#I also haven’t finished the comics yet so I don’t have info from there - I’m up to volume 4

[hiccupbutpurple]

Do any of the riders (aside from the twins) have siblings? Cause as far as I can tell

1. Hiccup is definitely an only child

2. Fishlegs probably has siblings (he’s the uncle of the dragon explorers, unless they are extended family but call him uncle out of ease)

3. Snotlout could have brother/s (I think there are a few hints, the one that comes to mind is when he says to Spitelout in his imagination thing ‘I’m your favourite son’ which either implies he has at least a brother or it could just be an expression to say ‘pls love me’ and not literally meaning the favourite of multiple siblings)

4. As far as I can remember, the twins and Astrid aren’t implied to have any other siblings.

[detailtilted]

In Search of Supernatural Fans from the Early Years

Hi! I’m looking for the legends who originally recorded old Supernatural convention panels featuring Jared or Jensen, or possibly Misha. See "What I'm Looking For" below. If you know one of them, or if you're a member of a community with people who were in the fandom in those early years, I’d greatly appreciate it if you could let them know about this post. I can be reached at DetailTilted@gmail.com or here on Tumblr.

If you aren’t familiar with my project, see the “Project Background” section below. This is not a low-effort exercise to merely repackage old videos. I’m putting many hours of work into each video to improve their watchability and accessibility. I will always credit my sources unless you wish to remain anonymous.

Even if your videos are on YouTube, I’m likely to have more success upscaling them if I can get the original video files. Thanks to the videos AgtSpooky kindly sent me, I've learned how big of a difference it can make when I have the original files to work with. That's why I’m putting more effort into finding those elusive original video takers.

The problem is that they all seem to have fallen off the face of the earth. Most of their YouTube accounts, LiveJournal accounts, and whatever other accounts I’ve dug up haven’t had any activity in 10-15 years. I’ve left a few messages on some of them, but I doubt they’ll be seen on dormant accounts. I’ve also gone down some crazy and twisted Googling paths trying to find current contact info for them, but without much success. In one case I even messaged the wrong person, who was at least kind enough to reply to the psycho asking for videos to let me know she wasn't the person I'd hoped she was. Oops!

What I’m Looking For

I’ve already finished CHICON 2007, Comic-Con 2008, and CHICON 2008, so I don’t need videos from those events, but I’d be happy to try to upscale your videos for your own collection if you have some you'd like to send me.

Actually, I could use CHICON 2008 Breakfast videos if you have any. I plan to attempt to redo that video either late this year or early next year.

I’ve been trying especially hard to reach people with original video files from either LA 2009 or Asylum 3 (2009), and I’d also be ecstatic to get some from LA 2008.

Any other old con videos you’re willing to share that have Jared or Jensen in them would be awesome. I hope to get to all the old conventions eventually. I haven’t yet defined “old”, so I don’t have a specific cutoff point.

Even if you just have audio files without video, those could be helpful too.

Length doesn't matter. Both long and short videos are welcome. Maybe I won't end up using them all, but the more options I have the better. Even if I don't put your video in my final edit, it would still be used because I always listen to every single video I can find when I'm finalizing my subtitles. Each video sounds at least a little different, and sometimes just hearing the audio in a slightly different way lets me catch a subtitle I'd missed or misheard.

Also, just to be clear, it isn’t necessarily my intent to exclude Misha. I’ve watched and enjoyed many of his convention videos and I liked Castiel for the most part, especially in the earlier seasons. I’m just not obsessed with Misha like I am with Jared and Jensen, and these videos do take quite a lot of work, so I’ve been putting my energy where my greatest interests lie. I’ll absolutely be including him when he’s in panels with Jared and/or Jensen, and in the future I may consider doing some of his solo panels.

So if you have original video files of Misha's solo panels that you’d like to send me, I’d be happy to add them to my stockpile for future possible use. If your videos turn out to be mostly complete, and if they upscale easily, then I might go ahead and do his panel at the same time I do the other panels from the same convention. If they'll take more effort to work with, I’ll probably skip them for now, but I may come back and tackle them if/when I run out of old Jared and Jensen videos to work with.

For any con videos you send me, regardless of whether I use them or not, I’d be happy to try to upscale them and send them back to you for your collection. I can’t always get things to upscale, so I can’t promise success, but I’ll definitely try.

Project Background - Enhanced Edition Con Videos

You can find my videos on my YouTube channel. (If you're already familiar with my project, skip to the next section -- there's nothing new to see here.)

I started this project in December 2023 to enhance old convention videos. My goal is to make them easier on the eyes and more accessible to both new and old fans from around the world. The videos on YouTube from that time can be difficult both to watch and to understand due to a combination of the older technology used to record them, the difficult recording conditions the fans were working with, and the lack of subtitles that make any sense.

I’m enhancing the videos as follows:

Visual Improvements: I’m upscaling the videos if possible, making color corrections if needed, and adding some slight stabilization to reduce the jitteriness. The end result is far from perfect because there’s only so much that current technology can do, but it's noticeably improved if you compare it to the originals.

Subtitles: I’m adding good, color-coded, English subtitles that can be turned on or off through YouTube’s CC button. The color-coding makes it more clear who's saying what when multiple people are speaking, and YouTube can auto-translate them into other languages to improve the accessibility.

Multiple Sources: If one video has gaps in it, then I'll try to find another that I can edit in to fill those gaps so the end result is as complete as possible. If I have more than one source that captured the same portion of the event, then I'll cut to whichever video I think had the best view of the action. In a few cases I’ve added a split screen with two different videos showing simultaneously so we can see action that's taking place in two separate areas. For example, when Jared and Jensen are on opposite sides of the stage. (There were also the infernal talking head bubbles on my Comic-Con 2008 video which nearly made me throw in the towel, but taught me a lot. 😅)

Extra Content for Context: These older videos don’t take up the full width of a modern video frame, so I’ve taken advantage of the extra space to display some still images with text to add extra context for many of the things they discuss. Some things are a lot funnier, or at least a lot more relevant, when you know exactly what they’re talking about. I clarify Supernatural episode references and pop culture references among other things. Sometimes I’ve also inserted short video clips, usually just a few seconds’ worth, if I thought it would add worthwhile clarity or entertainment to the topic at hand.

Current Project Status

If anyone has been wondering how I’m doing on my current video and what’s next… I’m almost done with the last video from CHICON 2008, which was Jensen’s solo panel. I should be ready to publish it on YouTube this Friday, May 24. I plan to use the same schedule as last time and put the Tumblr post up the following Tuesday when it’s a little more likely to be noticed here.

The next sequential conventions are LA 2009 and Asylum 2009, but I haven’t had much success in my attempts to upscale the available videos. If I were to work with what I have now, I know I could turn out something better than what’s on YouTube today, but the end result wouldn’t be nearly as good as what I might be able to achieve if I can get some original videos to work with. So I think it’s more logical to skip over these conventions for now and give it some time to see if I get any responses, in hope of a better end result.

I do intend to come back to the skipped conventions eventually, even if nobody sends me anything. Once I run out of conventions for which I can upscale the videos, if I still don't have anything better to work with for the ones I skipped, I’ll just do the best I can with what’s available. Even if I can't upscale, I can still do color corrections and stabilization, plus the subtitles and extra content. Some of these panels are split up into a bunch of very short videos, so it would also add value if I can combine them into something more sequential and cohesive. (I found 130 videos from the Jared and/or Jensen panels at LA 2009, and most of them were under 2 minutes long. 🤣) I don’t know if there’s enough footage to cover the entire panels seamlessly, but I’m itching to get my hands on that jigsaw puzzle of videos to try to make sense out of them.

So… the next videos I intend to work on will be from Vancouver 2009. This is one of the conventions that AgtSpooky attended and sent me videos for and they upscaled very well. Her breakfast video had already found its way onto YouTube, but wasn't properly credited. Her main panel videos aren't on YouTube as far as I could find, so that version may be new to newer fans. I'm only just starting to play around with upscaling the other sources out there, but my first attempt at the other main Breakfast source came out well. Both breakfast videos were taken from extreme opposite angles, so that should provide some useful editing opportunities. I’d still love to get more videos of this event if anyone has them.

If you made it this far, I am in awe. Sorry for putting this wall of text on your screen! 😅

[freddy-and-friends-au]

The band’s all here! (WIP)

I still haven’t finished their new endoskeletons yet, but I think I have their suits mostly down!

Feel free to ask any questions you may have in the inbox!

EXTRA INFO AND SCREENSHOTS UNDER THE CUT!!!

At first glance, these are obviously inspired by the traditional Chuck E. Cheese x Rockafire Explosion suits, designing them more like sports mascot costumes and having very little of the endoskeleton showing at all times (say for Foxy, of course). This was not only for more realistic world-building, but also to optimize animation, as we now have less moving parts that are actually showing, and therefore, less to render.

You might be wondering “if you wanted a more realistic approach to the suits, why not take a more realistic approach to the masks, like a more ShowBiz Pizza style?” And to that I say: everyone does that.

Okay, that isn’t entirely the reason. I like the idea of basing the designs more off of the canon models than something that already exists, because I like the idea of FazEnt having their own style of making animatronics. The ShowBiz style isn’t the only way to do animatronic masks, and these masks are how FazEnt would go about making them. Even when FazEnt does use the trademark ShowBiz rubber-face masks on the Junior models, they don’t do it the same way that ShowBiz does it.

Something interesting I want to do with Freddy & Friends is to set narrative moments apart from the moments meant to be passed off as real footage. The designs shown above are for the latter, meanwhile the narrative will use more artistically stylized suits textured to more so resemble a comic book, sort of like Into The Spider-Verse (except instead of going for a generalized comic book feel, the Freddy & Friends style is gonna be more reminiscent of the Batman: Year One comic). The designs will be more reminiscent of how I draw them on paper, as opposed to being faithful to the canon.

Here’s some extra info as to how I came up with the designs, as well as some extra renders and concept art!:

Original concept art from September 30, 2020.

Freddy was a little obvious to design, probably because everyone seems to design him like this when making more cartoonish versions of him. A more defined tuxedo complete with a collar and cuffs with a red stripe around his hat. It just seemed like the right direction to go in.

Bonnie was initially intended to wear a vest, though I was holding out for something else so that he could be differentiated from the evil rabbit (the evil rabbit wears a vest). I asked my friends what I could change it to, and one of them said “Try a cardigan”. Honestly, that fits Bonnie’s personality so much better, both in terms of spirit and cartoon.

You might also notice that Bonnie was supposed to have buck teeth, as well as more squared off teeth. That was originally part of his V1 model, but when I tried applying that to the new models, literally any way I tried to arrange it made Bonnie look like so much like an insufferable asshole that I wanted to punch him in the face. Ultimately, I ended up ditching the buck teeth and just gave him his classic teeth.

Chica was a little hard to do something unique with at first. I initially wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with her, but when I modeled her V1, her little chef’s hat was a last minute addition to her design. I’m also thinking about changing her bib into an apron, per the toon designs that Henry posted a while back.

Foxy was probably the most fun to design. Obviously, his final model has a lot of details inspired by the FNAF movie, but when I was designing him 4 years ago, I really just wanted to go crazy with his design. I wanted him to have a beard, I wanted him to have a peg leg (I really liked the idea of animating him with a limp). Unfortunately, I don’t know if I’ll keep the peg leg, because it might be a little too hard for Henry to animate with the tech that he has.

As a cheeky little reference to the roots of the FNAF fandom, I wanted Foxy’s hook to resemble the hook seen on the Splinks Foxy model. ;)

Endo01 - Version 4 WIP

I’ve done a few different versions of the endoskeleton. What I’m trying to do for this new one is to assemble him modularly, allowing me to make each component a recognizable component (they’re also actually modeled after real components).

I’m not gonna go into detail about the functionality of this guy, because I eventually plan to make a Freddy & Friends Instructional VHS series centered around being a mechanic for FazEnt. However, what I will say is that these designs are intended to have plausible functionality, especially using the technology of the 1980’s (which is not restricted to pneumatic technology, because making an animatronic walk with pneumatic actuators while maintaining the traditional complexity of animatronic endoskeletons is simply impossible).

