Posts tagged Mission Statement

Well, hello new followers gained in the last hour! What a lot of you there are. I assume you’re here because Pokemon? I bet you are. For your convenience, here is your Welcome Pack, to help you navigate which tags you’ll actually want to see on my blog and which you’ll want to avoid like the plague for being spurious nonsense:

  • ‘Elanor liveblogs Pokemon White 2 for a bit’ - this one does what it says on the tin, to be honest.
  • ‘Multiplayer notepad’ - this one is for when I decide to just chat inanely with people.
  • ‘Spies with Badges’ - this one is for utterly pointless short stories written with most of the denizens of Multiplayer Notepad, and is fictionalised silliness of the tallest order.
  • ‘… I have much more to say’ - this one is for the Random Pointless Activities my husband asks me to do because he wants to see the results, like answering 30 day writing challenges and liveblogging obscure Sylvestor McCoy Doctor Who stories. In fact, the Pokemon began that way, too. You may have noticed; I’m not a natural liveblogger (I know, I hide it so well).
  • ‘mission statement’ - this one is for posts like this, where I explain administrative changes for your blogging enjoyment.
  • And, there is a collection of various tags I use for the subjects that are On Topic for this blog, the most notable of which are ‘Real Figure’, ‘Real Poses’ and things like ‘comics’ or ‘video games’, fairly normal stuff.

Thank you and enjoy!

(Public service broadcast brought to you by because allgoodheroesdeservekidneys)

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Hello, Followers

So, if you’re following me just for the Pokemon, as a heads up it might get a bit sporadic this month because of reasons pertaining to Real Life because apparently Environmental Science degrees don’t accept what amounts to a lengthy and convoluted video game No Prize as a relevant source for a 3000 word report on a Phase 1 vegetation survey, even if you write a fuck-tonne about Sawsbuck; also, today I went to the second funeral of a close family member this year (NEITHER of whom has returned as a Yamask yet, I might add) so Family Stuff, and then there’s -

Well, then there’s NaNoWriMo. Yes, that’s right - it’s the return of what my husband terms Booky Booky Writey Month. My relationship with same is a bit complicated this year because of time issues, but the story can be summarised thus:

  • I’ve got this story that I’ve been writing on and off for years and wrote a full draft of back in 2008’s NaNoWriMo.
  • I really really REALLY wanted to write the next draft this NaNoWriMo.
  • See above for time constraints, leading me to conclude I could not do this year’s NaNoWriMo.
  • I became by equal measures morose and/or uncontrollably violent every time I saw a post tagged ‘NaNoWriMo.
  • In fear for his limbs/life/sanity, Steff told me he had much more to say, and to grow the fuck up and just do NaNoWriMo.
  • I considered this sagacious position carefully, and decided to do NaNoWriMo.

Just, not so much in a single month; it’s going to be something I just keep steadily working on. The big problem for me, see, has actually never been word count. Writing is something I could do in my sleep. I really don’t want to sound like I’m boasting here; I’m not saying that so great, intense and continent-moving is my skill that I could write the Great American Novel in a weekend in spite of not even being American or anything (plus, that’s To Kill A Mockingbird; already written, and I didn’t write it.) It’s just that a skill I have in writing, reading or anything else relating to the written word is the ability to just sit down, block out the world and Get It Done. I mean, I’ve got two drafts of the bloody thing already. I know I can produce it.

BUT I can only do that if I have a plan to write to, and I… don’t, really. Not really. I have eighty million and three ideas, yes, but I’ve just not had time to sift through them all and work out a coherent framework. So basically, November just marks the start of my ongoing novel writing, now beginning In Earnest and also beginning with Planning The Sod. This has made me much chirpier, and much less violent.

If you have no desire to see anything about my NaNoWriWoes, then Tumblr Savior it; that’s the tag I’ll use, although at the minute I don’t know if I’ll actually mention anything on here. It’s going to be a looooong time before I get chance to do anymore serious drawing right now, unfortunately (cue loss of fifty followers), and as I say the Pokemoning is going to become a bit sporadic probably, but there at least I can promise that every time I play White 2 I will still blog anything that happens.

I shall not be blogging about my Phase 1 vegetation survey, mind. No one wants that. There’s no comics or Pokemon in that. I tell you, this degree is not what they promised.

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Hello, people what are following me!

Just to let everyone know, I’m planning on instigating a new Tagging Regime, so that I may use this blog to ramble on about nothing in particular a bit more. I’m very aware that most of you are not following me for my elegant banter and incisive worldly observations, however, so yeah; this is my quick explanatory note about the tags, that you may Tumblr Saviour your way out of having to listen to my spectacularly banal opinions on shit.

The point of the blog is to redraw superheroes with real life figures. I will allow for the odd costume redesign to be considered relevant to this, and also anything about comics art that I reblog (such as mini-essays on gender depiction and the like). Anything outside of this will be tagged with “Off Topic”, such as any discussions of homosexuality I may have or whatever.

