#I which I am more clear about the panel though basically all six self is calling out on her being in the wrong

[chameshida]

Cartoon mash-up.

- Naughty remorseful but stubborn child got thrown into the therapy train to confont her inner thoughts after the crime she’s commited (Even not as an infinity train mash up though I like to think Six would have a nightmare regarding Mono, at least until she got on the maw and start having the lady nightmare instead and promptly forgot about Mono entirely)

- As for OTGW--

[preciousmomentsfigurine]

im back on here at least for right now, i keep cluttering my other socials with my diatribes and anxieties and i just need to get my thoughts out without being performative about it... i dont even know if anyones left on here who i was in communication with but anywho... im finishing up my first semester of my masters and ive been hit with some pretty substantial depression this week, kind of a culmination of all of the stress i have endured over the past few months. 

my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer in september. it was easily the worst news of my entire life, my mom and i are exceptionally close, im an only child and my relationship(s) with my parents is at the center of my universe. all that aside it’s just bad news obviously, but i guess i can say i “get” cancer now. they caught it early and it ultimately proved to be pretty treatable, she got surgery and did five days of radiation (which she completed last week) and now she’s more or less in the clear though she won’t be “cancer free” until five years pass without it reemerging.

that being said... this all happened in the first few weeks of grad school and im already holding on for dear life trying to adjust to the immense amount of responsibility i now have. im a teaching assistant, which is my source of income as well as the condition my full scholarship for school is contingent on, i was quickly nominated to serve on a graduate committee for my department (which is basically like a student council), i received another nomination for a scholarship thru an affiliated national scholarly collective, and i am being pushed incredibly hard by faculty towards a phd which entails a whole other laundry list of engagements to bolster my cv (e.g. speaking at conferences, submitting work to journals, moderating seminars/panels, etc.), working on my graduate teaching certificate, and then of course the mountain of course work...

so, suffice to say, i had zero time to even fully process the trauma and grief associated with my mom getting cancer, and there being a period of time where i literally had no idea if she would live or die and having to grapple with mortality, consciously or not. self care has been... an afterthought... i hardly have time to sleep, eat, and shower, let alone to cry or even honor an emotion for long enough to pacify myself. i’ve taken to detachment, or rather dissociation, to survive. that’s not entirely new, but i’ve never been this “good” at it, and it’s quite frightening. like i said, all this is catching up to me now, when it’s most important i’m on the ball as i tie up the loose ends of my semester.

basically, the lesson i can’t for the life of me figure out how to learn - one i’ve been attempting to work on basically my entire life - is finding a middle ground between absolutely fucking drowning in the extremes of my emotions, and completely cutting them off and losing myself down the line. i seriously never cry anymore. that’s something i never ever expected from myself. i’ve cried maybe three times in the past six months. maybe even this whole year? i’m so scared of my feelings, they’re nearly killed me countless times in the past, so i just decided i’d no longer have any. we all know that doesn’t really work for very long. my bipolar has taken me for a fucking joyride the past three months alone, and the crash was imminent. now i’m just empty and disenchanted with existing.

i’ve learned a lot this year, though. i’m still a basketcase and always will be, but this is the most stable i have been since like, childhood. i worked hard as fuck this year to pick up the pieces of my life. i’m at a place i literally never thought i’d arrive at, starting my career (that word still terrifies me), taking accountability for my well-being, feeling a sense of acceptance and compassion for myself that i always lacked, surrounded by tons of friends, and somehow, successful. i’m working on not letting the validation i have received since starting the whole grad school process totally petrify me - it feels good to finally be seen and recognized for the parts of me that were always dismissed, what’s “inside” as corny as it sounds, my intellect, my thoughts and opinions, my talents, my passion and tenacity and curiosity. on the flipside, it’s utterly rocked my world to learn that i possess these things, and that they’re valuable. i’m so used to depending on superficial validation at best, and being completely demoralized and abused at worst - my whole life i’ve been convinced by others, and then myself, that i was worthless and bound to fail. to have people i deeply admire and respect tell me i am intelligent and gifted, is fucking weird and uncomfortable, as much as it is liberating.

i guess this has turned into rambling, as i was initially gonna just talk about my day and how i’m feeling right now, but i guess i had more to say than i thought. i’m depressed, but i’ve really grown up and found myself this year, and i’m proud of the things i’ve done even just today to pick myself back up. i just met with my professor for a class i’ve been anxious about. the old me would have avoided this and buried my head in the sand. the new me pushed myself to face discomfort and feels a little bit stronger and lighter having done so.

now i’m gonna write this paper. wish me luck, ttyl xx

[incoherentbabblings]

What are your favourite comics anyway?

Oh! Oh! Oh! Okay. Full disclaimer. We’re going for what comics I re-read over and over again. Are these comics...good? Eh. Are they bad? No, I don’t think so. Some were meh to wow! when first released that time has either been kinder or harsher to, but I don’t think I have a series or a run or a title which is I like which is like... hot guilty garbage. Though, of course, feel free to disagree. There are some authors on here which people will not want to touch with a barge pole, and I totally understand and encourage not touching them if you don’t want to.

Having said that, here are my favourite popcorn comics (largely Titans and Batfam because I am... basic): 

The Flash (2016) issues 39-45 + Annual #1

Having said that, Flash time first. People think Williamson is a real hit or miss writer and I do agree, but I think this whole arc is one big hit. It’s frantic in its energy, I love Gorilla Grodd as a villain, I love the modern Flashfam trying to help, I love how Wally coming in to help totally turns the tide and the mood. I love how everyone looks at Wally like… this guys is powerful, more powerful than any other speedster… but also noting there’s something very fragile about him. I didn’t include Flash War in this because I’m still waiting for the payoff for that angst regarding Wally, but this arc… mwah. Wallace Rudolph West being vindicated as the greatest Flash (whilst allowing Barry to be flawed and to lead his family)? Yes please. Also I love Carmine’s art. I gather it’s hit and miss for some folk but I love the line work. Also Carlos D’Anda’s issue (come baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack draw Dick and Roy again your work has gotten so much cuter this past decade) is a beauty too. Big ol’ eyes.

 (Under the cut ‘cause this is LONG)

Batman Dark Victory

One of two Loeb stories for me. And yeah sure Long Halloween is objectively better but…jelly bean

Also, angry traumatised Dick smacking a dying man with a stick. What a legend.

Gates of Gotham

Cass! Damian! Dick!Bats! Tim! A mystery villain! World building for Gotham! Stuff exploding! Batfam banter! Trevor McCarthy art! This bizarre panel of Jim Gordon holding Tim’s hand like he’s checking the time?

It’s one of the last ‘pure’ Batman stories before the reboot – Bat Inc aside – so it’s how I like to read the Batfam’s relationship by the end of that universe. Everyone’s a lot more content, proud Dad Bruce, happy and settled Dick and Damian, Cassandra returning home, Tim chopping off the emo hair… it’s all good.

Grayson (particularly #5)

I know why people can’t stand it. The circumstances leading up to it are bog awful. Opinions on Tom King’s writing has only grown more spliced with time. The (sex) jokes are too on the nose and hit too close to home for many. The cheesecake art is too stilted for some. But! Issue #5 is my favourite single issue story. Ever. You never have thought boxes in this series, because everyone is lying, but you aren’t told when. You never know how genuine Dick is being at any given moment, until it is just him and the baby. I love how single-minded it allows him to be. I love how he flat out lies and manipulates to protect that little girl, whilst also caring for Helena. About how seriously he takes his job of protecting Bruce and his family (and that’s why he’s even doing the stupid spy thing in the first place). And maaaaybe it’s unrealistic that Dick could outlast Midnighter crossing the desert, but screw it. Bruce can be better than metahumans all the time. Let Dick get an issue to be so to. Saving a little girl who is probably going to grow up to be akin to Superwoman. Just because he’s given himself that responsibility. He’s going to double cross twenty groups at the same time and come out clean as a whistle. And he’ll cross a desert with a newborn to do it.

