#i actually had a whole separate drawing that kickstarted this too

[nomiyakazehaya]

i finally caved and drew my personal take on soft body megs and oppy… 😭 i've been binge re-watching kekkai sensen again and had this brainrot au idea for a while too 🥲 also took a lot of inspiration from dragoons of final fantasy and dnf/dfo for her helm design because i absolutely love those designs despite how painful and agonizing they are to draw sometimes and the idea of megatron being a lancer and/or wielding spear type weapons in general is something that dances around in my head very often still not 100% sure what to do exactly with optimus, but i actually like the hat design so far! maybe i'll make him something like a detective or inspector position, haha 😂

here's also an actual blood red version because i really liked both versions of this drawing 🥲🥲

[blazehedgehog]

If you didn't have to worry about money for the rest of your life, what would you change/ try to acomplish?

I'd just like to make games. I learned how to draw and that was my passion for a long time, but whenever people would ask me about "growing up to become an artist" it was never, like, the primary thing I wanted to do. But I never knew what else I wanted to do.

Until in middle school or whatever and I started asking questions like "How are video games made?" I roped some friends in and we brainstormed some ideas, but even after they fell off, I kept at it. I taught myself how to make games. I reverse engineered other people's programming. I wanted to make games so badly that I basically brute forced my way in to it.

I would love to make a finished version of OverBite, sure. Submitting a pitch to Devolver and getting rejected for that really made me take a hard look at OverBite and it shook me out of seeing it as this precious project of mine. OverBite kind of sucks (no pun intended). But it sucks because of the limitations of a game jam. A lot of game jams are teams of 2-5 people and I did most of OverBite by myself. All the coding, all the art, even down to the sounds -- I voice Dracula and a lot of his audio (the slashes, whooshes, etc.) is me making mouth sounds. I also wasn't super clear on my design of OverBite and it changed a lot at the last second (the original plan was more of a Metroidvania with a level up system).

It's okay to say that OverBite is kind of boring, I think. Too many traversal options that are all too similar (but also difficult to execute), not enough environmental variety (I built all of its levels in the last few hours of the jam), and some of the later levels get too big and too complex. There's a lot of room for refinement. And I've been slowly accumulating ideas to help diversify the game over the last seven years.

I'd also just like to make more fan games. I know some people out there are like "No, you should make original games" but honestly that seems ridiculous to me. I realize there's a whole legal quagmire about being "paid to make fan games" and my opinion on it is that you should not accept money for fan game development. Fan games should not be funded on Patreon, and they should not be funded on Kickstarter, which obviously makes large-scale fan game development difficult. But unfortunately that's the law and you're inviting a lot of trouble if you go against that. Not just trouble for your own project, but trouble for everyone around you.

Do not put rights holders into a situation where they HAVE to enforce that law. Do not be the martyr that spoils everything for your community just because you're too selfish to scale your project properly (or worse, be the sort of asshole that thinks you deserve to pocket a couple bucks for making a fangame).

But if the money solved itself for me, separate from all that? Like if people donated to my Patreon to support me having food and housing just because they liked who I am and the general concept of "whatever I'm doing next"?

I would love to be able to fully dedicate myself to finishing that Bubsy project. Or doing that remake of MarioWeen I've been mulling over for 11+ years. Or actually finishing a Sonic fan game for once. Or that Ghostbusters RPG. Not to make money from them, or fill out a portfolio, but just to be able to express that creativity. Doing them because I want to play in that playground. A person is allowed to have these thoughts and desires, even if they do not have legal ownership of the license.

(I have also, if you cannot tell, had a video brewing in my head about the legality of fan games, why people make them, and crowd funding them. There are definitely Things To Say about the topic.)

More than drawing, more than writing, more than video production, that is probably the number one thing I'd like to do if I didn't have to worry about putting food in my fridge.

But game development feels like such an uncertainty nowadays. The floodgates have burst, there's an endless fire hose of new games that never stops, and great stuff gets buried all the time. I realize Youtube is also a monstrous content stream, but comparatively, there's "less risk" insofar as videos take less effort to produce.

Like, yes, I went through hellish anguish for 4 and a half months on that Sonic Adventure 2 video, but it resulted in a tightly edited end product that's 46 minutes long. If you gave me that much time for game development, I could not give you a finished product that lasted 45 minutes, and I could not give you a game that would even earn a measly $100 in sales.

Fulfilling video games take years to make and are a much larger gamble overall.

Plus, I already "have my foot in the door" on Youtube -- I'm making real, tangible money, and I have over 27,000 subscribers. That's more than 90% of Youtube. It needs to be more, a lot more, but they'll come. I've been doing Youtube for more than a decade and a half, and most of that 27,000 didn't show up until the last 4-6 years.

The simple fact is I'd need a lot more time and a lot more money to establish myself as an indie developer in the same way I'm already established on Youtube, even if I'd rather be making games. To some people I am BlazeHedgehog, the founder of SAGE, the creator of Sonic TFH, the person who massively shook up MFGG and caused a flood of newbies to dominate the forums in 2005, etc. But the mainstream at large doesn't know that. There are a lot of places -- most places, actually, I'd argue -- where I'm a nobody. The mainstream at large only sort of knows me as "that guy who made that one Sonic 06 video" and "the dude with the modding tutorial videos."

Don't take that to mean that video editing does not make me happy. I've been editing video almost as long as I've been making games! I was teaching myself to cut together AMVs in 1998 at the same time I was learning the ropes of Corel Click & Create. They go hand in hand. I am a shotgun of creativity and it goes in all directions.

But at least for right this second, deep in my heart of hearts, I would make more games right now if I could afford to.

(And I say that fully implying that my heart is like the wind and I've flip-flopped back and forth between gamedev and video production based on fleeting whims before. The grass is always greener on the other side of the creative outlet.)

[ravnicaforgoblins]

Ravnica for Goblins

One-Shots and Story Hooks

One thing Ravnica campaigns are rarely without is conflict. On a good day, somewhere between nine and ten of the Guilds will be having an issue with one another in some way, shape, or form. This is good for adventuring parties because it means there’s always something to do. While coming up with a session can literally be as simple as picking two Guilds and building off their general reasons for not liking each other (which is as easy as picking a fight on the internet), sometimes you need help. You need something to kickstart those creative ideas again.

Fortunately, the artists over at Wizards of the Coast have had over a dozen sets/releases to craft not just the main storyline of Ravnica, but unique little one-offs as well. They come with absolutely stellar artwork to help build the atmosphere of the City of Guilds, and wonderful bits of flavor text that are prime jumping-off points for your story ideas.

So here are four story hooks taken straight from Ravnica cards to incorporate into your campaign. You don’t have to follow these prompts exactly, but if they spark some ideas of your own, run with them.

Watchwolf

Ravnica can be lonely & intimidating for a Druid. With so much of the world made up of pavement and skyline, one’s connection with nature can feel like a long-distance relationship. You’d be hard-pressed to find a tree outside the Conclave without venturing into Rubblebelt territory. Furthermore, what animals do inhabit the big city have been almost unilaterally conscripted into service by one Guild or another. Azorius hawks, Boros hounds, Gruul boars, Selesnya cattle; to say nothing of the terrifying creations churned out from Guilds like the Simic, Orzhov, or Rakdos.

Even the rats seem to have loyalties.

I was browsing a Tin Street stall for watermelon seeds when I saw it. A wolf, staring right at me from a bridge nearby. I looked around but didn’t see anyone it seemed to belong to. Boros dogs wear armor, Ledev dire wolves are never without their rider, and if it was Gruul it would almost certainly have some sort of clan markings. Could it be a wild one?

Noticing my gaze, the wolf made its way over to me. It avoided the crowd with a comfort you don’t see in wild animals. This wolf definitely belonged to someone in the city.

A few of the merchants were staring at us. Even if it was trained, it was definitely making them nervous. The wolf nipped & tugged at my tunic with its mouth. Not with aggression, but with urgency. Spend enough time with animals, you learn to spot the difference. I bought my seeds, tipped the shopkeep generously, and brought the wolf to a quieter part of the city to speak with it.

Who are you?

Watcher

A watcher? Curious.

