#also idk if it's that noticeable but i did some experimentation with the line art for this! was a lot of fun :)

[necrotic-nightshade]

20 for the ask thing :]

20- Blair Whitmore!

God it's been like 3 years since I last properly drew her. Missed drawing her!

I wanna add like. Additional fun facts about each character I draw. Only fun fact that comes to mind for Blair is that she has a pet cat named Shiloh. He's a scrimbly little fella with only one eye.

(Send me a number between 1 and 55 and I’ll pull from my list of OCs to draw from!)

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

“i had a dream about the Borderlands are Yours trailer last night for like the 7th time so i guess i ought to do the analysis before i have a breakdown”

find the trailer here

~discussion of the cloth map spoilers occurs in here, but nothing else. if you’re worried about those spoilers do not read~

non-spoiler tl;dr: we discuss why rhys’s head implant is yellow instead of blue in this one particular scene and also go thru a bunch of theories as to what tf is up with Zer0. and some other stuff about giant space lasers

so the intro is pretty much the same as the we are mayhem trailer so we’re gonna ignore that since we figured out where sanc-iii was

pretty sure this scene has been shown already too, in the official announce trailer, i remember taking note of the pink shots

another cov camp on pandora (see elpis in the back). ive said it before and ill say it again i adore amara’s as animations

seen this a bajillion times as well

from we are mayhem near the end. also im still lowkey convinced that robot directly to the right of moze is jakobs. i know i’m probably wrong but... i want to believe. it reminds me of a cowboy

The Are. this is directly below Sanc-III (u can see the wall in the background)

eden-6!!! im interested in the signs in the back there

Prison, Reliance, Jakobs Estate, and... amoe kyuri??? wtf does this say?? idek.

This A Way (glad to know Claptrap will haunt us from beyond Sanc-III)

im interested in the Prison. i wonder if that’s any of those concrete structures/buildings we’ve been seeing across eden-6. i was under the assumption those were like testing facilities, but a prison would also make a whole hell of a lot of sense.

actually

given this sign here over the bridge to the left of the above shot

and the fact we see this concrete structure on the far left in this coming shot

that might actually make some lick of sense...

also can i just say i love the aesthetic of this supply line

so there’s a lot of shots here we’ve already seen and gone over multiple times, im not going to do that again. sorry but... eh.

maliwan = cultists confirmed

i mean if the cult-themed t-shirts being maliwan colored didn’t already cue us in on that, this definitely should lol

and speaking of this shot, i wonder if this has anything to do with Rhys’s building? the one his office would be in. it looks like there are multiple levels to the right of this robo

ah maliwan working with the cult why am i not surprised

rhys gets fucking annihilated (TM)

in all honesty... given this quest name

“Space-Laser Tag” and the subsequent quest “Atlas, At Last” makes me honestly think rhys is about to seriously get fucked up

which sucks. i like rhys. we’ll talk more about this in a second, but i don’t think its coincidence the VHs have come up to the asteroid belt to stop the giant space laser and thus are not on Promethea where the laser is going to hit

better look at this shot, that definitely looks like a rampager to me. i get it, i think. gearbox is hyping up this rampager fight to be super awesome, show it in all the promotional material, have a kickass fight with it, then the twins come in and steal the kill from you. they steal the satisfaction from getting to kill this super hyped-up vault monster.

im picking up what you’re putting down, GB. 

did not realize fl4k actually snaps. how the heck do they do that?? gotta be hard with metal caps as their fingers tbh

404 space station not found

we’re back on the asteroid

... why this gun shoot tentacles :|

this is art

wheres his head going

i was so distracted by the razor blade status effect (??? zeroes??) i didn’t notice the giant-ass A on this banner

OwO what’s this for

~A~

also this which... looks like it could be an amara skill. maybe the one that releases elemental projectiles after an enemy is damaged? feel like we would’ve seen that one already tho.

thinking of this one, im pretty sure we should’ve seen this in one of the many, many gameplay videos (im so jealous) already available.

so if it is, baller, if it’s not, im not too surprised.

it does also seem to be targeting the double cause its shield becomes visible after being hit

i thiiink this is eden-6? in which case it may be that facility tina, brick, and mordy are in (the windows). which may, in retrospect, be that prison we’ve been hearing about

cool angle of the HBC. im pretty sure we’ve seen this shot before, too.

before we get to the actual best part of this scene

this looks very Athenas-like. possibly eridian? although the lights are throwing me off. i suppose the order or someone from the order could’ve built these structures... but what for??

