#and everything w/ calia

[swampgallows]

alleria is okay so far personality-wise in tww but i just wish she didnt look Like That. also because questing in hallowfall with her and anduin and faerin it's just kinda muddy with the monochrome and yellow/purple contrasts in all of their armor color schemes. i know this is the light vs void xpac(s) so everything's gonna be b/w and ourple/lellow but we're gonna have 2 more xpacs of this and i dont want it be overkill. alleria's design is especially weird because vereesa is silver covenant so she's already got the kinda crystal blue/white/silver thing going on, and then sylvanas went maw and turned like gunmetal blue and now alleria's like both of them combined. like sure theyre sisters, but theyre not triplets. i thought the kinda rgb thing they had going on originally was fine, but i understand the need for a rebrand from her 'forest ranger' look. just dunno why they made her look like an iphone.

i so heavily associate WoW with its bold painterly palettes in every zone and their color design that i hope it doesnt veer off into sepia skyrim territory in an effort to appeal to a wider audience or some shit. like the outfits themselves are very (unnecessarily) elaborate in impractical ways (see: calia menethil) but chromatically are kinda boring. actually yeah calia menthil is the perfect example both because i love hating on her and also just because it fits. her silhouette is distinct due to the headpiece and her enormous jugs but the coloration is such a drab featureless swathe it almost looks untextured.

i mean it would probably help too if 90% of the women in wow werent blonde haired and blue eyed :grimacing: but yeah. im not sayin everything has to be tbc-level clownsuit status but im not a fan of the uhhh app-ification of a lot of the armor. i feel like as wow starts moving into sculpted armor pieces with 3d assets they have a lot more liberty to make the lore characters MORE detailed and elaborate in the ways the painted textures of the early game attempted to. the modernizations of tier 2 that are coming out for 20th anniversary are the perfect example of that!!! but instead it's like. what is alleria's tunic made of. is it fabric? is there a plate chestpiece like faerin has? is it metal over a tunic? how much of it is made of metal? like it's more "detailed" per se, higher fidelity, but it somehow reads worse as armor or clothing anyone would actually put on their body. using tens of thousands of polygons to make some shit that nobody knows wtf it is

[alteredphoenix]

I don’t know if this says something about me as a writer or the way Zereth Mortis’s storyline feels so patchworked and condensed, but every time I work on the ZM Fic and its side story I’m always forgetting about Thrall and Baine - and when I do remember I have to tell myself not to forget about them. That’s where I start to think if - and by how much - the expansion got truncated to such a degree that 9.2 had to trim the fat just to go from ZM to the Sepulcher just like that (and I always thought while it was unique that the campaign questline had you go in there, grab Anduin, go back out to make the Crown of Wills, and go back into the rest of the Sepulcher, I also think it’s such a haphazard way of doing so instead of approaching it a different way a’la without Anduin physically being there because Zovaal’s not going to stop dicking around with the Machine of Origination while you’re putzing around in Bastion on a quest to make a new Arbiter).

At least Thrall has some sort of reason to stay in the Shadowlands i.e. Draka, but also because his actions indirectly led to Sylvanas becoming Warchief who therefore kicks off everything between Legion and SL. Baine, on the other hand, doesn’t get that, or at least chooses not to seek out his father and talk to him despite there being indications that something was going to/supposed to happen between them after the Tauren Heritage Armor questline. OTOH you can argue that Baine being in Torghast mentally fucked him up so bad that him sitting in Oribos can be considered a realistic reaction to being tortured...but you don’t get to see that because that never left SL alpha, so that just tells me that despite it not being present for the player to see it at least happens off-screen. So while Baine’s reaction and lack of involvement can be forgiven this also made him into a meme the community latched onto and hyped up once he actually got up...but since he doesn’t go out of his way to find and talk to Cairne, that significantly reduces the meaning of his presence in the Shadowlands. Then again, he’s also Anduin’s friend and tries to beseech him to look to the Light while in Bastion, so even if he’s not being proactive he at least has a minor role in being The Heart.

Since the ZM Fic takes a different approach toward the Broken Crown quest by removing Anduin from the equation altogether and not being retrieved until the endgame a’la the Sepulcher raid itself, that means I would have to give Baine a very good reason to go to Bastion and help make the Crown of Wills. Hence since he’s The Heart of the party, he would have to maintain a passive role but doing it this way means he’s not exactly languishing in Haven and makes him somewhat more proactive to the plot despite being a relatively minor character. Although it’s the same with Thrall, but he has more at stake going on because (a) Sylvanas dragged him to the Maw in the first place to humiliate him and Baine, and (b) that’s two Warchiefs in a row that have sent the Horde on a death spiral that he’s had to witness once personally and the other being told to his face (by Saurfang) and having Loyalist assassins get the jump on them. That’s not to say Baine doesn’t deserve his own part to play in SL; after all, he was imprisoned by Sylvanas in the Underhold and almost got to watch Thunder Bluff burn, so by technicality he should have done more to earn the spot of being in the Shadowlands...but while you can argue from an out-of-universe perspective as to why he didn’t (and I’m not going to say ‘he wasn’t allowed to’ because that’s being accusatory to the devs and I don’t have information nor evidence to prove that ‘he wasn’t allowed to’ is true), from an in-game POV Torghast screw with him so badly he couldn’t do more than beyond the bare minimum.