EXTRAS:

The original Version 1 designs

My failed attempt at giving Bonnie buck teeth (I wanna punch him so bad…)

Fixed Foxy

???

[ilovebeingaturtle]

I'd love to know what you think the birth order is of the 87 turtles

Oh man I think my age order headcanons change for them by the minute AHA, I love all interpretations! The popular idea of quadruplets that change the order/take turns on it whenever they feel like it is so fun. I think in regards for canon? My stance is the turtles both don’t know and never even thought to know. We barely get them to acknowledge they’re siblings, let along establish an age hierarchy. I don’t think the topic has ever come up AHA that feels the most in character

But like-delving into fanon?

The back of their toys lists Leonardo as 16, Michelangelo as 15 1/2 and Donatello and Raphael as 15, so that’s a fun order if you want to go off established info! Even if the info from the toys can be taken with a grain of salt. Similarly, you could also go via height order? Raphael and Leonardo are 5’1, Michelangelo is 5’0 and Donatello is 4’10 (again according to the toys and Cowabunga Collection this time)

Oh also! I read once that apparently one of the books lists Leonardo and Donatello as 16 and the other two as 15, but I was never able to find a source on it plus that’s just even more of a reach in general. Leonardo and Donatello you can definitely read as the oldest two, however Donatello does give me like. Third oldest middle child energy a lot, he can a brat /pos plus chill second oldest Michelangelo is just something I’m biased to, in the least he’s not the youngest in my mind.

In fact I’ll always be a strong advocate for Raphael being the youngest, he’s just got such “baby of the family” energy AHA so I do love assigning him that at any opportunity

OH ALSO! If we go by the air dates of their birthday episodes, Michelangelo’s birthday is November 6 and Raphael’s is December 19. For whatever reason the turtle wiki lists Donatello’s birthday as November 8? Still can’t find out why, but that’s another semi canon order too! I haven’t found a date for Leonardo yet

I think my personal favourite interpretation for their ages though?

It’s gotta be Michelangelo as the oldest, Donatello as the second oldest, Raphael as the second youngest and Leonardo as the youngest. Something about it is just so amusing to me and secretly youngest Leonardo is adorable, so it’s probably the order I’m most fond of!

O also I said this on here one time? Which I also definitely still enjoy as an interpretation AHA

Oh, and! Last year I made this comic WIP about their ages, I never finished it and I was still new to the fandom but honestly I don’t think I’d change too much if I remade it today, so have it too!

So the uh. TLDR my answer on their age order is Yeeeees…..?

[steddieunderdogfics]

This week’s writer spotlight feature is:  Sleepingoffyourdemons! They have 6 works posted to AO3 and all of them are in the Steddie tag!

Nevertheless_5 recommends the following works by @punkslovepoints:

in the back of your girlfriend's car

The most that I could give to you is nothing at all

"The A is for Ally"

What Happens at Comic Con Stays at Comic Con

obliterations everywhere (we blaze with scorching heat)

Sleepingoffyourdemons’ fics are character studies, grounded in reality with all the painful angst, real world consequences, and heartwrenching love you could want in your Steddie wish fulfillment. They hurt and heal in equal measure. They feel immersive in a comforting way. I fell in love with the first fic I read, and proceeded to read everything else by the author. Also, the research put into the time periods and info in notes is just icing on the cake. -- Nevertheless_5

Below the cut, @punkslovepoints answered some questions about their writing process and some of their recommended work!

Why do you write Steddie?

I don’t know! I didn’t watch season 4 and immediately think, “These guys are in love.” In fact, during Eddie's first scene, I didn't really even like him. Then, existing on the edge of the wider Stranger Things fandom, I saw a few fics showing up here and there and that was what really pulled me in.

What’s your favorite trope to READ?

I love a good missing scene fic, although I can understand why there aren’t many of those in this fandom, given that staying true to canon leads to a very grisly end to one half of the ship. I also like a slow burn, friends to lovers and a wee bit of angst.

What’s your favorite trope to WRITE?

Honestly, the same that I like to read. I try to write for myself and hope that other people will like it too. As difficult as that can be sometimes, like everyone, I also crave external validation where every comment makes your day.

What’s your favorite Steddie fic?

A Certain Type and the rest of the series by @anniebass. It’s one of those that burrows into your chest and lives there for the rest of your life. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about that fic.

Is there a trope you’re excited to explore in a future work but haven’t yet?

I’m annoyingly resolute to sticking as close to canon as possible (Eddie dying aside!) so I’ve never really strayed away from that. But have had an idea for an AU for the upcoming Steddie Big Bang that I think I could write with enough connection to canon that it’ll keep the part of my brain that screams ‘that wouldn’t happen!!!’ quiet.

What is your writing process like?

I tend to get an idea then focus on that until it’s done and posted. I don’t write that often, and I obsess over small details. I must have read each one of my fics twenty times or more, just going over and over them before I post.

Do you have any writing quirks?

I don’t know! There’s probably a lot that I’m not even aware of. Most of my fics have a lot of references at the end, even ones that aren’t specifically historical, so that’s probably a dead giveaway that a fic is one of mine. That and going off on tangents for whatever my special interest is that month.

Do you prefer posting when you’ve finished writing or on a schedule?

Definitely when I’ve finished. Although as I’m posting, people’s comments and feedback may inspire me to make small alterations or add scenes here or there in future chapters. I wrote an extra scene into the final chapter of The Most That I Could Give To You… to give an OC a proper send off because of the number of comments I’d had earlier in the fic from people who loved him. I also re-wrote the final scene of “The A is for Ally” the night I posted it because I decided I didn’t like how it ended and changed it. 

Which fic are you most proud of?

Probably “The A is for Ally”, because of the sheer amount of research that I put into it. I wanted to write an exploration of queer history that focused on queer joy in the early 90’s. It can be hard to find that balance, writing queer ships set in less progressive times. Because it wasn’t all sunshine and roses, but, equally, there were moments of joy and communities of real queer people living their lives and fighting for those queer spaces. I wanted to pay tribute to that. [Side note: The title is a joke, the A is not for Ally].

How did you get the idea for What Happens at Comic Con Stays at Comic Con?

As with most of the fics I've written, I wanted to read it, so I wrote it. I was looking for something set at comic con and was shocked when I couldn't find anything, especially with the source material being what it is. I later discovered Descent into the Depths of the Earth (Or at Least Milwaukee) by disastardly on Ao3, but by then I'd written mine. Luckily they are totally different, and I'd highly recommend that one too.

When writing "The A is for Ally", what was something you didn’t expect?

How popular it got! I’m still a small writer, not a big name or anything, but I got so many more comments on that fic compared to all the ones before and @cemeterylight even drew art of it. It was so nice that something I wrote resonated with people.

What inspired in the back of your girlfriend's car?

There’s a song by Lucy Dacus called Christine that has the lines “You're falling asleep on my shoulder in the back of your boyfriend's car” that is a beautiful portrayal of queer longing. Loving somebody who is with somebody else who obviously isn’t right for them. I love Nancy, and wanted to follow that thought: What happens if Steve does win Nancy back, but they’re both different people now? My pitch for the fic is that it's an exploration of trauma and chasing highs, loving multiple people in multiple ways at once, messy relationships and making out in cars. All with a Steddie endgame, of course.

What was your favorite part to write from The most that I could give to you is nothing at all?

Probably the couple of chapters in California. Eddie and Steve have been hooking up on and off for a few years long distance, and after it all blows up, they agree to spend some time getting to know each other without letting sex get in the way. It was fun to write in that space where you have two people who are obviously in love, have a history, but are trying desperately to avoid falling into old habits. That simmering sexual tension.

How do/did you feel writing What Happens at Comic Con Stays at Comic Con?

Really nostalgic for going to comic con! I haven’t been to one in a few years and it just made me miss the feeling of being in a space where everyone is as weird and nerdy as you are.

What was the most difficult part of writing obliterations everywhere (we blaze with scorching heat)?

I hadn’t actually written a proper fic before when I wrote that one. I had written two drabbles over a decade ago and that was it. So just writing it was difficult. At the time, there were next to no fics where Eddie was the one having a bi crisis and Steve was fairly chill in his sexuality (there still aren’t enough in my opinion, it’s a top tier trope) so I just wrote what I wanted to read.

Do you have a favorite scene and/or line from any of your fics?

Probably the whole conversation this snippet is taken from within The Most That I Could Give To You… where Steve has the charm turned up to eleven and Eddie is fighting for his life (figuratively this time). I adore writing the Stobin back and forth dynamic too, so there's this one from The Most That I Could Give To You… where they're talking about Sisyphus and May 29th 1992 from “The A is for Ally” where Robin sees something she wishes she hadn't. I also got a lot of nice comments on this scene from “The A is for Ally” where Wayne mistakenly thinks Steve and Eddie are dating and “Steve didn't correct him, didn't feel the distinction was all that important.”

Do you have any upcoming projects or fics you’d like to share/promote?

I’ve just posted a new one, Pebble and I've got another one that I’m part way through, both of them returning to my roots and featuring Eddie having a bi crisis. I’m also planning on taking part in the Steddie Bang, but obviously can’t talk about that! 

Thank you to our author, @punkslovepoints, and our nominator, Nevertheless_5! See more of Sleepingoffyourdemons' works featured on our page throughout the day!

Writer’s Spotlight is every Wednesday! Want to nominate an author? You can nominate them here!

[drawloverlala]

June status update

Hello! Ah we already are on June! hey, Happy pride month everyone!! 😊✨

And well Just wanted to write my usual status update and add a bit more of what’s to come for my commissions! as well as some update about the status of Brotherhood twist comic along the way ^_^

My commissions are still currently closed, I still don’t have a new opening date either, as I’m still working on the batch I got from April but I’m almost done with it! there’s only 2 commissions left to finish, one without background and one with background. And I’ll be possibly finishing the one without background this upcoming week.

after I’m done with these I’ll be taking a break but I’m thinking on opening commissions again after that, and with that said, I’ll be increasing my prices!  

The new prices are:

full character render= (half body) 80 USD / (full body)100 USD

A background = (simple)5 USD / (partial)80 USD / (fully rendered)250 USD

And well with this I’m wondering if the amount of requests will be less next time, I’ve talked before that I’ve been trying to regulate that a bit and this was an option to do that as well.

I also I feel like needed to regulate it again anyways, I mean, I was asked to draw a half body commission a while ago, and it made me realize that I can’t have the same price of a full body commission for that, so I thought I had to do some adjustment to my prices in general 😅, it has been a while since I last changed them after all.

And well besides of raising my prices in general, I also want to announce new listings for the future! Right now these are closed as well, but I’ll make sure to announce when I’ll be opening them!

🌸 Comic pages commissions!

I’ve already been working for a while doing these with an independent creator, but also I want to try taking these more regularly to create more experience in this field and to add newer content to my portfolio that I can show 😆

the process would be the same as with the illustration commissions, just that along with reference I’ll also require a sort of script, or at least a description of each panel. here’s the commission info page for this listing as well as examples:

Comic pages commission info page.

But here are the current prices as well! may or not change later, but here they are as of today:

Comic page (pencils): 40 USD

Comic page (pencils and inks): 90 USD

Comic page (pencils, inks and colors):130 USD

🌸 Chibis and Sketch pages!

I want to take these on Ko-fi, Their prices will be 20 USD and 40 USD respectively, I haven’t yet published these listings on my Ko-fi page, but here’s some examples of what I have in mind with these:

so... yeah, that’s about it for commission talk so far! then again, the comic commission prices may change, the new listings are still not open but I wanted to announce them, And currently still working on the batch I got from April but I’m almost done with it, and  after I’m done with that, I’ll take a break dunno how long but not too long and after that I’ll be announcing when I open commissions again with the new prices!

Here I updated my carrd with the current commission prices as well!

https://drawloverlala.carrd.co/#comissioninfo

If you want to see all my prices in detail I made this too.