heheheh

also this fucker has those rocks growing out of his head, too

the ones from the alien guns

somewhere outside the RC

back at it again in the space station

also this maliwan thing looks so fucking cool

duuuude looks like the cult got their hands on more than just maliwan hoverwheels, check out that dropship on the left!!! looking cool asf

the cars are STUNNING

holy shit this skin is amazing

very siren-esque

we’ve gone over this clip already but given now that we know the maliwan base thing is on the asteroid, it’s fitting to re-address it i think

a look at one of the metal bois (that im still convinced are jakobs lol)

i love the way this thing looks

the portal seems to be giving off the same blue sparkles we’ve seen on pandora

these

[edit] we also see them in the newest new trailer as Sanc-III zooms off into space. which is interesting.

dunno wtf that means, but yeah. they exist

probably some weird eridian/other dimension shit.

more eden-6

goliath looking amazing. not red and is wearing a helmet, so that’s interesting

looks like a part of the space station

biggggg hallway. im honestly loving how huge these maps seem to be

geniviv! i love her boss fight sooo fucking much.

honestly looks like so much fun

more c a r s

this fucker

probably eridian

i mean it seems to be absorbing the pink-ish energy from the moving stones so i assume its got some sort of link going on

also comparing the mask and arm bit to what we’ve seen rhys hand us on promethea

this thing???

but yellow instead of pink

u kno all this

ye

then again it does sorta ruin the eridian tech so maybe... it’s not lol

honestly my other guess is this is part of that ‘experimental forest’ we’ve seen signs for during the eden-6 demo. dunno why it’s destroying the eridian ruins tho. maybe those pink b e a m s are hurting it? entirely possible. some sorta... life succ ability like Tyreen.

but i don’t think it’s coincidence this thing has shown up right on top of some Eridian ruins/buildings/whatever. the leftmost part though looks like it could be human technology, which is weird. maybe some weird sort of mish mash. human tech that trees/plants grew onto and eridian ruins accidentally powered up. iunno man. im tiored.

rhys’s implant is glowing orange/yellow-ish which is very new

this is from the dev trailer (not glowing at all in the darkness)

from the promethea twitter trailer

and honestly that’s pretty wild to me because in tftbl rhys’s implant glows blue 

shown when he’s in the vault next to fiona

in bl3 during the We Are Mayhem trailer while using his ECHO eye

oh also since i just noticed

from the promethea demo

this scene

also from the promethea demo

they’re missing their monomolecular edge!

we’ll get back to zer0 in a secco

anyway you know who else’s head implant glows?

im not saying katagawa is replacing rhys because their implants are on opposite sides of their heads, but i am saying Katagawa WANTS Rhys in Maliwan and... well, Rhys’s forehead implant isn’t glowing yellow in any other shot we see of him

idk gamers i just think its sus

also rhys is holding onto that thing we see him handing to us in the Promethea trailer

this thing?? you know?

the eridian thingie majig

tho these look like two different areas... unless there’s like a very drastic wall change between angles (which there may be- these fans look identical)

which makes sense that Maliwan would want it (for the big laser thing maybe?? since we know they’re going for activating said laser)

... but honestly i get the feeling this is in some way related to... after the laser. especially since we know that that eridian thingie matches up with this one on pandora

in which case... wtf is the laser for? it definitely looks like its destroying stuff on the surface...

rhys also seems to have knowledge about the eden-6 vault key since he projects it during the dev trailer

me thinks someone got h a c k e r o n i e d

alright galaxy brain theory time:

rhys gets hacked by maliwan not only bc they want a merger, but also because he has info on the vaults/giant space laser, forces zer0 to be maliwan branded now since atlas is joining maliwan, zer0 finds out rhys is not willingly joining maliwan and is instead under maliwan control and tries to forcibly take the key away from him, we stop zer0 and save rhys from both the assassin and maliwan control

🤷‍♂️

Alright but in all seriousness there’s only 2 ways this can go

1. that’s actually our zer0

2. that’s actually not our zer0

and there’s a lot of theories running around about that and i guess we ought to address them

so for 1 there’s a few possibilities:

1. zer0 is a robo/cyborg and got hacked by maliwan (i personally don’t like this one bc i don’t want to know what zer0 actually is. it is a ~m y s t e r y~)

2. zer0 got paid more money to eliminate rhys and is doing so

3. zer0 decided killing their boss would be the ultimate challenge and thus decided to try it out... by joining maliwan

4. they’re faking rhys’s death and/or zer0 is infiltrating maliwan

5. zer0 got the brainwashed/their bodysuit got hacked (i would be interested to see if the monomolecular edge tech caused them to get captured or smth. i mean if there’s a tracker on it, then zer0′s decepti0n wouldn’t exactly work cuz they turn invisible... but they’d still be seen)

