#convergence thoughts

[the-glorious-evolution-fanart]

About the narrative of Convergence comic

It’s Ekko’s comic first and foremost. It treats him well, it shows us his inner conflicts about wanting to help his parents but struggling with the feeling that he’s imposing his will on others, then he wonders if he imposes on others due to his advantages due to intellect.

There are problems in that narrative too though. He threw away his Z-drive? Okay let’s say he did want to get rid of it, even though he would know how it literally has an ability to give people a second chance to survive fatal incidents. Why would he not dismantle it? Destroy it? Wouldn’t it cross his mind that someone might find it and misuse it? And how did the other kid find it in the end? Nobody knows, and the authors surely don’t know.

The other Lost Kids are annoying. We care about them just because Ekko cares about them, not due to any quality of theirs as characters. They’re there to serve as emotional fodder. Sorry narrative writers, you gotta do better than this. (Also shouldn’t “Lost Kids” be a title for orphans? Oh well it just has a weird vibe)

Now about Viktor, what everyone has been waiting for, staring at this Viktor-centric blog:

Do you like supervillains who are bombastic, convinced of their superiority of whatever kind, very harmful to others, and physically scarred? Congrats, you win another one. New Universe lore treats Viktor as a morally bankrupt character who for some reason believes “free will” is a flaw. It is intentionally written to make him clearly a villain, and then sprinkles in “but he tried to save lives” as a way to make him sympathetic. Guys he’s a villain here, he treats people like cogs.

Yaay let’s go slavery! Mind-controlling slaves to sacrificing themselves for “greater good” is not greater good. People are called heroes if they decide to risk themselves for others by their own will.

This is written a tiny bit naively, but in principle I fully agree Viktor would be willing to collaborate with someone to help him with public relations. A Piltovian as well. Remember, Viktor approached Jayce originally to ask for a collaboration! So, I like this aspect of the comic ^__^

I’m really not a fan of cheap sci-fi vibe of pulling out brains and putting them into mechanical bodies which then go “Beep-boop! We follow orders!” Like what the fuck. Also this fusion of in-game Viktor and Arcane Viktor is giving me the heebie-geebies. No thanks

Dear Riot writers. Either you don’t understand what Viktor is supposed to be about, or you concluded it’s much more profitable with a wider reach to have him be this type of villain.

This frame though... this frame comes dangerously close to the real valuable core of Viktor’s story. To one aspect of it at least. Can you feel it? Can you sense it like I can? His expression is also good here. Him being silent is also good here. There is something about the Evolution he believes in, but doesn’t know how to explain it appropriately. Partially because the Evolution is in big part a response to his trauma. You can’t explain your coping mechanism to random others who haven’t gone through that trauma.

Wide_Viktor.jpeg

It’s a good idea to have Viktor see others misuse his work (again)

For a moment, was excited, I had hope Riot would handle well the dumb Glorious Evolved which they introduced. A religion forming around his work is something Viktor wouldn’t like at all. I don’t like how Riot wrote the zealots as even rotting while trying to replace their bodyparts... It doesn’t go that way!! They would all have been already dead!! But then Riot goes 180 and has Viktor go “yees you opened my eyes to perfection” again to make sure he stays a villain, and encourages MORE mind-controlled slavery and sacrifice.

Do you want to be used like this? If not, then Viktor is a villain here. (I say this because I’ve seen A LOT of relatively new Viktor fans who like him for some other reasons, and then fall into a trap of trying to logic their way out of this evil characterisation. Trust me guys, you don’t have to do that, because you don’t have to justify all writing of a character. Writing is often done by many people in a company, motives change, etc. etc.)

Wide_Viktor2.jpeg

This is literally a Saturday Morning Cartoon. A prosthetic leg isn’t going to be able to mind-control you. The sensitive ones work by picking up signals from nerve endings and dumping back signals onto them for very specific senses of touch/pressure. An amputee using a prosthetic is not going to be mind-controlled guys, please.

Also it’s fucking absurd how new lore treats augments as “Tee-hee, I got my arm replaced for funsies and now I have a robotic claw”, like NO that’s not how these things go!! Call me a killjoy cause I’m listening to MCR!

Let’s go Viktor, atta boy, I’ll kick your ass that’s how much you go on my nerves. And I’m supposed to be your stan?

