#anyway this isn't in any way an attempt at a redesign it's just what i thought of from the initial concept; havent had time to draw real one

[aquanutart]

Bellibolt looks really similar to how I had imagined!!!! This is what I had pictured based on the initial description! I LOVE ELECTRIC FROG

[clownprince]

Joker's motivations in Joker War

Now idk if I was the only one initially confused by wtf Joker's actual intentions were in Joker War. Maybe I'm just a bit schewpid and everyone else got it but regardless here's my attempt to piece together what's going on in his weird little mind.

Imho, the first lines we get about Joker's underlying intentions are here:

It's extremely important that he was aware of Bruce's intentions to redesign the city. That was definitely the catalyst for the whole thing.

Speaking of Bruce's plans to redesign the city:

He mentions multiple times that his goal is to build a city that doesn't need a Batman.

Regardless of whether he actually mentioned something like this at a press conference or something, I'm sure Joker would be able to pick up on it anyway.

And it's very well-established that Joker needs Batman. The Best Man arc has this whole beautiful monologue about it:

Joker NEEDS Batman. A city without Batman is a city with no place for Joker.

The whole Best Man arc takes during the same year (year 17) as Joker War (prior to it, obviously).

The Batcat engagement took place in year 16. (In which Batman also had Joker locked up in his basement. And he deliberately tracked down amnesiac!Joker and made him Normal Joker again so he could get information. Yowza! Not cool, Bats.)

Additionally, the events of Endgame took place on year 15 and Death of the Family in year 14.

Joker reveals more of his motivations in the final fight scene between him and Batman:

Very interesting that Joker initially chooses to stab Batman in the back. Hmm I wonder if that has any deeper meaning or reveals anything about Joker's own feelings in this situation /sar.

Also very, very, very significant that Joker chooses to battle Batman in that particular suit, after he essentially desecrates it:

So, by now, it's apparent that Joker's direct intention with Joker War was to essentially destroy the possibility of Bruce's vision of Gotham:

He even directly says that all of this was about them.

Hm... I don't think he's just talking about the city, here...

And then we have this:

There's been a recurring theme since Death of the Family, that Bruce isn't being the Batman that Joker wants him to be.

To me, this line feels like "okay, Batman is ruined irreparably, let's just destroy him and start over from scratch."

Then we have this panel. Whew. I think this might be one of the most revealing panels in the entirety of Joker War, largely because of how Joker is depicted in it.

He doesn't look angry, he looks genuinely distraught.

And I didn't notice this until someone else pointed it out but if you zoom in, it definitely looks like he's crying.

I don't think this is just an artistic thing, largely because of this panel from a few issues back:

So those are definitely tears of laughter. But it looks roughly the same. Except based on the context and his expression, I don't think those are tears of laughter in Joker War. At the very least, he's hysterical.

Somewhat of a tangent but it's important to tie everything together: Joker War reminds me very much of DOTF and Endgame in that Joker is depicted (or tries to portray himself) as this terrifying, ruthless, inhuman thing, but if you actually look into his motivations, he's being driven by his emotions, particularly his feelings about Batman, which are almost inarguably the most human part of him.

In DOTF he talks about how Batman isn't being the Batman he wants him to be and yadda yadda, but then in the tie-ins, we have this section, which I think does a beautiful job of explaining his real motivations:

It's jealousy. Jealousy and fear. He's terrified of losing Batman.

And then there's a similar thing in Endgame.

Initially, he says this:

"Haha yeah I'm just bored of you lol."

But then in the final scene we get this:

He's not bored, he's heartbroken. He's genuinely hurt by Batman (in his perception) rejecting him, and he's lashing out in a major way.

I think it's definitely similar in Joker War, except he's not as afraid of losing Batman to the Batfam, more so he's afraid that Bruce's new design for the city will eliminate the need for a Batman, although the Batcat almost-wedding and Bruce's growing family definitely play a role in his motivations.

I think that might be where his whole idea of making Batman start over with nothing came from. Because when Bruce started, he didn't really have anyone except for Alfred, and later Dick.

I think that Joker could tolerate him having a few allies but he can't handle the idea of Batman having an actual family. Both because he doesn't want to share Batman's attention, and because he doesn't have a family, so why does Batman get to have one? Why does Batman get to connect with people when the only person he's truly connected to is Batman? He wants Bats to be as dependent on him as he is on Bats.

So, that's just my Hot Take (read: mediocre interpretation) of Joker War. I wasn't too fond of the storyline until I kinda pieced everything together and it's still not my favorite arc but I definitely like it better than I did initially.

[sweetshelluvaau]

I think what frustrates me that most about Hellvua Boss is that Viviziepop wants this show to be seen as deep and meaningful, diving into the nitty gritty of why these characters are the way they are and that's great and dandy and all but you can't just do that and then next episode act like nothing happen, reverting back to the status quo.

It's all surface level and means nothing by the end of the day. If you want your characters to be interesting and perhaps even sympatric (having sympathy doesn't mean the character has to be likeable btw and vice versa): Have them grow and learn from there actions. It's not okay for Blitzo, Stolas, Loona or whoever to say 'I was wrong' or 'I'm sorry' only for them to continue to do the same shit again and again.

When Blitzo says sorry to Moxxie about how much of a dick he could be in Truth Seekers, have him ACT like he means it and CHANGE (or at least tries being no one changes fully over night.)

(ps Blitzo being (or any character really) an asshole isn't presay a problem more how his asshole-ness itself is handled and written. I happen to like Blitzo btw, or at least the idea of him as a character but I digress.)

