#I'm not a writer but it's so comical that i do this with my college papers

[slippery-minghus]

x

[neil-gaiman]

HELLO MR GAIMAN MY SCHOOL IS HAVING A CAREERS TALK AND I AM MEANT TO ASK SOMEONE ABOUT THEIR CAREER.

UNFORTUNATELY, EVERYONE I KNOW IS A DOCTOR (WELL NOT REALLY UNFORTUNATELY, BUT IN THE GRAND SCOPE OF CAREER FAIR THINGS. I WANT TO PRESENT A JOB THAT WOULD INSPIRE THOSE WHO ARE INVESTED IN WRITING AND DIFFER FROM OTHERS). WOULD YOU PLEASE MIND ANSWERING THESE QUESTIONS FOR ME? THANK YOU SO MUCH, KING. YOU ARE AMAZING AND I ADMIRE YOUR WORK GREATLY.

(I WOULD GOOGLE THIS INFO BUT APPARENTLY I'M MEANT TO ASK YOU THIS YOURSELF.)

What is your job title?

Do you work for a company? If so, which one?

What does your job involve on a daily basis?

Do you have qualifications directly related to this job?

What has been your career path?

Did you do A levels at school? If so, were they directly relevant to your career path?

Did you go to university? If so, what did you study? Was your degree relevant to your current job?

Any tips to those unsure about their own career paths?

Thank you so so much !!!!!! You are an icon and I must thank you for writing the graveyard book, which helped my imagination as a kid a lot, and also in general. You are wonderful !!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you once more <3

What is your job title? Author and (currently on strike) showrunner. Also, Professor in the Arts at Bard College.

Do you work for a company? If so, which one? As a showrunner I work for Amazon Prime and Netflix, as an Author I work for myself and companies publish what I write. As a professor for Bard College.

What does your job involve on a daily basis? Writing. Right now, being on strike.

Do you have qualifications directly related to this job? Nope.

What has been your career path? Freelance journalist, to writer of books and comics and television and films. Since 2017 I've been showrunner of Good Omens as well.

Did you do A levels at school? If so, were they directly relevant to your career path? I never did.

Did you go to university? If so, what did you study? Was your degree relevant to your current job? I didn't.

Any tips to those unsure about their own career paths? Have an idea of what you want to do and keep heading towards that goal.

[abbyshands]

THE LAST OF US, and the israeli themes surrounding it

i'm very glad that people were able to see one of the previous things i published, where i complied a series of links that you can use to learn more of what's going on in gaza, how you can help, places you need to boycott, etc. however, at the end of the post, there is a large part of it that is DIRECTLY meant for people who play or watch the last of us, or play the last of us 2.

the last of us 2 in specific is not at all elusive in displaying the chilling themes we are seeing before us today. what boggles my mind, is that a select few individuals are choosing to keep publishing fics, reblogging them, uploading content that has NOTHING to do with what's going on, etc. also, you can't reblog one thing about palestine and claim that you care, then flood your account or people's home pages in fanfiction, especially during a media blackout. it just doesn't work like that.

i took the time to make a post discussing all of the israeli/palestinian themes that the games as a whole, but mainly the second one, display. if you are my mutual, a friend, a fan of my work, or a fan of the game or show, then i 100% demand you read this. if you can read fics for hours, you can spend time to read a post discussing the universe those very fics came from.

a lot of us are now aware of the last of us's nature in regards to the ongoing genocide, but not many people know the specifics of it. after seeing this post last night (the person who made this, you are an angel), i decided to take the time to dive into the specifics of the last of us 2's israeli nature, on a logical level, but also a moral level, using a list of sources to help me along, which will be linked at the end of this post. i will link the sources along the way so you know which sources i got my information from.

regardless of if this changes anyone's mind about ignoring the media blackout, or not giving a fuck about what's going on period, know this: regardless of how you feel, regardless of what you believe, from the river to the see, palestine will be free. at this fucking point, the people who are on the right side will keep speaking out and spreading awareness, regardless if you are here to do it with us. that's it. now, let's get into this.

UPCOMING DISCUSSIONS: neil druckmann, the last of us 1, the last of us 2, the last of us show and zionism in the show's cast, boycotting the game and show, and conclusion

NEIL DRUCKMANN

45-year-old neil druckmann, who was the co-director and co-writer for the last of us 2, was born in tel aviv, israel in 1978. according to the above source, druckmann was raised in a settlement in the west bank, where he was surrounded by violence on a daily basis. comics, movies, and most of all, video games, became an escape for him as a child, before he and his family moved to miami, floridawhen he was 10 years old.

to water down the full story that you can, again, read here, druckmann went to college to major in criminology. however, when he was in college, druckmann took a compsci course, that later lead to his major becoming coding as opposed to criminology. soon after, he knew he wanted a career that related to one thing: video games.

in the summer of 2013, the last of us part 1 was released, and it was renowned as one of best video games to have ever been made. in 2020, druckmann and nd released the last of us part 2, followed by the 2022 release of HBO's show based on the first video game. druckmann played a huge part on set, being not only the co-creator and co-writer of the show, but also having directed an episode himself. druckmann will remain involved in the second season of the show.

bringing up neil druckmann’s background is a crucial aspect of what’s upcoming in this post, hence why i wanted to discuss it at all. druckmann growing up in israel is one of the sole reasons the last of us was ever made at all, and not only that: it is the reason why the second game is the way it is, because neil druckmann planted his israeli ideologies right into it.

so, let’s speak on it.

THE LAST OF US 1

on the official the last of us podcast, neil druckmann himself discussed the last of us' link to the israeli-palestinian conflict, and now, genocide. the general consensus was that people will go ridiculously far for the people that they love. this idea of druckmann's was revealed when he discussed the first time the main character of the first game, joel miller, kills somebody to keep his daughter, sarah, safe from harm. this is one of the first scenes in the game prior to the time jump, where the pair's neighbor becomes infected, and attacks them. joel uses a gun to kill him so that the neighbor doesn't harm sarah.

the following is a quote i would like to copy from this link word for word: "Druckmann said he follows "a lot of Israeli politics" and compared the incident to Israel's release of hundreds of Palestinians prisoners in exchange for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011."

the plot of the first game, as neil druckmann explained, is based around a moral dilemma. he discusses how if joel had to kill a man to save a random kid, would he have done it? druckmann himself says, "but when it was his tribe, his daughter, there was no question about what he was going to do."

while the first game, in my opinion, isn't as heavily centered around israeli themes as the second game is, regardless, it is heavily crucial to note that the basis of the first game derived from a real-life incident involving israel and palestine, where hundreds of palestinian people (edit: i believe it is more than 1,000) were released from imprisonment, all in exchange for one israeli soldier. in the second game, the israeli-palestinian themes, if you look closely enough, scream out at you.

let's talk about it.

THE LAST OF US 2

"There is a common saying that if you seek revenge, you should dig two graves. Playing The Last of Us Part II is like being made to dig those graves with your teeth (Zacny)."

nd's 2022 the last of us part II is described down to the last letter in the above quote, albeit the game's utterly obvious israeli nature. in this post, the creator, rob zacny, goes on to discuss the game's theme of a "cycle of violence," and how the game reminds you in each grotesque encounter of the cruel ideology behind that. due to what occurs in the last of us 1, joel, basically, reaps what he sows when he is murdered for killing a surgeon who, along with the group said surgeon was a member of, the fireflies, was planning to perform surgery on ellie, who joel had since grown close to, in search of a cure for the infection that has plagued their world for decades. four years later, the second playable character in the game, who is introduced in the first half hour or so, abby anderson, kills joel to avenge the surgeon who was murdered, who happened to be her father. from then on, the game follows what, again, can only be described as a "cycle of violence." joel kills abby's dad, abby kills joel, ellie kills all of abby's friends, aims to kill abby in the final battle of the game, but spares abby when ellie's conscious morally attacks her for her decisions.

throughout the 24 odd hour gameplay, the player is allowed to play as ellie and abby, abby's parts of the game being arguably longer than ellie's. the idea this, i believe, is meant to introduce, is one of perspective: the player is meant to be loyal to joel miller once the first game has been finished, so when he is killed, they are inclined to make abby pay for it. however, abby's perspective, both in the past and as the present course of the game goes on, is meant to make the player understand why she did what she did. thus, the moral: there are no good guys in this game. every person is as equally bad as the following, and no one is innocent. however, when we consider the israeli-palestinian nature of this ideology and how it is presented in the last of us part 2, it simply doesn't work like this.

“I suspect that some players, if they consciously clock the parallels at all, will think The Last of Us Part II is taking a balanced and fair perspective on that conflict, humanizing and exposing flaws in both sides of its in-game analogues. But as someone who grew up in Israel, I recognized a familiar, firmly Israeli way of seeing and explaining the conflict which tries to appear evenhanded and even enlightened, but in practice marginalizes Palestinian experience in a manner that perpetuates a horrific status quo (Maiberg).”

when discussing the last of us part 2’s plot, one could 100% argue that there really aren’t good guys on the dual sides of the game. if you compare ellie and abby, you know that ellie went on a murder frenzy to get revenge on abby for killing joel. on abby’s side of it all, you know that abby wasn’t all that great before coming across lev and yara, and even then, she killed people to do what everyone in said world aims to do: survive. prior to finding lev and yara, abby had killed numerous people before, and did, as the player sees, handle joel very cruelly before she ended up killing him. here’s one more example, one that’s more random (but it’s simply to compare abby vs. ellie’s people, if you will): joel and manny. joel went on a cross country murder spree to keep ellie safe, and killed a building full of people at the end of the game to save her life. in regards to manny, if you recall a discussion that manny and mel had in the beginning of abby’s parts of the game, the pair are discussing a happening where a group aside from the wlf, the seraphites (which we will discuss later) attacked them because the wlf killed children who were a part of their (the seraphite’s) group. manny voiced how he would prefer to keep their people (the wlf) safe, and challenges mel, implying that those “kids” weren’t really kids, because they were the ones who attacked their guys (the wlf) in the first place. as a general consensus, manny kills several people throughout the course of the game, which can be inferred or seen by the player, making him, for the sake of what i’m getting at, a bad guy.

we see in the game how ellie and abby’s people are unanimously bad. the last of us is set in a world where laws and morals are thrown out the window for the sake of survival, so this is no surprise. however, this dual perspective, “no bad guy,” ideology simply doesn’t apply in the world today. you may compare ellie vs. abby, or joel vs. manny, or bring in more characters in the game, such as tommy, nora, etc, claiming that all parties are bad. that makes perfect sense. but think about it like this: if this is meant to represent the israeli-palestinian perspective, and i give you the scenario of a five-year-old child versus a full-grown IDF soldier, what would you say? isn’t there an obvious answer as to who is in the wrong and who’s not? maiberg is 100% right in claiming that the game marginalizes the real-life palestinian experience. abby, ellie, joel, manny, etc, are not real people. but the thousands of innocent children who have been killed for the ridiculousness and inhumane israeli regime are. you can’t say each side is equal in awfulness, not when one side is full of innocent men, women, and children, some of which could never make it into a year of their lives. not when if one side pauses their battle, there would be a ceasefire, but if the converse pauses their battle, they would all be dead.