What do you need, Watcher?

Help

What help do you need?

Lost

You’re lost?

Watcher shook his muzzle.

Where’s your owner, Watcher?

Taken

Taken? Taken by whom?

Watcher told me.

A what?

Role Reversal

This was definitely one for the books. Even for the Senate, seeing a Sphinx up close is extremely rare. Seeing one at your desk filing a complaint about another Sphinx is unheard of.

“They are Uthlon the Wise. A model among their peers for stoicism, moderation, and sound judgement.”

“And you’re filing a complaint against Uthlon for....”

I checked my notebook.

“....Getting drunk and painting rude words on the temple of Azor.”

“Yes.”

“We’ll look into it.”

I expected a response. There’s always a response when people get angry enough to file a complaint. However, instead of shouting or threats, the Sphinx Agammemnos stepped back from my desk and perched down a few feet away. They were really going to wait there until I looked into this. My lunch was sitting an arm’s reach away. I sighed deeply. I hated this job sometimes.

Then, another Sphinx came in and approached my desk.

“I am here to file a complaint regarding Uthlon the Wise.”

I took my notebook back out.

“For the crime of shouting out ‘River’.”

I had to ask for that one again. Apparently, they were asking someone a riddle, as Sphinxes do, when Uthlon the Wise popped up and shouted the riddle’s answer. For that, I might seek out this Uthlon the Wise for the sole purpose of giving them a medal. No sooner had this thought crossed my mind when another Sphinx, this one rubbing their head and moving as though drunk, wandered in.

“I....am here to....file a complaint.”

“Regarding Uthlon the Wise?”

The Sphinx looked pleased. They do love when someone can guess what they’re thinking.

“Uthlon the Wise hit me over the head with a club.”

I’d just finished writing that down when more Sphinxes came strolling in. I’d never seen this many in one place, not even in Isperia’s court. Then I saw the strangest thing of all. A goblin came in, calmly walked up to my desk, and told me in the best Common I’ve ever heard from a goblin:

"My name is Uthlon the Wise.”

For the love of the Guildpact, what is going on here?

Mass Manipulation

There they are. I thought I made my instructions clear to dress the part. One way you can always spot a Dimir is by their shabby taste. They’re so concerned with being able to keep things hidden in their clothes that they can never wear anything that fits them properly. Orzhov assassins, by contrast, always dress to kill. We turn the art of killing into an actual art. And here this tit comes showing up at the finest diner in the Precinct wearing that awful trenchcoat. Ghosts, I should have hired that Ochran. At least they know not to be seen.

The only reason I’m resorting to this alley skulker is because I need the job done quickly and on the cheap. If this imbecile ruins my appetite, I’m docking the price of the meal from their pay. Then again, if I do that, I wouldn’t be paying them at all.

Seems fair to me.

“Dreadfully sorry I’m late.”

“If this is how you run your business, I may just take mine elsewhere.”

“Now, now, let’s not get hasty.”

The server came over to take our orders, but because of this idiot’s tardiness, my main course would have to wait while they ordered drinks.

“Would you like to see our wine list?”

“Water is fine, thank you.”

Ghosts, I should have hired the Rakdos. This whole day is already a loss and it’s only breakfast. Why did I ever think these fools could be trusted with something important?

The server poured water from the pitcher while I waited.

“So, what’s the job?”

“What’s the job? The job is everything! How you present yourself! How you treat your clients! How you behave in high society! How am I supposed to trust you with a contract when you can’t even show up on time for a breakfast?”

They just sat there, drinking their water. Not even the decency to look ashamed. I’m going to put a word in to the Judge for another purge, this is unacceptable. We shouldn’t have to put up with these dredges.

Finishing their water, they clinked their glass on the table.

The whole diner was suddenly quiet. Not the awkward, shocked quiet of society types pausing to listen. I’ve lived in this city for almost 70 years and I’ve never heard anything like this kind of silence. Every single person froze in their place, some halfway in the motion of eating or talking. Then, every single head turned in our direction at once.

“I was afraid it might come to this. I know you have things to do, so I’ll be brief. When I ask you for the job, I don’t need your background or history and especially not your personal take. I know how uptight you Syndicate types are about contracts & paperwork & details and all that nonsense. I just need the deed and the name of the person it’s being done to. That’s all.”

Every face stares at me with blank captivation. Not a single eye blinks. Not a single mouth draws breath. Including mine.

“But first, let’s talk about the pay. For starters, since the target is probably wealthy enough to afford protection, the rate will double. Second, since you clearly have trouble keeping your mouth shut, you’ll need to be kept under supervision until the job is done, so the rate will double again. Lastly, since the reason I was late was because I was debating whether or not to poison your drink, let’s double it again and call it a deal.”

I swallow hard. I should have never gotten involved with House Dimir.

“Seems fair to me.”

“Excellent. Now, what’s the job?”

Debtors’ Transport

This one will not be easy. This isn’t your standard smash & grab in the Bulwark where the Wojek are too busy busting Gruul skulls to chase after a gang of thieves. Everyone in the city has thought of it at least once; rob the Orzhov. The problem is, everyone knows what happens to anyone who tries; best case execution, worst case servitude. The air surrounding the Orzhov Guildhall is saturated with the ghosts of poor souls still paying off their debts to the Syndicate centuries after death. It’s not a fate you wish unto anyone, least of all yourself.

But still....the temptation is right there. An Orzhov transport, one of those big bloated ones that look like someone took a person, removed their bones, and then blew them up like a balloon. Walking right through the plaza. Every week, same time, same route, same cargo. An enormous sarcophagus filled with more coin than your average Ravnican citizen will see in a lifetime, and the moans of the latest poor soul who fell too far behind on their payments.

From the street separating the haves & have-nots of Precinct Two, around the Hall of the Guildpact in Precinct One, then a straight shot along Plaza Avenue to the Orzhova Church. Roughly one hour to walk five miles of city and deliver the cargo into the greedy hands of the Ghost Council.

They aren’t subtle about their business, but they aren’t subtle about security, either. At least four Advokists and Knights for a light haul, double that for a bigger one, and if they’re really hauling a score you can expect a trio of their fully-plated Giants as well. Not to mention the gargoyles they have perched on roofs for every single street along the route. And the transports themselves aren’t exactly known for being well-tempered when something agitates them.

But you rip off a score like that and your entire crew can afford to buy a mansion on a floating mountain.

Assuming you get away, of course. That’s always the rub. There are few things the Syndicate take more personally than being robbed. You rob a score like that, they don’t just send the Order of Sorrows after you, they send the Angels. The executors of Orzhov justice who don’t sleep, don’t stop for lunch, don’t stop for anything until they find you. At least when the Firemane kill someone it’s an exciting way to go. Better death by immolation than spending every night listening for the sound of feathered wings dropping a scythe down on you.

But if you did it right, made sure no one saw you, made sure no one could trace it back to you, it could be done. It can be done.

But who would be willing to take the risk?

[inkribbon796]

Forgotten Light Ch. 1: Refractions

Summary: Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men . . . couldn’t put Thomas back together again.

Chapters: 1, 2, 3

During the several days that the Sides were in Brighton, the Coalition went through their house and every room they tended to frequent in the base with a fine-toothed comb. Trying to find another aura trail, which King, Nate, and Mare were doing the bulk of the aura searching.

The humans came in their civilian attire, not wanting to draw attention to the Sides’ home.

Deep indigos, pastel blues, sparkling reds, and vibrant purples. All the Core Sides were accounted for. There was evidence that Janus and Remus had been over to their home by the faint aura trails.

“So what else are we looking for?” Silver groaned as Jackie came back in from searching places the Sides liked to regularly frequent.

“I’ve got fook-all[1],” Jackie groaned.

“We need evidence of someone living here since March, because that’s when Deceit and the Duke moved out,” King rubbed at his eyes under his glasses. “And Spade doesn’t count. Spade was just spicy Logan with extra steps. He’d have almost the exact same type of aura as him.”

Joan sighed. “Either way this place is clear, what if we don’t find it?”

“Then we hope the legate is dead,” King decided. “Which is probably a good thing. Being trapped for so long without a lot of aura, it would probably make any demon crazy.”

