#bendy saltposting

[inkdemonapologist]

nobody asked but since I've seen a lil chatter on the DCTL Graphic Novel on tumblr too, here's the thread I posted on twitter, speaking as someone who's done a little freelance work as a comic artist, under the jump:

Main thought about the DCTL graphic novel preview is: yeah, I've made designs like that when I was being paid by the page and expected to just throw in extra design work for free and I have a deadline and no time to scour the source material or really put my heart into the design No shade to the artist; every complaint I have about the pages we've seen is that this looks like someone who was just working (quickly) from a script. The artist is likely not a Big Fan, so they only know the info and descriptions they're given. And the artist's portfolio shows they're capable of the kind of designs and dynamics this comic needed. its possible they phoned it in for no reason, but feels more likely to be "not enough time/not paid enough/not given enough info to give it that level of care." Which, don't get me wrong; an important level of craftsmanship and care is missing and im not gonna blame the artist but i AM gonna be a hater abt it lmao It's not just about designs; the convo with Joey is another good example. It's a literal illustration of the things Joey said and did in that scene, but it's missing the point -- that scene is our introduction to the way Joey throws Buddy off-balance. That energy is missing. And that's the sort of thing that needs the script to convey this purpose well to the artist, that needs the artist to have time & freedom to invest in portraying it, that needs time & investment & knowledge to ask for adjustments at early stages and get the page right one more note: begging batim fans 2 think abt the plot of DCTL and realise why "maybe we will not make the creepy guy who dies at the end a black man in this" is perhaps a reasonable choice. like im a fan of poc norman headcanons too but pls recognise this would be a tough call!! anyway, genuinely cannot wait to see how off sammy is gonna be in this lmao. will he be a mid non-design like norman or will he be conventionally handsome or will he get graphic novel dave miller vibes b/c hes an antagonist? will we get the fabled black hair sammy??? i cant wait

TL;DR I strongly suspect this was an issue of not enough time/not enough money. That design looks nothing like the description of Norman, right? Like, there's hundreds of different AU designs of all shapes, colours and sizes that you could create that would still look like Norman Polk, but somehow they managed to make a character that isnt ANY of them, lmao??? So... how could that happen, unless nobody gave the artist a description of Norman? Or if they did, how did that design make it past anyone else, unless there wasn't time for revisions or a system worked out for revisions, unless whoever was managing the comic project thought it was fine if the designs didn't fit with the descriptions in the book? If everyone is doing their job, then the artist is given the information they need without having to go do unpaid YA novel research before they can start drawing. That's why you have a writer adapting it!!

("they should hire fans, a fan would've done a better job" OK BUT THATS B/C FANS ARE MORE LIKELY TO ALLOW THEMSELVES TO BE EXPLOITED AND DO EXTRA UNPAID WORK B/C THEY CARE!! THATS NOT A SOLUTION!!!! THATS A JOEY DREW STRAT!!!!!!!)

Anyway I could yell about this for 15 years so I'm going to shush for now BUT I JUST FEEL VERY STRONGLY ABOUT IT LMAO.

[inkdemonapologist]

are you excited for the big role sammy's going to play in Cage?? im apprehensive... i love him a feral amount and i was real disappointed with his 2 seconds of screentime in BatDR

also just saying ur sammy drawings give me life he looks wonderful in hats

brought to u by ⭐️ anon

Hehehe aw thank you!! :D

There’s a lot of things in Dark Revival I ended up disappointed about, but despite my love of Sammy Lawrence, Sammy barely appearing was not really one of them. At the time, I’d commented to friends that the complete lack of Sammy mentions in the hype leading up to BatDR meant he was either very important or had only a cameo appearance, and I was actually pretty delighted about the Cyclebreaker cameo – it’s a moment that takes him startlingly seriously, that wasn’t just him quoting one of his four catch phrases; it’s... a kind of moment we haven’t seen from Sammy before. The part where he gets shot was like, where my expectations were, so the cyclebreaker thing was a pleasant surprise.

But like, ever since The Cage was announced… we knew Sammy kind of had to be in it. Like, Henry says “how did WE escape” and it’s set in the SPECIFIC place and time that Sammy also is; literally the only reason for Sammy to not be a significant character is if the creators actually didn’t want anything to do with him. So I have to admit the announcement that WE CAN CONFIRM that SAMMY WILL PLAY A MAJOR ROLE IN THE CAGE!!!!!!! RESTORED TO HIS CHAPTER 2 CREEPY GLORY! is just…… ugh, it’s hard to articulate why this tweet frustrates me so much.

