damn shame.
i hope the watcher team sees how everyone is responding and decides to course correct before it's too late and get away with only the hit to their reputation that they've already taken by announcing this, instead of pushing forward on a path that might lose them everything instead. nothing i've said here is with any hate intended toward anyone involved or those who are excited about the new service, but this just seems like a really ill-advised decision to me.
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Ok! I've finally decided to put together a (somewhat) comprehensive tutorial on my latest art~
Please enjoy this little step-by-step 💁♀️
First things first--references!
Now I'm not saying you have to go overboard, but I always find that this is a crucial starting point in any art piece I intend on making. Especially if you're a detail freak like me and want to make it as realistic as possible 🙃
As such, your web browser should look like this at any given point:
Since this is a historical piece, it means hours upon hours of meaningless research just to see what color the socks are, but...again. that isn't, strictly, necessary 😅
Once I've compiled all my lovely ref pics, I usually dump them into a big-ass collage ⬇️
(I will end up not using half of these, alas :'D)
Another reference search for background material, and getting to showcase our models of choice for this occasion~
When picking a reference for an actor or model, the main thing I keep in mind (besides prettiness 🤭) is lighting and orientation. Because I already kinda know what pose I'm gonna go with for this piece, I can look for specific angles that might fit the criteria. I should mention that I am a reference hound, and my current COD actor ref folder looks like this:
Also keep in mind, if you're using a ref that you need to flip, make sure you adjust accordingly. This especially applies to clothing, as certain things like pants zippers and belt buckles can be quite specific ☝️
Now that we've spent countless hours googling, it's time to start with a rough sketch:
It doesn't have to be pretty, folks, just a basic guideline of where you want the figures to be.
The next step is to define it more, and I know this looks like that 'how to draw an owl' meme, but I promise--getting from the loose sketch above to below is not that difficult.
Things to keep in mind are--don't go too in-depth with the details, because things are still subject to change at this point. In terms of making a suitable anatomically-correct sketch, I would suggest lots of studying. This doesn't even have to be things like figure drawing, I genuinely look at people around me for inspiration all the time. Familiarize yourself with the human form, and things like weight, proportions, posing will seem a little more feasible.
It's also important at this stage to consider your composition. Remember to flip the canvas frequently to make sure you're not leaning to one side too often. I'm sure something can be said for the spiral fibonacci stuff, which I don't really try to do on purpose, but I think keeping things like symmetry and balance in mind is a good start ✌️
Next step is just blocking in the figures. Standard. No fuss 👍
Now onto the background!
It's frankly hilarious how many people thought I was *hand-drawing* these maps and stuff 😂😂 I cannot even begin to comprehend how insanely difficult that would be. So yeah, we're just taking the lazy copy and paste way out 🤙
I almost always prepare my backgrounds first, and this is mostly to get a general color scheme off the bat. For collage work, it's really just a matter of trial and error, sticking this here, slapping this there, etc. I like to futz around with different overlay options until I've found a nice arrangement. Advice for this is just--go nuts 🤷♀️
Next, I add a few color adjustments. I tend to make at least 2 colors pop in an art piece, and low and behold, they usually tend to be red and blue ❤️💙There's something about warm/cool vibes, idk man..
Now we move on to coloring the figures. This is just a basic block and fill, not really defining any of the details yet.
Next, we add some cursory values. Sloppy airbrush works fine, it'll look better soon I promise 🙏
And now--rendering!
I know a lot of beginner artists are intimidated by rendering, and I can totally understand why. It's just one of those things you have to commit to 💪
I've decided to show a brief process of rendering our dear Johnny's face here:
Starting off, I usually rely on the trusty airbrush just to get some color values going. Note--I've kept my sketch layer on top, but feel free to turn it on and off as you work, so as to not be too bound to the sketch. For now, it's just a guideline.
This next stage may look like a huge jump, but it's really just adding more to the foundation. I try to think of it like putting on make-up in a way~ Adding contours, accentuating highlights. This is also where I start adding in more saturation, especially around areas such as ears, nose and lips. Still a bit fuzzy at this point, but that's why we keep adding to it 💪
A boy has appeared! See--now I've removed most of the line layer, and it holds up on its own. I'll admit that in order to achieve this realistic style, you'll need lots and lots of practice and skill, which shouldn't be discouraging! Just motivate yourself with the prospect of getting to look at pretty men for countless hours 🙆♀️
I'll probably do a more in-depth explanation about rendering at some point, but let's keep this rolling~
Moving forward is just a process of adding to the figures bit by bit. I do lean towards filling in each section from top to bottom, but you can feel free to pop around to certain parts that appeal to you more. I almost always do the faces first though, because if they end up sucking, I feel less guilty about scrapping it 😂 But no--I think he's pretty enough to proceed 😚
They're coming together now 🙆♀️ Another helpful tip--make sure you reuse color. By that, I mean--try to incorporate various colors throughout your piece, using the eyedropper tool to keep a consistent palette. I try to put in bits of red and blue where I can
Here they are fully rendered! Notice I've made a few subtle changes from the sketch, like adjusting the belt buckles because I made a mistake 😬 Hence why you shouldn't put too much stock in your initial sketch~
The next step is more of a stylistic choice, but I usually go over everything with an outline, typically in a bright color like green. Occasionally, I can just use my initial line layer, but for this, I've made a brand new, cleaner line 👍
And the final step is adjusting the color and adding some text:
Tada!! It's done!