“And then they cheered afterward,” Druckmann, who grew up in Israel, recalls. “It was the cheering that was really chilling to me. … In my mind, I thought, ‘Oh, man, if I could just push a button and kill all these people that committed this horrible act, I would make them feel the same pain that they inflicted on these people.’"

remember how i said discussing neil druckmann's background was crucial? it is. druckmann, who, again, was born in israel, told the Washington Post that the game's cynical themes of revenge and suffering is linked to the 2000 killing of two israeli soldiers (tw, lynching), who were killed by a mob (maiberg). allegedly, some of the incident was remembered in film, that druckmann watched, and in his interview, he explained his angry nature that came about in response to the video, and how he desired vengeance.

the last of us part 2 is mainly set in seattle, washington, where secondary main character, abby anderson, resides in with a militia group named the wlf (which we will also delve into later, alongside the seraphites). maiberg brings out how seattle, on a visual and mechanical level, is based around "a series of checkpoints, security walls, and barriers (Maiberg)." he notes: "[seattle] looks almost exactly like the tall, precast concrete barriers and watch towers Israel started building through the West Bank in 2000." here are side by side images for comparison:

now that we’ve discussed this, let us discuss one of most prevalent aspects of abby’s part of the story: the wlf, and the seraphites. the seraphites are a religious group, nicknamed “the scars” due to the scars the members of said group carve into their faces to display their membership, who the wlf, a makeshift militia group, runs into conflict with following the fall of FEDRA, the country’s former military. in a note in the game, a fedra commander explains that the city of seattle has been lost to the wolves (the wlf), who he names as terrorists. maiberg brings out the following: “Here, there are parallels to early Zionist organisations that fought British rule in the region. These organizations were also described as terrorists, and leaders of those organizations later became leaders in Israel, much like how Isaac, the leader of the Wolves, came to control Seattle. Other in-game notes, scenes of urban ambushes, and the bodies of executed FEDRA officers laboriously walk the player through the cliche "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter (Maiberg).”

maiberg also discusses a series of manners in which the fictional seraphites resemble real-life palestinians. here are the three ways he specifically discusses in his original post, but there are much more:

“The same note from the Seattle FEDRA commander that bitterly says the Wolves are in charge explains that it's now their responsibility to not only feed and shelter the people of Seattle, but deal with the "religious fanatics," referring to the Scars.

Later in the game, Ellie finds a location called "Martyr Gate," where the Scars' spiritual leader apparently died, indicating a religious significance of a specific and disputed location, and emphasizing the notion of martyrdom as central to their culture.

The Scars are able to get around Wolf patrols and various barriers around the city via an elaborate, secret system of bridges between skyscrapers. These function as a kind of flipped version of the underground tunnels Palestinians use to bypass Israeli blockades and other means of limiting free movement in order to get supplies and carry out attacks on Israel.”

one more post i would like to link is this one, the very reason i decided to make this in the first place. it captures the zionism in the last of us 2, along with the wlf vs. seraphite conflict, perfectly. i very much recommend you read it, as it explains it much better than i can.

the general consensus is this: the idea that the seraphites are equally as bad as the wlf, which implies that palestinians are equally as bad as israelis, simply doesn’t apply in 2024. as i said before: what is so vile and cruel about a newborn baby? a pregnant woman? an innocent man? NOTHING. part of the reason the last of us captures this so poorly is due to the apocalyptic nature of the world the game is set in. obviously, people would go rogue if their lives were put in peril by not only animalistic infected beings, but also humans. however, we live in a real world where laws and morals do, in fact, apply. this isn’t a video game where those are simply discarded. what the wlf and the seraphites did to each other in the last of us 2 could be any other day for them: but what israel is doing to palestine right now is a war crime, a genocide, and plainly vile.

THE LAST OF US SHOW, and zionism in the show’s cast

i don’t think i need to spend a lot of time here, because if you have made it this far, you are well aware of the real nature of the last of us and the last of us 2 already, so you must understand that the show is HBO’s take on the game’s story (which, need i remind you show-wise and game-wise, neil druckmann played a huge part in). i simply bring it up so that people are aware of the fact that the 2022 show is ALSO linked to the ongoing genocide, and the cast is a major part of that (however, if anyone would like me to delve deeper into the show, let me know, and i 100% will).

for the following season which is a sequel to the last, theorized to center around the happenings of the last of us 2, members who are set to play a few crucial characters in the game have been announced. this includes isabela merced, who will play dina woodward, ellie’s romantic partner for most of the game, alongside kaitlyn dever, who will play abby anderson.

many people freaked out when they realized kaitlyn dever will be playing abby, but not for the reason they should have been. if you are a last of us fan, you are well aware that abby’s muscles are a central aspect of her persona. yet, kaitlyn dever is on the skinnier side, and according to some, does not resemble abby.

but this is not the issue that is most crucial to discuss.

kaitlyn dever is a zionist, and so is isabela merced (i am under the impression that both of these claims are true, but i had trouble finding a source i deemed reliable enough to link here. if i do, however, i will). now, while i’m not here to riddle you with conspiracy theories, people believe this (zionism) is the reason kaitlyn dever in specific got the role of abby anderson (there is a separate actress, shannon berry, who more closely resembles abby, but made a post in solidarity with palestine. this is theorized to be the reason why she didn’t get the part, and why kaitlyn dever was announced shortly after this particular actress made said post). let us not also forget that ellie’s actor, bella ramsey, is also in support of israel, which can be seen here.

(edit: i was informed since making this that bella has a story on one of their social medias, showing their alleged support of palestine and calling for a ceasefire. i’m going to link this post where i spoke on it, so you aware of what i think on that front).

all of the previously provided information brings me to my final part of this post: boycotting the games, and boycotting the show.

BOYCOTTING THE GAME AND SHOW

i could go on and on about why this is so crucial, but we would be here forever. however, i’m going to paste in what i wrote in this post surrounding the topic of boycotting, as i personally believe i got it down quite well in regards to the last of us (the show and game). it reads:

"DO NOT BUY TLOU, TLOU REMASTERED, TLOU2, TLOU2 REMASTERED, OR ANY GAME FROM ND! neil druckmann has donated money to the IDF in the past. & where do you think he’s getting his money from? yeah, you got that. watch gameplays, pirate these games, or buy them secondhand. several shops sell used games. & for those of you who went and purchased the game anyway, knowing about all of this? fuck you.

if you think your $10 doesn’t matter, then think about this: okay, one person spends $10 on the game. whatever. but when 100,000 people do it? that’s a million dollars, going into the hands of a zionist, who is using YOUR money to help kill innocent men, women, and children. put that in your pipe and smoke it.

it is not just the games you need to boycott. HBO’S show also needs to be. follow this link to learn of more movies and shows you need to boycott, & the reasons why, including the last of us. let’s also not forget that dina & abby’s actresses are in support of israel, and BELLA RAMSEY, ellie’s actress, has also shown support.

boycott. the fucking. show. there are a million websites where you can pirate it, so you are not giving any of your support to it. resist."

what it comes down to is this: purchasing the game or watching the show directly from nd or HBO is not a must. spreading awareness and speaking out about palestine is. you are more than capable of not purchasing the game, or watching playthroughs, or buying the game secondhand, etc. you are more than capable of pirating the hbo show so that money is not made off of your engagement. it's not that difficult. i have said it once, and i will say it again: boycotting is a form of resistance, and that is the least we can do for those suffering in gaza as you read this. resist. people openly admitting that they went and purchased the game anyway simply make me sick. i hope you know what an awful thing to brag about that is, and how despicable of a human it makes you.

CONCLUSION

there's so much to discuss when it comes down to this topic, and it's possible that in the future, i will make a second part to this. however, for now, i really hope this does suffice. i believe knowing of the game's israeli nature is a step. but knowing the specifics is a leap, one that i need everyone engaged in this fandom to take, hence why i wanted to make this post at all.

i'm not saying anyone needs to quit liking the games or the show or whatever. i'm not saying you need to delete or throw away a game you spent $60 on. i've seen so many people who are way too dense to understand that. what i'm saying is that it's crucial you are at least AWARE of the content you are consuming. aware of why it even came about at all.

in my opinion, you can't separate the game from the roots. but you can remain aware of the inner workings of this world you've grown to love. you can keep spreading awareness about it, and you can do right by the people in gaza by discussing the ongoing genocide, and using your voice as much as you can.

i'm so lucky to have been able to gain a following on here in such a short amount of time, even if that following has gone up and down because i've chosen to post more about palestine as opposed to my previous content (granted, that fact won't deter me at all). i will keep using said following to keep speaking out for the people in gaza, and i encourage you to do the same. keep reblogging. keep speaking up. keep using your voices. the people in gaza need us. be there for them.

FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE 🇵🇸🍉.

LINKS AND RESOURCES:

neil druckmann | the official the last of us podcast | the not so hidden israeli politics of the last of us 2, by emanuel maiberg (i highly recommend you read the full post. it discusses several crucial details i didn't discuss in this post) | galid shalit prisoner exchange | Neil Druckmann Speaking on the Washington Post | 2000 killing of two israeli soldiers (TW: LYNCHING) | 'The Last of Us Part II' Is a Grim and Bloody Spectacle, but a Poor Sequel | Veiling Colonial Violence: The Last of Us Part II, Israel and the Erasure of Power (full disclosure, i did not read the full post. i merely needed the quote in the very beginning of it) | zionism in tlou2 | isabela merced | kaitlyn dever | bella ramsey's support of israel

PALESTINE LINKS

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[kbspangler]

This is the public statement from @alepresser and myself which went up at Webtoons tonight.