The * in this, is that I need to explain XD,  I’m currently working on projects  where I take these kind of commissions, so they are not technically closed, but I’m not currently accepting them outside of these projects, so they aren’t really open either. hope that’s not too confusing XD

🌸 Now about Brotherhood’s Twist fan comic!

ah so far, I FINISHED SKETCHING THE WHOLE COMIC! i mean like all pages are currently sketched! there’s still no dialogue set for some of them, I’ve been adding some drafts of dialogue, I also started inking some of the new pages! I can see now an end to this comic! so yeah, here’s the state of the comic:

New unpublished pages done: 8 (pages 64 to 69)

New sketched pages:16 ( pages 70 to 86)

New inked pages: 5 to 6 ( pages 70 to 74 and half of page 75)

Here’s a peek of some pages out of order!

And that’s all for now! Thank you very much for reading and well I hope you have great week!

[sir-klauz]

(Gerard Way, by me. Black ballpoint, red fine-liner. 🖊🩸 )

Soo I’ve not posted much OC character stuff of recent as I’m still writing the second chapter of The Lord of Wet and Pyro Princess Adventures (Genshin Ayato x Diluc fanfic I’m having a lot of fun with as I’m back in ~Genshin playing mode~ since I invested a bunch in the game and it’s also the Lantern Rite time of year again, a favourite of mine).

I’ve had a request to finish my WattPad Kaze fanfic too, which I’ll try and deliver but I got kinda stick in the basement scene lmfao as writing Zero as a top is so odd for me even though I Want It to happen.

I’ve wanted to get out some Kaze stuff as not as many people post it anymore and I’ve realised there’s still a big fandom community for Vampire Knight which is excitingg! I might move it over to Ao3 once I have time.~

I’ve been a little busy planning and “making the art” and custom credit card designs as well as payment plan ideas not too mention considering setting up an Etsy or Fiverr or somewhere people have more access to than pixiv as setting up my regular posting on my pixivFANBOX and trying to build a schedule for Saturdays whilst juggling my physical/mental health and transition as well as parenting and socialising more. Basically I want a gallery of stuff to trickle out rather than doing it every week under pressure rather than when it comes to me, as whenever I have pressure to deliver I lose my imagination and just feel like it’s a chore so avoid it. I’m sure other creatives can relate!

Likewise I’m sitting back and reading again to unwind again and haven’t caught up with everything I’m reading yet but I’ve got numerous things In The Works I’m taking more time on rather than rushing out chapters such as:

• The NYE one shot for Orange Juice in the Studio~

• Chapter 3 “A Date In The City” of Orange Juice in the Studio, essentially the ~teaser~ Aquarium and ice cream parlour date where I finally introduce supporting character into the actual story who works at the parlour! I don’t know when I’ll be introducing Mama but they are on the horizon for sure. I’m currently busy researching real locations in Valencia and I’ve never been so I don’t have in person reference and am sourcing that online. I’m also researching top LGBT+ hang out locations/clubs in the city to make appearances in the storyline.

• ORANGE JUICE IN THE STUDIO CHARACTER INFO SHEETS!!! Exciting.

Here I’ll give lots of what you need to know about OC and Reader! I’m wondering if I should not make one though for Reader or ask for engagement from my actual readers of Who Reader Is To Them, as well, the whole point of the character is to depict You as a reader, and those who relate to what I write can get on board. I will make a mock up one for sure and be loose with it as a rule! Or leave out absolute details like “star sign” or height or something.~

• Beginning work on the AU “HorrorLand! The Isle of Marionettes”! This will be about the Orange Juice OCs. As you can tell, it’ll be slightly gory horror fiction, somewhere to express my love for horror and things but not canon. Just a little fun.

• Designing what will be in my monthly newsletter which only Bronze subscribers will get for yours truly to enjoy!

• Weekly updates to my pixivFANBOX, with my manga style art specifically. My pixivFANBOX is for my manga art style only, my other types of art can be found on zer0comicz IG, and Zer0 Comics on Facebook, or posted on here. This is my official name for my freelance illustration/comic business.

• I’ll try getting some new commissions up I’ve got of OC and Reader on here and/or on @crimsonyoukai , if not that, I’ll make some mock ups on PiCrew whilst I’m doing my own.

• Tiered FANs will be getting The Monthly Marionette+, this begins after the first month of being a patron on Bronze, Silver (to be set up) and Gold (to be set up). I’ll announce when the newsletter is starting to air!

You can get early teasers for chapters of OJITS posted on my pixivFANBOX as well too on Bronze tier, I’m not posting teasers so much on here anymore until I’ve aired it for protection of my work etc.

My Ao3 profile for writing updates!

Any queries or questions or anything you’d like to know in general or what you may like to also see from me, please feel free to drop them into my Ask Box!

I have commissions open for art likewise. Each custom piece is £5, £10 for more detailed works, which I offer postage for the original or a print. Tattoo designs are £25 each.

[alunclewe]

So I attended the @sequentialartistsworkshop Friday Night Workshop, hosted this time by E. Joy Mehr (@ejoymehr on Instagram), although I got there a bit late and missed the instructions and thought I might have to sit this one out, but they ended up repeating the instructions, so I could participate after all, though I had to kind of rush (again).  The project this time was for participants to produce six-page “zines” (plus front and back covers) about... themselves.  The front cover was just a title page; the first page was a general about page; on the second page we listed some of our interests; each of pages 3 through 5 expanded on one of these interests; page 6 was a “fun fact”; and the back cover had our contact info.

On the previous occasions I’ve attended these workshops, I’ve done my art digitally, but for a zine it seemed right to go ahead and do things the old-fashioned way.  But since I hadn’t been expecting to use traditional media, I didn’t have any at hand, so I grabbed some pieces of paper from the printer and went looking for whatever other art supplies I could easily find, ending up with a technical pen and a box of old markers.  (And not, unfortunately, any correction fluid, which I would have used, among other things, to fix my having mispositioned my pupils on the cover page; instead, I tried to hide the mistake by making my eyes half-closed.  It does not look good.)

I’m afraid doing so much digital art has made me grow complacent; working digitally it’s easy to redo, resize, or reposition something, but with ink I have to be more careful to get it right the first time, especially when I’m going straight to ink and not penciling first.  Hence, for instance, my arms being so horribly differently sized on the cover.  Bleh.

Anyway, I know my handwriting is hard to read at the best of times, let alone when I was rushing this like I was, so in case anyone cares I’ll put the text of the “zine” behind a cut.

FRONT COVER:

ALL* ABOUT ALUN CLEWE

*SOME

PAGE 1:

ALUN CLEWE* is a cartoonist living in Los Angeles.  He had several webcomics in the past, one of which he plans to revive in August and one next January.

He is way too wordy

*Not his real name**

**Yes, I use a pen name as a cartoonist.  No, I don’t know why.

PAGE 2:

SOME OF MY INTERESTS:

Role-Playing Games

Writing Music

Writing Fiction

Acting/Filmmaking

Animation

Comics (obviously)

PAGE 3:

Role-Playing Games?

You know, like Dungeons & Dragons.

But there are others, like RuneQuest, Chronicles of Darkness, Symbaroum, and many others I’ve played/want to play.

I’m also working on my own RPGs, but... haven’t finished any yet.

PAGE 4:

ACTING

I’ve acted in a number of independent movies and webseries, although I use a screen name for that.  (A different name than “Alun Clewe”—I don’t know what it is with me and pseudonyms.)

I have my own webseries that was put on hold with the pandemic, but that I want to start producing again soon.

PAGE 5:

COMICS

In addition to the aforementioned webcomics, I have participated in 24 Hour Comics Day every year since 2006.

For a while, I tried to do a 24 hour comic every 24 days and post a page a day, but I only kept that up for about a year.

You can see all my 24 hour comics at d24comic.com, but the site is very ugly and bare-bones and needs a lot of work.  (This is the comic I plan to relaunch in January.)

(The other is called Soup, https://www.soupcomic.com)

↑ There’s nothing there now but will be in August

PAGE 6:

FUN FACT

As my day job, I work as a studio teacher—I work with child actors on film sets.  (Whenever there’s a minor on a film set*, the production is required to have a certified studio teacher present.)

*Okay, there are exceptions, but they’re rarish.

BACK COVER:

CONTACT

My website is

https://alunclewe.com

(but it, like my 24-hour comic site, needs a lot of work.)

You can also find me on Tumblr at @alunclewe (alunclewe.tumblr.com)

and on Instagram as @alunclewe

[twiwwleo]

The Ways In Which We Love Each Other

9/1/22

I have no idea what I’m doing. But I think I can make something of this. It’s been 2 months since grandpa passed. I have a lot of things I’m processing, and it’s all jumbled, but it’s there. I just need to clear away the excess stuff- not less important, just not strongly tied together. I have a lot of writing to do.

9/6/22 Week 0

Lots of jumbled thoughts still. My writing just feels like rambling, but it’s like I know there’s a thread in there that I can pull and it will untangle all of it. I can’t really gauge how my presentation of my project proposal went- Everyone was so quiet. did I make a mistake in picking this? I just kept talking because I didn’t know what else to do. Does everyone think I’m weird for doing (yet another) project on death? I hope I didn’t. I hope this was a good choice.

9/14/22 Week 1

Got my project schedule laid out. Notes and quotes all organized. Blog set up. More nonsense ramblings. Part of this is identity, and how a person’s impressions of someone else’s identity may be just a snapshot of who they are, and how like... that transfers to the info someone may put online, and how that’s a fragment of who they are, and how long will that memory last. idk. That will double as my glass self portrait project too.

9/21/22 Week 2

I remembered the book Ghostland by Colin Dickey, it  talks about hauntings and story and how that connects to the times these stories originated from and how it all connects. I’ll have to dig that out and reread it. Add it to my research materials. 

Writing version 1: done

it sucks and I hate it. That’s all. Onto #2.

9/28/22 Week 3

Definitely behind schedule. V2: Done.

Next week? idk

I’m overwhelmed. Tired. Working through it. Still a bunch of jumbled thoughts. Slowly getting clearer I think.

10/7/22 Week 4

Glass self portrait due in a week. I’m sandblasting sheets of glass with an image of my face layered so it’ll look kind of ghostly? Gonna call it “here then gone again”

A snapshot of what someone else sees in me, and its impermanence or permanence in someone’s mind. I’m a ghost flickering through their lives. 

10/12/22 Week 5

Had no idea what to show for my studio practice midterm presentation yesterday but I definitely almost cried. Glass critique went so well I almost cried in a good way though. I was smiling when I left Sherman. 

I haven’t even started filming yet and I have like... 4 weeks left now? It’s... slowly getting there.

10/19/22 Week 6

Way behind- adjusted schedule to “fly by seat of pants.” Will adjust as necessary. I had this visual out of nowhere of a graveyard full of identical numbered tombstones, but as the camera zooms out it shows each tombstone is actually a USB stick plugged into a hub. Each one is a bit of information a person left on the internet, anonymous, left behind as they move on. 

(Danvers State Hospital info)

Need to model some tombstones.

10/23/22 Week 7

 I think I finished the written portion. Think anyway. I went out and filmed and shot at the Grove City and Greenlawn Cemeteries. It was nice to spend an afternoon with the dead.  Peaceful. I also had to take a moment to consider that their participation in my project, but their lack of consent. These were all people once. Their stories aren’t mine to  use. I don’t want to commodify their deaths, nor their family’s grief. I need to consider how I’ll respect their privacy, and their family’s too without disrespecting them.

10/31/22 Week 8

Happy Halloween + Blessed Samhain!

Final edits being made to the written/spoken portion. Going to record on wednesday and finish editing the video by next Monday. 

Tombstones are finished. They’re cute. I accidentally printed them @ 6.8mm instead of 68mm. I have 49 comically tiny tombstone USBs that I have no clue what to do with. Maybe I can have a little dish of them beside my work and offer them to people as take-aways?

Gonna build the tiny cemetery hub tonight!

11/6/22 Week 9

I’m done. 

And I’m

proud and 

tired.

[enigmalea]

2021 Fandom Recap

I’ve been putting it off because I keep thinking “I haven’t done much this year”, and yet, that is categorically untrue. It’s uh... been a lot more productive than I realized.

IN 2021 I...

☆ Consumed every piece of non-game Dragon Age media in (roughly) chronological order. Last week, I managed to finish up with the 2021 DA Day short stories, even. That’s every web series, comic, novel, and short story, including the anime. I’m considering reading the WOT and Art books next year.

