ghostly enola

Together again... One final goodbye...

After two months, Jawhn's story has finally reached its ending. It's so bittersweet to finally say goodbye to Decayed & Decrepit, but I'm so happy with how the story unfolded. Hopefully we didn't make you cry too much! If you haven't watched the finale yet, check it out here!

"That's NOT how this story ends..."

Jawhn has unironically been through hell in Decayed & Decrepit. Losing all of his friends, seeing everyone he cares about die, feeling like a failure... It's brutal... But you know what? He keeps on fighting!

This series has led to such awesome character development and moments that even I never expected. And seeing everyone's reaction to Jawhn so far has been amazing. The fanart, the fanfics, the analysis!... I want you all to know that I appreciate it SO much and I'm so happy that you are enjoying Jawhn's story! Maybe one day I'll turn this into a full video!... If you all are interested! 👀

because okay. before the series he spent a long time in solitude, but there was a time spent where he WAS in a group with other survivors. what we know from that is they're likely all gone now, they did horrible things in the name of 'surviving' (jonathan included), and it's implied that jonathan killed at least a few of them (mercy or otherwise, we don't know.) so he's been through it. he's seen the horrors, he has blood on his hands and is resigned to never being able to truly wash it off, he has a purpose and no plans of letting anyone else get in his way.

so, by that logic, it's almost out of character for him to get so attached to spidey and 4c, right? going back to session 1, the first time he meets spidey and jophiel, he plans on leaving them in the sewers to die. this is #1 a coward's move, and #2 the first example of him lying to someone's face, and doing it very very easily. but even if that's what his plan was, he doesn't end up going through with it; as soon as spidey shows her apprehension, he backs down pretty quickly. even more, he ADMITS what he was going to do to them, which would ruin any chance of killing them in the future and also potentially damage his relationship with them. yet he still does it, and he still ends up growing closer to spidey.

family. he writes about her. i trust.

being cowardly, and being a liar are both very big parts of jonathan's character, but i would argue third biggest part is his empathy. we can see he's opportunistic and maybe a bit impulsive, so maybe it would make sense to stick with someone who could be useful to him, but honestly. what purpose does keeping spidey and 4c around have? one is an amnesiac who keeps wandering off, and one is a starry-eyed traveller who won't elaborate on why she's there. they won't be any help for him, and if anything they're a hindrance to his plans. but he keeps them close anyway.

all throughout the series, we watch him paint himself in the worst light. he reiterates that he's done terrible things. he's pessimistic. he doesn't take the credit for saving spidey. he DOES take the blame for killing 4c. while being feared at least guarantees some sort of safety from potentially being attacked, jonathan doesn't want people to see he's empathetic, because in his world, having hope and empathy and helping people is a flaw. it's what gets you taken advantage of, killed, or your loved ones killed instead.

but time and time again, he will make that mistake. and i think that's why he needed to let go of spidey, of the church, of everything that's tying him down. if he's not attached to anything, it won't get in his way; if he doesn't have anyone to care about, they won't get hurt.

After seeing post like this 👇

And this gem 👇

As well as countless of others from the AI generator community. Just talking about how "inaccessible art" is, I decided why not show how wrong these guys are while also helping anyone who actually wants to learn.

Here is the first one ART TEACHERS! There are plenty online and in places like youtube.

📺Here is my list:

Proko (Free, mostly teaches anatomy and how to draw people. But does have art talks and teaches the basics.)

Marc Brunet (Free but he does have other classes for a cheap price. Use to work for Blizzard and teaches you everything)

Aaron Rutten (free, tips about art, talks about art programs and the best products for digital art)

BoroCG (free, teaches a verity of art mediums from 3D modeling to digital painting. As well as some tips that can be used across styles)

Jesse J. Jones (free, talks about animating)

Jesus Conde (free, teaches digital painting and has classes in Spanish)

Mohammed Agbadi (free, he gives some advice in some videos and talks about art)

Ross Draws (free, he does have other classes for a good price. Mostly teaching character designs and simple backgrounds.)