“So what are we supposed ta[2] do?” Jackie groaned. “Put e’erythin’ back an’ pretend nothin’s happened? All yah’ve told us about this thin’ is that it’s dangerous or somethin’.”[3]

“Honestly I’ve never heard of one either,” Mare admitted, coming out of a wall. “I knew there were other types of demons, but I thought it was just a regional language thing.”

“Well different cultures do call you guys different things in different part of the world and that does influence it a little,” King agreed.

“Kid,” Mare crossed his arms in front of his chest. “You’re an empath just like me, you’re just a small one.”

King frowned, glaring at Mare. “Least I still have my own body, I don’t have to borrow or steal someone else’s.”

Mare looked exceptionally smug, “Just wait until yours starts rusting on you. Bodies don’t last forever. You’ll pick a fight, or someone will pick a fight with you while Daddy’s not watching, and you’ll lose. Or your body will get so useless you’ll have to leave it. It happens to everyone. You think Nate was my first body, or the one your old man’s got was his? Bodies don’t last forever, Dark’s probably overdue a trade out. Being in a broken down body can’t be good but he was always made of nothing but spite and coffee so fuck that body, I guess.”

King just about bared his teeth at the older demon, but he didn’t want anymore of that smug look pointed at him and thankfully Nate intervened.

“Okay, okay,” Nate used his magic to nudge Mare away, trying to break the stand-off and deescalate the two of them. “Let’s focus on this legate, because I was raised with the Legionnaires and I just thought that a legion was like a group of demons like a murder of crows. It’s why the Legionnaires chose their name because they were a powerful force, or at least I thought so.”

“Well that is partially true,” King agreed, searching for something in the magic space he had on the inside of his cape. “A group of demons is called a legion, but it’s also a type of demon for the same reason.”

Then King paused, “Shoot, I forgot it at the base, and we should probably go back to the base, leave this place back for them.”

“Yeah we’ve combed through this place enough,” King sighed and Joan and Silver stayed behind to make sure everything was moved back to where it was supposed to be as everyone headed back to the base.

King went to go find the tome he’d been looking for in his room, and while he was gone Silver and Joan came back into the base.

“I think we got everything back to where it was,” Silver told them. “But I guarantee we missed something.”

Joan rolled their eyes. “Lo’s absolutely gonna[4] know someone went through their house, and if he somehow doesn’t find out I guarantee you Virgil will when he goes through his stuff. He used to live with the Duke after all.”

King walked back in, Lunky clinging to his cape, King smiled and was talking with his child. There was an old book in his hand. “You can stay, but you can’t meet the new demon, he’s not very nice like 할아버지[5] is.”

“You do know you’re talking about Dark, right?” Silver asked.

“Yeah, well, he’s nice to Lunky,” King smiled, before his level leveled onto a more neutral frown as he cracked open the tome. “Alright so on Illinois’s first trips to Egypt he found this book in the bowels of some library.”

“Does it talk about Legates?” Jackie asked, walking over and getting a low warning hiss from Lunky for approaching the spawnling’s father without Lunky’s permission.

“Hey, it’s okay,” King told his child, before looking at the book. “So this book doesn’t directly talk about Legates but it kickstarted this little bout of research he and I did. What this book details is some spawnling that was formed by a lightning strike and began conquering the area. The Old Man’s apparently met this guy too, he likes building stuff apparently.”

“They play poker on the weekends or somethin’[6]?” Jackie tried to joke.

“No, they haven’t spoken in almost 200 years,” King dismissed. “More importantly this research Ills and I did helped us learn a lot about demons. Mainly that demons aren’t categorized by aura or region of the world, but based on how they collect aura. If they can survive being struck by lightning without discorporating, control lightning, or technology; then they’re glitches. If they feed primarily off the emotional state of other humans or demons, then they’re empaths. If they collect aura by manipulating people and making deals: that means they’re deal makers. If they’re attention whores that collect aura from large groups, they’re showmen.”

“Wait, glitches have an affinity fer[7] lightnin’[8]?” Jackie asked. “Since when? Anti doesn’t go outside in lightnin’[8] storms.”

“Well, that doesn’t surprise me,” King replied. “Honestly there should be a hell of a lot more glitches with an outright phobia of lightning. Before technology really took off the only way to get a glitch was if one split off from another demon, like what happened with Lunky, or something like lightning strikes them. I’m pretty sure Anti was human once and he’s old enough that he was probably killed by lightning.”

“What?” Jackie shouted.

“Yep,” King popped the end of the world. “Which is why glitches were seen as weaker or rare for centuries, it was hard for them to get a lot of power until the industrial revolution hit. But while we were deep diving in some of the books we found, we found some myths and legends that talked about another type of demon. It was like a hybrid of other demon types. Like a jack-of-all-trades, master of none, kind of demon.”

“So if demons are separated by how they collect aura,” Silver commented. “How do these . . . legates? I assume these types are legates, right? How do they collect aura?”

“Yes,” King confirmed hesitantly, “and that’s the problem. Legates are like an octopus. Eight legs, but one octopus. Something in the process of creating a legate, regardless of what it would have become, doesn’t split properly. If the legate was already a proper demon it would just make a spawnling and both the demon and the spawnling would be fine. And 99.99999% of the time the person just dies instead of making a legate. But it’s that incredibly slim chance where the soul is resilient enough that the energy can’t fully make a proper demon. That energy has to go somewhere so it makes a legate and this pseudo-demon, for lack of a better term, is dangerous because the demon itself can’t collect aura, but it’s legs can.”

“Is that where the Sides come in?” Joan asked.

“Exactly,” King gestured with his arms. “It explains why there are so many. Because when a demon makes a spawnling, multiple spawnlings mean a lot of energy was split off but when a human is turned into a demon there’s barely enough energy to make one demon, let alone seven. So the legate can’t absorb aura properly on its own, making it crazy and hungry because it can’t feed like it’s supposed to. It’s like being lactose intolerant but only being able to eat and drink dairy products. But the arms or extensions of a legate are fully capable of getting aura and bringing it back to the legate in a way it can feed from. The better control a legate has over its arms, the better it can feed. So it quickly gains complete dominion over the arms and turns them into mindless thralls.”

“But all the Sides have some of the most bombastic personalities I’ve ever seen,” Silver reminded, as Nate hummed in agreement, Mare was talking to him in his head.

“Precisely,” King smiled. “They’re not thralls, so that means they’re not giving their legate aura. So the legate is either dead or is kept somewhere that it can’t collect aura and turn the Sides into thralls. If we can verify the legate is actually dead or kill it, then the Sides keep their individuality.”

“So how do we do that?” Nate spoke up. “Especially without hurting the Sides in the process?”

King thought on that for a second. “Well when they get back we should come clean and just talk about the whole thing and maybe they know something they haven’t told us.”

“Okay, what if they don’t?” Mare asked.

“Well they’re non-violent for the most part, so if we leave them be they’re not going to torch the city down,” King shrugged, he tucked the tome into his cape. “Unless there’s something you guys haven’t told me. How did Thomas die exactly? Knowing what all the Sides have in common will tell us a lot about the legate we’re looking for.”

Nate gestured to Joan, who quickly began explaining, “So I found this old camera at an estate sale and brought it to some party. I was messing around with it, dropped it, and Thomas caught it. When that happened, he split apart and that was it, it went that fast.”

“You’re sure nothing happened in-between that time?” King asked.

“Yeah,” Joan answered, hesitant but sure.

“We still have that soul splitter,” Nate supplied helpfully. “We’re pretty sure it used to be Wil’s.”

“What?” King spat.

“Yeah, I’ll go get it,” Nate offered and ran out of the room to go fetch the camera. King at the same time sent Lunky back to Google. The spawnling complained but eventually the two heroes came back with their little missions completed.

“Okay, Logan really likes it for some reason,” Nate informed King when they were both back. By the look on King’s face the young man was thinking along the same lines. “Deceit hates the thing apparently, but none of the others have more than a passing tolerance towards it.”

King picked up the camera and groaned at the pink mustache stained into the side. “Of course it’s Dad’s. His magic always did weird things to stuff to begin with.”

The young man began trying to send his aura at it, to get it to react, but he was met with nothing.

