Ashmycelia - Ashwini

the process of becoming is beautiful in itself

he eats tomatoes like apples btw

happy PRIDE i’m here i’m queer and i believe the land should be given back to the proper indigenous stewards.

golden

hi hello I checked out Laika's Comet a while back and man it's stunning! it's been a bit of a driving inspection for me to potentially make my own comics/stories but I don't know where to begin... what's your writing process like? do you write the story out as if it were a novel first then develop it into a visual medium or is it something entirely different? I've been interested in comics and the like since middle school and I've always wanted to hear someone's process for making them and I hope this ask finds you well

before drawing them, i script my comics the same way you would write out a screenplay! i've written screenplays for a film and a few short TV-episode-length shorts for school, as well as a play. the structure of it just so happens to work really well for comics too.

in screenplays (the way i was taught at least) you cannot write what a character silently thinks or feels - you can only write how they act. anyone who reads the screenplay should be able to interpret that character's unspoken thoughts/feelings/motives from the subtleties of their actions, because in the real world, there are rarely voice-over narratives or thought bubbles.

this also creates a little more tension within the narrative itself... if the character's silent intentions were all revealed to us as the audience, we'd have very little to be curious about. if there's something that you need to show that they wouldn't say outloud (either because its out of character or just not something a normal person would ever do) its your job as the writer to create instances in which that information can be revealed naturally.

i write comics the same way. i DO think narratives or thought bubbles are a useful tool unique to the medium of comics (so i would say dont wave them off by any means) BUT if you learn to write like you would for TV/movies then you can write comics in a way that builds intrigue/tension LIKE would be built in the moving picture... and you will cut any reliance on 'easy' answers behind the knees. basically, you'll train yourself to be a better writer.

also, the way screenplays are organized is soooo much easier to figure out how many pages your comics (page length) are going to be. if one page of written script is one minute of on-screen time, then one pages of script for a COMIC is usually (for me) equal to one page of actual DRAWN comic. i appreciate the efficiency and straight forwardness of the structure.

a piece i made for my senior art series

doodle of ryker when he was a child (3 or 4 years old) the deer's name is MR. DIRT

yippee

wogh oh no

So I've seen a few too many people on twitter talking about The Kiss Scene from the new Scott Pilgrim anime. People saying it's fetishistic and indulgent, people calling it male gazey, etc. And while the kiss itself is certainly a bit exaggerated, I felt like writing a bit about why I disagree, and why context is important, like it always is. But it basically turned into an extended analysis on the metatextual treatment of Roxie Richter. So bear with me. It's a long post.

What really matters about this scene is not the kiss itself, but what precedes it. Not even just the fight scene just before it, but what precedes the whole anime series, really. And that's the Scott Pilgrim comic book, and the live action movie. Because in both, Roxie is a punchline.

She's a joke. Her character starts and ends with "one of the exes is actually a girl, I bet you didn't expect that." Jokes are made about Ramona's latent bisexuality, the movie especially treating it as funny and absurd, and her validity as a romantic interest is entirely written off by Ramona as being "just a phase." There's a fight scene, she's defeated by a man giving her an orgasm which implicitly calls her sexuality into question (come on), and the movie just moves on. It sucks. It really, really sucks.

The comic fares a little better. It never veers into outright homophobia like the movie does, and while the line about Ramona having gone through a phase remains, Roxie actually gets one over on Scott when Ramona briefly gets back with Roxie. But Roxie is still only barely a character. Like all the other evil exes, she's just a stepping stone towards the male protagonist's development. She barely even gets any screentime before she's defeated by Scott's "power of love." But Roxie stands out, since she's the only villain who is queer, or at least had been confirmed queer at that point (hi Todd). In a series that champions multiple gay men in the supporting cast, the single undeniable lesbian in the story is a villain. She's labeled as evil, made fun of, pushed aside in favor of the men, and then discarded. Her screentime was never about her, or her feelings for Ramona. It was about the straight, male protagonist needing to overcome her. And that was Roxie Richter. An unfortunate victim of the 2010s.

Fast forward to current year, and the new anime series is announced. Everybody sits down to watch the new series expecting another retelling of the same story, and.... hang on, that straight male protagonist I mentioned just died in the first episode. And now it's humanizing the villains from the original story. And there's Roxie, introduced alongside the other evil exes in the second episode, and she's being played entirely straight, without a punchline in sight. No jokes are made about her gender, no questions are made of her validity as one of Ramona's romantic interests. The narrative considers her important. In one episode, she already gets more respect than she did in either of the previous iterations of Scott Pilgrim. And this isn't even her focus episode yet... which happens to be the very next one.

The anime series goes to great lengths to flesh out the original story's villains and to have Ramona reconcile with them. And I don't think it's a coincidence that Roxie gets to go first. While Matthew Patel gets his development in episode 2, Roxie is the first to directly confront Ramona, now our main protagonist. This is notable too because it's the only time the exes are encountered out of order. Roxie is supposed to be number 4, but she's first in line, and later on you realize that she's the only one who's out of sequence. She's the one who sets the precedent for the villains being redeemed. She's the most important character for Ramona to reconcile with.

What follows is probably the most extensive, elaborate 1 on 1 fight scene in the whole show. Roxie fights like a wounded animal, her motions are desperate and pained. Ramona can only barely fight back against her onslaught. Different set-pieces fly by at breakneck speed as Roxie relentlessly lays her feelings at Ramona's feet through her attacks and her distraught shouts. And unlike the comic or the movie, Ramona acknowledges them, and sincerely apologizes. And the two end up just laying there, exhausted, reminiscing about when they were together.

Only after this, after all of this, does the kiss scene happen. Roxie has been vindicated, she has reconciled with the person who hurt her, the narrative has deemed that her anger is justified and has redeemed her character. And she gets her victory lap by making the nearest other hot girl question her heterosexuality, sharing a sloppy kiss with her as the music triumphantly crescendos.

It's... a little self-congratulatory, honestly. But it's good. It's redemption for a character who had been mistreated for over a decade. And she punctuates the moment by being very, very gay where everyone can see it, no men anywhere in sight. Because this is her moment. And then she leaves the plot, on her own accord this time, while humming the hampster dance. What a legend. How could anything be wrong with this.