Light of my fricking life.

Infinite Crisis

I…I like that things go boom. John’s is very good for that. Also, the Nightwing and Batman moments howowheheheheheheeeeeeee. Almost wish Bruce had shot Alexander. I wonder what would have happened?

(Brief side note: Graphic Audio’s adaptation of this is great fun. I dropped a bowl of cereal at the part of Superboy Prime versus the Titans. Cassie’s scream when Pantha’s head got punched off was a bit…intense. The No Man’s Land one is very good too if you have cash to burn - the voice actors are the same in both and Nightwing’s voice actor has this lisp and I don’t know man... I love it. He’s now the voice in my head for Dick).

Titans/JLA and The Titans (1999) issues 1-25

The Titans are now known I think for not being a very proactive hero group. Books struggle with balancing team dynamics versus plot, and this one is no exception. I know people don’t want to touch Devin Grayson’s stuff with a barge pole. My justification for this is flimsy I accept that, however, the JLA/Titans comic was the very first comic I read when I was like six or seven. I was rummaging through my brother’s room as a nosy kid does and this was at the top of his pile. Thank god for the little info boxes as each Titan was captured/referenced. I fell in love with Kory, I fell in love with Dick, I fell in love with Donna (oh Donna…) and then I tumbled down a hole and pretended I hadn’t until about six years ago. So that’s nice. So yes, this one is one hundred percent nostalgia based. 

But honestly, Linkara did a retrospective on this event comic and series years ago, and his reasons for loving it are the same as mine really, so go watch those if you have like five hours to kill. When Devin leaves the comic remains strong for just a moment then... absolutely plummets off a cliff. So I really wouldn’t bother with the second half of the series but hey. You do you.

Teen Titans/Outsiders: The Insiders

More Geoff John’s explosions. My first comic that got bought for me. My brother walked in to the shop and said: “I need a comic for my sister where Starfire gets a good showing” and the men went… ah yes.

Eleven-year old me was like EXPLOSIONSSSSS but also was intrigued by Kory and Dick’s bedtime convos (perhaps…I was a bit under the age bracket for this book - Kory gets a good showing huh?) but uh. Anyway. Also this is when I was thoroughly enamoured with Roy. This crossover is typical Winnick and John’s angsty angst with overly poetic narration and tropey tropes which, combined with what came before and what was to come for the Outsiders, can make both series such a slog to get through, but in isolation, I think it’s a real fun crossover which gave everyone a bit of time to shine and some real fan-ficcy moments (very self-indulgent, and I love that in a comic).

Teen Titans: Year One

I love Amy Wolfram and I love Karl Kerschel. It’s a good intro to those five characters with cute stories. Does exactly what it says on the tin. Batman is demonstrably a major prick in this, even after de-brainwashing, so it’s obviously going with the ‘Dick is only half as functioning as he is thanks to Roy, Wally, Garth and Donna’, which I can get behind 100% depending on what story they are trying to tell, but it’s just… it’s still sad to read. I just think the art is brilliant at giving each of the five very clear characteristics just from their body language, and you know immediately what each character dynamic is like with another.

Batman Hush

The other Loeb story. Again, it has what I like in a Batman story. A mystery, the family, appearances of villains, flashbacks and brooding, fighting, Jim Lee’s Nightwing being hunky… Ahem. It’s a fun read I think. Also, I really like Loeb’s Bruce? I don’t think people talk about it much. But he’s really chatty in his own head. And he’s witty and dry and funny. I like that! Also, Babs is such a backbone of this story. I adore that. She’s treated well here, I think.

Black Mirror

I flipping love this arc. I love it. I love the two contrasting but deeply disturbing in different manner art styles, I love the mystery, I love Babs role in the story, I love Tim’s little appearances and the banter with Dick, I love the weird villains and the terrifying ones, and how you think one is one of the two only to be revealed to be the other or both. I love Dick’s investigation and how he goes about it differently to Bruce. I love Dick’s relationship with Jim, I love the flipping reference to the vultures and owls seemingly following Dick (a whole reboot before Snyder got to tell that story), I love the monologue about how James thinks Dick is weird and weak for his compassion and love, when really that’s his greatest strength, I love Jim wanting so hard to believe James is trying against Babs’s cynicism, but also does try to get an unbiased opinion of someone who is proven good at reading people (Dick) and does what he needs to when his son is actively harming people, I love that ambiguous ending and the questionable science, I even love the Joker’s one (1) scene with Dick. I love this line,

I love Snyder at his best. When he’s good…mwah. Great.

…And yeah. That’s my story.

[talix18]

November 5

(AM)

In the moments when I’m lonely and longing for a life partner who lives with me and cooks for me and prods me to do the many projects around the house that need doing, I imagine what it will be like to make room in my house for another person. I’ve lived a long time, I contain multitudes, and each of those multitudes requires at least one room’s décor dedicated to it. This décor includes lighting, wall art, and hella knickknacks, which I’m learning are perhaps privileges and not rights. I am a terrible housekeeper. I keep the kitchen and the bathroom mostly liveable at all times, I scoop litterboxes regularly, and I do clean up obvious messes that are clearly out of place (cat vomit, food splatter, errant toiletries). I even keep up mostly with sweeping as I like to pad around barefoot or in socks.

But when it comes to, say, vacuuming the cat hair off the couch or dusting, I am Not Good. I’ve also lived alone for so long that I’ve gotten in the horrible habit of embarking on a Project – hanging knickknack boxes; reconditioning my leather goods in the wake of The Mold Issue (it was penicillin-ish, not the black stuff, praise the baby Jesus) – and quitting part of the way through (usually because of time constraints and a commitment of some kind), leaving the evidence scattered in my wake. (Currently on my floor are a pile of shoes, boots, and purses and some leather cleaner. My knickknack boxes and said knickknacks are strewn across the dining room table and the hearth of my wood stove. My intentions are good. I know that I want to complete these projects and honor the energy I spent starting them. Sadly, motivation and energy are not available On Demand in my life, and significant time elapses between the beginning of the project and the cleaning up of the aftermath.

I have cats. Cats come with shed hair and the occasional DIY beach simulation beyond the litter box. Dust happens. It happens with alarming regularity and perseverance. It’s most pronounced on the shelves that don’t get touched very often (all the stuff that’s just for looking at; the bookshelves that are too rarely visited). As my media consumption leans further toward streaming, dust has enveloped the stereo, CD racks, and TV console. If anyone besides me saw the state to which I’ve allowed my home to be taken over by the assorted cobwebs (imagine Ms. Havisham’s tablescape), I would have the sense to be ashamed. I would also shrug, rail against the social expectations that single home-owning women are expected to meet, and usher my guest out the door to attend whatever function has brought them over in the first place.

At this point it is fair to ask why I don’t just hire a cleaning service. Well. Remember that whole lack of energy and motivation thing? There are conditions in which I am willing to live, but I would never ask someone to clean up after me until my home was in some sort of organized and settled initial state. It’s been at least two and a half years since I can honestly say this has been the case. (That’s not even including the dresser drawer that is almost certainly on the bedroom floor.

