RantGearSolid

cover art for APVLLON's "valentine" (wip)

Been working on something fun but very tiring and straining on my hands. This is a rough sketch for a cover I'm drawing for my friend APVLLON, it's gonna be the art for his new song "valentine." Still super early, just blocking out the composition and the idea for now, but this is the direction I'm going with.

Right now it's all rough lines and grey blocking so I can nail down the values and layout before committing to anything. Once the sketch is locked in I'll clean up the lineart, actually color it, and polish that "valentine" lettering up top and try to blend it with the drawing. Excited to see this one come together, because i never finish anything lol.

Go show APVLLON some love when the song drops! Find him on Spotify and Instagram. I'll post the finished cover here once it's done!

changed the look of the site some

Changed up the look some! I tried to polish things a bit and add some accent colors to make it feel less flat. It was starting to look a little plain with just the one blue, so I pulled some colors from the header art and sprinkled them around, mostly in the section bars and little details.

Also went for a boxier, chunkier feel with the borders and stuff, which fits the whole old-web style I'm going for way better than the soft rounded look did. Oh, and I added a little "explore the site" menu on the home page so people can actually find all the pages, since I kept worrying nobody would notice half of them lol.

Still tweaking things here and there, so if something looks off, lmk on Discord or in the comments!

the one pretty corner of jacksonville

So I was out the other day at this labyrinth of a bookstore called "Chamblin's Uptown" (genuinely you could get lost in there, it's amazing), and when I was headed home I noticed this is probably the only part of Jacksonville that actually looks like a bigger historic city. Its something about the old brick road and the buildings (look like 1920-1940s era).

And then you drive like five minutes down the road and you're right back in the ghetto lol. It's such a weird contrast. This little pocket looks like it belongs in a completely different city, and then it just... stops. Well, I'll take the one nice stretch, but i know a few other spots in jax that are pretty, but most are of beaches.

built a comment section and a visitor counter (HTML is a pain sometimes)

Ok so small update but still cool. I finally added a comment feature and a visitor counter to the site! If you know these sites then they always had that little classic "you are visitor #000042" thing that every old site used to have tucked somewhere on the page. I've wanted one forever because it's such a core part of that old web feeling I keep going on about. Something about watching a number tick up just hits different, way more personal than some analytics dashboard telling me my "engagement metrics" or whatever.

And the comment section too, so people can actually reply on here instead of everything living in one place. That's the whole point right, making it feel alive and lived in. A site nobody can talk on is basically just a diary with extra steps lol. (Even though this is basically a diary.)

Honestly it was easier than I thought it'd be to get working. Like it didn't take me nearly as long as I expected. BUT, and this is the but, editing it after the fact is genuinely a pain sometimes because you gotta go dig through the HTML by hand. One misplaced tag and half the page just decides to break for no reason and you're sitting there for 20 minutes going "what did I even change." Very humbling. Very old web though, so I can't even be mad.

But yeah. That's the charm of this type of site. You actually have to build the thing yourself instead of dragging a block around on some website builder that makes everything look the same. Also I couldn't figure out how to use them sites like WordPress, GoDaddy, or Wix or whatever them other blog sites are... this is far easier. (Also it's like impossible to get this old style on any of those sites it seems.)

Anyway, go leave a comment now that you can, and watch the counter go up!

the source is (almost) always better: a light novel rant

Ok so this is kind of the perfect blog to start with because most people like anime, and a few people like light novels too! The example everyone reaches for when thinking of a bad anime adaptation from a light novel is Sword Art Online (if you're an anime fan and have a basic understanding of light novels), and they're 100% right! Though I could list more than a few series that I've enjoyed through the novel version rather than the anime adaptation.

Everybody clowns on SAO now, and yeah, the anime earned some of it. But a lot of what people hate about it is an adaptation problem, not a story problem. The anime blazes through arcs, drops entire chunks of side material, and the pacing gives you no time to actually sit with anyone. Aincrad especially. In the anime it's like six episodes and then we're gone. In the novels you get all these side stories, the little character moments, the day to day of being trapped in there. It hits so much harder when you actually feel the weight of it. Also I feel they really sugarcoated the characters in the anime compared to the light novel... for a few reasons.

The Progressive novels are the real proof. It's literally SAO going back and telling Aincrad floor by floor the way it should've been done the first time in the anime, and it's genuinely great. Slower and more thought out. Kirito and Asuna actually get to breathe as characters instead of being so rushed, LIKE IN THE ANIME. If the OG anime had that pacing, people would talk about it completely differently. One of the main reasons people hate on the adaptation.

Point is, the source almost always has more going on than the adaptation has time for. The anime is like the trailer or teaser, and when you go read the books you learn a whole lot more than what's in the anime. Sometimes the story is completely different or even flipped. One other anime I love, ゴシック, made the anime adaptation before the light novels were even finished, so part of the story is completely different. They also left out VERY important plot details. Actually one other series called Spice and Wolf did the same thing, and I enjoyed the novel way more than the anime! (the audiobooks were good too...)

Thanks for listening to my rant if you're actually reading!

why the adaptation fell short (part 2): money & the golden age

I def think it has to do with money most of the time. They also cut down on so much GOOD source material that it basically ruined the anime for me (even though it was still good. Reki Kawahara has a knack for being able to make great stories, as shown with Accel World too).

Modern day companies in Japan are milking over-saturated genres and mass producing genuine garbage slop, like all these random isekai anime coming out. Sword Art Online was made in 2002. Back then, companies cared for the series they adapted (like Kanon, or Clannad, or even Full Metal Panic!), and if he would have gotten serialized sooner rather than 2009, I'm sure they would have adapted the anime better than the 2012 adaptation.

Well after he won the Dengeki Novel Prize for Accel World is when they approached him for Sword Art Online, not when he was making the web novel from 2002 to 2008. But regardless, still a good anime. 2009 to 2014 was like the golden age for anime and light novels.

I just wish they would have left more source material in, not the "redemption movies" they did for the huge ass jump in levels while in Aincrad. That was the biggest issue to me.

site opened

Site's up! This is where I post about anime, light novels, and why the source material almost always beats the adaptation. Still building things out, so expect a few broken links. Thanks for stopping by.