#I keep thinking about making the campaign into a webcomic....

[heavenbat]

Vote for Disaster Dragonborn

After much deliberation, I decided to enter my dragonborn barbarian to @the-ultimate-oc-tournament :3 so here's a bit of propaganda for her hehe

I played her in a homebrew campaign one of my friends ran, titled The Drowned Archipelago.

She started out as a blacksmith in a small village; for the most part, she was content to just tolerate how life was, despite the Lord of the town being an absolute shitheel who constantly took advantage of the commoners. She and her family were of the opinion that if you kept your head down and didn’t get involved in things, you’d survive just fine.

But then she met Epiket (owned by @ushauz​), an air genasi gardener, who was much more opinionated and much less willing to accept things the way they were. She fell head over heels in love with him, and slowly began to agree with him. It wasn’t Fair that the Lord could sit so high and mighty on the backs of the working class. And so she began to get angry.

Eventually, she and Epiket began to conspire against the Lord. They settled on a plan to poison him at a banquet and, surprisingly, pulled it off. In the aftermath, though, they were forced to flee; Crista drew the most attention to herself, knowing that because Epiket had a lung condition she’d be able to handle any pursuers better, she tried to make the law come after her and give Epiket the best chance to escape.

Her travels took her to an area of the world known as the Drowned Archipelago, a cold, forsaken pirate-riddled series of islands in the southern sea. And that’s where she began to unlock her barbarian abilities, tapping into the sea’s storms themselves to fuel her rages. Eventually she even develops wings, a gift from a storm god:

For the most part, she still tends to be rather laid-back, very go-with-the-flow. She tends to not get involved in things... unless the situation involves commoners getting taken advantage of. She’s quick to stand up for the little guy, because in many ways she still considers herself one. Loud, crass, and pretty straightforward, she tends to face things with humor up until the point where she starts getting angry. And though she’s not technically educated, she’s still fairly clever, and loves coming up with wacky inventions and weird solutions to problems.

also she's polyamorous and ended up in a relationship with a half-orc tailor:

Fun Facts:

She speaks with an Australian-esque accent

She once stole a special harpoon from the Big Bad (Naga Tor) and then engraved "Naga Tor is a weenie" on it (with help from the party's bard)

Speaking of, at the very beginning of the campaign, before she'd even gotten a level of barbarian, she successfully out-rowed Naga Tor's ship, a notoriously dangerous pirate ship, on just a rowboat. She refuses to let him live it down.

She's borderline illiterate; she can read and write, but she's very very bad and slow at it

Due to her being a Storm Herald barbarian (which allows her to breathe underwater) and developing wings, she was dubbed an ATB: All Terrain Barbarian

Being a Copper dragonborn, she has the ability to spit acid; she uses this in her blacksmithing to do acid washes

She once spat acid at the head of a corrupt merchant's guild because she was tired of his bullshit

When she got a lot of gold for a reward, she immediately donated all of it to repair a city's failing sewage system (and thus pissed off the merchant guild for not going through the "proper channels" aka giving them a cut of the profit)

When the party got attacked by a giant serpent made of animated silks and ribbons, Crista's solution was to let herself get eaten by it and then cast thunderwave from an item she got, thereby exploding it from the inside. It worked :P

The party once ran into a water devil trapped in a pot of boiling water. The party put out the fire under the cauldron and then Crista, wanting to see if it could talk, stuck her head underwater. While the water was still boiling hot. Not her brightest moment XD

Her solution to fighting an ancient black dragon was to pilot an airship into it. It worked, and also the party managed to (barely) survive

yes she has a mullet

she was originally a Homestuck OC and I've just exported her to several different universes. In at least two of those universes, she invented steam-powered technology

Once she got her own forge/blacksmith shop, she named it "STOrMS FOrGE". the sign reads exactly like that, and that was after she got help spelling it; that was her third attempt, and when someone pointed out the r's were lower case she said "eh fuck it I ain't makin another one, it's close enough"

also she ended up becoming a werewolf:

[caemidraws]

M A S T E R P O S T

[General Tags]

₊˚.⋆ #dnd related art

₊˚.⋆ #comics and other funny things

₊˚.⋆ #tarots, full deck in progress

₊˚.⋆ #pettirossi content*, from full illustrations to session notes

₊˚.⋆ #marsilio (computer, show me pictures of the blorbo)

(*more links for the comic under the cut)

[Useful Links]

The other social

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Previous Asks

[Comic (TBA) - Prologue]

Cover | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

[How to Support]

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Comms (CLOSED)

:･⚔ ||| P E T T I R O S S I ||| ⚔･:

[fantasy/horror webcomic written by @jonesylium, illustrated by me]

Inspired by our dnd campaign, the comic follows the events that brought a group of unfortunate characters together, in a city ruled by factions and tall towers, scarred by night runners and obscure legends.

 ⬇  ⬇  ⬇  Find out more on our comic here  ⬇  ⬇  ⬇

Serious business aside...if you ever wondered what's going on in my art or who are the characters I keep drawing without providing any context - you're going to find out (some) more!

⚠️DISCLAIMER⚠️

This is our first experience in the field, as it's the first comic (of more of 3 pages) we've worked on together,,, We just really wanted to make a media with our characters, and while we know it's a wonky attempt, the dnd urge to share blorbos is strong--

(TW list in the FAQ section)

[ ₊˚.⋆ Comic Pages ⋆⁺. ]

Cover | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14

[ ₊˚.⋆ Session Notes and More ⋆⁺. ]

⚠️⬇ Spoilers Below ⬇⚠️

Misc | Side Tales | Colors | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30

[ ₊˚.⋆ Lore / Asks ⋆⁺. ]

⚠️⬇ Spoilers Below ⬇⚠️

Random Infos 1 | Random Infos 2 | Asks (WIP)

[ FAQ ]

☆ When are we getting new pages?

On every Thursday, at Midnight (Central European Time).

☆ Any trigger warning?

I'll be updating the tw list on here as the comic proceeds.

First chapter: blood, death, scars, burns, gang violence.

☆ Where should we send our asks?

You can send asks to me, @jonesylium or @pettirossiofficial! I'll do my best to reply any question concerning the comic but it'll may take some time in case I need to doodle something or need to wander the woods for 3 days to think about a good reply idk

☆ Who does what????

@jonesylium: writing and lettering (typos)

me: sketching, inking, coloring, crying

☆ Who are the characters???

Andrea [he/him]

Mars [he/him]

Misericordia [they/she]

the Twins (coming soon) [he and she]

Quarzaldo (best name btw) [he/him]

Solvi [she/her]

Toloc [he/him]

Ultima [she/her]

Will [he/him]

⚠️SHORT REF SHEETS COMING SOON⚠️

Special thanks ₊˚.⋆ to who's playing Everyone Else, aka @shaykan

☆ What is a pettirossi? Is it something you can eat or what

It's a pun about petti-rossi translating to red chests (red=rossi, chests=petti) and the italian name for robin (the bird!!!). We needed a gang name that sounded bloody and cool but not edgy.....

☆ Do you take requests?

You can hope to 'lady macbeth' me enough to make me think it was my own idea to draw something

☆ Why haven't you replied to my ask? :(

I either forgor OR your ask had a compliment in it and I'm safekeeping it in my askbox so that I have something nice to look at when I get sad

There are chances I go back to older asks so don't lose hope.....

[iraprince]

do u have any advice for those that want to run a quest?

it feels a LEETLE silly answering this when all my own are currently on hiatus bc i got busy (SORRY TO CALLIST0 READERS LOL) BUT!!! yes i do. i have only ever run quests/interactive comics on the site questden, so i guess as a baseline this will kind of all be geared towards that, but i think most of this should translate to any hosting situation

you have to be cool with your plots branching and mutating in unexpected ways, and you have to be willing to play ball with your readers. quests are a collaboration between the author and the audience. it often feels a lot like gming a tabletop campaign (and that's the origin!! questden, specifically, was originally an offshoot of /tg/.) -- we've all had or heard about bad GMs who view their position as that of a narrative dictator who exists to punish and prod a captive group of players thru their own personal novel, but a good GM is interested in telling stories as a group. u have final say and have to stay true to the important stuff abt ur story, but if u get mad or frustrated when ur readers want to explore something "off topic" or aren't following the threads of ur narrative the way u expected them to, u don't actually want to run a quest, u just want to make a webcomic w mandatory comments. (the flip side of this is: consider if the story u want to make is the right one for an interactive quest. if it is REALLY important to u that the plot beats of a story go a certain way, maybe save it for a medium where u have more control!)

keep it loose and fast. the art does not matter. i am rly guilty of not following this one, but i still think it's really important! one of the things i like best about quests is the barrier to entry is very low and you SHOULD be able to start and maintain one very quickly. if i were better at keeping my art scrabbly and sketchy and loose, my stuff would not go on hiatus as often as it does. draw fast! it's NICE if the art is gorgeous to look at and definitely will draw readers, but it's way better if the art is simple enough that you can update frequently and without much stress. the quality of ur writing + character building, and whether u are telling a story that's engaging and that ur readers feel meaningfully involved in, is 100000x more important than the art.

