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Yo Ho All Hands
no one will ever see this account thus I'm spoiling a page from the comic
Comics are tough. Please ignore all the shotty images crowding the page. It is various image references for various reasons.
And that aside, I've been trying to crank up the comic, seeing what works, what doesn't.
A lot of the pages I did finish have yet to be colored, but they're alright, so that aside let's talk about Bella because I am not really allowed to talk at nauseam about her with anyone other than my sister.
I came up with Bella a long time ago. Around 2012. She was actually inspired by a 'Rowdyright Boys' interview I watched on Youtube by a creator who went by 'JK Sketchy' at the time (I'm not sure if that's still their pen name). I was initially turned off by the idea of 'original characters' in any interpretation of the Powerpuff girls (particularly to do with the fandom) because when I was younger, it just didn't make sense to me. An original character would never exist besides the Powerpuff Girls, and there would never be any show about someone's original characters becoming the 'new official Powerpuff Girls.' And there was also that one episode of the Powerpuff girls "Knock it Off" that told my juvenile brain that was the official show's way of saying "no original character will ever be canon."
Silly. I know.
What changed my mind was 'Jk Sketchy's' video. The idea of having in depth characters that I could talk about at length, intrigued me. And I immediately sat my butt down at my mother's cheap dining table and cranked out three characters that had stuck with me to this day (The other seven came the next day.)
The first official three I had made were Dylan, Bella and Lillian. Bella and Lillian were twins, and Dylan was like... this arrogant shithead ghost who was arrogant for the sake of being arrogant. And they were all children because that's just how the cookie crumbles when you're a kid writing characters in a fandom with predominantly children.
Bella's character was nothing as I write her today. When I first wrote her, her personality was closer to Jenna's. She was stoic and mature and quiet, but unlike Jenna who is Kuudere TM, Bella was also very 'emotional' and I would often imagine her having theatrical Elsa moments (because I was also obsessed with Frozen at the time) where she would sing and cry and go through emotional trauma for the sake of angst.
And then I got into Homestuck and began shipping her with Dave Strider.
By the way, I've never read Homestuck. I only know of the fandom because the fandom was so big, it got around to little me and I thought it was epic.
All I knew about Dave Strider, according to fandom, he was the cool guy with sunglasses, so naturally, to ship Bella with Dave, she had to be the 'cool girl' who would wear his shirt a lot for some reason? I think it was an ongoing fandom thing for characters who were shipped with Dave to wear his clothing?
Anyway, I liked that Dave Strider was kind of edgy and cool, and I (being an internet kid. Terrible I know) started finding more online works that inspired Bella's character. Like leaked bits of 'Drawn Together' (yikes) and 'Dickfigures' (yikes), and Butch from More than Human (I love that fic it's awesome).
and younger me started scratching her chin and thinking "wouldn't it be cool, if 'mature Bella' went through an arch like the Princess-who I forgot the name of, in 'Drawn Together' and then Bella turns from 'mature sister' to 'wild girl who just wants to par-tay'?"
And the more I thought about it, the more I was in love.
Red in 'Dickfigures' probably had the worst impact on Bella. I just wanted a female character who was as obnoxious and 'cool' as Red was- or at least how I perceived Red at the time, and I felt like this was "revolutionary in writing" because most "badass" female characters I grew up around had a large feminine Identity they were tied to.
But ohohoh. Bella was nothing of the sort.
Bella became loud and annoying, she often made gross jokes, sexist jokes, she'd been to prison multiple times and somehow, she was still supposed to be perceived as a beloved hero.
One thing I would constantly make her do is flirt with Jenna and Dylan, Dylan particularly because she knew it got under his skin when she did it. She would go around the GAME mansion (some mansion all the teens in my head stayed at from their home as like... a super hero mansion hangout) calling him "her man" or "her boyfriend". And then eventually she actually started having a crush on him. She would legitimately get defensive when other girls flirted with Dylan or offended when Dylan didn't reciprocate her feelings.
Now I know I mentioned Dylan originally was just this 'arrogant kid', but all of my characters eventually went through a retcon influenced by the media I was intaking. So Dylan had shifted from arrogant kid to Karkat Vantas to 'MTH Brick' to Sasuke, Zuko, or any other male 'Kuudere' character that was relevant to me at the time- although he did snap at Bella, breaking his 'stoic facade'. And he was pretty much just an emo bitch who liked to boss people around at the end of the day.
Bella was immensely turned on by this for some reason and as I mentioned before, she became very defensive over him.
Jenna was kind of just.... queer bait. I didn't know if I actually wanted Bella to be a lesbian or bisexual, and typically she'd only 'flirt' with Jenna to get under her skin (although Jenna is not nearly as effective at responding as Dylan is).