Now for some ranting. Just from me, not from Ale—she's innocent of the art crimes I've committed in the past, and boy howdy have I committed art crimes.

This is the first page of my first webcomic, A Girl and Her Fed. I started this thing back in 2006. (I don't actually need a head count of those reading this who weren't yet born in 2006. I'm sure you're delightful and I wish you well in college.)

And this is the last page I drew in early 2020 before I turned art duties over to Dr. Beer. It's better, right?

Well, these days, A Girl and Her Fed has pages like this:

I drew this comic for fourteen fucking years because it's a story I wanted to tell, and I thought webcomics were the perfect format for it. I didn't know how to draw. I got better through sheer obstinate perseverance and sticking to deadlines as best I could for, again, fourteen fucking years. I sought out a replacement artist when I ran into time constraints and couldn't do art plus writing anymore; I'm a much better writer than an artist, so I had no problems whatsoever kicking art to the curb.

The first time Ale sent me art that would go up on the website—art I hadn't needed to draw myself—I literally cried in relief because I had been grinding myself down for, yet again, fourteen fucking years.

So when I read comments from people who say they want to make a webcomic but can't draw themselves and therefore need to resort to AI, that little line between my eyes gets dangerously deep.

This isn't like I'm some old dude who's bitching over student loans getting cancelled after making regular payments. This is me, someone who threw raw art onto the internet like a monkey hurling fresh poo, because I wanted to make a webcomic and the art is part of the process of storytelling via webcomics! I could've (arguably should've) hired an artist right out of the gate, and that would've been part of the process of making comics, too: a partnership between an artist and a writer is also something which grows and develops over time.

For example, after Dr. Beer and I spent two years working on AGAHF, we decided we enjoyed our partnership so much that we set out to make another webcomic! It's great! It's got wonderful art and consistent storytelling! You should read it!

But turning art duties over to unaltered images generated by AI because you want to make a webcomic but "just can't draw" is, frankly, a bullshit excuse. I'm not talking about persons who are physically unable to draw due to disability—I'm talking about people who say they want to make webcomics but simply don't wanna do the art part.

Friends, if you don't want to show your entire ass in front of God and country, you don't actually want to make a webcomic.

Do the thing yourself.

If you're scared, don't be. Take the plunge. Set a goal of twenty strips and do the thing yourself. If you can already draw but can't write? Great! Write twenty strips, write forty panels, etc. You might surprise yourself. If you can write but can't draw? Great! Draw twenty panels and see what happens.

Whatever comes out of it, it's a thing you've done yourself. It's something new you've given to the world, no matter how big or small. Be proud of that. And if you need to partner with someone else to make your comic dreams work? You can do that, too! It's still a thing you've done yourself, and many projects are stronger when done together.

...but maaaaaaaaaybe hire that partner before you've busted your own ass for fourteen fucking years. That one's on me.

[lilybug-02]

Happy 2 Year Anniversary to The Chara Timeline ✨

I FINALLY made drawing references for you guys, yippie!✨

It’s wild how long I’ve been working on this comic without reference sheets. I’m never that consistent with my art style, so I figured it was a waste of time 🫥💀😔 this is my first full comic okay…

Thoughts and Feelings About the Comic Below ❤️💖💕💞

Wow. It’s been 2 years??? I thought I would be done with this comic in 2 months! I don’t know whether to feel worried or accomplished!!

(With months between each update, I understand why it’s been 2 years. I’m a slow writer and artist and well- many things have come up in my life that had to come first, like my sisters wedding! 💞 and college 😅)

I want to thank my family and friends (WHO DO NOT READ THIS COMIC- THANK GOD) 💕 AND I want to THANK YOU! The readers! 💐💐

You guys are relentless! I’m as impatient as traffic and yet you guys wait for weeks or months at a time for like 4 pages?! You guys don’t even complain!!! I truly want to thank you all for that ❤️ it helps me so much. Being busy and getting burnt out are common and it helps me feel relaxed that i'm not on a timer. Literally tho- you guys keep this comic chugging I swear. Tysm 💐

Unorganized rambling about the comic ahead :) ⭐️🔥

—

My feelings with this comic are actually so complicated. On one hand I hate looking at my older art because GOD IT LOOKS SO OFF I want to stab it, and then on the other hand I am so so proud of myself for even continuing it this far. Ngl the weird route has been one of my favorite parts of this comic. It took me FOREVER to figure out an ending, but damn do I still get chills >:) hehe.

I’m still miffed that I named this project “Deltarune: The Chara Timeline” I could have gone for something so much COOLER. Doesn’t help I use like 7 different titles for it either. We got Deltarune the Chara timeline, Deltarune chara timeline, THE Chara timeline, chara timeline, Ct??? Man,,, I’m crazy. I take after my family so hard. We have 3 names for each of our dogs 💀.

Comic/Animation Tip i have learned. It is VERY GOOD to make the character relatively simple in design. Shape language is also super important, ((but I never really got around to doing that before I was half way through the comic, woops.)) These things can make ur process go by so much faster. This whole comic has been a HUGE learning curve. LIKE OH MY GOD. I had to learn how to draw backgrounds, write dialogue, plan a story, learn how to draw fast and draw noses (which god damn I really still can’t). And I had to learn how the heck to squeeze art into a tiny page and make it not look grainy. It's intense!

Anyways.... this has been such an awesome opportunity! Thanks Toby Fox!

I totally ran out of “art time” for my iPad and wanted to finish this today. So it’s a bit rushed. I’ll add weapons and possibly the other characters later :)

Oh shi- I forgot to add this grainy image of the next few pages lmao

[bloominglegumes]

earthspark season 2 head in my hands,,,

maybe ill delete this later but i want to just get some thoughts out

spoilers below

ok i absolutely love what they set up in season one, every member of the malto family was used so well to compare and contrast with the experiences of the cybertronian characters familiar to us, these tired war veterans and resentful past allies ,,, like one of the big ones in my head right now being their choice to use bumblebee, The Kid Appeal Transformer, making him switch out of being a soldier and into a mentor (not sergeant, not commander, just unqualified older sibling-type position) for a herd of kids who have practically no concept of war and its implications was so so juicy. it's been repeated in practically every bit of transformers media ever that bumblebee is the designated little guy, the friendly one, the autobot who most easily makes friends with aliens, we've seen it in g1, in idw, in bayverse, tfa, tfp, cyberverse, i'm sure there are more versions that i can't think of at the moment

what they did to bumblebee in earthspark was essentially still put him in this best friend role, but the twist was how bumblebee did not even want to be there and didn't know a thing about kids and i loved it and i know many other people loved it as well.. even if the earthspark characters were roughly developed from their g1 base, this bumblebee was so clearly more used to being on a battlefield than just hanging out, he struggled with interactions that weren't like the 'ready to jump into a fight in an instant' dynamic that he was used to, though still having that sort of fuzzy playfulness that bumblebee is always written with ykyk

i think the writers made some really fascinating choices in taking some darker elements like in the idw comics and sort of filtering it for the audience through the malto family, but not baby-padding the real emotions behind the characters' experiences if that makes sense?? take megatrons grief and guilt for instance, the presence of the kids didn't diminish the reality of what he'd done or the consequences, but they sort of worked like a frame to have megatrons actions recounted in a particular direction. thrash's unwillingness to deal with the aftermath of a war the terrans had no part in was so.so real, ik i say it all the time but it was, the characters and the relationships between them were written with this real and intimate nuance that i really wouldn't normally expect from a show targeted for kids, not to mention the very clear and loving representation for poc, lgbtq+ identities, immigrant experiences, disabled ppl,,,

dont even get me started on the visuals, the sound design, the animation quality,,, i've only loosely been in animation college for a bit, i know there's still so much i don't know, but for sure i feel like earthsparks quality was pretty insane for regular series episodes

plus their character designers knew what they were doing + went so hard in the best way,,and the action scenes were beautifully choreographed, every character had their own unique movements and fighting style (think of the soundwave fight in decoy or megatron + optimus against skywarp + novastorm in age of evolution) in a way that i think definitely rivalled tfp in its intricacy and life-feeling. the camera work was stunning, the acting was on point and consistent for each character, the 2d effects were vibrant and gorgeous and so full of life, i'd say earthsparks effects are one of its most distinct stylistic choices and its so so excellent and i adore every smoke cloud and smear and electric zap and ghgruhgf

which is why it breaks my heart seeing season 2 open with such a noticeable decrease in quality,, breaks my heart that they didnt receive enough of a positive reception or whatever exactly it was that led to the earthspark team having to trim down and cushion their story

i still think earthspark is a really fun transformers show with a delightful cast, amazing voice actors, and i don't want to bash any particular member of the crew for things beyond their control. there's no doubt in my mind that the current team on earthspark is full of incredibly skilled artists, and i'm sure many people, including myself, will continue to enjoy the series going forward,, i'm just. disappointed that its not the best that it could have been.

a lot of season 2's writing just felt like.a regular kids show??? feels almost similar to cyberverse's fluctuation in tone throughout each of its seasons, s1 was full of generically-kid-friendly humour and gags, then sort of shockingly plummeted into that whole arc with starscream and the allspark monsters,, like, either direction would be fine and fun, but it's just the sudden change that makes it oofy for me ;-;

from just looking at the visuals, the character animation is less crafted and careful than it is in season 1,, i can really only describe it as it now being closer to what i'd think of as 'regular tv animation, made to be released on a schedule', rather than 'oh my god look at that secondary action replay replay now'. the characters movements are stiffer, less weighted, less natural-feeling, and if you're looking for it, it's clear where they loop animation or sort of sneak their camera shots to simplify actions, like a few fight scenes that had sections simplified into slowmo hit poses rather than being fully animated,, again its more or less fine for any other tv series, but it just feels off after being used to the look we had in s1

then the character animation goes hand in hand with the character writing + the dialogue, also just feeling like a lot of the original story they wanted to tell has been padded up and swaddled with more lighthearted, universally acceptable, safe plots. the goals and obstacles that came up in each episode didn't have the same emotional depth as in s1, where the main leads of each ep gained some sort of insight after their experiences + had some sort of vulnerability exposed, yknow yknow??

