Dancing Skeleton

A skeleton's fanwork sideblog (art under #iri-art and writing under #iri-fic). AO3 is under IridescentSkeleton. Currently excited about stick figures!

[iridescent-skeleton]

AvA 13 spoilers in the form of screenshots:

TSC's powers apparently include:

Super Speed, Super Strength, Telekinesis, Laser, Healing, Water Breathing, Animal Communication, Magnetic Field, Revive, Clone, Shapeshift, Gravity Warp

You're pretty OP, Orange, when you don't have somebody who can control you.

[iridescent-skeleton]

Alan Becker and his team continue to impress me with plot points I hadn't previously considered.

Spoilers as I re-watch and ramble about my AvA 13 thoughts below in order:

Agent's shrug is hilarious. "Not my problem. If the boss is cool with this intimidating rando then so am I."

TCO reaching for TDL... 🥺 TDL immediately being violent in response, and then completely ignoring TCO for the entirety of the remaining episode. Such a petty, abusive ex.

A lot of clones, but also maybe not as many as I would think for a facility this size? Certainly less of them now.

The color gang back together! Red being the one who makes things happen as usual. There's the color-picking and filling I had previously headcanoned for the workers. And wow they genuinely dgaf about Yellow vanishing. Did the knocked out workers stay knocked out the entire episode? Or did they wake up in that box to nonsense and also decided to not gaf about the color gang?

The trauma responses to TDL... 🥺🥺

The memory downloading/viewing really is a more powerful tool than I ever expect. This one ability is driving everything.

TDL being bossy right away to V1c. I wonder if they anticipated that later punch at all or was too self-absorbed to even consider the betrayal.

Most of TSC's abilities that V1c is scrolling through are the same established ones just repeated. The new stuff is the cloning, magnetic field, animal communication, and water breathing. Later glimpse more stuff, like shapeshifting and "GravityWarn" (whatever that means edit: it's definitely "GravityWarp" now that I've looked again). The implications...

Cloning as in cloning self or others? Reminds me of that one fic I've been keeping up with...

"Animal communication" what does that even mean, that nobody has been apparently "communicating" with animals this whole time despite their advanced interactions. It's probably a throwaway to make TSC look extra powerful, like the water breathing, but, like, what does it meeeeeeean--

V1c seriously dgaf about anything but their immediate goals, screw this company and all the work that went into this building. I appreciate their power being limited, so they aren't too OP, but the times it goes out seem arbitrary.

Yellow is a hazard with that elbow. TSC being more concerned about their friends being safe, and Red backing off. I wonder if TSC is okay with being a tool to save people like V1c described, combined with being scared TDL will go after their friends again.

Hazard casually turning into caution sign cracks me up.

TDL so excited that they are successfully repressing free will.

Misti's literally been dead nearly 3x longer than she was alive. V1c. Buddy. No therapy? Not once in the 11+ years? Just keeping the company limping along with exclusively clones and Agent in the hopes of revenge?

I slowed down to look at TCO's memories. I knew it was too much to hope to find memory bubbles that didn't include previous on-screen footage... I continue to rely on fanfic to satisfy my desire to know TCO.

Confirmed that TCO did indeed half-heartedly tell TDL to stop with the firebombing.

I wonder if V1c feels even a tiny bit of guilt for beating up on TCO incorrectly. I doubt it, based on that shove. Single-minded V1c.

AvA is, at its core, a story about stick figures beating each other up. I get it, but also I think I would be more feral about it without that being such an important part of the narrative.

So the eraser doesn't erase the actual stick figures? Maybe it has to be wielded by a human to do that.

V1c sees the benefits of cloning themself to defeat an enemy, but I think TDL is too proud to even consider that. Goop teleportation is neat. I had liked the headcanon that Rebuilt TDL lost the fire powers and only had goop--delayed but now canon for now. Also V1c is officially the most powerful since they control others' powers.

TDL reaching out for V1c after winning the fight... 🥺 Because TCO did it to them the first time? Because that was a regular thing between TCO and TDL during spars? TDL wants to connect so bad, but only on an unequal playing field.

