Ruf Reblogs - Blog Posts
hey so, quick podfic/visual novel update; it’s still on the way! we’re still in the process of finding VAs. (Tessa, Uzi, N and a few extras)
Funding has come up a bit short so i’ll be opening up some spots in the discord server for volunteer positions for those who would just like to help out for the sake of helping out. we’re looking for assistance with sound design, music, voice work, background art/coding/sprites etc.
Those i have promised to pay still will receive compensation as it would be disingenuous to say otherwise, though if you’re interested in taking on a spot to ease up the workload, it would be a tremendous help. hopefully we’ll have the podfic itself out by sometime mid summer, and the visual novel sometime in the fall or winter if all things go well.
voll commission for @nilnaea ( : thank you for your patience!
“It was embarrassing, resorting to such primal threat displays to get N to back away from her, but right now, she couldn’t care less. J felt cornered, trapped, like some kind of animal. A scared, pathetic, disgusting animal.”
requiem chapter 9 doodle
Heart Man from SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Valentine's Day" (2000)
little animatic wip i made for my fic, requiem because this scene lives rent free in my noggin
All deeppink man expression meme collection
I was asked by a friend yesterday if I could offer basic tips about comic paneling. As it turns out, I have a lot to say on the matter! I tried breaking down the art of paneling using the principles of art and design, and I hope it helps you out!
EDIT: uh uh there are a lot of people reblogging this, so i figure i may as well append this now while i can lol
This whole thing was very much cranked out in a few hours so I had a visual to talk about with a friend! If this gives you a base understanding of paneling, that's awesome! Continue to pull in studies from the comics you see and what other artists do well and don't do well! You can tell paneling is doing well when the action is flowing around in its intended reading format.
Here's the link to the globalcomix article from which I pulled the images about panel staggering! Someone sent in a reblog that it wasn't totally clear that the 7th slide mostly covers what NOT to do in regards to staggering, and that is my mistake!
I saw in a tag that someone was surprised I used MamaYuyu too, and I don't blame them lol. If I had given myself more than a couple hours maybe I would have added something else on, I just really admire MamaYuyu's paneling personally.
uh uh, final append: I am by no means a renowned master of paneling, so if you find anything off base here, by all means, counter it with your own knowledge and ways you can build upon from here! Art is always a sum knowledge of everything we find. 💪
googled it for you if that helps- 💀 idk what it is either so we're both learning something new, op 🤠
yw lol /gen
what the fuck is a stimboard
i’m sorry but this audio is literally him, i had to
HELP- I HAVE SEEN THIS POST SO MANY TIMES, BUT EVERY TIME I SCROLL PAST, I STILL LAUGH AT THIS- 😭😭💀💀💀 /pos
this is so khori coded
like. look at the way he LOOKS AT HER!!!!! AGGAGAHEHEHEHHRHGGGH
happy christmas fanart? WRONG! I WANNA DRAW KHORI ANGST
Pomni: Hey! That's just Kinger
Caine: KINGER?? Awww he's marry
Pomni: Oh no Caine, He's single
Caine: Then what happen to Queeniee
Pomni: He dosne't like talk about it
Gangle was crashing out that whole episode, good for her.
commiserating
commission for @wayward-delver
Novels are not movies.
Visual media has taken on the world by storm. It’s the next big thing in the evolution of humanity, maybe. It’s quite certainly changed the way we entertain ourselves. And with the recent spread of short-form content, visual media has also become cheap, disposable, and easily accessible to the masses—perfect recipe to make a product famous.
Alright, I’ve been a little too dramatic, lol. But for real, I’m one of those who’s severely addicted to Instagram Reels. Whenever I’m done scrolling, I feel like I’ve completely wasted my time—I could have read a novel, watched a movie, or caught up with my favorite mangas. But instead of all those ways to relax—and believe me (pwlease) that I only open Insta to relax, when I’m free—I just waste my time.
I love my novels and manga, mind ya, so when I catch myself wasting precious time that I could have instead used to consume them, I cuss myself. And then I go scroll some more Insta, because I’m an absolute idiot.