on the more nitty gritty side: try to have a hook in each update. one of the most common reasons suggestions die off is readers being unsure of what they're supposed to do next. sure, too much spoonfeeding could end up feeling like railroading, and you don't have to end every single update by getting right in their faces and yelling "WHAT DO YOU DO NEXT??", but when you finish an update try to take a second to put yourself in a reader's shoes and see if there's an obvious next step. is there a course of action to decide on/debate, are there clear questions they can ask an npc, etc -- i can't think of a great way to describe it, but you want to avoid ending an update on a note where the player character and readers are basically sitting there looking at each other like "um... okay. that's that, then." some ppl even just end all their updates w multiple choice options, which is a super simple way to keep things moving if it fits the style of what ur doing. if you don't want it to be that overt but you still can't think of a way for there to be a clear hook, you can at least try to leave a little nudge in the narration that invites the readers to try to tie whatever they've just done/learned back into the pc's main goals/motivations or current tasks. (on this subject, VERY useful for your main character to have a very specific goal or end destination that everyone is on the same page abt. it's harder for your plot to lose momentum if you can always point at what your readers are supposed to be moving toward!)

finally: KEEP UPDATING EVEN IF YOU GET VERY FEW/NO SUGGESTIONS. it's a niche genre. questden is a small website. it's hard to get people to read something new, especially if it's in a new and unfamiliar format (and especially especially when it's on a website that looks like a chanboard lmao). picking up readers takes a long time, and a lot of people lurk without suggesting (ESPECIALLY if it's a difficult/plot-important decision, and also especially in the opposite, if it's a very obvious next step and someone else has already commented what most ppl would say). it's very tempting to want to wait for more suggestions bc u "only" have one or two, and then that wait becomes stagnation, and then you're frustrated and u end up dropping the quest bc "nobody cares." instead u just have to push thru!!!! u only have two suggestions and u wish u had more? maybe next update u'll get more. u have NO suggestions and u feel like that means ur quest is dead in the water? NOPE! the solution is to update again, bc maybe ppl with latch on more and have something to say in the next scene. the more u update ur quest, the more u'll be able to talk abt it (and maybe get more readers), and specifically in the case of questden the more ur thread will be bumped to the front page. think abt how many times you've seen ppl talking abt a webcomic or a book and thought "i need to check that out eventually...." but it takes months for you to actually do it. 99.9999% of the time, ppl need to see something MULTIPLE TIMES before they check it out!! most readers do not come from clicking something the very first time they see it!! i know it can feel lonely and discouraging, but u owe it to ur art and the stories u want to tell to keep trying, even if engagement is very low at first, otherwise you're killing it before it's even had a chance. like, get shameless about it. ask your buddies to comment on your quest. but give that horse a few really good whacks before you decide it's dead!! i think that's my main thoughts. if you have any more specific questions i'm happy to help if i can! but also i think you'll learn the most by just jumping in and fucking around. quests are easy to pick up and easy to drop, and imo do really well as a playground where u test different ways to draw and tell stories, so might as well just get messy.

[beesmygod]

today is webcomics day. i am bea and i make "A Ghost Story" - part 3: sketch 1

ed note from the future: this got long. its going mostly under a readmore for everyone's sake. and i didnt even finish sketching, just trying to explain what is going through my mind while trying to sketch. look, if i write down my process in exhausting detail people will realize im completely insane. this is a net benefit to anyone trying to interact with me in the future who thinks i can be reasoned with. community service. thank you for allowing me to post this shit lol

hmmm. giving up on the first few panels for right now. here's what i'm thinking about as i sketch this:

too many of my panels were talking heads or constantly relied on one point perspective. i have been trying to work against this for a while with mixed results. sometimes the result is so bad i have to scrap what i did and start over but sometimes it's "good enough for TV"* and i hit publish on it. no risks, no reward after all. can't get better if you don't try.

in this first panel, i have two people having a back and forth conversation through a weird magic hole in the floor/wall. maxine is laying on a couch with hole right above her head. homestar runner will demonstrate what i mean:

however, there are logistical problems with maxine that homestar runner doesnt have. maxine's right shoulder is dislocated, so she can't lay on that side, or any side that would put pressure on the joint. im realizing i don't actually know what position would be most comfortable in her situation or how she would instinctually arrange her body to avoid pain. i start looking up videos from physical therapists on how they recommend patients sleep for some ideas.

also i start looking up what women look like sleeping on couches. how does the human body fold up. because this isn't it.

anyway, this was my first effort with the first panels.

for reference, the last page ends like this:

the top left of the sketch would have been the hopi clown back on the shelf with the "camera" tilting above it to reveal maxine. while this keeps the relevant object from the previous page in frame as a piece of connective tissue between updates....i'm struggling to fit the second character in. the one talking from the hole. maybe there's still hope for this? it's not terrible. initially i nuked it but maybe i can make this work.

fuck! she needs a pillow or two to make this work. this video is right, that DOES look naturally comfortable compared to the standard fetal position that would pull the affected shoulder inward. i didn't draw any pillows into the stupid establishing shot of the office bc its not the kind of couch you are expected to sleep on!!! this is a man's business office!!! i thought i was so smart!!

basically every couch comes with decorative pillows though, and the shot of the room didn't include the wall the "camera" was up against. my 2-point perspective failure might have paid off here lol. if i can establish that the second character is talking through the hole, he can use his rayman hands to reach across the room and get the pillow for her. it can be part of his personal campaign to show maxine he means her no immediate harm. the pillows were just out of frame. lurking. ok let's try it again. uhhhh after i eat some lunch

---

*my friend kelly had an anecdote from working in animation that im going to retell badly from memory. her boss would take the work she labored over to meet by deadline and would laugh at it, saying "ah, its terrible! but good enough for TV". and while extremely mean, he had a salient point: it never has to be perfect. it just needs to be good enough to be seen. sometimes i seriously think about this anecdote when im dissatisfied with my own art. it's bad. but it's good enough for tv.

[anonoob]

LOOKING FOR CONTENT TO WATCH?

here are some underrated (in my opinion) media's I recommend!

Lackadaisy (Animated PILOT - Webcomic.) Lackadaisy has its own Animated PILOT on YouTube, and a Webcomic you can find on the official lackadaisy website! The series is about a webcomic set in Prohibition-era St. Louis, Missouri. It chronicles the events of a cast of anthropomorphic cats as they struggle to keep the titular speakeasy afloat.

Murder Drones (Animated series) Murder Drones has recently gained popularity, but is still a small project. You find it on youtube. On a post-apocalyptic exoplanet, worker drones struggle to survive by hiding from rogue robots called Murder Drones

Epithet Erased (Animated series - book) you can find the first 7 episode Animated on YouTube! Season 2, however, Is a book. based on the tabletop roleplay series Anime Campaign! With unique powers called epithets, and characters attempting to steal an amulet rumored to have the ability to take a person's epithet.

Lego Monkie Kid (Cartoon) The tale begins when an ordinary boy, Monkie Kid, finds Monkey King's legendary staff, and he becomes the chosen one. You can watch on PRIME VIDEO!

Recreyo (YouTube channel!) Oddly enough, I'm recommending a YouTube channel.. a Comedy podcast with a group of friends with trust issues are thrown into different chaotic scenarios where they have to survive by learning to trust each other.. or not.

I'm running out of ideas or media's so.. uh yeah guys you should watch those silly fnaf rps like Oddities or The Famous Films!!! There's more, but I don't know them all lol

Also the sun and moon show is pretty cool yeah

EDIT ; The amazing digital circus is a new media too! Though, the fandom has grown largely. It's a animated pilot on YouTube, under the GlitchProductions channel. (creators of murder drones)

EDIT ; Spooky Month! Halloween is one of everyone's favorites, and so is October! I'm sure you've all heard of this show, made by Sr. pelo. Every year, near Halloween, a new episode for this series released! Last year, it grew huge in popularity.

There obviously tons of smaller projects out there, and I totally recommend them! Make sure to support small creators!

EDIT 2;

Fizz back w/ another banger

Y'all have obviously heard of hazbin hotel and helluva boss (I think helluva boss currently is better, especially in it storyline.)

Ramshackle ! An animated pilot on YouTube and it's 1st episode!, with many other small contents (webtoon, merch, art)

(Not really a media, but a nice nostalgic moment for old time flamingo fans) rewatch Roblox myth videos! They're actually nice to go back and remember, Especially if you were around when the vids came out.

An anime for once! Madoka Magica is great, actually. It's a dark spin on the magical girl ordeal, and it's probably the only anime I really like.

Object shows. There's a LOT of these. Most popular; Inanimate insanity, BFDI. Best recommendations; ONE (hfjcheesy), love of the s*n

Robloc area ; Regretevator, Evade, etc are lowkey fun games with good fandoms (sometimes)

EDDSWORLD OH My God please watch eddsworld it's made by this dude named Edd Gould and it's awesome

Indigo Park. Play it. It's so fucking cool/gen

Kinitopet, nice ai spin game!

Class of 2009 is epic and funny (also has triggering topics tho)

Musicals! It's nice to find new and different musicals!

Horror! +Favs ; Mandela catalogue, the walten files (there's more but it's been a bit)

Dead end, cold front, etc! The creator has amazing games :3

I had more but. Forgot oops

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2024-09-02

Do you rember. Wen day is dark, sember.

Listening: @cyelatm released a new album Habit Prism that I've been listening to in bits and pieces. Even, rhythmic folk, good music to have on when you have people around.

In that vein, Bandcamp Friday this coming Friday! Make your lists!

Watching: Watched The Raid which I've had kicking around for a bit. Do you want to watch guys punch each other all over for like 15 minutes at a time for an hour? No? Get better taste in movies and then watch guys punch each other all over for like 15 minutes at a time for an hour.

The Raid is so obviously made for like two dollars, there's one building, every single gun and piece of armour is airsoft gear, the camera is visibly some mid-tier hardware that suffers from severe rolling shutter, and it kicks so much ass.