“Okay, Dad, what weird thing did you do to make this?” King grumbled in frustration.

“That’s all I could ever get it to do,” Nate lamented. “I’ve tried popping the film cartridge, but it’s stuck. I think it’s just old.”

Humming a bit in affirmation, King turned it over a bit and set it on the closest table, his fingers drummed pensively. “Okay, it’s Dad’s, there’s gotta be some trick.”

King took out one of the medallion necklaces Dark had made for Lunky and hung it right over the camera.

Still nothing.

Frowning, King channeled his aura through the camera and finally a reaction took place. A mix of King and Dark’s aura in proximity to the remnants of Wil’s that stubbornly held the camera together brought forth another aura. It was distinct and visible: a shimmering, rainbow aura. It lasted for a second but it was there.

In alarm, King flew back from the camera, pulling the necklace away. In an instant the aura disappeared.

King approached and experimentally held just the necklace above before taking it away again and trying to search for an aura trail.

“Oh, you sly bastard!” King realized as he pulled out the very dagger that had caused part of his soul to split off and create Lunky. He’d kept it because he was certainly not letting the Jims get their hands on the knife again. “I fucking found you!”

King tried to drive the soul splitter into the camera and some protective spell fanned out to break the soul splitter and bruised King’s hand.

At first King thought his hand had been broken or fractured, but as the pain subdued to a dull, aching throb, he began trying to move it and realized that at worst it had bruised his bone.

“Fucking shit!” King hissed as Silver ran over to him. The force of the barrier spell and King’s attempted blow had caused the table to break and the camera to fall to the ground, undamaged by the fall.

Nanites surged out of some unseen compartment in the camera and created a projection disk. There was a whirl and a hum, before a holographic symbol hovering in the air. It was a blackened symbol of three heads and dozens of arms surrounding it, the only words there were: “Hecatoncheires Projects Presents:”

The symbol lasted for a second before the projection showed an image of future Logan, Spade, standing in front of them.

Spade’s projection smiled at them and he took a deep breath before he greeted them, “Heroes.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Accessibility Translations:

1. Fuck-all

2. to

3. Put everything back and pretend nothing’s happened? All you’ve told us about this thing is that it’s dangerous or something

4. going to

5. Grandfather; Korean. Specifically the informal way to address your paternal grandfather. Phonically read as “halabeoji”

6. something

7. for

8. lightning

[mattbrothersscriptwriter]

My Top 20 Films of 2019 - Part Two

I don’t think I’ve had a year where my top ten jostled and shifted as much as this one did - these really are the best of the best and my personal favourites of 2019.

10. Toy Story 4

I think we can all agree that Toy Story 3 was a pretty much perfect conclusion to a perfect trilogy right? About as close as is likely to get, I’m sure. I shared the same trepidation when part four was announced, especially after some underwhelming sequels like Finding Dory and Cars 3 (though I do have a lot of time for Monsters University and Incredibles 2). So maybe it’s because the odds were so stacked against this being good but I thought it was wonderful. A truly existential nightmare of an epilogue that does away with Andy (and mostly kids altogether) to focus on the dreams and desires of the toys themselves - separate from their ‘duties’ as playthings to biological Gods. What is their purpose in life without an owner? Can they be their own person and carve their own path? In the case of breakout new character Forky (Tony Hale), what IS life? Big big questions for a cash grab kids films huh?

The animation is somehow yet another huge leap forward (that opening rainstorm!), Bo Peep’s return is excellently pitched and the series tradition of being unnervingly horrifying is back as well thanks to those creepy ventriloquist dolls! Keanu Reeves continues his ‘Keanuassaince‘ as the hilarious Duke Caboom and this time, hopefully, the ending at least feels finite. This series means so much to me: I think the first movie is possibly the tightest, most perfect script ever written, the third is one of my favourites of the decade and growing up with the franchise (I was 9 when the first came out, 13 for part two, 24 for part three and now 32 for this one), these characters are like old friends so of course it was great to see them again. All this film had to do was be good enough to justify its existence and while there are certainly those out there that don’t believe this one managed it, I think the fact that it went as far as it did showed that Pixar are still capable of pushing boundaries and exploring infinity and beyond when they really put their minds to it.

9. The Nightingale

Hoo boy. Already controversial with talk of mass walkouts (I witnessed a few when this screened at Sundance London), it’s not hard to see why but easy to understand. Jennifer Kent (The Babadook) is a truly fearless filmmaker following up her acclaimed suburban horror movie come grief allegory with a period revenge tale set in the Tasmanian wilderness during British colonial rule in the early 1800s. It’s rare to see the British depicted with the monstrous brutality for which they were known in the distant colonies and this unflinching drama sorely needed an Australian voice behind the camera to do it justice.

The film is front loaded with some genuinely upsetting, nasty scenes of cruel violence but its uncensored brutality and the almost casual nature of its depiction is entirely the point - this was normalised behaviour over there and by treating it so matter of factly, it doesn’t slip into gratuitous ‘movie violence’. It is what it is. And what it is is hard to watch. If anything, as Kent has often stated, it’s still toned down from the actual atrocities that occurred so it’s a delicate balance that I think Kent more than understands. Quoting from an excellent Vanity Fair interview she did about how she directs, Kent said “I think audiences have become very anaesthetised to violence on screen and it’s something I find disturbing... People say ‘these scenes are so shocking and disturbing’. Of course they are. We need to feel that. When we become so removed from violence on screen, this is a very irresponsible thing. So I wanted to put us right within the frame with that person experiencing the loss of everything they hold dear”. 

Aisling Franciosi is next level here as a woman who has her whole life torn from her, leaving her as nothing but a raging husk out for vengeance. It would be so easy to fall into odd couple tropes once she teams up with reluctant native tracker Billy (an equally impressive newcomer, Baykali Ganambarr) but the film continues to stay true to the harsh racism of the era, unafraid to depict our heroine - our point of sympathy - as horrendously racist towards her own ally. Their partnership is not easily solidified but that makes it all the stronger when they star to trust each other. Sam Claflin is also career best here, weaponizing his usual charm into dangerous menace and even after cementing himself as the year’s most evil villain, he can still draw out the humanity in such a broken and corrupt man.

Gorgeously shot in the Academy ratio, the forest landscape here is oppressive and claustrophobic. Kent also steps back into her horror roots with some mesmerising, skin crawling dream scenes that amplify the woozy nightmarish tone and overbearing sense of dread. Once seen, never forgotten, this is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea (and that’s fine) but when cinema can affect you on such a visceral level and be this powerful, reflective and honest about our own past, it’s hard to ignore. Stunning.

8. The Irishman

Aka Martin Scorsese’s magnum opus, I did manage to see this one in a cinema before the Netflix drop and absolutely loved it. I’ve watched 85 minute long movies that felt longer than this - Marty’s mastery of pace, energy and knowing when to let things play out in agonising detail is second to none. This epic tale of  the life of Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) really is the cinematic equivalent of having your cake and eating it too, allowing Scorsese to run through a greatest hits victory lap of mobster set pieces, alpha male arguments, a decades spanning life story and one (last?) truly great Joe Pesci performance before simply letting the story... continue... to a natural, depressing and tragic ending, reflecting the emptiness of a life built on violence and crime.

For a film this long, it’s impressive how much the smallest details make the biggest impacts. A stammering phone call from a man emotionally incapable of offering any sort of condolence. The cold refusal of forgiveness from a once loving daughter. A simple mirroring of a bowl of cereal or a door left slightly ajar. These are the parts of life that haunt us all and it’s what we notice the most in a deliberately lengthy biopic that shows how much these things matter when everything else is said and done. The violence explodes in sudden, sharp bursts, often capping off unbearably tense sequences filled with the everyday (a car ride, a conversation about fish, ice cream...) and this contrast between the whizz bang of classic Scorsese and the contemplative nature of Silence era Scorsese is what makes this film feel like such an accomplishment. De Niro is FINALLY back but it’s the memorably against type role for Pesci and an invigorated Al Pacino who steals this one, along with a roll call of fantastic cameos, with perhaps the most screentime given to the wonderfully petty Stephen Graham as Tony Pro, not to mention Anna Paquin’s near silent performance which says more than possibly anyone else. 

