#I may or may not have taken some inspiration from other comic creators on this platform as well

[transformers-bold-bright-brisk]

Prince is slowly learning about the inhabitants of Earth. He is starting off very uninformed of their surroundings.

[lucygriefer]

Apothecary Nightmare design

I've been listening to the Apothecary diaries anime dub and was inspired to make this idea. Enjoy. The original Dreamtale creator is Jokublog

This AU idea was inspired to me by "The Apothecary Diaries". There's a good bit of text explaining the AU as I want to leave myself some notes and ideas (Some that may be scrapped some changed who knows right now).

In this AU Dream and Nightmare are both heirs to the Floral Empire. Nightmare having more of a chance to take over as he was the first born. Nim having been killed when her sons were 4 by assignation via a slow acting poison. So she and the food taster didn't survive. Being picky eaters Dream and Nightmare were saved from the same fate. Nightmare wasn't as liked but no one really cared. Till the twins turned 5 Dream was about to be cursed by someone, but Nightmare pushed him out of the way and became corrupted. After that almost everyone of the empire secretly turned on him. The two not knowing till the two turned 6.

A group kidnapped Nightmare in the night. Placing special made restraints that are normally used for prisoners awaiting trial. To weaken his magic and prevent him from using his tentacles. They were cruel and gave him extremely heavy restraints despite how small he was. He never learned the true weight and simply guesses that they are possibly 60 pounds. They kept him drugged and carried him far away, wanting to sell him for a high profit. Only for an avalanche in the snowy mountains to happen and take their lives, with only Nightmare surviving.

When Nightmare finally awake he couldn't return home as he does not know how to return home. So he traveled. Trying to find help. During so he broke his crown and started hiding it around his neck under the metal collar not wanting to lose his crown.

Eventually finding a village and being taken in by some women who works in a brothel. Being raised by them while also becoming an apothecary. Working with poison and finding cures to them. Doing this for 16 years and seeing the women of the brothel as step parents. Eventually at the age of 22 he was kidnapped again and sold as a servant to the X empire.

One day he learned about two of the heirs having been sick and concluded that it was poison. So he left a written note to warn them and went on with his day not wanting to be seen as anything that important.

This caught the interest of Cross and his concubine (Killer, Dust, and Horror). So Cross worked to find who it was that saved his children Arch and Mo (Mochi just without the chi part). When they found out it was Nightmare and learned of his skills as an apothecary, he moved him up to poison taste tester, and is waiting to make him his fourth concubine. Being made into a concubine is a high honor. A tradition in Cross' family is to have 4 concubine. For now Nightmare is not a concubine and won't be for another year or two. As Cross wants Nightmare to get use to them all. They also don't know of Nightmare’s royal background.

I won't have Nightmare and Dream reunite for a while. There are also other empires that I'll be adding later. I'll be making artwork of all the other characters later, as I do wish to make some short comics with this idea. Also the restraint design might change, I'm still trying to figure out how it'll look. I might also change Nightmare's clothing design idk at the moment. So look forward to seeing Apothecary AU designs of Cross, Horror, Killer, Dust, Error, and others.

Pffh XD I just noticed this. The Nightmare in the corner eating a piece of sushi testing for poison. I accidentally drew the missing pinky tip on the wrong hand XD . I drew it on his right hand instead of left XD

[purplebehittindifferent]

FAQ!!!!

before asking, check this out!

How many comic series do you have?

TLDR: As of currently I have 3!

Reconnecting: my deltarune fan comic. It is completed and the masterpost can be found on my pinned.

SpiderVerse: this is completed… for now. I had more plans but they fell through as the friends I had planned to do them with, left. Link on pinned.

IEYTD: this is just little comics scattered about, masterpost in on my pinned :)

RULE5: coming soon!

(if you would like more masterposts send an ask <3)

Is there going to be more reconnecting??!

TLDR: kind of? vvv

There will be no more COMIC/DRAWN content related to reconnecting (at least no more than the occasional doodle.) but I do plan to keep writing fanfiction on Ao3 to continue the story as long as it will go.

Can I send prompts for fics or art?:

Of course! Just know I might not be able to do them all!

Your art is online and your AO3 is open! aren't you scared AI is going to steal it!?:

TLDR: my ao3 will remain open, my art will always be here vvv

I hate AI stealing creators' content as much as everyone else does. However, more so, I want anyone to be able to access real art. I have selected all of the available options to keep my works from being taken, and am very aware that the only way to keep my work safe on AO3 is to close it to guests. 

It took me, an avid fanfic reader, 4 years to get an Ao3 account. I care more about you guys being able to read what makes you happy and feeds your brain worms, than I care about my writing being stolen for this AI boom we are living in. It would tear me apart if you wanted to access my writing but had to wait so long for an account. 

I do not support AI in any form that replaces human beings, and though I know eventually I may never be able to have my work safe from AI on any platform, I will keep sharing it, and downright refuse to take it down. 

Taking all of my art down in fear of AI will be something I never do. In that way AI will kill me just as much as if it started stealing my work. Art is meant to be seen and shared. They will not take that from us.

I believe there is a group of people who like real artwork and writing made by real people. And I keep my trust in those people to see the value in non AI generated content. 

We will persevere.

Is fanart allowed?

TLDR: YES

SO MUCH YES. I BEG PLEASE PLEASE if you create fan content of my content or content inspired by my content, that is absolutely as long as I am either credited or @ on the post so I can see!!!

Where can I read RULE5?

TLDR: Rule5 isn't released yet!

Rule 5 is my original comic in progress, I have posted teaser art and some concept stuff. The hope is that it will start releasing weekly in early 2025. I am completing all the art first, so that it can have a consistent upload schedule and I can relax for a while. Trust me when I say- I will not shut up once it is available.

I want to make a comic but don't know where to start…

TLDR: DM me!!

My DMs are always open to genuine questions! I've actually spoken with many people who wanted to start their own series and have been told it's been helpful!

Though my biggest advice is GO FOR IT!!!!! The first couple updates might not gain a ton of traction right away, but persevere, keep going, and @ me so I can reblog it to help support you!!!

Are you LGBTQ+?

TLDR: nope :) cishet.

Many people have asked me this lol

Where can I find the masterposts and links to your other socials?

They are all on my pinned!!!

You have mental disorders + illnesses… What are they?

Respectfully it is none of your business. I try to spread awareness because I believe that is very important, but I also try to keep my personal things personal. If i'm ever outright about something, feel free to ask questions, and if i'm uncomfortable I will just say I do not wish to answer <3

How do I commission you?

There is a link on my Ko-Fi that goes to my comms!

 If you have any questions before ordering you can DM me anytime. Click the option you want, order it, and it will give you instructions from there. I check my orders once a day. If you set your order and I have not gotten back to you, please DM me it's possible I missed it.

Do you/will you draw NSFW and post it?

Not here.

Are you really in my walls?

Yep. I'm not kidding. That skittering you hear? It's me. Go hydrate yourself or I'll steal all your left shoes.

I found your work reposted without credit, should I tell you?

Yes please tell me!! I have not found any of my stuff randomly reposted without credit but I'm sure it will happen someday.

What art program do you use?

I use procreate! I highly recommend, as far as the brushes go, I use all of the base ones that come with the app itself. Nothing fancy.

Will you draw my OC?

If you commission me! sure!

if theres any more questions you think should be added here LMK

[metal-organic-au]

💎 IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF METAL ORGANIC AU (Sonic AU)

What is Metal Organic AU?

[This is an alternate universe where Metal Sonic became an organic hedgehog due to an accident caused in a fight with Sonic, now he will look for a way to return to "normal" no matter the cost, although in the search he discovers things that will question…]

Extra Clarification: Some drawings are not Canon within the story, at the time of publication the Canon ones will have a pink flower, the NON-Canon ones an orange flower and those belonging to an alternative version of the same AU a clover

🌺 (Canon) 🏵️ (No-Canon) 🍀AV (Alternative version)

📍In what world does the story take place? 📍

The universe is set in a world where the events of the games and the IDW comics are combined, some things are modified but they are not as relevant. Being an alternative universe, it will have its differences, as well as changes that I, the creator, implemented to avoid making a copy and paste of the original material.

📍Will the other robotic versions and other creations of Eggman appear?📍

Some of the robotic versions derived from Metal Sonic himself are not taken into account for the Canon, these versions would be those that appear in the Archie and Fleetway comics. As well as certain minor games, here is a list of all those that are NOT Canon in the main story.

Rocket Metal Sonic ❌

Amalgam (Minecraft) ❌

All robot versions of the Archie and Fleetway comics. ❌

Tails Doll ❌

I will only take as Canon within the AU story certain versions that have appeared in main games and IDW comics. Here is the list of those that ARE Canon in the main story.

Metal Sonic ✅

Neo Metal Sonic ✅

Mecha Sonic Mark 0 (prototype) ✅

Mecha Sonic Mark 1 ✅

Mecha Sonic Mark 2 ✅

Mecha Knuckles ✅

Belle The Tinker ✅

Metal Knuckles (in the future) ✅

Sage (in the future) ✅

Another point to clarify is that not all the robots created by Eggman will have an organic (Mobian) or cyborg version, as is the case with Omega, Sigma, Gemerl, among others.

📍Why do Metal and Sonic share memories?📍

The reason why this is possible is because it dates back to the events of Sonic Forces, where Sonic became a prisoner of Eggman thanks to "Infinite", who did a small experiment without Sonic being aware of it as he kept him asleep with a pill (it was so Sonic wouldn't ask him questions and not bother him). The experiment consisted of transferring part of Sonic's memories to Metal Sonic, this was thanks to a helmet that Master Eggman made, he only managed to transfer only a quarter of Sonic's memories into Metal Sonic's Memory Chip. To clarify at that time Metal was still a robot, the connection was not shown until Metal became organic, is not such a strong connection, example.

If Sonic gets sick from a cold, Metal will not affect him, he will not get sick but he may feel discomfort as if he were sick, such as having certain symptoms, as chills and sneezing.

This connection of Metal with Sonic's memories is something important since, since it is not a very strong connection, it can be on more than one occasion, on the edge of the tightrope and the connection breaking up, which would have catastrophic effects if that happens.

⛈️ What are the Sky Endings and Dark Blue Endings? ⚔️

Both are endings within the AU story that happen simultaneously in different circumstances, the reason they are two endings is to see the perspective of how certain things would have ended, how the simplest decisions end up causing greater good or evil even if they are insignificant.

Apart from the fact that I didn't want to leave things with a single ending, it didn't seem like a good thing to me, what better way to imagine this as those games that have more than one ending. I was inspired by Undertale itself with the routes pacifist and genocidal.

⭐ Sky Blue Ending ⛈️

It is a good ending that Metal can have, but not completely, he is not an ally of Sonic, nor is he a hero as expected even if he is far from his creator, it is a bittersweet ending.

⚔️ Dark Blue Ending 🩸

Being a very bad ending where the world is in complete chaos, one that would describe dark, a worse scenario than Master Eggman taking over the world. Where there is no hope and no future is visualized.

THE OTHER ALTERNATE VERSIONS OF THE AU

The fact that alternative versions exist is something quite open and Canon. Although they are not related to the main story, alternative versions do not always have to belong to the universe of origin, an example of this is Metal Archie, which is a very separate universe because the events of Metal Organic take place but in the world of the Archie comics, which will mean that things can change and happen differently.