First, the cats moved in. I took in the cats when they were three and their owner was moving out of state. His situation involved temporary lodging with a friend and the cats weren’t welcome, so Jack and Lily (formerly Jill) came to live with me. When they came, I’d been a cat-free home for just about a year. Long enough to get rid of litterboxes and food bowls, but not long enough to pull up the wall-to-wall carpet the house came with. And I really wanted to get the carpet up, as my dearly departed Bo, who is really the reason I bought this house, was bulimic for most of his life. And his life was a long one, so he had his own crotchety habits, which included peeing in places that were not the litter box. I cleaned up behind him to the best of my ability, but my guess was that new cats would be able to tell he’d left parts of himself behind. (Besides the handful of whiskers that I collected when they fell out. Did I mention I’m a witch?)

Since the cat acquisition was, on my timeline, relatively rushed, and my bookshelves and couch are heavy, I made the executive decision to cut what carpet I could get to away and go back for the remnants later. The cats are now six, this is officially their Gotcha month, and three years later, we’re all still living with those remnants and the exposed paint splattered plywood floor revealed by removing the carpet. (We’ve also learned a hard lesson about how much insulation that carpet provided in the winters since its removal.)

I had every intention of putting down new flooring, but that requires money. Which I had more of before The Mold Incident.

The Mold Incident announced itself most obviously on a leather duffel bag I brought home from India (21 inches long for $45 US and I had acquired more than my suitcase could hold) and a leather backpack I got in Italy (25 years ago). A person other than myself would have assessed and remediated the situation in a timely fashion, I imagine. I know people exist who don’t have anxiety about phone calls and who get things done rather than letting them pile up, and I wish one of them lived in my house. (Future significant other, I’m looking at [for] you.) I, on the other hand, let the situation continue to worsen until it was obvious that the problem was not going away, no matter how hard I ignored it.

One mold inspection later, I was assured that the mold was of the friendly green-ish antibiotic kind and not the deadly black kind, and assured that the problem was simply one of humidity. Encapsulating my crawl space and installing drainage and a sump pump would keep the mold from coming back. (Remember those two thousand-year floods that destroyed historic Ellicott City twice in three years? I live up the hill from historic Ellicott City and my town also flooded in that second storm. I knew that water was sitting in my crawl space when I saw a wet spot on my bedroom floor.)

Cleaning the mold that was already in the house would cost, I was told, somewhere around $5K. Or I could do it myself, using a one-to-one combination of white vinegar and blue Dawn. All I had to do was wipe down all of the walls, ceilings, furniture, and exposed surface. And launder every article of clothing in my closet and coat rack. A friend lent me a garment rack that lived in my dining room as I took everything out of the closet and put back the mold-free stuff, culling for things that could go to donation bags because my closet was Way Too Full.

I finally gave back the garment rack, but the pile of shoes and bags remains. And the cleaning every exposed surface fizzled out (though the bucket, rags, and ingredients remain at the ready). Encapsulating the crawl space required getting in there and cleaning everything out (the pile of mildewed insulation was…something), which required pulling up part of the floor in the spare room. (Where my contractor saw the places in the floor likely to cave in and installed three new joists to prevent that. He also replaced the part of the wall in the closet that was secretly a hole hidden under siding and, while he was at it, finished the siding on the house that was begun when he built me a new utility room.)

Are you tracking the costs that are adding up? Clearing the crawl space, installing the joists, hanging the siding, and finally the encapsulation itself. Altogether, I basically bought a new economy car and shoved it under my house. The only part of it I can see is the siding, and that’s not even the color I really wanted (because the color I wanted was “premium”; for the sake of all you hold holy get the big things the way you really want them if you possibly can [that should probably go for the small things too]). And my floors are still paint splattered plywood.

(PM)

The hanging of the siding knocked lots of pictures and knickknacks from the walls, which led to the removal of a shelf that held the knickknacks, which revealed paint that needs to be touched up. Well, there’s no point in doing the floors until the walls are painted. Okay, but there’s a fist-sized hole in the electrical panel in the spare room that needs to be patched first. Which I can finally get to now that the HVAC is installed. Did I mention the new HVAC system? Maybe it was a new midline car, one third of which is in the attic.

Where was I?

I’m learning, as I contemplate all of the things I have to move and decide whether to keep and clean, that ownership is one thing, but maintenance of stuff is a different issue. Maybe this is a thing other people learn when they are much younger. Addict. Depressed. Brain issues. Bear with me. I understand that cars involve maintenance costs; so do pets and children. And houses in general require upkeep that isn’t associated with other living situations. I knew relatively early on that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the costs of having a kid – even if I could make it work financially, there are no days off in bed when you’re a parent. I knew I’d made the right decision when a friend told me that for him, parenting made the highs higher and the lows lower. I can’t afford any lower lows.

So I don’t have kids, because on my own, I can’t afford them. I have a 15-year-old car that’s paid for, but also requires the occasional costly repair. It’s easier for me to coax occasional lump sums than a new monthly payment out of my budget, so I hold on to the car and maintain it to the best of my ability. I have a lot of books, which are pretty self-sufficient once they’re shelved, and theoretically it’s easy to wipe the dust from a bookshelf, unless you are a person who has so much stuff some of it gets propped up in front of the books. See if you can guess if I am that kind of person. (Spoiler: I am.)

[kierongillen]

Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine 41

Spoilers, obv.

After last issue's formalism, this one just accelerates. And, as everything in this arc, everything is a big beat. If everything is a big beat, how do you choose what to spend your space on? What beats really matter? How do you pace it? What can be a grace note and what's a scene? That's what this issue, and the rest of the arc, tends to be about.

This issue has gone down very well. I'll admit that while I absolutely gasped when I got paged in, I suspect it's going to be least favourite of the whole arc. That more says how much I enjoy the rest of the arc. Also, as a friend put it to me, I may be allergic to making people happy.

Let’s get on with this.

Jamie and Matt's cover:

There is, to some degree, a "Who hasn't had a headshot cover?" to this arc. As such, Mimir finally gets his. This is a glorious one – the pinks and blues, work really well, and the circuitboards frame it well. Obviously, Mimir plays a big role in this issue, so it is thematic. As is…

Paulina's cover

I just love Paulina's covers, as her being the regular alt-cover artist on Thunderbolt should imply. This made me want to immediately pitch a kick-ass pop D&D bard comic to someone, Xena Warrior Princess as produced by Xenomania. The names of the swords are the chef-kiss, but there's so much to love. The expression is everything.

Page 1

One page scene, with a modified nine panel grid. The one page scene is something that happens a lot this arc. I did a two-page version, but with the right seven panels, we're sorted. Yes, this is all we see of the de facto antagonists of the series this issue – when last issue was all about them, it doesn't worry me too much.

Page 2

Standard music journalist concept. That the second album tends to be worst than the first. Hard to prove, though my old friend Peter's note that "you have your whole life preparing for your first album and have a year to do your second" does seem to imply an easy explanation.

Page 3-4-5

Stealth mission! It's Metal Gear WicDiv!

We actually forgot to add the flashes to the first panel until the very last minute. Monthly Comics is a hell of a time sometimes, stress the “hell.”

I love the determination of Laura in the second panel of 3. That's great eyes.

Looking at this now, that "I can't do much now" is in a panel smaller than 1/9th of the page says a lot about the scale she's working on. The background was Matt in full trippy mode – I had a friend note that this scene is a little akin to Kohl in Rue Britannia 5 (The difference being Kohl is using nostalgia for a performance, while Laura is just doing a performance) but the moving squiggle does remind me the use of optical illusions in Phonogram 3. Bugs in the optic nerve are our friend.