When Stolas says sorry to Octavia for ignoring her and not thinking how his actions hurt her (and being a selfish horny idiot in general and just how he treats...Ya know I'm gonna save that rant for another day when I get to his rewrite. 'kindhearted' my ass.), have him realize that 'hey, I'm being a bad dad' and have him try his hardest to be better. (Heck, maybe even have Octavia not being so forgiving because boy howdy do you give your dad waaay too much lean way. I kinda hope one of the later epsiodes links happens to be true and should have happened way earlier. Sorry I can't feel bad for you Stolas.)

Show that your characters are attempting to better themselves.

Show that actions have consequences and sometimes they aren't always easily fixable, if not ever.

Show us why we should care about your characters.

Anyways I originally wanted to wait til I got my redraws done before posting the rewrites but being how it'll likely be a while for me to draw them all out I may just start posting my rewrites now if anyone is still interested. I did do a redesign sketch of Millie that's on one of my roleplay blogs but I'm going to be changing a few things in the final desgin...

[theemperorsfeather]

So, like, the dept head has suggested a couple times now that I look into one or the other of some big marketing professionals association (specifically the one or two that are oriented primarily to the architecture/engineering industry), think about joining and maybe pursue some kind of certification. Which if I -wanted- to do this as a career would probably be great. But ... I don't. I have skimmed the websites and looked at the things they think you ought to know and it sounds horrible. Boring, tedious, not the kind of thing I want to care about and also not directly relevant to what I spend most of my time on anyway.

My manager has said that perhaps this sort of thing would make it more likely I (we) would be taken more seriously as professionals, not that she thinks we should NEED to have this kind of fancy documentation to be taken seriously. And I agree, and I don't think it would make any fucking difference, really. "Oh look I took a lot of online courses" yeah well the architects are still going to want to do things the way they want to do things. Certification isn't going to convince them to meet our internal deadlines better, or spend their time writing things ONLY THEY CAN WRITE instead of fine-tuning our perfectly fucking fine boilerplate because why say a thing in 10 words when you can say it in 25 fancier ones.

I have no real authority in the company. Not that it seems having that authority necessarily makes a fucking difference: my manager has some internal status that I don't; my previous manager has a higher level internal status and is also the assistant dept head. And I've sat in meetings where one or more of the technical staff just rolled right past what they were saying was REQUIRED, or said "no i want to do it a completely different way." To say nothing of how it doesn't matter who says "here are our internal deadlines," they will be met, or not, based purely on who is reading that email.

And I think the other thing she said, which has to do with the "technical" vs "support" staff thing, is also a part of it, and no quantity of certifications or whatever the fuck is going to change that.

I don't want to put a lot time and energy into learning more about the whole fucking marketing/business development process when I feel so burned by everything about what I've been doing. Why would I want to even attempt to contribute more at this point (and how likely is it that I'd even be included in the discussions that all the certification stuff is focused on, I don't know, I'm barely involved in the discussion of the InDesign template redesign, and I work on that all the fucking time).

[vikenticomeshome]

Cyberchase - Hey, you guys want to see something cursed?

So, I've been digging around through archives of the old Cyberchase website trying to do another reconstruction on the "How it All Started" web comics that debuted back in December 2001. Sometime around 2002, they redesigned the site. They changed the framing of the pages and removed some of the animations to help fit with the new design. I've been trying to recover everything I can from the original 2001 version, but there are a few pages where the original version appears to be gone forever.

Would you like to see something cursed that I found? I promise I haven't edited this in any way. The web comics typically took video frames from the show, tweaked them, and then added their own drawing on top. We saw some infamous examples on my post about The Hacker's most humiliating defeat, where they used screenshots from the pilot, including sacks of stolen Poddle Eggs that had nothing to do with the story.

Anyway, that wasn't really cursed. This background was used in "How It All Started" episode 3, where we get to meet the kids who would become the CyberSquad. This is from page 7, when they introduced Inez.

Here's a link to the image from an official archive of the pbskids.org website, which is running on the pbskids.org domain, so you know I'm not lying.

And here's a local upload in case that one gets taken down and tumblr loses the link.

Look at this. They halfway erased Inez in her own kitchen to make this background. This is clearly a frame from Season 1 Episode 4 "Snow Day to Be Exact", when Inez and her cat, Gatito, are making jelly bean cookies. Sure, they gave Inez a chocolate chip cookie, but that's hardly an equivalent exchange.

And yet, this isn't the only cursed part about this image. Here's what "How It All Started" episode 3 page 7 looks like.

Okay, so they had a frame of Inez in her kitchen from the show, where she has her canon skin and hair color. They want to use this frame to show Inez using her computer on the kitchen counter. So, they halfway erase Inez from the background to add their own drawing of Inez. They still have part of Inez in that background, with her canon ethnicity, and yet, they still made White Inez.

Despite Inez's ethnicity being established in the pilot, I assumed that White Inez was an anomaly from when they were trying to decide what ethnicity she would be in the final show. I had a similar excuse for the version of Inez from the character bios that used a purple star instead of a yellow one. However, this background proves that they had already written Season 1 Episode 4 "Snow Day to Be Exact" with Inez retaining her original ethnicity from the pilot.

That just makes White Inez from the web comics even more confusing. Plus, the fact that Inez was only halfway erased to make the background feels like either laziness when crafting the background or some sort of inside joke. Anyway, there's no use ranting about it now. My other post going through Inez's character bios and introduction contains my attempt at fixing these Inez drawings, for what it's worth.