🪡 What is different about alternative futures? 🪡

Simple, the events do not happen within the same world, it was previously explained in which world the events of Metal Organic take place.

It is also the case that there are so-called What If? (what Marvel does). These are stories that happen in the same universe but raise the question: what would have happened if such an event happened but in a different way?

📍Why say all this?

It is because the creator likes these things and there may be few What If stories shown from Metal Organic wo the future.

📍The alternative futures (Sky and Dark Blue Ending), how different are they from the What If stories?

In the latter, the story from the beginning can change completely, being something very different from the original, in the finalys Sky and Dark Blue Ending the title itself says so, it is already an ending that concludes the story, but not does completely change the story, but rather the how hes concludes it.

EXTRA NOTES 📝

The interactions of the characters in the answers to the questions asked to the AU do not happen canonically, it is only a hypothetical interaction of how the interaction between certain characters could happen if they met. There are things that can happen canonically but not in the way that can be shown in the answers, nothing is what it seems.

If you are someone who has seen the publications from 2021 to 2022, the drawings such as the information in said publications are no longer completely Canon, the creation of this publication was made to make the information clearer, also to clarify certain points that some others they do not can understand.

Because this is an alternative universe, there may be new characters that are not found in the games and comics, there may be certain inspirations but only that, they will appear at specific times and will not be recurring or central unless the creator says otherwise.

If you expect certain events to focus on Sonic and company, I must inform you that this will not happen, they are not the important focus, they become something secondary that complements the story.

Not all of the creator's drawings (scribbles, drafts, etc.) are canon content, it is simply content that the creator creates for artistic taste, unless it is something canon, the creator will clarify it.

The chronology is based on the creator's own perspective so don't expect it to be the same chronology as the games/comics are theorized to follow or as some fans say.

Any suggestion of what the story should be like or changes to it, with all due respect, will be denied, this story has already been written from start to finish since 2023, if there are changes will that be at the discretion of the creator.

It is possible that the story is aimed at an audience between 17 and over 27 years old, for a better reference a shonen combined with touches of seinen.

It's just a single artist drawing and writing the content of this AU as story, because he draws on the phone there may be errors in the art, so excuse the quality, don't expect him to be totally professional but he does his best, the reason he does all this is out of love for the Sonic franchise, being the product of a fan created for fans.

Fanarts and other things can be done with the AU characters, as long as credits are given and it is not controversial.

The creator can be very forgetful, so if he overlooks something, it is not done on purpose, he will clarify it at the time.

Creator's Note: Some things I show may not make sense but they are there for a reason, I'm someone who likes stories with clues like an RPG, I guess it was from watching a lot of Gravity Fall

Important point: Romance is not something central in this AU, any request for couples will not be taken into account, sorry, the creator already has plans for the couples that will be Canon in the story, although he does not care if people form their own shipps as long as they are not controversial. Additional note: Friendships between men do not always end in Yaoi, the same goes for girls.

📍If anyone ever wondered what the voices of Metal, Lord Neo and Mecha would sound like, here I leave it, it's just a Fan Cast

🌀 Metal Sonic - Voice (Fan Cast)

🌻 Mecha Sonic - Voice (Fan Cast)

⚡Lord Neo - Voice (Fan Cast)

📍Extra note: Any new information to clarify points will be added to this post.

[rosella35]

G/T Stories Appreciation

For everyone who’s followed my stories over the years, you may already know that I’m a pretty inconsistent contributor to the G/T community, but this year has been by far the most challenging! As much as I’ve wanted to keep writing Borrowed Courage and post more art (and fanart) on here, I’ve been struggling through the final year of my psychology degree at university, and while it’s almost over, it’s taken up a lot of the time that I used to spend engaging with the amazing creators here on this platform.

So basically, I’m writing this post to give all of my favourite giant-tiny stories (and their authors) a well-deserved shoutout! There have been a few series that I’ve binged while stressed from thesis-writing this year, and a heap more that got me through high school and plenty of other stressful times in life, so without further ado, have some recommendations!

A Tall and Small Collection by @narrans - Definitely one of my staple reads this year! For anyone wanting a wholesome yet angsty story about a borrower family and their resident human, this one is a must! Narrans is an incredibly talented writer, and I can’t wait for the much-anticipated paperback of ATaSC coming out soon! 

Watch Your Step by @not-a-space-alien - Hands down one of the most creative takes on the ‘human catches fairy’ trope. Thistle is such a well-developed character, and the interactions he has with his human roommates are so entertaining (and have literally made me laugh out loud at times!). If you’re after a slow burn trust-building story, then I couldn’t recommend this one more! 

Nobody’s Fool by @ratcatcher0325 - I binged this whole story the other night after submitting an essay and it was incredible! I usually don’t read too many pet trope works anymore, but this one warmed my heart for a good reason. I loved the journeys each character went on throughout the story; especially Penn’s. It's always so empowering to read about a character overcoming prejudices and using their story to inspire others!

A Fraction of Justice - another one by @ratcatcher0325 which deserves just as much praise as Nobody’s Fool! Alexander is such a strong yet vulnerable character, and I am loving he and Natalie’s story so far. Seriously amazing writing, especially during the emotional scenes! 

Online Dating Can Be Hard by @duckit7 - Seriously such a sweet story about two people developing feelings for each other in a mixed-size world. I love the world-building in this one, and how realistic the characters and their struggles are. Definitely worth a read if you like slow burn romance with a sprinkle of angst!

Gulliver’s Children by @rosabea6 - This one’s a webtoon about a teenager with a size-shifting disease. Once again, some crazy world-building, and scarily realistic scenes. Also, the art is absolutely incredible! I’ll flag that this one is for mature audiences since there are some violent scenes, but overall hands down the most amazing G/T themed comic I’ve read!

Perspectives Series by @hiddendreamer67 and @arc852 - I'm not part of the Sanders Sides fandom, but this series was wild! I can’t believe how many different scenes and tropes you guys managed to write over such a short period; it’s beyond impressive. If I had to pick a favourite, it would have to be ‘Switched Perspectives’, since I’m a sucker for size switching shenanigans (and in this case angst)!

Borrowtober Series by @Nicole08196 over on deviantart - This one doesn’t get old! A super cute story about a family of borrowers and their two resident humans, with a really fresh perspective on the lives of borrowers. Nicholas and Darius would have to be my favourite pair; their guitar practicing bonding sessions are so wholesome!

Trust Series by @creatorofuniverses and @neonthewrite over on deviantart - As if I would forget mentioning the trust boys. This one has a special place in my heart, since I basically went through high school following along with the series (and now here I am at 23)! For those who haven’t read it yet, Trust follows the lives of two viri (who pretty much live like borrowers) and their human counterparts, and has four main AUs so far. Definitely worth checking it out!

Spirit of Adventure - also by @creatorofuniverses , with a supernatural twist! Basically a viri who can see ghosts, his ghostly friend and a team of human detectives out fighting crime. What could go wrong?

The Prince and the Faeling - another amazing series by @creatorofuniverses​ which you can find at @askthefaeling​ . It’s an angsty story about a spoiled prince and his snarky fae companion.  

Brothers Apart by @nightmares06 - This series definitely takes the throne for most prolific! Even if you’ve never watched Supernatural, Brothers Apart and its many AUs explore just about every G/T theme under the sun, and with incredible writing to boot! If I were to pick a favourite, it’d have to be a tie between ‘Brothers Adopted’ and ‘Brothers Lost’, but all of the AUs are amazing in their own right ^_^

I also want to give a special mention to @neonthewrite ’s Bowman of Wellwood, @keydekyie ’s The Moth and the Bear, and @bittykimmy13  ’s Christian and Gloria stories for being my G/T nostalgia bombs, the first two of which are now published! If you haven’t already, go check them out! 

I’m sure there are many more writers who I’ve missed, so please add them in if you’d like! Huge thank you to you all for doing what you do! ^_^ 

[mekkanicalsol]

Hi again! I assume most of the art you post of Dione would be pre-MMV? Do you have any thoughts on what her fate would be like post-MMV? Or the other stardroids or moons?

Yes, most of the art of Dione is 'pre-MMV'. Post-MMV I have visualized a bit before in one sketch comic, but to sum it up she miraculously survives just a bit after being caught up in the destruction. It's left vague and up for interpretation on what she really does from then on except for some 'what-ifs'/AUs, but without an exact purpose to extract from anymore and seeing how everything they've done for the sake of their creator was actually rendered useless, Dione might just be wandering aimlessly from then on or just sitting in one spot waiting for something. Maybe she feels a slight sense of relief that all of the fighting has ended but is also dreading the fact that now she lives on as a useless entity (in her own words and thoughts). For the other stardroids, I imagine it's a similar case though maybe not as hopeless as Dione's whole schtick. Something like Terra being unable to process the losses they've taken and having to come to terms with their creator is long gone; this whole time of having to take a leaderly role and being bestowed very high expectations to carry out Ra's wishes being for what is essentially nothing bothers him greatly. That's just one part I can imagine so far and I like to bounce around multiple ideas and look at other interpretations by other people, lol The existence of the other moons and other stardroids fall into this one tidbit I didn't explain as much or at all previously in that many of these space guys were produced in mass and divided into squadrons to conquer an assigned galaxy/solar system, etc. - (Inspired by a friend's idea for this one, huge props to them, especially with calling the main droids the 'Milkyway Squadron' iirc) So they may or may not know of what happened and believe to just move on with what they were supposed to do.

[davidmariottecomics]

You Can Always Restart

Ahoy hoy!

I've mentioned a few times over the past couple of weeks (mostly in the "What I enjoyed" section) that I've been reading David M. Willis' Dumbing of Age. I'm all caught up on over a decade of webcomics! Woo! There are a lot of reasons that I like it. I find the characters compelling. I'm a big sucker for slice-of-life type stuff that occasionally gets spicy and that tracks multiple groups of folks all just kinda living their lives and the ways they intersect with comedic and dramatic effect. Lots of Beast Wars references and acknowledgement of how great IDW TF comics are (and the occasional nod to TMNT and Sonic and stuff too). A cartoonist with the initials DMW when I'm DWM. It's great! 

But now that I am somehow caught up, I've also decided to check out their earlier comics. I've just finished the original run of Roomies! now. Roomies is a proto-Dumbing of Age in a lot of ways and that's a big part of what has inspired this week's blog about revisiting and revising your old work. 

You Can (Always) Redo

Yes, that is a riff on the Rebuild of Evangelion titles which are also a pretty good example of what I'm talking about today. 

Sometimes, as a creator, you have a good idea. Sometimes, you have a great idea. And sometimes, you do not have the ability to properly execute your big idea. There are a million reasons for it, right?

Just to look at Evangelion. The original TV series, somewhat infamously, always had a very small staff working on it, was running up against tight deadlines the entire run of the production, had various curveballs thrown at it by both the creator and the studio that would significantly change the overall plot and focus of individual episodes while in production, and ends in a couple of really weird episodes that may or may not have had budget problems and/or time problems of being created in a major crunch. The last couple episodes weren't too well received, and so the ending got rewritten in a pair of films. And then a few years later, Hideaki Anno and Gainax decided to do the whole thing again over almost 15 years with the Rebuild movies.Plus manga and light novel adaptations/reimaginings. Plus this that and the other thing (not to mention Anno's Shin Godzilla, Shin Ultraman, and Shin Kamen Rider, which are a similar, but different thing).