☆ Launched a Discord bot, Archivist, which is currently in 1070+ servers. It’s a simple AO3 scraper that grabs the info for an AO3 fic, user, or series and post it in a rich embed in Discord. It really should say, I learned my first programming language and made the bot, but, you know, technicalities. I have some updates planned for 2022! ☆ Participated in two exchanges:

wrote three fics (two short fics, and one drabble) for @black-emporium-exchange.

ran the first Dragon Age Poly Exchange, and wrote one longer fic for it.

☆ Hosted @dapolyshipping Day monthly

☆ Modded, created layouts, and wrote for @dragonageannual

☆ Completed various other small fandom coding projects. A couple of page layouts, a tutorial on getting AO3 fics delivered to your discord server, etc

I also managed to hit my writing goal!

TOTAL WORDS WRITTEN:  47,001 / TOTAL WORDS PUBLISHED: 44,438

Stay Back From the Edge Cullen/Solas, rated E, (4068 words)

Getting Used To It Cullen/Dorian/Iron Bull, rated E, (23617 words)

Darkest Alleys of Kirkwall Anders/Male Hawke, rated E, (2765 words)

Any Dream Will Do Solas/Male Lavellan, rated G, (644 words)

Booty-ful Assets Alistair/Male Tabris, rated G, (528 words)

I'd Love You To Love Me Varric/Male Hawke, rated T, (2243 words)

In Another Cup Anders/Solas, rated T, (4058 words)

Wait For Me Abelas/Female Lavellan, rated G, (100 words)

Home Anders/Cullen/Dorian/Solas, rated G, (100 words)

Tea-vinter for Two Cullen & Cassandra, rated G, (1948 words)

Fix These Broken Things Anders/Dorian, rated M, (2648 words)

As you can see, I wrote quite a bit more than I published - I’ve been plugging away at a few WIPS for a while that I’d like to make progress and publish next year.

I’m still trying to decide exactly how I want to goal track/plan for next year and what my focuses will be. I’ve been sick for about a month, so as much as I’d love to get those posted by tomorrow I don’t know if that’s realistic.

Either way, I hope everyone has a Happy New Year, and I’ll see you all next year!

[becomewings]

Hello again! I'm the new ARMY. Thank you for answering my previous ask :D

But it has raised a new question. What do you mean by notes 1 & 2 and album-accompanying notes? I thought they were the same? Like the notes 1 & 2 came with albums? Is there a difference in their content? Which do you think I should read first?

(Sorry for all the questions. I'm excited to get involved!)

Hi again! :) Please don’t be sorry, I’m happy to share this info and hope it helps you and potentially others as well!

The Notes 1 and The Notes 2 (which technically have fuller titles that include ‘The Most Beautiful Moment in Life’) are full-length, published books available in Korean, Japanese, English, and Spanish. The “album-accompanying” Notes that I referred to are individual entries that began accompanying certain BTS albums as of Love Yourself: Her. Not all of the entries released with the albums are present in the books, although some dates overlap (presenting different versions of the time loop or shorter excerpts). The album-accompanying Notes are only in Korean. As I unfortunately don’t speak it, I can’t confirm if the ones that do very closely match the corresponding entries in the books are truly identical in the Korean originals--I can only go off fan translations into English and compare to the official book translations. (I posted something about this a long time ago for SeokJin’s 30 August Year 22 entry from Tear because I was curious if it matched the Korean version of The Notes 1 but didn’t get any replies... not sure if there are newer folks here now who could answer this?)

I hope that clears things up about the different sources for The Notes. Actually, I should also add that sometimes excerpts have been posted on the official @/smeraldo_books Twitter account, generally around a comeback and/or before new Notes are released.

As for the order...! This may really all come down to personal preference, but I will outline my recommendation based on my own experience (as someone who started following BTS in ~Aug 2019) and what may generally be the most chronological. (I should put this into a formal post sometime, maybe? Anywhere, here we go with a first draft!)

If you have not already, watch all BU certified MVs/short films from I Need U through Epiphany. List here. I recommend just letting yourself... experience them. Don’t read the YT comments, don’t hunt for theories (old or new), just let your mind do its own thing. You won’t understand everything, and that’s okay!

Read the Save Me Webtoon. This used to be readable all in one go online, but now unfortunately I think it’s paced out on the app. The events in this comic are SeokJin’s earliest time loops and therefore fall before Notes 1.

Read The Notes 1 and the Notes from the Love Yourself albums Her, Tear, and Answer. You will get a much fuller picture of the narrative in Notes 1, but the albums’ entries fill in some gaps and potentially occur in slightly earlier loop(s). Notes 1 can be purchased from WeVerse. Fan translations of the album notes are presented in chronological order here or twitter user origamifirefly has/had hers posted for download on Google drive.

 Now is a great time to rewatch all of the MVs/films if you haven’t in a while!

Read the album Notes from MotS: Persona and 7, again included here. These occur in very different versions of the time loops from Notes 1 and serve as the bridge to...

The Notes 2. Aside from the mobile game (getting there in a moment), this is the most substantial piece of new BU content in a year and a half and was published last August. Big book lots of feels haven’t brought myself to reread it yet.

Watch the BTS Universe Story ‘Map of the Soul’ trailer. There are earlier, shorter trailers, but this gets the most information across. I’m recommending this after Notes 2 because it actually references a lot of the Notes 2 version timeline.

Play BTS Universe Story: The Most Beautiful Moment in Life <I’M FINE>. This is the official BU content available in the mobile game so far and most of it is unfortunately behind a pay wall (or you can unlock them slowly with in-game resources...? I didn’t have time for that so I paid up front). OR you can read the extensive highlights/summaries I just finished 7+ weeks working on if you’re more interested in the plot than the game experience. ;) The narrative in <I’M FINE> actually falls between the Save Me Webtoon and Notes 1, slightly overlapping with the latter, but I think you will have a better grasp on the overall story if you at least read Notes 1 first. Alternately, you may consider playing this before you read Notes 2. The <I’M FINE> arc actually bears very little resemblance to the Map of the Soul trailer.

Come celebrate with me because you just made it through a LOT of a complex, nuanced, transmedia experience!! ♡ 

I’m really curious to hear how others have progressed through BU. Do you agree with my outline or have suggestions of your own? Please share them!

[popculturebuffet]

The Boys Volume 4: We Gotta Go Now Review Part 2 (Issues 27-30) (Comission for WeirdKev27)

Welcome back all you happy people to my review of the the Boys, specifically the X-Cruating X-Men Themed arc, We Gotta Go Now. Part one is RIGHT HERE in case you haven’t seen it. I split in in half because Tumblr REALLY dosen’t like longer posts and since I have yet to find a better platform and didn’t want to have to redo half my work like I did with two parts of my scott pilgrim retrospective, I opted to split the diffrence.

I don’t have much of an intro this time as last time I covered my issues with the book, why Garth Ennis was a poor choice for it given his admitted hatred for superhero comics even into present day, and the first four issues in which Ennis tried to satraize the x-men.. by saying they have a lot of teams, making wolverine into a gibbering moron.. again.

And rather than actually parody the x-men outside of two gags, mostly spent the time making them into racist, and one of the homophobics, gibbering assholes. So get situated with part one and then meet me back here under the cut so I can finish this monster:

Content Warning: This review contains talks of sucicide, child abuse, child abudction, rape and pedophilia, as it’s in the material i’m reviewing so if ANY OF THIS is a psychological trigger for you, please use caution reading it or skip this review for your own health. 

Issue 27:

So we open with MM and the guy from last time.. Silver’s father. As it turned out “Uncle Paul” took her out for ice cream and she vanished, taken off the street with no one finding her.. revealing that Voight isn’t just finding orphans but KIDNAPPING CHILDREN. This.. is actually a valid dark take on the x-men for me. While more often than not parents actually do fuly support their children leaving with charles and if their ripped from parents it’s from an abusive home, it’s still an intresting dark take: what if Charles wasn’t asking permission but simply kidnapping children to fuel his teams. Hell the curren era actually explores this with some parents terrified of their children leaving for Krakoa and anti-mutant racists using this fear as fuel. 

Anyways, Paul sadly killed himself feeling he was responsible for the incident and MM sadly leaves, now having damming info on their foes.. but knowing just how badly this broke this poor man. It’s a genuinely gripping and emotoinal scene and if the boy shad more of this and less of 

Then i’d be talking about a MUCH better comic. 

So meanwhile it’s st patrick’s day in new york and G-Whiz are naturally up to some drunken bullshit.

So while one of them fails to notice the diffrence between scottisha nd irish to Huey’s mild annoyance

Meanwhlie Butcher has a club soda with a bar owning budy whose reactoin to some patrons trying to enter wearing green and clearly looking to get ripped is uniquely insanely awesome...

Over the top? Perhaps but given the man is himself irish and has to watch people use his hertiage as an excuse to get shit faced, you can see why maybe he needs to throw a hatchet once in a while and given he clearly has hawkeye level percision they weren’t in any real danger.. unless they didn’t leave then Butcher would be helping bury the bodies. 

So Hugie tries to reason with Buzzcut but ti’s clear he’s been too heavily indocrinated as it’s “diffrnet” since they’ve been trained all their life.. and then G-Whiz all pee in one of their memebers mouth while Blowchowchi decides to masturbate on him after. 

So Hugie joins Butcher instead and we get some good character stuff: Hugie WANTS to stil lsave them as he gets these idiots have no idea of what’s approriate because they were never taught it, but Butcher says their too far gone and he needs to pull Hugie out anyway. Hugie also needles butcher on some questions.. and gets too far when he makes it clear he knows what happened with butchers wife but wisely drops it. 

Back at the G-Mansion... we meet G-Coast and G-Style.... you.. you aren’t prepared for the amount of racisim your about to witness...

I was not exagerating. Even for the time this is HORRIBLY offensive, sterotypical and racist. And while I shoudln’t HAVE TO mention it, a white man should NOT be using the fucking n-word in his scripts, let alone for shit like this. He went OUT OF HIS WAY to do this. This isn’t an analog to ANYTHING x-men related. None of the team members rsemble any actual black x-men or x-men period. Garth ennis just wanted to go on a weird racist tangent about rappers. I don’t have the reaction images for this it’s just fucking vile and stupid. Easily the worst thing he’s done and as we’ve seen that threshold is vast, but introducing two teams JUST to make racist as hell sterotypes in the name of “comedy” is so fucking low he’s fallen off the fucking globe. 

Not-Iceman, does his name REALLY matter given the level of names we’re dealing with? I say nay, talks about what if Silver made the right deceision but Five-Oh disagrees saying the “other stuff” , we’ll get to that, is worth the fame and that... i’m not going ot say it..

You know Five-Oh maybe she didn’t sleep with you not because she’s some “frigid bitch” as dude bros like you would say.. but because your a giant pile of dicks that somehow took the form of a human being. 

WE end the issue with a long, pretty thoughtful rant on why St. Patrick’s day sucks, which comes off as a personal thing for Gath Ennis, unsuprisingly given he’s from ireland himself, but I honestly can’t blame him for it and he makes a good argument for once. They even use the grossout the series tends to lean into at times for good effect, using a barf filled st. patrick’s day bowler as an effective symbol of what the holliday’s become. 

Issue 28:

We open the next issue at Stillwells office as he talks with Goodkin over the phone. Goodkin wants silver back, but Stillwell admits they CAN’T bring her back and suggests he just move on and also isn’t happy to find out via some background noise that Goodkin is training another Pre-Whiz, i.e. a kid version of G-Whiz. Goodkin also says “i don’t answer to you”.. to the man who very clearly is trying to kill him. You know Goodkin you could just put on a t-shirt under your suit jacket that says “GO ON AND KILL ME BITCH YOU AIN’T GOT THE TESTICULAR FORTITUDE”, you’d at least die faster.. probably from one of your own students given there’s a reason that shirt was banned from the manor.  Lost all of the G-Pirates that day. 

So we move on to Silver’s Funeral, where G-Whiz are about as respectful as you’d expect:

Blowchowski... just shove the pencil up your dick and be done with it. Given what we’ve seen with you this arc the fact you haven’t dropped trow and jammed a pencil up what I assume is an especailly tiny penis is the only suprising thing about your character. 