There's some really interesting things happening with camera movement in this movie. Really really complicated multi-axis camera moves, the same shot will take like six different dutch angles in a single move, or will lock on to different objects and follow them, it's great for martial arts but it's also used to pretty good effect in some interstitial scenes.

The culminating fight with Mad Dog is so wild, literally just three guys in an empty concrete cube fighting for a solid ten or twelve minutes and it works! Does not seem possible. They actively remove almost every prop from the room so it's just guys hitting each other but they keep doing incredible stunts.

It's funny looking at the gifsets on here because they're unreadable, everything happens so fast and requires so much context that is only delivered in the full flow of the movie. My favourite part is when he said "It's Raiding Time" and raided all over those guys.

Reading: Finally sat down and got through the Phalanx's Twilight, Legion's Triumph series on acoup.

Sections IVa-c mostly slid off my brain because it's a bunch of wars I don't know enough about to contextualize but it's mostly justification for what's explained in parts I-III which were great, and it's an interesting look at how the political and military structures of Rome interwove to improve the effectiveness of the Legion.

Also reading Skin Horse, which I started ages ago but never got very far, I think because I started a job around that time and lost track of it. Sticking webcomic tabs on my little ARM tablet is really convenient, I've jammed Out Of Placers and Laika's Comet in there as well, it's been a while since I did a big archive dive on a comic.

Skin Horse is very much of its time, not really in sensibility but just in content. The nerds are characterized by liking Harry Potter.

Making: Resolved the power delivery issues that were causing me to have mysterious failures with the LED driver. That was annoying. Anyway remember to split your power supply when you could potentially pull like 10A@5V to drive LED's.

Playing: Tactical Breach Wizards campaign is ongoing, as you get deeper into the campaign your team expands which dramatically complicates operations, your possible actions explode, and I'm not even halfway through.

Dall was my newest operator at time of writing and she's probably the hardest to use, she can deal a lot of damage but relies more so than anyone else on good positioning, it's really easy to end up way out of place and waste her moves, and she's too heavy to shunt around with Jen's storm attacks the way you can with the others.

Speaking of those, I really like how the short turns and deterministic actions mean you can get really into the weeds. The first time I used a gale grenade to shunt Zan over one extra block to line him up I assumed this would be a sometimes food but you really find yourself doing stuff like that all the time.

I'm heading back and picking through some of the challenge missions concurrently with playing partially to stretch out overall gameplay and partially because I think having fewer abilities unlocked will make those more interesting.

Tools and Equipment: You know, I think we know each other pretty well, I can put this here. The Doxy USB-C Wand is a safe and legal thrill.

[alister312]

The Path Taken [A Gregstophe Fansong]

Written for Gregstophe Week 2023. Day 5: Devotion/Betrayal.

You read that right— for day 5, I wrote a song! I used to write songs a lot, sometimes based on shows and characters, sometimes based on D&D campaigns I was in, sometimes original. However, in all that time, I’d never written a song for my favorite ship all time. I thought it was about time I remedied that.

Original lyrics by me, written and performed on ukulele. You can find the lyrics and chords in the description of the YouTube video. Explanation of lyrical choices as well as a link to the journey through song drafts below the cut!

Firstly, some reasons I chose the chords I did. Playing around chords early on, prior to any of the drafts, I got really into the Em chord. I was just vibing with how it sounded. I knew I was going for a more melancholy sound since it would be from Christophe’s POV, something very longing. I’ve had experience in sticking the D chord between minor chords to make it sound minor. I decided to do that again, and the Am chord sort of just happened since it was nearby. I didn’t want the song to be too dark though, so I threw the C chord in an attempt to brighten the melody.

For the song opening, I had that pretty solidified early on. I knew God had to be mentioned in there somewhere and I ended up really liking the idea of Christophe comparing and contrasting himself to God. However, he’s not uplifting himself, instead he’s putting God down. I also really wanted to play around with the sound similarities between “leave” and “lead”, two things Christophe associates with Gregory. One he wants, the other he fears.

Onto verse 1! The idea of Christophe being dynamite set off by Gregory, the spark of the revolution, sort of came from a line from a webcomic I really love called Shaderunners. It has two characters that I majorly project Gregory and Christophe onto, both in appearance and personality. One of them has a line at one point about how they’re flames, always burning each other down. It really fits so well for Gregstophe, but it needed a touch more martyrdom. So, Christophe wants Gregory to destroy him.

Continuing with the idea of them as flames, not just in a romantic sense, but flames of the revolution they’re fighting for, I alluded to Gregory’s “La Resistance” line (”You see the distant flames, they bellow in the night”). This is further cemented by the “Flag in fist” image, meant to invoke their Les Mis roots.

Skipping chorus for now, let’s do verse 2. Since v1 opens discussing Christophe, I wanted v2 to open talking about Gregory. While I don’t always think “silver-tongue” is the most apt way to describe Gregory (it has some more negative connotations I don’t quite see him as), it helped transition into the sword imagery for him rather well. It also gave a chance to show Christophe’s self doubt/insecurity in comparison to Gregory’s accomplishments. And since I’d just compared Gregory to his rapier, it only made sense to do the same to Christophe with his shovel.

This continues, Christophe putting himself down while putting Gregory on a pedestal. Almost literally, placing him on his soapbox (morally better than him) and ivory (meant to invoke thoughts of wealth, showing that Gregory is above him in social status as well). However, even though Christophe sees himself as an animal, a lowly mole, Gregory is lifting him up to the same level as him, getting rid of the barriers between them.

Now let’s do the “bridge”. I put that in quotes because often there’s meant to be a shift of some kind for the bridge in a song, but I didn’t do that. It’s more of a callback to the opening, restating the idea of promises and keeping them. I have no specifics in mind for these promises, but more vague ideas of promises of devotion and loyalty to a cause, or at least to Gregory. If Gregory swears to die for a cause, then Christophe will too.

The idea of “deathbed” came from a comment Sara made to me when I was looking for song title suggestions. I immediately loved the imagery and knew it had to be a line, again calling back to the opening idea of Christophe’s mother tucking him into bed and telling him about God. The dogs, of course, are the guard dogs that lead to Christophe’s ultimate demise and the next line is taken directly from his dying refrain (“Now the light, she fades / and darkness settles in”).

The last line of the “bridge” is doing two things. One, it’s the clearest allusion in the song towards Christophe’s cigarette addiction (go up in smoke). It’s also serving as another callback towards the idea of them being flames, destructive but in a valiant way. They might be dying for the cause, but they refuse to go quietly. Their sacrifice, no matter how it is they die, is a blaze of glory for them.

At last, time for the chorus! Gregory has a clear martyr complex, a want to not only fight but die fighting for a cause. Christophe wants to be there no matter what but doesn’t know how, so the best he thinks he can offer is to dig Gregory’s grave, even if it’ll break his heart. He’s unsure if Gregory will permit this though, so Christophe has to ask him while assuring Gregory that this is the right choice for him. Christophe wants to be led, he wants to follow Gregory no matter what, even if at the end of the path is their mutual deaths.

If you’d like to hear the development the song went through, you can listen to rough drafts 1-9 here :)

I hope you enjoyed the song! If you have any further questions about it, feel free to ask me at any time :)

[anurapoda]

Orginal Character Masterlist

Hi, fun fact about me: I mainly write orginal works with orginal characters. Despite this everything on this account is very fanfic focused... I want to change that!

This is a masterlist of orginal characters I am actively using. This is not every orginal character I have, as there are a few I'm just not invested in outside of specific roleplays. Those ocs will be excluded.

For the sake organization these ocs will fall under three sections, orginal characters, dungeons and dragons ocs, and minecraft ocs.

PLEASE SEND ME ASKS ABOUT MY ORGINAL CHARACTERS

Anyway, ocs are below the cut and will include their name(s) and basic background.

Orginal Characters

*Anura (She/They/He) - This is just my online sona, she is different from oc!Anura who will appear later in the list. persona!Anura is a shapeshifter who can take any form she wishes with no restrictions, her most common form is with feathered wings and some kind of horns - thought it depends on how I'm feeling *turns into catgirl*

Usha (She/Her) - My oldest orginal character, Usha comes from an old god roleplay based off of a webcomic I read back in 2017. She's the goddess of Death, may have destroyed 80% of the world that one time, and has a son named Insanity who is @fizzello character!

Constance (She/Her) - My second oldest orginal character, she orginally went by a different name and was considerably younger. I took the main themes of her old character and made Constance, a medium from the 1860's who's heavily indoctrnated and falls in love with a white boy.

Walter (He/Him) - The white boy Constance falls for. He is a newer orginal character who has gone through a lot of revisions, at first he had fire powers! Now he's just a redhead in the 1860's who's a cop with a politician as a father. Also he may be cis and straight but in modern day this bitch is a femboy.

Annette (She/Her) - I keep saying I'll flesh her out but I haven't. She's dead, Constance and Walter need to solve her murder. Annette is not her real name, I forget her real name, it's in a book somewhere. Annette exists.

Solstice (She/They) - My lil vampire baby, I love her. @fizzello character kidnapped her but that's ok because they're gonna fall in love! She's super new and I haven't used her much, I'm just in love with her as a whole. Think high school mean girl obsessed with her looks but she's actually really nice (unless if you've kidnapped her)

Dungeons & Dragons OCs

Robin (She/They) - My first DnD oc who I made in 2021 I believe? I gave her all my trauma. Abusive mom? Check. Brother who she has complicated feelings for because she feels betrayed? Check. Lesbian cat moms? Ok so I don't have those but that's besides the point.