Panel 3 on 4 is obviously Clayton living large and conquering. When you ask for something like "Can you sample the background and use as a speech balloon" you have no idea if it's going to work.

We could have divided the middle panel into two, but I suspect it'd have been less effective. We've seen the trick before. Now we see the same trick, but different. Mix it up. We're performers.

Hmm. I realise the Norns string of balloons is something I'm doing more often now – it's not something I've always done. I'm normally a one-panel-one-emotion, which strings of dialogue rarely allow (as, if there’s any change of emotion inside the string, the image is rendered ludicrous). In a middle shot, and a strong emotional throughline with the dialogue and I'm more okay with it.

While this whole three pages is an action sequence, it's also exposition for Laura's current state. The best exposition is demonstration, I guess.

I mean, the last panel of page 5? That's how cut to the bone we are. Problem? Solve it. Problem? Solve it. We don't need to fuck around anymore.

Page 6-7-8

And after six whole trades, the reunion between Lucifer and Laura. I suspect a different writer would have played this bigger and more melodramatic, but when the reader knows this, a splash feels overkill, especially with the taut pacing of the rest of the issue. However... there are five panels here. That's a page's worth of content, and enough to give an emotional throughline.

Sometimes when writing it's all about trying to find an honest response which is also unexpected. Like, in life, you think you'll feel sad or happy at certain times, but when you live through it, you don't. Or you don't entirely. What other stuff is happening? That's what rings true to me.

Anyway – that's where Laura's Guilt comes from. Laura at her most Dionysus.

And then Lucifer shatters all that self pity with the wink. Did you miss me? Of course, you did.

Page 7, panel 4 is one of those "a comic panel is not a moment in time" bits of magic McLeod always talks about. As in, as we read across the panel time progresses. The Mimir/Cass conversation is getting on for... 10 seconds, maybe? The teleport signatures do not take that long to appear. It's only with Laura's interruption that panel kicks into high gear.

As Multiversity noted you can easily imagine another draft of this with a bigger fight scene. And it's true – but also lying around was a version which cuts it even shorter. Do we need to really give a whole page to Cass breaking out? I felt so. Without the big beat, it feels flat. And it's good to see Cass let rip.

The slight angle on Jamie's external shot with a Norns black/white plus golden thread from Matt is really interesting. We don't often see the Norns as combatants in WicDiv, so this is a rare chance to give Cass a "Hello, I am a bad ass too, in case you've forgotten."

Page 9-10-11-12

Cripes. Going this and making notes I can't believe how tightly we're winding this and (more so) getting away from it. We did all this in four pages?

Two panels to the escape – the right image and a handful of taut captions to hold you between scenes. The first is doing a lot of work, but the second is just elegant. What do you need but the broken doors? Great stuff by Jamie here.

(Laura's captions do a lot of work here in setting up the themes, and the return of Sakhmet's memory to the story)

If you're wondering "How on earth could we get the escape be quicker, it's to take the first two panels on page 8 and move to the previous page. That makes it a five panel page, which is entirely do-able. That's a cost, but it would have bought slightly more space in this scene. As it is, I preferred to cut mid-page and end with Lucifer's first spoken lines in ages.

Once more, a big reveal in a small panel. Chrissy's note on the script was basically hearts for Luci at this point. Like, the second she cuts to the chase and tell s people what to do...

...and then the page turn, and she just goes full Lucifer. I know you lot have missed her, but I have too.

Getting back to Inanna was also easy, the sweetheart... but it all leads back to Sakhmet. That Mothering Invention was as tight as it was didn't leave much room for Laura to think about Sakhmet, or mourn at all... or, most of all, make it clear the story (and Laura) considers her loss important and real. It's an awful sad panel at the end of the page.

Inanna's voice was easy to find again. He's such a sweetheart. Tara is a little harder, just as I wrote her less, but I've been fascinated by this arc in terms of writing her as an actual character. I think one of the ironies of issue 13 was that it put Tara on a pedestal, and the pedestal is an objectifying as any other cage. Getting her back as a character is wonderful, and she gets to be as messy and flawed as everyone else.

Inanna not knowing ANY of this is hard. That's the problem with most of this arc – there is so much information flying around, and secrets some (but not all) are aware of. Who gets to respond to what and when? What to remind people of? What to let slide? Inanna not knowing about Baal is so huge it had to be hit and hit hard.

And then... the bodies.

When plotting this and trying to work out how I could get the cast – oh god, this is not a deliberate pun, but it's also clearly a pun - back on their feet, I was thinking of the Morrigan Gambit. Three heads, three bodies. Perfect. Then I remembered Mimir, and swore. I started to think about how that would be a tense, dramatic situation and how the personal politics could play out and I realised that Tara would just turn it down. I then realised that's exactly how the scene would work too.

(In a "tightness" thing, I suspect in another world, this scene would have been two pages. The "and Tara then just butts in" is the key thing, but you could get the timing a little more intricate to sell the moment more – still, even in this page, I could have extended it more, but seeing Tara's elaboration and everyone else's response to it was just key work for them all.)

In passing – Mimir's glowing in the dark in the penultimate panel just wonderful. Nice work Jamie and Matt.

Page 13

From the Sisters of Mercy's song, Marian.

Page 14-15-16-17

Here's where you talk about spending space. What's important here? You need the scale to show what Baph has been doing – and Jamie turns it into something astoundingly gothic. The use of blacks, the use of light and shade. Just the right level of suggestive. It’s one of my favourite bits of composition in the issue.

As the pantheon are getting back together, this leads to an increase in crowd scenes, which are the eternal artist killer. As such, I'm looking for solutions which only involve the absolute minimum of the cast in a scene.

Thee was an awful moment earlier in the issue when I went – wait! Do I have too many heads to carry? Then I realised I was fine. That said, finding places to put them down so we can have chat scenes was also somewhat tricky. The shelf turning up on page 15 is an example. Clealry Baph planned to (er) have a place to keep heads.

Well, I say, Baph, but it's clearly Nergal now. The road from early Nick Cave to late Nick Cave has been a long way. It's a great shot.

To go back to the space, why spend it on this? We’re reintroducing Nergal and Morrigan, and we’re also showing the scale of them in the plot, and the actions of Nergal. Where we go with the bodies is such a big beat, it needs to come from something similarly large. That’s also the reason why so much (relative in the issue) space is spent on the Morrigan/Nergal scenes. Of course, it’s also a key scene for this subplot, so demands space for that. It’s rarely just one reason. Probably a useful time for my usual “these notes are only ever a selection of thoughts.”

This is also a serious pose panel by Jamie.

The “I could bring her back.” He’s an underworld god too. If she could do it, he could. This is something which I suspect some people thought implicit in the old scene, but the final manipulation of Morrigan is unpacked at length in the nine panel grids.

Nine panel grids are a natural rhythm for this – when I was planning the later bit the triple-goddess of it made obvious sense, so it expanded to the whole scene. Also, the cropped image reduces the possibility of a Jamie crowd scene.

I always thought that, given the amount of time the various characters get on film, Ladyhawke could more accurately be called Blokeywolf. I digress.

Page 18-19-20

As said earlier, the triple-goddess to nine panel grid is one of those natural ways to give a stress to each of the elements. You’ll notice the clicks are left then right then centre. I’d originally written it as left to right, before – after Chrissy’s Editorial urging – rewrote to end with the Macha section to go last. Gentle Annie may have been the kinder part of Morrigan, but Macha was the part he mostly dated.

