So, over the weekend I watched The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell on Netflix with my older sister, it's a "cooking" show in which the host Christine McConnell makes creepy sweets and other crafts just in time for the spooky Halloween season. Now, before this I did know about this show before, and by know about it I mean know of its existence I saw it on the front page of Netflix and I think it was shown in the whats coming up in October to Netflix trailer thing. At first, I wasn't too much interested in the show, to be honest it reminded me  a lot of another cooking show on Netflix called "Nailed it", a cooking contest show in which contestants try to re create complex cakes and treats only to fail miserably on purpose because most of them are known for being bad cooks. I didn't like that show at all because of how annoying the host was, and how incompetent the contestants (even the judges ) were to an unbelievable point. Anyways, back to Curious Creations, I watched this show because my sister had said the main character, Christine McConnell use to frequent sites like Reddit spamming her creations and boasting about how great she was, tons of users did get very upset and annoyed with Christine.

She was known for deleting and re-posting her photos and blaming it on her perfectionism. There was even a thread started about her due to how much she spammed, there were a lot of  people that didn't mind her re-posting because of the quality of her creations, even the mod of the Reddit where she spammed was in her favor...

Christine blamed her constant spamming on her perfectionism, but some people weren't buying it. 

So, knowing that my sister was pretty interested to see if this lady's creations were good enough for her to spam it, which also lead me to be curious. and after watching the whole show all I have to say is...what the heck did I just watch. The show was so weird, it wanted to be a cooking show, but it didn't do that  well. At parts the show tried it's hand at comedy, but that didn't go well, and then it tried to go for this spooky murder mystery thing at the end. The show was just a mess, and I would like to explain why I though it was a mess in this here post. (TL;DR at the bottom for the impatient folk)

Since this is a cooking show (when it all comes down to it) I'm going to go over the cooking part of the show, before the story and characters, because there's a lot  of things  weird  about the way this show presents the recipes  to it's viewers that it deserves a section all its own.

The recipes in this show (while seemingly perfect) are wayyy too complex for a beginner to make.  Usually with a cooking or craft show the host treats the audience like this is there first time cooking/baking/or crafting, they go through every step in fine detail, so the viewer doesn't get confused on how the recipe should go. This is the number one rule when giving instructions to people on  just about anything. This show does NOT do this, HECK! in the first episode Christine goes from showing  the audience how to make a peanut butter-chocolate bone to a FREAKING CAKE MANSION complete with little monsters out in the front yard.  Like NANI? you can't just go from zero to 9,000 that quick (this lady is really showing her power level way too early). Christine doesn't even use a measuring cup or spoon through out the entire show let alone tell you the measurements of the ingredients, she gives the most vague instruction especially when it comes to the most complicated recipes, like with the mansion cake she doesn't show you how to build the actual house, she just gives the measurements of the sheet cakes (not the measurements of ingredients that made the sheet cake come into being) tips like cake support, thick big pieces, remember to frost in between but she doesn't show herself actually making it.

The only thing she does go into detail about is the sculpting  painting, and texturing of the sweets, Christine uses  a lot complex tool that the  average bear won't know how to use nor where to get them from tools like a air brush, food painting brush,  sculpting tools and icing pipping bags. (which anybody whose even brought a gingerbread house kit or any cookie kit knows those are a hoot and half to even put icing in the darn bag not to mention to actually use with a steady hand) and even at some point in the show she makes candles and uses hot wax like its an everyday thing (which she gave no warning on how hot the wax could get).  The recipes that have different parts to them like chicken pot pie, the road kill cake  and the gingerbread house, she doesn't even go over how to make the various parts...

 
*make

Despite being a perfectionist ( and supposedly working 3 days straight without no sleep on more than one of the recipes on this show) there are still a handful of mistakes made in the decorating part that are way too careless for a perfectionist. (btw these mistakes were pointed out to me by my sister who is also a perfectionist)

Another problem I have with the show is the parts Christine makes from scratch (like bones, eyes, paws, claws, teeth, etc), you could easily just go out and buy a mold of these parts for pretty cheap without going through the trouble of making them yourself. Also the last problem I have with this section is that she touches the food way to much for my personal liking (I know that probably just me but I really wanted to get that off my chest). This show uses alot of molding chocolate in the recipes, which is why she makes most of the part  homemade.

I wouldn't mind these mistakes of missing steps, parts and details, if only this show was just about Christine making sweets for fun and not teaching it to an audience. While you can argue that no one has to make the recipes they can just watch, Christine did put in the effort of going through some of the steps. The recipes aren't well explained enough for the average viewer of Netflix (which is 18 to 29) who only probably baked a cake once.I feel like the cooking/baking/ crafting part of the show is kind of just so Christine can show off her skills and how great she is at cooking/baking/and crafting, which leads me to the next part of the review.... 