King Helmet of G-Style gives a ulogy which is unsuprsiingly about having wanted to bang Silver when she was alive. What’s honestly more intresting is that King Helmet has one of the better names Ennis farted out.. but simply a spirit halloween roman soldier costume. While Darrick Robertson isn’t a BAD artist the designs for the various supes are just... weak. Ther’es nothing funny or interesting their just the generic superhero costumes you’d find in a dtv movie.  There was no love or effort put in here and it really mutes the already dead silent parody further when instead of actually putting effort in you just sketched out the easiest costumes you could. 

As for the G-Men their even less respectful. 

I’m just so tired of this at this point. Again I read FIVE VOLUMES of this shit. I’m so tired of “OH THEIR A PRICK GET IT” characterization.but this arc is worse with it because we spent SO MUCH time with the g-men compared to teenage kicks. At least with Annie’s story we have a sympathetic pov. Here we’re just stuck in the room with a bunch of petty douchebags. I know the x-men infight, it is a thing with them, but come on. If your going to parody soap opera drama in these books at least make it FUNNY drama or darkly hilarious or pognaint or anything. Not just “Oh well she woudln’t suck my dick so I hate her “ or “I’m a homophobic asshat”. ‘or “I think Nightcrawler is brain damaged”. 

Butcher naturally isn’t pleased to find out from Frenchie that Hugie is at the funeral with G-Wiz trying to save them, and tells frenchie to grab him asap, while Butcher rushes to join them and MM heads for the legend to get some passwords, with Butcher trusting his word. 

So while that goes on Stillwell talks to his boss trying to encourage him into letting him take out the G-Men, pointing out Goodkin wanting silver back is the last straw: with the combo of this, the new pre-whiz, and whatever incident killed nubia that keeps getting bring up and we’ll find out about soon enough, it’s time to clean house and while they might loose profits if they don’t stop the g-men now, they might have to clean up something worse if they let it keep going like this. 

MM uses said paswords to get into Voight’s records. It won’t last him long, their security is naturally great as any shady corp covering up a lot of horrible shit does.. i.e. all of them, but it should get him what he needs. 

So the inevitable naturally happens next: G-Whiz take Hugie into the woods near the manor and having been informed of his double agent status prepare to kill him. It’s a genuinely sad scene as Hugie TRIES to talk sense into them, how they shouldn't have  to want this and they can be something better.. but it’s not enough and they sick Blowchowski on him who naturally has acid vomit powers. Just like the real John Belushi. Hugie apologizes..... because he sees Frenchie and The Female behind them.

One mostly off panel murder party later, one of G-Whiz HAPPENS to be a telepath and alerts Divine about it, while back at the scene of the crime Butcher and MM show up and with one member of G-Whiz left alive, they decide to interogate the shell shocked kid: Our cliffhanger is Butcher asking him to spill or Hugie’s going to cut his throat. 

29: So the Last G-Man tells his story and .. it’s genuinely heartrending and tragic, adding another horrifying lair to the dark version of the x-men. Had the Boys been more like THIS , more dark deconscurctions of various heroes with some human elements to keep it from getting too edgelord instead of just

For too damn many pages, again.. I could be talking about a masterpiece instead of this thing. 

But while I won’t hesitate to rip a work to shred with my admantium claws if it’s bad enough.. I will never hestiate to give credit whre it’s do and this sequence is truly harrowing: 

We find out how it is for most of the G-Kids: Goodkin finds them, plies them with candy and toys and other goodies and tells them they get to be a superhero someday. What kid WOULD turn that down? 

Eventually relaity sets in and you want to leave but unsuprisingly Goodkin doesn't let the kids go instead telling them this sacrifice is what it takes to be a g-man and all that bullshit. Eventually.. the kids are indocrinated enough to buy into it, helped by being given friends in the other kids and the g-men and the ones who don’t settle in.. well as Butcher says “use your  imagination”. 

So thus their plied with more toys post compound v, big boy toys like drugs and porn as they grow into it, and taught to protect the brand whatever the cost.. revealing silver killed nubia to prevent a meltdown. 

We then get the last piece.. and the main reason for that content warning: Goodkin rapes them. He rapes the kids, and other g-men eithe rkeep silent or join in. This did anger me when I first heard about it.. but it was because I assumed like everything ELSE ennis did with heroes it was used as an edgelord punchline. Instead with proper contect.. it’s heartbreaking. These poor kids indoctrinated, raped, abused, and made into playthings for a sick old man who keeps the cycle of abuse going constantly. It also gives a horrifying and disturbing reason WHY goodkin keeps expanding. It’s not even clearly meant to be a commentary on the x-men, it’s just a horrifying taken on them, taking a pure and fun concept.. and twisting it into something nightmarish but valid story wise. instead of using child rape just for shock he uses it to tel lthe story of a bunch of kids who were made into fucked up adults by a man who just wanted mor etoys to play with and break. It’s haunting horrifying.. and damn good writing. 

It’s why I say Garth Ennis CAN write.. he’s just not very good at satire or deconstuction when the things he’s taking apar the dosen’t understand. he CAN writ ea good story.. he was just never capable of being objective enough to make THIS story as good as this all the time. 

Jamal, the last g-whiz’s ending is also tearjerking as Europo punches him in the head for telling on them. But that’s just the opening Salvo. The boys are soon faced down with ALL the g-men across all franchises lead by Five-Oh, all ready to die for John Goodkin. And while Butcher’s ready to haul ass and run, Hughie?

And to Butcher’s shock the other boys fully back him in this sucidie mission because while Hugie IS doing it because he’s good and pissed at this shit.. he’s not wrong. Goodkin is unhinged, has a loyal cult and kills LOYAL members who say anything. Hugie outright infiltrated his operation. He’s not going to stop till ALL of you are dead for this or all the G-Men are. Blackmail won’t work because that will just make him want to kill you harder to preserve things.  Approaching it strategically is out because they have a teleporter who just demonstrated he can kill any of you at any time unless you prepare for him. You aren’t dealing with your normal fame hungry supes, you are dealing with a ride or die CULT of supes who you just pissed off and who unlike the Seven, who have a cold war type thing with our heroes, are under NO obligation not to punch your guts out.  Not only that.... Frenchie and the Female just DECIMATED an entire team with just the two of them, Butcher shows next arc he’s more than capable of taking on an even higher level team once their heavy hitter is gone, Hugie has NONE of his usual issues about killing these bastards, and MM is just as good and pissed and an experinced fighter. Bucher’s whole objection here makes no sense, epsecailly since the narrative has overly built up the boys as nearly unstoppable. In the show where they have no powers sure, makes more sense. But here while their on about the same level as the G-Men, their way more used to killing equal oponents. 

So we’re about to get a cool fight scene.. when we get a subversion instead.. Voght shows up and Goodkin tells his men to stand down their clearly on their side right? Right?

Instead we get an UTTERLY BRUTAL and gory slaughter as the G-Men are gunned down, hit with stinger missles for the fliers and then, as hinted at the top of the story flamethrowered. Nothing is left, no one is spared, and the G-Men in one night are no more. As Stillwell puts it to butcher “Just so you know, we can clean up our own shit.” For once ,Butcher’s feeligns are accurate

I’m split on this conclusion. On the one hand while I do give the boys good chance.. they woudln’t of made it out of this unscathed and the boys not getting catharissi here is the point: instead of righteously taking down some cultish dickheads, they watch as these same dickheads who were robbed of a normal life are utterly and completely slaughtered.. and get a picture of just WHAT their up against. This isn’t just a show for Vought’s other teams what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass, this is what happens if the BOYS press Vought too hard. It’s a big move by Stillwell, to show “We COULD wipe our asses with you ANYTIME if you stepped too far”. They wiped out an ARMY of supes in seconds, and even if they had been coming at them, still would’ve won on numbers and kit alone. As skilled as our heroes are... even with prep they would not surivive this. So while it is unsatisfying narratively.. that’s the point and it works: our heroes don’t get to right some injustice they get to watch as a bunch of rabid brainwashed dogs are put down and it’s made clear they could be next. 

My issues with it besides not getting any closure, which again feels intentional so fair enough, is that it’s WAY TOO TELEGRAPHED this is supposed to be shocking and while it is horrifying, hence me not showing it to you because god damn, we spend almost a scene an issue leading up to this. We get SO MUCH SETUP that of course this is how it ends. It’d be weirder if Stillwell showed up AFTER and we got a subversion. The first scene in paticular ruins it by telegraphing the flamethrowers. It honestly woudl’ve been more effective if we didn’t have that scene and just had stillwell calmly say to contain them, leaving us wondering.. and then get this horrifying finish that shows EXACTLY what he meant. NO saving some of them, no save points just ALL of them dead in an instant. Scorched earth on this investment. Still it’s an effective scene and I’ll give Garth, flawed though it may be. 

Issue 30: 

Finally we’re almost done with this. Not even hiding my relief like a professional. This has been a nightmare, the only relief being I was paid very good money for this shitshow. 

So we open with Stillwell cleaning up G-Whiz’s frathouse, while preparing plans: Their going to use lookalikes to help keep the G-Men afloat for now and use a preemtive strike on the manor as cover.. but eventually the fans will realize the g-men really aren’t coming back and they’ll have to take the hit. We also see Pre-Whiz, the children Goodkin was grooming next, preparing to fight... only to be darkly dropped out of a crate over iceland. GET IT BECAUSE THESE INNOCENT CHLIDREN DIED. Like it’s a joke that COULD work, i’ve seen an utterly hilarious montage of a bunch of teenagers dying over and over and over again. 

See THAT’S actually funny. Pre-Whiz dying isn’t funny because.. these are a bunch of abused children who really think their going to be heroes.. getting thrown out of a plane to die as collateral. If they were older, maybe, but these are fucking toddlers getting murdered. 

With Hank and Dean not only are they both 15-16, but the deaths don’t have any hint of tragedy. Their just over the top stupidity or sci fi carnage set to a pithy montage song. The show later DOES play it for tragedy when dean finds out and shockingly does not take it well at all, but it works then because it undercuts the prevoius comedy of the clone thing with the reality that this is a real person you’ve been fucking around like this without ever telling him. Ennis TRIES to mix pathos with comedy here and it just comes off terribly. 

So we get some scenes with each of the boys after this: Butcher tells Hugie this can’t happen again and “We’re not here to make things better, we’re here to prevent then form getting worse”

If you don’t MAKE things better, don’t even TRY to be better people, what’s the point? Sure Hugie was HORRIBLY misguided here... but if you just go in assumign all supes are bad and not trying to get some good ones on your side so next time your standing down an army you hav ebackup, if you don’t TRY to take down Vought too and just perform triage.. what’s the point of you Billy?  I get you have to do triage FOR NOW, that’s fine, but if you NEVER try to do anything better, what’s the bloody point of you?

Frenchie and the Female get a bit as he tries to stop her from going to sate her bloodlust.. but it dosen’t work and he looks on sadly as she goes in for the kill. 

We get a damn good scene with Mother’s Mliik who goes to give Silver’s father closure. Will it help him? He dose’nt know.. and we don’t either. MM decides to walk back after instead of getting a ride he coudl use it. Again.. why sin’t MM, the compastionte, intresting and pragmatic character with a more unqiue backstory the lead and not the fucking cardboard cutout who decides “Eh fuck actually helping people”? 

We then find out just what Butcher found out the other day as he beats it out of kessler.. he knowsl.. he’s just pissed. Silver..was a spy for Raynor. Raynor loved the idea of having her own Supe spy in the g-men, and ignored Silver’s warnings Goodkin was closing in on them. The pressure of betraying a man she loved like a father even though he sure as fuck didn’t deserve it and having to betray him as she felt things were getting out of hand literally killed her, with Raynor sending in the boys as she hadn’t gotten anything concrete out of Silver, anything she coudl use and wanted to put this to bed once and for all. 

We get a scene setting up the next arc of Homelander both being informed of the g-men massacre, with the boys being blamed for it naturally, and Stillwell using it as an excuse to finally go after him. Homelander can’t since Bucher has damming evidence on him.. but another team could. One looking for some.. Payback. 

