Hey! You! Person soaking in the rain! Yes, you! What on earth are you doing just standing out there?
You don't know? Then come inside my shop and get out of the rain, you poor dear. You look soaked to the bone. Come, sit down, I'll get you some tea and a blanket to help you warm up. Hm? Oh, yes, of course you can look around. Most of the items around are for sale, if your interested.
Dragons-Denizen is an independent artist creating amazing designs for great products such as t-shirts, stickers, posters, and phone cases.
Anything catch your eye? Oh? The tea cups walking around? Yes, they're for sale, though I'd recommend buying their tea pot as well, or they'd get quite lonely.
Oh, and that egg potion? Oh yes, it's such a little darling, though I'm not sure what it's effects are meant to be. All I remember is that it replenishes itself, so you don't have to worry about hurting it if you do try drinking some of it's potion.
Ah, and the Yarks Varen Post card? Hmm? Writing? What writing?
Is there anything else you'd like to know more about? Let you think about it? Of course. Enjoy your tea in the meanwhile, dear.
and here we have the physical version! The right middle butterfly came off its wire while i was putting it on last night and i have no idea if its properly glued on but everything else should be okay...? we'll see i guess.
Pchooooooo It's a troll oc. I'm trying to figure out poses stuff, so I found a troll doll maker (http://farragofiction.com/DollSim/index.html?type=2) and was originally just trying to do troll + pier but here we are now. Me vs knees and feet today were having a battle. And yeah. I made the pants poofier to avoid the knees. sh.
Update on the pumpkin-ening! she's now 2d+ and i don't have an exacto knife nor the scissor skills to cut out her tattoo and other parts so they're staying as is.
Sorry for the quality, had to fight tumblr to even let this upload ;^;
I mentioned that fabric could be used for backgrounds and clothing patterns and realized i should put my money where my mouth is so i drew this.
Not yet made onto real fabric, due to my ma wanting to do something with frames.
Plan is to have JUST the character cut out (no outline), cut out my curtain fabric and put character on that (which is what the outline is) and then put that onto the pumpkin fabric. The pumpkin fabric's much brighter in person, so idk how well this'll go but experiment!
The character's sorrrta a sona of mine? Ish? Really the sona's a pumpkin orb with legs, and this human shaped vers is usually in a purple suit. This time tho, i was looking at scene clothing (bc of the bg) and went hmmmmmmmm, and then stumbled on diaphonized specimens and went oh!!!! Need to do that! Drew her naked went oh wait clothes now what and came up with this on the fly. These are the best shoes ive ever made, and they're completely black to hide lines, rip.
creature drawings be upon ye! And yes, that is a homestuck wiggler grub baby. I was thinking thoughts at the time and was thinking about how the official troll babies are kid of weird and how I wanted to draw fat baby cheeks to pinch. Then whabam, grub-ier grub baby.
As for the above two pics, I've been told I should prob just make a specific fanfic into an original and I've been putting that off by trying to make original species and I'm not very good at it yet, rip. Still, fun to try out!
Wabam! an oc I haven't ever fully finished drawing before today. Usually I'm like, suuuper slow on drawings, here's the sketch one day, here's line art another, and coloring usually multiple days but today, she came out in one go. Even did a simple bg. I just was watching a vid on bearded dwarves in fantasy and remembered my own bearded lady oc (not dwarven, she's more bigfoot-esque?) and just jumped right into drawing her.
Her name is Alyssum, Alice as a nickname. She's a shy, introverted character, who spends most of her time around plants. Then, a little kid drops from the sky and she has to find a way back home for them, oh no! She was a school project where we made posters for fictional movies and she was what I came up with! (the fake movie's name was 'Dealing With Your Monsters', btw!)
Never finished that poster, I'm not sure how that project went anymore, but she remains a favourite of mine. Below is a pic of her in her original look!
Big difference, huh? I could NOT figure out how to do her dress at all. I do wish I kept her bulkiness she has here, but brain refused.
Howdy howdy! I wrote an article on Villainess Manga and put it on ao3. It's about how Villainess manga has changed because of Wish Fulfillment stories. You can find it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/74681766/chapters/195045121 or you can read it in the keep reading.
If you have any suggestions or feedback, I'd love to hear!
An Essay on Villainess Manga, or Help, My Subgenre’s Homogonizing and my Villainesses aren’t Mean Anymore!
An Introduction to Villainess Manga: Why Are Villainess Manga Read in the First Place
Villainess Manga (Or Manhwa, or Manhua, or even webcomics) are simply put, comics that feature a main character who is referred to as a “Villainess”. This may be a role or title they’re referred to in the future, past, or even present, and it may even be a title they didn’t earn themself. Often times, our main character is either reincarnated into a story as the Villainess of the tale, or our main character was a Villainess in her past and now has decided to change her ways (via time travel, or living her new life in exile). This means that our main character can be put in a wide variety of situations and still be called a Villainess. Reincarnates and decides to become a baker instead? A staple in the “genre”! Goes Back into the past to exact revenge in a cruel and unusual manner? A common occurrence. A villainess who’s trying to survive her extremely murderous family by convincing them she’s murderous too while trying to escape? You’re looking at one of our most well known classics, Roxana. Have fun!