6. rhys got the brainwashed/hacked and zer0 is attacking him to get the eridian thingie/key/relic/whatever back

personally i’m curious how they’d play off 1-3 given Zer0 and Rhys are both shown on sanc-iii and zer0 even has crew challenges

im saying idk if the crimson raiders would appreciate zer0 attacking/trying to kill an ally without very good reason.

which is why i’d imagine 4-6 are the more reasonable answers?

also given the explosion of Promethea (what we’re assuming is Promethea) is green and also the laser we see maliwan controlling is purple, i wonder if that’s some brainwashing juice instead of... other stuff. cuz like.

this is elpis’s giant space laser. very radiant and like... ribbon-y? and has all that blue stuff and orbs and mm.

THIS is Promethea’s very solid and has circles and just. looks straight up like a death laser.

and yeah again it could be modified by that human-looking (?) tech around it to be like a brainwashing b e a m or something

or just more precise. that too.

and honestly idk if this could destroy a planet like how we see the planet (that we are assuming is promethea bc of the asteroid belt) in the sanc-iii article

it’s a solid ‘yeah that’s more likely than my theory’. might take a lot of time tho. or maybe those energy rings power it up or deal more damage when they hit the planet...

oh also given Tina literally says “WE blowing up this whole mother humpa”

and the reason im questioning the human-looking tech around it is because

typhon and leda 100% noticed something here. i guess if it was altered by humans after typhon and leda found it then that would make sense?

we’ve also got this from the tree guy, so i don’t know for certain.

anyway number 2

(2. that’s actually not our zer0)

i love these ones

1. that’s 0ne (zer0′s assassin’s assassin from the son of crawmerax dlc)

2. maliwan made a/hired a copy of zer0 and it’s easy to copy their voice/way of speech bc of the modulator (that’s just a fake implanted into atlas to steal all their secrets)

and all of these have the idea that the real zer0 shows up to save rhys at the end of this scene (explaining the blue light)

this

i personally disagree on that being zer0′s sword. tbh it looks more like a maliwan weapon or a laser or smth to me. that said it could be a weird effect because they’re in decepti0n or smth.

most of these theories have the idea that the real zer0 is either off with Fiona or Lorelei or just off on their own and only show up later. i wouldn’t even be surprised, given their line at the end of Tales. you know the one where they diss rhys like “i was talking to her” lol

so i don’t really have much to add to these. personally i believe that’s our zer0 up there, but i wouldn’t be shocked if something happened with the monomolecular edge that allowed maliwan to create a copy of zer0. or brainwash/control them. whichever. 

i do like the reintegration of 0ne into the story, that’d be a hilarious call-back, but i worry it’d be too obscure (a side quest in a headhunter dlc) for the majority of players. we’ll see

it’s weird if brainwashing or mind controlling thru the maliwan tech is the case bc the monomolecular edge isn’t present on their maliwan sword. or their future sanc-iii sword (but that part DOES make sense bc why would they keep that).

(alright also so i just took a bunch of nyquil cuz im sick as a dog so if this devolves into incoherent rambling im so sorry)

ah aurelia

i love her to bits but i don’t trust her because i mean... she worked alongside Nisha and Wilhelm and Alistair dislikes her. there’s like a 50-50 shot she’ll become evil

i would not be surprised if this is a boss fight (door looks frozen over on the left there) but also i would not be surprised if she’s helping us fight off waves of enemies given it looks like we’re in the jakobs manor

like i said 50-50

her attack does make the camera wiggle a bit, usually that happens if the attack injures the player viewing it (with the hud off) cuz it will give a stagger effect

so take that with a grain of salt. also we don’t see aurelia on sanc-iii when hammerlock and wainwright are both there in the group shot in the launch trailer

this fucker i already talked about a bunch in my reddit post on the eridium subject so im going to link that here. i might have already spoken about it on here tbh... i can’t remember lol

anyway here’s the copy and paste from there to here

you can see a huge Tink with Eridium growing out of his head and what look to be Eridium horns. And he's being elementally charged from an Eridian floor tile (in one of those temples, probably the Pandoran one but it could be Athenas, I guess). Kind of like how Bloodwing (also bigger) becomes elementally charged by Jack using element-throwers to change her element. i know it's a cultist tink because on his right shoulder (our left) he has those glow-y pink/purple tubes that are on the CoV guns and other cultists (like goliaths). and while i'm not sure if this is solely Eridian stuff (since they're in a temple) or because of the twins, it's definitely something that should be talked about. 