Yes, the CG de-aging is misguided at best, distracting at worst (I never really knew how old anyone was meant to be at any given time... which is kinda a problem) but like how you get used to it really quickly when it’s used well, here I kinda got past it being bad in an equally fast amount of time and just went with it. Would it have been a different beast had they cast younger actors to play them in the past? Undoubtedly. But if this gives us over three hours of Hollywood’s finest giving it their all for the last real time together, then that’s a compromise I can live with.

7. The Last Black Man in San Francisco

Wow. I was in love with this film from the moving first trailer but then the film itself surpassed all expectations. This is a true indie film success story, with lead actor Jimmie Fails developing the idea with director Joe Talbot for years before Kickstarting a proof of concept and eventually getting into Sundance with short film American Paradise, which led to the backing of this debut feature through Plan B and A24. The deeply personal and poetic drama follows a fictionalised version of Jimmie, trying to buy back an old Victorian town house he claims was built by his grandfather, in an act of rebellion against the increasingly gentrified San Francisco that both he and director Talbot call home.

The film is many things - a story of male friendship, of solidarity within our community, of how our cities can change right from underneath us - it moves to the beat of it’s own drum, with painterly cinematography full of gorgeous autumnal colours and my favourite score of the year from Emile Mosseri. The performances, mostly by newcomers or locals outside of brilliant turns from Jonathan Majors, Danny Glover and Thora Birch, are wonderful and the whole thing is such a beautiful love letter to the city that it makes you ache for a strong sense of place in your own home, even if your relationship with it is fractured or strained. As Jimmie says, “you’re not allowed to hate it unless you love it”.

For me, last year’s Blindspotting (my favourite film of the year) tackled gentrification within California more succinctly but this much more lyrical piece of work ebbs and flows through a number of themes like identity, family, memory and time. It’s a big film living inside a small, personal one and it is not to be overlooked.

6. Little Women

I had neither read the book nor seen any prior adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel so to me, this is by default the definitive telling of this story. If from what I hear, the non linear structure is Greta Gerwig’s addition, then it’s a total slam dunk. It works so well in breaking up the narrative and by jumping from past to present, her screenplay highlights certain moments and decisions with a palpable sense of irony, emotional weight or knowing wink. Getting to see a statement made with sincere conviction and then paid off within seconds, can be both a joy and a surefire recipe for tears. Whether it’s the devastating contrast between scenes centred around Beth’s illness or the juxtaposition of character’s attitudes to one another, it’s a massive triumph. Watching Amy angrily tell Laurie how she’s been in love with him all her life and then cutting back to her childishly making a plaster cast of her foot for him (’to remind him how small her feet are’) is so funny. 

Gerwig and her impeccable cast bring an electric energy to the period setting, capturing the big, messy realities of family life with a mix of overwhelming cross-chatter and the smallest of intimate gestures. It’s a testament to the film that every sister feels fully serviced and represented, from Beth’s quiet strength to Amy’s unforgivable sibling rivalry. Chris Cooper’s turn as a stoic man suffering almost imperceptible grief is a personal heartbreaking favourite. 

The book’s (I’m assuming) most sweeping romantic statements are wonderfully delivered, full of urgent passion and relatable heartache, from Marmie’s (Laura Dern) “I’m angry nearly every day of my life” moment to Jo’s (Saoirse Ronan) painful defiance of feminine attributes not being enough to cure her loneliness. The sheer amount of heart and warmth in this is just remarkable and I can easily see it being a film I return to again and again.

5. Booksmart

2019 has been a banner year for female directors, making their exclusion from some of the early awards conversations all the more damning. From this list alone, we have Lulu Wang, Jennifer Kent and Greta Gerwig. Not to mention Lorene Scafaria (Hustlers), Melina Matsoukas (Queen & Slim), Jocelyn DeBoer & Dawn Luebbe (Greener Grass), Sophie Hyde (Animals) and Rose Glass (Saint Maud - watch out for THIS one in 2020, it’s brilliant). Perhaps the most natural transition from in front of to behind the camera has been made by Olivia Wilde, who has created a borderline perfect teen comedy that can make you laugh till you cry, cry till you laugh and everything in-between.

Subverting the (usually male focused) ‘one last party before college’ tropes that fuel the likes of Superbad and it’s many inferior imitators, Booksmart follows two overachievers who, rather than go on a coming of age journey to get some booze or get laid, simply want to indulge in an insane night of teenage freedom after realising that all of the ‘cool kids’ who they assumed were dropouts, also managed to get a place in all of the big universities. It’s a subtly clever remix of an old favourite from the get go but the committed performances from Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein put you firmly in their shoes for the whole ride. 

It’s a genuine blast, with big laughs and a bigger heart, portraying a supportive female friendship that doesn’t rely on hokey contrivances to tear them apart, meaning that when certain repressed feelings do come to the surface, the fallout is heartbreaking. As I stated in a twitter rave after first seeing it back in May, every single character, no matter how much they might appear to be simply representing a stock role or genre trope, gets their moment to be humanised. This is an impeccably cast ensemble of young unknowns who constantly surprise and the script is a marvel - a watertight structure without a beat out of place, callbacks and payoffs to throwaway gags circle back to be hugely important and most of all, the approach taken to sexuality and representation feels so natural. I really think it is destined to be looked back on and represent 2019 the way Heathers does ‘88, Clueless ‘95 or Easy A 2010. A new high benchmark for crowd pleasing, indie comedy - teen or otherwise.

4. Ad Astra

Brad Pitt is one of my favourite actors and one who, despite still being a huge A-lister even after 30 years in the game, never seems to get enough credit for the choices he makes, the movies he stars in and also the range of stories he helps produce through his company, Plan B. 2019 was something of a comeback year for Pitt as an actor with the insanely measured and controlled lead performance seen here in Ad Astra and the more charismatic and chaotic supporting role in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood.

I love space movies, especially those that are more about broken people blasting themselves into the unknown to search for answers within themselves... which manages to sum up a lot of recent output in this weirdly specific sub-genre. First Man was a devastating look at grief characterised by a man who would rather go to a desolate rock than have to confront what he lost, all while being packaged as a heroic biopic with a stunning score. Gravity and The Martian both find their protagonists forced to rely on their own cunning and ingenuity to survive and Interstellar looked at the lengths we go to for those we love left behind. Smaller, arty character studies like High Life or Moon are also astounding. All of this is to say that Ad Astra takes these concepts and runs with them, challenging Pitt to cross the solar system to talk some sense into his long thought dead father (Tommy Lee Jones). But within all the ‘sad dad’ stuff, there’s another film in here just daring you to try and second guess it - one that kicks things off with a terrifying free fall from space, gives us a Mad Max style buggy chase on the moon and sidesteps into horror for one particular set-piece involving a rabid baboon in zero G! It manages to feel so completely nuts, so episodic in structure, that I understand why a lot of people were turned off - feeling that the overall film was too scattershot to land the drama or too pondering to have any fun with. I get the criticisms but for me, both elements worked in tandem, propelling Pitt on this (assumed) one way journey at a crazy pace whilst sitting back and languishing in the ‘bigger themes’ more associated with a Malik or Kubrick film. Something that Pitt can sell me on in his sleep by this point.

I loved the visuals from cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (Interstellar), loved the imagination and flair of the script from director James Gray and Ethan Gross and loved the score by Max Richter (with Lorne Balfe and Nils Frahm) but most of all, loved Pitt, proving that sometimes a lot less, is a lot more. The sting of hearing the one thing he surely knew (but hoped he wouldn’t) be destined to hear from his absent father, acted almost entirely in his eyes during a third act confrontation, summed up the movie’s brilliance for me - so much so that I can forgive some of the more outlandish ‘Mr Hyde’ moments of this thing’s alter ego... like, say, riding a piece of damaged hull like a surfboard through a meteor debris field! 