Ignoring the anatomy, Viktor floating and the complete mismatch of tech style, does Viktor look like a guy trying to merge with other people’s minds? No. Does he look like someone who’d want to be the ruler of that one giant mass of mind-controlled humans? Arguably yes. Boring villain characterization.

Even a child can identify that this is not “perfect” functioning. Anyway, as I said, Saturday morning cartoon and I’m tired now so I’ll end it here. Every other bit of the comic is just repeating what has already been said.

Enjoy the comic for the qualities it has, and I’d say don’t take it as any reference for characterisation or references or whatever.

[yallstar]

for those who come after,

right?

[hauntingsunshine14]

so like kevin day right?

I need kevin to be like the green brothers of the exy-verse. Like people know him either from the prolific history yt channel he runs (he saves people taking any hist class, is worshipped by apush students during exam szn) OR from being the best exy striker to ever play the game.

then I need all the tweets going 'wtf is kevin day doing teaching on yt in my apush class?? I thought he was an exy player??'

or

' why does my cousin have a poster of kevin day in exy gear? I see that guy every time my hist prof has a hangover and puts on youtube??'

anyways,

kevin day wins a kids choice award or a streamy or something and he receives some very confused calls from the foxes.

[fantastic-nonsense]

the 90s are so fascinating for both Dick and Babs from a romantic standpoint because they're both working through MASSIVE crashouts for extremely different reasons: Babs is recovering from The Killing Joke and breaking off her engagement with Jason Bard, while Dick is reeling from his marriage to Kory failing, Joey dying, the Titans dissolving, not being Bruce's first choice to fill in as Batman for him after Knightfall, etc etc. Them getting together—and their romance in general—is a slow burn, slow-building relationship explicitly presented as "okay, they're both independent, mature, and confident characters now, this is the only way this was ever going to work and now they're ready for it."

Birds of Prey (1999) #8 was the first time in the post-Crisis universe the potential for their romance was explicitly acknowledged, but there are these….hints, here and there, in mid-90s comics (post-Dick returning to Gotham after the dissolution of the Titans) that indicate DickBabs was something that was definitely being thought about in the Bat Offices. Because Dick is CLEARLY not over Kory during this era and he dates 2-3 other women before he and Babs get together, but the hints are definitely there! It's actually really fun to read and realize that the entirety of the mid to late 90s is mostly just them reconnecting, talking to and supporting each other, and building up towards the more explicit romance in Nightwing/Birds of Prey at the speed of molasses.

Like, the "it was you. it was always you" trope DOES NOT WORK for them! It invalidates their other relationships and misses the whole point of what made them work in the first place! The whole point is that they're not the same people they were before their lives disintegrated, and through the rebuilding process they reconnected with each other as people who have grown, changed, and learned from their previous life experiences and found each other that way. They only work because of the adults they grew into being.

And then they finally get together, and it's great for a couple of years!

….then of course the mid-2000s hit the towers, and they break up, and we have several years of Dick and Babs explicitly thinking of each other as "the one who got away" and tiptoeing around the subject of whether or not they should give it another shot at some point.

idk it's just routinely astonishing to me how many people don't really recognize that Dick has to have already gone through the entire NTT era and his relationship with Kory and that Babs has to be Oracle and a grown woman who had a life before Dick for that romance to work. DickBabs only works as Nightwing/Oracle. Trying to retcon it into being Batgirl/Robin (beyond a 'childhood crush that is never acted on' aspect) or Batgirl/Nightwing is setting it up for failure every time.

also yet another reason why current DickBabs is shit, because DC is ignoring that a large part of the appeal of the relationship was the slowburn "part of rebuilding a new life after the old one has disintegrated" aspect, but that's a conversation for another post I guess

[nyaa]

Statue of William S Clark, Sapporo. 北へ。/ Kita e. Photo Memories (1999)

William Smith Clark (July 31, 1826 – March 9, 1886) was an American professor of chemistry, botany, and zoology; a colonel during the American Civil War; and a leader in agricultural education. Raised and schooled in Easthampton, Massachusetts, Clark spent most of his adult life in Amherst, Massachusetts. He graduated from Amherst College in 1848 and obtained a doctorate in chemistry from Georgia Augusta University in Göttingen in 1852. He then served as professor of chemistry at Amherst College from 1852 to 1867.