wait no yeah i did talk about this because of the athenas post. i just remembered lol

uhhh whoops. double dipping i guess lol sorry

still not sure if this is Pandora or Athenas. kind leaning towards Pandora atm

i like how this guy is able to make a cryo wall thing

he goes to smash it but we don’t get to see what happens cuz it cuts to another rampager

dishing out corrosive/radiation (??) attacks while someone shoots it with a fire weapon

this bamf which i KNOW i discussed in that athenas post

also something i haven’t noted is that his roar seems to be activating something here, like a spiral light of dooooom. also more blue sparkles. maybe summoning an assist? or a debuff/attack aoe. 

there is also this weird light near its legs that moves with the camera and sorta reminds me of the weird real-life face talky siren thing. you know the one

very curious as to what this is cause i haven’t seen it in any other scene with a rampager in it. maybe some sort of connection to the spiral/whirlwind thing it’s making?

oh wow im tired now lol

well bl3 is fully downloaded on my computer gamers, so we can officially say it’s happening!!!

[copperbadge]

Hi Sam, I decided to take my 1st stab at writing fic. Its going great so far but Id love some advice from someone of your experience. I'm having trouble with tenses - Past tense feels the most natural for me to write in, but I hate how clunky it feels when I do action scenes (which I have many of). I LOVE how present tense feels more dynamic and snappy, real stream of consciousness effect...but I wind up having lots of weird phrasing. Idk, is mixing & matching tenses every few paras a bad idea?

Sorry to ramble, I guess my question is how do you tell if your writing is getting in the way of readability?

I think really there are multiple questions here – questions about judging the appropriateness of a style, about one style in particular, and about gauging a style’s readability. All are tough but let’s dive in! 

In terms of the appropriateness of a style, especially as a beginning writer, I tend to recommend going to books you really love, or writers you really admire, and looking at how their books are structured. Read not for pleasure (just this once!) but to see how they construct their paragraphs, how they use tenses and tense shifts, and how they convey information. This is a skill, so you have to practice at it! Look for passages that are mostly information, look for how dialogue is designed (are there a lot of dialogue tags? Are there none?) and pay attention to tense-indicating words like has, had, do, did, etcetera. 

In terms of tenses in specific, you will find that almost no story has shifts between tenses in the way you’re describing, in part because it does confuse the reader – is the story happening now in the moment, or did it already happen? People really like linearity in their stories, and tense shifts disrupt that linearity. HOWEVER, lots of stories do have covert tense shifts – for instance, a story told in present tense may shift to past tense if someone in the story is telling a story, or if the narrator in the present tense has skipped something and is now backtracking to explain it. There are ways to make tense shifts work, though they may make life more difficult for you. 

Lots of people will tell you that present tense is inherently not as good as past tense, and they are wrong; they just mean they don’t like it as much. For every person who says to me “First person present, Sam? Really?” there are fifteen people who don’t even notice because they’re just enjoying the story. 

This does make studying how to write present tense more difficult because you will encounter a lot of haters. However, because we use present tense more often in conversation than we do in literature, it can be awkward, as you’re finding out, to tell a story with it. The best way, again, to learn how to write less awkwardly in the present tense is to read in the present tense – find books that use the present tense voice and read them, studying how they handle wording that you’ve found awkward in the past. You may even find that what you think is awkward isn’t even that noticeable when you’re reading someone else say it. 

I am a big fan of knowing the rules so you know how to break them BUT ULTIMATELY if you want to write a story shifting between tenses, do it and the hell with what anyone says. You are experimenting with style, and if it doesn’t work it doesn’t work, but while you can write for others to read, in order to satisfy the creative urge really you need to write for yourself first. Write the story you want to write, the story you want to read, and you will learn as you go. If other people don’t like it at first, who cares? You told the story you wanted to tell. 

I ran into this when I was learning the ukulele – I realized that the reason I didn’t like playing music as a child was that my teacher was teaching me as if I was possibly going to be a concert pianist or play in a jam band. She had me learning a lot of musical theory and playing a lot of music that would give me technical skills – but they were not skills or lessons that were any fun for me, they weren’t music I liked or the skills I’d need to play the music I liked. And so I didn’t practice much and when I did it was without passion.

Learning the ukulele, I got proficient really fast because I started out playing songs I liked and learned the chords I needed for them because I wanted to play them so badly. I was enjoying what I did and because of that I learned faster. Did I learn every skill I will ever need for the ukulele? Of course not. Some of those missing skills, like reading sheet music, may one day be important. But those harder, more boring skills can come in time, when I already have my passion for playing cemented and I myself am willing to take the next step. And without ever doing anything I didn’t want to do, I learned how to compose songs of my own, because I learned how the chords from songs I liked fitted together. 