Like………………….. "he's in it more" is not the only thing people care about, surely! What is he doing? What is his role in all this? What does he even WANT? In a review, "he's back to his chapter 2 creepy glory" would be a powerful recommendation; in a tweet from the creator right after preorders go up, it feels more like, "Hey, remember the thing you wanted? we DEFINITELY did that thing you wanted and we did it SUPER WELL so preorder our game please!!" Give us an intriguing line of dialogue or a hint about what he's doing (opposing you? helping you? uneasy truce? trying to find bendy?) and you wouldn't even need to promise us that he plays a major role; we'd be curious to learn more.

So this reassurance ends up doing the opposite, for me, because I still don't know if the creators even understand what I like about Sammy. The thing is that the circumstances of BatDR (there's a little Bendy running around, the Ink Demon is claimed dead but actually it's not, Wilson is trying to become the Lost Ones' new Big Brother) could've been INCREDIBLY relevant to Sammy -- that's why people wanted him to show up in BatDR, to see what he thinks of these developments and how he would react to them!! So if you're interested in Sammy, the character, then it would not be hard to hint at like, what his deal is – "Sammy knows the Ink Demon is out there somewhere and Henry is the key to finding him" or "after the disappearance of his Lord he's become a desperate man who's as much an obstacle as an ally" or even "Sammy was defiant when he went into the Pit -- what will Henry find when he encounters him now?" or w/e -- simply insisting HES LIKE HE WAS IN CHAPTER TWO, THE ONE YOU GUYS LIKE instead of being able to think of a single character-based hint that we might find compelling is, tbh, rather un-reassuring!!!

My complaint about Twisted Alice’s role in BatDR was that ultimately, it felt like they were just trying to capture the vibes that Twisted Alice had in BatIM instead of really exploring what that character would be doing HERE, in THIS situation. Nothing she’s doing really makes sense, and what IS there seems to have forgotten what her actual deal is, but she’s doing it with the right flair, so it feels like she’s in-character enough for the scene to be fun. Like an episodic cartoon that just forgets what happened in previous episodes depending on who’s writing this one. So… I think that’s a real risk for Sammy. For the people who just want him to show up and whisper cult-ish things so we can hear his voice more and go HEHEHE ITS HIM, this isn’t really a concern lmao, that will probably happen. I don’t have high hopes that he’ll make sense as a character, but tbf I don’t know that he ever has.

And IDK, its still early, its possible the cage will come out and I'll look up spoilers and be like OMG NM I LOVE WHAT THEY DID WITH HIM. A game that's supposed to be psychological horror could, in theory, be a really fun place for Sammy!! Maybe the people actually writing him will give him more care, haha. It's a little silly for me to be so worked up about the marketing for a game that I am not going to buy b/c I’m still not interested in giving JDS, Inc. my money. AND YET DESPITE IT ALL I STILL… CARE ABOUT SAMMY LAWRENCE LMAO….. I think my main emotion about The Cage is just curiosity, though. I do want to know what they do with him. I’m curious if he’ll play a major part in the story, or if he’s like Henry or Porter in BatDR, with one big scene where he gets a bunch of lines and then runs off. A lot of people really want to see Henry and Sammy team up in this, but I’m not writing off the possibility he’s an antagonist of some kind, so I’m curious which way that’ll go. But I don’t feel like I have any strong expectations, so I guess we’ll see!

[inkdemonapologist]

Thoughts on the BatIM books not being canon?

Originally typed up an answer based on the one TheMeatly tweet about creators being given “freedom to make things their own” when telling stories in their world, and that the games decide the canon. I thought that “the books aren’t canon” would be a bit of a reductive takeaway from that – like, I read it as the idea that the books don’t determine the canon, and aren’t beholden to some grand future plan to make sure they fit with the games, so they aren’t a trustworthy predictor of what’s going on in the games and in the case of contradictions, the games win. Like, the books can’t be counted on for theorycrafting, but that doesn’t mean Buddy or Abby are “noncanon” Bendy characters – just that they’ll never intersect with the games. But recently Mike Mood tweeted that “if it’s in a book, it’s not canon” pretty directly, so I guess Adrienne has just been writing a Bendy AU all this time??? Lmao.

I still think this is sort of not surprising after BatDR. Before BatDR actually came out, I was advocating pretty enthusiastically for little references to book characters – I know this was sort of controversial at the time, because people were worried about the idea of making the books “required reading” and references you don’t get if you don’t READ UP ON THE LORE – but I don’t think this would be necessary. If you give Dot an audiolog that’s like “I may just be an intern here in the writing department, but even I can tell there’s something fishy going on. I’ve got to investigate. Wally’s always losing his keys in [hint for the player], I bet I can find them” then if you’ve never read the books, that audiolog tells you everything you need to know, isn’t tangled up in any Book Lore, introduces the character as if she’s new, while also being a fun chance for the book readers to be like YOOOO MY GIRL IS HERE. Even just a schedule that says Joey has a meeting with Abby Lambert, or Ms. Lambert’s name on a desk somewhere in the art department, or a couple of animation cells on desks with characters from Crack-Up Comics, would be a fun wink to the book readers EVEN IF you want the canon to not be tied up with the books. Heck, you’ve got the non-audio-log memos in this game, you wouldn’t even have to give book characters a canon voice.

