Okay like I think Lois and Clark in that new Superman show is very cute and romantic too but there is nothing inherently queer about it. Like writing a show where the main romantic leads actually seem to like each other is not inherently queer that’s just good writing lol
There’s this weird tendency among fandom types where they’ll take a character, and insist that they are fans of them, before changing their design, age, pronouns, backstory, blood type, species, hometown, favorite color, zodiac sign, medical history, and every other facet of their being.
They will then violently insist that this version is superior to the canon one and act like they “fixed” them and it’s like. Buddy that’s not the same character anymore. That’s just your own oc commiting identity fraud. Like. I get the desire to experiment with different interpretations of a story. But first of all it’s okay to just make an original character if that’s what you really want to do. And second of all, are you even really a fan of the character you “fixed” if they’re a completely different person afterwards?
Like. Idk dude for somebody who claims to be a fan you sure don’t seem to like them as they are :/
Gonna remember “buddy that’s not the character that’s your OC committing identity fraud.”
I used to work for a trade book reviewer where I got payed to review people’s books, and one of the rules of that review company is one that I think is just super useful to media analysis as a whole, and that is, we were told never to critique media for what it didn’t do but only for what it did.
So, for instance, I couldn’t say “this book didn’t give its characters strong agency or goals”. I instead had to say, “the characters in this book acted in ways that often felt misaligned with their characterization as if they were being pulled by the plot.”
I think this is really important because a lot of “critiques” people give, if subverted to address what the book does instead of what it doesn’t do, actually read pretty nonsensical. For instance, “none of the characters were unique” becomes “all of the characters read like other characters that exist in other media”, which like… okay? That’s not really a critique. It’s just how fiction works. Or “none of the characters were likeable” becomes “all of the characters, at some point or another, did things that I found disagreeable or annoying” which is literally how every book works?
It also keeps you from holding a book to a standard it never sought to meet. “The world building in this book simply wasn’t complex enough” becomes “The world building in this book was very simple”, which, yes, good, that can actually be a good thing. Many books aspire to this. It’s not actually a negative critique. Or “The stakes weren’t very high and the climax didn’t really offer any major plot twists or turns” becomes “The stakes were low and and the ending was quite predictable”, which, if this is a cute romcom is exactly what I’m looking for.
Not to mention, I think this really helps to deconstruct a lot of the biases we carry into fiction. Characters not having strong agency isn’t inherently bad. Characters who react to their surroundings can make a good story, so saying “the characters didn’t have enough agency” is kind of weak, but when you flip it to say “the characters acted misaligned from their characterization” we can now see that the *real* problem here isn’t that they lacked agency but that this lack of agency is inconsistent with the type of character that they are. a character this strong-willed *should* have more agency even if a weak-willed character might not.
So it’s just a really simple way of framing the way I critique books that I think has really helped to show the difference between “this book is bad” and “this book didn’t meet my personal preferences”, but also, as someone talking about books, I think it helps give other people a clearer idea of what the book actually looks like so they can decide for themselves if it’s worth their time.
Yeah yeah, I’m severely late to this party and I know this shit’s been done to death by now. But lately I’ve enjoyed listening to Guardian HQ’s video essays in the background while I’m working, and it’s pretty fascinating just how much this single show got wrong, from both writing and visual standpoints. I haven’t even seen the thing in full, but it seems the numerous critique videos on Youtube have made most of the key plot points and character details available to us. Besides, what I’ll be talking about today doesn’t have nearly as much to do with the writing as it does with the art direction, and you don’t need to know the story to realize the visuals aren’t much to write home about.
Is it out of line to say everything in High Guardian Spice looks kinda bland and generic? There’s a logic behind the character designs’ basic construction, but the art style in which they’re drawn doesn’t know if it’s going for an anime-type look or a more westernized, cartoony vibe. It awkwardly treads water between the two camps, unsure of where to swim in order to find its own unique identity.
This made me think back to Teen Titans and Avatar: The Last Airbender, two other Western-produced animated shows with heavy anime influences. What made these shows stand out when High Guardian Spice doesn’t?
Teen Titans revamped familiar comic book characters with a slick, angular flair, adding highlights to their hair and outfits to give them some extra pizazz. Avatar, meanwhile, rejected the anime tropes of shiny, candy-colored hair, oversized eyes, and outlandish clothing, opting for a more naturalistic look based on real cultures and locations. The anime fingerprints are apparent in both cases, but each show embraced stylistic experimentation and moved away from stereotypical design elements associated with the art form.
So how exactly does High Guardian Spice experiment with its visuals? Well, uhhh… I really can’t say. We know the main characters went through multiple iterations, but some fairly prominent creature and prop designs come off more like first drafts.
They really couldn’t have given us anything more creative than generic fantasy dragons, generic fantasy staffs, generic fantasy orbs, a purple blob with a face, and a hastily put-together platypus bunny? (I mean he’s cute and all, but still.)