So yeah, Bella had just become super annoying, and the personification of every p!nk 'punk-pop' song I could get my hands on. I mean I even had this scene in my head where I daydreamed- despite BELLA being a HERO mind you- she's in a trial, with an orange jumpsuit, handcuffed behind her back and Dylan is her Lawyer. The song I would daydream to was p!nks 'Bad Influence' and in one scene she would stand on the witness stand and piss ("Blegh!") in front of the court.
Like girl. Come on now. What the hell is wrong with you?
Did I mention during this time, she was white.
I had a lot of issues with seeing myself through the characters I drew. I used to think "only fair-skinned people can be awesome animated characters" quite often.
Anyway.
My excuse for Bella's terrible behavior? She was actually a demon "Dun Dun DUn!!!!" Yep. The good ole' demon excuse. Does it every time.
For some reason, Bella was a demon, and Lillian, her twin, was an angel. I just liked the idea of twins who were opposites but still supportive. I thought I was 'so different' TM, and I kept thinking, "One day when I release my idea to the world, I'm gonna be so famous for being so different."
Those Wattpad numbers did not lie though.
One thing that younger me was very terrible at, was being realistic. I yearn to this day to be an internet sensation, but let me be real, with my work from the past, there was nothing of longevity within it, and I was obviously too young to understand that.
As I became older, I started to realize, Bella was very unlikeable. There's this old bit I have- I can't find it but she's basically just bullying her friend Collin for the sake of Bullying Collin.
Oh, here it is. kind of. She isn't really mean in this, but she is annoying and the writing is just bad. And yes the saucer thing the group finds is MTH Brick's saucer (is it even called a saucer? Sauser? I dunno)
https://www.fictionpress.com/s/3310405/4/What-if-We-Were-a-TV-show
There are far worse examples of Bella's bad attitude and her mean spirited nature, and although I am not totally against mean bitches being protagonists (Who Jenna is now) I am against assholes being assholes with nothing to justify their assholery.
I just didn't like it with Bella. Add that she had this 'not like other girls' demeanor about her as if she were 'better' than most female characters she was around, it just ended up making her misogynistic with the constant sex jokes (even if I tried to defend it with "but she jokes on the girls AND the boys") and her juvenile behavior.
She also smoked and would get drunk and fight people. She was a bully, but oh wait, we're supposed to like Bella because in the end you see, she APOLOGIZES. OH MY GOSH.
Like bitch. "That's my cookie. and my juice."
Lmao I'm jk.
But seriously, she just became very stupid and annoying and rude, and even I started not liking her and not feeling bad for her when bad things happened to her.
In my older pieces you will discover often, that I try to make my characters "complex" by making them unforgivable jerks at times. My thinking was "Hey, no one's perfect. And even though my characters are heroes, I want them to be flawed." but my characters were flawed on like... Homelander levels, which wasn't my intention, because I never saw any of them as actual Anti heroes. Even if I told myself that Bella was supposed to be like Deadpool, I wasn't able to give her a strong enough story that justified her being a jerk past "Oh, she's just a little screwed up in the head from being a demon."
It's ass.
I tried making her lore a bit darker- and by 'a bit' I mean extremely dark with a bunch of child abuse and death and other horrific things to drag her childhood through the mud, but something didn't feel right within me using those darker themes and elements just to say I had a fucked up character, especially when I wanted to desperately move my character on so quickly from her trauma just to have her be "kick ass" as a late teen or early adult.
That's when I actually sat back and asked myself "Who is Bella Jevasteen"? What did I want her to be?
Well.
Today, Bella Jevasteen is chaotic in a different sense. She's blunt in a loyal sense. Anyone she sees as an ally, she WILL protect them and side with them. She also believes in protecting people who she feels can not protect themselves, even if she has to step out of line or get in trouble, and because she's a potty mouth (as you can see in the image I shared) she is sharing her 'unpopular opinions' very often. She's mischievous and curious about almost everything, in fact her curiosity is what lends her to being a pretty damn good chemist and she also loves video games- cracking them to find easter eggs or besting speed runs- although she wouldn't wear her geekiness on her sleeves because she doesn't want to identify with the crowd. Funnily enough, she makes friends with anyone and treats them all the same. She doesn't have beef with the hot, popular chicks because she wants to date all the hot, popular chicks. She's obsessed with Megan thee Stallion. In Bella's head, she and Megan are married. I've decided she is Bisexual. And overall she still has her tomboy flamboyant nature from the way she dresses in everything baggy to how she'd rather spend her free time skating at a skate park or playing the drums, even the way she talks and connects with people.
I know her character may seem a lot more tamer to a boring degree, but trust me, she is not boring nor perfect, but the foundation of her definitely needed to shift with the story I'm making for her now and how I use her. She will still be chaotic, but for the narratives purpose, not just because.