We get another really good scene with Hugie and Annie, with Hugie telling her, if in vauge terms about loosing his previous girlfriend and the two cuddle. Aww

In less... good terms we end the arc with Butcher.. taking Raynor up the ass... before turning it into a threat on her family, because of course she’s cheating and her if she pulls this again. Does she deserve some compuance sure? Should ennis have framed it like sexual assault with Butcher not only on top of her with Raynor in his power, but ending on her terrfied face while he looks pleased with himself, (’m not making this up but fuck if i’m showing you something this disturbing)? 

FUCK NO

Final Thoughts:

As you can probably gather I don’t like this series or arc. 

For the series it tries to be extra deep then goes right to being juvinille without the nuance of something like Final Space or the Venture Bros, works that CAN blend goofy as shit with deep character work. The Boys is just too immature to make it work half the time and while it has genuine moments of greatness their smothered by so much edgelord bullsemen. 

The arc itself  is a mess. It’s bloated, clocking it at 8 issues and not needing all of them, with several scenes that come out like padding, from the endless scenes of Stillwell pregaming for his G-Men Genocide,  to endless scenes of the g-men themselves that don’t add anything in half of them. This arc could’ve cut an issue and would’ve been better for it. 

This is the least of i’ts problems though: The arc TRIES to satarize the x-men but as I should’ve bludgoned into your head forgoes actually satire and doing any research for “THERE’S A LOT OF TEAMS AND CHARLIES A RAPIST” There is a good story SOMEWHERE in there of making a dark version of the x-men where their groomed into being child soldiers by a pedophile, dark as balls but an intresting concept. But it’s drowned out by the G-men themselves being 1/2 dimensional cardboard cutouts with maybe one trait, NONE OF THEM being symapthetic enough for it to work: 

G-Whiz are supposed to be.. but are homophobic frat boy douchers who aren’t given enoguh character for Hugie’s claims their just innocent kids to work. Fratboys do the kinds of things these idiots do all the time, it’s not abnormal enough for this narrative to work. The G-Men are varying shades of racist and one a homophobe and G-Style and G-Coast are some of the most racist comic book characters i’ve ever witnessed. And I’ve read comics with Fu Fucking Man Chu in them. Ennis own inablitly to actually craft comeplling or layered or symapthetic vilians makes the whole arc implode on itself. What coudl’ve been a dark version of the strangest heroes in all ends up as a limp wristed parody. What a fucking waste bub. 

If you liked this review follow me for more, and if you REALLY enjoyed it and want to see me pick apart more bad comics join my patreon. Even a buck a month helps with my bills, and doing so unlocks stretch goals for more reviews, including Chuck Austen’s x-men and america. So join today if you want to see those, your joining helps get those made and will have me reviewing amphibia season 1 and both seasons of tuca and bertie as well as all of quack pack. 

PATREON IS RIGHT HERE

[chessdaze]

Since I outed myself with an ask to phoenix about an event I’ll go ahead and post something about my schedule for three wishes here. I won’t put this under read more just for visibility, so sorry ahead of time for clogging your dashes.

As a note ahead of time THESE ARE ALL SUBJECT TO CHANGE, I DO NOT GIVE ANY DATES CAUSE I’M NOT PUTTING MYSELF ON A DEADLINE. I’m doing this for my own enjoyment and hopefully, others as well but please don’t rush me. I’m sharing this just to be open about my plans and what I’m working on, and perhaps for the motivations / reminders it’ll give me - not to give anyone a reason to come at me. Okay? Okay.

Not counting small comics or misc posts of art and info or fics:

First order of business is for me to finish drawing all of Silas’ outfits and Design the Enchantress. I have Silas almost completely done sketch wise, so I’ll work on the sketches of the Enchantress next and then line/color and post those. I might also do some side character designs as I have a few that might show up here and there (but they’ll just be like the ghosts in canon, occasionally there and then you don’t see them for fucking ever). I WOULD do outfit design sheets for EVERY character BUT....that would be a lot of work. I might end up just making polls like ‘who would you like to see outfit references for’ and then work on them at my own pace. That way you guys get what you want first and I still have fun designing everyone’s outfits regardless.

Second order of business is my event I mentioned in the ask to phoenix, BATTLE OF THE BANDS! I accidentally went full game dev on the documentation (because if I’m not gonna use all that documentation homework I did for that game art degree NOW then when am I going to??), but I’m actually pretty far along planning wise since I’ve been working on it when I needed break from art things. Right now I have about half of the main story of the event outlined. My order of doing things is Summary of Story > Outline of items / mini games > Figure out what characters were going to be in the event > Main story outline > Card Story outlines > Finalized story and Card Stories > Art Assets. So it might take awhile before I post any art for it. But if people show interest in me posting some of the in progress things feel free to send me an ask every now and then and I can update you! Because of the ask and permission given, Evonie from @phoenix-manga ‘s Diamond Crown Academy will make an appearance in the event, as well as Three Wishes OCs made by @tsukikoayanosuke (Bridgette) and @missnekonyan (Donelle) as the clubs their characters are involved with the event overall. I’m really excited I got permission from all of them to be able to reference their characters! They won’t be big rolls but I’m happy to give all of these creators spotlight by adding in their characters.

Third thing, Regular Card Stories and Art for Cards! I am already making documentation to have these noted down, Will probably do them one dorm at a time but I do have a few ideas already. I will say that my R-SSR order of the cards is a bit different from canon. R’s are School Uniforms and PE outfits (will be slightly different depending on which PE course is taken by the student, since there’s three at three wishes), SRs  are Dorm Outfits and Fundraising outfits - as Dorm outfits are different per person i didn’t think they were special enough for SSRs but still worth some highlight, and Fundraising / Volunteering is a mandatory class at Three Wishes so that gets another SR spot. Then lastly their SSRs are their Ceremony outfits. These are also different per character but they will all have a matching color scheme so that’s why i wanted these to be the SSRs.  I also already have like four future events planned and which characters will be getting cards / what rank the cards will be for those characters! None of these events have any kind of outline yet, only general concepts and characters possibly involved, so the characters may change but I have them written down so I don’t forget and I can add to the event outlines as I find inspiration.

Maybe the fourth thing is actually designing the dang school. I SUCK at environment art, I’m not going to lie. It’s why alot of my comics up until this point has had minimal or no backgrounds at all. But one of the reasons why I’m drawing comics is to maybe get better at backgrounds cause I’m already sick of them not having one so progress I guess. But this is why this is kind of last on my list, as I definitely need the practice. If there’s a dorm or location I have listed that you would like to see art for or just described in better detail, Feel free to send me an ask!

And the thing I’m kind of working on while all of that is going on is of course, the Main Story Outline! I have all the chapter names picked and I have at least the Prologue - Second chapter bullet pointed as a first draft - I already know some places I wanna go back and change things but for now I’m just trying to get the general ideas for each chapter down. As of now there are eight chapters in total - including the prologue and the finale, so six major story chapters over all.  I’m still not sure how I want to tell this story in all honestly. Part of me REALLY REALLY REALLY wants to make these full blown comics in all honesty. I’ve been wanting to draw actual comics since I was a kid and I’m closer now than I ever have been to being able to do so. But I also know how much of a time sync that is and know that I haven’t quite grasped all the shading tools in CSP to really give it the effect I want to have - which is one of the reasons I’m working on the mini comic pages here and there so I can slowly improve - but I can’t promise anything. If nothing else, I’m semi confident in my writing skills so I will maybe end up writing it out.

As a treat TM, I’ll list the chapter titles I have down below. THESE ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE, but I am pretty happy with them right now - they’ll only likely change if I end up changing my entire idea for the chapter or changing the order of chapters. Anyone care to give me some theories on what you think each chapter is about? :thinking:

Prologue: the start of an actor's life Chapter one, Nightingale: by the stroke of midnight Chapter two,wondrous: a queen among thieves Chapter three, diamanttobar: the wishing well Chapter four, guardian: a dragons curse Chapter five, lapinhole: tipping the golden scale Chapter six, servireu: the guest has arrived Finale: when the last petal falls

If you read this far, thank you so much and I hope you look forward to more three wishes content! <3

Also I ask that this post isn’t reblogged, not gonna come at you if you do but it’s just a to do list really lol idk why anyone would want to reblog it.

[thedeaditeslayer]

Bruce Campbell talks ‘Evil Dead,’ ‘Spider-Man,’ ‘Xena’

mm

The first time Bruce Campbell came across Sam Raimi, they were students at Michigan’s West Maple Junior High School.

“Sam was a year younger than me,” Campbell recalls, “and I remember him dressed as Sherlock Holmes playing with dolls in the middle of the floor. And I remember going way around him. And I found out later that it was Sam Raimi. We didn’t really come into contact until we got until high school.”

What a connection they made. After bonding over D.I.Y. filmmaking, Campbell and Raimi went on to do 1978 shoestring horror-short “Within the Woods” together, which they evolved into 1981 demonic thriller “Evil Dead.”

Campbell would periodically reprise signature “Evil Dead” character Ash Williams in various sequels and offshoots. And appear in Raimi-produced “Xena: Warrior Princess,” portraying slippery “king of thieves” Autolycus on that ’90s-iconic TV fantasy epic.

And then there’s Campbell’s memorable cameos in Raimi’s blockbuster, Tobey Maguire-starring “Spider-Man” film trilogy: the ring announced in the first, 2002 film, “snooty usher” in the 2004 sequel and a maître d’ in 2007′s “Spider-Man 3.”

Of course, Campbell’s made a mark outside that dynamic duo. He drew raves for his portrayal of a nursing-home-bound Elvis Presley in 2002 indie comedy-horror gem, “Bubba Ho-Tep.” Then there’s his role of Sam Axe on USA Network spy drama “Burn Notice.” Not to mention numerous other film, TV, voice acting and even video-game work.

The cult-fave actor will make his first ever trip to Huntsville this week, for Oct. 24 events at Von Braun Center’s Mark C. Smith Concert Hall featuring “Evil Dead” screenings followed by a Campbell-led chat about the film, his life as an actor and beyond. Tickets for these 3 and 7:30 p.m. events start at $32, via ticketmaster.com.

His upcoming projects include a comedy album with actor Ted Raimi, Sam’s brother, called “The Lost Recordings.” Campbell also is readying a book of essays called “The Cool Side of My Pillow,” which finds him riffing on subjects ranging from noise to the environment. He hopes to have both released by the end of this year. More info at bruce-campbell.com. On a recent afternoon, Campbell checked in from his Oregon home for a phone interview. Edited excerpts are below.

Bruce, when you do an “Evil Dead” screening event, do your discussions turn up new things about the film or that you haven’t thought of in a long time?

Every show turns up something new because it puts you on the spot. Someone will say something that will then trigger something that you had forgot. I just sat down the other day before one of these shows with my guy who is my frontman and I was like, “OK, l’m just going to tell the story of making this movie.” It’s not for questions I’m just going to tell you basically what you’re about to see. But yeah, every show triggers some new thing. I’ve seen the movie. I know how it ends. But that is the challenge, finding some new, weird tidbits.

Back in high school how did you and Sam Raimi first bond? Did you share a class or something?

Basically I got into typing class, that’s what started it. I could not believe I was stuck in this stupid class where everyone around me seemed to know how to type. I’m like, “How do you know this?” It was very frustrating. So I went to a counselor for the first time ever – I’d never gone to try to get out of anything.

So I go there and I say, “Hey can I drop this dumb typing class?” She goes, "Yeah, what do you want? I go, “What do you got?” So she comes up with “radio speech.” And I’m like, “Radio speech? Wait they do the morning announcements (at school) and stuff?” and I’m like yeah let me get all over that.

So I got into a class and Sam Raimi was also in the class. And the guy who taught radio speech also directed all the plays. We didn’t know how critical that was. The first year I couldn’t get in anything in my high school. I was auditioning for everything but I didn’t have a class with this guy. By the next year I had a class with him, and then me and Sam were in basically all the plays after that. We found out how the deal worked.

So I met him in radio speech and we’d do the morning announcements together and got to talking about what we do in our neighborhoods. I was making little regular-8 (millimeter film) movies and Sam was making Super-8 movies. So we started to join forces during the course of that high school run, that two or three years in there.

We were very productive. We didn’t really get into trouble because we were too busy like filming parties. We wouldn’t go to the parties we’d film the parties and use them in some way in our little films so it was a great guerrilla filmmaking period.