there are still traces of some juicier bits in there, like for instance i really like the section with the quintesson executioner causing mo to begin doubting quintus prime's intentions, then later the titan being all 'quintus is a prime and you should respect him' in a decently menacing way,, and i am glad that they had hashtag call out starscream and reminded him of their earlier conversation, i really hope they do something with those, but my point still stands that there were few parts of s2 i felt had some deeper meaning that can be built upon in the future.

i feel like the decision to make a timeskip was somewhat of a cop out as a means of explaining away how robby + mo have full control over these cybersuits now, how the maltos aren't shown having any more intra-family or identity-related conflict, how the decepticons all decided to follow starscream and go right back to fighting, etc etc, like 'oh well a year passed, things happened, this is just how things are now' like??? what happened to all that delicious heavy emphasis on growth and the choice to become better as a person and connecting to other people that was in s1,,

i know the decepticons wouldn't all have suddenly decided to buddy up with the autobots, but timeskipping a year and just reverting to the typical autobots vs decepticons dynamic we've had forever, without ever again really showing the thought processes of any of the characters in depth regarding the return to hostilities, when they just spent the whole previous season establishing how everyone is handling the aftermath of the war,,,, its like they've suddenly been turned back into generic cartoon villains instead of the unique individuals with their own thoughts and motives that they were introduced as,,

[diverting for a sec here im also just so sad that theres been nothing to fuel my enjoyment of megatron being very estranged from his high command,, barely anything to fuel the divorced-remarried 3p megoplita dynamic like,,,,, starscream praised soundwave and shockwave both individually, op and megatron had another one of those finishing-each-others-sentences moments, op called his and elitas relationship "complicated" and i love that, but please i'm begging here elaborate,,,give me more drama to work with,,]

even when there are like.objectively horrible scary things happening, like mo going 1v1 against the quintesson, cosmos being fully conscious trapped in alt mode for 15 years, jawbreaker essentially fusing with aftermath and getting betrayed and all their cavewater stolen (is that not an issue??) ,, i feel like the characters are remarkably.unreactive???? maybe its just another timeskip cop out, ~a year has passed so they've gotten used to it~, except they all still clearly behave like the children they are,.

and it seems to be turning earthspark from being, in my opinion, one of the most emotionally charged + mature transformers series out there rn into just. i'm going to say it again, it's just starting to feel like a generic kids show, unless whoever controls this show at hasbro can get it back to the high standard it started itself at.

i've read news of nightshade's pronouns being cause for negative reception, and some reviews of s1 say earthspark is too 'woke', that kids shouldn't be watching shows pushing that type of agenda. i'm not sure if that's the main reason for this big change in s2 for the much 'safer' writing, or if there's more that i'm just not aware of right now, but like. man. i hate.creativity trying to survive capitalism the show is about love and family and cool robots wtf is wrong with people who genuinely hate that

i know i won't make much of an impact with just this post, i doubt anyone is still reading this,, but seriously, earthspark is clearly a love letter made by tf fans for tf fans, in such a wonderful, gorgeous package, and it really breaks my heart so much to see all the great things established in season 1 practically go to waste. i haven't said this enough before, if you enjoy earthspark, please support it through official means however you can, leave good reviews or buy their stuff, just let the decision-makers know they can profit from making this show better,, i really hope it survives to complete the story they want to tell

[comicaurora]

Hi! I'm a big fan of your work. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

 I'm an artist who's been working on a story with a close writer friend of mine since the pandemic. Together we've outlined a webcomic that we're both very excited and passionate about, and it's been a great experience. Late last year we started actually making the comic itself, and a little less than a year later we're 37 pages in. 

I wanted to ask you how you're able to somehow push out three high-quality pages every week? I work full time, and most days I'm too drained when I get home to immediately start working on the comic. Plus all the other stuff I have to take care of to be a functional adult. I'm not even that slow of an artist, but it just doesn't feel like there's enough hours in the day. At my current rate, I get about one page done per week. I'm 24 now, I don't want to be in my 50s still working on this story. Do you have any advice for increasing your output as an artist without completely overwhelming yourself?

Sorry for the wordy question. There's a reason I'm the artist and not the writer.

Oof, that's a tough one!

I mean, to start with, a fundamental difference in our schedules is I don't work full time. Everything I do for a living is very self-scheduled, and I can work far in advance to meet the deadlines I set and take entire days or even weeks off when I need them. Back when I was in college, dealing with outside schedule requirements, I definitely wouldn't have been able to keep up everything I do now.

That said, there are still methods to streamline and speed up the artistic process. I don't know the details of your methods, but I'd recommend sketching and storyboarding larger numbers of pages at a time and finalizing them at a more leisurely pace, rather than taking one page of comic at a time from a total blank to a finalized, polished version. The storyboard can be very basic; many of mine are little more than color-coded scribbles showing the characters and text boxes showing their dialogue. It's just enough to be readable to me so I can go in and edit it for pacing and timing, but it looks like absolute chickenscratch to anyone else. On the production side, that makes it much more feasible for me to work on multiple pages at a time, since I don't need to finish polishing one page before I can start boarding another.

This method can be expanded into a bit of a factory production line, allowing for a two-pronged approach of progress - one for finalizing older pages, the other farther along for storyboarding new ones. And once you have multiple pages done at a time, you can schedule them well in advance, which takes a lot of deadline pressure off and can make it less mentally daunting to work on. This also diversifies the space of things you can work on, depending on your headspace and energy levels - which is a useful option to have when you're wiped from outside responsibilities.

[mysticstarlightduck]

Late Writeblr Intro!

Hello, friends!

I figured it was about time I made an actual blog intro of my own since I forgot to make one when I started this blog last year. Better late than never, lmao!

Pls, reblog, like, and/or reply to help boost the blog! 💕

Let's get started:

Personal Stuff! 💜🩶🖤

My name is Anna/Anya but you can call me Mystic, Ducky, or just Anya on this blog! My personal nickname is Ani and I adore it (:

I am an Asexual woman (my pronouns are she/her!) and I'm also personally an atheist who puts my faith in the spirits of Mother Nature, though I respect all other religions equally!

I'm Gen Z and Latina (Brazilian). I was raised bilingual (Brazilian Portuguese + English) and I love learning languages - currently, I'm working on learning French and Spanish! Career-wise I am studying in college to become a character designer and hopefully animator, as I want to pursue a career as an artist and writer! I also wish to have my WIPs published in the near future (:

Some fun facts about me!

My favorite shows are Critical Role, Game of Thrones, Castlevania, The Legend of Vox Machina (animated series), Star Wars, Voltron, The Dragon Prince, Avatar the Last Airbender, Legend of Korra, and DC Comics content, as well as many more lmao. I love watching movies and series!

My favorite Vox Machina characters are Vax'ildan and Percy (:

I am a younger sister 💖

My hair is short and curly (pixie style, similar to the haircut Rapunzel has at the end of the Tangled movie!)

I adore listening to music, especially songs that can inspire me to write my WIPs! Playlists are a huge part of my writing process and something I really enjoy making.

I'm currently rereading Shadow and Bone (+ Six of Crows) and I am always looking for more good dark fantasy/historical fantasy books to read so book recs are always welcome! I also am a huge fan of the Percy Jackson series and Trials of Apollo (by Rick Riordan), though I'm usually more of a gritty/dark fantasy fan (like Game of Thrones)!

I have three dogs and two cats!😺🐶

I know how to play the piano, though I haven't done that in a while because things have been chaotic for me, but I'd like to start playing regularly again in my winter vacation.

I have worn glasses since I was 5 years old and have terrible eyesight without them (and some days with them, lol, so bear with me).

My friends and I are doing a DnD campaign every Sunday, where I play as a half-elf rogue named Aeryn (he/him). I'm adoring this adventure so far, it's so fun!!!

I love to bake and am rather good at it, but am a painfully average cook lmao (some specific recipes I make are actually rlly good, but it depends a lot on my mood and the 'alignment of the stars' lol)

I want to learn how to knit/crochet! 🧶

I'm a theater nerd and love musicals (:

About my Writing!🏹⌛

I write fictional works mostly in the genre of fantasy (high fantasy/epic fantasy/dark fantasy/historical fantasy/urban fantasy, etc. You name it!) and science fiction (space opera/cyberpunk/superhero, etc).

My works usually revolve around themes such as epic quests, secrets, adventure, rebels fighting an oppressive system, sibling bonds, acceptance/respect, outcasts, and much, much more! I love fluff and whump equally, and though my stories tend to focus on serious topics (or at least darker/heavier themes) within a fantasy/sci-fi setting, I like to have a good bit of humor, lighthearted fun, and comedy to my stories to lighten up the mood!

My main WIPs:

Song of Thorns

🌹WIP Intro: (here)🌹

Genre: dark fantasy, medieval fantasy, adventure/mystery, dark fairytale, eldritch horror (mild)

Style: Standalone (possible Trilogy)

Tags: #wip song of thorns #song of thorns

Short Summary/About: "A peasant girl moves with her siblings from her struggling seaside village to the kingdom's glittering floating capital, but after her older brother is kidnapped, she ends up discovering the dark, bloody secrets hiding behind the long-lasting royal family of the town and must team up with a young dhampir thief, the exiled prince, and a lonely druid girl to save the dying kingdom from this web of lies".

Supernova Initiative

🎇WIP Intro: (here) 🎇

Genre: space opera, adventure, exploration, laboratory whump, heist, thriller/mystery

Style: Episodic book series with an overarching plot (each chapter/group of chapters equivalent to an episode in a TV series)

Tags: #wip supernova initiative #supernova initiative

Short Summary/About: "A young intergalactic thief and his crew are captured after a heist gone wrong and forced to accept a strange deal - complete a mission for the Junction, retrieve important missing files, and get their freedom back. All the while that is happening, Jack Tithus, the protagonist, finds himself trapped as a test subject to an immoral, and elusive, man known as the Director."

Enchanted Illusions

💀 WIP Intro: (here)💀

Genre: Victorian fantasy, adventure, mystery, gothic fantasy, dark fantasy, crime-solving

Style: Possibly a trilogy

Tags: #wip enchanted illusions, #enchanted illusions

Short Summary/About: "On a magical setting inspired by Victorian times, a group of strangers and outcasts must work together to thwart a powerful secret organization and stop a murder spree that could lead to another civil war between myths and humans."