Comics are tough. Please ignore all the shotty images crowding the page. It is various image references for various reasons.
And that aside, I've been trying to crank up the comic, seeing what works, what doesn't.
A lot of the pages I did finish have yet to be colored, but they're alright, so that aside let's talk about Bella because I am not really allowed to talk at nauseam about her with anyone other than my sister.
I came up with Bella a long time ago. Around 2012. She was actually inspired by a 'Rowdyright Boys' interview I watched on Youtube by a creator who went by 'JK Sketchy' at the time (I'm not sure if that's still their pen name). I was initially turned off by the idea of 'original characters' in any interpretation of the Powerpuff girls (particularly to do with the fandom) because when I was younger, it just didn't make sense to me. An original character would never exist besides the Powerpuff Girls, and there would never be any show about someone's original characters becoming the 'new official Powerpuff Girls.' And there was also that one episode of the Powerpuff girls "Knock it Off" that told my juvenile brain that was the official show's way of saying "no original character will ever be canon."
Silly. I know.
What changed my mind was 'Jk Sketchy's' video. The idea of having in depth characters that I could talk about at length, intrigued me. And I immediately sat my butt down at my mother's cheap dining table and cranked out three characters that had stuck with me to this day (The other seven came the next day.)
The first official three I had made were Dylan, Bella and Lillian. Bella and Lillian were twins, and Dylan was like... this arrogant shithead ghost who was arrogant for the sake of being arrogant. And they were all children because that's just how the cookie crumbles when you're a kid writing characters in a fandom with predominantly children.
Bella's character was nothing as I write her today. When I first wrote her, her personality was closer to Jenna's. She was stoic and mature and quiet, but unlike Jenna who is Kuudere TM, Bella was also very 'emotional' and I would often imagine her having theatrical Elsa moments (because I was also obsessed with Frozen at the time) where she would sing and cry and go through emotional trauma for the sake of angst.
And then I got into Homestuck and began shipping her with Dave Strider.
By the way, I've never read Homestuck. I only know of the fandom because the fandom was so big, it got around to little me and I thought it was epic.
All I knew about Dave Strider, according to fandom, he was the cool guy with sunglasses, so naturally, to ship Bella with Dave, she had to be the 'cool girl' who would wear his shirt a lot for some reason? I think it was an ongoing fandom thing for characters who were shipped with Dave to wear his clothing?
Anyway, I liked that Dave Strider was kind of edgy and cool, and I (being an internet kid. Terrible I know) started finding more online works that inspired Bella's character. Like leaked bits of 'Drawn Together' (yikes) and 'Dickfigures' (yikes), and Butch from More than Human (I love that fic it's awesome).
and younger me started scratching her chin and thinking "wouldn't it be cool, if 'mature Bella' went through an arch like the Princess-who I forgot the name of, in 'Drawn Together' and then Bella turns from 'mature sister' to 'wild girl who just wants to par-tay'?"
And the more I thought about it, the more I was in love.
Red in 'Dickfigures' probably had the worst impact on Bella. I just wanted a female character who was as obnoxious and 'cool' as Red was- or at least how I perceived Red at the time, and I felt like this was "revolutionary in writing" because most "badass" female characters I grew up around had a large feminine Identity they were tied to.
But ohohoh. Bella was nothing of the sort.
Bella became loud and annoying, she often made gross jokes, sexist jokes, she'd been to prison multiple times and somehow, she was still supposed to be perceived as a beloved hero.
One thing I would constantly make her do is flirt with Jenna and Dylan, Dylan particularly because she knew it got under his skin when she did it. She would go around the GAME mansion (some mansion all the teens in my head stayed at from their home as like... a super hero mansion hangout) calling him "her man" or "her boyfriend". And then eventually she actually started having a crush on him. She would legitimately get defensive when other girls flirted with Dylan or offended when Dylan didn't reciprocate her feelings.
Now I know I mentioned Dylan originally was just this 'arrogant kid', but all of my characters eventually went through a retcon influenced by the media I was intaking. So Dylan had shifted from arrogant kid to Karkat Vantas to 'MTH Brick' to Sasuke, Zuko, or any other male 'Kuudere' character that was relevant to me at the time- although he did snap at Bella, breaking his 'stoic facade'. And he was pretty much just an emo bitch who liked to boss people around at the end of the day.
Bella was immensely turned on by this for some reason and as I mentioned before, she became very defensive over him.
Jenna was kind of just.... queer bait. I didn't know if I actually wanted Bella to be a lesbian or bisexual, and typically she'd only 'flirt' with Jenna to get under her skin (although Jenna is not nearly as effective at responding as Dylan is).