Anyway, back to the topic. Visual media has absolutely taken over our lives. I won’t go into the debate of whether this is a good thing or not, but we all can agree that it’s an undeniable fact. Video is everywhere.
Because—and lemme repeat myself—it’s cheap, disposable, and easily accessible today.
And because of such exposure to video storytelling, beginning authors forget that novels are not a visual medium. Yep, here goes my rant.
***
#01 - The Problem
The problem is simple—these kids have too much access to their smartphones. And these smartphones are filled with videos, like a dustbin with its lid hanging on because of all that garbage overfilling it. (Damn, I sound like a boomer.)
And therefore, when these new authors begin writing, they can’t help but imagine a sort of movie or a TV show as their story. And that’s where the problem is—novels are not supposed to be movies.
Movies are a visual media. That means they’re composed of pictures. Images. But guess what novels are composed of?
Text. Words.
It seems pretty basic. I mean, everybody knows this distinction. But what they don't know, however, are the implications of this distinction.
Personally, I began writing with film-novels too. And those novels are bad. Genuinely. I cringe at the fact that I could even mail editors and believe they’d accept them. Good thing they never did.
What’s a film-novel, though? Well, the idea is pretty clear—it’s a novel, but imagined in the form of a film. So, it’s like a film, but in text.
It’s like you’ve written the film as a novel, instead of writing it as a screenplay or something, maybe.
But you’d ask me—why? Why is it even a mistake? Everybody has a different writing style. And to that, I’d tell you one thing—the audience. The audience is different. The media is different. You can’t expect a cinephile to read your book. And since it’s not like a professional novel, a (Googles the correct term) bibliophile certainly won't.
So, who’s gonna read your story?
No one—because it’s neither a film, nor a novel. It’s a film-novel, an illogical mix of the two.
Everyone drinks water, and everyone likes ice-cream. But you can't… No, I’m not even completing that sentence. Ew.
Anyway, you get the idea, lol.
***
#02 - Identify
So, what does a film-novel even look like?
And for that, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you,
The lean figure was standing on the other side of the railing three floors up on the ground of the school building where children below were shouting and kicking football upon each other, wearing white football jerseys. The figures, as they ran all over the ground, seemed very small as I looked at them. The goalkeeper of the right side, who was just beneath my white shoe, kicked the ball so hard that it flew in air and went directly to the other foot of mine. The other players shouted “Whoaaa!” as they saw the ball flying. But suddenly, two of them looked upwards and saw me. One of them pointed towards me and then shouted, “Hey, who’s he?!” All the other players started walking towards that boy who was in the middle of the field with their heads tilted up above on me. Another one shouted, “Hey! What’cha doin’, eh?!” My narrow eyes, which had dark spots beneath them, looked at the boys from behind my spectacles. I then moved my head a little up and saw my shiny gakuran jacket fluttered by my shiny yellow colored buttons as the wind started blowing from my left side. I was able to feel the wind dancing upon my soft skin as I closed my eyes and turned my head upwards. I took a deep breath, and then exhaled it out with my mouth. I then again took a breath. This time, when I exhaled it out with my mouth, I was able to feel the saliva of my mouth upon my lips. I tilted my head and turned towards my arm, which was trembling a little. Both of my hands were still holding the railing of the school’s rooftop. I then turned left and then looked on my other arm. “Hey! Get down!” One of the persons from beneath shouted. I turned my narrowed eyes towards the ground, the teachers, a large gang of footballers and students, and some even workers had gathered in a circle. I turned my head towards the front. I looked at a couple of brown colored and blue-green colored houses in front of me, which stood high and mighty. Beneath them was the clear blue sky.
A wall of text!
Warning: you don’t really need to read all of it. But you probably did, lol.
Anyway, it’s the opening scene from one of my first novels. And, as much as I hate to say this—it’s pretty sh*t. It has a lot of problems—no paragraph divisions, for example, as well as a lot of grammatical mistakes too. But the biggest problem with the text is that it’s just images.
Reading this text, I dare you to highlight one single sentence that might tell you anything about the narrator.
The narrator is narrating the motions, not the emotions.
(Damn, that was a dope line to say, man.)