“Uninspired” is the perfect word to describe these choices. There’s extremely little effort put in to make this fantasy story look and feel different from every other fantasy story the audience has experienced before. So what can we do to make the world and characters stand out?
Let’s discuss color for a sec. This show has the same problem as some Vivziepopdesigns in that there are too many hues representing a single color. Looking at this screenshot and the swatches in the lower right corner, it’s clear the palette’s kind of all over the place.
After sampling each of these colors with the eyedropper tool, I noticed that literally every single one had a different H (hue) value on the RGB spectrum. That’s over nineteen different hues in this image alone! It’s especially noticeable in all the disparate yellows, reds, and oranges. We can create a much more focused palette than that.
At first I considered using Francisco Goya’s witch paintings (since, y’know, magic and stuff) as reference for color palettes, but then I had a massive “duh” moment. The show’s called High Guardian Spice, so why not use colors taken from spices?
This reduces the master palette from dozens of hues to six, from which we can adjust values and saturation based on each character’s needs.
Here’s something else that bugs me:
Why are Snapdragon’s pupils drawn differently from the other main characters’? Snap’s family members appear to have the same eye style, but is there a story-based explanation for that? I thought the characters might belong to a non-human species, but no, that’s not the case. So what the fuck? Did the creator just think “Oh yeah, this pupil style looks good on this character, so I’ll use it for them and absolutely no one else because reasons”. Screw it, let’s apply these pupils to all the characters for more consistency between them, as well as a more pronounced departure from the standard shiny anime eyes we’ve seen a million times before.
In terms of overall art direction, I pondered which kinds of art could serve as inspiration for a story about witchcraft. How ‘bout these woodcuts from when European paranoia around witches was at its peak?
Look at all the interesting textures in these prints. This kind of hatching could easily set High Guardian Spice’s characters and environments apart from the crowd. And is that some potential Neppy Cat inspiration I spy? I believe so.
Anyway, this post has almost hit the image limit, so join me for Part 2, where I put these ideas into practice.
Yeah yeah, I’m severely late to this party and I know this shit’s been done to death by now. But lately I’ve enjoyed listening to Guardian HQ’s video essays in the background while I’m working, and it’s pretty fascinating just how much this single show got wrong, from both writing and visual standpoints. I haven’t even seen the thing in full, but it seems the numerous critique videos on Youtube have made most of the key plot points and character details available to us. Besides, what I’ll be talking about today doesn’t have nearly as much to do with the writing as it does with the art direction, and you don’t need to know the story to realize the visuals aren’t much to write home about.
Is it out of line to say everything in High Guardian Spice looks kinda bland and generic? There’s a logic behind the character designs’ basic construction, but the art style in which they’re drawn doesn’t know if it’s going for an anime-type look or a more westernized, cartoony vibe. It awkwardly treads water between the two camps, unsure of where to swim in order to find its own unique identity.
This made me think back to Teen Titans and Avatar: The Last Airbender, two other Western-produced animated shows with heavy anime influences. What made these shows stand out when High Guardian Spice doesn’t?
Teen Titans revamped familiar comic book characters with a slick, angular flair, adding highlights to their hair and outfits to give them some extra pizazz. Avatar, meanwhile, rejected the anime tropes of shiny, candy-colored hair, oversized eyes, and outlandish clothing, opting for a more naturalistic look based on real cultures and locations. The anime fingerprints are apparent in both cases, but each show embraced stylistic experimentation and moved away from stereotypical design elements associated with the art form.
So how exactly does High Guardian Spice experiment with its visuals? Well, uhhh… I really can’t say. We know the main characters went through multiple iterations, but some fairly prominent creature and prop designs come off more like first drafts.
They really couldn’t have given us anything more creative than generic fantasy dragons, generic fantasy staffs, generic fantasy orbs, a purple blob with a face, and a hastily put-together platypus bunny? (I mean he’s cute and all, but still.)
“Uninspired” is the perfect word to describe these choices. There’s extremely little effort put in to make this fantasy story look and feel different from every other fantasy story the audience has experienced before. So what can we do to make the world and characters stand out?
Let’s discuss color for a sec. This show has the same problem as some Vivziepopdesigns in that there are too many hues representing a single color. Looking at this screenshot and the swatches in the lower right corner, it’s clear the palette’s kind of all over the place.
After sampling each of these colors with the eyedropper tool, I noticed that literally every single one had a different H (hue) value on the RGB spectrum. That’s over nineteen different hues in this image alone! It’s especially noticeable in all the disparate yellows, reds, and oranges. We can create a much more focused palette than that.
At first I considered using Francisco Goya’s witch paintings (since, y’know, magic and stuff) as reference for color palettes, but then I had a massive “duh” moment. The show’s called High Guardian Spice, so why not use colors taken from spices?
This reduces the master palette from dozens of hues to six, from which we can adjust values and saturation based on each character’s needs.