So yeah, Bella had just become super annoying, and the personification of every p!nk 'punk-pop' song I could get my hands on. I mean I even had this scene in my head where I daydreamed- despite BELLA being a HERO mind you- she's in a trial, with an orange jumpsuit, handcuffed behind her back and Dylan is her Lawyer. The song I would daydream to was p!nks 'Bad Influence' and in one scene she would stand on the witness stand and piss ("Blegh!") in front of the court.
Like girl. Come on now. What the hell is wrong with you?
Did I mention during this time, she was white.
I had a lot of issues with seeing myself through the characters I drew. I used to think "only fair-skinned people can be awesome animated characters" quite often.
Anyway.
My excuse for Bella's terrible behavior? She was actually a demon "Dun Dun DUn!!!!" Yep. The good ole' demon excuse. Does it every time.
For some reason, Bella was a demon, and Lillian, her twin, was an angel. I just liked the idea of twins who were opposites but still supportive. I thought I was 'so different' TM, and I kept thinking, "One day when I release my idea to the world, I'm gonna be so famous for being so different."
Those Wattpad numbers did not lie though.
One thing that younger me was very terrible at, was being realistic. I yearn to this day to be an internet sensation, but let me be real, with my work from the past, there was nothing of longevity within it, and I was obviously too young to understand that.
As I became older, I started to realize, Bella was very unlikeable. There's this old bit I have- I can't find it but she's basically just bullying her friend Collin for the sake of Bullying Collin.
Oh, here it is. kind of. She isn't really mean in this, but she is annoying and the writing is just bad. And yes the saucer thing the group finds is MTH Brick's saucer (is it even called a saucer? Sauser? I dunno)
https://www.fictionpress.com/s/3310405/4/What-if-We-Were-a-TV-show
There are far worse examples of Bella's bad attitude and her mean spirited nature, and although I am not totally against mean bitches being protagonists (Who Jenna is now) I am against assholes being assholes with nothing to justify their assholery.
I just didn't like it with Bella. Add that she had this 'not like other girls' demeanor about her as if she were 'better' than most female characters she was around, it just ended up making her misogynistic with the constant sex jokes (even if I tried to defend it with "but she jokes on the girls AND the boys") and her juvenile behavior.
She also smoked and would get drunk and fight people. She was a bully, but oh wait, we're supposed to like Bella because in the end you see, she APOLOGIZES. OH MY GOSH.
Like bitch. "That's my cookie. and my juice."
Lmao I'm jk.
But seriously, she just became very stupid and annoying and rude, and even I started not liking her and not feeling bad for her when bad things happened to her.
In my older pieces you will discover often, that I try to make my characters "complex" by making them unforgivable jerks at times. My thinking was "Hey, no one's perfect. And even though my characters are heroes, I want them to be flawed." but my characters were flawed on like... Homelander levels, which wasn't my intention, because I never saw any of them as actual Anti heroes. Even if I told myself that Bella was supposed to be like Deadpool, I wasn't able to give her a strong enough story that justified her being a jerk past "Oh, she's just a little screwed up in the head from being a demon."
It's ass.
I tried making her lore a bit darker- and by 'a bit' I mean extremely dark with a bunch of child abuse and death and other horrific things to drag her childhood through the mud, but something didn't feel right within me using those darker themes and elements just to say I had a fucked up character, especially when I wanted to desperately move my character on so quickly from her trauma just to have her be "kick ass" as a late teen or early adult.
That's when I actually sat back and asked myself "Who is Bella Jevasteen"? What did I want her to be?
Well.
Today, Bella Jevasteen is chaotic in a different sense. She's blunt in a loyal sense. Anyone she sees as an ally, she WILL protect them and side with them. She also believes in protecting people who she feels can not protect themselves, even if she has to step out of line or get in trouble, and because she's a potty mouth (as you can see in the image I shared) she is sharing her 'unpopular opinions' very often. She's mischievous and curious about almost everything, in fact her curiosity is what lends her to being a pretty damn good chemist and she also loves video games- cracking them to find easter eggs or besting speed runs- although she wouldn't wear her geekiness on her sleeves because she doesn't want to identify with the crowd. Funnily enough, she makes friends with anyone and treats them all the same. She doesn't have beef with the hot, popular chicks because she wants to date all the hot, popular chicks. She's obsessed with Megan thee Stallion. In Bella's head, she and Megan are married. I've decided she is Bisexual. And overall she still has her tomboy flamboyant nature from the way she dresses in everything baggy to how she'd rather spend her free time skating at a skate park or playing the drums, even the way she talks and connects with people.
I know her character may seem a lot more tamer to a boring degree, but trust me, she is not boring nor perfect, but the foundation of her definitely needed to shift with the story I'm making for her now and how I use her. She will still be chaotic, but for the narratives purpose, not just because.