I wanted to a separate section for the story like I usually do, but this show had little to no story to offer, so I decided to put it together with the characters. 

Beside Christine there are many other characters in this show.  Rose, a creature made out of various roadkill that Christine found and brought back to life, Rankle, an old Egyptian cat that Christine found at a antique shop and also brought back to life. Edgar the werewolf(?) who was a stray that wander into Christine's house that she decided to let stay because (she's that  nice) and Norman, her boyfriend Christine met in the graveyard while visiting her grandmother. There are a few other characters like the ghost lady, the monster in the basement, the neighbor that shows up in that one episode and then never again, and Christine's cousin who tries to take back her parent's will from Christine. 

None of the main recurring characters change at all through the series, and if you not watching the show for the recipes I feel like this part is there to give the viewer another reason to watch. The problem is the characters aren't that likable or funny especially Rose,  she suppose to be the comic relief but all she does is spew weird, pervy, raunchy bad sex jokes, she humps basically anything even if it doesn't move. In one episode, she was jealous of Edgar because  Norman was giving him attention and affection instead of her, the voice actress for Rose is a woman even though Rose doesn't really sound (or act) much like a woman to me.  Edgar is just "the dumb one" and Rankle is the only one character that I found decent (mostly because he's a cat).  

All the residents in the household have unconditional love and respect for Christine, but we don't see Christine doing much beside cooking/sewing/crafting to show that she has  earn their trust and respect well enough. I mean these guys tried to kidnap and torture one neighbor that had a slight problem with her. Christine obviously didn't seem upset at the neighbor because she's a Mary sue. I never thought I would use that word to describe a character from a show made by a 37 year old woman, but that's what Christine is a Mary sue.

Any problem she comes across, she solves it without worry or hesitation, she fell in love with a dude she met at a graveyard, cooked him the perfect dinner, made her own dress for her date and the night ended perfectly. One of her friends tries to burn down the house because they felt like they were being neglected and ignored and she calms them down with a surprise birthday party, or when her jealous crazy cousin try to take back her parent's will (which they gave to Christine because she's so nice and talented) she straightaway  got her cousin sent to a mental hospital. Not to mention  the fact that just about anyone who steps  a foot into her house she gives them a grand feast. Even when it seems like  Christine can't get out of the situation herself with her magical Mary sue powers when her cousin comes back for revenge , her serial killer boyfriend (who only kills bad people btw) comes in and saves the day. Everyone calls her beautiful, talented and while the other characters insult and mock each other, all the complements are saved for  Christine. Heck, even the trailer boast about her beauty and talent if those aren't the traits of a Mary sue I don't know what is. 

To be fair it's not even the fact that Christine's character's  a Mary sue, you can have Mary sue-ish character and still have them likable (i.e Barbie, Strawberry-Shortcake, etc) you just have to give them a personality or an interesting backstory. Christine has none of that, she delivers all her lines in the same monotone voice, we don't get to see her upset, mad, scared or nervous or in any type of vulnerable situation.  Like if you were to make a list of Christine's traits there wouldn't be that  many nor  any negative traits.  The show also hints at Christine being some type of witch, a interesting plot point since there are kitchen witches, but the show barely does anything with it. We hear that Christine can do magic or at least has some connection to the magical world/supernatural, since she can talk to her dead grandmother, revive dead animals, and read magic spells. Not to mention, none of the characters seem freaked out or phased by Christine's magical lifestyle, her neighbor doesn't seem scared to approach the house to make a complaint, her cousin doesn't seem weirded out by undead, walking, talking animals and a werewolf. 

So, even if someone were to watch this show for it's "story" or "characters" there's not much to see. All the characters are flat and one sided, the main character's a Mary sue and while it's allude to that she has magical abilities, they're not use/ shown enough to make the show unique or interesting.

I feel like this show really could have gone for a Scary Godmother type of vibe for Halloween, just target at a adult audience because this show does have adult jokes and the recipes are too much for a child to understand, or even learn how to use the tool safely or properly. It could have been about a Scary Godmother type of main character, who was weird, mysterious, yet interesting and fun to watch. I think they were trying to go for the mystery angle for this show, which explains why barely  anything about Christine's character's past is explained, but there's a difference between mysterious and straight up not knowing anything. Even though the show ended on a cliff hanger I highly doubt it's going to get a second season, and even if it does I don't think it will be anything better than what we have now.