SamDoesArts (free, gives good advice and critiques)

Drawfee Show (free, they do give some good advice and great inspiration)

The Art of Aaron Blaise ( useful tips for digital art and animation. Was an animator for Disney. Mostly nature art)

Bobby Chiu ( useful tips and interviews with artist who are in the industry or making a living as artist)

Sinix Design (has some tips on drawing people)

Winged canvas (art school for free on a verity of mediums)

Bob Ross (just a good time, learn how to paint, as well as how too relax when doing art. "there are no mistakes only happy accidents", this channel also provides tips from another artist)

Scott Christian Sava (Inspiration and provides tips and advice)

Pikat (art advice and critiques)

Drawbox (a suggested cheap online art school, made of a community of artist)

Skillshare (A cheap learning site that has art classes ranging from traditional to digital. As well as Animation and tutorials on art programs. All under one price, in the USA it's around $34 a month)

Human anatomy for artist (not a video or teacher but the site is full of awesome refs to practice and get better at anatomy)

Second part BOOKS, I have collected some books that have helped me and might help others.

📚Here is my list:

The "how to draw manga" series produced by Graphic-sha. These are for manga artist but they give great advice and information.

"Creating characters with personality" by Tom Bancroft. A great book that can help not just people who draw cartoons but also realistic ones. As it helps you with facial ques and how to make a character interesting.

"Albinus on anatomy" by Robert Beverly Hale and Terence Coyle. Great book to help someone learn basic anatomy.

"Artistic Anatomy" by Dr. Paul Richer and Robert Beverly Hale. A good book if you want to go further in-depth with anatomy.

"Directing the story" by Francis Glebas. A good book if you want to Story board or make comics.

"Animal Anatomy for Artists" by Eliot Goldfinger. A good book for if you want to draw animals or creatures.

"Constructive Anatomy: with almost 500 illustrations" by George B. Bridgman. A great book to help you block out shadows in your figures and see them in a more 3 diamantine way.

"Dynamic Anatomy: Revised and expand" by Burne Hogarth. A book that shows how to block out shapes and easily understand what you are looking out. When it comes to human subjects.

"An Atlas of animal anatomy for artist" by W. Ellenberger and H. Dittrich and H. Baum. This is another good one for people who want to draw animals or creatures.

Etherington Brothers, they make books and have a free blog with art tips.

📝As for Supplies, I recommend starting out cheap, buying Pencils and art paper at dollar tree or 5 below. If you want to go fancy Michaels is always a good place for traditional supplies. They also get in some good sales and discounts. For digital art, I recommend not starting with a screen art drawing tablet as they are usually more expensive.

For the Best art Tablet I recommend either Xp-pen, Bamboo or Huion. Some can range from about 40$ to the thousands.

💻As for art programs here is a list of Free to pay.

Clip Studio paint ( you can choose to pay once or sub and get updates. Galaxy, Windows, macOS, iPad, iPhone, Android, or Chromebook device. )

Procreate ( pay once for $9.99 usd, IPAD & IPHONE ONLY)

Blender (for 3D modules/sculpting, animation and more. Free)

PaintTool SAI (pay but has a 31 day free trail)

Krita (Free)

mypaint (free)

FireAlpaca (free)

Aseprite ($19.99 usd but has a free trail, for pixel art Windows & macOS)

Drawpile (free and for if you want to draw with others)

IbisPaint (free, phone app ONLY)

Medibang (free, IPAD, Android and PC)

NOTE: Some of these can work on almost any computer like Clip and Sai but others will require a bit stronger computer like Blender. Please check their sites for if your computer is compatible.

So do with this information as you will but as you can tell there are ways to learn how to become an artist, without breaking the bank. The only thing that might be stopping YOU from using any of these things, is YOU.

I have made time to learn to draw and many artist have too. Either in-between working two jobs or taking care of your family and a job or regular school and chores. YOU just have to take the time or use some time management, it really doesn't take long to practice for like an hour or less. YOU also don't have to do it every day, just once or three times a week is fine.