All of these versions tackle the same basic material, but due to different sized budgets and teams and Anno's shifting interests and feelings as a person, they can get pretty different. One of the things I really like about it is seeing how each iteration and even just escalations within each version feel like they're usually trending toward something truer to who Anno is at the moment of creation (even if I think most of the endings are bad). 

If you have an idea you like, roll with it. Chances are, you've got something, otherwise why would you be interested in the first place. But in recognizing your limitations--be they budget or time or skill or editorial interference or whatever--know that you can also keep an idea in your back pocket to try it again, but better. 

The Walkyverse If you haven't taken the time to read all of Willis' webcomics, that's probably fine. They've been at it for like 25 years at this point, so it's a lot to catch up on. The long and short is there was an initial series: Roomies! about college roommates. That ended and some plotlines were refocused/retconned into a new series, It's Walky! That then spun-off into two other series: Joyce and Walky! and Shortpacked! And a ways into all of this, David looped back around to the initial concept of a story about college freshmen trying to acclimate to their new circumstances (and being semi-autobiographic, but now with the clarity of hindsight) and started Dumbing of Age. Most of the cast are folks from the various previous series, but reimagined and tweaked to fit the college plot. Some personality traits remain pretty true. Some ideas that just got touched on waaaaaaaay back in Roomies! are refined and actually executed deftly. 

There aren't a lot of ideas I had when I was young that I revisit and see if I can't make work better now with my expertise and skills, but there are definitely some things that I've poked at here and there. And for some of my more recent ideas, there've been lots of things I've revisited. Sometimes it's a concept that I feel like I'm getting to the 95 yard line on but can't quite get across to the goal, and so I see if I can't run a different play and break it. Sometimes it's a particular script that I look at and even if it is recent, I feel isn't terribly representative of how I write. But when I go through these things, I always try to make it a new doc so I can still go back to the old and see just how and what I've refined that might make it's way back or that might make itself into yet another revision. 

I think there's sometimes an assumption that live performance is the only medium in which you get a different variation of a work every time. But you can absolutely revisit your older comics works and ideas and find some new angle on them or reason to bring back something that never quite clicked when you did it in the past. 

Wrap It Up 

In some ways, you can even do this in licensed or corporate comics. Brian Cronin has a fun series over at CBR called Wrap it Up! Each entry looks at two comic series wherein the plotline of one series ultimately had to be resolved in another. I think the most recent--at time of writing--was about Adam Warlock's series getting canceled and some of those plots getting resolved in Hulk. I bring this up because while obviously starting from scratch is an option, sometimes you'll be given a chance to finish your story in another way: be it a different series or a one-shot or OGN. I've even occasionally seen stories more-or-less wrapped up across universes by using similar characters (I swear one of the Wrap it Ups is about a Namor story that gets "resolved" in Aquaman because it was easier to do a light retelling and then resolve the story there than it was to get new Namor stuff going at Marvel). 

A good idea shouldn't go to waste, and there's often going to be some way to circle back around to it. It's just a matter of keeping those ideas in sight so they don't get lost. 

And, as an extra little note: I have said before, when I'm scripting, I tend to practice bad habits. I do a lot of one-and-dones where I take a single pass and then have someone else read it and only make revisions after I've had someone else do a pass. I also do a lot of batch scripting with rewrites--which is where I will write say the first 5-10 pages of the script, leave it for a bit, plot out the back half, reread that first section and do my first round of rewrites, then finish the script having sometimes almost completely rewritten the first batch of pages. Unless something is actually egregious, I tend to believe you shouldn't revise until you've finished a draft and can see the thing in it's entirely. And, no, you probably shouldn't just get stuck revisiting and rewriting the same script or redrawing the same page again and again until you get it right. But maybe down the line, you'll get the chance to truly do it all over again, the way that reflects you now.  

What I enjoyed this week: Blank Check (Podcast), Craig of the Creek (Cartoon), Honkai Star Rail (Video game), My Adventures with Superman (Cartoon), The Broken Room by Peter Clines (Book), Crime Scene Kitchen (TV show), Dumbing of Age (Webcomic), Solve This Murder (Podcast), Cruel Summer (TV show), Praise Petey (Cartoon), The Loveliest Time by Carly Rae Jepsen (Album), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Movie).

New Releases this week (8/2/2023): Nothing from me!

New Releases next week (8/9/2023): Nothing from me! Couple of slow weeks, but lots coming up the pipeline! 

Announcements:  I've mentioned it a couple of times, but I'm largely done with the con circuit for the year. There might be a thing in a couple of weeks, and if so, I'll be letting folks know ASAP! We're not going to be at Tucson Comic-Con this year. Love that show, but just didn't work out right. And at the moment of writing, I don't *think* I'll be at NYCC. 

This is kind of a soft announcement following them mentioning it on their Twitch stream, but Becca and I are working on a comic. We're co-plotting, I'm scripting, they're drawing, and their friend Duke who has lettered a bunch of their smutty stuff is on-board when we get to that part of things. If you're curious to learn more...

...Maybe join my Patreon! You get to see developmental stuff from this, and other work-in-progress projects. Plus this same blog, but without the part plugging my Patreon! And even more extra stuff! ORRRRR... join Becca's Patreon because they're also going to be sharing some of this comic developmental stuff! 

Pic of the Week: The neighbor's cat was chillin in our complex's courtyard and I managed to sneak some pets. The kitty is pretty nice, but often doesn't let people approach, so it was a nice treat. Or maybe it was the kitty's way of apologizing for frequently coming and hanging out on our landing and driving my cats wild. 

[thenightling]

Top 10 Halloween Mascots

Here is a list of my top ten favorite Halloween Mascots. Christmas only really has Santa Claus but Halloween has attempted several mascots over the years.

10. The Sanderson Sisters:

The Sanderson Sisters are the three stooges-esque bungling evil witches from Disney's Hocus Pocus franchise. They are loosely based on the traditional Maiden, Mother, and Crone concept and more directly may have been inspired by the three witches from DC's The Witching Hour comics (which later became the Hecateae in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.) There are currently two Hocus Pocus movies, a Disney parks stage show and a Broadway musical in development. They have all sorts of merchandise including throw blankets, dolls, and action figures. There are even Hallmark ornaments of them now. Unfortunately these characters are NOT in the public domain so only Disney is allowed to make up new stories involving them.

9. The Headless Horseman

This one is another localized figure the way Lestat is for New Orleans. The Headless Horseman is the mascot for the town of Sleepy Hollow New York (Formerly known as Terry Town but renamed for tourism purposes since Sleepy Hollow was its nickname and the basis for the Washington Irving Legend of Sleepy Hollow).

The Headless Horseman doesn't just exist in Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. In fact Headless Horsemen are so common in Irish folklore that they have a name for them. Dullahan.

8. The Wicked Witch of the West

The Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz (particularly the movie version) has become the classic idea of the "Halloween witch." The Halloween special "The Halloween that almost wasn't" also suggested that Halloween cannot officially start until she flies her broom across the moon. Depictions of her or witches like her are everywhere in pop culture and not just around Halloween.

A version of her even appears in the fantasy soap opera, Once Upon a Time. She's the sort of character often taken for granted and she is in the public domain though MGM claims to own the rights to a particular shade of green for her skin tone. There's currently a highly successful Broadway musical telling her side of the story called Wicked (loosely based on the novel of the same name.) Wicked is currently being adapted into two movies.

7. Frankenstein's Monster.

I, myself, would not have added Frankenstein's Monster to this list but every year new costumes and decorations are made that depict him. He is in the public domain (meaning anyone can use him) and he is a well-loved character. Unfortunately few people know what the Frankenstein monster of the novel actually looked like so most of the merchandise is a zeitgeist creation resembling the version played by Boris Karloff.

6. Lestat

Owned by the estate of the recently deceased Anne Rice, Lestat was her favorite creation, the fictional French vampire brat prince. Lestat became the hero of her Vampire Chronicles book series after initially serving as an antagonist in Interview With The vampire. Lestat became the mascot for her annual New Orleans costume ball and is still the most popular Halloween costume in New Orleans.

Lestat was played by Tom Cruise in the 1994 film Interview with The vampire, which earned the low budget sequel, Queen of the damned and later a Broadway musical. Currently Lestat is played by Sam Reid for the Interview with The vampire TV series.

5. Elvira

Elvira was a TV horror host in the 1980s. She also released some music as the character. The character's creator is Cassandra Peterson. Elvira even got her own movie and several comic book series, including ones where she took on Dracula and Faust. She even hosted The House of Mystery for a while.

4. Count Dracula.

Though not originally invented for Halloween, Count Dracula has become something of a fixture around Halloween. There are Halloween costumes and decorations of him along with other public domain monsters.

Since Dracula IS in the public domain that means anyone can use him without having to worry about copyright infringement. And so Dracula has been a character in many Halloween specials including The Halloween that almost wasn't (also known as The Night Dracula saved the World). Monster High, Monster High 2, Scooby Doo and the Reluctant werewolf, Scooby Doo and the Ghoul School and Dear Dracula.

Not bad for a vampire that supposedly was the prince of Wallachia who, as a mortal, died in fourteen seventies and according to the fiction became a vampire after that.

Universal Studios claims to own the version of him with the red lined cape and widow's peak hairline and that is why the version in Hotel Transylvania (by Sony) does not have these details, which is odd since many other depictions of Dracula not from Universal, have used these particular traits. I think Universal was just giving Sony a hard them when they found out about Hotel Transylvania. 3. Stingy Jack.

Stingy Jack is the public domain folkloric figure who we get Jack-o-lanterns from.

A very short version of the story is this. A man named Jack cheats The Devil out of his soul but is not welcome into Heaven. So when he dies he is doomed to wander. He attempts to enter Hell just to find a place to race but The Devil turns him away. Mocking him, demons toss out an ember from Hell-fire that Jack places inside a lantern to light his way.

Now a ghost Jack wanders the world but he is also something of a coward. And similar carved lanterns- he would mistake as other wandering, damned souls, and these would drive him away. These lanterns are Jack-o-lanterns.

Over time the legend evolved to suggest that Jack-o-lanterns could ward off all wandering spirits. The earliest Jack-o-lanterns were carved from turnips but Irish immigrants North America found that Pumpkins were easier to carve. (And taste better too.)

Today it is considered good luck if you can keep your jack-o-lantern burning all Halloween night. And bad luck if it burns out before midnight because that invites the spirits into your home, that the Jack-o-lantern was protecting you against.

2. Sam / Samhain.

There are two versions of Sam.

The first is Sam Haim (deliberate mispronunciation of the Gaelic Samhain = "Sow-in"). He was the very spirit of Halloween from The Real Ghostbusters Halloween special "When Halloween was forever." He is a robed figure with a pumpkin-like head obsessed with honoring the rules of Halloween and punishing those that violate those rules...

Then we have Sam from Trick r. Treat. A child-like figure with a Pumpkin-skull head under his sack-like Halloween mask. This anthropomorphic personification of Halloween is obsessed with honoring the rules of Halloween and punishing those that violate those rules...