All in all, this took me the better part of a week, but I have a lot of free time, so yeah ✌️
I hope you appreciated that little walkthrough~ I know people have been asking me how I do my art, but the truth is--I usually have no clue how to explain myself 😅 So have this half-assed tutorial~
As a bonus, here is a cute (cursed) image of Johnny without his mustache:
A baby, a literal infant child !!! who put this wee bairn on the front lines ??! 😭
Anyway! peace out ✌️
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there's something about the way people talk about john gaius (incl the way the author writes him) that is like. so absent of any connection to te ao māori that it's really discomforting. like even in posts that acknowledge him as not being white, they still talk about him like a white, american leftist guy in a way that makes it clear people just AREN'T perceiving him as a māori man from aotearoa.
and it's just really serves to hammer home how powerful and pervasive whiteness and american hegemony is. because TLT is probably the single most Kiwi series in years to explode on the global stage, and all the things i find fraught about it as a pākehā woman reading a series by a pākehā author are illegible to a greater fandom of americans discoursing about whether or not memes are a valid way of portraying queer love.
idk the part of my brain that lights up every time i see a capital Z printed somewhere because of the New Zealand Mentioned??? instinct will always be proud of these books and muir. but i find myself caught in this midpoint of excitement and validation over my culture finding a place on the global stage, frustration at how kiwi humour and means of conveying emotion is misinterpreted or declared facile by an international audience, frustrated also by how that international audience runs the characters in this book through a filter of american whiteness before it bothers to interpret them, and ESPECIALLY frustrated by how muir has done a pretty middling job of portraying te ao māori and the māoriness of her characters, but tht conversation doesn't circulate in the same way* because a big part of the audience doesn't even realise the conversation is there to be had.
which is not to say that muir has done a huge glaring racism that non-kiwis haven't noticed or anything, but rather that there are very definitely things that she has done well, things that she has done poorly, things that she didn't think about in the first book that she has tacked on or expanded upon in the later books, that are all worthy of discussion and critique that can't happen when the popular posts that float past my dash are about how this indigenous man is 'guy who won't shut up about having gone to oxford'
*to be clear here, i'm not saying these conversations have never happened, just that in terms of like, ambient posts that float round my very dykey dash, the discussions and meta that circulate on this the lesbian social media, are overwhelmingly stripped of any connection to aotearoa in general, let alone te ao māori in specific. and because of the nature of american internet hegemony this just,,,isn't noticed, because how does a fish know it's in the ocean u know? i have seen discussions along these lines come up, and it's there if i specifically go looking for it, but it's not present in the bulk of tlt content that has its own circulatory life and i jut find that grim and a part of why the fandom is difficult to engage with.
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let's talk about that one scene in oops
(and fizzarolli in general bc me and my autism r obsessed with this scene and haven't seen someone break it down. also ft. blitz lmao)
just a general scene and vague character breakdown/analysis!
i first of all want to admire the perfect representation of best friends to enemies with blitz & fizz because ugh.
And like Blitz tells everyone this but the way it's so malicious here. Just the perfect simple dig and Fizz's little shit eating grin because it delivered how he knew it would sdfkjsdkf. Shoves Blitz to the side because really that's all he cares to say. Fuck you and what you did to me, bye bye <3 Fizz is so for talking shit and dipping (House of Asmodeus) I love how messy it is but also shows how he really doesn't hold malice for Blitz otherwise. Obviously we see this front and center later in the episode once they start reconnecting, but I like the subtlety and how he's so willing to snap at Blitz despite his usual anxiety with confrontation.
Blitz also knowing exactly what to say to really piss Fizz off once things escalate <3
(Fizz literally so smug and content with himself lmfao)
(smirk wiped off bc hey that's the thing i'm sensitive about!!)
