back in the revolutionary days, “veuve” (lit. “widow”) was one of a variety of colorful nicknames for the guillotine; by the 1800s it (ALLEGEDLY) was gay slang for, as far as I can tell, a bottom*. so make what you will of that information
the source of this factoid seems to be henry ashbee’s weirdo victorian sex encyclopedia, which I have no reason to consider a painstakingly reliable source, but the same passage includes the very entertaining story about Victor Hugo accidentally wandering into a gay cruising ground, so we can dream. that being said, if you decide to read ashbee’s work further on the strength of this, watch out for a lot of homophobic & otherwise bad attitudes and some other disturbing content (see “victorian” and “sex encyclopedia”)
also note that it seems like veuve can also now be slang for various other rude things. slang with caution
(*for the implications of patiens, the Latin word the source is comparing to veuve, try here, pg. 189-- nsfw text at link, needless to say)
it’s my sister’s birthday today so i drew her characters kamei and moe from her webcomic the winter campaign. it’s a story of equal parts FAMILY SECRETS and TEEN ROMANCE (or maybe.... 60/40.....) set in early 20th century Japan, she’s been drawing it for like seven years and I admire it a lot. check it out!! (ps there’s been some ~drama~ lately so it’s a good time to tune in... just saying...)
this drawing is heavily referenced/copied from this work by kasamatsu shiro, but I don’t think the architecture is very accurate to the time or place of the comic, so just don’t worry about that,
a comic I started for Valentine’s Day and finished at around the right time for the beginning of Floréal… so that’s all right then. happy spring, everybody
(I tried out something different for the formatting of this photoset, so please let me know if it’s difficult to read!)
hope you’re all well. to be honest i didn’t post a lot this year because for about half of it i was really sick. it sucks but sometimes bad things happen! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ i didn’t draw anything for a long time but luckily i’m doing a lot better now.
this year i’m going to start drawing again in a pretty casual low-pressure way, so i still might not post a lot for a while. i’m also graduating from college this year so i’ll have a lot of IRL stuff to work out! if you don’t like following blogs that aren’t very active it won’t hurt my feelings if you unfollow, but if you want to stick around for a bit that’s ok too, i’m not planning on abandoning this blog permanently or anything.
have a good and healthy new year! hang in there!! i will be doing so as well
(here are some year-end reviews from previous years: 2016 2015 2014)
I’m a little slow on drawing things to post here, because I’ve been working on thumbnailing/scripting for an original comic for once in my life!! so here are a few wips (not related to each other)
I’m not a stickler for all Les Mis movies being exactly like the book, because due to time restraints that’s basically impossible (I like the 2012 movie, and it leaves out plenty of stuff!), but when your movie is three hours (!!) and there’s clearly been a lot of effort put into including details from the book, up to including actual dialogue, this seems like a weird place to cut corners.
(also, you DO have time for a bunch of instances of women getting pushed around and assaulted, hmmmMMMmmmm, great)
anyway, if you’re thinking “but star-crown, what three hour long les mis movie am I gonna watch now”, maybe check out the 1934 Raymond Bernard one, which has its own idiosyncrasies but is good I think
it’s not being a lawyer if they don’t catch you doing it
aka “I see you craving those hot hot Le Chapelier Law jokes, I GOT EM HERE”
history note: with the caveat that my grasp of what laws were in place in France at any given time is somewhat inexpert especially wrt the 1830 government change fdjkfld why, the gist of the legalese here is “workers’ organizations formed with intent of unionizing or striking weren’t supposed to be allowed in the early 19th century for various reasons,* but some other types of workers’ organizations were judged innocuous enough to pass muster”. for more on this topic, see The French Worker: Autobiographies From the Early Industrial Era edited by Mark Traugott, from which I learned every single thing I know on this subject and which is also interesting for its own sake! (the first panel is also from an illustration in it)
I was going through a lot of old sketchbooks when I was at home for a few weeks, and I came across this weird contextless comic page. For something I must have drawn at some point in high school, the art’s not that bad, but unlike most of the characters in my old sketchbooks, I have no memory of who these guys were, what they were doing, or why I drew this in the first place.
The Mysteries of Paris was published about twenty years before Les Miserables, and like Victor Hugo, Eugene Sue is also concerned with criminal justice. Less like Victor Hugo, some of Sue’s ideas for reform are totally bananas, and even within the context of his own novel don’t seem to work all that great.
some historical footnotes about the last comic under the cut!!
“hey, star-crown, is anyone actually doing anything illegal in this comic” well... it’s not super straightforward to find unbiased sources about the history of anything to do with gun control laws (WHO COULD HAVE GUESSED), so I can’t actually confirm whether just carrying around guns or ammunition would get you arrested (I mean, javert does give marius a gun, so...?). but I guessed based on some lines in les mis (like when it’s describing the atmosphere in early 1832 and it mentions things like the police seizing cartridge-making materials from a drawer in a junk shop) that it was at least something the authorities might Want To Ask You Some Questions About. as long as it felt kind of historically plausible that was ok for me!!
hats? since they’re outside, everyone in this comic should be wearing a hat and yet they all wander around Paris bareheaded like animals. this has everything to do with the fact that I think 19th century hats look kind of goofy and I don’t want to draw them. i’m sorry (on the other hand, I don’t have any evidence that the kind of scarf enjolras is wearing is especially historically accurate, but I do like drawing scarves, so...)
I would have liked the Authority Figures at the end to just be police officers, but it needed to be something that both grantaire and the reader could instantly read as Authority Figure, so it ended up being National Guardsmen (?? I hope) instead. References: [one],[two], for colors I just went straight up Tom Hooper
references for buildings (used very loosely) come from NYPL Digital Collections!
courfeyrac is telling combeferre the plotline of les visitandines
a comic I started for Valentine’s Day and finished at around the right time for the beginning of Floréal... so that’s all right then. happy spring, everybody
(I tried out something different for the formatting of this photoset, so please let me know if it’s difficult to read!)
not a lot of posts from me so far this year...!! shrieks
if it’s any consolation this comic is shaping up to be about 10-12 pages, probably in color? A NICE BEEFY POST (thank you for the advice on the last post, by the way! I still haven’t figured out exactly how I’m going to handle it but it’s good to see how other people deal with it)
I actually like doing this kind of long comic but the flip side of it where you don’t hear from me for a month isn’t great D: I think I’m going to hold back from posting more wip panels because I feel like those aren’t that interesting out of context but I look forward to showing it to you!
origamiaround
baratheonpilled
titsay
blakekathryn
kianamaiart
romaincrisis
janainaart