#ask quohotos

[quohotos]

trans pride bat!

Managed to get it done for the last day of transgender awareness week

[transgender-chiroptera]

May I politely request the Jamaican Flower bat?

Of course! Enjoy :)

[fablepatron]

Halo art request:

The pilot playing on a Gameboy

How did he get that thing that should be in a museum!

[quohotos]

draw the bird who bats

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Do you mean specifically a chimney swift?

Or do you mean just any generic Bird that is currently trying to Bat?

[quohotos]

what's something you would want to see in an animated adaptation of the underland chronicles?

Oh BOY where to begin?

These are going to be in no particular order...

Each trailer should have the prophecy read out in a dramatic voice. The trailer for the first one will go "And eight will be left when we count up the dead" and then a quick montage of some pretty scary shit happening but the cuts are too fast to see what's actually happening. The only exception to this is the marks of secret where the fact that the song is a prophecy is a reveal (however the song plays in full in the trailer, it's just structured different from the others)

The animation should be a little edgy. Give things hard angles, stay away from the bulbous smooth (Modern) Disney look.

Really go nuts with the bat designs. Embrace the warrior cats OC-ness of it. Let all the background bats be just as vibrant and wacky as the main cast.

Everyone's bond should sorta look like them, kinda the way that dogs kinda look like their owners. Solovet's bond should look like a total villain. Euripides should look like Vikus. I mean, Aurora's got that gold thing going on which Luxa also has with the crown. The bonds gotta look like they belong together spiritually.

The nibblers need to have more of a role before the marks of secret. Have them in the background of other shots, have them actually get lines in the jungle, see if they can be more present at the council discussing the plague, write some new scenes for them, etc. I wouldn't even be against them inventing a new nibbler character and putting them on one of the earlier quests. The audience should already know and care about them before we see them being horribly brutalized in a reenactment of a real world genocide.

Ares, and all the other bats for that matter, need to have very expressive eyes. They don't always get a lot of lines so they should still have a way to have visible presence in the scene's that they're in.

Every time the bats do that thing where they detect rats and their ears shoot up it should play a musical sting

All the underland creatures/factions should have their own leitmotif. Ripred's lieitmotif should be this uncanny blending of both the rat's theme but also with hints of the Regalians and Gregor's. After Gregor think's that boots has died in the labyrinth there should be this super dramatic and gutwrenching theme, and then all the music just stops for the rest of the movie until they reunite and then the music can come back. The most you get is like a minimalist drum and base sequence, but nothing properly melodic until we know that boots is safe.

The sequence Gregor escaping with Ares and Pearlpelt from the labyrinth should be all in one take.

Every time Gregor slips into the Rager state it should be accompanied by a recognizable sound effect sting and have it's own sound effect and muscial sting. Something like glass shattering mixed with reverb and pitch shifted down. Rager sequences should be in first person and show just how much he's dissociated from the violence he's doing. The audience just sees that split vision with all the weak points highlighted and one by one they get crossed out.

I hope they cast someone appropriately nasally to play Ripred, I think he should be a little high pitched and scrungly. However, I would make an exception if they somehow got Kieth David to voice him. I would be very unsatisfied if they cast Ryan Reynolds

I hope they cast someone with a deep voice to play Ares. He needs to be big and imposing and scary. He needs to be like the big kid at the playground. The fact that there's a more pained sensitive side to him needs to be a revelation. He needs to be a bit monstrous so you can understand why everyone sees him that way, and why he's dying not to be seen that way but has basically given up and accepted how the world sees him. I would be very Unsatisfied if they cast Ryan Reynolds. It would be fucking hilarious if they cast Chris Pratt... I would hate it but it would probably work and that makes me very mad.

I don't really care how Gregor is cast. Caleb McLaughlin would be a perfect Gregor, but he's all grown up now. He could probably still voice him but it wouldn't be the same. I do not care so long as it's not Ryan Reynolds.

Please don't have anyone call Gregor "Greg"... that just feels wrong. Well maybe Ripred would do it specifically to piss him off.

Henry needs to have a dumb haircut, like... it has to be stupid and ostentatious.