Ceana (She/They) - I love Ceana. You can take her from my cold dead hands. Her parents are dead, she's a single mom who works two jobs to support her 7 brothers, there's other stuff I can't say here cause @fizzello is gonna see this and they're in the campaign she's an NPC for, but just know I will tell you about it if you send me an ask.

Nephilia (She/They) - I LITERALLY CANNOT SAY ANYTHING ABOUT HER BECAUSE OF @fizzello BEING HERE. But I am so gay for her. She's a villain and that makes her 10x hotter. She's also a spider!! She has many arms to hug me :)

The Queen and Princess - Once again, cannot say anything about these guys cause of @fizzello. Please ask me about them though. I need to scream about them.

Minecraft OCs

*Anura ( She/They/He) - Listen, I know she's identical to my online persona. But her lore is different! She's made entirely of void, can shapeshift, and feeds off of player code. Also, she's not a player!

Azelea (She/They) - The twin of @blood-smith character Berry, Azelea works in Decked out as a medic and landscaper and owns her own bakery called the Lush Cafe! Oh also she's a mooshroom hybrid who will fight you if you pick on her sibling.

Ayaan (She/They) - A wallcreeper bird hybrid! She's orginally from an anarchy server and has a found family with @cr0w-covered0n-m0ss and @chara--system characters. Her dream is to be a server admin, though she kinda put that dream aside to be of us to her family.

Aria (She/Her) - My newest oc, she's a demon hybrid who has a found family with @z-alien-boi character. She's grieving the loss of her brother and working to let Z's character enjoy their youth - something she's never been able to do.

*When discussing Anura I will use either person!Anura or oc!Anura to indicate which one I am discussing. If I do not include the prefix, assume I am discussing oc!Anura.

----

That's all the orginal characters I'm invested in at the moment, I'll try to update this as that changes. I always love talking about my ocs so please send me asks about them, and I'll try to write orginal stories for them again soon and post them here...

[kelmcdonald]

Spooky Season is Here!

Hi everyone! And welcome to everyone who signed up for my newsletter at Rose Comic Con. It turned out to be the best Rose City Comic Con I've ever been to.  If you're new here I'm making these comics:

Blue Moon is a werewolf romance gn I'm writing and Meredith McClarren is going to draw. I'm late on its script.

The City Between is my webcomic about werewolves in the future. It updates Wednesdays. The current story is called Shards of Reflection.

You are the Chosen One is a fantasy comic about 23 kids who got the same prophecy dream. It was posting on Fridays on my Patreon. But my editorial work has been piling up/overwhelming me lately. So it's on hold until I finish up some other stuff.

My day job is an editor at the manga company Seven Seas and the indie comic publisher Iron Circus Comics. I like folklore, fantasy, and especially like werewolves.

The big exciting thing this month is I've been helping my good friend and streaming cohost, Alina Pete, build and prep a backerkit campaign for the anthology they've been editing, Indiginerds.

Indiginerds wants to celebrate the ever evolving Indigenous culture. Organized by the ever talented editor Alina Pete, one of the co-editors on Iron Circus's wildly successful anthology Woman in the Woods, this book collects work from several indigenous artists and writers. From gaming to social media, pirate radio to garage bands, Star Trek to D&D, and missed connections at the pow wow, Indigenous culture is so much more than how it’s usually portrayed.  Join this anthology as it examines balancing traditional ways of knowing and pop culture.

It will launch October 16th. If you want to be one of the first people to backer, you can sign up to be notified here. It's a great book and I'm excited for the world to see Alina's hard work. 

This month, I'm also gonna start making comics that answer reader questions. If you have one post it here!

Also on full moons, I host a werewolf movie watch parties in my discord. Next full moon is October 28th. And at noon PST, we will be watching the 70s Japanese werewolf movie, Wolf Guy! If you'd like to join click here.

I'll also be doing my usual streaming

As always I'll be streaming art on Twitch. My schedule is currently the following:

Tuesday 8pm-10pm PST

Wednesday 8pm-10pm PST

Thursday 6pm-9pm PST (during the Iron Circus Geekshow)

Stop by!

Last month I was mostly keeping my nose to the grindstone except for selling stuff at Rose City Comic Con. Thanks everyone who stopped by and grabbed a book. I mostly took pictures of cosplay when I wasn't selling books. You can see them all here. But there are the highlights.

The leads of the Sabriel series by Garth Nix!

An excellent Claudia from Interview with a Vampire show

Nedry from Jurassic Park, complete with shaving cream dna holder.

And best for last, an older cosplay rocking a Granny Goodness from New Gods. 

This month I got several of the backgrounds done for the video game I'm working on for Iron Circus games. I have two or 3 more settings to draw. But I'm gonna spend next month focused The City Between and the manga I'm editing for Seven Seas. 

Speaking of manga, one of the favorite titles I've been editing for Seven Seas, Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout, is out now.

It's about a guy who is transported into a fantasy world and is turned into a hot girl. His best friend is also transported and the two have to stop a demonlord to get home. It's complicated by the fact that they are cursed to be attracted to each other. It's a deconstruction of both romance and fantasy tropes while talking about gender identity. It's a lot of fun!

This month I've mostly been watching Star Trek stuff. Particularly, Lower Decks. I appreciate that while Lower Decks is an adult comedy cartoon, it's humor doesn't come from one character being awful and abuse to other. That's a refreshing break from all the adult cartoons trying to copy Rick and Morty. I think the characters are just a lot of fun. Also, this season the little monster Moopsy has captured my heart (and my bones.) They need plushies of this little guy.

I also reread one of my favorite mangas, Pluto. If you are unfamiliar, Pluto is a retelling and modernization of an Astroboy story. It is a murder mystery as a robot detective looks into someone murdering the worlds most advanced robots. I decided to reread it because there was a question going around bluesky about what scenes from comics have stuck with people/"live in their head." For me it's a scene between Astroboy (or Atom as he is called in this book) and the scientist who built him, Dr Tenma, having diner.

Basically, this scene sticks with me because Atom was built to replace Dr. Tenma's dead son. This starts with Atom talking about his interests and how he happily did his chores. Everything Atom cares about isn't what Dr. Tenma's son cared about. Both of them realize over the meal that Atom is his own person and he can't replace Dr. Tenma's son. So even though Atom is the most humanlike robot ever made and is a grade scientific achievement, Dr. Tenma failed in his goal to bring back his son. And Atom is left is an impossible task. I think it's just such a well paced and laid out scene. In context, I think it's heartbreaking. 

That's it for this month! Have a good one everyone.

[agalanthe]

2024

[ Version française ci-dessous ]

In keeping with tradition, here are my New Year's greetings, during which I wish you all the best ! And as always, it's an opportunity for me to talk to you about the past year and the year to come.

Like last year, I'm starting with the negative, evoking certain feelings. If you only want the good stuff, you can skip the next block of text and go to the paragraph just before the artwork of Akhiles.

2023 was not characterized by a significant presence on my part on social networks. Fewer posts because little enthusiasm, continuing on last year trend. So it didn't get any better. In fact, I find these networks increasingly harmful, their algorithms deplorable, and the behavior on them often excessive and Manichean, creating a toxic, anxiety-provoking and deleterious atmosphere when you browse them. When you see the irresponsibility of the billionaires who own them, it makes me very angry. Perhaps popular, intelligent alternatives that emphasize creativity and a form of humanism will emerge in the future, but for the time being it's all rather sluggish, and you have to settle for "that" to get a measly drop of visibility for your work. Without much conviction at the moment, given that it's derived from Meta/Facebook/Instagram, I've just recently made a timid foray into Threads, a kind of Twitter/X. If you're curious, you might want to take a look around, but don't expect much, in my opinion.

Now that my rant is over, let's move on to the positive : Moon Tales has made good progress in 2023 - or at least there hasn't been a slump - even if it's still not going fast enough for my taste. It's a long way to go, mostly in the shadows, so it's not easy to keep up the energy and motivation - on this subject, see my mood note on the 3rd design notebook. So it's been a pretty good year on that front !

Despite my slight disaffection with social networks, I still posted a new webcomic page and a few images, often dedicated to Akhiles, towards the end of 2023 - his lineart and a video of his visual creation can be seen on Instagram or Facebook. If you haven't read it yet, you can learn more about this character in the 4th Moon Tales design notebook published on this very blog.

2024 SHOULD REMAIN QUIET

Speaking of design notebooks, what about the 5th ? Announced for 2023, it was not published as planned. I hope this will be the case in 2024, but it's far from sure. Although it's been written almost in its entirety for some time now, I'm still lacking the visuals I need to illustrate it in the best possible way, which would take a long time to produce and are not a priority at the moment. As a reminder, this notebook will evoke the conception of the contemporary imaginary city in which the adventures of Moon Tales will largely take place (a few other small details are available on my 2023 greetings post).

In addition to this possible future publication, I'll continue to post an image here and there, usually Moon Tales-related, but not exclusively. I'm working on a big illustration for a tabletop rpg project that's yet to be announced. Its world has nothing to do with Moon Tales, but I think it should please a variety of people (mostly French, however) :) Perhaps you'll be hearing more (in French, too, sorry) from the project leaders soon ?

To conclude this 2024 post, I'd like this time to thank the ttrpg and videogame podcasters and videomakers (French, here again) who regularly and very pleasantly accompany me when I draw. While I don't always necessarily agree with them - but sometimes I do, of course ! - and some of the discussions can be slightly irritating, the diversity of viewpoints is interesting and often fascinating. So thanks to Ind100 Podcast, the Roliskatonic run by Damien C., the Roliste TV crew, the Role'n'Play players (special mention to the Greenberg Legacy campaign, fascinating to follow and which I'd like to play one day), various new video game media such as Origami, Sumimasen turbo and the biclassed GaGzZz, game designer and Youtuber. A mention also goes to the two heads of Cult'n'Click, a "movie tv shows" channel, who are very friendly and funny ! There are others, of course, but I view/listen to those very regularly.