Basically, a lot of times, we teach art of all kinds to children as if it’s going to be a marketable job skill. It’s a very capitalist way we have. Very rarely do we let children find the parts of art they most enjoy without forcing them through the parts they don’t, I think because it scares us that they might make something that doesn’t fulfill some idealized potential. Art, in any form, is meant to be an expression of self, but even when we say “The outcome doesn’t matter” we treat it like it’s an assembly line. You can make anything you want to make as long as you make it in one of these three proscribed ways. 

So to your final question, how to determine when style is getting in the way of readability – that’s a really tough one because we are never objective about our own work; we know what we’re trying to say and we think we’re conveying it, but because we have backstage knowledge, we can never truly be sure. One way, of course, is to have someone else read it and tell us what they think; “I understood this, I didn’t understand that.” 

It’s a painful process, being told what we “did wrong”. It does help us learn; knowing how other people see your work will help you a great deal in terms of self-knowledge. But it’s also a process that’s only necessary once you’re already in love with what you’re doing, because at that point you WANT that self-knowledge that only comes from critique. So this leads back into what I said first: you have to love what you’re doing and do it from love first, and only care about other peoples’ opinions afterwards. There is no tried and tested way to know how other people observe our work, but if we love to make things for ourselves first, then we feel strong enough to ask and internalize the answer. 

Basically, write what you want to write, and if you find that you love doing it, keep doing it; soon enough you’ll get bored of doing the same thing and want to expand, and that’s where skills acquisition will come in – where reading, listening to readers, and self-reflection will be helpful, instead of just tedious. At that point you can explore the nature of tenses and how to write in a single tense with more skill -- or maybe you’ll write a crazy fun experimental novel with tense shifts and change the literary landscape. WHO KNOWS. 

Good luck! 

(Did you find this useful or educational? Encourage artistic expression and drop some change in my Ko-Fi or at my Paypal!)

[bobthedragon]

Heya, I really like your art and I was just wondering if you had any quick tips on lineart because lately I've been trifling to make my art appealing especially with lineart. Thank you for your time!

so I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and fighting with artblock and trying to figure out exactly what I value most in my lineart choices and after finally making a shitty drawing of kib to use as an example so I could think things through this is my answer

When I was like 12 I read about a million “How To Make Lines Like The Cool Animes“ tutorials, and since then I’ve spent a long time throwing out things I learned that I didn’t like, and changing things I did like to suit my personal aesthetics.

The broad-stroke b/w style I use most often is currently my favorite application of lineart, but it’s all done without much conscious understanding of what’s going on at this point, so it’s sort of hard for me to break it down, but lemme see what I can do

Generally I just think of things “Outer Lines” and “Inner Lines”.

Outer lines are thicker, and define the edges of objects and shapes. They show Silhouettes and Overlapping.

Inner lines are there for details. They show structural elements, shapes, patterns, textures, and contours.

I also just like using large ink masses to show coloration, shadow, and idk other things. That’s not really linework?? I think. but I like having them flow together organically anyway, bc I like the idea of the gestalt play it creates.

Line Weight and Line Variation and w/e are all big words in linework, but as far as I can tell their rules are all very ambiguous. I like thickening lines to show contrast in how much things stick out, how much shadow they gather, and how clear the silhouette is

Lines are a pretty much?? fictional concept honestly. Most shapes you look at don’t have any ‘lines’, so what you’re drawing is just “points of contrast” and “edges” and “disruptions in visible patterns.” My artistic theory is basically making lines thicker where the contrast is stronger and thinner where it’s less so.

I use inner lines to show the structures of things (as well as play with implying structures that don’t necessarily make sense bc I like that sort of thing) idk anything and I’m really sleepy

One thing to keep in mind is that if you draw something on one side of something that’s supposed to be symmetric, it’s a good idea to imply it on the other side (and also a good idea to make sure it’s lining up approx right in perspective) I also did this Wrong in my example, since the two lines I highlighted on the face are not eachother’s symmetries, since the right one is the cheek marker and the right is the eyemarker. so woops???

So that’s basically it?? I think. I’d love to talk more later but my lineart is really something that I’m not?? very sure about. I love varying widths and I love using lines like paint and like ink and making messes

One thing that some people notice when I’m working is that I don’t really?? use sketch layers, I just transform them into the final piece, and I end up using a lot of the throwaway lines for texture and flow reinforcement. Honestly I just do this bc I hate Layers and I love things that don’t 100% make structural sense.

Art is an experimental and personal process and I encourage you to use any words I (or others!) say to inspire yourself, try out techniques and see how they work for you, and eventually come up with your own internal formulas!