Untitled

[brittlemawmonster]

Me and my sister have been playing the demo for Clerks and Quirks on Steam together. She says it's her new favorite game ever, actually! So I doodled the characters we were using stressed out because this game is stressful. :)

[brittlemawmonster]

I've never been all too interested in Strawberry Shortcake, but I've been watching the 2003 cartoon the past couple of days (I'm about halfway through, though) so I doodled these while doing so. It's pretty charming. I also watched a bit of the Berry Bitty and Berry in the Big City Series. The top is obviously my design for Strawberry Shortcake, and the bottom is 2003 Strawberry who I traced over with my design, since that's the show I've been watching. People should really do this when they do redesigns: Putting them in the original style. It's fun!

Right off the bat, the character designs of 2003 are great! All of the characters are very distinct and reflect their food well (sans Huck, but he really exists to be the 'athletic boy friend' which he does reflect).

To be perfectly honest, a lot of the characters are pretty flat, at least in the 2003 version. They're not horrible, I really like Custard and the friendship she has with Huck is incredibly cute. Custard is incredibly pesimistic, contrasting Strawberry's endless optimism well (to the point the use the glass half empty/full analogy in the first episode) and she is the character who has an arc in the first episode. I especially love the line about 'I didn't think of him as different. I just thought of him as Huck.' (Probably butchering it a bit)

Honey is pretty well written. She is a little annoying, but I always appreciate when older cartoons have a more 'show boasty' female character who isn't a villain. She also, strangely, has a lot of episodes regarding her? Don't get me wrong, I just said I liked her, but it feels kind of weird having a pony main character when the others are all human children and one cat? Like, she just feels like an MLP character? Is she Rarity?

Strawberry herself is... Perfect. In both 2003 and from the bit I've seen of Berry Bitty she is very much the role model for kids. She is always telling the other characters (especially Custard) how one is supposed to act as they act up. She always has the solution. No stories have really challenged her as a character yet. Still, I can't help but kind of like her just because... She's such a ray of sunshine. Like, the show and the world and the vibe is all just so charming and you put this adorable, do no wrong, optimistic, sprite-like-creature role model for 5 year olds in the center stage. It isn't very complicated, but it is very cute. :)

The other characters are fine. As I said, I like Huck and Custard's dynamic. Huck is also pretty stand out in the group because he isn't food based (I know he's huckleberry pie, but he in no way resembles it and he has no hobbies related to it) and acts a lot more 'boyish' by virtue of... being a boy in an early 2000s cartoon for young girls. He just has a very different vibe.

Ginger Snap and Angel Cake are a bit too similar to me? In the beginning of 2 of the 45 minute episodes of S1, Strawberry opens by telling the audience about her friends. Her description of Orange Blossom is different, given that she runs an orchard and makes organic food, but she describes both GS and AC as 'super creative' and they both make 'the best of their assigned desert'. I think that Ginger Snap is the smart one, being a bit of an inventor, and Angel Cake is a perfectionist who cares a lot more about the art of cake making while GS is quantity over quality. Still, I hope they both stand out a bit more as I continue.

While the characters are a bit plain, though, friendship in general is adorable. They have good chemistry, all being nice and supportive and clearly loving eachother. I can't fault a cute friendgroup. :)

Also, I think the idea for a Strawberry Shortcake 'reboot'/AU that has been forming in my mind without my consent is something I'm interested in exploring? I already have a lot of ideas for the characters. I dunno. We'll see.

Anywhos, that's what I'm thinking so far about the 2003 Strawberry Shortcake show. If you actually read all this, please do tell me! I adore character and story analysis, but it would feel pointless to continue sharing it online if no one gave a crap. What do you think about the show? If you love it, why? Even if you do love it, what are some of its shortcomings? How about the other installments in the series that I only watched a couple episodes of? Etc. Etc. Lets chat! <3

Have a lovely day!

[brittlemawmonster]

Good 'ole Lungfishopolis. What do you think? LINDA IS HARD TO DRAW! ANY MISTAKES ARE MY OWN INTERPRETATIONS OF THE DESIGN, DAMMIT!

I love Linda! She's a sweetheart and she was completely screwed over by Oleander. Still, she appreciates Raz and helps him out of not only a sense of duty, but I like to believe a genuine compassion. Her mind isn't the deepest in the story, only because the entire conflict of it is brainwashing, which inherently removes autonomy from her own mind. Still, there's a lot of great details. The resistance obviously represents the part of Linda's mind that is resisting Oleander and they seem so peeved with Raz? I take this to mean that the part of her that's resisting is just so pesimistic; just trying to survive the next event and kind of anti-everything? That's a loose interpretation, though, and I'm open to different suggestions. I think my two favorite parts of Linda's mind are the wonderful, 'She's more scared of you than you are of her," And then Raz being a giant monster in her mind (which is an obvious, but fun visual interpretation as well as fun gameplay wise), and the fact that (and this may be a stretch, but I like it), the resistance's method of 'taking back the city' is through verbal persuasion (pamplets) rather than brute force, because that's all Linda can really do. She isn't psychich herself, can't go in and beat of Kochamara like Raz did. She can only talk herself down. Brainwashing isn't a violent act but a mental one, and she's employing the same method onto her inner lungfish. I dunno. It's small, and could be unintentional, but I love it.