The audience should get to see Ripred from close to Gregor's perspective often. Have the camera right over his shoulder and tilted up to see just how tall this beast is.

Let us see more of the happy times that are alluded to at the start of the marks of secret. Even if it's just a montage, let us see them being normal. Let us see Gregor and Ares play that ball game and see the kids just hanging out. Please 😭

Make Gregor more talkative. There's great moments of internal monologue that could be lost in a screen adaptation, let him talk to Ares or Luxa or even temp about it.

In the code of claw Ares should go with him to the prophecy room to learn that he's going to die. Gregor should tell him about the stone knight and it can be something they share. You can even set it up with them doing the bond handshake there while laying on the floor so that it's a visual callback later (Fuck, I just thought of that and now I'm destroyed again).

I mentioned this in another post, but I think it would be cool to have Gregor get a walkman or other battery powered music player from the museum. They can have a few tunes to bond over, but eventually they have to take the batteries out to put them into flashlights.

A huge missed opportunity in the books is how basically every single human in the Underland we see is royalty or part of the military. I think it would be cool to let us see a bit more of how the regular people live. Maybe have one or two characters who aren't royal or soldiers.

Earlier entries should try to cut away from the violence, simply showing the character's reactions to the horrible things happening around them. Later entries should stop hiding it, paralleling the loss of innocence of the characters. By the code of claw Gregor and Ares, or at the very least Ripred, should be allowed to swear. There's no way you're getting that story on screen without at least a PG 13 rating, and these people just witnessed a genocide and are about to kill a bunch of people in a war. Gregor can say "Holy shit" instead of "aww Jeez" at least once. I also just think "What's your plaaaaaaan" is great but "What's your fucking plan?" lands pretty hard as well.

Don't make the underland too visible. Don't add global illumination. Let there be darkness, let there be long shadows, let us only barely see distant things. When Gregor finally gets echolocation then make the distant things visible through a strange shader... but cut out the bit where he can echolocate heat that makes no sense.

Ms. Cormaci needs to sound exactly like how she did in the audiobook, this isn't up for debate.

When the Bane calls Gregor and Ares to battle it needs to be one of the most disturbing, blood chilling things the audience has ever heard. It needs to be loud, and painful, and monstrous. You gotta see that the pup we all loved and coddled has fully lost it and become this fascist ball of hatred and murder and violence. It should cut through the audience's core and silence everything else in the scene. Just have it hold there after he's shouted, showing them locking eyes on each-other and cutting back in between the two. Yes, the Bane has completely been subsumed as a symbol of his side, but so has Gregor. He's in the black armor, he's the figurehead as well. There are parallels, y'all.

Let the Shiners be at least 20% less awful. They're funny, but let them have their hero moment where they're redeemed in the marks of secret rather than saving it for the end of code of claw.

Old Hamnet in the flashbacks to the flooding of the garden should be hot. Flashback Ripred who was there is of course also hot. He remains so in the present as well.

The narrative that Gregor is told in the first book, that the natives just let Sandwitch have the Underland because they weren't really using it... it's heavily implied that's a lie, especially after we learn about the Diggers and how they were genocided and basically expunged from history. I think there should be a direct callback to it, make this implication an explicit part of the story.

Give my girl Aurora some more lines. She goes on all these adventures and never gets to be more than "Luxa's bat".

Oh no I hit character limit for this post... uh... I have a lot of thoughts and I probably will have more in the future 😅. Probably way more than you asked for but you opened the floodgates and this was the result.

Thank you for the ask!

[quohotos]

no i changed my mind

draw Tagfer

pov ur dr. Entrati thinking you'd be safe in 1999

[quohotos]

eclipse bat! 🌑☀️🦇

Time sensitive bat requests are difficult. I can get them done but not always on time

[quohotos]

THEY'RE GONNA LOOK LIKE SHARK LEOPARDS ITS GONNA BE SICK

Like this?

or did you mean specifically leopard sharks, because those do already exist

Oh and for those that don't know, we're talking in reference to this:

[quohotos]

what if the bat was YOU?

What if? What an interesting question? Let's wonder together...

[quohotos]

it’s been too long since you popped up in my notifications. draw me an owl!