But, when BatDR had NOT ONLY no acknowledgement of the books, but also….didn’t even seem to be going in the same direction? I think the writing was sort of on the wall --

-- the people writing the games aren’t taking the books into account and the books aren’t going to be referenced here. The only question was whether the books were written with the plans of the games in mind and… I’m gonna be real. The idea that the Bendy franchise doesn’t really have Plans as such and so the books are just guessing and theorising, but the games reserve the right to go off in a completely different direction if they want to is, uh, not that surprising either. Bendy and the Ink Machine has never really seemed like a thing that had a grand plan, to me, it was just fun to pretend that it did – and then when the books were actually GOOD, it sold the idea of trying to puzzle that world together even more.

So there’s a cynical part of me that’s annoyed about this being mentioned now, you know, after 3-4 different books have been purchased by fans who were interested in learning some lore while waiting for BatDR, and now that BatDR’s out it’s like “oh, well, we’ve never felt this was CANON canon” when before it wasn’t really sold that way. If this has “always” been true, then all the “is Joey gay” questions could’ve been so easily dodged by admitting that the books were doing their own take rather than determining canon, but that fans are free to accept that interpretation. Adrienne answered one AMA question about what would become of Dot in a way that implied she didn’t know, as if she’d created this character who now existed in the world and it was up to the creators of that world to determine her fate. All of this combined with that one clarifying tweet about how EVERYTHING IN THE ORIGINAL BATIM IS STILL CANON before BatDR’s release creates the picture of intentionally selling on original BatIM’s love of theorycrafting and lore-collecting because that’s what would keep fans engaged. Either they were carefully Not Mentioning that the books aren’t canon during a time when they needed the books to sell, or the decision to treat books as “noncanon” is more recent than TheMeatly claims.

But despite my complaining, I do think this is like… wise. BatDR makes it clear that writing a Mystery With Deep Lore isn’t really what they want to do with this franchise now, if it ever was, and so now that BatDR has done reasonably well they can go ahead and admit it. If they want to be able to just hand a comic project to some comics people and not have to collaboratively run every design through their own art department to make sure it’s one they’d be willing to use in the games if that character ever appears, then it’s nice to go ahead and tell fans point blank that these designs are an interpretation by a third party, not The Canon, and should be treated as such. I think it’s not a bad way to run things, to give these other creators freedom to do their own thing with the material.

But, well, as for me and my feelings… I liked the books. I got into this franchise backwards, from a fansong and fanfiction that made me care about characters from a game I’d neither played nor watched, and then finding the concept of Sammy’s ink addiction in DCTL compelling even if I’d only heard bad things about DCTL at the time – I started writing Taste of Ink in hopes of getting this out of my system so I could move on, haha. And then Illusion Of Living came out, this incredible picture of everything I wanted from the franchise, and unfortunately nothing else has ever quite measured up. Maybe that makes sense; a lot of Bendy fans had a hard time getting through TIOL. I think I wanted a different franchise all along, and back when there wasn’t any new content in the True Game Canon, it was easier to play out the thing I wanted in the leftover ruins of this one. But then the original creators came to restore those ruins, and it was a cool thing they built, but it wasn’t anything like the ruins I’d had so much fun in anymore. I’m… genuinely proud of how much I contributed to this fandom, and so thrilled that people have enjoyed what I made here. If you weren’t following me a couple of years ago I really do recommend looking back through my blog because I made A LOT OF CONTENT………. Early on I got an ask of “does ur back hurt from carrying the entire bendy fandom,” which obviously I couldn’t post because there were definitely other creators carrying it with me, but tbh there were very few of us back when I fell face-first into this obsession and I have to admit that ask gives me some warm fuzzies to this day, haha. Like, there was a little stretch of time when the version of BatIM that I imagined helped to keep the fandom afloat! But it, like the books, was never the direction that the franchise was going to go. The BatIM I loved was was collectively dreamed into existence by people who found that game’s premise compelling.

I still love Bendy. I don’t think I ever will stop. This franchise made such a huge impact on me for reasons that are still KIND OF MYSTERIOUS LMAO. I still care a LOT about this world and these characters, but I don’t know if I’ll make much more canon-adjacent fanstuff here. Cthulhu AU is giving me the human batim content I crave and several of the AUs I’m involved in have sort of become their own thing. Maybe someday I’ll figure out how to capture whatever it was in BatIM that took over my brain so intensely for more than 3 years, but I don’t know if I’ll find it in the franchise anymore.