Of Starlight and Beasts

✨⚔️WIP Intro: (here)⚔️✨

Genre: medieval fantasy, epic fantasy, adventure/quest, dark fairytale, sword and sorcery, prophecies

Style: Book Series

Tags: #wip of starlight and beasts, #enchanted illusions

Short Summary/About: "A young knight in training and an amnesiac star mage embark on a quest to prevent an ancient prophecy from coming to fruition as a vengeful sorceress queen's army marches relentlessly onto their land with the intent to destroy all their kingdom has built."

The Last Wrath

🔥⚔️WIP Intro: to be made...⚔️🔥

Genre: dark fantasy, warfare, political intrigue, espionage, adventure/quest, medieval fantasy, whump

Style: Book Series (currently on hiatus)

Tags: #wip the last wrath, #the last wrath

Short Summary/About: "In a land torn by an ancient war between two sides of a continent, a mageborn girl finds herself trapped amid the bloodshed after her past comes back to haunt her and her family. Now, stopping the war may be the only chance she still has to survive."

Tales of Wilted Flowers

🥀WIP Intro: to be made...🪻

Genre: RPG-inspired fantasy, high fantasy, adventure, fairytale, epic quest, heist story, whump, light fantasy

Style: Trilogy (currently on hiatus)

Tags: #wip tales of wilted flowers #tales of wilted flowers

Short Summary/About - "A group of youths rejected and betrayed by society in many different ways come together due to unexpected circumstances and must rely on each other to prevent the kingdom's corrupt Head Sorcerer and the King from reviving an ancient evil."

Realms of Loss

🍂WIP Intro: (here)🍂

Genre: dark fantasy, warfare, medieval fantasy, high fantasy, ancient times fantasy, Viking-inspired, prophecies & curses

Style: Book Series (currently on hiatus)

Tags: #wip realms of loss #realms of loss

Short Summary/About - "In a continent destroyed by the fall of the Old Gods, and trapped in an endless toil for survival, a cocky young prince discovers his role in an ancient prophecy after his brother, the King, is murdered and assassins come for him too. Running away into the forsaken land beyond the walls of his kingdom, he'll have to learn to be a leader and save his people as a dead, murderous God awakens."

Mutant Inquiries/Open Secret Files

🤖 WIP Intro: to be made..🤖

Genre: superhero, cyberpunk, futuristic, dystopian, science fiction, urban fantasy

Style: Episodic Series, still in development

Tags: #wip mutant inquiries #wip open secret files #mutant inquiries #open secret files

Short Summary/About: "In a dystopian, high-tech future, a group of mutant teenagers become vigilantes and crime fighters to rebel against the oppressive government regime and survive their crime-ridden city."

I have a few other smaller-scale WIPs I occasionally, less frequently work on, such as Lies Untold and Jade Ruins, but those up above are the main ones that I wish to publish. I've also got a big, secret extra WIP I'm working on for fun and will share it with you guys soon!

[trungles]

Hello, long time follower just on other platforms and I love your work. I am currently getting my Masters in Comics and Graphic Novels, and do tell me if this an inappropriate question but how much do you make? Like a month doing comics and art? Also what do you do on a day to day basis? I'm worried about my future after I graduate.

Thank you so much! This is a great question, and I wish more people would be candid about answering it because I'd like creators to demand more money. This will be a very long post! Keep reading if you're interested. MASSIVE info dump below.

I think earnings in comics and books can look wildly different for almost every creator, and it depends on a lot of things. With that in mind, I make a slightly different amount every year. I view my finances mostly through page rates, contracted projects, and passive-ish income. Because I'm terrible at math, I'm just going to tell you how much I make per contracted projects, plus some relevant information in terms of Life Stuff. This will be very long, and I will highlight some important details that people maybe don't like to talk about very much.

Please also bear in mind that I live in Minnesota, away from all my major publishers and editors who are situated on the coasts, so my cost of living is much more manageable.

Background: Building a Foundation (2012-2018)

I graduated from college in 2012 and lived with my parents until 2018. I did not have to pay rent or worry about food, so I got to save up a lot of money to invest in developing as an artist–paying for printing zines, making merch, travel to conventions, table costs, and secure hotel accommodations. This helped enormously, and I would not have been able to spend six years developing my portfolio and connecting with comics peers and professionals without my parents. They were very supportive, even if they had no idea that I was developing professionally as an artist (LOL, they're very proud of me now, but they truly just thought I was being a weird internet gremlin the whole time). They're also not wealthy people by any means. My parents immigrated to the US in their 20s as refugees with absolutely no money and one baby (it me, I am the baby), but they each became pretty successful small-business owners in their own right and were able to help put me through school with minimal debt, even through the financial crisis in the late aughts.

I started making art in 2012-ish as well, but only semi-professionally, and barely on purpose. I was employed full-time in a non-art job between 2013 and 2018 at a local non-profit that specialized in pediatric therapy. I occupied a role as their front office person/corporate assistant. I made about 40k a year at that job, with benefits, and I made a negligible amount of money doing art and making comics. I should also note that throughout this time, I was working 40 hours a week at my day job, commuting between 2-4 hours a day depending on the weather (my commute was an hour for each direction in good weather and up to three hours if it snowed), and then working on comics for 3-4 hours in the evening, every evening. This meant that I would frequently be working anywhere between 65-85 hours a week for five years, and I do not recommend this! I burned out pretty bad! I didn't go to art school or learn about comics, either, so I felt like I had to spend time building my portfolio to make up for lost time. I didn't even know I wanted to make comics until maybe two years after I graduated from undergrad.

I did manage to build a nice portfolio and connect with people who were making the sort of work I liked to make, so the portfolio-building did help. I posted regularly online in different platforms and steadily grew an audience over the years via Tumblr (heyyy!) Instagram (which I personally loathe), Patreon (stressful, but necessary and also getting more comfortable to use!), and Twitter (which I have very mixed feelings about, but I'll miss it if it dies). I did a few short comics with writers whose work I admired. The Fresh Romance Anthology in 2015 was my first major published work, and it was with writer Marguerite Bennett, who remains one of my absolute favorite people. I was so inexperienced at the time, and she would check in with me to make sure I got paid for my work, and then she would follow up with everyone responsible if I was not properly compensated. Not everybody is this on-the-ball about making sure their colleagues are treated well, and she absolutely set the bar for me going forward.

Doing It For Real + Some Numbers (2018-2021)

In 2018, I put together a pitch document for The Magic Fish (if you'd like to see my pitch document, here is a Dropbox link to it! It's just a book report for a book that doesn't exist yet, and I hope you find it helpful if you need it), shopped around for an agent, and found one I'm very happy with (Kate McKean at Morhaim! She's amazing! She runs a newsletter where she gives you the lowdown on how the publishing industry works, so if you're interested in Books, you can check out her writing over at Agents and Books). Then my agent shopped the pitch around to editors and publishers, and Random House Graphic won out. Also, every time she negotiates a contract for me in my home market (the US), she gets 15% cut, which is entirely worth it to me. She does so much. It's incredible.

Random House Graphic's offer wound up being for two books at $45k each, with pretty standard royalty rates, I think around 10% in general, though there are stipulations around royalties that I can't remember off the top of my head (and also bear in mind that you do not earn royalties until your book sales have earned out your advance, and not all published books earn out). To me, this is a lot of money! BUT the graphic novel took two full years to make, so that $45k needed to last me until 2020, which is not livable if you're on you're own. Also, the advance is paid out in chunks at certain milestones of project completion. I'd get a few thousand at a time for the script, another few for the thumbnails, more for the inks, and on and on until the book is done. I would not start to get paid for the second book until I started working on it.

Earlier in 2018, I'd moved in with my partner, so we managed paying the bills and groceries together. Luckily for me, I had also completed a full tarot deck as a separate personal art project to help build my confidence as an illustrator, and my agent sold the tarot deck project (The Star Spinner Tarot) to a different publisher for a $15k advance, so I had some extra wiggle room in 2018. I quit my day job because this was a rare instance in which a book deal provided me with enough money to live on making art, with the caveat that I shared financial responsibilities with my partner. By this time, my Patreon, which I started back in 2015 I think, was also earning anywhere between $800-$1000 a month, which was really great semi-passive income. I'd post process shots and WIPs a couple times a week, and that really helped from month to month.

In 2020, The Magic Fish was published and got a lot of really lovely press. It debuted on the Indie Best-Seller list, and it got pretty popular in schools and libraries. Suddenly, my responsibilities expanded to also being a public speaker (side note: if you make a book about topics of some academic interest, make a generic powerpoint presentation about it now! I'm so serious!). I stopped tabling at conventions (the pandemic), but I would also be paid for speaking gigs in between. I'm not an enormously in-demand public speaker, so I usually asked for an honorarium of about $500 from schools and institutions for online appearances, though I'm about to ask for a lot more because it's cutting into a lot of the time I need to make comics and hit my deadlines. As people are more comfortable meeting in person, I usually ask for a speaking fee of at least $1500, and it must be after they've already taken care of my travel and accommodations. I'm not very well versed in the standards for speaking fees for debut authors, so this might not be standard! It's just my best estimation of the value of my time and effort for that instance.

Speaking of comics and deadlines, I sometimes take on smaller projects for DC (you might have seen these) and Marvel (shhh it's not been announced yet), and the page rates for those, as they've paid me, are usually as follows: $90 per page for writing ($45 for plotting and $45 for scripting), $160 for pencils per page, and $90 for inking per page. I've never colored or lettered, so I don't know those rates. I do regularly talk to other writers and artists, and the rates for writers are all over the place and seem to depend on whether you've signed an exclusive contract with either of those companies. I don't know what a contracted penciller or inker is paid by them, or if that's even a thing that happens? I also sometimes do comics cover work, and I usually charge between $1200 and $1500. I tend to charge a bit more for covers these days because I personally don't like doing covers all that much.

Starting to Reap the Benefits Maybe? (2021-2022)

In 2021, I started getting royalty checks for both Star Spinner Tarot and The Magic Fish. These payments will vary wildly, and I think they will naturally peter off as time goes on, and I'll need to make more books and projects. In both cases, I was surprised. I think at one point a random check hit my bank account for like $20k and I nearly fainted, but some of the other royalty checks will be much more modest. This process of getting paid is also immensely eased by having a good agent! I cannot stress this enough!