Finally, a huge thank you also to the people who like, comment or sometimes write to me privately. Without you, Moon Tales would be much more complicated to make. And if one day this webcomic is released, as Pierre and I hope it will be, it will be partly thanks to you and your support. And we won't forget it :)

Happy 2024 !

[ Note : you can comment this post on my Facebook or Instagram ]

*** French version below

C'est la tradition, voici donc mes vœux pour cette nouvelle année, durant laquelle je vous souhaite le meilleur ! Et comme toujours, c'est l'occasion pour moi de vous parler de l'année passée et de celle à venir.

Comme l'année dernière, je commence par le négatif en évoquant certains ressentis. Si vous ne voulez que le positif, vous pouvez sauter le bloc de texte qui suit et reprendre au paragraphe juste avant l'illustration de Akiles.

2023 n'a pas été marquée par une présence importante de ma part sur les réseaux sociaux. Peu de posts car peu d'envie, ce qui fait suite à ce que j'évoquais l'année dernière sur ce blog à leur propos. Ça ne s'est donc pas arrangé. Au contraire, je trouve ces réseaux de plus en plus nocifs, leurs algorithmes déplorables, et les comportements sur ceux-ci souvent excessifs et manichéens, créant une atmosphère toxique, anxiogène et délétère quand on les parcourt. Quand on voit l'irresponsabilité des milliardaires qui les possèdent, cela me met très en colère. Peut-être des alternatives populaires, intelligentes et qui mettent en avant la créativité et une forme d'humanisme verront le jour dans le futur, mais pour l'instant ça rame sévère et il faut se contenter de "ça" pour que son travail ait une misérable goutte de visibilité. Sans grande conviction pour le moment vu que c'est issu de Meta/Facebook/Instagram, je viens de tenter il y a peu une incursion timide sur Threads, une espèce de Twitter/X like. Tentez éventuellement d'y faire un tour si vous êtes curieux, mais n'en attendez pas grand chose à mon avis...

Mon coup de gueule passé, venons-en au positif : Moon Tales a bien avancé en 2023 - du moins n'y a-t-il pas eu de creux -, même si cela ne va toujours pas assez vite à mon goût. C'est un très long chemin à parcourir, dans l'ombre la plupart du temps, aussi n'est-il pas aisé de garder énergie et motivation - cf. à ce propos mon billet d'humeur du 3ème carnet de conception. Ce fut donc plutôt une bonne année de ce côté là !

Malgré ma petite désaffection des réseaux sociaux, j'y ai tout de même posté vers la fin 2023 une nouvelle page de webcomic ainsi que quelques images, souvent dédiées à Akiles - son lineart et une vidéo sur sa création visuelle sont visibles sur Instagram ou Facebook. Si vous ne l'avez pas encore lu, vous pourrez en apprendre plus sur ce personnage dans le 4ème carnet de conception de Moon Tales publié sur ce même blog.

2024 DEVRAIT RESTER CALME

En parlant des carnets de conception, qu'en est-il du 5ème ? Annoncé pour 2023, il n'a finalement pas été publié comme prévu. J'espère que ce sera le cas en 2024, mais c'est loin d'être certain. En effet, s'il est écrit quasi intégralement depuis quelque temps déjà, il me manque, afin de l'illustrer au mieux, des visuels longs à réaliser et qui ne sont pas prioritaires pour l'instant. Pour rappel, ce carnet évoquera la conception de la cité imaginaire contemporaine dans laquelle se dérouleront en grande partie les aventures de Moon Tales (quelques autres petits détails sont disponibles sur mon billet de voeux 2023)

Outre cette éventuelle future publication, je continuerai à poster une image par ci par là, généralement liée à Moon Tales, mais pas que. Je travaille en effet sur une grosse illustration pour un projet de jeu de rôle qui n'est pas encore dévoilé. Son univers n'a rien à voir avec Moon Tales mais je pense qu'il devrait faire plaisir à diverses personnes :) Peut-être en saurez-vous plus de la part des porteurs du projet bientôt ?

Pour conclure ce billet 2024, j'aimerais remercier cette fois les podcasteurs et autres vidéastes jeu de rôle et jeu vidéo qui m'accompagnent régulièrement et fort agréablement lorsque je dessine. Si je ne suis pas toujours forcément d'accord avec eux - mais parfois si évidemment ! - et que certaines discussions peuvent être légèrement agaçantes, la diversité des points de vue est intéressante et souvent passionnante. Donc merci à Ind100 Podcast, la Rôliskatonic tenue par Damien C., les piliers de Rôliste TV, les joueuses et joueurs de Role'n'Play (mention spéciale à l'Héritage Greenberg, passionnant à suivre et que j'aimerais faire jouer un jour), divers nouveaux médias jeu vidéo comme Origami, Sumimasen turbo ou encore le biclassé GaGzZz, game designer et Youtubeur. Petite mention aussi pour les deux tauliers de la chaîne "séries ciné" Cult'n'Click, forts sympathiques et drôles ! Il y en a d'autres évidemment mais je visionne/écoute très régulièrement ceux-là.

Enfin, un énorme remerciement également aux gens qui likent, commentent ou m'écrivent parfois en privé. Sans vous, Moon Tales serait bien plus compliqué à réaliser. Et si un jour ce webcomic est publié comme Pierre et moi le souhaitons, ce sera en partie grâce à vous et à votre soutien. Et ça on ne l'oubliera pas :)

Happy 2024 !

[ Note : vous pouvez commenter ce billet sur mon Facebook ou Instagram ]

[quietsnooze]

I had yet another DnD campaign implode, after just 4 sessions. The DM got understandably overwhelmed, as he promised 12 sessions to wrap a storyline and we could all reevaluate then if we wanted to continue, but we didn’t make it more than a day and a half in game.

I’m truly cursed. I need to stop joining game I find on r/LFG, but there really aren’t good ways to find games actively seeking players, other than that and similar types of threads on discord servers, for example.

What I really want is to find that elusive unicorn of a friend group to play DnD with, comprised of people who are as enthusiastic as I am to play out a story. It shreds at my soul to create these characters, pour myself and my love into them (despite trying not to with my latest game, which I had a bad feeling about since the start would wind up this way), only to have the character and their storyline and trajectory torn out from underneath me. I’m left alone with a shell of a character who was created for this purpose. Sure, I can repurpose them, I can tweak things and write a solo story if I wanted to. But there’s something I crave deeply, that nostalgic whim of collaborative storytelling, that is lacking from solitary fiction writing.

I already write a story. I have a webcomic, I have complete control over that by myself. What I want from my hobby is to collaborate with other people, to be surprised by what the other characters do, not have to think about the motivation of every single character and build it from the ground up.

I’m a DM. My group meets once a month due to scheduling, and just three days after last session, I had everything prepared for the next one. So I started to deep dive into worldbuilding, to make ration pack tables for each kingdom so it incorporates their unique style of cuisine. I put way, way too much thought into incidental towns, because I have no other game to fixate on and pour this creative energy into.

My last long term campaign was torn out from underneath me in April 2021. We were 30+ sessions in and Cat, my eladrin barbarian, was starting to reach the cusp of her backstory. And then it was silence for months, and that dread boiled in my stomach until it was confirmed - the DM burned himself out on the story. He told us what might have happened, what he had planned, and I was so very sad I didn’t get to participate in the moments I could see would have been incredibly poignant and emotional and cathartic had they been roleplayed out at a natural pace. Over the year of the campaign, I drew over a hundred pieces of art and filled a literal self-published book with that creative, devoted energy I had for my girl.

So, I’m understandably guarded. I’m occasionally reached out to by someone on twitter who sees a moping tweet of mine in my forever-DM-ness and offers to invite me to a game, but I’m incredibly shy and I’ve been burned too many times by strangers.

A friend asked me what I want from a DnD group or game. It made me pause. Because, what I do want is friends. What I desire above all else is the camaraderie. I want people with whom I can develop long lasting friendships, wherein we have a completed DnD game that has a satisfying story and character arcs. My ultimate desire is a second game, in which there are hints and references to the echoes of the characters past, those old heroes of ours, the way that Vox Machina keeps coming up in new Critical Role campaigns. When I was in Cat’s game, I was invited into an existing group who had a completed mini campaign under their belt. They made references like those, but I was out of the joke because I wasn’t there. No amount of explaining why it was funny or surprising or incredible would make me feel like I had been there, and that this was a reveal that I should be gasping about. It just made me feel left out.

So, I don’t know what I want. Some sort of vetted, proven, trustworthy DM who has as much passion as I do to craft a story and see it through. Until then, I’ll be that for my players. I just won’t be playing Dungeons and Dragons, not in the same sense that they’re showing up, embodying one character and their headspace and their desires, because I am the world, I am the deities and the wind and the cities and the fates. I have to juggle everything, and they get to come in and enjoy the fruits of that effort. It’s what makes DMing worthwhile for me, those moments where my players are so engrossed that they gasp, that they put together a plot thread from several sessions earlier and watch as it ties neatly with this new one. I adore their passion and their respect for the lore (I made it difficult because the homebrew world is one where magic is mistrusted and outright illegal in most locations).

I just... want to have that fun of being one other fictional person again, bonding with my party, solving puzzles, smashing my greataxe into the face of evil, and not noticing the hours fly by with all the escapist fun I’m having.