The narrator is only telling you about the images and actions and dialogues and thoughts. Even though it’s in first-person POV, you feel distant from the narrator. And, even in third-person POV, authors are supposed to make sure the distance between the narrator and the reader remains at a minimum.
That’s how you get a film-novel—that’s filled with scene-descriptions, actions, and dialogues. There’s no narrations in it. The readers don’t know the thoughts of these characters.
***
#03 - Is it really a problem, though?
Well, you might ask me—is it really such a big problem?
Heck yeah.
The reason is pretty simple, actually—no one wants to read a film-novel. These novels are filled with only descriptions and actions—that’s too much of mental effort. these novels make their readers keep on imagining stuff, and no reader wants to do that.
Because it’s easier to look at pictures than to imagine them based on text. And that’s why your film-novels won’t work.
See, you need to understand this—novels are different than film. Sure, novels are a form of storytelling too, and they do include visual effort, such as descriptions, action, and all that. But, all that is not the main selling point of a novel.
The main selling point of a novel is the emotions. Emotions captured in words, in situations—caught in context like a butterfly in a child’s hand. Films can display emotions, but novels put those emotions into words.
Narration is what forms the greatest part of a novel. Narration is where a novel actually shines. Narration is what the readers come to read.
And, as you could guess, films don’t narrate. Consider this,
And rain made him feel like crying. He gulped down, trying to keep the lump of his throat in check. He couldn’t cry in the middle of so many other kids. They’ll ask questions, and what will he say to them, huh?
He was sorry.
For what?
For everything he did. And for everything he didn’t.
The day had just begun. It’d be long before it ends, y’know. He just couldn't wait for it to end. There was no lifting up his mood. Not until tomorrow.
How do you display this in a film? The answer—you can't. However hard you try, you can't.
Such narrations are where the art of novels shine. Such narrations are what differentiates a novel from a visual media.
***
#04 - Is it really a problem, though? (pt.ii)
All this talk constantly reminds me of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. It’s a literary achievement and really experimental in a lot of stuff that it does. For example, the novel has no dashes or apostrophes—and it’s not like these punctuation marks were not needed, they’re just not used. So, you’d find a lot of grammatical mistakes throughout the text.
And also, one thing that McCarthy ignored—and that’s relevant to the discussion we’re having—is that there’s literally zero narration. Zero.
McCarthy adopts a style that’s similar to a third-person POV, and is kinda like how I used to write when I was little—just with paragraphs and better scene-descriptions and action-descriptions. A lot better, as you can observe if you read his work.
Anyway, he didn’t have any narrative elements in his text. So the readers don’t really know what these characters are thinking or planning to do. They just know that these characters are somehow surviving.
I don’t wanna give away most of the plot of the novel, but the basic premise of the novel is that there’s a father-son duo who’s been caught in this apocalypse-type situation, and are traveling down the road to the south part of the country to escape the harsh winters that the north experiences. The novel doesn’t reveal a lot—the readers don’t know the names of these characters, the thoughts of the characters are hidden most of the time, and you don’t know what actually happened that most of humanity is dead and society is completely gone.
Now, McCarthy did it for a reason. A scarcity of punctuation marks reflects a form of scarcity in the scenery around them. Because most of it is, well, gone. Humanity is gone, and stuff is decaying. You don’t find fresh food anymore. Scavenge all you want—one day, all the canned food will expire, and there will be nothing to eat. Except fruits and veggies, that need to be grown somewhere. And nobody likes the latter, honestly.
And the scene-descriptions are so tough to read. They’re an actual pain. I have had a really hard time deciphering most of it, because the vocab is too high, and probably the sentences do not flow into each other easily. I can’t say anything about the sentences if I don’t understand them, y’know.
But, man, maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be. Maybe that’s why McCarthy wrote the descriptions in this way—to symbolize the mental stress that the characters go through as they experience this world, this form of reality that they were not meant to be in.
And maybe the novel is so lacking in narrations because the characters’ minds have gone numb. They’re forgetting language. With almost zero human interaction most of the time, they are forgetting how to think and interact in words. You lose the skills you don’t really use anymore, y’know. And these guys are so obviously depressed, so they don’t think about the world. They are used to the sad reality they live in. No point in complaining how bad the food is if that’s all you’re gonna eat all your life.