Then both the Star Spinner Tarot and The Magic Fish got foreign language licenses, and those come with small advances of their own, each between $2k and $3k, from what I can recall, with varying royalty rates depending on the publisher who acquired those rights. Those royalty rates are, in my limited experience, more modest than my American publisher's, come to around 7% or 8%. The Star Spinner Tarot got an official French edition, and The Magic Fish has been licensed for publication in Italian, French, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish so far.

Since 2021, I've also signed on to draw two more graphic novels for other people, and my agent is able to demand higher advances for me, even when I'm only doing the drawing part.

My Day-to-Day

I think that's about as comprehensive as I can be about numbers. On a daily basis, my schedule depends on whether I'm writing or drawing. Graphic novels are long projects. I'll be writing for months at a time and then drawing for even more months or even years after. I spend a lot of time answering emails for speaking requests, and my agent will sometimes pass along emails about legitimate project requests (another advantage of having an agent is I don't have to sift through scam emails or shady collaborators). I spend way more time answering emails and trying to iron out my calendar than I'd like.

I'm currently working on my second graphic novel for Random House Graphic, and I'm extremely excited about it.

Another thing I've learned is that I like to bounce between projects, but they have to be between a paid project and a personal project. If I'm juggling paid projects, I get overwhelmed and stressed. If I can work on a paid project and then also make personal art, I can feel some relief and maintain a positive relationship with my work. If you can ever get to a point where you can manage to do this, I highly recommend it. I never want to hate making comics, and this balance of personal-to-paid projects helps me keep loving the work.

Closing Thoughts

My only hesitation in talking candidly about all this is that I'm not sure my professional trajectory is applicable for most people. I think I've had a uniquely positive experience once I got off the ground, and I know most people's journeys are very much not this smooth. In a lot of ways, I got very lucky. And along the way I had help, especially before I got my foot firmly in the door. I don't think I make stratospherically high amounts of money, but I know this is still an atypically stable amount for a lot of artists and authors. And even so, I anticipate that some years will be better or worse than others.

Obviously, I couldn’t cover absolutely everything, but my hope is that this will be a good starting point for you to figure out what you need to plan for the future. Best of luck! Thank you for your question! I’m sorry it’s so long.

[the-cat-and-the-birdie]

'You're reading too much into ATSV.'

[aka meta analysis is good for the soul]

I often get told on this blog that I'm reading too much into plots or scenes or things in general.

And honestly, fair point. I do the most.

And as a writer, I will say that I do it out of pure respect.

[actual photo of me reading the script and going for my 'reading too hard at ATSV notebook']

Movies take years to write.

People spend months of their lives genuinely toiling over these characters, often times creating more work than what can ever be reasonably used. Months of revisions and scraping work.

For weeks, about a dozen people probably went to sleep dreaming or thinking up what Hobie would wear, what Gwen would say, what emotional cues Jess will have.

A lot of people dedicated years of their lives and creative labor into that story.

To me, it isn't at all bizarre to take an hour out of my day to sit and consider the story they spend a lot of time trying to tell.

Compared to the labor they have given me, multiple 40+ hour work weeks for years - an hour or two is literally nothing lol

It's literally the least I can do.

As a writer, I feel like its only right to sit back and look deeper into a story.

To analyze the writer's intentions, or examine their storytelling tactics and abilities.

We are taught to consume media so quickly and rapidly that to offer time to critically analyze a piece of work is considered bizarre, too much work, or pointless.

As if there's nothing to read into. Or as if speculation and meta analysis is helpful to no one.

If someone spends five hours drawing fanart that is accepted. If someone spends two hours writing fanfic, this is expectable behavior.

But I spend the same amount of time to look deeper into the work of the writers, and often times I'm met with surprise or treated as if I'm overly uptight.

It's like snickering at a person who asked there was deeper meaning behind a painting. While standing in an art gallery.

When streaming shows drop all in one day, it becomes about the Easter eggs and watching it as fast as possible as not to be spoiled.

Then at the end of it, you wash your hands of it and wait for the next big release.

People spend years, decades of their writing career trying to write realistic characters with layered motives. Or stories with complex themes.

Comic Book and Screenwriters included.

I myself try very very hard to do so - to provide foreshadowing, and emotional insight into the characters, their motives, their faults.

If I heard someone say that the piece is not worth looking that far into, all the work I've done as a writer gets overlooked.

Writers cannot grow if people are consuming their media without caring enough to look critically at it as the work of a storyteller.

So yes, I'm looking too far into it. Cause writers can write that far into it. And that deserves to be examined, acknowledged, and praised.

To assume less is too assume lesser of the writers who put everything into the media you enjoy.

This year of all years, we should be appreciating the work Screenwriters put in.

I guess what I'm trying to say is - I'm not being an asshole (well, not trying to be).

I'm looking at writers as vital parts of a movies production. Because they are.

We look deeply at the art style, or the animation, or the music. Writers are not shadow figures. They're people with careers. And them and their work deserve to be spoken about and acknowledged as a work of effort just the same as CGI artists or editors, or directors.

I implore you - Read more into it.

If you're a writer yourself, doubly so.

Read FAR into it. Build your analyzation skills, come to your own conclusions. Break the story down every which way and look at the characters from every angle.

It's fun, it's free, it makes the characters so much more real.

So many people on this website hope to one day become published writers. One thing they do to help you achieve that in college, is by racing things like scripts, and looking critically.

Meta analysis is good for you as much as it is the writers.

If you don't think you're cut out for it, or would have nothing to add, still try. Not for the brownie points, but to feel closer to the characters and the story.

If you've seen ATSV (or any Fandom media) and haven't ever really sat and thought about it - everyone's moral stances, why they want what they want, why they've made the mistakes they've had, where you stand on it all - I highly recommend it.

You might come away with some surprising conclusions about characters or even yourself.

Think about your favorite characters, and what might happen to them in the next movie.

There's really nothing wrong with reading that far into it.

Fifteen minutes of thinking, or an hour of writing is nothing compared to the months of work that went into this absolute masterpiece.

Trust me, the first time you catch some shit that makes you go

ITS LIKE A HIGH I TELL YOU.

Touch grass? Nah bro, touch your local library card. Go there right now. Take out this book.

There's gonna be a discussion tomorrow in class.

If you read this far heyhello I think you're rad as hell.

Here's a Hobie for the road because he's a great companion.

Bye.

[daresplaining]

I'm going to need to know your FULL opinion on the erosion of Elektra Natchios in The Red Fist Saga ASAP!

OOF. Okay, here goes...

Elektra's role in the Red Fist Saga directly follows the Woman Without Fear mini-series, so I feel like I should start there, especially since I haven't really talked about it yet on this blog. Woman Without Fear was an Elektra solo comic that came out just as Devil's Reign was ending and the creative team was gearing up for the Red Fist Saga. The mini-series's purpose was to introduce big, shocking changes to Elektra's origin story. These changes didn't end up having much to do at all with the Red Fist Saga, or with anything else really, but they did functionally strip her of her agency and autonomy and made her motivations instead revolve around Matt. Now, Elektra's origin story has changed before. Frank Miller himself gave us three versions: the original, introduced in Daredevil volume 1 #168 and #190, a slight variation in Elektra: Assassin (he changed the timeline a bit and modified the character of Elektra's father), and then an entirely new, in my opinion much less interesting version in Man Without Fear-- which was not intended to be part of the 616 continuity, though that didn't stop later writers from drawing from it, including Zdarsky, who seems to have used it as a core text to inform his characterization of Elektra in general.

I know you know Elektra's original origin story, but I'll provide the general gist for anyone who might be unfamiliar: Elektra Nachios was the daughter of a rich Greek diplomat and his wife. Her mother was gunned down by assassins while pregnant, but Elektra survived. Her father, now paranoid and fearful, put Elektra in martial arts classes from a young age, while also keeping her sheltered to protect her from harm. She ended up attending college in the US, where she met Matt Murdock, another sheltered kid with a beloved but overprotective father. They fell in love, but the magic was destroyed when Elektra and her father were taken hostage by terrorists. Matt tried to be a hero, and Elektra's father ended up getting killed. Shattered by grief, Elektra left school and traveled across the world to train with Stick, who had trained her childhood martial arts teacher before casting him out (in Elektra: Assassin, the timeline is slightly different; Elektra trained with Stick before attending Columbia, though the end result is the same). Stick saw Elektra's skill, but judged that she was too emotionally compromised to complete the training and kicked her out. Elektra devised a desperate plan to prove herself to Stick: infiltrating the Hand and taking them down from the inside. She failed tragically. Turned cynical by grief and hardship, she used the skills she had picked up from all of her training as weapons to protect herself from a harsh and unforgiving world. She carved herself a life from the tragedies she had endured. She became an assassin.

Note that I mentioned Matt's name a grand total of two times in that synopsis. It's not to say that Matt isn't important to Elektra, of course he is, but he isn't that important to her origin story. The star of this beautiful tragedy is Elektra, as she should be.

Woman Without Fear introduces something new-- at least, new to the comics (more on that in a moment). It takes the Elektra: Assassin timeline and suggests that she trained with Stick when she was still a child. (It also brings in things from the Man Without Fear Elektra origin, but I don't think I'm going to get into that here because that is a whole other rant and this post is long and tangent-y enough already). It then suggests that when Stick rejected her, she still ended up with the Hand-- but not of her own will, with the intention of destroying them. No! She was successfully recruited. And once the Hand had her in their clutches, they sent her out to go after another target: Matt Murdock. In this shiny new backstory, Elektra and Matt run into each other at college not as two kindred spirits, but because Elektra was ordered to hang out with him in order to bag him for the Hand...before, oh no!, accidentally falling in love with him. To add extra insult to this character assassination, we're told in the main series that even her behavior during her father's hostage situation was intended as a test for Matt.

What this change indicates to me is a fundamental lack of understanding of Elektra's character; or worse, a lack of respect for her complexity, or a conviction that she operates at her best as a tool to further Matt's narrative.