3. Avengers: Endgame

It’s no secret that I think Marvel, the MCU in particular, have been going from strength to strength in recent years, slowly but surely taking bigger risks with filmmakers (the bonkers Taika Waititi, the indie darlings of Ryan Coogler, Cate Shortland and Chloe Zhao) whilst also carefully crafting an entertaining, interconnected universe of characters and stories. But what is the point of building up any movie ‘universe’ if you’re not going to pay it off and Endgame is perhaps the strongest conclusion to eleven years of movie sequels that fans could have possibly hoped for.

Going into this thing, the hype was off the charts (and for good reason, with it now being the highest grossing film of all time) but I remember souring on the first entry of this two-parter, Infinity War, during the time between initial release and Endgame’s premiere. That film had a game-changing climax, killing off half the heroes (and indeed the universe’s population) and letting the credits role on the villain having achieved his ultimate goal. It was daring, especially for a mammoth summer blockbuster but obviously, we all knew the deaths would never be permanent, especially with so many already-announced sequels for now ‘dusted’ characters. However, it wasn’t just the feeling that everything would inevitably be alright in the end. For me, the characters themselves felt hugely under-serviced, with arguably the franchise’s main goody two shoes Captain America being little more than a beardy bloke who showed up to fight a little bit. Basically what I’m getting at is that I felt Endgame, perhaps emboldened by the giant runtime, managed to not only address these character slights but ALSO managed to deliver the most action packed, comic booky, ‘bashing your toys together’ final fight as well.

It’s a film of three parts, each pretty much broken up into one hour sections. There’s the genuinely new and interesting initial section following our heroes dealing with the fact that they lost... and it stuck. Thor angrily kills Thanos within the first fifteen minutes but it’s a meaningless action by this point - empty revenge. Cutting to five years later, we get to see how defeat has affected them, for better or worse, trying to come to terms with grief and acceptance. Cap tries to help the everyman, Black Widow is out leading an intergalactic mop up squad and Thor is wallowing in a depressive black hole. It’s a shocking and vibrantly compelling deconstruction of the whole superhero thing and it gives the actors some real meat to chew on, especially Robert Downy Jr here who goes from being utterly broken to fighting within himself to do the right thing despite now having a daughter he doesn’t want to lose too. Part two is the trip down memory lane, fan service-y time heist which is possibly the most fun section of any of these movies, paying tribute to the franchise’s past whilst teetering on a knife’s edge trying to pull off a genuine ‘mission impossible’. And then it explodes into the extended finale which pays everyone off, demonstrates some brilliantly imaginative action and sticks the landing better than it had any right to. In a year which saw the ending of a handful of massive geek properties, from Game of Thrones to Star Wars, it’s a miracle even one of them got it right at all. That Endgame managed to get it SO right is an extraordinary accomplishment and if anything, I think Marvel may have shot themselves in the foot as it’s hard to imagine anything they can give us in the future having the intense emotional weight and momentum of this huge finale.

2. Knives Out

Rian Johnson has been having a ball leaping into genre sandpits and stirring shit up, from his teen spin on noir in Brick to his quirky con man caper with The Brothers Bloom, his time travel thriller Looper and even his approach to the Star Wars mythos in The Last Jedi. Turning his attention to the relatively dead ‘whodunnit’ genre, Knives Out is a perfect example of how to celebrate everything that excites you about a genre whilst weaponizing it’s tropes against your audience’s baggage and preconceptions.

An impeccable cast have the time of their lives here, revelling in playing self obsessed narcissists who scramble to punt the blame around when the family’s patriarch, a successful crime novelist (Christopher Plummer), winds up dead. Of course there’s something fishy going on so Daniel Craig’s brilliantly dry southern detective Benoit Blanc is called in to investigate.There are plenty of standouts here, from Don Johnson’s ignorant alpha wannabe Richard to Michael Shannon’s ferocious eldest son Walt to Chris Evan’s sweater wearing jock Ransom, full of unchecked, white privilege swagger. But the surprise was the wholly sympathetic, meek, vomit prone Marta, played brilliantly by Ana de Armas, cast against her usual type of sultry bombshell (Knock Knock, Blade Runner 2049), to spearhead the biggest shake up of the genre conventions. To go into more detail would begin to tread into spoiler territory but by flipping the audience’s engagement with the detective, we’re suddenly on the receiving end of the scrutiny and the tension derived from this switcheroo is genius and opens up the second act of the story immensely.

The whole thing is so lovingly crafted and the script is one of the tightest I’ve seen in years. The amount of setup and payoff here is staggering and never not hugely satisfying, especially as it heads into it’s final stretch. It really gives you some hope that you could have such a dense, plotty, character driven idea for a story and that it could survive the transition from page to screen intact and for the finished product to work as well as it does. I really hope Johnson returns to tell another Benoit Blanc mystery and judging by the roaring box office success (currently over $200 million worldwide for a non IP original), I certainly believe he will.

1. Eighth Grade

My film of the year is another example of the power of cinema to put us in other people’s shoes and to discover the traits, fears, joys and insecurities that we all share irregardless. It may shock you to learn this but I have never been a 13 year old teenage girl trying to get by in the modern world of social media peer pressure and ‘influencer’ culture whilst crippled with personal anxiety. My school days almost literally could not have looked more different than this (less Instagram, more POGs) and yet, this is a film about struggling with oneself, with loneliness, with wanting more but not knowing how to get it without changing yourself and the careless way we treat those with our best interests at heart in our selfish attempt to impress peers and fit in. That is understandable. That is universal. And as I’m sure I’ve said a bunch of times in this list, movies that present the most specific worldview whilst tapping into universal themes are the ones that inevitably resonate the most.

Youtuber and comedian Bo Burnham has crafted an impeccable debut feature, somehow portraying a generation of teens at least a couple of generations below his own, with such laser focused insight and intimate detail. It’s no accident that this film has often been called a sort of social-horror, with cringe levels off the charts and recognisable trappings of anxiety and depression in every frame. The film’s style services this feeling at every turn, from it’s long takes and nauseous handheld camerawork to the sensory overload in it’s score (take a bow Anna Meredith) and the naturalistic performances from all involved. Burnham struck gold when he found Elsie Fisher, delivering the most painful and effortlessly real portrayal of a tweenager in crisis as Kayla. The way she glances around skittishly, the way she is completely lost in her phone, the way she talks, even the way she breathes all feeds into the illusion - the film is oftentimes less a studio style teen comedy and more a fly on the wall documentary. 

This is a film that could have coasted on being a distant, social media based cousin to more standard fare like Sex Drive or Superbad or even Easy A but it goes much deeper, unafraid to let you lower your guard and suddenly hit you with the most terrifying scene of casually attempted sexual aggression or let you watch this pure, kindhearted girl falter and question herself in ways she shouldn’t even have to worry about. And at it’s core, there is another beautiful father/daughter relationship, with Josh Hamilton stuck on the outside looking in, desperate to help Kayla with every fibre of his being but knowing there are certain things she has to figure out for herself. It absolutely had me and their scene around a backyard campfire is one of the year’s most touching.

This is a truly remarkable film that I think everyone should seek out but I’m especially excited for all the actual teenage girls who will get to watch this and feel seen. This isn’t about the popular kid, it isn’t about the dork who hangs out with his or her own band of misfits. This is about the true loner, that person trying everything to get noticed and still ending up invisible, that person trying to connect through the most disconnected means there is - the internet - and everything that comes with it. Learning that the version of yourself you ‘portray’ on a Youtube channel may act like they have all the answers but if you’re kidding yourself then how do you grow? 

When I saw this in the cinema, I watched a mother take her seat with her two daughters, aged probably at around nine and twelve. Possibly a touch young for this, I thought, and I admit I cringed a bit on their behalf during some very adult trailers but in the end, I’m glad their mum decided they were mature enough to see this because a) they had a total blast and b) life simply IS R rated for the most part, especially during our school years, and those girls being able to see someone like Kayla have her story told on the big screen felt like a huge win. I honestly can’t wait to see what Burnham or Fisher decide to do next. 2019 has absolutely been their year... and it’s been a hell of a year.

[tessatechaitea]

Cerebus #18 (1980)

This is the kind of cover that probably kept me thinking this book was too adult for me and that I should just stick to Groo and Elfquest.