So, a scarcity of narrations tell you a lot about the story and its characters. It reflects something, it symbolizes something. The Road is a masterfully crafted piece of prose, please don’t get inspired to write in this style just because. This style won’t work on most of the stories.
Yeah, just because he wrote like this means you can too. Let me tell you, dear reader, that all of what we call rules are meant to be broken. Nothing is absolute. But here’s the catch—you can’t break the rules just because you don’t know how to apply them.
Authors need to learn these rules, because that’s what constitutes most of the written prose. That’s what forms the basics of the craft. So, learn them, understand them, and know how to use them. And then make a conscious decision not to use them.
See, these rules are like tools or weapons in your arsenal. And you need to keep your arsenal ready for everything. And then, you can decide which weapon to use, when to use it, and how to use it. Because you don’t know what sort of idea hits your head next and you’d suddenly need some of them.
***
#04 - Solution
So, how to make sure your novel actually comes off as a novel and not a film-novel? Unfortunately, the answer to that question… is that I don't know.
I know this sounds so absurd, but it is what it is. As someone who’s so recently started studying prose, I know this problem exists, but I still don’t know how to fix it. You could say I know my novels are film-novels, and I’m trying to fix it. But I, personally, am having a lot of trouble with it.
However, one way I can recommend is to write from your character’s POV, not your POV. You probably imagined your story as a film, but that’s now how you’re supposed to write it. Get into your characters’ head, see what they’re seeing, and write that.
But it’s tough. For me, at least. I always find myself going back to my old ways, and I think I need to re-write almost all of my scene-descriptions and actions because of it.
Lol, how ironic.
***
Conclusion
Yeah, and that’s it. I hope you liked this blog. Sorry I hadn’t posted in along while, I was going through a writers’ block. Stuff is happening these days, y’know.
Anyway, I’ll see you again in a couple of days, with something new. Bye-byee!
he must be studied. Like in a lab.
before cleanup & refs:
I was bored in science and accidentally made a dca oc oops
His name is Pewter (because pewter is a grey metal alloy)
He was made in the 1960s, so by fnaf sb He would be about 70+ in physical age and 20+ in mental age. He doesn't have any color in his design, only black and white. He is fully mute because he was never given a voice box, so he speaks in sign language
His arms don't have elbow joints, more so a robotic tube surrounded by Cotton and fabric ontop, making his arms flexible and soft. His legs do have joints, but still have cotton stuffing the inside of his pants around his actual legs
His hat his held up by metal wires and more cotton to make it soft
I have a mini theory that I just thought of now…
At some point in the show, Pomni could form a friendship with Caine.
The way that my thought process is going is that since it is already implied that Pomni is a very sympathetic person, and has said to Gummigoo in episode 2, “I guess I just don’t want you to feel like you’re nothing… I don’t want anybody to feel like that.”
Because of this particular quote that she said, I think it wouldn’t be impossible for Pomni to sympathize with Caine with his problem with feeling like he’s bad at the only thing he’s good at. This implies that he thinks that he is not good at anything. This could lead up to the topic of someone thinking that they are useless and good for nothing.
So basically what I’m saying is that we could have some kind of platonic Showtime in the canon story. This could be in the form of an emotional comfort scene like with Gummigoo in episode 2, or even just a straight up friendship.
At this point in the show it has already been heavily implied that Caine is the thing making everything dysfunctional in the circus.
Even though it is very unlikely that my dumb little theory basically about platonic showtime that could happen in the show just because I’m desperate for more Showtime content that I can actually view because I’m a minor will become an actual scenario, but It’s still a cool thing to think about I guess lol.
If you have come to this point in my insane rambling, thanks for reading my thoughts!
They are for each other
How’s your wife, Kinger?
I feel you with existence being hard… I’ve been there way too many times. I hope you’re doing alright. I wish you well. Stay strong, friend. 💗
I love the art by the way!
Sorry for the lack of art, existence is very hard lately... anyway, have some FunnyBunny