Hope this was helpful and have a great day.

All the photos on this tumblr ad the animal photo reference site I run is another resource available for artists to use!

100 rough gestural sketches are better than 1 meticulous drawing where you spent months (and eventually gave up) trying to get everything perfect

It’s going to look bad until it doesn’t- and when it doesn’t look bad anymore- you’re going to feel so proud.

Guys, the Bridon arc just finished airing this January, and Link Click typically has two years between seasons. This current pace is normal and HEALTHY. Would you rather the animators be worked to death just to release a show full of errors, or would you rather wait for a more polished work?

Besides, it’s not like they’ve starved us of content during the wait. They’ve given us several new official art. And have you all forgotten that fire music video they just gave us last Halloween??? Link Click is the only donghua/anime fandom I’ve been in that has official music videos. what are we, vocaloid??? Link Click could start an album with its songs

We are so fucking spoiled, but many have taken all this new content for granted. Like, I get being excited and wanting to know what happens next, but ART TAKES TIME. so just wait.

I’m saying all this as someone who also comes from the Blue Lock fandom. Blue Lock got so popular that executives rushed the production process so they can squeeze out more money from it fast. As a result, the anime adaptation was so shit, people started calling it a slideshow.

Not every show gets to have albums with official songs, and we have not one but two. We even have incredible animations to tease those releases. We have teasers and art with clues and hints we could create theories with and art of the characters, not to mention the mini fan animations we had shortly after the Bridon Arc finished that were made by animators that worked on the show (Pack&Prep, Mastermind, and Fractured Echoes).

I agree, but it’s not without reason! I’m not caught up on TBHX yet, but even from the episodes I’ve watched, I can say it’s definitely more refined than Link Click in regards to worldbuilding. I guess this is because Link Click is more of an experimental work.

Link Click’s storytelling started out more “literary” (season 1) with its soft worldbuilding, but it became more “genre”-style (s2 onwards) as their powers got more complex and the setting expanded to beyond the photo studio. Li Haoling has been having a hard time reconciling these two different modes. I think he wants to keep it more literary-leaning, but that’s a herculean task because time travel is a hard sci fi subgenre, and sci-fi as a whole just inherently falls under genre fiction. Trying to make a literary story out of time travel would be like trying to make a sweet dish with just savory ingredients. It’s not impossible—for a movie or just one season of a show. But for 3 seasons??? That’s a challenge. Because the more episodes there are, the more questions you bring, and the more questions, the more you need to be able to justify the answers. And the moment you fixate too much on giving concrete answers (i.e., hard worldbuilding), the further you stray away from the “literary” path.

In short, Link Click, no matter how good it is, has a lot of structural flaws.

To Be Hero X, however, is, as I said, more refined. It’s built on a pre-existing franchise (To Be Hero), so LH0 no longer has to worry about the worldbuilding aspect. He can just focus on creating a good story without having to fuss over the technicalities. It’s honestly no surprise that it’s more popular than Link Click.

A writer’s skills evolve over time, so it only make sense that LH0’s later works would be better

@psychopomp-namine oh that’s right. Link Click is super popular in China that you can even find references of it in other donghua. It can be considered part of the donghua canon.

You’re also right about the marketing. Funimation fumbled so bad with Link Click when they first released season 1; there was barely any promotion for it on their official accounts. All official subtitles (Bilibili and Funimation alike) were also shit, so if you wanted to have a good watch experience, you had to dig for fansubs (several fansub groups popped up then to save it). And I think it’s this extra fandom effort that made Link Click team or donghua creators/producers as a whole realize that international audiences can get interested in donghua.

I mean, not that there weren’t any donghua that’s gotten popular internationally before LC. MXTX shows (MDZS and TGCF) were right there penetrating the mainstream, for example. Scissor Seven and White Cat Legend were also big. But the thing is, no matter how “big” these were, they were still pretty much niche on the international stage (especially WCL since it’s a historical Chinese story). MXTX shows catered to only BL lovers, while the other two mentioned were still mostly for those who were already fans of CMedia. There wasn’t really a show for “all audiences” that international fans could just latch onto without prior knowledge on CMedia tropes or Chinese culture.