The parallel of Mitsi as the unfeeling cursor as V1c disintegrates. The way she's still in shock after her free will unlocks, not mindlessly trying to rescue others.

Apparently you can flatten to death. Was this part of Agent's abilities all along?

TCO so scared... Their nightmare about TDL coming true all around them. Willingly locking themself into a dark cage in the name of survival. "I'm no hero." 🥺

Yellow getting an upgrade for next time. Definitely Alan doing his best to make them more popular, lol.

TSC feeling the urge to unlock at all the mayhem, but mostly because they see their friends getting scared. All for naught.

Mercs to the rescue! Or trying to. And why do they care about the color gang more than the worker clones? Clone bias confirmed? (edit: No, probably convenience--Yellow had the tool to protect them, and Primal is so big they needed a big box. Still, clone bias would be interesting to explore.)

Mitsi is back online enough to protect the sheep, then shows that staying near the enemy can be a protective strategy.

TDL is so proud. "Yes, I have found a way to eliminate pesky personalities and boast unlimited power at last. Now I am truly living up the name The Dark Lord."

YES. MITSI RECEIVING AGENCY PICKING UP THE PENCIL. BEING A MAJOR PART OF THE STORY FOR NEXT TIME. Thank you Alan Becker team.

[iridescent-skeleton]

AvA 13 👀👀👀

[iridescent-skeleton]

Vic and Alan helping Chosen to fly in "Please Mom, Don’t Adopt My Stickfigures" by @thenocturnenarrator

[iridescent-skeleton]

POV you're a player about to meet your demise

[iridescent-skeleton]

biting chewing gnawing v2

(redraw of my most popular doodle)

[marisatomay]

I was talking about this with a friend but a really interesting cultural shift over the last ohhhhhh ten years maybe is that many people in fandoms view themselves as stakeholders and not audience members. Because of that, they think that the fandom should be running things, or at least have an acknowledged say in how something is run. And every reminder that they are not in control, no matter how small, bothers them.

[marisatomay]

This has always existed to an extent but it used to be very siloed and only noticeably prevalent in certain fandoms and everyone else in fandom spaces generally agreed that it wasn’t healthy to act like that. Now it’s seemingly every fandom with an online presence and it’s all happening much more publicly than ye olde Trekkie forum.

[marisatomay]

I do think that the increase in access to creatives through social media, extended promotional cycles where you do a thousand interviews and all of them get clipped for instagram and tiktok, and an increase in entertainment and fandom aggregate social media accounts which keep people updated on all of those clips and every second of the creative process has had a big hand in creating this sense of ownership that audience members feel. It makes us feel like we’re on the team because we think we know so much. But we are not and we don’t.

[callmearcturus]

Co-signing every single word as someone who is old enough to have watched almost this entire process happen from the evolution of web 1.0 to 2.0 to whatever dark abomination it currently is.

The ONLY thing I feel the urge to add is while a lot of this was born of social media (and this horrendous notion that every celebrity from your local band to the top billed actors of the world must have their own Online Brand and frequently do their own PR work to maintain that, which is and always was bullshit),

some of it is outsiders coming into the space.

As our platforms have vanished and communities have combined on the load-bearing pillars of the internet (reddit, twitter, facebook, IG, etc), the creative teams behind our media (and their PR teams) have invaded fandom spaces. At best this has happened out of support of the culture; at neutral this happens because the artists feel creative fandom is worship of the art and thus entitled to it; at worst this happens as a calculated move because having a strong fandom around your art can lengthen the half-life of it, how long the audience will interact with it.

[iridescent-skeleton]

Happy Homestuck Day to my original favorite black-and-red duo

[iridescent-skeleton]

I have an Actual Drawing Tablet to use with a Real Life art software now. But the "stroke eraser" tool on Samsung Notes is now such a major part of my process that I'm struggling to transition...

[iridescent-skeleton]

Headcanon that Purple was the one who introduced Blue to the wonders of enhancing your style using hair pieces.

[iridescent-skeleton]

Fandom Racism in AvA/M: A Series of Thoughts

Racism is not a personality trait that belongs to mean people. It includes actions that anyone can take. It is deep in societal culture, and takes work to unlearn.