This show would have also been better if it changed it's aesthetic entirely something more like a fairy-tale fantasy setting,  so that way the outrageous cakes, sweets and crafts fit better. You could still have her have a romantic interest, maybe the king sends her request to make sweets and such and with each request it more and more to what she likes  until she ends up making her own wedding cake and gets married to the king. It sounds a little like  fan-fic, I know, but to be honest so does this show with the way it is now. A Mary sue that lives in a big spooky house, with  animals that she rescued and revived from the dead. They love her so much that they'll even kill for her, and she has cute picnics in the  graveyard because  "she's  not like the other girls", and she meets a guy whose handsome and nice, but secretly turns out to be a serial killer...but he's not a evil serial killer he only kills bad people and he'll protect his uwu pastel goth queen from any baddies trying to bother her..

But in the end..

TL;DR

This Netflix show is weird it doesn't do well as a cooking show due to the show-off nature of the host and the vagueness of the steps in the recipes, and it fails as a comedy because the jokes aren't funny and characters  either don't make that much of an impact on the *ahem* "story" or are really annoying. The show has a lot of potential to be interesting given the suggestion the main character has magic but nothing is done with it to make it fun or interesting. I couldn't see anyone watching this show outside of Halloween or at  least Fall. It's too grown for children but not amusing enough for adults. So I give this show a 

2.5/5 (go watch the first two Halloweentown movies,  The Scary Godmother Movies, Over The Garden Wall, those are certified hood Halloween classics, or anything spooky or Halloween theme this time of year because it's probably way more entertaining than this. Plus the Scary Godmother movies  have recipes that are way easier to understand than any of the recipes shown in  this show.)

Overall opinion:

Howdy, everybody!

So...uh..yeah I'm not dead. I was just busy and sick, so I was busy being sick (I don't know if I'm going to be doing updates every time I don't post on here for a long period of time, since I don't really have a schedule for my blog, and I kind don't want one because it's going to start feel like  more of a thing that I have to do to instead something I want to do, if you know what I mean. but whatever eh).  So,  at beginning I was working on the onceler fandom analysis thing, but it really confusing and it alot of info at explain, I mean I got exhausted just reading it all and try to understand it. (part of me believes that's why I got so sick, and maybe that was sign for the heavens that I should be taking a break, so I did). I'm still going to try and finish that post sometime soon, while the Onceler fandom was quite confusing and weird, it was also really fascinating to see one simple character from a "kind of" throw away Dr.Seuss movie got so much attention and changed so many people.   

Another thing I worked on during my absence was animation. I finally got the animators survival kit  dvd. I've  been practicing that, and here's what I've got so far...

https://twitter.com/Cinderpeach/status/1053714594882052097

Here's  the link because I can't post gifs from my computer onto my blog for some reason. I'm really proud of what I'm made though, even if it's just simple movements it's a start. I feel like a start to gain a new skill. 

Other than that not much has been going on, the halloween themed splatfest was fun, but I'm pretty sure team treat didn't win (I haven't check atm my typing this).

I'll still be posting on this site as per usual the next post if not art-related is probably going to be about daydreams or at least the way I daydream because I just found out recently it's not like many other people daydream, which doesn't really surprise me all that much, and anyways until next time..

Well, I was planning to give my blog a makeover yesterday, but I was stricken with a 24 hour bug thing. So, today as soon as I awoken I took my computer and started designing the website brick by brick. I've been up since 8am and  it's almost 4 pm at the time of typing this, and I have to say that this website turn out much better than I thought. The coding was also alot easier than I first expected, the CSS cookbook help A TON! So... yeah Welcome to Ash's Ashes 2.0. While  I still do like the other previous theme I had (I still think it's cute) this one is much more personal, and to think I found this BG while searching for more cute pngs. I made a page that gives credit to all the wonderful and generous people whose work I used to created this website makeover. The page will probably increase over time because I have a lot other seasonal  themes I download that I might use in the near future. But that's enough of internet for me today, I think I've used all my creative juices making this site look good. As always until next time

Later days ~

So, I've  been thinking  about giving my blog a little more personality, so I'll be giving my blog a little makeover...hopefully..eh...maybe. I saying this because while I have learned how to code from high school, it's been a minute since I've actually done some coding. Also my meomeries of coding in highschool weren't very fun, it was mostly filled with frustration and despair, but since I really genuinely like my blog I'll probably be more moviated to try. (Also I found a whole website just for teaching Typepad CSS so that should help a bunch). I won't do like a full makeover, I'll start simple (i.e change the bg) and then work my way from there. It probably happen over the course of the next few days (maybe). Even if it does end up being a major OOF on my part I'll just default back to the current theme (the one with stars and stuff).  I just wanted to make this post so the few people who do visit my blog aren't confused, I'll still be posting as usual during this time..so.. yeah that's all for now..