(The first Legend of Hei and Nezha movies existed before LC, but I’m not counting them because they’re movies and not series. And to be frank, Legend of Hei movie only started appealing to international fans when the jp dub was released and people kept comparing the art style to ghibli. It wasn’t really appreciated as a “donghua,” even though the entire cultivation power system is intrinsically rooted in Chinese culture)

Anyways, it wasn’t until Link Click that international fans really started paying attention to donghua. Time travel is just universally understood, so getting into the story is easier than, say, watching a xianxia. And the thing about Link Click being a time travel with some parts mystery, a lot of dude bros and casual anime fans also got into the story. And with ShiGuang as protagonists, the fujo girlies also gut pulled along. Err… I’m not explaining this well, but tldr, Link Click just naturally appealed to all demographics.

So yes, Link Click did get quite popular internationally—but still not as much as TBHX. One reason is definitely the marketing, but the other reason is what I mentioned in my answer to the ask: its structural flaws.

I’ve tried pulling family and friends into watching Link Click so many times since s1 aired, and a lot of them can never get past the first episode without me constantly bugging them to continue the rest of the show. My brother said he found S1E1’s emotional aspect too heavy for a pilot episode. A friend said she just wasn’t in the mood for something slow and contemplative.

Weaklings, I’d call them, but they also highlighted the “problem” Link Click is struggling with: making something “literary” out of something that’s intrinsically “genre.”

Time travel is a sci-fi iconography, and sci-fi is traditionally classified as genre fiction.

People who started Link Click with the expectations of it being a hard time travel story like, idk, Steins:Gate or Mirai Nikki, would walk away disappointed when it instead focused more on the human condition (I haven’t watched Steins:Gate, but my brother kept saying its time travel concept is more complete than Link Click’s).

To Be Hero X has none of these problems. The world of TBHX operates on one simple rule: Trust value shapes the world, and that’s it. And that very simple concept allows a lot of flexibility in exploring the human condition in a way that can balance both “genre” and “literary” modes of storytelling. Link Click doesn’t have that grace.

Time travel is a demanding genre to work with because the writer must always keep track of the different timelines. Too many inconsistencies will make the entire story fall apart. Link Click: Yingdu Chapter, as much as I love it, betrayed a lot of the rules in the time travel genre by retconning a lot of stuff, and that’s disappointing to many fans. But the story also needs to address the emotional motivations of one of the protagonists (LG) in a way that would still allow it to stay true to its overall theme and goals. The retcons had to be made. To keep the “literary”, some of the “genre” just had to be sacrificed.

oh god, this sequence is everything

first of all, the role reversal. In the first gif, we have Xia Fei standing next to the camera and against the light. He’s therefore in the position of a director and not a model. Then, in the second gif, we have Vein inside a video, a framing that’s usually for Xia Fei.

second, the scene transitions. The way Vein’s candy looks like it’s passing through the ring of Xia Fei’s fingers is just so fucking hot.

third, of course, is the iconic Vein shaping the candy into a heart in his mouth. he must be very good with his tongue

fourth, the colors and shared motifs. the consistent red and green color scheme, along with the TV and Keep Out signs, signal to the viewers that Vein’s and Xia Fei’s sequences are meant to be seen as a pair instead of separately. This connection becomes even clearer when right after this, there’s a stark shift to Liu Xiao’s dominant blue-purple color (brought by the falling candies rendered like TV static)

finally, XIA FEI’S SOFT LOVESTRUCK SMILE! And the little blush on his cheeks as he leans back, oh my god. we know he isn’t smiling like that because of the candy. all those TVs around him were playing Vein, okay???

and once again, this entire sequence is really just veifei role reversal

how it started:

OVER AND OVER