[mollyjames]

when u get this u have to answer with 5 things u like about yourself, publicly. then, send this ask to 10 of your favorite followers (non-negotiable, positivity is cool)✨

(P.s. love your art so much and hope youre having a good day^-^)

I'm pretty bad at these, but what the heck. Let's give it a shot.

1. I'm pretty good at taking care of myself. One of the things I give my parents a lot of credit for is recognizing that their 10 year old kid was definitely not okay and sending them to therapy, and despite the one teeny tiny obvious glaring oversight, I did get pretty good at processing my emotions. Even when things go bad, I can keep it together and do what's necessary to get through the day.

2. I like my relationships with other people. I'm not great at maintaining soft friendships, I tend to be introverted and I definitely have that thing where "relationship decay" doesn't exist for me so I'm always surprised when I suddenly realize it's been years since I've talked to a person. But the close relationships I do have, my wife, my partner, my parents, and my close friends, are all people who I enjoy spending time with and I feel I can talk to when I need help.

3. I'm stubborn. There are times when this is a serious weakness, but on the whole I think it's helped me a lot more. Take my art, for example. I'm really glad to hear you love my art! But I tend to be my own worst critic. I almost never like the art I make once it's finished. But, I'm stubborn, I keep doing it regardless. Which means I'm also pretty good at tackling long term projects, like webcomics and D&D campaigns.

4. I like my taste in music. I listen to a lot of different music across a variety of genres. My "Personal Favorites" playlist is such a crapshot and I'm unreasonably proud of that. I think it's very important to believe your taste in music is better than everyone else's. (Only in my case, that's actually true.)

5. I'm living the life I want to live. I'm a girl, I'm an artist, and I'm happily married. When I think about everything I wanted to be as a kid, that's kinda it. Whatever else happens, I got the most important parts right.

[whimsyprinx]

I’m a new follower, can I hear about your characters?

Ofc!!!

First there’s Cashmere, my fave, she’s a little tiefling barbarian who’s taken a job to track down and retrieve magical items with the rest of the people on their party! They’re also looking for their mentor who they haven’t heard from in months as well as the being who brought them back to life, cause around three years prior to current events Cashmere had died and woke up with a weird door on their chest which they and their mentor later found contained a weird clockwork heart! There’s more to them as well but I can’t say much more since people from the campaign I’m in follow me here and I’ve already accidentally spoiled enough things abdjjd

Next is Serenity (no last name yet because I’m so bad at those, I was considering Swab but the last name makes me think of twilight ) she’s one of the magical girls I’m designing, the basic story for her is that and and the other magical girls are tasked with defending their realm from nightmare creatures! Basically there’s a realm that’s home to a kingdom of dreams and kingdom of nightmares, the two coexist and do their jobs but the princess of dreams fell into a cursed slumber filled with nightmares and those nightmares began to escape her dreams and even escaped the realm and are now terrorizing the dreams and real life’s of earth people!

Next up is Maiden Valentino, she is an old oc who I revamped and share with @piipstachio now, she’s a side character in their story hell’o world! She’s a sweet succubus who desperately wants to be in a loving relationship but can’t seem to keep one to save her life, most ending in heartbreak for her. She always finds herself in a new short lived rs much to the dismay of her friends and family

Then there’s Cinnamon and Hazel who I need to work on designs for, they’re ocs for a webcomic I’d like to make some day but probs never will cause I can’t write. Cinnamon Spice is a fairy witch, which is a witch who becomes a fairy godparent! She’s still in university to become one! The story starts with her nervous for her class test to turn a pumpkin into a carriage fit for royalty! She’d practiced the spell many many times and was telling herself that everything would be okay. Finally the time comes for her to cast the spell, she sets down the pumpkin she chose and recites the spell with her eyes squeezed closed and to her dismay beards gasps not of envy but of shock, when she opens her eyes she sees why! Before her, where her pumpkin had previously sat, now sat a girl her age! After some magic council shit it’s decided that Cinnamon will help this girl (named Hazel Sugar by the pumpkin farmers who see themselves as her mothers) get use to her new life as a human, they become roommates and eventually develop feelings for each other!

That’s like the extent of ocs I have somewhat fleshed out

[biteghost]

How do you come up with so many cool characters?? All of your OCs seem so vibrant and fleshed out. Do you have a specific process for developing them, or do they just kinda come to you mostly formed? I find I struggle with building a compelling OCs for D&D games & would love to hear your thoughts on character development.

(This answer got long, sorry.) This is a super nice sentiment, I’m happy you think my characters are all cool and unique!!

As far as process goes, uh, it depends on the character? I’ve spent a long time (years) rewiring my brain when it comes to what I think about when creating OCs. They don’t usually come to me fully formed - I get an idea in my head about a concept, and then over like a week or even months of fiddling I end up with a character for that concept.

A lot of the time my characters are simply people I wanted to see more of in media as a kid! Mostly, female characters I actually relate to or are as nuanced and messy as their male cast members, haha... (It was a trip when I realized in high school that I didn’t hate female characters - it was actually that none of them were written as well as the cool boys in the anime series I liked, haha! Be the change you want to see in the world, basically.)

Inspiration for characters (and stories for them to be part of) come from a lot of places. An easy piece of advice is to make an effort to intake media you like! Read new comics, watch new movies and television shows, read books, play video games, listen to music and obsessively memorize the lyrics - hell, obsessively learn everything there is to know about black holes or public domain characters (that’s what I did, lol...)!

(Note: ’New’ meaning new to YOU - you don’t need to only be partaking of media that’s created in 2021 - you can find a lot to love in media that was created before your time, or for generations before you!)

I must reiterate: intake new media that you ENJOY! You don’t have to like all the same things as everyone else, you don’t have to be invested in the same shows and podcasts as your friends. Varied interests and taste is part of what makes us all unique! Increasing your pool of inspiration will help you come up with interesting ideas, and help you find YOUR voice. Your particular interests and the niche things that speak to you will help you figure out what kind of characters and what kind of stories you like to create! But the process doesn’t end at just intaking media... When you find the stuff that brings you joy, analyze what exactly it is about that thing that speaks to you... Put it into words. Explain it to a friend. Make it tangible, analyze the feelings and why the series made you feel that way... and then take it and shove it into your own stories, lol!

Engage critically and thoughtfully with work you like, with characters you like, and it will help you have the language and thought process to recreate it in your own work!

My creative process is like an exquisite corpse of all the characters and series I’ve liked over my lifetime. I mesh them all together in a grim blender and what comes out is a shake in the vague shape as an OC, lol

BUT... it seems like you’re asking more specifically about making characters for tabletop roleplaying games like D&D? And THAT is a different process for me than making OCs for my comics or original story ideas!

I don’t usually join a tabletop game with a fully fleshed out character, actually?? I don’t spend a long time on their backstory, and I usually figure it out like halfway through the story, or through collaboration with my game master!

My TTRPG characters are usually whatever I think would be most interesting in the given game setting or set-up and... usually they exist in opposition to whatever the core concept of the game is. So, the examples I have from games I’ve played are:

In Cardians: West (World of Darkness: Hunter the Vigil): we played in a modern-day urban fantasy setting, where players were recruited into a supernatural Hunter group that was also a criminal organization that Did Crimes and Broke The Law in the name of keeping peace and protecting humanity from the supernatural creatures that go bump in the night. I played Andrew, a Lawful Good Police Detective, because I thought playing a character who would need to grow past his original ideals of ‘Right and Wrong’ in the name of the greater good would be interesting! (And it was!)

In SINNING ADVENTURE (WoD: Geist: The Sin-Eaters) we payed in a modern-day urban fantasy setting with the premise that the players all Died and were brought back to life by forming a pact with a powerful spirit (and getting cool ghost powers in the process!) I played Cassius, a character who could not cope with his death, and thus refused to use his new powers because they were evidence that he was no longer strictly human. It caused conflict in the group and world, but I thought it would be interesting! (And it was! Cassius was a Bitch.)

In Rex Machina (Dungeons and Dragons 5E), I wanted to play an Aarakocra, but was having a hard time deciding on a class or backstory... until I found out that in the ‘canon’ of D&D Aarakocra only live to be like, mid 20s???? Their lifespans are insanely short compared to other playable races!! And I thought that was stupid, so I decided to make MY Aarakocra, Izzy, a warlock that’s looking for ways to extend his own stupidly short life. His pact essentially granted that to him, giving him extra time to find a way to achieve True Immortality. His conflict challenges what’s ‘true’ living in this world, and his extended life is in direct conflict with a lot of forces in the world we play in, and while it is very stressful I think it’s really interesting to play!

In Lamplighting (Monster of the Week), my character Aicen is an assassin who made a deal with a demon and gained supernatural perks out of it... except I decided that she doesn’t WANT to be in this deal. She is actively trying to undo it because it wasn’t her deal - she inherited it from a CEO that she killed during an unrelated job. (Aicen is probably my character I’ve put the most backstory into, and that’s just because at character creation in MOTW you are given a lot of questions about who your character is and why they’re where they are!)

In Hand of Adam (WoD: HtV), the concept was that all players were going to join a post-apocalyptic supernatural-hating cult. I played Shouter, who was a self-preserving pacifist coward who also turned out to be a fae (which the cult would have killed him over). It was stressful but very fun. I love Shouter. He ran away from fights and didn’t actually kill anyone until the last episode where they fought God (whom he killed, lol).

