Had To Do A Nonfiction Comic For Class So I Chose To Do Mine On How Mario Got His Voice! Pretty Happy

you know what’s crazy. you can do just about anything

ahato mizuta / dedf1sh.

MY GUY🐕🐕🐕

so come you coyotes, and howl at the moon

till there’s blood upon the sawdust in the last chance saloon!

do you see my vision

this was super fun to draw bc i feel like i've finally adapted my style to digital art and also this is two of my favorite wlw ships and im proud of myself for coming up with this :)

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.

“ITS NOT FAIR HOW DID PEWDIEPIE GET SO GOOD AT ART SO FAST IN JUST A YEAR WHEN IVE BEEN DRAWING LONGER THAN HIM AND MY ART LOOKS WORSE”

im gunna say this as gently as i can, in order to improve your art, you have to put actual effort into doing so aside from simply “drawing everyday.” Drawing every day is good advice and has lots of benefit, but unless you are engaging in constructive practices while you’re doing that daily drawing, your art WILL remain stagnant.

Engage in critique with your artist friends of a higher skill level on what you could improve on, watch videos about art and how to improve your art.

study artists you like and pick apart exactly what about their art is appealing to you personally and apply that to your work. Contrary to popular belief, art does actually require lots of effort to become good at.

Theres plenty of resources out there. USE THEM.

AMAZING Pokémon TCG SV Temporal Forces (2024) Reuniclus illustration by Atsushi Furusawa (removed card text)

gec

CONTENT WARNING: STALKING

A lot of brewskis have noticed my slow down these last few months and this is the major reason for it. Yes, a person at my work has been following me at the beginnings of my shifts and has not gotten any repercussion. I don't feel safe anymore. My partner and I are moving, but even still we don't feel comfortable with me working at that place, however it's difficult as I don't have a college degree and this place pays more than most jobs around here.

We have some plans in place, but I'm financially struggling. I hate to do this, but I created a ko-fi to help with relocation and to help stifle some of the burden of quitting this job. All the money would go towards things like rent, groceries, and car payments. I do have a Patreon, but it isn't bringing in enough to help with this issue and I'm debating about deleting it due to me not being able to keep up with things over there.

Anything helps, but don't donate if you can't---reading this and sharing it will be a massive help still <3