A celeb or well-known person you were surprised to learn they’re an “Evil Dead” fan?

I heard Charlie Sheen, one of his favorite things was to smoke a doobie and watch “Evil Dead 2,” and Alice Cooper’s favorite horror movie is “Evil Dead.”

If it’s good enough for Alice Cooper it’s good enough for me. You host the quiz show “Last Fan Standing.” What do you make of the mainstreaming of nerd-culture?

Every generation has its deal. In the ’40s most moviegoers were in their 40s and so the actors were in their 40s. Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy and all the guys were in their 40s. You didn’t have to be 21. And then as the audience got younger the actors got younger and the people who run the companies get younger and so they’re really just catering to what’s popular.

Comic books have always been popular but now they’re really popular. Not really sure what that’s all about but yeah social media has certainly helped but I think it’s another form of escapism. Whenever times get weird, people want escapism. During The Depression they did the Busby Berkeley splashy musicals where everyone was happy all the time, when life was really miserable. And some decades where we’re really doing okay, the movies turned introspective and we go after ourselves and figure out why we’re like this and like that. And so I think we’re in a phase where we just want to be taken away to another galaxy and Marvel is very happy to help.

And you’ve been a part of that. In Sam’s “Spider-Man” trilogy, which of your cameos did you have the most fun with?

Well I don’t know it’s hard to lineate because they’re so critical. The first one I named Spider-Man. If I wasn’t in the movie a billion dollar franchise would be called The Human Spider. He wants to get in the theater in the second one, past the snooty usher who won’t let him in because he’s late, because it will spoil the illusion, so I think I’m technically the only character who’s ever defeated Spider-Man. And in part three, a superhero comes to a mortal for help. He wants me to help him propose to his girlfriend so it’s sort of a landmark case where a superhero goes to a mortal for help which is pretty rare. So I can’t delineate because they’re all critical to the “Spider-Man” universe.

Do you have any cool mementos from "Evil Dead or elsewhere from your career? Maybe something like the chainsaw from “Evil Dead 2”?

You know, it’s weird I’m not a hoarder, I’m not a collector. My brother, he has the shotgun from “Evil Dead,” but not because he loves movie trivia, he just likes guns. My brother also has I think the set of keys to the original cabin. That’s a pretty good one. Not sure how he got that one.

I have weirder ones. Like I have a prop from a 1989 movie called “Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat.” I have Van Helsing’s holy bottle where he shakes the holy water at them. And I have what I call my tchotchke shelf, where most people would look at it and they couldn’t identify what importance each item is, but there’s a story for each one.

Some of your favorite actors outside the horror genre?

Oh, I l love a lot of the old time actors. William Holden, he starred in “Bridge on The River Kwai” one of my favorite movies. I like the guys who had to work a lot. In the old days and actor would finish a job on Friday he was under contract, he took two weeks off and started a new movie a couple weeks later. Actors kind of just do one or two movies a year if they’re lucky these days and it doesn’t help them refine their craft.

I feel like the guys who worked a lot got good because they got really used to the process. I’m a fan of the studio system. Not all movies were good and not every actor was happy under the studio system, but I think a busy actor’s a good actor.

For your role in “Bubba Ho-Tep,” what was your process for tapping into Elvis’s vibe?

What guy doesn’t want to be Elvis, you know? So I worked with an Elvis impersonator for about a half an hour and then he gave up on me. He goes, “Look, man, you’re never going to get it.” I’m like, “Wow either I suck or you suck as a teacher but somebody here sucks.”

No, but I watched a bunch of footage and documentaries. There’s a good one, all his Memphis Mafia who worked with him, a filmmaker basically got them all drunk one night and interviewed them all and that’s where the good stories are. You learn a little more of the human side of him. But that’s pretty much it. I’ve never been a stage performer so mercifully there wasn’t that much of it, just in quick flashbacks.

And there’s a part of me, in the back of my mind, I want to know that Elvis' descendants, somebody, a daughter, niece, somebody has watched that movie and approved. We’ll see.

I thought it was a cool creative take on that whole Elvis thing.

I agree. That’s why I did it. It was one of the weirdest scripts I’ve ever read But yet it wraps up though. It has a weird premise but it has a really interesting theme of what do you do with old people. Do we forget these old people? And are they still useful in society, old people? And I thought it had a sweet ending, that these two old guys they kind of rally themselves one more time.

What’s a well-known role you’ve turned down?

Turned down? I don’t have a lot of those. I don’t operate in that rarified air of saying, “Oh I turned ‘Titanic’ down.” I tried to get a part in a studio movie called “The Phantom” and Billy Zane wound up getting the part." And it was down to me and Billy, I was number two for the job, but I didn’t really enjoy the process very much because it seemed more political than actually acting. It was amazing how many people you had to audition for, and you had to go up the ranks and each time it got a little more tense as you move up. So I’m good doing these weirdo little movies.

I read the budget for “Within the Woods,” the predecessor of “Evil Dead,” was a princely 1,600 bucks. What was the most expensive line item, you think?

Food and probably fake blood. Tom Sullivan, who did the special effects, probably needed to mold a few things, so he probably spent a couple hundred bucks on molds. A lot of it was footage because Sam Raimi likes to shoot footage, so we probably bought a lot of rolls of film. And we did go to a cabin to shoot it, so had to get in the car and travel so maybe a little gas money in there too. That’s about it.

What can you tell us about the status of the next installment of the “Evil Dead” franchise?

We’re honing-in, circling the building now trying to lock in a partner. We have a couple of bidders and we’re trying to just find the correct suitor and we have a script written and a director picked. Sam Raimi hand -picked a guy named Lee Cronin, who’s a very good Irish filmmaker. And it’s got a very good modern tale. It’s a modern-day urban “Evil Dead,” it’s called “Evil Dead Rise.” And we’re hoping to do that next year.

You were a producer on 2013 “Evil Dead” remake. What’s the key to making a reboot effective?

Well rebooting can be very confusing and frustrating and not always successful. Reboot, sequel, remake we have all these crazy terms. What we’re doing now is we’re saying," Look, this is another ‘Evil Dead’ movie and that book gets around, a lot of people run into it and it’s another story." The main key with “Evil Dead” is they’re just regular people who are battling what seems to be a very unstoppable evil, and so that’s where the horror comes from. It’s not someone who’s skilled. They’re not fighting a soldier. They’re not fighting a scientist. They’re not fighting anybody more than your average neighbor. This one is going to be a similar thing. We’re going to have a heroine, a woman in charge, and she’s going to try and save her family.

Speaking of a female protagonist, when you’re at a con or meet fans somewhere, who has the most passionate superfans: “Evil Dead” or “Xena”?

“Xena” hits them at an emotional level. Like, they’ll come up to me and Lucy Lawless (the actor who played the show’s title role) and just burst into tears, because her character helped them get through a difficult time. “Xena” is more representative of overcoming your struggles in life. “Evil Dead” fans are pretty fervent but they don’t cry as much.

[ckret2]

So I've been deeply pulled into the Radiosnake pairing bc of your fantastic writing! Problem is, now I have fic ideas but no knowledge of the Hazbin background. Can you tellI me where I can get more Hazbin info? I've only watched the pilot and read your stuff. I heard there were comics??

That is an excellent question anon, because right now it is really hard to get Hazbin background easily.

Okay, so, the canon info on Hazbin Hotel can be sort of sorted into four tiers, from most to least canon.

Tier 1: The Definitely Canon

There is, of course, the pilot. And then there is an Angel Dust prequel comic, only seven pages of which have been released so far. We’ve been told it’s gonna be finished and we’ve had glimpses of in-progress prequel comics for a couple other characters—most prominently Alastor’s and Charlie’s—but so far that unfinished Angel Dust comic is the only one that’s been officially released.

Finding the in-progress comic pages is... a challenge. Nobody, as far as I can tell, has been specifically collecting all of the pages we’ve seen so far. I was able to scrounge up:

Couple more Angel pages

some Alastor pages

another Alastor page

a random Alastor panel

another random Alastor panel—I’ve seen the full page of this before, Alastor goes “Hello ladies!” and they go “HELLO ALASTOR~<3″ but I can’t find the full page now

There’s a smattering more canon panels on the artist faustisse’s twitter, but I haven’t dug them all out, and some of the posts I’m gonna link in a lil bit have a glimpse of another panel.

If you haven’t already heard of Helluva Boss, I recommend looking into it as well. It’s a second series being created by the same folks, different cast of characters but set in the same version of Hell, so any canon details we learn in Helluva also apply to Hazbin.

Helluva’s pilot is here. Plus a cute music video here.

Earlier this month, during a BLM charity stream hosted by show artist Ashley Nichols—she runs regular streams under the title “HuniCast”—they released a few sneak peaks of future Helluva scenes, all compiled here.

And that’s it for canon. Two pilots, a music video, a smattering of future scenes, part of one comic, a few WIP pages/panels from other comics.

Tier 2: Pseudo-Canon

Everything else we currently know about Hazbin (and Helluva) are things that the creators have told us. Consequently, they’re all pseudo-canon—and likely subject to change in the future as the shows and comics are further developed and released. Some details that were released/described in the past have been contradicted at other times, or else radically changed by the time the pilot came out.

(For example, when Alastor was first created years and years ago as an OC with no plans for Hazbin, he was a demon deer who could shapeshift into a human shape—now he’s a demonized human with a few deer traits. And Charlie and Cherri Bomb used to look very different.)

So until and unless they make it into canon, all these pseudo-canon details are subject to change and should be taken with a grain of salt—but, they also comprise most of what we know about the characters’ backstory and the as-yet-unaired characters.

Pseudo-canon info on Hazbin is scattered mainly between two sources: the creators’ twitter accounts, and livestreams where they take questions and talk about the making of the show. If you and livestreams do not get along (my ADHD and livestreams do not get along), or if you don’t want to wade years and years back into twitter accounts to dig up every scrap of info on the characters the creators have ever mentioned, collating all the pseudo-canon info is gonna be hard. (It’s gonna be hard even if you do want to sit through the streams and dig through all their tweets.) Lots of fans, me included, depend on the absolutely heroic work of various fans who are willing and able to watch hours-long streams and collate a list of canon factoids released during the streams. I’ve reblogged as many of these posts as I’ve been able to find:

Alastor’s sound design (on twitter)

Alastor's Sound Design (post I made with screenshots of weird—but very interesting—subtitles slipped into the aforementioned video)

Sir Pentious and Cherri Bomb’s sound design

Niffty and Husk’s sound design

Charlie, Katie, and Tom’s sound design

Intro song’s sound design

Happy Hotel’s sound design

details from Faustisse (including a pic of a couple costume designs. Most of these posts come from zatyrlucy, who’s been doing a fantastic job of going stream-by-stream to get lists of details from the regular streams by Ashley Nichols and by comic artist Faustisse.)

more details from Faustisse (including a pic of the Von Eldritch family dining room)

Faustisse 3 (better look at that table)

Dollymoon’s Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART ONE (Shoutout again to dollymoon for compiling these, we’ve never spoken but I am eternally grateful for this service. Dollymoon’s posts are THE single most reliable compilation of Hazbin Hotel’s nebulous pseudo-canon facts that I have found to date, including both links to the sources and timestamps where applicable. Dollymoon’s URL has changed since making this post so the “read more” link doesn’t work but the “source” or “reblogged from” links direct correctly to the new blog. Incidentally, the risk of other blog creators deleting their blogs/posts or changing their URLs is why in info posts like these, I always link to my own reblogs rather than their original posts—their original posts might vanish without warning, but I know I ain’t gonna delete my posts, so these links will still work in the future.)

Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART TWO

Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART THREE

Faustisse 4

HuniCast - Australian Wildlife Relief charity stream

I think this was a faustisse stream (the original source deleted these posts, so the comic pages that were originally behind that read more cut are now gone.)

Faustisse stream 6?

And those are all the masterposts of factoids I’ve managed to collect. If anyone has more masterposts, chuck ‘em at me.

Even this isn’t all the knowledge that’s been released about the show. The posts that dig the farthest back are Dollymoon’s, and even they don’t comprehensively cover all of Hazbin’s production. A couple of these characters, Vivziepop created as a teenager, so there’s some truly ancient concept art floating around out there that will have details that probably aren’t canon anymore... but might still be until something happens to actively contradict them.