Okay, but what’s the point of classifying them as Villainess, instead of cooking or revenge or psychological? Girlhood and the expression of it on the “Negative side”. Our main characters aren’t Heroines or Side Characters. They’re the women who are expressly meant to be seen in a negative light, by the role they’re in. And that can be used to show how to get out or through those negative views to live a better life, or used to show when being bad is the best way to get through a situation. Also, and this is very important, sometimes they’re just really cool.
What Changed
Something that’s been popping up in this “genre” is an influx of… not using the villainess role to its fullest let’s say. Instead, these villainesses are changed or outright start not as villainesses, but as Heroines, but now in a different hair color. Black hair, instead of pink. It’s not just that there are some manga that are being pushed out just to make more money, which is fine, but they’re doing it poorly and against what the niche was originally meant for. A Villainess isn’t someone that just was bullied and now needs to be swaddled, she’s someone who was hated widely, and now has to deal with those consequences.
But then, how did this change even happen, from a character exploration to something that seems to be just another Heroine Fantasy?
It happened because of something called Wish Fulfillment.( And money and Capitalism, but that’s not very specific in this current age.)
Purely Wish Fulfillment in Villainess Form
What exactly do I mean by wish fulfillment? Isn’t all art to be shared a form of wish fulfillment? Sort of, but not to the extreme that’s happening to cause a whole genre niche to switch. What we’re looking at is Purely Wish Fulfilment, where something was made just to fill in a specific need, and nothing else. Someone saw an empty space, and thought to fill it. It’s great for scratching specific itches… but when there’s so many of them, all without saying anything about what they’re made about, it squishes down what the art was originally made to be a part of. Making it a whole bag of M&Ms when it was meant to be trail mix.
These M&Ms, or specific Wishes to fill, usually come in two varieties. The Villainess being praised by the world, or the Villainess is against the world and is ready to fight tooth and nail.
The Villainess Turned into A Sweetheart!
With the sweeter side of these wish fulfillment stories, we see our villainess is just a beaten down character by the world who just needs love and everything will finally be great. The story asks that you pity this Villainess for being the Villainess of the story, and once that’s out of the way, she will now get all the love she was never given. If she was reincarnated, she is now loved by everyone who meets her and sees her great new ideas for improving the world like soap. If she’s always been a Villainess and now she’s being exiled, she was never really at fault in the first place and they’ll wish they still had her excellent mind as she now lives a happy relaxing life. She was never in the wrong in her life, and now she gets the great reward of fluffy creatures, good food, and a hot male lead(s) to follow her every word like a duckling. Which, I won’t deny, sounds like something fun to read if you’re in the mood for it.
Things like My Lady Just Wants to Relax exist for a reason. Sweet wish fulfillments are great for when your mind is just in need of something sweet to turn your brain off to. But once again, we run into that M&M problem. What does My Lady Just Wants to Relax actually do with its main character being a villainess? It gives her a bit of trauma to be resolved via her new harem-found family, and that’s it. It’s a problem to be solved easily as a way to make a bond between the main characters, and not an exploration about femininity in any form. The role of Villainess could have easily been replaced with Previously Bullied Heroine, and nothing would have changed.
In contrast, however, there is a manga that does have a Villainess making food premise as its wish fulfillment, that I believe does explore what it means to be a Villainess. Lady Rose Just Wants to be a Commoner. This is a manga in which once again our main character is a Villainess exiled who decides to make food in her new commoner-life (she bakes bread, in this case. She’s not the owner of the bakery either, she just bakes bread.), but this time she’s being inundated with men from her life as a Villainess who just want her to come back to her old life. Except the life she lived before was a mask she wore, something to present a face of perfection that nobility demanded while playing her role. A mask she doesn’t want to wear anymore, because it literally traumatised her. All while still showing scenes of her making good food, becoming friends with another woman, living her life freely. This is a story where you cannot swap out being the Villainess with being a traumatised Heroine without changing the meaning of what’s being said about the story. With being a Villainess here, she’s someone who has hurt others while forcing herself into being someone unapproachable for her own survival as a noble. But if she were a traumatised Heroine, she’s now no longer someone who has had any fault in this situation, and instead is now someone learning how to overcome that trauma to live a new life. A story that has its place in being told, but not the same as before. It doesn’t hold the same meaning for the readers. It is an exploration in being the Bad Guy in a story and coming out of it.
The Villainess Yearns For Revenge
Here, on the darker side of Wish Fulfillment stories, getting revenge. Our villainess has been pushed around by the world, or more usually her family, and now she’s out for revenge! This usually comes in the form of time travel, coming back to the past after being betrayed with new future knowledge to make sure the thing to fight back against can’t gain a foothold to be able to stab our main character in the back. These types of stories usually have the people opposing our Villainess as evil awful people who are caricatures we all should root against, such as an evil stepmother who’s stolen all of your money, or a “Heroine” sister who’s done everything to make our main character take the fall for being evil.