Some people like to cause discourse, and use race as a starting point. These are trolls, and should be blocked and ignored.

Some people notice racist choices being made by fellow fans, and try to approach the issue. Because of the trolls and people mistakenly believing racism is a personality trait, however, some receiving fans treat this as discourse and no productive conversation or reflection happens.

Racism in fandom is hurtful and exclusionary towards fans of color.

Yes, even if it's subtle. Yes, even if you don't mean it. Yes, even if you're also a fan of color.

To learn more and start to untangle the racism in your own head, find educational resources. I suggest starting with looking through the Creating Black Characters' syllabus, and going from there.

In the meantime… I have a few thoughts specific to the AvA/M fandom worth considering (if you haven't already considered them).

Race is not made super obvious in this fandom because the characters are mostly stick figures. We've only seen it with minor/background characters like the Minecraft villagers (with explicitly different skin tones) and Mitsi/the village characters (with their hair choices).

As such, our fandom feels very free to interpret things how we wish. Making human versions or adding human characteristics to these blank slate appearances can be a beautiful opportunity to explore!

Or it can be an opportunity to not make thoughtful choices and let our unexamined biases through our designs.

I'm not here to police anybody's decisions in character design.

I just think everyone deserves to have the opportunity to consider all of the thoughts they might have otherwise missed when making design choices, so their choices can be a little more thoughtful.

For example…

When turning the stick figures human, some people choose to make the whole cast white and without any specific ethnic background (Irish, Italian, etc.). If you make that choice, consider that it helps to reinforce the "white is default" trap (or specifically "white American is default") that lots of media already falls into. The whole stick figure cast is full of color, so it wouldn't be strange to expand that to be a variety of colorful humans as well, even if your own skin is just one color. It might make fans of color feel more included.

The Chosen One is commonly interpreted as Black. If you choose to include that into your design, do it while remembering that TCO and Victim are the only literally black characters, both of whom have suffered through slavery and torture. This design choice might feel icky to Black fans who are admiring your art.

Purple is commonly interpreted as white. If you choose to include that into your design, do it while remembering society tends to associate royalty as white and European, as if whiteness improves your status. It might be a missed opportunity to challenge this narrative bias.

Green is commonly interpreted as Black, which I believe is because of DJ's love for this character leading to the fandom to make Green look similar to him. I don't see the similar challenges with Green as I do TCO, but do consider that actions you have Green act out may fall into stereotypes that might not have happened otherwise. Also, if you choose deliberately to not make Green a Black character after seeing it so common in the fandom, consider why. It will elevate your character design to be certain of your choices.

These are just some noteworthy things to mention in regards to race and racism in the AvA/M fandom. I've been trying to tackle my own racist biases here as well--you'll notice in my art how I'm constantly shifting my hair designs to be more intentional, and trying to settle on something that makes narrative sense instead of just looking cool. I've switched TCO to be more Japanese like Alan, instead of with coily Black hair just because it looked cool when other people did it. I'm keeping the Green-looks-like-DJ thing both because it looks cool and because it's a trend that breaks the "white as default headcanon" which is nice to encourage.

This kind of critical thinking can be applied to other societal traits as well. We can consider the implications of choosing a specific gender, disability, religion, etc. in our stick figure interpretations. It's worth considering and talking about this, because not only will this improve our confidence in character design and address larger societal problems on a manageable level, but it will also help more diverse fans to feel safe and included here.

[iridescent-skeleton]

havin' a chat

[iridescent-skeleton]

Challenge the rancher that wrestles creatures much bigger than you if you dare.

[itzrix]

[FREE COLLAB] :D‼️

It's funny to think that my purple might be the youngest purple among the purples..

You can join if youre board just make sure to keep it sfw :3

[iridescent-skeleton]

Matching the energy 💜

(My usual "art program" isn't made with fancy stuff like layers/etc. so this was a fun lil excuse to figure out some things. Krita has a surprisingly good magic wand function, had no problem dealing with the JPG I was feeding it.)

[iridescent-skeleton]

arguing in the desert

[iridescent-skeleton]

tired after work with nobody to go home to

[rm6y7m6]