spiderbraids (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spiderbraids) wrote2023-06-15 10:41 pm
spiderbraids) wrote2023-06-15 10:41 pm
Fanart: Finish Our Story
(A follow-up of sorts to "Giving a hoot about good animated stories")
Is it really fanart if you're not really a fan? (Not in the sense of actively disliking the show, it just never caught my attention) Well, with the writers' strike going on, and with WBD head honcho David Zaslav being seen as the writers' main target, I decided to draw two fanarts for an animated series that Zaslav also had a hand in cutting short... (though fair warning, it's none of the usual suspects you might be thinking of)
(And yes, I get that the writers are complaining about not getting their fair pay and stuff, rather than not getting to finish their stories, but still...)
These are the titular brothers of the Cartoon Network show Victor and Valentino (Vic on the left, Val on the right) which has been described as a Mexican Gravity Falls, but despite having more content than GF (3 seasons vs. 2), it doesn't have a proper conclusion... In fact, V&V's last episode sets things up for what was looking to be a really interesting 4th season, as it reveals many of the characters to be various Aztec gods, including the brothers' own grandma (!) To quote series creator Diego Molano, "My writers, (artist) Casey (Alexander) and I were excited to dig into Season Four because it's when Victor, Valentino and the whole town would have woken up to their god-hood." He also adds that "we would've seen Vic and Val comedically struggle to harness their grandfather Tlaloc's special powers of lighting and rain." Again, not a fan, but I suspect that the prospect of V&V now having powers would've sounded exciting to the fans, given how excited the show-runners themselves were...
So anyways, I had a basic general premise in my head: What if the characters themselves protested against the show getting cancelled just as they were about to dig into really interesting stuff? I had other shows under the WB umbrella in mind as well, but I felt that I could probably do a V&V art well; indeed, I managed to knock out these fanarts in about a week (!)
The season finale didn't do all of the heavy lifting in setting up the non-existent next season, though, as a few episodes before that, the show revealed something new about one of the show's recurring supporting characters, moody teenager Xochi Jalapeño: Turns out she has the magical ability to manipulate plants, which is something you probably would have expected to come out sometime earlier than episode 115 of 119 :-\ (Yeah, she had her reasons, but still, you'd think it would have come out even by accident at some point given the sheer amount of episodes before that) The Molano piece mentioned above didn't touch upon any specifics of what he had in mind for her, but you have to imagine that we'd be getting more out of those powers in another season :-\
(Aside: given that the EPG synopsis for the episode in question reads "When Vic and Val accidentally bring a fungus into Xochi's garden, they have to find a way to stop the monstrous plants it creates", and given that this episode reveals the existence of her powers, you probably imagine it plays out something along the lines of of V&V fighting the monstrous plants, only for Xochi to unexpectedly intervene with her powers... Nope, apparently V&V catch her in a private moment with her plants at the garden in her dad's shop, she captures them, and they proceed to tell each other their own embarrassing secrets, including Xochi telling V&V about her magic; fungus and monstrous plants never figure into the story)
Now I don't have any of the major social media, otherwise I'd probably leave it to the fans to ponder which one is the bigger disappointment: That we didn't get three seasons of her as a Mexican Poison Ivy, or that we don't get a whole season of her powers going forward... But you'd imagine Xochi herself to be miffed to have only barely gotten to scratch the surface of her powers (even if she did make good use of them in the series finale, from what I've heard anyway)
Is it really fanart if you're not really a fan? (Not in the sense of actively disliking the show, it just never caught my attention) Well, with the writers' strike going on, and with WBD head honcho David Zaslav being seen as the writers' main target, I decided to draw two fanarts for an animated series that Zaslav also had a hand in cutting short... (though fair warning, it's none of the usual suspects you might be thinking of)
(And yes, I get that the writers are complaining about not getting their fair pay and stuff, rather than not getting to finish their stories, but still...)
These are the titular brothers of the Cartoon Network show Victor and Valentino (Vic on the left, Val on the right) which has been described as a Mexican Gravity Falls, but despite having more content than GF (3 seasons vs. 2), it doesn't have a proper conclusion... In fact, V&V's last episode sets things up for what was looking to be a really interesting 4th season, as it reveals many of the characters to be various Aztec gods, including the brothers' own grandma (!) To quote series creator Diego Molano, "My writers, (artist) Casey (Alexander) and I were excited to dig into Season Four because it's when Victor, Valentino and the whole town would have woken up to their god-hood." He also adds that "we would've seen Vic and Val comedically struggle to harness their grandfather Tlaloc's special powers of lighting and rain." Again, not a fan, but I suspect that the prospect of V&V now having powers would've sounded exciting to the fans, given how excited the show-runners themselves were...
So anyways, I had a basic general premise in my head: What if the characters themselves protested against the show getting cancelled just as they were about to dig into really interesting stuff? I had other shows under the WB umbrella in mind as well, but I felt that I could probably do a V&V art well; indeed, I managed to knock out these fanarts in about a week (!)
The season finale didn't do all of the heavy lifting in setting up the non-existent next season, though, as a few episodes before that, the show revealed something new about one of the show's recurring supporting characters, moody teenager Xochi Jalapeño: Turns out she has the magical ability to manipulate plants, which is something you probably would have expected to come out sometime earlier than episode 115 of 119 :-\ (Yeah, she had her reasons, but still, you'd think it would have come out even by accident at some point given the sheer amount of episodes before that) The Molano piece mentioned above didn't touch upon any specifics of what he had in mind for her, but you have to imagine that we'd be getting more out of those powers in another season :-\
(Aside: given that the EPG synopsis for the episode in question reads "When Vic and Val accidentally bring a fungus into Xochi's garden, they have to find a way to stop the monstrous plants it creates", and given that this episode reveals the existence of her powers, you probably imagine it plays out something along the lines of of V&V fighting the monstrous plants, only for Xochi to unexpectedly intervene with her powers... Nope, apparently V&V catch her in a private moment with her plants at the garden in her dad's shop, she captures them, and they proceed to tell each other their own embarrassing secrets, including Xochi telling V&V about her magic; fungus and monstrous plants never figure into the story)
Now I don't have any of the major social media, otherwise I'd probably leave it to the fans to ponder which one is the bigger disappointment: That we didn't get three seasons of her as a Mexican Poison Ivy, or that we don't get a whole season of her powers going forward... But you'd imagine Xochi herself to be miffed to have only barely gotten to scratch the surface of her powers (even if she did make good use of them in the series finale, from what I've heard anyway)