#mellowfilmmaker

[punkheart11]

@mellowfilmmaker

I love Monika and everything about her. I wish she was canon! Anyway here is my submission. I wanted to give her a really energetic personality. She was really fun to design!

[friedeggtarts-archive]

@mellowfilmmaker Colored lines + Typical SU style Monika Dewey. I put some design explanations underneath the cut, hope that’s ok! It’s been a while since I’ve drawn in SU style so hopefully this is good enough :) 

[COMMISSIONS] [INSTAGRAM] [KO-FI]

Hair + Bow-Tie + Shoes - Because of Dewey’s crush on Pearl, some parts of Monika’s design mirror Pearl’s. 

Nose + Color Scheme - I imagine Buck got his nose from his mother because Mr. Dewey’s nose is so different. The color scheme for Monika is color picked from Buck. 

Outfit - The coat and collar I took from Mr. Dewey. The pants are just a cool design I saw on Pinterest. 

Eyes - I just think she’d have nice eyes. 

[perispinel]

Why MellowFrames Fails At Satire

First of all, why do I think MellowFrames is trying to be satire in the first place? Well, satire is defined as "a work that ridicules it's subject through the use of techniques such as exaggeration, reversal, incongruity, and/or parody, in order to make a commentary or criticism of it." What's something I complained about in the past in regards to MellowFrames? Putting criticisms into the comics. So yes, I think it'd make sense to call it a satire on Steven Universe... Unfortunately, as my title suggests, I think it fails at that goal. Why is that? Well, remember the list from before- exaggeration, reversal, incongruity (meaning putting something in an unfitting situation), and parody, I order to criticize. However, it seems like instead of using parody to criticize, it's doing the reverse, with comedy taking a backseat to criticizing things that are supposedly wrong with the show. Let's go into more detail though:

Exaggeration

Tell me, how do you exactly exaggerate a cartoon that's already pretty over-the-top, fantastical in concept, and very comedic? There are many ways to figure that out, but the wrong answer is most likely to go episode-by-episode, taking the plots of the episodes and simply changing the dialogue to have characters comment on things. The most it can do is to exaggerate the time things take to happen, but it's a comic, time is relative to how long you take to read, so that isn't really factoring in much.

Reversal

Reversal is to present things in the opposite order, a satirical tactic never taken advantage of in MellowFrames, because at the same time that he tries to poke fun at SU, he also is trying to play out an actual story as if this is just an abridged series. Things happen in the same order in MellowFrames that they do in the show, literally- each episode is done days or are most months within the episodes coming out, not counting ones done a while after the episode came out. This is in contrast to things like DBZA or Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged which are done when the show is complete or near complete. Isn't it odd to try and make a running plot in your parody series when the source is still running at the same time the parody is?

Incongruity

Incongruity, as mentioned, is presenting something in a situation out of place or in a situation unfitting to the surroundings, like hypothetically putting Dendy from OK K.O. in a dramatic and violent cartoon setting to mock that genre. Rarely ever is this used in MellowFrames- even when things are photoshopped into different shots, it never comes out as being so out of place that it's funny (in my opinion). It seems that the attempt to make it into it's own story (one only different from SU on superficial levels) gets in the way of potential comedy.

It's not like Mellowfilmmaker is awful at writing humor or anything- check out his Captain Planet one-off parody, it does amazing at poking fun at the flaws of the original show with a very intriguing concept... That's the thing though, it was a one-off. I'd bet if he tried to make a parody series on all of Captain Planet it would get stale really fast, same way Shrek was a great satire on Disney but got stale after three movies.

So, I hope this is a thorough enough argument on why MellowFrames is not a good parody or satire on Steven Universe.

[ozu-teapot]

Do you have film struck? I'm guessing that's how you got access to all these films.

No I’m in the UK and we don’t have filmstruck here. There are other streaming services though (not so arthouse) and of course you can find stuff online, but I qwn quite a lot of the films I post on disc.

[blueonwrestling]

mellowfilmmaker replied to your post “I’ll be doing shit for AEW Double or Nothing, obviously when it’s a...”

I think it’s tomorrow

yeah tis i fucked up.

my bad, this ones on me.

[melancholykiwi]

@mellowfilmmaker: Howdy! Heard you needed someone to draw your Mellowverse character Monika Dewey, and, since I’m a big fan of your work, I decided to give it a go!

This is how I imagined her based off your description. The image is transparent for your convenience, and I tried to make her as accurate to the show’s style as possible. Hope you like it (And that I’m not too late)!

[fandomsandfeminism]

I think we should rename MRAs into CWMRA ( Cishet White Men’s Rights Activist). I think that’s more accurate to what they’re like.

LOL. Honestly, just calling them assholes would probably be the most honest 99% of the time. 

[fandomsandfeminism]

mellowfilmmaker replied to your post “You could make a statement that everyone is entitled to air, and...”

I'm sorry to say this, but it's because you're a woman. For some reason, people (mostly guys) have to prove a smart woman wrong.

Lol. There are times when being a Woman with an Opinion on the internet is like wearing a “kick me” sign. ahaha.