Tier 3: The Wiki

The wiki is kind of an absolute mess. It’s a chaotic blend of things actually seen in the pilots/comic, things mentioned at some point in some stream somewhere, and wild fan speculation based on what they headcanon as plausible based on the above, all mixed together with very little indication for which is canon, pseudo-canon, fanon, or speculation. Most of the statements on the wiki don’t have citations.

(And, on top of that, half the main characters’ info gets split up into separate tabs instead of just having a normal-ass wiki page, AND their image galleries are on COMPLETELY SEPARATE pages that are linked to in one of the tabs, and the most important characters all have TWO SEPARATE GALLERIES. Which doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of the facts hidden underneath those tabs, but nevertheless drives me up the wall.)

Some things on the wiki were added according to info released so long ago it’s probably changed by now. Some are possibilities that got reported as facts. Other things on the wiki have unambiguously changed, or else are just flat-out incorrect. (For instance, at this moment Alastor’s page still lists him as an overlord, even though it's been confirmed that Alastor is not an overlord despite his power level because he isn’t interested in and didn’t pursue that position, per this stream. For a little bit, somebody’s fanart of their headcanon human Alastor got added to the wiki as concept art.)

tl;dr: the wiki should never be trusted as a primary source. The wiki’s better than it used to be. Even so, at this time, it’s only trustworthy to fill in the gaps of what you already know is true from other, better sources.

The thing it’s good at is it more or less compiles all the known info all in one place. Trying to figure out who the hell this Vox guy is is really hard if you’re reading for mentions of him in compilations of a dozen different streams, much less if you’re trying to comb through those dozen streams yourself, plus a dozen more, plus three different artists’ twitters. In comparison, it’s really easy to, say, just go look at Vox’s wiki page, where all the trivia is compiled. (And Vox’s page is actually one of the better cited on the wiki. Look at all those numbers!)

So, if you need to find out who this character is you’ve never heard of before, if you want to see a full list of the thus far named characters, if you don’t remember whether Alastor likes coffee or tea, if you want to know what Angel’s twin sister looks like, if you need a reminder of Sir Pentious’s death year... check the wiki. It’s an okay starting point.

But, if you see a “fact” on the wiki that you yourself don’t remember from straight out of the pilot, and it doesn’t have a citation that links to a tweet or a stream... regard it suspiciously. And do not trust it unquestioningly as fact until and unless you have seen the source.

Tier 4: Noncanon Creator Shitposting

I’ve mentioned Ashley’s HuniCast streams a couple times. The biggest draw of them is that she usually gets several of the voice actors in the streams, where they’ll happily say nonsense in their character voices. For the most part, they’re not sharing any actual canon info they’ve been given on their characters, just goofing around pretending to be their characters. Nevertheless, a lot of the things that happen in streams get accepted as broad fandom headcanons, like Alastor being into dad jokes. (My favorite, for obvious reasons, is this one.)

It’s easy to find the source audio for all this wonderful nonsense by searching youtube for “HuniCast highlights,” and then rummaging around for animatics people make out of the audio. The only one noncanon video of this sort I can think of that didn’t originally come from HuniCast is a lone one from Alastor’s singing voice (who’s a different voice actor than his speaking voice).

So, obviously, none of these are canon. But they do come from some of the people actually involved in the creation of the show, and they are in the characters’ canon voices, so a whole lot of people treat them as semi-canon anyway. (Even the wiki lists “dad jokes” among Alastor’s likes, which to my knowledge hasn’t come up anywhere except for HuniCast streams.) Since they’re so broadly-known, they’re worth knowing about as important sources of fanon, even if you don’t want to adopt them into your own headcanons. They’re basically the same level of canon as blooper reels.

[kpopisamood]

Queen’s Clan { 7 }

Summary: y/n is plagued by nightmares. She realizes that the more she runs away, the less frequently they haunt her. However, in running away, she’s also running straight into her ultimate demise. Will she be saved in time by those who would lay down their lives for her, even if they don’t know of each other’s existence?

Monsta X/Reader, Human/Vampire(s), Reverse Harem

Warnings: future smut?, violence, language

Word count: 1.69k

Tag list: @noonaduck @lovinggalaxies @elenaramos1 @girlwith-thecinder-blockgarden

***

The image was almost comical. You were in the dining hall, front and center at the end with four pairs of eyes all locked on you in some sort of fashion. Minhyuk sported a newly acquired bruise by his eye and he was looking at you with great concern. The others, whose names were Jooheon, Hyunwoo, and Changkyun all stared at you curiously. Wonho was nowhere to be seen but you had heard he went searching for you and his former “clan mates” weren’t allowing anyone to leave to go tell him they found you.

“It builds character.” Changkyun stated sarcastically to your questions on why you would do such a thing.

Jooheon coughed awkwardly, trying to wrack his mind for any sort of conversation starters.

“So, you’re the new Queen.” Changkyun sighed out. Jooheon did a double take at the blatant disrespect he gave to you but shook it off when you shrugged and mumbled a ‘guess so.’ back at him.

“Okay this is too much, who are you guys?” You blurted out, the silence was deafening and someone had to say something other than small conversations.

Hyunwoo cleared his throat before starting the introductions...again.

“I’m Hyunwoo, but those closest to me call me Shownu. These two are Changkyun,” he pointed to undercut boy “And Jooheon.” He pointed to the one with a cap.

“I meant, why are you here?” You pushed on.

“Could have asked that from the start.” Changkyun mumbled out, earning a slap on his shoulder from Jooheon.

“We were all part of the same Clan at one point. We were here to catch up on some new info and we sensed a new Queen in the area. We’ve had a system of Queens and Kings for centuries and usually when one awakens, it’s announced globally. It’s strange because we’ve never heard of you and your birth wasn’t announced to our society whatsoever so you could say we were curious about a hidden Queen.” He explained, leaving no detail out.

“Well, you’ve seen the freak show so is your business finished here?” You really weren’t trying to sound bitchy, but it’s been a long couple of days with too much information about things that normal people dreamt about or ended up in a state institution from.

“My liege, we’d like to stay under your command. If that’s alright with you.” Jooheon stammered out, trying very hard not to sound pushy.

“Speak for yourself.” Changkyun rolled his eyes and stood, just as Hoseok marched in, hair tousled and shirt in shreds, revealing a very healthy abdomen. But you weren’t staring, no.

Just as he’s about to blow up at everyone, he sees you at the head of the table and marches his way to you. He carefully lifts up each of your arms, checks under your hair and around your neck as well as anything that wasn’t covered.

“I’m fine.” You huffed, trying to pull away from him. He held on for a split second longer before allowing everything to set in place. “Can someone explain why you were all fighting?”

“It’s training.” Changkyun said simply. “We’ve gotta keep in shape somehow and the element of surprise helps sometimes. Are we through here? Because I’d like to go to bed.”

Hyunwoo nodded at him, allowing him to escape through the hall and you heard his footsteps lightly tap along the floor, disappearing slowly as he got further away.

“My apologies for our clan mate, Queen. He’s a bit troubled lately.” Hyunwoo explained, trying to cover for his underlings. He’d take on a full beating for the two he came with and it showed. He was a very silent but kind giant in your eyes and his loyalty to the two were intense. “We saw a little bit of your interaction earlier, is it safe to assume that Minhyuk and Wonho are your Blood?” He asked softly.

“My Blood?” You questioned.

“He means to ask if we serve you officially, my Queen. That you’ve chosen us.” Minhyuk said, his unwavering gaze on you.

“I—“ you cut yourself off. This was still all so new and sudden. Surely you couldn’t have actual servants to do your every bidding without question, right? “I don’t feel comfortable owning people. Slave days are over.” You stated.

A couple seconds lasted before laughs bellowed around you. Jooheon was clutching onto his stomach, Hyunwoo was trying to cover up his mouth, Hoseok was leaning against the wall for support as he faced away to laugh, and Minhyuk was chuckling unabashedly.

“We’re not slaves, Y/N.” Minhyuk laughed out. “We’re our own people who are wanting to do your bidding.”

“Min, that doesn’t make her understanding it any better.” Hoseok chastised. He strode over and took a seat next to you, face up close. “Have you ever heard of mutualism, Y/N?”

The term sounded familiar, scientific. You faintly recalled your fifth grade science teacher talking about it while he popped in a “Bill Nye The Science Guy” dvd on the lesson. But you signalled him to keep explaining anyways.

“It’s a symbiotic relationship where all parties involved will benefit. Neither side will have anything taken from them or be hurt.” His gaze intensified, almost like he was seeing straight into your soul. “What a Clan, or Blood, as Shownu mentioned, would do is have a complex relationship where all parties could rely on each other. There could be a simple tie with just friendship and comfort that you’d be seeking, or there’d be the mating side of things. We’re not pushing you straight into the latter. What we all want is to have that symbiotic relationship where we protect you and you provide us the idea of belonging.”

Belonging?

Changkyun suddenly reappeared and shamelessly stated,“Oh, so y’all haven’t fucked yet?”

Your eyes widened before you turned a deadly glare onto the man who was getting on your last nerve.

“Jesus Christ, what nun in what orphanage beat you as a child?!” You yelled, ready to tackle the shit out of this cocky kid.

Changkyun’s eyes widened slightly before a smirk fell into place before he rebutled back, “Probably the same one who kept a chastity belt on you through adulthood.”

Precisely four seconds ticked by before you lunged for the arrogant prick, tackling him down and utterly losing it. He gripped onto your wrists, not allowing you to physically assault him as you wanted and he laughed. The idiot laughed.

Before things could get any worse, you felt two pairs of arms gently prying you away from the boy who would die in a few seconds. Each one whispering sweet nothings to calm you down but it did nothing except make you rage.

What was going on? You weren’t typically a person who was easily angered. Sure, you’d get annoyed every now and then. But so did everyone. You had to keep a low profile and fighting with people didn’t exactly keep you off the radar. So why the sudden hostility?

An image of Changkyun being held down by you while you slowly licked up the column of his throat, slightly nipping at it while he groaned against you slipping into your mind, making your throat dry up and you stumbled back.

“I need to go.” You told the two holding you. Minhyuk and Jooheon eye each other before they nodded and helped walk you out of the dining hall and back to your room.

Another feeding session would likely ensue and the three that were left in the room felt a pang of envy strike them.

***

“She’s fed from him already.” Shownu stated the obvious, giving Wonho a glare.

“Yes.” He replies back, not denying anything.

“You realize Minhyuk is considered part of her Blood now, right?” Changkyun teased. He was already off the floor, brushing off the invisible dust he imagined was there, as if he wasn’t just attacked. “Also, she was able to get me to the floor, Wonho.”

Wonho was about to threaten him with the sexual insinuation before he turned to the hallway where you disappeared in awe.

“She’s getting stronger. She’ll need more Blood mates.” Shownu stood up and walked to his former Clan mate.

“She doesn’t want this.” Wonho bit back. They all had a deeper history with one another and he wasn’t so willing to go back to what once was. It could finish off what she started.

“She doesn’t have to have what we did. This time could be different.” Shownu was desperate. He had needed a place to belong ever since her. If he had to play along and just be the big brother or best friend for you, he would. But he couldn’t go on living like the lost being he was turning into. “You know what will happen if we don’t align ourselves to her. What we’ll get is death and what she’ll get is possibly worse.” Shownu practically begged. He would not go back to the life he had before. He had too much pride and he wanted what was best for his former clan mates.

Wonho’s jaw tensed and loosened for a few seconds more. “You can stay as long as you want. But I’m not forcing her into any sort of bond. This time, we’re doing things her way. If she wants us as her mates, fine. If she wants us as friends and simple companions, we stick with it. Understood?”

Shownu smiled before he nodded his acknowledgement. “You have my word.” He promised, and he always kept those promises. Wonho shook his head and walked out, likely going to see how you were doing with your newfound thirst.

“Did you really mean that, hyung?” Changkyun asked, approaching him.

��We won’t let it be like last time. We can’t.” He shook slightly, feeling past emotions threatening to boil over before Changkyun clapped his shoulder gently.

If they were doing this, then they’ll do it together. After all, this was their Clan.

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