Then, in a moment of weirdness, Jamie actually drew it in the original order, despite never having seen that script. Morrigan has powers, as does the logical necessity of a left to right panelling order. As a nine panel grid, just moving panels around to fix it is easy. Hail grids!

Like most of the big acts of magic, it’s all about emotional sense than anything else. Hence, it is inevitable as Nergal actually does this, the bleak temple he’s constructed starts to crumble. And, in perhaps the most ludicrous bit of me in the comic, The Temple Of Love Is Falling Down. Too much is the bare minimum.

Jamie’s triple-portrait of the Morrigan is pretty startling. I have no idea if Jamie will miss drawing Badb’s hair, but I’ll miss seeing it.

Re-reading this now I’m struck by how low-key it is. That was always part of WicDiv’s magic – the finger click, and then things happening. The Morrigan transformation was usually drawn to be instantaneous – one panel Macha, the next Badb and so on. This kind of keeps to that.

And then… the reveal. That the new bodies isn’t a splash page says everything about this issue, but it still gets the punching the air moment. We had to have one of those eventually. Lucifer in a black suit is one of the things I’ve been waiting as long to see as Nergal in his. I giggled with glee at seeing this. Jamie’s worked in elements of the Morrigan into each of the gods – Lucifer’s red hair is the most obvious one, but Gentle Annie in Inanna and Macha in Mimir also have their notes. Inanna’s netting top is the main one – and note the shapes on Mimir’s armour changing to mimic Macha’s.

Yes, writing Lucifer remains fun and easy. I recommend it to everyone.

Page 21-22

In terms of seeing chat, people responding to the small details in the issue is one of the bigger joys. That Jamie got the Inanna/Nergal hug in the background of this exchange between Laura/Lucifer/Cass is absolutely wonderful. Laura and Cass have come a long way.

This is arguably a small cliffhanger – the smallest of this arc, at least. However, it sits on the weight of the rest of the run. We’re promising a solution to one of the larger mysteries in the run, and I suspect we get by on that. Note how space is used – this is a dense panel layout, but we go to a thired of a page for Laura’s “I know how to end this” (so giving it weight” and then going to three panel page for the conclusion (which adds weight to each of these beats.) Jamie takes the framing to tight on Cass for the beat as well to sell it. Note Matt with the Norn-colouring creeping in – and how it goes from the fires in the first panel to this is just a joy.

Page 23

Interstitial, and obvious reference to the Jay-Z record, but everyone is just excitedly clapping over the adding stuff to the godwheel. Sergio outdid himself here. It’s certainly an example of how you can have storytelling and even hero-shot audience-cheers beats out of things entirely unlike a traditional comics panel. After all these issue,s we get to see something added to the godwheel. Of course people cheer. That said,  as I said to a friend, “Of all the things I’ve found to torture the WicDiv readership, hope is the cruelest of all.”

EDIT: Actually, I messed up here - Jamie did the tweaks. Nice work Jamie!

And that’s it. Next up – 42, wherein questions are answered. In passing – the letters we’ve been getting are amazing. I’m going to try and cram as many as I can in the issues to come, but issue 44 will be our last one with a letters page. So that’s a timelimit if you wanna try and get in. It’s wicdiv@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading.

[sol1056]

if you promise peaches, deliver peaches.

After S7, the asks have been piling up. A few examples:

I was so confused in ep4 when Acxa disappeared, I thought she’d stuck with the team after ep3 and maybe I just missed the scene where she left, but others have brought that up, too.

Funny how the majority of the problems in s7 are because they tried to force BP Keith to the detriment of the story, and ironically, Keith's story, too.

I thought Lance’s family reunion would be much more emotional and be a part of his arc, since he was the most homesick, but then they gave that to Hunk?

Shiro got tossed aside in the most ableist, racist, and homophobic way, and Allura could have had a cool storyline mixing her paladinship and her castle storyline with a new altean mecha, instead of Shiro becoming a bad Allura 2.0 and Keith becoming a bad Shiro 2.0.

Srsly tho, am I the only one who finds it extremely bothering that in writing Allura and Lance they don't bother to show Allura coming to view Lance in a romantic light after her breakup?

Why even bother in S6 to make such a big deal of Shiro/Kuron saying his dream is to be a paladin over and over? Until he was revealed a clone some of us thought he was Shiro, so it's even harder to accept Shiro not being BP anymore.

The EPs seem to be so stuck in their initial idea and salty they couldn’t do it exactly as they want that they just ignore the story itself?

The EPs have spoken of being determined to get the VLD gig out of fear it’d be given to someone who'd wreck the story. That's understandable, but we're talking about a 78-episode, six-season, space opera mecha series. This genre practically demands a sprawling world and a massive cast, and it's far beyond the scope of anything either JDS or LM have ever helmed on their own. 

My guess is that JDS and LM didn’t realize the enormity of what they were taking on, or they (and their bosses) seriously underestimated the degree to which they were wholly unprepared.

Behind the cut: what I meant when I said these EPs are not storytellers.

I’m not surprised the EPs over-estimated their skill, really. People will look at a creative process like art –- where you often start young, practice daily, maybe study it formally, apprentice or intern (especially in animation), and gradually work your way up -- and they see the effort. They know it wasn’t an overnight thing. 

Too often, the very same people won’t accord that respect to the art of storytelling. It’s treated like divine inspiration, something that just happens. We’ve been hearing and reading and watching stories all our lives; how hard can it be to do it ourselves?

It’s goddamn hard, is what it is. I would love to tell you otherwise, but that’s the truth. You can rock your dialogue but you gotta track character goals, too. Complicated backstories only get you so far if you don’t understand how to modulate tension. You can have a great premise but you still gotta resolve the damn thing. A story has a hundred moving parts; scale up to a space opera’s necessary levels of epic and we’re talking exponentially more.

In my experience, the hardest part of storytelling — not the technical aspects of writing, but the art of storytelling — is holding the shape of the story in your head. The entire thing, all at once. You have to, if you’re to see how a choice at this point will echo down the line, or a motif laid here should reflect there, how the theme shifts but stays true from start to end, how these secondary arcs weave together to undergird the main arc.

I’d say a lot of what we learn in our first few novels is how to see — and hold —the story’s shape in our head. I’m not talking dialogue or voice acting or choreography. I’m talking about the overall shape, the vision and theme it establishes, evolves, and eventually resolves.

If we cannot, we will find our stories promise peaches and deliver pine cones.

Looking back, there are too many clues --- almost all given by the EPs themselves --- that they didn't have the experience to do this story justice. What they did have was a certainty that their vision was the best, an inability to deviate from that one story they'd devised, and a continual low-grade frustration at being held back.

Let's go back to the beginning. S1 starts a little rocky (to be expected as a team finds its groove), but S2 builds on S1 quite deftly. It’s not perfect, but in a storytelling sense, it’s the strongest season, and it's much too self-assured to be a beginner’s. It moves swiftly but steadily to a pivotal midpoint, and from there snowballs gracefully into its finale; it balances nuanced characterization with plot movement, and its opening promises bear fruit by the end.

In those earliest interviews and panels, the EPs are often casually vague about basic details, like character ages or relationships. At least twice their answers change, giving the impression they hadn't known and had needed to confirm with someone else. Generally, though, they're low-key and hopeful, possibly leaning on the borrowed confidence of that other storyteller’s influence.

By S3/S4, their tone shifts to a peculiar kind of non-ownership. They joke about having no idea what's going on, tossing out guesses as though they'd be the last to know. They offer head canons, rather than insight. They wear their frustration openly, alluding to the story they'd wanted, chafing at what had been decided for them.