What is possibly most baffling to me about all of this is that this change had pretty much no bearing on the Red Fist Saga. Why was it made? What was the point? The term "MCU-ification", referring to changes being made in Marvel's comics that seem aimed at aligning them more closely with the MCU, gets thrown around a lot-- possibly too much-- but this really does seem like a case where there's no other clear explanation for the change other than to shift 616 Elektra's backstory closer to that of her live action counterpart. (In the Netflix show, Elektra recruited Matt for Stick; something I, as a huge Stick and Elektra fan, actually thought was a cool What If?/alternate universe because it presented an opportunity to explore a different take on their relationship). The new backstory is mentioned a few times in the main Daredevil series, but otherwise it seems irrelevant to the plot. And that's because Elektra herself is kind of irrelevant to the plot. She seems to have three purposes in this story: 1. To serve alongside Stick as an exposition machine and provide details about the Hand/Fist/Pinky Toe/etc.; 2. To be someone Matt loves and thinks about in moments of danger and conflict (despite the fact that they have very few moments of actual emotional connection in this story, despite getting married!), and 3. As a warm body onto which Matt can project his perpetual internal musings on good and evil ("Elektra was Bad, but she is Good now. She, like all people who have done bad things, is still worthy of God's love and is capable of rehabilitation, and look! Her decision to take on the Daredevil identity is proof that she is now Good! She has become a worthy soldier of God." Man, I wish I was exaggerating.)

Elektra's appearances in Daredevil comics have always centered around Matt to some degree, simply because it is his comic. There's miles of difference between reading a DD comic with Elektra cameos and reading an Elektra solo series. But that doesn't mean it isn't frustrating to have comics like the Blackman/Del Mundo run, or the Dark Reign solo tie-in, that delve so deeply into Elektra's rich psyche, that truly do look at her worldview in a way that is complex and morally difficult and so, so compelling, and then to have comics like this where she barely even feels present because so little effort has been made to do anything other than slap some vague morality lessons onto her and make sure she and Matt sleep together every other issue.

[ollieoliver910]

*In Regards To Wong Creating The New Avengers...*

Yeah, I'm done with Marvel. I'm tapping out. Any lasting hope I had, especially when it came to Doctor Strange. One of the last pre endgame characters left that is still popular and relevant is now completely gone.

Benedict Cumberbatch man...he was so fucking robbed of something more. It also doesn't help that he had acknowledged in a podcast that M.O.M. did not feel like HIS movie...which it wasn't...which is why it sucked major donkey balls. Trust me, you do not want to suck donkey balls, but I wouldn't doubt that the people at marvel are getting high writing this shit just by doing that.

I don't even know where to start because I was processing the "Wong will create the Avengers" information for a couple of days...So I think I will begin things with this.

STRANGE should have replaced STARK as the leader (or one of the leaders) of the avengers. Infinity War and Endgame almost hinted at the fact that this was going to be the case...AND THAT WOULD HAVE MADE SENSE FOR HIS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT! Strange has problems working as a team, something that Tony himself had to overcome for almost ten years! The fact that they had this fantastic set up for Strange, especially when he is the exact opposite of Tony when it comes to his powers, and they didn't jump for it, like...ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? As a writer, this hurts me SO BADLY because it was the OBVIOUS thing to do! Even a high schooler who knew enough about the marvel cinematic universe would probably want Doctor Strange to go in that direction too! This isn't even a college level writing class thing, or a college class that trains you to pick apart every word from a book and analyze it. This is, simply, the most EASIST SHIT TO CONNECT. Even if you don't write for a living, you can just see and feel where they should have taken Doctor Strange and or the rest of the movies that followed Endgame. If it was me, I would have put Doctor Strange and Black Panther together as the next Iron Man and Cap dynamic, which again, with them being opposites (magic vs technology) would have worked so damn well! Sadly, because Chadwick Bosemen passed away, that will never come to be and with how bad the writing has become overtime. I don't think marvel would have the mental capacity to try to catch lightning in a bottle twice.

THIS, one top of my seething list of issues of how they disposed and misused Doctor Strange is why I am done with marvel, PERIOD. M.O.M wasn't even a Doctor Strange movie, it was a Wong and Wanda road trip movie that FORGOT they had set up something with Mordo and NEVER followed though on it. Plus, it didn't even feel like a Doctor Strange movie VISUALLY! That's what I loved about the OG movie. It was a trippy, surreal film with AMAZING effects that were also present in Infinity War, which to me, made that fight with Thanos my favorite scene in the movie.

In M.O.M, all that is GONE! Or is limited to a 10-20 second scene when Strange and Chevz travel to another dimension. I read a while back that Scott Derrickson wanted the second Doctor Strange film to be a horror movie, which sounds fucking awesome! But Disney was so against the idea that Derrickson left due to creative differences...and we got what we got instead...damn.

What makes everything a thousand times worse is the Wong pandering in every fricken film/tv show that comes out, and I used to like Wong! Mostly because in Infinity War and Endgame, he was robbed of any substantial screen time in those movies and I kind of felt bad for him because of that. Now, he has WAAAAY too much screen time, to the point where ALLEGEDLY, Wong might be the one creating the new avengers too...sigh...push an agenda.

Doctor Strange has only been demoted from Sorcerer Supreme once in the comics (I believe) in order to save the whole damn universe, but outside of that. Sorcerer Supreme IS his title. This is what makes him DOCTOR STRANGE, and to give that title to, essentially, your sidekick who does nothing other than berate your actions because your a straight white man is just like...FUCK. HOW DID WE GET HERE??? HOW???

I have no hope for Doctor Strange 3 if Marvel decides they are going to pursue it, why? Because there is no way a writer on that film can develop Strange and Clea's relationship within a single movie right before Cumberbatches contract is about to end. I literally guarantee you when Secret Wars is finally released. He will be one of the first ones to die. Without going too much into the comic itself, he was done justice there. With Secret Wars, his death will be agenda based, I would bet money on it.

So yeah, that's it. I'm done. I'll just sit behind my computer screen and continue to watch Disney burn. They already ruined all the other franchises they own, I guess pain is nothing but a flavor for them at this point...

Rant over.

Edit: Spider-Man: No Way Home is the last movie I felt Doctor Strange was phenomenal in. I wished they pushed the father/son dynamic with Strange and Peter so much more since Tony is no longer part of Peter's life...but don't worry. Marvel will revive everyone and none of this will matter in the end...barf...

[pbnmj]

Genuinely curious, what’s up with Noir’s age? And what does it have to do with his 08/09 run? ((You may ignore if you wish :D))

i no longer have to do an extremely long explaination about comics noir because it has already been done here, by foolsocracy!!!!!!! really great breakdown of his very vague age, which is never said outright in the 08-09 run, only implied!! my own personal take on this is that he's 17-turning-18 in the first one, just about graduated high school but not able to afford college (see the panel below LOL)

this also got a little longer than i thought it would, so under the cut for the rest of it! the tl:dr is "itsv!noir is not the same as comics!noir, and people saying that he's 19 isn't strictly true. to me, he's around 30!"

eyes without a face (the 09 run!!) only takes place 8 months after, in september 1933, which makes peter 18-turning-19. this is more of a headcanon though!! (see the noir birthday poll, which made me a noir-is-a-december-baby truther)

(peter being a libra is mentioned once in the first issue of amazing spider-man (2015), mostly as a punchline, and a specific date of october 10th was given in another issue that i have lost. other media, like with the mcu, has his birthday on august 10th. but to me noir is a sagittarius and you cannot pry that from me)

the 2020 run of noir begins establishing the year as 1939, making peter around his mid-20s, and 25 if you believe me on the 'peter was 17 in noir 2008' LOL.... i won't lie though i haven't read this one properly i very quickly skimmed so pinch of salt regarding my takes on the 2020 run

noir being in his teens during the first original runs is why "itsv!noir is 17-19" goes around so often! i've seen that on tumblr, twitter AND on tiktok and i don't mind what people hc, but it has become a pet peeve when people say it like its canon even though it's never been mentioned by the writers or the art book. itsv!noir is similar to his comic counterpart, but his differences in his origin story make me interpret him as a different noir (like how peter b.'s dimension is 616B, making him... 90214B?)

again, we are straying from itsv canon/etc here because i'm deranged, but i personally hc noir as being 32! some of my friends think he's in his mid-20s, others think he's older, but really the only reason is that 32 is the midpoint between the other two peter parkers: ripeter was 26 and peter b is 38. he's also voiced by nic cage, which makes me think older in the first place!

i just like the idea that he's more experienced that ripeter, but hasn't gone through as much as peter b. he spends most of the movie being broody ("moral ambiguity of your actions!", "matches burn down to my fingertips", etc etc), or snarkier than you'd expect ("it's that easy" "who are you again?" "you gonna fight or are you just bumping gums" etc etc). he also very sweetly tells everyone that he loves them before he leaves !!! i feel like it can in fact be in character for a peter parker in his late 20-early 30s, distanced from his tragedies in his own world by time (he doesn't forget them, that's different !) being able to look out for the spiders around him.

okay now we are VERY deep into hc territory, but it makes him able to balance out the rest of the itsv spider-gang as an older-brother figure who's able to guide peni, miles and gwen but also be able to act as a voice of reason for peter b. and ham if the sitauation calls for it. that being said noir is still peter parker and is therefore capable of spider-esque tomfoolery, which can lead to him misjudging the need for a snarky one liner ("this is a pretty hard core origin story"). my characterisation of him is also very inspired by heyitsspiderman, the itsv fic that changed me for the better, and noir isn't even in it that much LOL

veering back into itsv!noir's age and your actual question though: he's always read older in the movies, and not at all 17-19. noir is always going to be around 30 (32 if i have to give a number) to me!! if anything, he did go through the same kind of 'canon events' as comics noir did, but is an older and more experienced version of him, with tweaks to the backstory (like a radioactive spider instead of a spider-god, and webshooters instead of organic webbing). there are reasons ofc to see him being younger (egg creams are non-alcoholic, and that if it's 1933, his comicsverse self would be 18-19 too) . however you must consider that sony didn't expand on this and therefore it's up to fan interpretation and also that

[sciderman]

I love the fact your Peter learns from his mistakes.He’s literally telling Wade to not fuck up something that would have even worse consequences of.That’s a good man right there 👏👏 praise for Peter