Clark had a significant impact on the scientific and economic development of the island of Hokkaido, and made a lasting imprint on Japanese culture. Clark's visage overlooks Sapporo from several statues and his parting words to his Japanese students, "Boys, be ambitious!" (「少年よ大志を抱け Shōnen yo, taishi o idake」) have become a nationally known motto in Japan.

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[sysig]

Got your number (Patreon)

[opashoo]

Nine Sols?

I have never played Nine Sols (sorry) but I do think it looks cool as hell. I have strongly considered playing and have been considering it since before its release. I can't promise anything though. (To tell you where I am in terms of gaming headspace rn, I replayed Spearmaster's campaign five times in a row, Hunter's campaign twice, and then replayed Rivulet's after. Nine Sols might be awhile away)

[egophiliac]

I was wanting to try doing an art piece in the style of the signature spell poster art pieces you create. But I’m not really the best at coming up with a composition for such a thing.

Do you have a process for how you come up with the compositions for them?

oh, awesome! it is an INCREDIBLY enjoyable style to work in; I hope you have fun with it! :D

I'm not great at putting my thought/art process into words, so my apologies if this doesn't make a lot of sense, but I'll try! my first step is always to do a LOT of thumbnails to figure out both the idea and how I want to show it; not trying to do a real sketch or anything, just little doodles to figure out what exactly I'm trying to portray. (I also call these "garbage passes" because they're not meant to be any good, they're just there to throw things out. aha. ha. ...anyway.) I think it's important during that first stage to really focus on the idea and the layout and not to get too bogged down in the actual drawing yet!

I tend to save my final thumbnails, so I'll use 'em as examples (I posted the ones up through episode 5 here if you're interested!) (and, uhhh, spoilers through episode 5 also in this post, hopefully that won't be an issue!)

the main thing I try to think about in composition is balance -- not necessarily in terms of symmetry, but in where each element is placed and how much space it's taking up. remember, empty space is still space! it's also really important to think about the parts that don't have anything in them, as much as the parts that do!

personally, I like to divide things up roughly by both halves and by thirds -- there's a lot more in-depth info out there on why the "rule of thirds" in particular works well visually, but in short, our brains tend to focus on things that are placed closer to imaginary division lines, instead of in the exact center of an image. so even when I'm doing something that is very centered and symmetrical, I try to keep that in mind and generally aim around those for landmarks like faces/eyes (or...where they would be, anyway) and other focal points.

it's not a formula of "the character's face should be in this division of this grid" or anything, more like "our minds like to focus on these areas, let's think about how to use that", if that makes sense! and of course rules are made to be broken, art is lawless anarchy, and so on. but it can be a good starting place for deciding where you want to put things!

(blue - thirds, red - half)

and against the finished versions, because they do usually end up changing a lot (including the empty space of the border):

(...these actually lined up a lot better than I thought they would. :') it makes me look like I do things way more intentionally than I do.)

other stuff I just try to keep in mind is that our eyes like following arcs and paths, which can be a good way to guide the eye:

and frame and control the focus:

honestly, composition is one of those things I feel like I struggle with a lot, so I'm not sure how much of this is helpful or actually makes sense outside of my head. but hopefully it helps a little! it's all just stuff to think about while drawing and not anything hard-and-fast, so don't, like, stress out about making sure things are lining up exactly on the thirds or anything. again, it's more "our brains think these are the dopest parts of the rectangle" than anything else! take advantage of the cool parts of the rectangle!

NOW GO HAVE FUN DRAWING seriously though, it is always super cool that other people like this idea and style enough to want to do it themselves and for other/their own characters! thank you! ❤️❤️❤️

[the0retically]

Thinking once again about disabled jrwi characters, Council please give us canon disabled player characters (there are NPCs that are disabled which I love, but please the main ones can be disabled too!!)

Runt is there with her knee braces, Ashe is there with mobility issues, William is there with his decaying body, Dakota is there with his body that doesn’t fit right anymore, Chip uses a cane every chance he gets whenever he gets the opportunity to, Jay is there with her bad legs and knees, Rolan is there with his messed up joints from his bug form, Alastyr is there with his arm

[the-glorious-evolution-fanart]

what do you think about the convergence designs?

