Badfungi - Wasting Time

girl help i’m having creation ideas above my skill level

reading the latest opm chapter like

The existence of this meme is especially for them

This has always stuck in my brain because it's the first time we see Vash talk about a plant as a person, referring to the plant as a girl instead of "it" like the crew and assigning morality/emotions to her... and it's so interesting me that he's shittalking her as selfish. Whenever Knives talks about plants, he's seeing them as weak and defenseless and unable to protect themselves from humans; a lot of other talk/imagery around the plants in the manga centers on them as angelic, giving, kind. Vash is the only one who ever talks about them expressing things like fear, confusion, anger, and selfishness, which feels a lot more like recognizing personhood in them than reducing them to victims or angels.

IDK I think it ties into my general frustration when Vash gets flattened to being only ever nice, patient, or worst of all, naive. As if he's kind because he can't help it or doesn't know better, not on purpose. He's frustrated with his "sister"'s behaviour and how many lives it's threatening, and he also sees her as a person whose life an personhood are equal to theirs and wants them all to be okay. He sees the negative aspects of others, is fully aware of the consequences of his actions and the risks, and he cares despite, even so, regardless.

(Also seen in another light it's just funny. Like ugh I just wanted to enjoy my trip and then my bratty sister threw a tantrum and nearly blew us all up just because a JJBA villain attacked)

The Summer Hikaru Died and onomatopoeia

I've wanted to gush about this topic for a while and i have no organized thoughts but a lot of feelings i need to get out. First and foremost being "Holy shit this manga is so damn loud" which is a weird feeling to have since manga is generally understood to be a silent medium.

And yet the Mangaka MokuMoku Ren has filled their work to the brim with sound. Now comics using onomatopoeia (words that echo a noise ie: crunch) is nothing new the sound of a fist hitting it's target and walls being wrecked is nothing new. But usually onomatopoeia is worked into whatever action is resulting in the noise

adding both a sense of motion as well as sound. Which is what makes The Summer Hikaru Died's use of it so unique and compelling. To utilize onomatopoiea you have to give up on space that could otherwise be going to deatil work in the background or foreground. Now this is fine with smaller unobtrusive effects like Wolverine's claw extending, and there's numerous example's where a sound will take up large portions of the page to show how loud something like a bomb going off is. But i've yet to see another comic western or otherwise so consistently use this facet of the medium to instill such claustrophobia and dread. As a slower paced horror manga The Summer Hikaru Died builds it's suspense mostly through atomosphere, the supernatural happenings weighing on the surrounding evironment until they break the surface

The use of sound is heavy, it's harsh, it's a vehicle to show how wrong things have gotten from the whisper of "it's coming" heard in the ringing bell of a train crossing to the omnipresent call of birds, bugs, and frogs that pushes in on the paneling shrinking the world with their cacophony.

the way sound shrinks the world making reader and character both feel suffocated by the drone is matched by how the manga uses silence as a way to make the characters feel exposed and vulnerable. the page is now empty of distraction the world of the story on full display and it still feels wrong it's agorophobic, at least amidst the din there was some sense of anonymity being just one voice among hundrends.

even the speech bubble feels out of place as it wanders off desperate to fill the space. The manga is full of these moments of sound and silence in some dance with eachother always too much or too little, never comfortable. It adds a lot to the horror of the manga, and is just one part of many that makes The Summer Hikaru Died such an excellent manga, every chapter I can feel my skin crawl as the setting becomes more hostile to the charactres while they uncover more of the truth of their circumstances.

I actually have so much green lantern nonsense to post its insane (<- dude who will forget to post on tumblr)

served my duty as an autistic artist and made a bunch of autism creature reaction images

Honestly the queue and schedule post options on Tumblr are extremely underrated. No other major social networking site has the ability to do that with the same ease as Tumblr does, and we've had them for like a decade now. They're fantastic features and Tumblr doesn't get enough credit for having them.