HE IS SO GOOD. he's wonderful – no one gives him enough credit for just how much he's learned and evolved over the years – he's come so, so far. and i have a wonderful little post i'm sitting on that's kind of actually all about how far he's come. but we see it everywhere – he's constantly evolving, and taking ownership of his mistakes and learning from them.

we say that peter maybe apologises too much, but – he takes what he learns forward. and he wants wade to move forward too. and he believes wade is.

wade - wade's kind of the opinion of the contrary.

it's a sore spot.

a BIG huge ouchie for wade.

fact is - wade's perpetually frustrated that peter is evolving much faster than he is - because wade feels like he's relapsing, constantly. he desperately wants to be better.

it's something that revolves in my brain a lot, actually. wade and peter's differing approaches. wade is of the mindset that there's a constant reset-button on him.

and in the comics - there is. wade is a character that's never allowed to evolve in the comics. he's whatever the writer or audience is interested in, for that week. he's been the villain, been the anti-hero, been the hero, reset. back to villain. back to anti-hero. has a marriage. has a divorce. has a daughter. has his memories of his daughter erased from his memory. he is never allowed to actually progress, or have any sort of stability as a character. deadpool, as a character, has never had a status quo.

peter parker - in his heyday - (we don't talk about the last decade of comics) - growth and evolution was the crux of his comics. he starts off a bitter teen - grows into a cynical college student - into a persevering adult, in a long-term romance and eventual marriage that span decades of comics. he becomes a teacher - he just - he grows. the comics let him evolve to the point you'd hardly recognise him if you sat teenage peter parker and adult peter parker next to each other. it's a long game and you're with him every step - and i just - i think wade's awareness of that reality (what with his relationship with the fourth wall) means that he'll always have this nagging fear that peter's inevitably going to evolve past him, and wade's going to be on reset, again.

i think he's terrified that if he loses peter, he'll be back to square one. i think he's terrified of how much he needs peter here - to remind him that he's doing something right.

[neonbrutalism]

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Ship Comics!MattFoggy (Part 1)

Hello My MattFoggy Friends.

Are you sad about Daredevil: Born Again more than likely not including Foggy? Do you agree that he is so crucial to Daredevil and also he and Matt are married?

Then let me introduce you to ... the Daredevil comic! Because if you thought Matt and Foggy were married in the show, wait until you read the comic.

One thing I hear a lot is that there's almost 60 years of Daredevil comics, way too much complicated history and detail and you can't be expected to read all that. And to that I say... correct. And you're not expected to. I myself have not read all of volume 1 nor parts of volume 2, 5 or almost any of 6/7.

You just gotta pick what seems interesting. I like the Waid Run! I started there and have picked and chosen other runs. Nobody actually expects you know the complete history of the characters. It doesn't matter! Did Matt dad die before or after he met Foggy? Did they go to Columbia or Harvard? How old are they? How long did Matt and Elektra date?

The answer: who cares? Not even the comic writers can keep that straight. Just go with what you want to happen! Nobody is going to call you out. If you want dead characters alive, go for it! If you want to import characters from the MCU into your fic, please feel free! It's a 60 year soap opera. Do want you want. If you really want to know, just read a wiki summary.

If anyone gets weird or salty in your comments … that person is making some very weird choices. Do not engage. Good God, it's a fanfic. Do whatever you want. Just reply "lol, yikes" and move on. I am 35 years old and I am giving you grown-up with a job in an office adult permission to do that!

The major differences between the comic and the show are:

Matt is a redhead. Matt having red hair is pretty much the only difference that remains constant. Everything else is different and changeable writer-to-writer. Except early in Volume 5, when he was drawn to look like Charlie Cox and the miniseries between 5 and 6 where in some issues, everyone was copied from the Netflix show and it was weird.

Anyway:

Foggy's hair is usually short but he has 1990s anime girl bangs like Sailor Moon. If you like long-hair Foggy, sure, he can grow it out! He's sometimes blonde.

In earlier runs, Matt is sometimes shown to have been blinded as a teenager, 14 to 16. In more recent runs, he was a child like he was in the show.

Jack Murdock died when Matt was either in college or in law school, either before or after he met Foggy. It changes depending on the writer. He's also been written as dying only a few years after Matt was blinded.

Matt doesn't just have enhanced senses... He has an entirely new, unique sense, radar sense, that functions separately from his other senses. I don't know how. So, if he loses his hearing, he can still understand the world around him.

Stick trained Matt and once, pushed him off a building but didn't abandon Matt until he was in college. Comics Matt doesn't quite have the abandonment issues Netflix Matt has. He has a whole lot of other ones.

Matt wasn't crushed by Midland Circle. But he DID basically die in the storyline Born Again and have to be nursed back to health by Maggie.

Matt's not actually very religious in the comic. He was raised Catholic and he gets more religious when he's especially distressed (and due to inspiration from the show) but for the most part, he is not a very devout Catholic. However, in volume 6 and volume 7, he is (but it's kind of a weird ninja cult way idk i'm trying not to editorialize in this)

Foggy's class. In the show, he is from a lower-middle class family that loves him and Matt. In the comics, Foggy's family is very wealthy and they are pretty disappointed in Foggy. His birth mother, Rosalind Sharpe, is a huge asshole and hates her son and Matt both, but has tried to use them in the past for her own gain.

They're both huge nerds. Foggy's supposedly "cool" in the show but he is not, I assure you, in the comics. Comics!Foggy almost certainly cannot recognize a Taylor Swift song. Comics!Matt likes experimental jazz. I want to give them both swirlies.

What if you want to write comics-verse with Butcher Shop Foggy and Religious Matt? Then do it! It's fine! It's a big multiverse!

I just want my MattFoggy friends to have content.

Now on the downside, as this comic's been going on for a while, Matt (and other characters) are kind of assholes to Foggy about his weight. I ignore that bit. As with all comics, you have to ignore some shitty stuff sometimes because it all varies writer-to-writer.

Anyway, you came here for some MattFoggy Married Evidence, right?

Okay, here we go, presented with the help of my friend @froggynelson and all my chums on Discord and the Avacados in Love server...

In no particular order, a small selection of Matt and Foggy being in love.

One time, Matt got possessed by a demon and Foggy free-climbed a castle to rescue him. He is the only person able to get through to Matt to help save him. Shadowlands is otherwise, unfortunately, bad.

Something else from Volume 1 is that Matt was supposed to be the better lawyer of the two of them. Of course, since then, everyone's agreed Foggy is the better lawyer. But really, they're better together than either of them are apart. (This is the bit that made me think "oh they're GAY gay")

In volume 3 and 4, Foggy had cancer. Matt gave up his (already compromised) secret identity and moved to California in order to help him.

It was extremely sad!!

They had to fake Foggy's death!

He got better :)

Now Tumblr's post editor is chugging at this point, so please join me in part 2 - The Quest for More MattFoggy.

[bi-bats]

Imagine that due to Things and Circumstances DC has handed you the power to make 3 things canon for the rest of time and comics writers afterwards will have to actually abide by them!

What would you pick?

Okay after thinking long and hard about this, I have come to my conclusion. Also this is SUCH a good ask holy shit thankyousomuch this was SO fun to think about:

1. Jason cannot compromise his morals or stance on killing or guns.

Reasoning: the writers are using this to get Jason back in the batfam and I hate it. The WHOLE POINT IS THAT BRUCE CARES MORE ABOUT HIS MORALS THAN HIS SON AND I HATE THAT THEY'RE MAKING JASON COMPROMISE SO THAT HE CAN RECEIVE BRUCE'S LOVE. IT'S A BAD MESSAGE. THE POINT IS THAT BRUCE IS CHOOSING HIS MISSION OVER HIS SON AND THAT SUCKS, AND I FUCKING HATE WATCHING WRITERS BE LIKE "WELL HE'S RIGHT SO JASON SHOULD REALIZE THAT SO HE CAN BE A PART OF THE FAMILY AGAIN" LIKE NO THE OTHER POINT IS THAT THEY'RE BOTH RIGHT! THAT'S WHY ITS SO HARD. BRUCE IS RIGHT THAT ONE PERSON SHOULD NOT GET TO BE JUDGE JURY AND EXECUTIONER AND JASON IS RIGHT THAT THE PEOPLE WHOSE LIVES THEY'RE SAVING ARE USING THAT LIFE TO CAUSE MORE HARM ITS. ITS THE POINT. Its the point. And the fact that they're throwing out these two important conversations (bruce allowing his morals to define his love for Jason, which would be an incredible thing for him to work through, and the really legitimate conversation about how there is no right way to do what they're trying to do) because they want Bruce and Jason to hug is SUCH a disservice to BOTH of their characters. Woof sorry I went off about that one

2. They need to age all the young justice characters to college age and they aren't allowed to go back.

Reasoning: What the fuck is even going on with DC rn? The last comics I was reading, Tim was like 18ish, Kon was reading as like. 16 in one issue and early twenties in the other, and Bart was reading like a 17 year old. They're writing Jon as older than both Kon and Bart right now and I just. What the fuck is even going on? I know he was aged up but like. Theyre writing Damian as like 15/16 and Tim is BARELY reading as older than him rn. Meanwhile, they basically have Dick running the Titans like the Justice League. Wally has kids who are heroes.

Young justice should be in their early twenties. College aged kids. It's really frustrating watching them not age up at all while they age up every other generation. Age those kids up and let your teenage characters be Damian’s generation.

3. Batman should not be allowed to show up in more than 18 comics per year if he is not part of that team. (This isn't technically a canon decision, but it is a rule I would impose)

Reasoning: JL, Nightwing, Detective Comics, Batman (obviously), World's Finest - all of those or fine. But shit like the Flash?? WHY ARE YOU HERE? GO HOME!!!

That said, I'm okay with it if like there's a 6 issue arc of the Superman where he's operating in Gotham. That's fine. That makes sense. And those would come out monthly, so they'd be able to do a comic with him once a month for 6 months of the year and twice a month for 6 months. But they need limits on how often they're allowed to have him show up where he doesn't belong because without it they're just dropping him in everything!! I was SHOCKED he wasn't somehow a part of one minute war!! And like, I love the guy but get the hell out of my flash comics okay you DON'T need to be here. Bye boy

Anyways thank you SO MUCH FOR THE ASK THIS WAS SO FUN ILY 💚💚