Later Days~

Click Here 

So, I've been seeing the three emoji OC design Challenge floating around and I've finally decided to join in, so here's Beatrice, she's a happy-go-lucky woman that loves honey and bees, she loves bees so much that she puts flowers in her hair so they are always attracted to her, it's also been said that she can actually control bees (which freaks some people out).Beatrice collects her own honey herself, and likes to use the honey in her lemonde. Anyone who drinks the lemonade are instantly happy, so its pretty popular with people.  Beatrice believes a little honey and positivity can solve any situation...

So...yeah there that's my first emoji OC, I'm thinking of doing more of these because I had a lot of fun making this one, and I always love making new characters and such.

Well, until next time 

It's been a whole year since I started this blog, and to be honest I didn't think I was even going to this be using this place much at all since it was given to me.  Even thought, this blog post is like a month late because I forgotten when I made my first blog post. I had a feeling it was in August, but  turns out it was  September, Better late than never I suppose.

So, I guess I should start with the reason I start this blog, I know that my first blog post was the about that ( one has a bunch of reasons) but I want to get into the BIG reason that prompted me to start in the first place. I was in a discord chat, it was the one of the  first few I joined, and , I really enjoyed my time on there, I felt welcomed from the moment I signed in, all the people were nice on there (at the start), and we would always have interesting conversation about games or just random stuff. There was an art chat that I posted some of my art in (of course), and I got a few complements and such, it was really great I started feel like I found my own place on the internet were  I belonged. Until One day, I posted one of my art pieces as usual, but this time it was different, I was also hanging out in the voice chat at same time but not  talking because I didn't really feel like it.

One of the people in voice chat said something along the lines of "I'm looking at Art Chat and its pretty bad" at first I did felt a little hurt, but I just brushed it off and tried not to think about it. The next time I posted my art was few weeks later, and the same person made the same comment again.They wouldn't tell me what's wrong with my art they would just say it's bad. A few weeks later, a newcomer came and joined, and they also didn't like my art (unsurprisingly they were friends with other person who thought my art was bad, and  I think they looked up to the other person because the newcomer would always praise their art but would scoffed at mine) eventually the person just show me a picture of what I was doing was wrong they drew me a picture of proper body proportions. They didn't really go into detail or anything, just a genetic drawing a figure with proper body proportions done int their style. At this point I realized that the person just didn't like my style they thought it was too cutesy and cartoonish, they liked a more realistic art style, which is all fine and dandy with me. 

People can like whatever style they want and that's fine with me. What I don't like is when people say someone's art is bad or wrong simply because the artist doesn't draw in the style they like. This person didn't  throw shade just at   me but a few other people as well who's drawing style leaned more towards cartoon or anime style. That wasn't the only reason why I started to feel unwelcome in that server there were more and more people coming into the server who were just rude or just unpleasant to be around, there started to be less and less of fun conversations, I started to see the people liked and made friends with online the server less and less, and more and more people getting frustrated with how the server was being handled and just leaving, not to mention a few favorites on the server got banned for (from what I heard ) unjustified reasons. 

Soon the place loved going on to and feel so welcome slowly just disappeared. I started to get more and more upset and sad as the more a visited. My sister noticed this and said I should probably just stop going on to the server if makes me this upset. At first, I got really sad at the idea of leaving the server because I really felt like it was a place that belonged to (at least some point) and thought maybe if I stuck around more things would get back to the way it was before. It took me a while, but I finally decided to stop visiting the server. 

A few days after I left the server and my sister gave me this blog so I could write out my thoughts,feelings and post my art. This blog site was originally her's and my oldest brother's  but they haven't used it in years, so my sister passed it on to me. At first, I never really thought of myself as someone who need a diary to write out their feelings or someone's whose thoughts and opinions are interesting enough to have their own blog. But as I started posting, I gotten used to the idea, instead keeping my ideas, thoughts, and opinions to myself and having to repeat them over and over in my mind, I could make a detailed post about it and be done with it. If did don't where to post my art or a place where I could free go on and on about something I was passionate about (or something that really frustrated me) I could just go to my blog. 

Even though I do have other platforms like tweet or insta, reddit, and etc. I always come back to my blog, if some reason on other platforms I feel like I'm preforming or like someone's always watching me like I have to something great, but here on my blog I don't get that feeling. No one's watching so I could just be myself and say and post anything I want without the fear of others saying what's right or wrong. Over the past year I've been able to make my own place to call me instead seeking one out and that's one of the most coolest feelings in the world.