In Dave's Swords of Cerebus essay, he explains how he didn't know what the fuck he was doing when he was writing this story and I'll tell you a secret: it fucking shows. He explains how he wrote one idea but realized that idea wasn't going to work and then wrote some other ideas but they weren't going anywhere and then he went back to the first idea and wrote a small novella which still wasn't going to work so then he tried some other idea but couldn't really get anywhere and pretty soon his week that he plans for writing was over and he just had to start drawing one of the scenes. So he picked one and strung it out and then he needed a new scene and took the Lord Julius epilogue and stick that on page 5 and 6. By that time, he sort of had a new idea with the help of his brother-in-law and even though that new idea was pretty lame, what more could he do?! He doesn't admit that his new story is lame; I think he thinks he really pulled one out at the last minute. But it's really kind of lame. I get it though! He's written seventeen previous stories (plus some Cerebus stories that appeared in other magazines) and they were all pretty good and working toward building a portrait of Estarcion and Cerebus and some kind of weird aardvark mystery. He was due to slip up some time! I'm just glad he was honest about how the writing part when all wrong and since he couldn't fall behind on the art, he had to just kind of start drawing and hope for the best. I suppose in that regard, the comic wasn't so bad. It told a coherent story that moves Cerebus' plans for the invasion of Palnu ahead and Dave even gets some funny jokes in. But as far as the extended story goes, not much happens? Cerebus and the T'gitans took over Fluroc by murdering everybody in it and then needed more money for troops and they got more money for troops by conning a merchant that came to town. That's it! That's the whole story! Did we need this story? Probably not! But did we really need any Cerebus story so far? Almost certainly not (with the exception of all the stories that showcased new characters!). But what I really liked about this comic book was the Aardvark Comments section! Things are really getting good finally! It's not just a few nerdy nerds nerding it up for Dave Sim.

I mean, it is some nerdy nerds nerding it up nerdily!

The first letter is what I'm assuming was the introductory or cover letter from Marvel's Jim Shooter when he sent out contracts to prospective employees.

Is this the worst thing Jim Shooter ever wrote? Sadly, it is not.

If you're one of those people who like to describe 95% of everything as "cringe," you'll love Dave Sim's response:

Remember, this was 1980 and "written blackface as hyperbolic response" was probably just something taught in creative writing classes.

Casually whistling past the terrible method of his response the way you simply steer the conversation away from racist tirades every time your grandfather speaks up at Thanksgiving dinner, this feels like the first time Sim really calls out the two big publishers and how they conduct business. It'll become a hallmark of Dave Sim in his crusade for independent publishers. And this sarcastic and also racist response (I can only whistle nonchalantly for so long!) isn't his only response in this Aardvark Comments. But as his first response, I'll assume it's the most closest to how he truly feels about Marvel and DC. In 1980, he's already calling them out on their practice of stealing their employees' intellectual properties. Okay, "stealing." The contract is to make the "stealing" legal so they don't wind up in constant lawsuits and can continue to offer the artists whose creations make them scads of money little to no future compensation on their efforts. Dave Sim could think of no other attack on Marvel than to pretend he's a caricature of a slave. I'm not in disagreement with Dave here and, believe me, in 1980, I almost certainly wouldn't have thought the mintrelesque response was anything but a clever way of making his point. Although I was also 9 in 1980 so I probably would have had to ask an adult why the fuck Dave was writing like that. But as I said, there's more! The next letter is a bit of a response to Dave's crusade against the Big Two Corporations. And from his peers!

I guessed I missed the comments in Issue #15. I'd better go back and see what the Pinis were talking about.

Here's what Dave said in Issue #15's "Aardvark Comment": "Maybe Marvel can turn its corporate back on you. As they never grow tired of explaining, fan sales make up a very small fraction of their profits. They don't think much of your taste in comics, artists, writers or anything else." It's a little hard to parse this comment being that I don't know what was happening in comic books in 1980 concerning the fans and Marvel but doesn't this sound a lot like the Comicsgate argument of today? That Marvel doesn't give a shit about what its "real fans" want? Anyway, back to the Pini's letter. The Pinis' letter reads like Elfquest trying to talk Cerebus out of gutting a merchant. I suppose when you point out that artists and writers working for Marvel and DC are idiots for not publishing their work as an independent, I can see how they might get upset with you. I'm sure Richard and Wendy had a number of discussions with Marv Wolfman where Marv would say things like "I'm not dumb! You're dumb!" or "I'm not a piece of property! You are!" or "I'll show you who's a slave to the man! I'll kill Cyborg!" After that, the Pinis were probably all, "You know what? Criticizing work-for-hire in the comic book arts just isn't worth all these Marv Wolfman tantrums. Let's just bite our tongues." After a couple of letters from some nerd groupies in which Dave laments the target audience of comic books, he responds more in length to the . . . well, wait. Let's first look at his response about his core audience!

I'm offended! I always fix it immediately when a headlight goes out.

I mean, after seventeen issues, "Aardvark Comment" is finally getting interesting! Okay, so now to Sim's actual response to Wendy and Richard Pini.

Dave Sim being serious. Probably.

I'd like to point out the end of this letter in which Dave states fairly plainly the main theme of criticism behind Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea for nearly a decade: "I just don't happen to think that the system in operation now is the best thing for this medium and that it is not the most conducive way to get the best from the creative talents that exist. Quite the opposite, it seems to encourage half-assed efforts in order to guarantee that you are not surrendering your rights to something of value. And how many of us, Steve Gerber included, could know in advance that our ducks were of any value?" This was as true in 1980 as it is now. It's just that in 1980, it was much harder and a lot more work to retain the rights to your creations through self-publishing. So most comic book writers and artists were doing their best work at DC and Marvel. What other reasonable choice was there? Dave and Deni have discussed multiple times across the last dozen and a half issues how hard self-publishing has been for them. Now imagine a company like Image exists or a place like Kickstarter. Creators now know to save their best ideas for places that will give them full control and full potential earnings on their creations. DC and Marvel can't help but be full of writers doing half-assed jobs with their half-assed ideas and saving their truly monumental and mind-blowing work for Image or another, now more easily accessible independent publishing venture. This was in 1980 and Dave Sim was seeing creators screwed out of future royalties on ideas that wound up making fortunes for the parent companies. Some people accept this as business as usual and would be able to garner no sympathy for a creator stiffed out of royalties. But those people are unimaginative, pitiable, and sad. Something being legal has never in the history of everything been a convincing argument that that something is ethical, moral, or just fucking compassionate. Hopefully this "Aardvark Comment" begins to stir some serious discussion with Cerebus readers because I'm eager to read a lot more of Dave's thoughts about comic book publishing and fandom. Eventually there won't be a whole lot of separation between the comic book and the letters page. I mean, when the author inserts himself into the story as both some sort of omniscient being and also another fictionalized author, it gets hard to separate what you believe from the ideas expressed within the story. Cerebus #18 Rating: B-. That rating was for the lackluster story! The "Aardvark Comment" page gets an A! Oh, and I forgot to mention "The Single Page!" Imagine my surprise when I turned the page and saw this:

Tim Kreider in 1989! (Remember, this is from the 1989 Bi-weekly reprints of the 1980 Cerebus #18.)

You can just see Tim's eventual style in these early characters. The main male character is basically a baby-faced version and immature style of his eventual renditions of himself.

This is from Tim Kreider's book of essays and cartoons, We Learn Nothing.

I can't recommend Tim Kreider's essays and cartoons highly enough. Read his books, We Learn Nothing and I Wrote This Book Because I Love You and maybe search the Internet for a cache of his old cartooning website. You probably won't be disappointed. I say probably because I've learned that a lot of people on the Internet aren't exactly like me like I expect you all to be. Idiots.

[theonyxpath]

So, yes, it’s Labor Day here in the US, a national holiday. Many companies would therefore give today off to their employees, but since every day is a holiday here at Onyx Path, we had our usual Monday Meeting today, and work continues apace.

Of course, the second part of our MMN Blog title today comes from the fact that the Scion: Demigod 2e Kickstarter has been just crashing through the Stretch Goals after funding in 75 minutes! We’re all really thrilled and grateful to all of our backers for showing such fantastic support!