1. Jack Skellington.

This was probably obvious. Jack Skellington has the disadventage of NOT being in the public domain. Anyone can use Santa Claus but Jack is owned by Disney. They have owned him since the early 1980s when a young animator named Tim Burton wrote his original poem / children's book that ultimately became the 1993 stop motion animated movie.

It's easy to dismiss Jack because he is owned by Disney. And that means other people don't have the freedom to play with him the way they do with other characters like Santa or even Count Dracula.

Now the modern depictions of Santa Claus (at least here in the US) have him wearing red and white and and a lot of people take for granted that he always dressed this way but if you go backward to as recently as the nineteenth century, you'll find his robes used to be long and were many colors, from white, to blue, to green, to black. The main reason we're so used to Santa in his red suit with white trim is actually because of early twentieth century Coca-Cola advertisements.

So even Santa has been influenced pop culture and corporations.

Disregarding the limitations caused by being owned by Disney, Jack Skellington has become very iconic in the last thirty-years. The popularity of Nightmare before Christmas helped spread "American style" Halloween to Germany and other parts of Europe. So for them Jack has always been a fixture of Halloween, and not some 90s novelty.

Nightmare before Christmas was something of a sleeper hit. Disney did not realize how popular it was until about a decade after its original release. (Similar would also happen with the Box office flop, Hocus Pocus, now considered a Halloween classic.)

New stories are being published involving Jack Skellington and his Pumpkin Queen, Sally, and new merchandise is sold every year. This year a Mattel's Monster High / Disney collaboration lead to the release of a limited edition Monster High style Jack and Sally doll set. Upon release date the dolls sold out in less than nine minutes, proving that Jack is still very much The King of Halloween.

Also Jack Skellington has song numbers, which, if you know Christmas specials, has a way of preserving a character indefinitely in pop culture.

Jack Skelington has appeared in Nightmare before Christmas, the Kingdom hearts video games, Nightmare before Chrsitmas: Oogie's revenge video game. The novel All Hail the Pumpkin Queen, and the graphic novel Battle for The Pumpkin King.

[counttwinkula]

i gotta say that one of my least favorite things about the modern internet is the ease with which people just accept that an image exists without any thought of its provenance

like, the most obvious cases of this are when an illustration gets turned into a meme and spread across the internet without the consent of the creator

how many times have you seen the original form of a viral image spreading around tumblr with people reacting in shock and awe, "that's what the original said?"

and here's an example that makes my blood boil: remember the iconic "one fear" comic?

do you remember when someone removed the artist's signature, and then dozens of edits were spread with the words "one big meme" in its place?

it's like someone was out there trying to make my point for me: that once the image goes viral and becomes exploitable (as we called it back in the encyclopedia dramatica days) the artist's identity gets filed off of it

but the other half of this issue, which is the part that really just confounds me altogether, is better represented by the sculptor izumi kato. if you don't recognize the name, you may recognize a very specific photo of his work:

this photo of a work by kato (untitled, 2004) accompanied the original SCP creepypasta. in the years since SCP-173 was first posted this photograph and depictions of the character it inspired—a character whose physical appearance was taken directly from kato's art—has been spread far and wide across the internet's horror communities

(yes i know the SCP website has removed the image from the official website and i applaud that decision)

unlike teen comix, where any viewer immediately, if unconsciously, knows that this is a drawing and that therefore someone drew this, i think that the public does not have that same awareness when it comes to photographs

as many art critics have noted since the advent and spread of photography, the photograph occludes not only the concept of authorship (which is beyond the scope of this post), it also alienates the viewer from the idea of context—the image exists for its own sake, separated from the subject of said image

the internet is built on weird images spread without any sort of context, and i get that. i also know that i'm the kind of person who thinks about this stuff and not everybody is

(chris sharp, fire hydrant jack, ca. 2007)

what just makes me crazy is how people seem so willing to look at a picture and just think "i guess that exists" without taking a moment to think "someone must have made that"

and what irks me is how many blogs here—beloved blogs with tons of followers—repost and reblog this content without any thought put toward attribution when the item in question is obviously an art object. the blogs that come to my mind, and i do not say this with any malice, are ones that reframe the subjects of these photos within a D&D context, placing the focus on their "bit" and entirely eclipsing the artists whose works their blogs rely upon for content

the issue of attribution has become even more urgent because the efficacy of google's reverse image search function has plummeted

i cannot tell you how many times i have scoured the internet for any sort of image source for a work of art, wading through scores of pinterest and tumblr links, before suddenly finding the artist's name—or before declaring the whole matter a lost cause

that was when reverse image search was still useful, and nowadays for whatever reason (i am not knowledgeable enough to say why or how) it has ceased to be useful altogether. i have no idea what alternatives we have, and so i really think it falls on us to try to apply some code of ethics to this matter

i'm not saying i only reblog attributed images, i know that's basically impossible, but i am imploring people to at least think twice about this, and i am asking blogs with big follower counts that rely on other people's images to think about the impact they have on further distancing the art from its creator

[kalebishop96-blog]

Cuphead vs. The Cuphead Show: If TCS is Good Now, Here’s Why And How it Could Be Better (A Critical Essay Review)

 Foreword of Essay:

 This critical essay was written for the growth and support of the franchise, the game, the animated series, and other future productions that may arrive. The intended angle chosen upon writing this essay will be subjective interpretations backed up with facts, lore, clips from various classic cartoons, and article reviews, and such materials will be used to be compared to the animated show. Arguments are intended to be balanced with facts on both pro and anti-bases of the scale and such angles will also be backed up with some common opinions about it.

However, please note that such intentions may not be perfected in this essay and some points of view may have been missed due to the amount of research taken and the nature of human error. I repeat the intention of making these critiques are for the sake of improvement and my passion for making art and wonderful stories.

May you have an open mind and may you be protected from negative emotions that may trigger you in reading this essay.

DISCLAIMER: THE IMAGES USED IN THIS ESSAY ARE NOT MINE, THEY GO TO THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS SUCH AS STUDIO MDHR, COMIC BOOK ARTISTS, AND AUTHORS. AS SUCH, EVERY IMAGE HERE IS CREDITED AND LINKED BACK TO THEIR OWNERS.

FAN ART OF OTHERS (NOT MINE) WILL NOT BE REPOSTED HERE, BUT WILL INSTEAD BE LINKED BACK TO THEIR ORIGINAL POSTS. IF YOU WANT TO VIEW THEM, PLEASE CLICK THE LINKS.

The moment I fell in love with Cuphead was because of this:

I have one word for this GIF: #goals.

At the time, my relationship with my brother was already broken to the point that there was irreparable damage. Before the Double Platinum Award, I was only familiar with Cuphead. I have seen it, I have played a bit of it, but I wasn’t entirely invested in the game… until I saw this peculiar picture above. At first, I thought it was weird, goofy, funny, wholesome, and cute. This is when I started to get interested and do a bit of research about the lore of the game (because lore reading is one of my favorites), and also some background about how the game was made due to the wonderful animation and graphics. Overall, I came to this conclusion:

Cuphead and Mugman are two best friends who live together as brothers.

It was the very first glimmer of a concept to even surface in the media; a standard production would have featured an average toxic relationship, or it’s a production with a lot of fighting and it is stereotyped as ‘healthy’ because siblings fight. This picture changed everything for me and it was helping my relationship with my brother heal as well as my perspective on being a brother. Even more, there were other people within the community that made art that echoed this relationship.

Note: The following examples are fanart of other creators and will not be reposted here, but instead LINKED back to their respective pages. Please show your love and support for them, thank you!

TITLE: Cuphead and Mugman in “Mocking the Dice!”

MADE BY: NinjaHaku21

Source: https://ninjahaku21art.tumblr.com/post/166836582635/cuphead-and-mugman-in-mocking-the-dice-me-and

TITLE: CLINK

MADE BY: velvet-fox123 

Source: https://www.deviantart.com/velvet-fox123/art/CLINK-709574634

TITLE: Cuphead and Mugman Cute Brother Moments

MADE BY: QueerMars

Source: https://www.deviantart.com/queermars/art/Cuphead-and-Mugman-Cute-Brother-Moments-872213389

TITLE: Collab/Redraw: Apology Cookies!

MADE BY: TheWallop-Cat12

Source: https://www.deviantart.com/thewallop-cat12/art/Collab-Redraw-Apology-Cookies-824553030

I’m here because I wanted so badly to be part of it with the added benefit of my mental healing. And so I did!

It was bliss, and having the idea of these brothers play & play, and live rent-free in my mind was some of the happiest things I’ve ever had in my life. I wanted it to keep going and going.

So I’ve made my own fan work here and there (which are irrelevant to this essay) but to keep my inspiration up I kept on following the franchise. The game, the comics, and soon the novels if I can get my hands on them. But then came… The Cuphead Show.

I wanted to love the show unconditionally, and yet I find myself agreeing to the critical reception of 67% and 70% ratings it has received. I watched a select few episodes and avoided the ones I did not like, and I would say Episodes 7 and 8 were actually decent to watch. I kept tabs on the series every now and then just to see how the story was going, and I’m sad to say my opinion has not changed. This essay will elaborate on why.

 Essay Contents:

Cons:

-        Character inconsistency

-        Weak Plot (even if it is a comedy, compared to cartoons like SpongeBob, Adventure Time, The Amazing World of Gumball, etc.).

Pros:

-        Superb Animation

-        Strong appeal to the Gen-Z.

-        It’s a ‘fun-house cartoon’.

This mainly talks about The Cuphead Show.

Character inconsistency

This is talking about the large disparity between the characters of the game, comics, and books, and the show. The three aforementioned materials have a consistency about the style and characterization of the franchise’s characters and that consistency has led to well-structured and well-branded stories , but noticeably they are very different from the show. Characterization is a vital part of Cuphead’s story because this is a character-driven plot. Without the key strengths and weaknesses of the characters, the plot becomes weak and less entertaining.

The characters in question are of course:

-        Cuphead & Mugman

-        Elder Kettle

-        The Devil

-        King Dice

-        The Inkwell Isle Bosses

Starting with:

Cuphead and Mugman (TCS)

In a nutshell: They fight about the smallest things… but they don’t laugh about the smallest things. They are brothers, but they don’t have enough ‘bro’ moments.

At best, they are nice to each other and just talk (on seldom occasions they show how much they love each other), at worst they are verbally and physically violent, on average they are just tolerant that they are there. A lot of you might think that “hey, isn’t what I described a perfect description of brothers?” Actually, because they fight a lot and the degree of harm they cause to each other, this is an example of what a toxic relationship looks like. Realistic and healthy brotherly relationships have a balance of both wholesome and bitter moments, and by the end of the conflict they just continue playing as if nothing of the sort happened. This topic about healthy brotherly relationships is a core of Cuphead and Mugman’s relationship and characterization because even Maja Moldenhaur mentioned this during her speech in ‘The Cuphead Journey’:

They weren’t just brothers, they were best friends.

(Side topic: But wait, wasn’t she talking about Chad & Jared MDHR, not Cuphead and Mugman? And yet, the cartoon art created for that specific presentation had Chad and Jared wear red and blue shirts respectively for almost every slide. And the fact that the ‘Deal With the Devil’ was actually a metaphor for their choice of quitting their jobs and going all-in on the Cuphead video game project. You get the jist, they drew their Cupsonas in a Fleischer-inspired animation world).