I might put a lot of Scribbleverse art up on here, though, and I’m not sure whether that counts as Relevant or not, so I’m also going to introduce a “Grey Area” tag. That way, if all you want from this blog is redrawn superheroes, dammit, stop pissing about, then you can Saviour block both the Off Topic and Grey Area stuff; if you don’t mind seeing our invented superheroes just block Off Topic; and if you don’t mind listening to my Views On Things then, er, ignore all of the above.

gailsimone: comicqueens: — Black Canary redesign, by Mat Major I like this a lot. Dinah don’t need no weapons, though… So I’m thinking I might branch out into this a bit, since part of my original reason for Tumbling was to show how stupid some costumes would look on a woman with a real hourglass figure. And since it’s been pointed out to me, I find myself being more and more annoyed by the discrepancy between male and female costumes - men are so clothed the only skin on show is their lower face half the time (Cyclops, Captain America, Batman etc) while women end up with a minimum of 50% skin exposure (and yes, before anyone jumps up eagerly to say it, I KNOW THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS. Sit back down. I’m talking about the overall trends.) So I think I might do a few redesigns. It would be nice to do some male ones too, but that will involve me assessing my physically male friends for a Comics Conformist figure and forcing them to pose, and I don’t know if any will agree. But hey. If I can find a good, un-photoshopped picture online I’ll use that.

gailsimone:

comicqueens:

— Black Canary redesign, by Mat Major

I like this a lot.

Dinah don’t need no weapons, though…

So I’m thinking I might branch out into this a bit, since part of my original reason for Tumbling was to show how stupid some costumes would look on a woman with a real hourglass figure. And since it’s been pointed out to me, I find myself being more and more annoyed by the discrepancy between male and female costumes - men are so clothed the only skin on show is their lower face half the time (Cyclops, Captain America, Batman etc) while women end up with a minimum of 50% skin exposure (and yes, before anyone jumps up eagerly to say it, I KNOW THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS. Sit back down. I’m talking about the overall trends.)

So I think I might do a few redesigns. It would be nice to do some male ones too, but that will involve me assessing my physically male friends for a Comics Conformist figure and forcing them to pose, and I don’t know if any will agree. But hey. If I can find a good, un-photoshopped picture online I’ll use that.

193 notes

When my father was eighteen, he read To Kill A Mockingbird and decided that, amongst the many gems of wisdom contained within its pages, it was a manual on how to be a good father. I’ve read To Kill A Mockingbird, but I have no clue which bit he was thinking of when he decided it was telling him to read comics to his children as bedtime stories. Presumably there was logic there somewhere. Either way, I therefore grew up on the Dark Phoenix Saga and Tony Stark’s battles with alcohol. These things have led to Point 1 about me, which will help to explain why this blog exists.

1. I really really love comics.

Point 2 is less to do with Dad’s parenting and more to do with his genetics. Well, and my Mam’s.

2. I am lucky enough to have, in the land of Real Life, an actual hourglass figure.

This is mostly pretty good, since it means a 28GG bra size and a 27 inch waist, but the thing about hourglasses - the crucial thing - is that the top and the bottom are both balanced for accurate sand-based time measurements, so 40 inches of shoulder and thigh comes with that. My shoulders could comfortably bear a yoke, and my arse could block out the sun. It’s brilliant.

I mention these, though, because in recent years Points 1 and 2 have collided somewhat in my head. It has been a long time since I saw a female superhero in a comic drawn with anything approaching a genuine hourglass - they’re frequently drawn with one in mind, clearly, but then something happens and the artist falls at the final hurdle. You end up looking at a stream of identically-figured women who are completely slim up and down until you get to the torso, where you find breast implants that could take your eyes out and the abdomen of a wasp. Plus, those breasts - those enormous, massive breasts - are always drawn out of a bra, and therefore spread sideways under the armpits. And yet are still completely perky.

For the record, there’s just no way they would be. Breast tissue has no ligaments, so the bigger and heavier they are, the more you’re picking them up off your navel of a morning. And you can’t even approach the word ‘comfortable’ without a bra. At that size, you can’t even approach the words ‘not hurting’ without a bra.

So, I’ve decided to start this project where I redraw a lot of superhero women as they’d actually look if they were Real Life hourglass figures, using myself as a model. The process so far has involved prancing about in front of a camera in a bra and thong while trying not to fall over, and then drawing myself while resisting the hella-powerful temptation to ‘correct’ things. The emotional slide goes “Oh god hideous photo” - “Sketching seems like I look okay” - “Sketch is finished oh god I’m hideous” - “Colouring oh god I’m hideous” - “Colouring is finished, seems like I look fine but am wearing a shit costume”.

Most inappropriate costume for a Real Woman ever, by the way, goes to Emma Frost. In case you were wondering. Remember those large bricklayer shoulders I mentioned that come with the hourglass figure? They don’t mix well with an off-the-shoulders line.

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