As the story moved into the split-seasons, it's clear that whomever lent that guiding hand in S1/S2 was no longer present. Someone else’s fingerprints are on S3, and my guess is it’s mostly Hedrick, at least on the script-level. The word choices change, the cadences change, the beats change. From S3 on, VLD has all the hallmarks of a muddy vision. 

You can see that in the story’s shape. It holds together, but barely. It darts forward, then sideways, then treads water for a bit. It’s erratically paced, dropping plot points and introducing new ones, only to drop those as well. It can’t settle on a driving antagonist, and when it finally does, it can't keep the antagonist’s goal consistent. It sacrifices nuance for one-note characterization, and shoves most substantiative character growth off-screen.

This continues to S6, which generally continues the focus on plot coupons over character goals, exposition at the cost of emotional beats, and neglecting established characters to introduce left-field swerves in the guise of plot twists. On the plus side, it does manage to rally enough to end its multi-season prevarication, and put to bed questions hanging around since late S3.

It's worth noting that both EPs have only a single writing credit each, for the pilot three-parter. That makes it doubly striking that JDS chose to write the Black Paladins episode. After the season aired, JDS complained in passing about rewrites on his episode. If that seems odd, remember that an EP has final approval on every script. If it bothered him to have his ideas rejected in favor of keeping Shiro, it must've burned to have his writing choices countermanded.

From the timing and the episode credits, this must've been around when Tim Hedrick left the team --- and the EPs took full ownership. 

It shows in their post-S6 interviews. Gone are the ambiguous expressions or vague promises of doing their best. Their wording is declarative: what Kuron had been, what Shiro would be, the resolution of Shiro’s illness, the nature of Shiro’s past relationship. None is equivocated, nor couched as head canons. They’ve taken control of the narrative, and their interpretation is now the deciding one.

This change was important enough to them that they had to make sure we’re aware. There’s simply no other reason to tell us S7 had been written in its entirety, let alone tell us the original outcome. Nor is there any other reason to tell us they petitioned for — and got — permission to rewrite.

When I look at S7 with my writer’s hat on, everything tells me this is where the brakes came off. With Hedrick’s departure, there was no one left but the EPs themselves to steer the story. By whatever means, for whatever reason, VLD went from a crafted vision, to a conflicted one, to none at all.

Set aside the larger controversies for a moment, and just think about the shape of S7. It’s almost three seasons in one: the first part skips from event to event, then abruptly timeskips to reset the entire playing field. That second part in turn is divided from the last half by a two-parter that halts momentum for an overlong flashback with an entirely new cast, followed by a finale that mostly backseats its protagonists in favor of letting that new cast dominate.

There’s a common pattern in the way beginner writers react to critique, and I see that all over the EPs’s responses, from the beginning. It’s only grown worse since S6. They can’t quite juggle the story they think they’re telling versus the story they’re actually telling.

I’ve had these conversations too many times to count. I ask, how did this character get from here to there? The newbie storyteller is quick to explain, usually in great detail. I ask, but then why did this happen? The more I dig, the greater the chance the newbie will get angry that I don’t seem to be reading the story they’re so obviously telling. If I keep pushing, they’ll get defensive.

They’ll confidently assure me this is exactly the story they’d intended to tell, and if I don’t like it, that’s my problem. (They may not be able to hold the shape in their head, but they’ve probably already taken to heart the adage that one must stay true to one’s ‘artistic’ vision. The part about listening to critique even when it’s uncomfortable… that takes a bit longer to learn.)

My reaction almost always boils down to: you’re telling me this amazing story, but that’s not the story you’ve actually written.

Sometimes the best description of the shape of a newbie’s story is that of a house after a tornado’s swept through: the front door is on the chimney, the roof is half-off, and the windows are shattered in the front yard. Most of the pieces are there, but it’s all so jumbled the newbie storyteller can’t see what’s missing. They can’t hold the shape of the story in their head, so even when they know here’s where something goes, they’re too overwhelmed to remember the door they need is still on the chimney.

An epic story is no cakewalk, and boy do I give credit for that effort, but it’s one thing to learn by noodling in a fandom on AO3. It’s quite another to do it at the scale of a television series, let alone one with the expected scope of a space opera spanning galaxies. This is not the place to learn as you go.

Here’s why the shape of the story — and holding that in your head — is so important. 

Think of a story’s resolution like a fresh peach. You want the reader to bite into the peach as the culmination of everything the story has been, from start to end. But you don’t get a peach by planting pine trees. You must start with the proper seeds, and make sure what grows is a peach tree, such that your final act bears the right fruit.

I touched on this before with the promise of the premise. Themes, backstories, world-building, and motifs are facets of the seeds planted in the first act. Everything you need to resolve the story must be present when the story begins; that’s where your premise lies, and your promises are made. 

Through the entire second act, the tree must grow. The storyteller’s task is to trim as needed, bind this to that, shore up the roots, add water and nurture: this is where the theme expands, the foreshadowing laid, the questions reveal answers that lead to further questions, narrowing the outcome, each outlining the tree’s shape in sharper detail.

By the time the story turns the corner into the third act, the readers should be reasonably certain they’re going to get a peach tree. This is not a bad thing! You want them looking forward to plucking the peach and enjoying it. You want everything planted at story-beginning to come to fruition, at story-end.

That is why you must hold the shape — the vision — in your head, always checking against where you began and where you plan to end. You cannot throw out the entire tree at the end of the second act and start over; if you ignore the fruit your story is producing and insist on serving up pine cones, you’re going to have confused and possibly angry readers.

You promised them peaches, damn it.

The story is now midway through the third act. Everything planted in the previous seasons must now be coming to fruition… but it won’t. The EPs are openly (even proudly) reversing course on everything that’s come before. That means directly violating every motif, every thematic element, every bit of foreshadowing in word, image, or sound.

And at the same time, the story’s scope is simply too vast, and they haven’t the experience to juggle all the thousands of moving parts. The result is the most slapdash season, yet. Characters simply drop out of sight, only to reappear again with no warning. Themes and motifs built up over so many episodes are tossed aside as if they mean nothing.

The hand-to-hand fights are visually striking — the EPs’ strengths are in storyboarding, after all — but emotionally hollow, bereft of dialogue that could finally give us closure. Characters that would’ve once spoken openly with each other barely exchange a word; character-distinct dialogue is uttered by someone else, as though the VAs mixed up the scripts in the recording booth.

To achieve the emotional heft required for a meaningful resolution, there must be echoes of the story’s beginning. But when the beginning is negated—underscored by a timeskip that resets the entire playing field—there’s nothing to refer back to. The events now are happening in a void, divorced from the themes and motifs that created the emotional context in the first place.

This is by design; the EPs’ vision has never matched with the story as it was told to this point. They can’t go back, so they’ve rebooted. Once with the timeskip, and again with a two-parter episode that introduces new characters that can be entirely their own. Compared to the protagonists, these secondary characters have been lavished with attention to the point of overload: full names, backstories, designs. All of of that, and the time required to introduce them is to the detriment of the actual protagonists.

Whatever story VLD ostensibly set out to tell, that story is gone, now.

This is no longer a matter of losing track of the story, such that the promised peaches have transmuted into pine trees. We passed that point somewhere in S6. The EPs have burnt down the orchard to plant new seeds, while doing their best to ignore the charred stump of the story we'd been promised.

I would've preferred peaches, myself. That was the story I was promised, and that was the fruit I expected from everything I saw onscreen. But now? 