Going back: Best friends, for no apparent reason, do things that make each other laugh or happy, and because they are best friends they always look for that moment. That doesn’t necessarily mean they do nice things all the time, sometimes or often they do things that are risky, stupid, dangerous, and offensive to the average person, but between the both of them it’s a language that only they would understand and only they know would make each other happy. This is what’s supposed to make the polar opposite to their consistent fighting, and combining the two polars (wholesome and bitter) will achieve a balance and accuracy to a healthy relationship.

 What is demonstrated in the show however is this:

Between them it’s like they live in an atmosphere of kerosene and only a spark of antagonization is enough to light the sky on fire. This is what I meant when I said ‘the average toxic sibling relationship’ stereotype which is covered up as healthy in the mainstream; siblings don’t support you, they provoke you, at least that’s the culture that the mainstream wants to instill.

Even in the episode 7 & 8 that’s evident in these lines:

 Season 1 Episode 7

“No one cares about little ole me!” Cuphead said denying his worries about the Devil taking his soul.

 It’s Not:

“No one cares about little ole me…” Cuphead paused. “Except you pal.”

Mugman smiled. “And Elder Kettle.”

“AAAND Elder Kettle.”

 There’s an absent sense of security and confidence that he has people who cares about him, and that’s not only shallow, but toxic that he takes them for granted, which makes his character inconsistent. He’s a loveable scamp, not a selfish jerk.

 Another example:

After Quadratus instructs Mugman to nit an invisible sweater…

“Well, it looks like I have to nit an invisible sweater.”

 Emphasis on ‘have to’, as in it’s a hassle he has to fulfill his obligation and there’s no benefit in that.

 It’s Not:

“Well… IF IT MEANS SAVIN’ MY BROTHER’S SOUL I’LL DO ANYTHIN!” Says Mugman standing on top of a rock from Quadratus’ pond with a white glow behind him and an angelic choir, which is actually coming from Quadratus, singing on the background.

 Cuphead starts to cry tears of gratitude, but then mischievously smiles. “HEY! YOU CAN’T STAND THERE LIKE YOU’RE SOME KING OF THE ROCK, GET DOWN FROM THERE!”

 The scene plays on with Cuphead wrestling Mugman on Quadratus’ pond, and Quadratus becomes the wrestling referee that counts 1, 2, 3 as laughing Mugman is pinned down.

 Mugman is supposed to be this unconditionally loving brother to Cuphead. No matter how much the latter screws up and makes stupid decisions, he’s always there to pick him back up and keep playing with just a high five to the chest. Plus, if he really is his ‘best friend’, then he’d keep on hanging out with Cuphead because there is an unexplained happiness he feels with him, and it usually translates into a lot of feel-good actions like high-fives, fist bumps, chest bumps, head clinks, etc. In here, he’s just as tolerant and cold, he’s no better than Cuphead, makes sense for the spin-off, but it eliminates what makes Mugman Cuphead’s pal.

Another example:

Episode 2:

“NO FIGHTING!” Elder Kettle slams the door. He opens the door again to check on them and then slams the door again.

Cuphead and Mugman without hesitation begin to fight.

 It’s Not:

“No fighting!” Elder Kettle wags his finger.

Cuphead and Mugman look at each other, and smirk.

“Uhh what?” Cuphead raised an eyebrow to EK.

EK raised an eyebrow in confusion. “Because… you’re brothers?”

While looking at Elder Kettle, Cuphead and Mugman do a fist bump, followed by a complex Chicken Little high five combo and then ending with a head clink and a buddy hug.  

“Yes?” Cuphead and Mugman say together.

Elder Kettle hums. “Good point. Have fun, but not too much fun!” Elder Kettle leaves.

Cuphead smiles mischievously at Mugman.

“What?” He asked suspiciously at Cuphead.

“Elder Kettle’s not home.” Cuphead smiles bigger.

Mugman’s eyes widen in shock realization about the meme reference. “NO! NO! NONONONONONONO!” He says while towering and scolding Cuphead while the latter smiles more mischievous. Eventually Cuphead’s smile infects Mugman that he starts giggling. “N-HO! UH-UH! I’M NOT DOING IT!”

“DEW IT!” Cuphead says in a goofy evil bass voice while he narrows his eyelids.

“NO! NO!” Mugman pulls out his straw from his head and begins to play it like a trumpet to the melody of ‘When Mom Isn’t Home’.

Cuphead walks over to their front door and slams it open and shut repeatedly, same way as the meme.

(Rest of the scene plays as an inspiration to the ‘Trashing The Camp’ scene from Tarzan).

 Another example:

Season 2 Episode 3:

Cuphead removes the tentacle that has been attacking his face while Mugman is adoring the conversation of Briny and Cala for the latter to be the former’s girlfriend.

“Hey, Mugsy!” Cuphead whispered.

“Yeah?” Mugman whispered back.

“Ya sure about lettin’ Captain Brinyface become Cala’s mate?” Cuphead whispered.

“Yeah! It’s goin’ great!” Mugman smiled.

“No no, I mean you! Don’t you want to take your chance with Cala?”

“What?!” Mugman yelled. “What do you mean?!”

“I mean, she did call you ‘dinner’.” Cuphead winked.

“Cuphead-….” Mugman paused in thought and then smiles with an ‘I see what you did there’ face while Cuphead smiled wider. “Not that kind of dinner.” Mugman giggled.

“Eh, suit yourself. She’s a really BIG catch if you know what I mean.” Cuphead elbow nudges Mugman and winks at him twice.

Mugman giggled. “Nah, there are plenty of fish in the sea.”

Cuphead’s mouth gaped open “Oooooohhhh!”

Cuphead and Mugman start tearfully giggling at each other.

 Cala Maria looks at the cup brothers confused while Captain Brinybeard looks unamused.

“Vat are they talking about?” Cala Maria Asked.

“Eh.” Brineybeard shrugs his shoulders. “Brothers.”

 And my last example:

Season 3 (or Season 1C as some people refer)

Episode 1:

By the end of the episode, after Mugman asks what Cuphead wants to do, Cuphead chooses to go back to Soul Ball, indicating that nothing has changed, and despite being sorry for dealing with the devil, the thrill of the game is too much of a reward to deny. Realizing this, Mugman faints, and the cycle begins again.

What could’ve been better is:

Cuphead plays Soul Ball, but this time he offers the ball to Mugman to play. Mugman is nervous and gets angry stating he will never risk his soul to the devil, Cuphead says he knows that… but then dares him to not lose the game. Mugman then gets nervous and worries about losing the Soul Ball game. Cuphead agrees… but then says he’ll be missing out on the fun of: ‘Pissing off the Devil’. Excited and motivated, Mugman makes his 1st try on Soul Ball, but then loses. The machine sucks Mugman’s soul, but Cuphead easily catches it and puts it back to Mugman. The Devil appears pissed and tries to forcefully take Mugman’s soul, but Cuphead laughs and runs away with Mugman fearful of his life.

“The game’s not over yet buddy!” Cuphead says.

 Once again, the Devil shoots fire from his pitchfork and accidentally destroys a part of the Carnevil. Mugman realizes this and starts to laugh with Cuphead as they play this game of dangerous ‘tag’ with the devil. After the Carnevil is destroyed, the Devil is horrified at the destruction, while Cuphead and Mugman laugh and run away together with the Carnevil once again burning down in the background.

-End of Examples-

I think you can see the difference; there wasn’t much significant ‘best friend’ qualities that Cuphead and Mugman shared between them, whereas it was only hinted and told that they are very close. This is the power of ‘show don’t tell’, a lot of toxicity and hostility between them is shown and they would tend to forgive each other only to repeat the cycle all over again, and only in desperate times or in the rare case they are on the same page would they call each other friends. What’s worse is that not only is this a dark concept about brotherhood, but it’s a very inconsistent characterization of Cuphead and Mugman in comparison to the game, comics, and books.

The Following are images coming from the comic: Cuphead Volume 1: Comic Capers & Curios.

The following images are from the comic: Cuphead Volume 2: Cartoon Chronicles & Calamities

 (This is another fanart, will not repost but will be linked).

Source: https://twitter.com/ElCajarito/status/950834633133916163/photo/1

The concept of resurrecting either Cuphead or Mugman includes giving a high-five to either of their hearts. I repeat, a high-five to either of their hearts. Whatever the interpretation may be: it’s cute, adorable, and wholesome.

Source: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/mSYNJRvCizk/mqdefault.jpg

Best shot I could find.

These are the animations for Mugman and Cuphead respectively if both players choose to equip Chalice’s cookie before entering a boss fight. It’s a small detail but, but if you will take a closer look, at the very start of the animation they’re both holding a half of the same cookie, or in other words, they’re casually sharing the same cookie. This indicates one, (of course) they care about each other, and two, it directly contradicts the Cuphead Show synopsis ‘Unless there's only one cookie left, in which case it's every cup for himself.’  

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftenor.com%2Fview%2Fcuphead-studio-mdhr-jumping-jump-happy-gif-19678123&psig=AOvVaw0Xypu0Kunzbbfo7smjWQGb&ust=1669258211622000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CBAQjRxqFwoTCPiUs8elw_sCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAE

Source: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcuphead.fandom.com%2Ff%2Fp%2F3100000000000000588%2Fr%2F3087692258901041559&psig=AOvVaw37IAqOTWKqP7dJBKZEzdD-&ust=1669258167955000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CBAQjRxqFwoTCIjJ0bKlw_sCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD

These are the jumping victory animation of Cuphead and Mugman after beating a boss level. Just two brothers celebrating side by side by jumping and jumping accompanied with lots and lots of cheers. Nothing toxic, just simple wholesome childish joy.

One last evidence:

-        No mention of any ill will or criticism towards each other. Despite Cuphead had gambled his soul to the devil, Mugman pulled his own weight (2-Player game available), protected his brother from harm (resurrect mechanic), invited to race him back home as soon it was all over, and made a promise with Cuphead to never get in trouble again as if it was his responsibility too. Heck, in the DLC, he even joined him on the next adventure & voluntarily got in trouble and ate the cookie without knowing what it does. He’s as much a trouble-maker as his brother is.

However, if it was given from the start that they fight a lot, then I have no right to criticize and this essay is an example of ignorance and a lack of respect for the creative choice of the artists. But in this case, it’s the other way around, The Cuphead Show is an adaptation of the game and the franchise; despite its Executive Producers being Chad & Jared MDHR, the main director of the project is Dave Wasson.

If it were a truly healthy friendship between these two then they would be open and carefree about expressing themselves without the fear of being shut down by each other. And the following is a big yes to brotherly relationships: roughhousing, wrestling, arm wrestling, and other physical competition; it is a healthy aspect of brotherly love because it pushes them to be stronger and learn how to fight when the real threats come, and most importantly it’s the right amount of thrill and fun in playtime for boys like them.

Instead, in the show, we’ve got 2 brothers who provoke each other until they fight for the smallest reasons they could think of, and they tend to not respect each other for who they are and what they need. (Ex: Mugman uses Cuphead’s jawbreaker instead of soap to make Quadratus appear, he doesn’t respect his brother’s passion for candy. Cuphead takes an entire maple syrup bottle and is inconsiderate if Mugman would’ve liked some. Mugman thought of cutting Cuphead’s hands with shears. Cuphead attempted to replace Mugman as his brother).       