[quohotos]

i have another ask outside the usuals

in honor of Mole Interest, you should draw some Digger art for the Underland Chronicles

Hopefully I'm not too late to hop on the Mole Interest trend. Also, really hope the definitive illustration of the Diggers isn't my paint3d rendition because they deserve so much better...

[quohotos]

what’s the best Underland book, in your opinion? and what’s your favorite?

In my opinion Code of Claw is the best. It's just tens around the board: introducing new world building that re-contextualizes the whole series, delivers the thematic message for the whole series, has amazing moments of action and suspense, pulls no punches, and obliterates the heart of anyone who reads it.

That being said... I think Prophecy of Bane is my favorite, or at the least the one I would be able to stomach rereading the most. I make no secret of who my favorite character is, and Ares is just great in that one. Seeing Gregor and Ares' bond develope is such a treat, especially when you compare where they started vs where they end.

[quohotos]

banana bat!

[quohotos]

bat in crocs :3

You know puss in boots? Get ready for Bat in Crocs!

[quohotos]

did u maybe also read guardians of ga'hoole? could i bother u for some of those owls?

YES! I did read all of them when I was like 11 or 12. Our school library had the full series. I don't remember if I liked owls before I discovered Ga'Hoole, or if I liked owls because of Ga'Hoole but either way it became like my THING for a couple years.

My favorite thing about them was that in the inner cover was all of the main characters illustrated with their names attached, and then in the back cover was four more characters illustrated who you hadn't met yet. I just thought that was so cool, and every time a new character was introduced I would flip back to the end cover and see if it was one of the ones shown off. I'm totally going to steal that technique if I ever get published.

I actually made a clay plant pot that had little (also clay) renditions of these guys pasted onto the side but I can't find it at the moment. If I ever do I'll post a picture of it.

oh, rant time:

I read ALL of the books, and then got two books into the wolf spinoff before I realized I just... didn't super enjoy Lasky's writing. I put up with it because owl but there were a lot of things that really baffled me as I reading. What the fuck was going on with gizzards? And magnets? Why were there always songs? Why did we get two expansion pack maps (wait, no that was cool I'm not complaining about that one)? Why was Soren's brother owl Hitler? I mean that literally, they say like "Hiel Kludd" and goose step and do a little owl salute. Why do all of the books I read as a child have animal Hitler in them??? Are the humans (sorry, others) all dead? Did the owls kill them? Trader Mags tears out the eyes of portraits and trades them, and laments the fact that she's never found violet eyes (is that a fucking Underland Chronicles Reference??? (I don't think it is now but I sure as heck thought so then). Why did it suddenly become first person but for like only one book? Why is Soren related to both Owl Hitler and Owl Jesus? Does Mist actually have magic powers or is she just like that? Why did Soren let his kids drink alcohol? Soren just starts a family off screen like welcome back he's a dad now? Am I allowed to make fun of the fantasy names that are impossible to spell and pronounce or are they actually Native names and I'm gonna appear super racist? God those were violent, like a lot of people died? What's all this shit about owls not pooping, they totally do poop in addition to dropping pelots? This book mislead me and I totally embarassed myself infront of the entire highschool biology class aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

I remember walking downtown and going past a local mini movie theater. There were posters up for the Ga'Hoole movie and I was like HOLY FUCKING SHIT LETS GO LETS GO YES YES YES.

And then I saw it and it was just alright. I mean I'm not gonna say it was bad or anything, I don't think Zach Snyder ruined my life or whatnot but it was just okay. I feel like British Soren was anoying but they at least got Twilight correct. Mad they recast the spotted owl because they're native to where I grew up and we love the representation. They rolled the first like four books into one and changed the lore to kind of merge the moon blinking (which just dissipated from the story after book 2?????) with the animal magnetism that brainwashes his sister (fucking magnets again, magnets in the gizzards, how do they work?). Why did they put owl city on the soundtrack? I mean it was obligatory, they had to, but also why?

I did read all of them religiously, and I do have a great appreciation for owls as a result... but I'm just not as attached to them as I am the Underland Chronicles. I feel like they were good books for me as a kid, but I have very little desire to go back and re-read them.

[quohotos]

hello