I hope you like carrots.

[moreracquetball]

oh my GOD that idea that you just mentioned about the fan response??? would literally die for that wtf and tbh i just want to see a lot of jason and whizzer interacting because i Always live for that

Media/Fans

the media finds out about them before they’re even like officially dating. Somehow one lucky paparazzi person that is on like stealth mode gets a picture of a tender moment when Marvin and Whizzer are out together somewhere. In the picture, Marvin is like brushing an eyelash off of Whizzer’s cheek or holding his hand or doing something really sappy (basically trying to communicate to an emotionally-stunted Whizzer that hey sleeping together is cool and all, but I want to actually date you, you know). Well, the news BLOWS UP with headlines like ‘Whizzer Brown’s Mystery Man’ and ‘Playboy baseball player settling down?’ and everyone scrambles to find out just who Marvin is. Once they find out that Marvin is a divorced dad, news outlets like TMZ are flooded with headlines like (thanks to @a-lesbian-from-next-door-too for this GEM of a headline) WHIZZER BROWN WITH DILF???

Whizzer Brown secret boyfriend is the most searched thing on Google that day.

All production in the tabloid industries stops as editors bark for their reporters to dig up more on this story. Journalists scramble for any bit of info they can get on Marvin.

And here comes disastrously incorrect articles like:

Marvin was actually still married when he and Whizzer started “dating.” Whizzer was the cause of his divorce.

Marvin is like 15 years older than Whizzer and is basically using Whizzer for his money.

Marvin has been Whizzer’s secret boyfriend (HUSBAND???) for over ten years now and it’s been kept well hushed hushed secret bc Whizzer has built a brand out of Gay Baseball Player/Playboy.

Jason is Marvin and Whizzer’s adopted child.

CONSPIRACY THEORY: Marvin and Whizzer are not actually together at all. Marvin is not even gay! Whizzer just wanted to rebrand himself from “player on and off the field” and so hired Marvin to be his fake boyfriend (pretending to be “settling down”). (this prompts a startled Marvin to exclaim, “How could anyone think I was straight???” to which Whizzer dead-panned responded, “Honey, no self-respecting gay man dresses like that.”

Also consider the TMZ panel (also credit to @a-lesbian-from-next-door-too for this exchange, too)

“Marvin? What kinda name is Marvin?”

“I know. It’s such an old man’s name!”

“It’s like he was born a middle-aged dad, you know?”

“Uh, guys, Whizzer is a pretty stupid name, too. When you think about it. I mean, who names their kid Whizzer?”

“No one asked you, Brent.”

“Yeah, Brent. Shut the fuck up.”

Marvin finds out about the news bc he goes to work the next morning and some asshole coworker has taped all the headlines around his desk (the DILF headline is blown up and taped over his entire desk).

Marvin is obv pissed and lowkey anxious bc he doesn’t want this sort of attention to negatively affect him or (GOD FORBID) Jason. Whizzer himself is just a little annoyed and sees that Marvin is upset, so he tries to like make the issue go away by tweeting out: “tfw ur out with one of ur booty calls and ppl think that just bc he held ur hand u two are getting married’. And uhh, this makes the media die down but Marvin gets more upset bc hey asshole I think I’m falling in love with you but apparently I’m still just one of your booty calls, huh? And Whizzer gets mad bc Marvin is mad and he just tried to make Marvin less mad, and angst angst angst.

When they do get together, Whizzer posts a picture on Instagram of the two of them with the caption 'tfw you fall in love with one of your booty calls’. And the Internet just kinda explodes.

Fans are a little mixed. On one hand, they’re happy that Whizzer seems to be happy. On another, they’re terrified that a relationship will somehow hurt Whizzer’s playing. They then shut the fuck up when Whizzer plays the most vicious game of his entire career and just throws the best pitches and just basically almost single-handedly eviscerates the other team. At the press conference, people ask what’s up with Whizzer’s playing, and one of Whizzer’s team members just sorta smirks and answers for him, “He has a lot of pent up tension and aggression. He hasn’t seen his boyfriend in like a month [bc it’s the peak of the season and they’ve had to move around a lot to different cities and such]." 

Guys guys guys guys, I cannot begin to describe just how i c o n i c Marvin becomes so quickly. 

Because once they’re like “official,” Whizzer spams his instagram account with Marvin - Marvin in a new gifted Red Sox jersey while Jason (in his decked out Yankees uniform) glares mockingly at him; at the park during a crisp fall afternoon, Marvin breathless and red-faced and caught mid-laugh; Marvin comically but dead-seriously holding a baseball bat with a stance and grip that makes Whizzer and all baseball fans around the world weep; Marvin Jason and Whizzer, in a cheesy selfie after a really tough game; a picture of Marvin’s back as the man is hunched over an oven (this one has the caption “I love when a man puts the steak in ;) ” ); a particularly artsy one with a black and white filter, with Marvin (asleep, hair mussed, naked but only his bare arms, shoulders, and upper back is not obscured by the white sheets) asleep in their bed. The fans lose their minds over these pictures, along with the little tibits of info/stories that Whizzer shares when prompted about what a dorky/lame/baseball-hating/he-writes-me-poetry-literally-what-a-fucking-nerd that his new boyfriend is. 

When tweets and questions about Marvin keep buzzing Whizzer, Whizzer kindly asks (not forces, Jeez, Marv, don’t make it sound like I held a gun to your back) that Marvin get his own instagram/twitter accounts so they can just fawn over Marvin directly and leave Whizzer the hell alone to answer questions about baseball and photography and not about his relationship every fucking five minutes

This turns out to be a mistake. Marvin amasses ten thousand followers in six months. The guy barely even posts about Whizzer himself. He posts about broadway reviews and retweets funny cat pictures and every once in awhile, he posts partiuclarly needling things like how chess is better than baseball and he tags and @’s Whizzer in all of them. And everyone??? Loves it??? Whizzer is a little jealous at how people fawn over Marvin?? Like where’s some Whizzer love??? Whizzer is still the twunk that everyone loves, right???

Marvin is slowly accepted by the baseball wives. They’re catty and cliquish and they make Marvin’s life a living hell those first few months, but when Marvin does not take their shit and keeps pushing back, they grow to a mutual understanding that soon turns into begrudged respect that eventually turns into tentative friendship that eventually much much later turns into “if you dare utter one mean word or look at Marvin the wrong way, I will slit your throat with my sharpened, manicured, pastel pink-painted nails.” Whizzer shares one picture on his insta of Marvin with the baseball wives, with a glass of champagne in his hand and looking like he’s talking shit and the other baseball wives are laughing and eating this shit up, and he captions it: I think my boyfriend joined a cult.

The media as a whole leaves the two alone after they turn out to be just a regular couple and not that interesting?? EXCEPT EXCEPT EXCEPT (see next bullet point)

Okay, so Marvin hates baseball, right? This is established. This is well known. This is Fact. Well, after they become like “official” and the media now knows who Marvin is, news outlets start to attack him/make fun of him/crucify him for looking bored at Whizzer’s baseball games. Like he’ll have his phone out or he’ll have his chin propped up with his hand as if trying to combat sleepiness and sometimes he brings like a magazine to read and he always has that bored, vaguely pained “I do not want to be here right now” look on his face. And any time that the Red Sox makes a good play or gets a homerun, it’s clear that he’s been spacing out bc whenever the people around him start cheering, he likes jumps and does that weak, wide-eyed “Idk what just happened and i kinda want death right now but I am being supportive” clap (one time, he zoned out and Whizzer’s opposing team got a homerun, and Marvin just started meekly clapping bc he heard the crowd doing it and ESPN and TMZ and all the news outlets had a field day of making fun of him).