NOW. THESE ARE ALL JUST EXAMPLES OF HOW *I* LIKE TO PLAY CHARACTERS!! For me personally, I enjoy playing a character who has built-in conflict either with the world, the story, or the other players. I’m only able to play characters like this because my friend group are all really cool and we all know that conflict is not bad - it’s fiction and we’re just roleplaying! If I didn’t trust my GMs and fellow players as much as I do, I probably wouldn’t have felt comfortable enough playing some of these concepts.

I don’t think you need to know every little thing about a tabletop character, and in fact, not knowing some things and leaving it up to the GM and story to flesh out is an easy way to help you get more invested in both your character AND the story your GM is telling! Tabletops are a collaborative storytelling experience, so if you’ve already plotted out your character’s whole story, there won’t be much participation from other players or your GM. Figure out what your character wants, and let your roleplaying and GM slowly put all the other pieces in place over the course of your campaign!

But the TL:DR about how I make tabletop OCs is that I just... try to give them a goal, an ideal, or a personality that is in direct conflict with some aspect of the game we’re playing. I don’t want the character to be undermining the whole game, because that’s really crappy to do to your GM, but I have to have something for my character to grow through or change. I like giving them built-in character arc starters, lol. I haven’t played a game where my character has gotten along with every other player character and NPC over the entire campaign since my very FIRST game, lol!

Also, if you’re having trouble, why not ask your GM what they think? Again, tabletops are collaborative! Don’t be afraid to talk ideas out with your GM for your character.

A final note about playing in specifically oneshot games (i.e. games that are not long campaigns but are meant to be played in one or two sittings). Personally, I always just retrofit an OC I already have to play in oneshots! When I make a new character for a long campaign, it usually takes me two or three sessions to find their voice and figure out how to roleplay them. If the game you’re playing is only one session, I find it easier to jump right in and get the most out of your character and the game when you’re playing a character you already know pretty well! I’ve played characters from my webcomic quite a few times, and it’s always a lot more fun for me than figuring out a new character on the fly!

SO UH, IN CONCLUSION... sorry if this is mad unhelpfu!! My personal processes are unique to me! but that's the point - no one person will have the exact answer that works for you! You have to keep trying until you figure it out for yourself! Good luck! Keep creating! <3

[loreweaver-universe]

And that’s...the show.

What a clever way to get Lake off the train.  On multiple levels!  Not only was it clever in-character, but her escape came from her accepting her nature at long last--which was what would have brought her own number down to zero.  That’s such an excellent way to end her journey--truly, she was the same as a passenger the whole time.

That was a good finale.  Not the action-packed ending that season 1 got, but it didn’t need to be, really.  It was different from Tulip’s journey in ways where a bigger action sequence than what we got wouldn’t have been appropriate.  In fact, the fight with Sieve feels kind of like an afterthought--it wasn’t obviously, it tied off an important loose end and gave Alan Dracula something to do in the final two episodes, but it didn’t really feel like a proper focus of the episode.

Showing off One-One’s weird blue-and-orange morality system was really cool.  Watching him actually get trapped in logic loops was fascinating, and I think he was used VERY well here.

Alan Dracula was a fun sideshow character, but often felt like he was just there for the animators and writers to play around with, rather than an essential part of the team like Atticus and One-One were in season 1.

Jesse was a good deuteragonist!  Shut up, Tumblr spellcheck, that’s a word.  Jesse’s journey was simple--come to terms with the fact that he and his friends were bullies, and it was very deftly done.  The fact that the train reorders its cars and constructs them for individual passengers’ journeys makes it interesting that his final obstacle was confronting the Apex--the train even works other passengers into its plans.  Which, ironically, makes the Apex more denizen than passenger.  Anyways, Jesse’s journey was simple and well-handled, which is good because he wasn’t actually who the story was about.

That would be Lake.  Mirror Tulip.  Horseradish, as I’ve been tagging her since season 1.  The Chrome Car was my second-favorite episode of season 1, due to excellent character drama, excellent horror, and excellent writing all around.  I remember wishing very much that Lake had joined Tulip on her journey--clearly, the people writing the show wanted to keep telling her story, too, because we got a whole season of it.  Lake’s journey of self-discovery and self-actualization was a really fascinating one.  Watching her slowly come out of her prickly shell until she was finally ready to accept herself for who she was was an excellent journey.  I really do think it’s SUCH good writing that she basically got her own number down to zero right when she got One-One to let her off the train.

Mace and Sieve turned out to be excellent villains, as well--Mace more than Sieve, really, but Mace got more focus and had more presence, and rightfully so.  My favorite episode of the season focuses on him and Tulip, after all.  What an excellent bastard.

All in all, a good season, but not quite as strong as the first one.  That’s not a low bar to fail, though.  Excellent work all around, and I’m delighted with the ending.

The final episode just wasn’t as strong an ending as season one’s though, and wasn’t the best episode in season 2 by a couple places.  The Tape Car was creepier and focused on horror, which I liked a lot, and The Wasteland was just fantastic.  It also has to compete with some VERY strong episodes in season 1--which, again, is not a low bar to fail.  All in all, I’d place The Number Car at my new #3 for season 2, between The Lucky Cat Car (which was very funny, but didn’t have the emotional or dramatic stuff The Number Car did) and The Tape Car (which I’ve already covered), as well as my new #7 overall, between The Lucky Cat Car and The Cat’s Car, which did drama and horror VERY well.

That’s it for Infinity Train, at least until we maybe get a third season!  In a couple days, I’m going to make a post on my Patreon asking for show suggestions for what to replace Infinity Train with in the main slots, and then we’ll have the poll to replace it a few days after that.  I’ll keep you posted as to what the results of that are!  In the meantime, up next is going to be this month’s Patron Picks--as usual, I’ll be doing Paranoia Agent, Baccano, and then A Place Further Than the Universe.  After that, we’ll be getting back to She-Ra for a solid while--I’ll be starting Season 2, so stay tuned for that!

Streamwise, I streamed the first part of my blind playthrough of Transistor yesterday (which you can view here) and will be starting what I think will be the rest of the game shortly.  If you want to tune into that live, head on over to my Twitch channel and give me a follow!  That should be happening within the hour.

As always, thank you all for tuning in, and thank you very much to the 62 patrons who make it possible for me to do this for a living!  I’ll see you next time!

IN OTHER NEWS:

I recently completed my blind playthrough of Transistor!  You can see the full playlist of those streams by clicking here!

I recently completed my playthrough of Final Fantasy VII Remake!  You can see the full playlist of those streams by clicking here!

I recently completed my playthrough of the second story campaign in Fire Emblem: Three Houses!   You can view all the streams of the Golden Deer and Black Eagles routes I have done by clicking here!

If you’d like to help me pay my rent, buy me some food, or help with my bills and medicine, please use my direct donation link!  If you’d like to support me per liveblog completed every month, please pledge to my Patreon! Becoming a patron not only allows you to vote on what shows I do whenever I choose a new one, but also grants access to the community Minecraft server to $5 patrons or higher!

You should also go pledge to Gio’s Patreon–our Discord server maintenance tech, creator of Rubybot, and community Minecraft server overlord deserves far more than I can afford to pledge to him by myself.

If you’d like more of me and my content:

My Episode Lists master page, where you can find every show and liveblog I’ve done!

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It’s your kindness and support that lets me do this stuff, and I wouldn’t be where I am without all of you to do it for.  Thank you all so much for your support, and for tuning in every episode!

OTHER PEOPLE YOU MAY ENJOY:

I may have been one of the earlier Steven Universe liveblogs, but a whole community of livebloggers has sprung up over the last five years!   I linked to a bunch individually for a few wrap-ups, but honestly, this end-slate is already eight billion miles long, so I’m just gonna link to my links page.  Click here if you want recommendations of other livebloggers, or other neat people, or webcomics and podcasts that I recommend.

[autumnblogs]

Day 9: Troll Time

Time to get trolled.

https://homestuck.com/story/1527

This is the first of the events that I’ve noticed enough to talk about in Homestuck that alludes to the Alpha Kids. While Roxy on the other side of the scratch is the one actually responsible for the disappearance of Jaspers and the Pumpkins, at this point in the story, we have some pretty good suspects for exactly who disappeared both of them.

I could see myself guessing that Jade’s penpal is one of the trolls, but it wouldn’t be my first guess. I’m going to pay close attention to all of the events on one side of the scratch that are caused by the other side of the scratch, because my theory is that a Scratched Universe, more than anything else, is really terminated rather than truly being retroactively erased. Too much doesn’t make sense from a causal perspective (not necessarily from a temporally linear one) if a scratched universe is actually erased entirely, or even if it is closed off from the rest of existence - why can information enter and leave a Scratched Universe at all from an outside perspective, for example?

Are Side A Side B teleporters, appearifiers, and so on and so on, loopholes? Maybe it has something to do with the nature of Void, the Furthest Ring, and their seeming exclusion from the rules the rest of Paradox Space is required to follow.

The Doylist answer, which in Homestuck is also allowed to be the Watsonian answer, might be that while a Scratched Universe is *materially* erased, information about it is still permitted to propagate through narrative contrivances such as the author. Fenestrated planes can easily be considered narrative contrivances, but if we use this as our theory, it seems like Appearifiers and Sendificators would also have to be Narrative Contrivances (which I’m going to spell with a capital NC from here on out.) I... actually don’t have a problem with this hypothesis, so it’s what I’m going with. Also, since a friend of mine who’s reading this liveblog asked, I’m going to post a link to the tvtropes article on those two terms at the start of this paragraph for anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

Perhaps, given the proclivity for the Void to preserve lost information in the form of dreams and memories, and given the nature of Space as the medium through which events normally propagate (as well as the fundamental medium of storytelling from which all other storytelling mediums derive their medium-ness), and their proximity on the Aspect Wheel, Narrative Contrivances are objects which have are shared between these two domains - as objects associated with the Void, Narrative Contrivances are permitted to follow their own set of rules which to someone outside of the universe are obvious, but to anyone inside the universe are a complete black box, and as objects associated with Space, Narrative Contrivances function as a means by which to propagate information in such a way as to preserve causality, the logical topology of Paradox Space, and with them, the self-fulfilling nature of Paradox Space. They allow the world-line of objects travelling through the narrative to remain consistent, even when they would violate material geographical conventions.