What's your favorite part about Linda and/or Lungfishopolis?

(Also, I have a mini comic idea for Chloe and Linda together. Maybe I'll do that if there's interest.)

[brittlemawmonster]

This is unfinished and won't be finished (because I'm unhappy with it), and will likely be redrawn sometime soon, but I'm posting it anyway because I just spent 4 hours on it and even failures should be shared if you put that much time into it :(. Constructive critism welcome and appreciated. If you have any ideas for Gristol's mind for my 2nd attempt, I'd love that.

I'm still going to talk a bit about his mind for a second, though. Gristol's/Nick's is one of my absolute favorites aesthetics wise! It is an 'It's a Small World' esc park ride where you can get off the ride and explore the set! That is just so fun to me! Aside from the general vibe of the mind being so fun and one of my favorite minds to explore, it shows a lot about Gristol. I've heard that Gristol is the one unsympathetic villain in Psychonauts. Unlike others, when you enter his mind, you don't find deep rooted family trauma or genuine connections made post-villainy. Post exile, it is very clear that he still lived in luxury eating caviar. He hated his parents, likely having no genuine connections. He was likely coddled growing up, facing little to no consequences from anyone around him and, when karma struck, he blamed everyone else around him. He's a narcissist, and a master manipulator proven by the fact that 'everybody loves Nick!' He's a bad person. I think the monotoned carnie guy really shows this. The carnie uses words like 'propoganda' to describe Gristol's ride portraying his own world view, proving that at least some part of Gristol knows he's bullshitting himself. He doesn't care. He's lying to himself, and he almost believes it. Like all Psychonauts characters, and most people in real life, Gristol isn't irredeamable. He is deeply ill. He needs help. His actions (attempted and successful) are not excused obviously. He hurt a lot of people and was ready to wage war over his own innate sense of superiority. But that is not a normal way to think. He needs serious help. I think the Psychonauts can help him. Anyway, that's my take on Gristol's character. My favorite parts about his mind (ignoring the awesome aesthetics) are how he sung in the end of the ride and the carnie guy. He sung over the characters subtitled as 'Children of Grulovia'. He sees himself as their voice. Yet, the carnie, as I mentioned before, is bored, over the whole ordeal. He is subtitled as 'propagandeer' and refers to his work as such. At first I hated his addition, thinking it was comic relief where it didn't belong, muddling Gristol's mind. Again, though, I think he's the part of Gristol that knows he's lying, making excuses. Yet he does his crap anyway. Gristol isn't the hero of his own tale. Even in his own mind, he's the villain. What's your favorite part of Fatherland Follies?

[brittlemawmonster]

Here's some Good Omens Ineffable Wives things I doodled before the finale. I love character and story analysis and would love to have a conversation about the finale and series as a whole if you want, but I'll warn you my thoughts on S3 are mostly negative.

[brittlemawmonster]

ALL of my MLP drawings because I want to share them but don't want to post them all individually. Most are self explanatory. I toom all of the drawings w/o a background and crammed them into one image. Other than that, the one with the purple background is Pinkie dressed up as Surprise (her original design before Hasbro made Faust change it). The scenes w/ Fluttershy stressed about her element and Rarity calming her down are for a mini AU I made where Fluttershy was too cowardly to take up the mantle and it caused a lot of serious harm.

Okay. that's it. Hope everypony likes them. :)

[brittlemawmonster]

Inside Gloria's Mind.

I love Psychonauts! What's your favorite part of Gloria's mind? Mine is a little weird, but it's this one line of dialoge that The Phantom says in the catwalk section if Raz falls. "Ha. Just like Gloria’s mother!" At first, it's a terrible line from a terrible character... Until you realize that he's a part of Gloria, her inner critic, and everything he says reflects what she sees as her own personal failings. Combined with the fact that we know Gloria loved her mother, her mother committed s***cide, and that it is heavily implied that it was because of jealousy over Gloria's success, Gloria clearly blames herself for her mother's death and taunts herself in her own mind. That's my interpretation of it, at least, and it's my favorite part of Gloria's Theatre, even if it's such a small detail.

Anyways, hope you enjoy! Maybe I'll do the other minds like this.