Cuphead and Mugman had a special relationship, they’re like two best friends who invite each other over for a playdate except they live in the same house. They don’t have to wait until late afternoon or after school to have fun or they didn’t have to say goodbye just to wait for their playdate, because they live in the same house!

 I know I’m not the only one who agrees on these differences. There are several fanart and fan creators that agree with this disparity and support the show anyway, which I am grateful by the way that they support the franchise. My part as a fan is to highlight how it could be improved.

 A few pegs that could be like Cuphead and Mugman’s relationship would be:

-        The Game Grumps Dan & Arin (Some specific examples may not apply)

-        Fred & George Weasley (Harry Potter)

-        Team Rocket

-        Chip n Dale

-        Goofy Gophers

-        Sans & Papyrus (Undertale)

-        Catdog

 In conclusion, Cuphead and Mugman’s relationship is actually what I look for in this franchise because it helps me heal from a scarred relationship. I love the franchise’s interpretation of these two, but The Cuphead Show has a lot of shoes and porcelain cups to fill.

 That’s it for the first part of this essay, sorry if it’s short but it’s all I could write at the moment. I will continue discussing the rest in my next post.

What do you think? Do you agree or not? Let’s start a healthy discussion! Leave a comment below!

[niyana-the-ambiguous-mobian]

You ever have a good original idea for a book or book that can become a movie one day you think hey I should get to work and start creating? But then you think about after facing the challenges of getting your idea out there it’s subject to being changed by movie studios that may and can cut important info from the source material you poured your heart in and they’ll just make it weird with hot actors who can’t even save the most cringey lines the editors will put in the film? And even if you made a book not everyone reads books that much you fear and it will be lost to the fading light that is the library and bookstore lands?

This was me at 3am after getting up for some water and couldn’t head back to sleep and ended up having an existential crisis over a “what if” scenario that popped into my head. Just a regular daily thing for me😓

Hey there Non.

I'm not gonna lie, I've had PLENTY of ideas that I would have pop up in my mind when brainstorming randomly, even at times writing the ideas out in synopsis form with little dialogue tidbits and potential character arcs if I ever choose to write about it in the future, not just in terms of stuff for like Sonic or other fandoms but just OG story ideas that were created over the course of a couple of months that were just inspired by stuff I've watched over the years.

And each time I would put more time to explore those ideas, that same negative feeling of thinking what would happen to said stories and/or characters if it got accepted into some big, well-known studio or company and having it become a lesser version of what it initially was because they kept changing things that probably didn't need to be changed or taken out.

But that was before I got more accustomed to other means in terms of that, like posting artwork on websites like Instagram or Deviantart, sharing stories you've written on Ao3 and FF.Net, creating a comic series and posting it on Webtoons for everyone to see. Or even on sites like Tumblr, where you can pretty much do all three on a single blog! Even comic strips that started out on here got to become cartoons and shows on their own in due time.

We can't always let those what-ifs get in our way to try and get out there in the hectic world, cause otherwise we could end up missing out on opportunities where it'll be everything we'd ever dreamed of doing. For some creators, they'd rather do the safe route and be a small, part time creator and continue making content for the audience they gained while others want to aim for the big leagues like YouTube or a animation studio and give their content a shot to be made into a property.

Both routes are good choices, but it’s mainly up to you to choose how you want your content to be known on the web. It's different for everyone, it would probably come to you in a couple of weeks or months, but in due time...lighting will strike and you'll act upon with no doubt on your mind.

[sedge-yells-at-comics]

Reprinted below, in case the link implodes.

Flash #27 Reveals Why Reverse Flash Is a Truly Unique Villain                

The finale of "Running Scared" provides a gut-wrenching Rebirth update to one of DC's most complicated villains: Eobard Thawne, the Reverse Flash.

By Meg Downey Published Jul 27, 2017               

If you’re a fan of the Flash, you’re probably pretty familiar with the concept of the Reverse Flash, a man named Eobard Thawne who, like Barry, has super speed and wears a flashy costume. Of course, the “Reverse” might sound like he’s the literal opposite of the Flash -- maybe someone who slows things down instead of speeding himself up? Or maybe someone who runs backwards?

There are a lot of obvious and incorrect guesses pretty readily available for casual or newer fans to throw darts at. The reality of the Reverse Flash is, however, pretty complicated. Mostly because his “reverse” status is actually ideological at its core. Flash media, be it print, animated or live action, has traditionally made this apparent by painting Eobard as someone who is essentially pure evil -- a sort of manic, time traveling serial killer who is motivated solely by his endless need to destroy Barry Allen from the ground up.

At that point, the problem then becomes finding a way to make Thawne’s homicidal drive, well… unique in the scope of the DC Universe, a place that just so happens to be populated by enough over-the-top villains to populate a decent sized Midwestern town. Why is Reverse Flash someone that’s specific to The Flash? What differentiates him from any of DC’s other iconic arch rivals, like Lex Luthor or The Joker?

Well, The Flash #27 has the answer, and it's probably not the one you expected.

Running Scared

The rebirth of the “classic” Eobard Thawne (as opposed to his New 52 revamp) began in the Flash/Batman crossover mini-event “The Button” back in April, a four-part storyline which connected the original Thawne to the events of last year’s DC Universe: Rebirth one-shot.

Since, then, Thawne’s taken up residence as a perpetual thorn in Barry’s side in the hero's own ongoing series, stepping directly into the spotlight for the three-part “Running Scared” arc which served to highlight Thawne’s Rebirth status quo. For the most part, it’s a story that fans will be pretty familiar with, borrowing heavily from elements of stories like The Flash: Rebirth and Flashpoint. Thawne’s from the future, he time traveled to kill Barry’s parents, he’s connected to a negative form of the Speed-Force, and so on -- But that’s where things start to get their Rebirth-specific legs.

It’s not that creators Josh Williamson, Howard Porter and Paul Pelletier are trying to reinvent the proverbial wheel with “Running Scared” -- just unlock a different side of it by shining a light on one of the most unique aspect of Eobard and Barry’s relationship.

Reverse Flash doesn’t hate Flash the way Lex Luthor hates Superman, or Bane hates Batman. It’s actually (appropriately) quite the opposite. It’s the reverse. Eobard Thawne loves Barry Allen, obsessively and vengefully, which is where his endless, destructive need to ruin Barry’s life comes into play.

“Running Scared” highlights the fact that a young Eobard grew up alone (though Williamson was quick to confirm that that particular story element came out of an earlier Geoff Johns Flash issue) with only his idealized and imaginary version of Barry -- a character from his history books -- to keep him company. Barry was, for all intents and purposes, Thawne’s only friend, confidant, and emotional anchor, despite the fact that the two of them wouldn’t actually meet for years and years.

It was plenty of time for a very troubled and very lonely Thawne to fall in love with a version of The Scarlet Speedster that existed only in his imagination...and, well, it’s pretty obvious how that particular emotional endeavor actually went down. Actually meeting Barry and subsequently being forced to deal with the fact that he was just a guy and not the cartoon character Thawne had built in his head for years, proved to be too hard a stress test for Thawne’s fragile psyche.

Fatal Attraction

Meeting and being disappointed by a personal hero is a rough experience for just about anyone, but rather than allowing himself to move on -- or even allowing himself to simply decide to hate Barry instead, Thawne’s obsession only doubled down.

As issue #27 hurtles to its conclusion, Thawne’s real motivations become abundantly apparent. As Barry, infected with Thawne’s own inverted Negative Speed Force thrashes Thawne within an inch of his life, he presses him with a question - Why, if Thawne has always been so inspired by him, has he gone out of his way to ruin Barry’s life at every turn? Why has he done all of these terrible things, from killing Barry’s parents to beating Wally within an inch of his life, to kidnapping he and Iris and hauling them to the future?

Thawne’s answer is as unexpected as it is heartrendingly honest: because these horrible things are the only way Thawne understands how to make Barry spend time with him.

It’s that simple.

Thawne’s love for, and obsession with Barry Allen has permeated his life so deeply and completely that he is even willing to count his time spent being pummeled half to death by Flash as a win. He’s completely unable or unwilling to differentiate between Barry’s affection and Barry’s hatred, and he’s ready to do whatever it might take to put himself at the center of either emotion in Barry’s mind.

“A few years ago, it would have really hurt my feelings to hear you say that,” Thawne taunts after Barry threatens him, “but now to think that I caused you that anger? That I could get under your skin like this? It warms my heart.”

It’s deeply troubling, of course, and horrifyingly uncomfortable to get a look into the head of a villain who is, essentially, the personification of a fan gone terribly, terribly awry -- a theme that only gets more difficult to swallow when you begin to think about the increasingly complicated relationship between fans and their idols in actual, genuine, non-super heroic world around us.

This subtle reworking of the Reverse Flash has made him one of comic’s most poignant ruminations of the idea of toxicity in fan communities, idolization of strangers, and self destructive obsession, and it did so in a way that boldly allowed Thawne to win at the end of the day.

The issue closes, and the arc completes, with Barry exactly in the position Thawne wanted him in: completely alone, just like Thawne was as he built Barry into a hero of mythological perfection in his head. Now, where Barry will end up, and whether he’ll be forgiven by Iris, Wally and the roster of people he’s been manipulating as he leads his vigilante double life, is still largely a mystery.

It’s clear that Thawne didn’t expect, or even really want, Barry to come running into his arms to start their life together the second he succeeded in isolating him -- he makes that abundantly clear as he warns that he’ll just return again and again and again, de-powered, killed or otherwise hindered. Iris may have added an exclamation point to the end of the story arc by “vaporizing” Thawne with a Black Hole gun, but it hardly matters.

Reverse Flash will be back, somehow, at some point, and it’s doubtful that his love and obsession for Barry will have wavered in the slightest. We know now that’s just now how his mind is capable of working. It’s unlikely that Thawne will ever feel anything for Barry beyond his own supremely twisted adoration, no matter how many times the Flash pummels him into the ground. It’s just not the way Thawne’s brain is able to process information anymore.

It’s complicated, messy, and uncomfortable, but it’s also one of the clearest articulations of exactly what makes Reverse Flash such an interesting villain in the scope of not just the Flash family of books, but the DCU as a whole.

[arecomicsevengood]

I Think We Can All Agree, NFTs Are The Ugliest Thing We’ve Ever Seen

It was recently announced that Kickstarter is moving to the blockchain. I’ll be honest with you, I have no idea what this means, or why it would be done. It’s pretty obvious to me how Kickstarter makes its money, they pretty transparently deal in the stuff and take fees for doing so. It seems like blockchain is just the latest buzzword that gets thrown around silicon valley tech circles and appeals to investors. I don’t really know what it is, or how it connects to crypto, bitcoin, NFTs, all these things that are widely opposed to by reasonable people on the grounds of being environmentally destructive and also a scam. I know the website Popula used Blockchain, but that’s not why I stopped going there, the site was poorly designed and uninterested in giving any indication as to what its articles were about. I am not being facetious when I say I have no idea what the blockchain is. Does it have anything to do with how people on Twitter block people they’ve never interacted with because of the people they have negative interactions with are associated with them in some capacity? Does that cause a lot of carbon emissions?