Hey there Anon, my general thoughts I mentioned on my general art blog: https://www.tumblr.com/ikleyvey/721851451454980096/what-do-you-think-about-the-face-reveal-of-viktor?source=share

In more detail:

I downloaded and saved all parts of the Convergence, I really like comics and I value this one as well. I like the colours especially I think.

I love them, I want a bunch of content with them they're so dear to me! But we're not here for beauty. We're here for darkness.

I think we should all have expected bullshit technology that definitely cannot work. Like when sci-fi works slap "quantum" onto anything and think it makes it sound cool and science-y.

No, a severed head bolted onto a thin metal neck connected to the body is not going to be able to live. Riot, stop with putting mechanical parts between organic ones. Stop it. Bad Riot. Just like they wrote in a story about Zaun a woman with mechanical elbows. Her lower arms would rot away!! This is very logical!! And excuses such as "this is fantasy" don't work because the tech level doesn't match super sci-fi. And even in super sci-fi nobody would make such designs because they're impractical.

Their designs do not fit Viktor's aesthetic at all. They're much more like quickly pulled from Warhammer 40K Mechanicus, and not even that.

Case in point, all designs are not thought-through much. It's first draft stuff.

What are these augments?? What are these legs?? Triple faces and spindly arms? No, I want to base my stuff on real stuff...

I heard tracing maybe(?) helps speed things up, and commissioned comics are so often on very tight deadlines and not paid well, thankfully I'm not forced to trace.

We do not need another Dr. Doom copied element. Believe me. Not another one. I don't agree with Viktor having a scarred face, that's Dr. Doom's thing. Riot is using this as a cop-out. It's much better to have him use the mask as a symbol of his ideology, and a metaphor for him hiding his vulnerability in a very obvious way. THIS is why he's physically "perfect" in my version because that characteristic I believe enhances his main traits.

So is he WideViktor, or is he the skinny sickly Viktor from Arcane? Nobody knows, the authors don't know, and I'm sure as hell Riot didn't give clear instructions on that either lolol

^ Best Viktor art bits in the comic imo, even if I don't like the new mask design. (original mask ftw!)

I don't want to dunk on other artists, but movement and anatomy can be improved. Heck, my anatomy needs to be improved as well! But if problems are noticeable in our art, then they definitely should be improved. I mean this as positive encouragement so that art would be even better. (Also lol did they paint my character in pink? I joke)

It was HILARIOUS to watch official content regurgitate what I identified and portrayed as incorrect and very simplistic interpretation of lore back in two-thousand-fucking-fourteen:

I was like 19 or something, never had a single job in my life, had gotten only one commission by then, I was a literal 0. But I always say, believe me when I point out something. BELIEVE ME. Very few people do. And what happens? I end up being right! I'm always happy to talk about stuff though.

I'll make a companion piece to this post specifically about the NARRATIVE of the Convergence comic. Also if anyone wants my opinion on a specific frame from the Convergence comic, send it to me I have open submissions!

[front-facing-pokemon]

[threadbearsweater]

addiction is a near constant battle with oneself. you want the thing because it feels good, but how soon you forget the way it makes you feel when you're coming down. so you do more of whatever it is to chase the bad feelings away, and my god. it's just this endless cycle of numbing and feeling and numbing and feeling and numbing until you're forced to draw a line, either voluntarily or not. where is that point of no return? how much further away do you push it every time you use? and if.. God. if you know what it does to you, why do you keep doing it? is that moment of bliss worth the hours/days/months/years of total misery for yourself and all those who love you?

[mollysunder]

S2 really has me thinking about the gender dynamics in the main timeline. Jinx was raised by Silco, and in his home was the strongest influences on him and Zaun were the women in his life, Jinx and Sevika, who in turn are the most important women in Zaun. In Silco's absence, Jinx, Sevika, and Isha form a new unit (sort of) that grapples with the deteriorating situation in Zaun.

Then we see Powder in the better timeline, and her home is visually dominated by men. Vi's dead and Sevika's nowhere to be seen, but every possible male influence in her life is alive and she's mostly thriving.

This was 100% unintentional by the show and 1000% hilarious to me.

[woah-uhuh-uhuh-uhuh]

whats that joe iconis? you want *me* to be in charge of the jeremy outfits from now on?? well if you insist....

[thedemonscrawler]

canon please slow down i am not a fast author

[burrromese]