Looking at this post, I do see how SL is so cut and strung together, and I do see good parts in it despite it being so flawed (and, IMO, one of the weaker expacs, next to TBC and WoD). I don’t know if it’s because of the ongoing lawsuits that jettisoned whatever plans the devs might’ve had for SL (e.g. the possibility of a Drust raid and a 9.3 patch) or the result of the community reaction online (which I noticed that whenever reactions do happen, they’re loud, loud enough to the point of inducing several Author’s Saving Throws to curb the heat, which...I’m learning I am not very fond of,  at all, having to tailor a story based off backlash and outrage, which also explains why I don’t stick with popular fanon). As I’ve said, I don’t like making conspiracy theories around things that might have/could have happened but never made it live because it didn’t fit the game’s narrative tone or direction. I would prefer to criticize rather than commit to shit-slinging.

But despite the flaws I do see an upside to writing a fic set in an expac that’s heavily maligned, and while it doesn’t retcon from Legion onwards like most Fix-It Fics prefer the ZM Fic still plays somewhat loosely with 9.2′s approach while still maintaining most of its canonicity. So even if Thrall and Baine (and hell, much less Anduin, he’s barely in this fic to begin with) aren’t at Main Character/Important Supporting Character status that Sylvanas and Jaina do in this fic, I can give them small roles that will at least carry them long enough to make it to the end (and into Dragonflight, although I’m not expecting Thrall to do anything of the sort afterwards, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if Baine isn’t involved with the Wrathion and the black dragons the same way Jaina will be for Kalecgos and the blues and Tyrande with the greens; DF is the story for the dragons, after all).

[spicylief]

Here’s the first set of tests for panels, fonts, and dialogue bubbles/boxes. 

The panel tests were done after finding some unconventionally designed/organically-shaped (non-boxy/clean cut geometric) comic panel layouts on Pinterest. I might use those in combination with rough traditionally geometric ones depending on the demands of the scenes. 

For me, the painterly-shaped panels seems to work for something dramatic/action-heavy like Calia’s panel, whereas it doesn’t work as well for the others. For those kinds of shots, I feel a more conventional panel with even a roughly inked border would probably be better suited. This logic would probably apply as well to dialogue bubbles/boxes since I am fond of both the borderless-shaded one and the bordered B+W ones.

I’m more or less decided on a font; rather two fonts - Gabriola (MS) and Permanent Marker (Google). Use of either would depend on the script and what’s happening in the scenes. The sizing would also vary as well for similar reasons, which probably means I’ll have to be careful in my sizing for everything else. I’ll likely do more tests as I try to nail down these design formats.

[nuka-zombie-archive]

was tagged by @henantier :) thanks!!

relationship status: single babey!!

top three ships: mal/alina from the grisha trilogy (my bABIES WHOM I LOVE DEARLY AND DESERVE EVERYTHING), thaizo/wren/jespar bc im a self indulgent hoe like that and def prophetess/calia bc It's Cute Damnit

last song you listened to: uhh that'd b 'mourning song' from the game pyre (play it its Real Good Fam)

lipstick or chapstick: chapstick bc homegirl never wears lipstick!

last movie you watched: labyrinth!! that oldass movie w a baby and a goblin king!! good shit

currently reading: 'waiting for godot' bc thats for school babey!!

tagging: @iamaweretoad , @jilljoycearts and @the-r3d-painter bc why not!!

[limecircles]

10, 15, 18, 24, 27, 42, 50 (for any oc omg,)

10. What deadly sin would best represent your OC?

Mikhael: Gluttony, Mammon: Greed/Lust, Lazarus: Envy, Leviathan: Pride.           I don’t have specific characters that correlate to each sin, but here are the ones that I’ve given the most though to.

15. If your OC could have any pet, what would they choose? Why?

Haylie has always wanted some sort of reptile, a lizard or snake of some sort, but has been moving locations constantly and wouldn’t have the time or ability to care for such a pet. She loves seeing reptiles in the wild wherever he goes though!

18. What are your OC’s greatest fears? Weaknesses? Strengths?

Calias has a deep fear of failure and of inadequacy stemming from her need to prove that she can be just as good as her peers, who usually had much more support in their lives. She is stubbornly independent, refusing help from even those who want to give it, fearing that accepting would be weakness. She is very quick on her feet and reacts quickly and calmly in the face of danger.

24. What is their outlook on life? What is their philosophy / what do they think in general about living?

Raphael is sort of conflicted on this front, not having very much faith in themselves or in others, but will try their best at doing their job, even if they feel neutrally about it. Raph often does deep introspection on life, the universe, and everything, and has come to the conclusion that no one can truly know for certain what everything is or means, leaving them with a nebulous outlook on life much like their personality.

27. What kind of childhood did your character have?

Gee has had a relatively good life so far, getting good grades in school (albeit at the cost of social interaction and making friends…), getting an internship working in the field he loves, and meeting people who will eventually be his best friends. His childhood was reflective of this, his parents stern but kind and willing to help him with anything he needed.

42. Does your character have any scars? Where did they get them from?

Mikhael, I think, has the most scars out of all my characters in this universe (visual reference). Their scars come from everything from elder gods, to angels, to tripping over stuff and falling down.

50. If your character was presented with imminent and unavoidable death/fatality, how would they react? Would they try to avoid death anyways? Would they try to make their last days count?

Sam would definitely accept death with much more grace than many others, making sure she spent it surrounded by loved ones. Although she has a bad habit of hiding her own issues in favor of focusing on others instead, so perhaps other people wouldn’t know of her imminent dying until it happened.

(thanks so much for this ask omg! I love ranting about my characters, so sorry if this went a little long… ;w; I also rotated out the ones I felt like talking about, since I think a lot of people are most familiar with Mika.)