All I know is that I’ve had a “fuck kickstarter” stance for a moment now, for reasons I haven’t publicly articulated. It’s one of the basic premises I operate from, which are perhaps impossibly idealistic and generally prone to conspiratorial thinking. These are the thoughts that sneak into my TCJ reviews and instigate minor controversies. I started writing for TCJ when Dan Nadel was an editor, though I never worked with him, I think my thoughts align broadly with the issues he highlighted in his infamous “sell your boots” editorial, or at least the subsequent comments thread. I think Kickstarter is a poor excuse for publishing. It creates a world where artists that are either established or have a big social media following or easy pitch can maybe succeed but diverts their success into things that have nothing to do with the art, or reaching a broader audience.

Nadel’s company Picturebox is in many ways my ideal for what a publisher should be. They put out a bunch of great books, but they also took risks, and some books were more successful than others. Successes subsidize risks, a risk that fails is not pursued further. With Kickstarter, a book that “does well” is pre-sold in advance to a readymade audience, and the more successful they are, they get a book on a different paper stock or some stickers or other bullshit. Whereas in publishing, you put out a book, and if does well, the stores that carried it know to order more of your other books, and more risks are taken. We’re now living in a wildly conservative time for book publishing, and interesting things don’t make it to stores, and stores are boring. It’s bleak all around.

Picturebox may be an esoteric example if I’m citing my ideal of what a good publisher does. Often I find myself thinking of Dark Horse in the nineties, which published creator-owned work from Frank Miller, Paul Chadwick, Paul Pope, Mikes Allred and Mignola, Bernie Mireault, Jay Stephens, and Dave Cooper. They also paid Jim Woodring to write Alien comics, they had a Grendel anthology that published work in the U.S. by artists from Croatia, and they did a bunch of manga licensing. I think of them as a much more conservative company now, whose work I don’t pay much attention to. Bob Schreck and Diana Schutz were the big editors in charge of the work I’m talking about, I believe, and it’s interesting to me that, when Schreck went on to DC Comics at the turn of the century to edit Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Strikes Again, he was working with an artist who was aware of (and inspired by) alt-cartoonists like James Kochalka to make weird and invigorating work. Comics these days is far more siloed off. There was a time when the success of Frank Miller got a higher page rate for Renee French. Now is a much rougher time for artists like Renee French economically, and while it may be wildly profitable for Frank Miller, I don’t think it’s benefitted him artistically to be in, essentially, the 1% of comics artists, afforded a deal with Legendary to be the only artist they publish. (Right? The movie studio got into comics, but only ever released Holy Terror?)

Another reason to romanticize the 1990s: Publishers handled publicity for their books in such a way that artists did not need to be constantly online, which is maybe the number one requirement of a person seeking to promote their Kickstarter. Part of the rationale behind Kickstarter is to treat traditional publishers like they’re parasites, which is true inasmuch as current publishers also require their artists to be online constantly, doing all the promotion of their work themselves, as part of the ongoing neoliberal shifting burdens onto those least adept at shouldering them. If I were a publisher, and I wanted the work of the artists I published to be as strong as possible, I would want their time online to be minimized. It does not benefit an artwork for its creator to suffer from terminally online brain. Particularly if a publisher is seeking to have a diverse publishing slate, the more an artist differs from the cis white male model, the more likely they are to be continually antagonized and harassed online. The work of being a proponent for oneself online works against the work of making work that’s larger than yourself off of it. (Traditional publishing theoretically supplies editors as well, which I’m sure many comics would benefit from, but how much publishers actually give useful editorial input to their artists is something I couldn’t say.)

This is not to suggest that Kickstarter doesn’t fulfill a role. Clearly, it is a response to the conservatism of traditional publishing. “Publishers should make bolder choices” might seem like a non-solution, as all the cultural factors I’m alluding to here plainly suggest why everyone is so conservative. But like: That’s it. That’s the solution. That’s the issue. Book publishing, done well, is the alternative to weird web platforms, which will probably always be prone to snake-oil salesmanship.

---

For whatever it’s worth, I should direct people to Domino Books, who is currently planning an anthology of weird experimental work which will be funded partly through advertising. Domino is also a zine distro, and I believe proprietor Austin English largely believes that distributing affordably-produced self-published work is a preferable alternative to publishing as I’m outlining it here. His tastes are far more outré than what would ever be successful on Kickstarter. But again: Selling ads to subsidize the costs of a publication is a pretty good example of what a publisher can do that shouldn’t be the artist’s responsibility to bear. Not all comics should have advertising, but it’s a pretty major part of the newspaper model that provided a profitable outlet for comics for the entire twentieth century. Anyway, credit is due to him and editor Floyd Tangeman for publishing artists who seemingly have no social media presence where one can preview their work.

[amagicdoctor]

Character Design Corner #0

The Character Design Corner is a new series on the blog where I give you a look behind the scenes on how I design certain characters. Originally, I planned for this month to open with Doctor Strange himself, but before we get into the actual characters I thought it would be more important to quickly go over my art style. This will be used in reference to you readers, so you know where I'm coming from in the future. But don't you worry, next month, in September, we'll be getting into the science behind Doctor Strange!

For now, we'll be doing a very general art style overview. If you're an artist or love reading about how artist's produce their work, this is a series for you. Follow my art style journey below the cut:

!!!This is not an art guide or tutorial!!!

The drawing I want to use for this discussion is a fairly recent one that I've been happy with (see original post)

The first thing I want to get into is the way I draw. I'm a HUGE anime and cartoon fan, so that will typically find it's way into my general art style. If you're an anime fan, you should be able to tell that I try to capture that "big eye" and "detailed hair" look that a lot of anime styles have.

Also, emanata, which are emote symbols used in many different forms of visual media, are something that I use from the many anime and mangas that I read. Comic books and American cartoons use these too, but the ones I try to reference in my own work are visually inspired by anime.

The second thing I want to talk about is one of the most prominent parts of my work: the coloring style.

I really love using bright and hyper-saturated* colors in my work. It makes the drawings POP and it's the kind of coloring style that some of my favorite artists, who I use for reference, use too!

(*a term I coined for my own personal use, basically means those saturated colors on the top right of a RGB scale.)

Going with bright colors at the base of my work was originally inspired by The Simpsons, "The Simpsons are yellow because original creator Matt Groening wanted them to be eye-catching, and yellow is the most eye-catching color. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Groening knew he needed an eye-catching design to pull in potential viewers as they flipped through the television channels." (read here) In a world where people scroll so fast in the dash, having bright colors is going to pull them in and want to read and interact with the art much more!

But while the science behind using bright colors is great, I just use it mostly for the aesthetic. This does have it's downsides though.

When I'm trying to draw something with a "dark" color in it, Clea, for example, who I draw with dark skin, or Doctor Strange, who has black hair, I try to find alternatives to making that color light enough, yet still staying true to its original tone.

Now the reason this is a huge issue is because I don't like my base colors being darker than the line art. Over the years I've made a conscious choice to have a dark blue line art color instead of black. This was originally taken from advice I've seen other artist provide in their personal tutorials. Some of you artists may have heard the suggestion that you should not use the color black or white directly. Well I still use whatever I want, but I just don't use black colored line art anymore. Blue is my favorite color, so that's my designated line art color. Because of this, my base colors have to adjust as well.

The color black isn't used as my line art color of choice, so black cannot be used in my base colors either, it would be too dark for my line art. Instead, to match my dark blue line art color, I use different shades of blue. For example, in the picture above, you can see this in Doctor Strange's hair and Raven's suit.

I should also note that I'm not an art student, I'm completely self taught, so learning about "color theory" and balancing background colors with characters and the rest of the foreground is still a work in progress. I'm learning as I go, and while I'm not a master, the process is still fun!

Now that you all have a better understanding on my work, I hope you will look forward to next month. As a reminder, Doctor Strange will be the first character we look into next month officially starting off this series for real! And in that post I'll provide more detail than I had here. I can also take suggestions for the next characters to look into as well.

Is there anything here that I missed that you would like me to go over? I'll update this post as we go along in case I did. Feel free to send some follow up asks or comment about anything I should clarify.

[rollflasher]

Another Sonic ramble

So once again I’m here with one of my rambles about my incredibly subjective view of how the Sonic series should be handled! *Beat*

...anyway.

So, one of the more recurring opinions on the fandom is that Sonic games should be written by Ian Flynn, I have talked before about the gripes I have with his writing and why I disagree with this but this post is not entirely about him, but rather a more general topic that has been bugging me for a long time.

The other day I was watching a video speculating about the upcoming Sonic Rangers, there’s not much to write home since it was pretty well made but there’s a particular part that inspired me to do this post and talk about it with other fans to discuss it.

See, at one point the video critisized the fact that Sonic Forces was written by a Japanese writer because they have to re-write the script in English and that can cause problems with localization, and that it would be better to have western writers from the get-go since Sonic’s main demographic comes from there, while making an off-hand suggestion that Ian Flynn could be a main choice. While I can see where they’re coming from, my response was a simple:

‘‘Absolutely, not’‘

See, I have a lot of issues with this to put it bluntly and I’ll try to break them down and explain them the best I can since they’re pretty subjective in nature, but I’m bringing this up because I want you guys to share your thoughts as well.

So, why does it bug me so much the idea of Sonic being handled by western creators?

In my case, the main reasons are because Sonic loses a core part of it’s appeal because of this, the fact that SEGA of Japan seems to have a better grasp of the franchise’s tone and characters and there’s the very subjective point that, in my eyes, American versions of Japanese franchises were always nothing more than dumbed down products of the source material.

To start with my first point, whenever someone talks about Sonic’s creation, a lot of people are quick to point out that our favorite blue hedgehog and his games were inspired by western pop culture and cartoons, and that is true, however oftenly they forget to mention a core thing that not only inspired, but also formed part of the core identity of this franchise.

Sonic is very inspired on anime, and at heart this franchise is a shonen.

(This image by The Great Lange expresses more clearly what I mean)

Generally, the most acknowledgement anime gets on it’s hand on Sonic is the mentions of Sonic being inspired by Dragon Ball, particularly the Super Saiyan, but there’s so much more than that, as Sonic blatantly takes inspiration from Studio Ghibli films specially in games like Sonic 3, which draws a lot of inspiration from Laputa: Castle in the Sky, this great post shows proof that this is not a coincidence.

And it doesn’t stop there, Shiro Maekawa himself has stated that SA2′s story (and in particular, the characters of Shadow and Maria) draw a lot of inspiration from the manga Please Save My Earth.

Even Sonic’s character design resembles shonen protagonists moreso than the main characters of silent cartoons, don’t believe me?

Sure, Sonic has a cartoony anatomy, no one can deny that, but he also exhibits a lot of traits from shonen characters such as spiky hair/quills (?), dynamic posing, a confident, courageous and energetic personality and most importantly, fighting spirit.

If you compare Sonic’s personality and more specifically, his abilities and moves to, say, cartoon speedy characters like the Road Runner, there’s a pretty big disconnection between him and western cartoon characters. Hell, this disconnection is even just as present if you compare him with a character like The Flash from DC.

Simply put, Sonic acts, moves and more importantly, fights like a shonen anime character. He doesn’t just go Super Saiyan and that’s it. Here’s even a quick comparison if necessary.

And this is important because this doesn’t apply just to him, but the whole franchise as a whole and when it takes a more western approach, all of these details are kinda lost or more downplayed, of course this depends on the artists and there’s YMMV at hand, but I think my point is clear.