But Fizz keeps his composure. And if you'll let me be alarmingly gay for a second, I love how his version of keeping his cool as a messy gay is managing to basically recreate this drag race confrontation in what is probably my favorite set of Fizzie lines.
eat him up babes. also it's so important that that shitty coffee and fizz were on this side of the street for framing i'll talk about it more in a sec jfskjdfksf.
and now my personal favorite exchange of this entire scene that is criminally underrated imo:
love his face after this line. I SUPPORT DISABLED PEOPLES WRONGS sfjdlkfsdd. literally so fucking nasty with his clown wit but also so justifiable because yeah blitz did just pull this nightmare and dip in fizz's pov. i cannot wait for that to get touched on more likeeee why were they kept apart ugh.
and finally!!
this cut to blitz,, specifically the scarred side of his face is sooo good.
the face of a man who just achieved critical vicious mockery vs. the face of a man that knows he can only win this interaction one way now
Blitz does deserve a little violence maybe <3 Fizz underestimated his ass jjdkfsdlk.
Idk I just love how indicative this whole interaction is for their characters but especially Fizz, it's a perfect build-up for him. Fizz has major imposter syndrome with dual layers because of general haters but especially because of Mammon and Asmodeus. Not on any fault of Ozzie's,, we just see Fizz obviously thinks he isn't fully deserving of their relationship/his situation and the healthy dynamics of it and so do most major news outlets apparently askjfsk.
(full fizzy meme post & also i like how this is a special also like damn do u think they were also apart of the crossword??)
It'll be really interesting to see how his character develops in future episodes because I feel like a lot of what I've rambled about here has come to a resolution after 2 Minutes Notice in the musical special lmao. I really like how here when he goes to compose himself, this is how he does it.
Makes me wonder how many times him and Ozzie have had the self-worth and imposter syndrome conversation before it finally stuck in the Mammon Musical Special. I just love their relationship and how they compliment one another,, and how it projects into Fizz's other relationships because they're healthy for one another. Love my OTP love Blitz & especially love Fizzie. Obviously.
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Thinking about an AU where Techno, Wilbur and Tommy are all the harbingers of the actual entire apocalypse and Phil (just some insane guy) decides that those are in fact his kids and starts gaslighting the absolute shit out of them about it.
Rambles under cut!
I wanna try something where they're just more insidious and passive killers than anything else, theyre mostly just biding their time and watching as wherever they're lingering around gets sicker and just starts withering away.
They're a slow moving threat that just can't be stopped and for some reason (because Kristin thinks its funny) Phil just isnt affected by them.
Phil: Oh Techno's always been like that ever since he was a baby
Techno: I have literally never met you a day in my life
Tommy: Idk man... you have always been like that
Wilbur: Oh my death he's actually getting to us
Its a mix of that combined with that "how did he know I was a gemini" meme
Phil: Wil! I brought you some salmon, I know how much you love it!
Wilbur: How the fuck did you know I like salmon
Phil: I'm your dad silly, of course I'd know :-)
I just think itd be super fun since Phil in this au is literally just some insane dude. He literally lies about their entire childhood but does it so consistently and so realistically that it throws them off guard.
I also have a few ideas where they start referring to Phil as their dad in the beginning as a sarcastic / mocking thing but accidentally just getting themselves even more adopted as they do it.
Phil: Wilbur put on a coat
Wilbur: I don't need one!
Techno: Go on, Wil. Listen to dad
Wilbur: Ugh fine. Only because dad wants it, though
Stranger: Whos this?
Tommy: Oh thats our dad. He kinda just tags along
Stranger: Aww thats so sweet! You got his nose and everything
Tommy: I- wh- no he's not actually our da-
Phil: I know he did! Isn't he the cutest, spitting image isnt he?
Tommy: You're not my dad!
Stranger: Oh someones embarrassed!
Phil: Yeah he's going through a rebellious phase right now
Just a mixture of things like that where it starts as calling him it but then accidentally actually giving him parental authority along with that.
I also wanna explore how Kristin and Phils relationship would be like. Maybe her as death being very bemused by this silly human that just decided she was his wife one day.
She literally visits him in dreams and stuff and he just acts as if they're married and have been for years. He complains about their 'rambunctious kids' and how he has to threaten them with her so that they behave sometimes. She finds it so silly and just cant help but play pretend.
Kristin: Hello, human
Phil: My love! Its been so long since I've seen you
Kristin: We've never met
Phil: Oh don't say that! It hasnt been that long. I've just been far too occupied with our boys to visit too much
Kristin: Our boys? I made them
Phil: And they came out beautiful! I'm so glad Wil and Tech got your eyes. I was hoping they would.
I think that'd be a core part of this AU as well. Everyone is playing pretend but then it just fuzzies and it all becomes real for them. At first its a joke that Phil is her husband and their father but then they get lost in the fantasy and fun of it all and actually accept him as such.
Phil has no ulterior motives either, he's literally just a strange insane man that heard stories about neotrio and started thinking they were his kids one day. He genuinely believes his delusion and they end up accidentally making it a reality.
He just makes lucky guesses and plausible lies often enough that he's still shiny and new, he's still fun to play with and thats what ends up 'tricking' them all.
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