Here’s something else that bugs me:
Why are Snapdragon’s pupils drawn differently from the other main characters’? Snap’s family members appear to have the same eye style, but is there a story-based explanation for that? I thought the characters might belong to a non-human species, but no, that’s not the case. So what the fuck? Did the creator just think “Oh yeah, this pupil style looks good on this character, so I’ll use it for them and absolutely no one else because reasons”. Screw it, let’s apply these pupils to all the characters for more consistency between them, as well as a more pronounced departure from the standard shiny anime eyes we’ve seen a million times before.
In terms of overall art direction, I pondered which kinds of art could serve as inspiration for a story about witchcraft. How ‘bout these woodcuts from when European paranoia around witches was at its peak?
Look at all the interesting textures in these prints. This kind of hatching could easily set High Guardian Spice’s characters and environments apart from the crowd. And is that some potential Neppy Cat inspiration I spy? I believe so.
Anyway, this post has almost hit the image limit, so join me for Part 2, where I put these ideas into practice.
The Boiling Isles and the magic system that was put in place were never taken seriously. Looking back, it all feels like a joke.
There’s no conflict outside of Belos minus small situations that Luz gets herself into. There are no actual Wild Witches fighting back. There’s no underlying threat coming from anywhere. There’s no racism between witches and demons or homophobia or anything that would be a legit concern to Luz with her friends. Maybe if her friends didn’t look like her and she actually befriended a demon, she could have discovered that demons don’t have much going for them and they are considered the minority, often overlooked for human-passing witches in a lot of things. Whether this was Belos’ doing or something that was in place due to erased conflicts in the past, who knows. The show itself pulls this biased as well for whatever reason they want to give.
For a magic-based society that hinges on how strong one is, it’s rarely used. A lot of stuff is done physically and magic is secondary, only brought forward when it’s convenient for the narrative. None of the bullies use magic toward their victims, they’re just mean girls who happen to know magic. In Harry Potter, bullies CONSTANTLY cursed their victims and used magic to its fullest because… magical world, why wouldn’t you? Floating candles, form-changing, magical teachings that used fleshed-out examples, etc. Where is all of this in the Boiling Isles? For a show that dunked on HP with Quidditch, it’s not doing a good job living up to the magical part (at least the snitch thing needed talent and honed skill in order to hunt down, it was no easy task at all yet the show pretended it was). The magic is strange too, with Eda snapping her fingers to make the key fly toward her or the verbal spell that Lilith used, or even the oath thing that Amity did once and never again. None of it was really touched on. In what coven did those come from?
For a place that has some of the most unforgiving landscapes, it’s pretty damn safe. I already pointed out that Anne felt like she was one step away from being killed in Amphibia, you don’t get this in the Boiling Isles. Luz never truly feels in danger when out and about. Hell, she didn’t feel in danger with the Slitherbeast because… it’s literally the only other animal shown, minus the Echo Mouse and maybe a parasitic worm here and there in the town. We don’t see the damn thing in the opening credits until she fights Belos for the first time. We only see one dragon-like creature with no explanation of what it is. All of the “threats” come from other players in the story rather than the Isles themselves.
You’d think that the Isles were more prepared for boiling rains, that there was something for powerless beings akin to prosthetics already put in place that weren’t Palismen who had to bond with you (No, Belos had to create that because no one else in the BI cared enough), there is no culture of their own outside of anything to do with the covens (the past was modeled after England before Philip even touched the place, I mean WTF?! That would have had conflict in itself), and everyone is just mindless pushovers in one way or another. They just accept that Belos is evil/gone and those who took him out just… take over? This also lends credence to the whole “no conflict” thing.
The Conformatorium is only important for one episode. ONLY one episode and it’s episode ONE. It’s treated like a gag the rest of the time. Eda’s criminal past isn’t taken seriously and she gets her slate wiped clean for Hexside, being a wild witch (escaping petrification), and the rest of her crimes are either just alluded to or non-existent. The prisoners in the Conformatorium don’t even make any sense if the Boiling Isles are supposed to be strange and NOT THE HUMAN REALM. If this is the case, Luz should STILL have a hard time fitting in and be unable to make friends. You mean to tell me that Luz never found someone who was like Gus or Willow in the human realm, the nerd who likes something akin to plants, or the prodigy that is out of place due to age? No outcast table or anything?
It’s so weird that people keep saying that Wanda’s trauma is because of Tony. “Tony’s weapons attacked her home! It’s Tony’s fault!” Actually, those weapons were sold by Obadiah Stane (if they were Stark Industries’ weapons at all, but we’ll ignore how the logo is wrong because it might just be a continuity error). Tony actually is the person who stopped Stane the instant he found out about it. So in fact, Tony is the one who prevented what happened to Wanda from ever happening again.
But for some reason we can’t say that. Everyone cries foul. They say we’re trying to erase Wanda’s trauma. Instead of, you know, redirecting it to the proper source. But I guess it’s easier to take up the narrative Wanda created (and loudly and consistently spouts) instead of looking at the truth (which is never said out loud in the movies and is left to be inferred). Because children don’t understand how to think critically.