My second point is...SoJ has consistently proven they have a much clearer grasp on how Sonic’s world and characters are compared to SoA.

Hear me out, yes, Sonic 06 and ShtH exist and yes, SoJ is not perfect by any means. But hear me out...when did the characters start to get flanderized and turned into parodies of themselves? In the 2010s...and when did SEGA move from Japanese to western writers in the games?

Of course it was more then that since there’s a whole tone shift that came with this decade and the new writers, but it’s not a coincidence that when writing in Sonic started to decay, western writers also happened to get on board with the games.

Besides that, SoA has a wide history of not getting Sonic’s tone and characters, from how they made media without much of Sonic Team’s input, to altering how characters are seen in the west. (Such as how they amped up Sonic’s attitude in their media or how the English scripts of the games featured things like Sonic seemingly barely tolerating Amy while the JP scripts portrayed this as Sonic just not understanding girls all that well instead, or for more recent examples, the addition of the ‘’torture’’ line in Forces). Not only that, but even ignoring obvious infamous writers like Ken Penders, even the ‘’best’’ writers from the western side of Sonic are still not above of giving us Pontaff-esque gems.

Like this one.

Or alternatively, I feel like sometimes western writers on Sonic rely a bit too much on their personal vision about Sonic which may or may not be a good thing, clear examples of this are Ian Flynn himself and Pontaff.

By contrast, while SoJ has it’s own share of notorious inconsistencies when dealing with writing (The 2000s era is a big offender), it seems that for them Sonic hasn’t changed much and this is visible not only on the JP scripts of the Modern games which are for the most part better than the ENG ones, but also things like the Sonic Channel comics and the recent one-shots they made with Sonic interacting with the cast show that for all intents and purposes, the Japanese’s staff vision of Sonic is much more clear and consistent compared to the west. Because of this, I’d rather have a good Japanese writer on Sonic games with the localization being focused on being faithful with the original script than have a more western writers dramatically changing the characters. (I don’t mention the tone since either way, SEGA is the one in charge of that and the writers have to follow that)

My last and very subjective point is that, at least for me, everything SoA does with Sonic involving the writing and canon feels like a dumbed down version of the source material. One of the reasons it bugs me so much that in the latest decade Sonic has taken a more western direction is because a lot of what I pointed out gets lost as a result, even if some of those elements are still there, you can tell they’re more downplayed with products like the Tyson Hesse shorts having a more predominant cartoon direction. If any of you have been following my blog for a long time, you should be aware that just because I prefer the Japanese Sonic content doesn’t mean I won’t give the western products a chance, my enjoyment for Mania, the Tyson Hesse shorts and the movie should be a testament of that, but at the same time I can’t help but being sour about the fact that because of these products, we don’t have stuff like a new anime for Sonic or even a serialized ‘’main’’ manga as an alternative for the comics, and my hype for these products is generally more subdued as a result since I’d wish SEGA rather spent that money and resources on more Japanese content than just merchandise.

In particular, because Sonic is a Japanese franchise with a notorious inspiration from anime, what I get from this is a pretty big contradiction. I know Sonic is much more popular on the west but...is it really necessary for his game or products to be handled by western creators to keep their appeal?

For instance, imagine if Dragon Ball’s manga and anime got replaced by western comics and animated series because of it’s world-wide appeal, would that really be the same?

Or imagine the same thing with Fullmetal Alchemist, a pretty aclaimed anime that has a lot of western influence. Would it really not matter at all if it’s Japanese products were replaced with western ones?

At least for me, it wouldn’t.

And what I said about American versions of Japanese franchises being nothing more than watered down versions of the source material? I have that view because of countless examples.

Mega Man and how the English manuals removed a lot of important information about the story of the Blue Bomber’s game and world, causing a lot of plot holes in the process.

American remakes like Godzilla 1998 or Dragon Ball Evolution being an in-name only version of the source material.

Or the many censored anime English dubs from the 2000s, for instance, whenever I see the Yu-Gi-Oh! dubs, I only see a very dumbed down and childish version of a show that was originally a shonen.

And I know that all of these things don’t have to necessarely get lost since every creator is different and there’s franchises like Avatar which are made on the west but draw a lot of inspiration from anime and I’m aware of that, and I want to make it clear that I’m not trying to say that American writers are not allowed to work on Sonic, what I’m trying to say is that inevitably there’s always gonna be some culture dissonance and clash when writers from another culture handle a foreign franchise. And even with examples like ATLA, I think being made by one culture while being inspired by the other is actually a big part of these franchises appeal and it’s something that can’t simply be replicated by handing it to creators from that specific culture they draw inspiration from.

I think James Rolfe’s quote about the same thing with the Godzilla franchise sums up how I feel about this.

‘‘It’s like champagne, anybody can make their own and call it champagne, but unless it’s from Champagne France, it’s not real champagne’‘

So, this last part was very subjective, but I think this post in general sums up why I dislike so much the idea of Sonic having western writers specifically in the games or just focusing more on that side in general.

But what do you guys think? I guess I am too biased so that’s why I wanted to ask for opinions and discuss this topic.

[dandylion240]

All of the story asks please :) (Character specific ones I'd say up to you, but would love to have them be Jonah/Cecil or my usual favorites ;) )

what’s the last screenshot you’ve taken for your story?

2. describe your story in three words or less

Family, Angst, Drama

3. describe (insert character here) in three words or less

Jonah - unassuming, brave sensitive

Cecil - insightful, supportive, caring

Evan - self-sacrificing, helpful, innocent

Jayden - protective, stubborn, active

4. how did you choose the name of your story?

I try to use titles that is kind of thematic of the story I'm writing. It takes me forever to come up with a name and sometimes the name changes multiple times before it gets posted.

5. how do you choose your characters’ names?

It depends upon the story. For my Reagan family stories (TS4) I use the parents names. It's kind of a family tradition. For instance Jonah/Ethan. All boys will start with E and the girls will start with J. In my TS3 stories I sometimes choose a theme for names and use that. Like next gen of NSQL the theme is nature.

6. how long have you been working on your story for?

Well it depends on the story. With my Reagans I started writing for them in the summer of 2019. For my TS3 legacies I started in 2014 I think.

7. whats the biggest risk you’ve taken with your story? did it pay off?

I think my biggest risk is my current story Into the Depths of Darkness. I wasn't sure I could pull it off and the story has changed from what I thought it would be and the hero of the story has changed from first conception. I'm happy that Jonah is the hero of his own story and it's given him so much character growth and he's becoming more of what I always invisioned him being. I owe a lot to @mahvaladara to how the story has progressed and the ideas she has contributed. It wouldn't be what it is without her.

8. what about your story are you proud of?

There are many things I'm proud. Mostly that I continue writing even though sometimes it feels like I'm ripping my heart out to write some of things I write about and also that I don't quit even when it's hard.

9. what about your story are you looking to improve on?

There's always things that can be improved. Writing is a process that the more you do it the more you learn and get better. I could say pictures but I'll admit the storytelling will always come first over pretty pics and sometimes I just can't find the right pose to fit. Maybe one day I'll be able to make my own poses but I'm not there yet.

10. is your story fully planned or are you still working things out? is there a definitive end?

It's a work in progress. I start writing from an outline of how I think the story should go but it's loose enough for me to rearrange things or remove/add things to it as the story evolves.

11. why have you decided to tell this story? are there any messages or meanings within it?

I just like to write. If there's any message in my stories it's that family is important and no matter awful things you might face in life if you have people who love and care for you that you can endure it. But mostly that you can rise above your circumstances and still be a healthy, functioning person despite everything even if you have a mental or health problems, you can still be happy, loved.

12. do you actually play the game or do you just use it as a storytelling medium?

It's mostly a storytelling medium for me. I do play it sometimes but tbh though TS4 lacks so much depth and gameplay I find it boring after a while. I've gotten into playing TS3 again now that I have a better computer that it doesn't lag as much.

13. from basic planning to a finished post, how long does that take you?

I don't honestly know. I've never stopped to consider how long it takes.

14. do you have any regrets about your story so far? if you could go back in time, how would you fix these?

No I don't think I have any real regrets. Sure I go back and think I could have written that better or edited that picture more but for the most part I'm happy with my stories.

15. what have been the highlights of creating your story?

The highlights have always been the people who become involved in my characters lives.

16. what about the process do you enjoy?

Seeing my stories come to life. How my characters change as the story progresses.

17. what about the process do you hate?

When I struggle to write a scene and it doesn't flow the way it should. It's generally because I'm coming at it wrong. Once I figure that out than it flows. Sometimes the seeming lack of interest in what I write from the readers is hard to overcome and I feel like quitting. But the few who comment I thank because that always revs up my motivation to continue.

18. choose a song that reminds you of your story

Just one song....that's really difficult say. There are so many songs out that fit my current story. This song fits Into the Depths of Darkness because where there's a lot of darkness there's still hope to be found.

19. choose a song that reminds you of (insert character here)

Ok I'll do this for Jonah - Fight Song

20. choose your favourite shot from your story so far

21. choose your least favourite shot so far

22. choose a favourite character from your story so far

Jonah is my baby. It may not show it by I love him.

23. choose your least favourite character so far

Hmm this is difficult because there were characters I created purely to be hated. Currently my least favorite is Ethan but it's not because I don't love him but it's because of his roll in the story.

24. are there any characters who remind you of yourself?

Not really. There are certain aspects of me in all my characters or people I know in them but none are an incert of myself.

25. what inspirations have you drawn on for your story?

There are so many. I draw inspiration from people around me. From movies and TV shows I watch. The books I read. Sometimes from the people I interact with on here mainly @izayoichan @mahvaladara @jenpants and @legendofsim They've let me bounce ideas off of them and their input helps me in my stories.

26. have other sim stories inspired you?

Yes they have. See above. All their stories have inspired me.

27. what genres would you describe your story as?

Modern fantasy drama??? I have no idea if that's a thing but it best describes what I write.

28. if you could reproduce your story in another medium (movie, novel, comic, etc.) what would you choose and why?

Hmm I'd say novel or maybe series. A movie would be cool too.

29. what would your story’s rating be? (G, PG, M etc.)

Hmm interesting I'd like to say its somewhere between PG-13 and mature just because of some of the topics.

30. if you were leaving simblr and had to choose another creator to continue the story for you, who would you ask?

I think either @izayoichan or @mahvaladara for my TS4 stories since they've helped me write some of them and they would keep true to the characters as they love them as much as I do.

For my TS3 stories I would say @legendofsim since for a long time our stories had been intertwined.

31. drop some random trivia about your story

Ethan was supposed to die trying to save Jonah

Caiden was supposed to have played the part of the hero instead of Jonah

Cory was going to heal Jonah's broken heart over the of Ethan.

But as they say the story changed...

32. give a light spoiler

Someone will be heartbroken at the end of the story.

33. recommend another creator’s story!

There are so many: @izayoichan @mahvaladara @nikatyler @justkeeponsimming @amuhav @legendofsim @simlit @lilyshadowwriter @wannabecatwriter

Please don't be upset if you weren't listed on here. I love everyone I follow but these are my favorites. I have others but some aren't active anymore and stuck with the ones I'm always waiting for the next installment, even if I'm behind on a few of them.

Thank you for asking!