And the media??? is like “why are you not supporting your partner? You embarrass him by looking so bored. Can’t you learn to love the sport if you love him??” and being really bitchy about it. And Whizzer gets pissed and so goes on air during a press conference - when some smart-ass reporter tries to make a barb about Marvin looking bored and in pain - and says really bitchily, “Guys, Marvin just doesn’t like baseball, okay? Yeah, that makes him an idiot - because baseball is incredible - but it doesn’t make him a bad partner. I don’t expect him to love the things that I love. I like that we’re different, you know? That makes him less boring. Like, he goes to my games even though he hates baseball. That is being supportive. Like fucking hell, guys, I’m with him because he makes me laugh and has a great ass - not because he’s some super baseball fan.” CUE MIC DROP.

And yeah, there are homophobic reactions to the relationship. Facebook groups dedicated to it. Marvin gets hate mail and one time got like yelled at on the street. Some of the media’s stories are overtly homophobic and overly crass. It’s 2017, sure, but there are still idiots out there.

Marvin and Whizzer don’t let the attention - good or bad - get to them. They just keep being in love and posting overly sappy instagram posts about their anniversaries and poking fun at each other on twitter and the attention never breaks them.

I will posts Jason specific headcanons later but like dang, this took a lot out of me bc I have a lot of FEELINGS and if you have more headcanons about this topic, reblog and add your own bc I’m curious how you feel the media/fans would take this.

[lilyevane]

 LIYAH’S BLOG TUTORIALS  — 02. how to make icons

DIFFICULTY: ★★☆☆☆

@tonqs requested maybe about how you make your icons?

ASKBOX!: please check the tutorial requests list before sending any requests to the askbox!

EXAMPLES OF FINISHED PRODUCTS:

examples of fandom related icons

examples of misc icons

WHAT YOU WILL NEED:

photoshop

pinterest

patience

the tutorial begins under the cut! thank you so much for your lovely feedback on the previous tutorial, it means so much, and i would be extremely happy if you could leave a comment in the replies with your opinion on this one too! i apologise in advance if nothing makes sense ♥

this tutorial will be split into two parts, as i’ll be teaching you two different things:

PART ONE: making fandom-related icons

PART TWO: making miscellaneous icons

                                            PART ONE: making fandom-related icons

QUICK BEGINNING!: i’m going to be teaching you how to make a harry potter icon on photoshop. i have made icons from other fandoms before, though since this is a primarily harry potter blog, i thought that it would make sense if this is what i did! ♥

STEP ONE: first, you’ll need to find a good quality picture that you’re going to use your icon off the internet. by good quality, i mean being clear, with good lighting and not anything blurry or pixelated. it shouldn’t be anything below 200x200! i’m going to be using this picture:

it’s obviously quite large, though we’ll be decreasing the size once we crop it using photoshop!

STEP TWO: open photoshop. you can use any version for this tutorial, though i’m using photoshop cc! go to OPEN > NEW and enter these details into the box:

once your details match the picture above, press OK and we can begin!

STEP THREE: now, open the photo of the chosen character that you downloaded. we’re going to have to crop it so it’s the same size as our plain canvas. 

STEP FOUR: the next thing we’ll need to do is crop the picture to 150x150. you should have learnt how to crop on photoshop in the previous tutorial! if you haven’t check it out now, as i won’t be going over it in this one! this is how your box should look like before you crop:

STEP FIVE: now that the picture is cropped, drag it onto the empty canvas. after this, on your right sidebar, press the circled button:

after this, choose NEW LAYER:

my sidebar now looks like this:

i called the new layer “colouring”, as the next step is to colour on top of the image.

QUICK TIP!: do NOT EVER forget to create a new layer! i cannot even recall the number of times i’ve started to paint directly on top of the picture and realised that if i make any mistakes, i would end up erasing the entire thing!

STEP SIX: the next step is to choose a colour that you’re going to use to paint on top of your picture. i’m choosing black!

STEP SEVEN: start colouring on top of the new layer, leaving out only the picture of your character! (basically remove the background, in a sense. another way around this is to cut the character out, though i personally find this more easier for some reason.)

now that i’ve coloured on top of it, my icon looks like this so far:

looks, a bit off, right? the only way to better that is to use a psd!

STEP EIGHT: apply a psd! this basically means enhancing the picture by changing the brightness, contrast etc. you can use the PSD that i gave out in my previous tutorial for this, it works fine!

now that i’ve applied my psd, this is how the icon looks:

you can make adjustments + tweaks based on the lighting of your icon; by adding adjustments to the curves, playing around with the brightness and contrast etc. 

STEP NINE: and now you’re finished! just repeat this process to be able to make more harry potter icons ♥

EXTRA TIP!: and this is an ideal way that you can customise your mobile theme with your icon (cause i have no self-control and i just felt like it)

(do you want to see a tutorial on ways to customise your mobile theme? request here)

this is the end of part one: making fandom-related icons!

                                  PART TWO: making miscellaneous icons

QUICK BEGINNING!: making miscellaneous icons is extremely simple, now that you’ve learnt how to make fandom-related icons! it’s the same process minus the colouring!

this is an example of what you will hopefully be able to achieve by the end of this tutorial:

STEP ONE: the first thing you’ll need to do is find a good picture to use as an icon. an ideal place to find good pictures for icons is pinterest, and that’s what we will be using in this part of the tutorial! open pinterest and in the search bar, type in words such as “femme” or “people” or “girls”.

STEP TWO: the usual drill, choose “boards” from the different filters.

this should warrant a variety of different boards. look through them and start saving pictures which you would like to use for your icons, anything that appeals to you!

i chose this picture—and i’ll be showing you how to edit it to make it look like the finished product above!

it’s extremely big, but we’ll be editing that soon!

STEP THREE: once you’ve chosen some pictures you like (i’m only showing you one right now) save it to your computer and then open photoshop. the version i’m using is photoshop cc, though any version will work!

STEP FOUR: once you’ve successfully opened photoshop, clikc on FILE > NEW and enter these details into the popup box before clicking OK:

STEP FIVE: now, open the picture you saved earlier and it’s time to crop it to fit the size of the canvas! this is how your cropping panel should look like before you crop:

you should have successfully cropped the picture! drag it into the empty canvas we opened and it’s time to add a psd!

HANDY RESOURCE!: you can use the psd that i distributed in the previous tutorial, which can be found here. you can also look at websites such as @itsphotoshop, @yeahps and @completeresources, they all have amazing psds !

STEP SIX: apply a psd to your icon!

the icon used to look like this before:

though now that you’ve added a psd, it looks like this:

STEP SEVEN: and now you’re finished! repeat this process to be able to make more misc icons! ♥

EXTRA TIP!: an ideal way to customise your mobile theme with this icon (i’m planning on releasing more new ones soon) is like this:

(TIP): it’s nicer to have more minimalist mobile themes than to have a mobile theme which has a lot going on (eg. a very vibrant header, colours that clash together and don’t look nice such as red and green etc.)

i am extremely sorry if none of this made sense, and now that i look back on this tutorial, it really does look like a load of rubbish! if you feel like you didn’t learn anything through this tutorial, please come shout at me through PM on ways that i can improve next time, i really don’t mind!

QUICK FEEDBACK!: do you have some feedback for this tutorial? it would mean so much to me if you could fill out this quick form telling me your opinion, thank you so much! i hope you have a lovely week and keep being amazing ♥

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