We’ve all had times where we’ve wished we could take revenge, to not turn the other cheek when someone did something wrong against us. An itch that needs to be scratched, and feels great to scratch in the form of revenge stories. And, when a Villainess is in these types of stories, she usually does do things that would put her as someone hated by the world, putting her against the world! Exactly what we were looking for, right? Something that would be filled by a story like The Villainess Turns the Hourglass, wherein our Villainess comes to the past after being executed because her sister positioned her as a criminal, and so she reenacts revenge against her sister and stepmother who caused her downfall. She manipulates people, she lies, she… fake flirts with her stepbrother. She’s a Villainess through and through! But once again, it must be asked… what exactly does all of that explore about being a Villainess? What it means to take purposefully evil actions to enact a plan that gets you hated? Or does it just fill that itch that says “I just want to get one over on them and get away with it”?
In contrast, I’d like to bring Villains are Destined to Die. This one may not be exactly getting one over, but it is definitely a revenge. In this, our main character is transmigrated into a Villainess who’s despised by her family for having tantrums and not being the daughter they were using her to replace. In return, she makes sure they realise that the pain they’ve caused her currently and in her past (pre-transmitigation) was unjust, and that they’ve long since gone past the point of ever being fully forgiven. Less of a direct revenge than The Villainess Turns the Hourglass of turning the family against each other to implode, but a devastating revenge in my opinion. In this, being a Villainess is directly in front for why people don’t like her, and it’s in turn why she fights back in evil ways. Her maid uses needles to stab her awake each morning because she’s basically abandoned by her family? Use that needle to blackmail that maid into treating our Villainess like her boss and eventually helping with other less than legal things. In the Villainess’ past pre transmitigation, she shot at other nobles with her bb gun? They were putting insects in her tea and otherwise harassing her. It’s a cause and effect, a showing of how someone could become a Villainess (especially through ways that a Villain wouldn’t normally face, such as being harassed at tea parties) and when’s the right time to fight back and be a Villainess. Against someone who has knowingly caused you harm and intends to continue. When the other won’t listen to you in any other way. When you are in danger, mentally or physically. Protect yourself, fight for yourself. A ‘Do not go quietly in that gentle night”, sort of message. It’s a story that’s very sympathetic to the woman who used to be our Villainess pre transmitigation, the woman who had been bullied and harassed her whole life and fought back with teeth. And every woman needs a bit of that, in a world where woman are told to pull their teeth and be gentle.
They Used to Bite.
The thing about Villainess stories in general, is that they’ve changed. They used to bite. They used to talk about the different aspects of what it means to be a woman. They used to be a story that held meaning in what they were talking about. Now, with so much Wish Fulfillment being put on the market, they’ve just become a marker that says “This girl’s got issues :C” and says good enough with that. They’ve become a marker the same way that “Werewolf boyfriend” is a marker for what kind of monster you’re dating. It’s become a filler title, instead of a title that says “We are going to be looking into some things that you as a woman should look at”. It hurts a bit to know that the old ways of Villainesses are going or are smothered under everything else. I’m not against Wish Fulfillment, but I’ve had enough sweets. Please, just let me eat something real again. I just want to read about a story where being considered evil actually means something. I just want to stop feeling like being a woman means that you’re supposed to be a figure who never does anything wrong. I just want to be seen as real. Why is that wrong?
Look at my mangy cat! It's gonna be my neocities halloween cat this year. I was gonna put a robe on him make it all torn like I did with my minecraft skin but I was like... but the corruption hole 🥺
I really need some sort of picture or something I can just put in response to things online, because there are definite days where I'm like "Oh! I would love to comment on this fanfic, it's wonderful and I love it! But! I can't do words today, words are bad from me and cannot be written." and like. I can do '<3' but sometimes a fic needs more than that yknow? So that's another thing to add to my projects list >;p
Dadadadaaaaa! these are what I've got for now. Not 100% on all of these (I swear the ones I'm like hmmm about change each iteration) but I'm leaving them as is to try them out and see if I like them or not. We'll shall see!
My ma made a good point about social media stuff. She was posting some stuff onto facebook and had a post-warning-limit thing that only popped up only when she tried posting some political things. She decided that it's not safe there and moved to bluesky, but has also decided to clear out some things from Google-owned platforms.
I'm not gonna nuke any blogs I had or anything, but I think I'm gonna scour through my yt playlists, download anything I think is gonna get deleted/removed, and remove any things that'll obviously get me flagged. (ie anything about pirating, things that can be flagged as a convenient reason to keep an eye on me?)
I'd recommend taking the time to go through your youtube and downloading stuff you might be worried that might be pulled off of youtube. Or things you especially like, since anything that could go through youtube to strike stuff down might act like the copyright claim system and make like. A lot of accident flaggings?
I think I'm also gonna start looking over any n/sfw stuff I want to keep too, since that might be nuked too (with how much the internet's been trying to wipe n/sfw stuff off of the internet, Trump's finally going to make the final push on that). Maybe think about it like the Tumblr n/sfw purge?
since I've seen like... 1 post about october (surprised noone's queued up things for october 1st midnight), here is a cat I edited to have a hat and wand.