This description of Narrative Contrivances makes me think a lot of things could be Narrative Contrivances, like First Guardians, for example, who can violate the speed of light.

This is all a lot of silly bullshit, but it’s fun to come up with theories to describe and predict Homestuck (and future Homestuck works, even though I’m not terribly invested in them.)

This has been a long Cold Open. More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/1529

John gets cyberbullied!

Man. Cyberbullying has really gone from being an individual concern to being an apocalyptic issue. Who knew? Maybe in writing the trolls and their cyberbullying as being inextricable from the apocalypse, Andrew Hussie predicted this.

I’m not trying to understate John’s issues by comparing them to stuff like massive social media disinformation campaigns - receiving Death Threats as a thirteen year old is terrifying, and on a general level, the fact that this kind of horrible shit was commonplace in the earliest days of social media should have been a big indicator that what was yet to come was going to be so, so much worse.

I’m also not trying to jocularly exaggerate the threat that almost completely lawless social media has on society. If you haven’t already, check out the excellent documentary The Social Dilemma, and then delete your Facebook account if you haven’t already (and since you’re reading my extremely anti-capitalist anti-patriarchy liveblog on tumblr, you’ve probably already done that. If you have, good for you!) And your twitter for good measure, come on, you know who you are. Mabe your tumblr too while you’re at it.

Cyberbullying is part of a larger theme in Homestuck, another one of those things that it’s Capital A About. As a work that is not only about growing up, but specifically about growing up in the information age, Homestuck is repeatedly about the ways that Social Media don’t just bring us together, but keep us apart from one another. Cyberbullying is one of the effects of Social Media pushing people apart - it’s so, so much easier to threaten to kill someone when you don’t have to look them in the eye while you’re doing it, and when you have the anonymity of a string of alphanumeric characters as a name to hide behind.

https://homestuck.com/story/1537

The Black Queen is a very bad woman. It’s always intrigued me that the Queens allow their counterparts’ agents free movement through their territory like this even on the eve (or the advent?) of full-scale war between their kingdoms. PM is just allowed to wander around Derse unsupervised.

I suppose that if even God and Satan can afford each other a bit of token civility while discussing the fates of sinners, so can Prospitians and Dersites.

https://homestuck.com/story/1542

@zeetheus​ John’s definitely proceeds Rose’s bluh.

Rose sips her Mom’s martini for the same reason that she later falls prey to alcoholism. Trying to grow up without help, Rose interprets the martini as a symbol of parental authority, the same way that she interprets the partaking of beverages in general as being a ritual of intimacy with her Mother. Empty signifiers.

https://homestuck.com/story/1549

Jack Noir’s grating voice is so outrageously distracting that it prevents itself as an intrusive thought in the Narrative for PM.

Actually, come to think of it, *all* of the Carapacians talk pretty much exclusively via narration. I wonder if that’s representative of an altered relationship with their narrative reality, which is the first time ever I’ve had that thought pretty much at all.

I always just chalked it up to one of the quirks of Andrew’s writing style, but especially when we take into account the fact that Homestuck is as metanarrative as it is, and that Carapacians are the only characters in Homestuck Proper who interface with the narrative prompt except for the audience, Andrew, and Caliborn himself, I can’t help but wonder. Maybe as living gaming abstractions, in spite of their limited intelligence and abilities, Carapacians have a unique relationship with the narrative laws of Paradox Space (perhaps in the same way that Narrative Contrivances do?)

https://homestuck.com/story/1569

Riffing a little more on the “Fetch Modus as analogous to thought processes” motif previously introduced, Jade’s excellent visualization abilities and vivid imagination serve her well as a Space Player, but tend to misfire, running wild, and seeing patterns where they don’t exist (intrusive thoughts make her see Johnny 5 in her Eclectic Bass and whatever the fuck mecha she’s about to accidentally imagine, I don’t know, I’m not a weeb.) Jade sure does think about robots a lot.

https://homestuck.com/story/1579

I have to say, I consider Terezi’s manipulative abilities to be genuinely pretty strong. I have never known a better way to strongarm me than by pointing out traits that I don’t know whether I feel good or bad about - it just terminates my thought processes.

Although in John’s case, it helps that he is, in fact, a weenie, a stooge, and most importantly, a nice guy. All these facts make him extra manipulatable.

https://homestuck.com/story/1584

<3

I have no reason to believe everyone in Homestuck’s universe isn’t stupidly badass, but I choose to believe that no one is as stupidly badass as the leads because it makes me happy to imagine that these kids are just ridiculously OP superhumans.

(That said, it’s kind of fucked up the level of violence that these literal children are involved in, maybe I shouldn’t get so excited about it. Should we be enthusiastic about the kids’ triumph over their dangerous enemies? Horrified by the travails they are being put through? Probably both motherfuckin’ things.

https://homestuck.com/story/1588

I think about this page a lot.

Rose Lalonde is a very dangerous young lady. She is ruthless, pragmatic, calculating, and cool. She’s even a killer, and literally just killed two imps before fighting this Ogre!

Why is she choosing to show mercy to it now? Is she just trying to get Dave’s goat? Maybe the answer is, deep down, she doesn’t really want to hurt anyone or anything.

https://homestuck.com/story/1589

Kanaya and Dave have a great relationship and I love them as friends very much. I wish dearly that there was more of them in the webcomic. They have approximately the same relationship with authenticity, which is to say that they don’t have an insincere bone in their respective bodies, but practice insincerity nonetheless to impress someone they care about.

For Kanaya relating to Rose, I think it’s a lot more innocent.

https://homestuck.com/story/1590

The least eloquent character in Homestuck has his brief, and I’m pretty sure only encounter with the most eloquent character in Homestuck.

Poor, poor Tavros. While Rose is pretty much always on this level, it seems a lot more innocuous when she’s talking to her friends, or the more mean-spirited and (relatively) competent trolls, the way she treats Tavros almost feels like bullying because of how obviously pathetic he is.

That said, he turns right around, and invokes exactly what’s coming to him. Y’know as much as Tavros is an authentic abuse victim and Vriska gaslights him into thinking a lot of the bad things that happen to him are his fault, there are a lot of times where he does stupid shit that invokes the justifiable wrath of the people around him.

https://homestuck.com/story/1592

While I could pontificate about the fact that Kanaya and Rose are my favorite couple, and squee enthusiastically, instead I will call attention to the fact that, by way of mixing her metaphors, Kanaya has been the victim of an authorial pun - she’s a Fruit Ninja. (Unless Fruit Ninja didn’t exist at the time of writing? It may very well not have.)

https://homestuck.com/story/1596

As the Page of Breath, Tavros sucks at communicating. Here, he sucks at communicating because in spite of his objectively pretty sick rhymes... he is talking to someone who just can’t be arsed.

https://homestuck.com/story/1602

This is one of those absurd moments that at first blush seems meaningless, but I think helps to decipher the kinds of things that John Egbert cares about. It’s one of the moments where he ritualizes an action that one of his heroes takes - John Egbert thinks that Nic Cage is cool, and wants to be like him, so he roleplays Nic Cage for a little while.

https://homestuck.com/story/1603

We’ve barely met the trolls, and they are *already* using the humans as a convenient method to troll each other instead of staying on task.

Karkat also establishes his love of RomComs before his introduction even rolls around.

https://homestuck.com/story/1618

Conceding ground to implacable enemies is generally the correct means to win in Homestuck, usually by getting them to destroy themselves or each other purely by their own unsustainably wicked or stupid conduct. Only a being as powerful as Lord English is sufficient to destroy the Significance-hoarding antagonist that is Vriska, as she threatens to overshadow everyone else in the universe by her own inflated self-importance. Only Vriska, so arbitrarily lucky, could possibly get into position to destroy Lord English. They were made for each other. They deserve each other.

One of my favorite dialogues in the whole comic. Man, I sure love Act 4. There’s something indescribable about the dialogue Andrew writes for this part of the comic. Homestuck at its best whiplashes from silly to scary to heartbreaking to heartwarming, and back to silly again, from beautiful to ugly, and I don’t think that even Act 5, as it piles up layers upon layers, well past the number of parts needed to make a whole, captures the essence of Homestuck as well as does Act 4.

Homestuck is different in every part, of course, and for everyone who says that Act 4 is peak Homestuck you will meet someone who says that Acts 1 through 3 were peak Homestuck, or who says that Act 5 was Peak Homestuck, or that Act 6 was Peak Homestuck. I do not mean to demean any portion of the work by saying that Act 4 is my favorite. The things I like in Homestuck the most are just the most themselves in this portion of the story.

https://homestuck.com/story/1627

I’m feeling less and less intelligent as I read more and more of Homestuck, because honestly, my theories read less like honest-to-god insights, and more like somebody who just wasn’t paying any fucking attention. Here, Jade spells out basically what I’ve been saying.

https://homestuck.com/story/1640

We’ll pause here for the evening. Reading was a little sparse today, but it’s a good place to leave off, especially since for some of these I wrote just stacks of theorizing.

Until tomorrow, Cam signing off, Mostly alive except for a bit of a cough, and not alone.