Putting the two together, I thought that a change of pace today that showed how some labor was done to create the elements for Scion: Demigod might be appropriate. And since I did some of that labor, I figure it’s on me to step up today and delve into the creation process for one of our latest Scion pantheon symbols.

This one is for the Apu, the Incan pantheon.

It’s usually after the writing is pretty well finalized, but not necessarily developed, that I’ll ask the project developer for notes on whichever part of the project needs a symbol. In the case of Scion, our writing and dev teams do such a deep dive into the pantheons that I could get overwhelmed just reading through the text, so in addition to letting me read that, I also ask for any ideas they might have for symbols and elements appropriate to the pantheon.

Sometimes I get easily usable ideas, and other times the needs of a visual project mean that I have to dig a bit deeper myself. In the case of the Apu, my notes scrawled on my note pad included: “golden sun disc (with link)”, “stepped pyramid”, “stone and gold”, “order/stability”, “Cusco”, “black and white llamas”.

I was good to go with the golden sun disc, and checked to see if any of the previous Scion symbols I designed went down that same visual direction. None did, so using that big hit of gold as the centerpiece became the start for the symbol. I originally considered using the foliage motif similar to what I did for the Aztec pantheon symbol as a background and surrounding next for the gold disc, but that did seem too close to other symbols and for me it just didn’t feel Incan enough.

Which is a big part of what makes these Scion symbols work, they have to feel appropriate to the pantheon. Which means we’re in the realm of the subjective, as what feels right to me may not feel right to you. But that’s the chance you take, because these are Scion symbols and they have to touch us, mean something to us, at least a bit, or we’re missing the point of the setting/game. All the raw data in the world about what should be included doesn’t help if most people aren’t connecting with that symbol.

That led me to hit the books. Yes, actual books. If I know what I want, finding 1500 images that I can use as reference for that thing is a snap with a Google search, but if I’m still looking for visuals that connect with me, then online searching just doesn’t work for me as well as paging through books about a culture. I don’t know what’s on the next page, which is the point.

One of the things I picked up on, was how striking the textiles still are in areas we’d consider Incan. Which started a whole different idea about how the color could and should work for this symbol. Bird feathers as decoration, and returning to one of the writer’s suggestions, the Incan knotted rope language called quipu. I had wanted to use it but didn’t have a way to keep the ropes and knots legible in the symbol, but with a bright textile background holding everything together, I could bring the quipu back into play.

Here’s my rough ideas page, the Apu symbol at top right representing the first pass, and the one lower left coming after I did more research:

From the rough sketch, where I’m looking at what elements can be arranged in what pattern, and where I’m thinking about but not putting down the color yet, I’ll draw out the various elements on bristol board in ink – usually with technical pens rather than anything that would give a varying line. We just need an even line.

A lot of time, if I know I want an image the same on both sides, or top and bottom, then I’ll just draw the one side and copy/flip/combine in Photoshop after scanning. The knotted ropes are on a separate page, as they required the whole sheet so I could draw them with enough detail.

Like I mentioned, these drawings get scanned in, and are really used as raw materials to copy and paste from when I start to make the whole symbol in Photoshop. Each element in the design gets its own layer, and that layer is set to Multiply in the layer menu. That way, the darkest lines stay dark, but anything in a layer “under” our line art shows through. This will become clearer when you see how the color goes in, but here’s just the line art all piled on top of each other:

At this point, it’s time to get color in there, and in this specific symbol, it’s also time to get the patterning into the Incan textile. Some of the colors only show up when the overall color is on there, so don’t worry if it seems like some of the symbols aren’t there. They are on layers that I did different layer types, like Multiply from before:

I also used the same colors for the fringe along the bottom and just drew those in loosely knowing the overall color would fall in between the other colors. Each instance of the bird symbol is on its own layer so that I could play around with size, position, layer effects, and color. I was going more for energy with the positioning and a certain lack of perfect positioning to replicate the hand-crafted nature of the textile.

Next, here it is with the red overall color. I spent a lot of time playing with the color controls to get the red I wanted, and then tweaked almost all of the little bird symbols to have their colors work with the red:

While some of the birds are now showing up, you can see a few blank spots in there. Don’t worry, those won’t show up once the other item layers get colored in.

This was good, but the thing was, it didn’t feel like fabric to me. And that’s what I wanted to really play up – the texture of the textile! I could have scanned in a cloth texture, or found one online, but in this case I went with combining layer effects and filters. I’d tell you what I did if I could remember, but here’s what it looked like without the red layer behind it:

I’m going to jump ahead here, and give you a step by step look at the big gold disk as it’s layers are painted in, but just assume that whatever I tell you about the disk, I already did in sort of the same sequence for the knotted ropes and the feathered headdress. I also started thickening the line stroke around objects to give them more heft and set them visually into the whole symbol. More on that later.

So here’s the first color for the disk, a dark golden brown:

Here’s where it really gets fun and painterly. The next layer is just yellow, with the Photoshop brush set on soft-round and at something like 25% transparency. With the lines already setting up the shapes, I just zoomed in and put yellow in keeping the brightest areas towards where the light was supposed to be hitting the disk (more from below than the traditional light from above):

Looking at it at this point, it didn’t pop enough. So I copied the yellow layer and set it to Multiply or the like and the doubled up yellow hit what I was looking for. It didn’t show up much when I was putting these sequential layer graphics together, but it’s that sort of subtle coloring that gives it the 3D look we need:

And here goes the last highlight on the gold, which was a lot closer to white to really get a bit of sparkle, plus I also created a shadow effect in two layers so that the disk would feel more like it is on top of the other elements. We want that gold disk to be the big popping thing from this graphic, and it needs to be strong to outshine the colors of the textile:

You can also see that I made the outer edge line much thicker than the others inside the symbol, so we’d have a strong edge to it so it could stand out on the page like the previous Scion symbols. Although, to be faaaair, I did reduce that thickness where the knotted ropes break out of the bottom. The ropes were being engulfed by the outline visually, plus, there’s a whole “language will be free” sort of thing going on there.

Hope you enjoyed this little look at the labor (or labour, as Matthew, James, and Ian would say) behind one of these pieces. It really is a labor of love, though, and it is so great when folks really respond to them.

Because this blog was so art heavy, here are your usual pieces of art from upcoming projects all together at the end!

V5 Let the Streets Run Red art by Sam Araya

Terra Firma art by Gregor Pedrycz

Hope you don’t mind the extra art here, but they really do illustrate our

Many Worlds, One Path!

Blurbs!

Kickstarter!

Scion Demigod Second Edition funded last week in 75 minutes and is headed strongly to 300% funding, having blown through all sorts of Stretch Goals! Check it out if you haven’t already:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/scion-demigod-book-3-for-the-scion-second-edition-rpg

Onyx Path Media!

This week: The Titanically Talented Trio of Terrible Terrificness discuss Stumbles, Errors, and How To Avoid Them! They’ll be looking at all sorts of fumbles and bumbles they and others have made while putting together game books!

As always, this Friday’s Onyx Pathcast will be on Podbean or your favorite podcast venue! https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

The Story Told RPG Podcast gets top billing this week due to their excellent, in-depth interview with developer Neall Raemonn Price regarding the currently on Kickstarter Scion: Demigod! Check it out and learn some of the ins and outs of Scion: https://thestorytold.libsyn.com/episode-61-scion-demigod-interview-with-neall-price

We’ve got lots of Scion: Demigod actual plays coming in the next few weeks, with the first starting this week by Vorpal Tales! Keep watching this section for more Scion: Demigod games!

For anyone new to our media section, you can find us running and playing games over on twitch.tv/theonyxpath pretty much every day of the week! Plus, if you’d like your games hosted there, just get in touch with Matthew Dawkins using the contact link on matthewdawkins.com. 

Please give our Twitch channel a follow, as you can find a huge number of videos of all kinds of games being run!

This week on Twitch, expect to see these games and streams running:

Scarred Lands – A Family Affair

Technocracy Reloaded – Vorpal Tales

Scion: Demigod – Vorpal Tales

Danielle’s RPG Development Workshop

Hunter: The Vigil – Cold Cases Forsaken Spaces

Changeling: The Dreaming – The Last Faerie Tale

Mage: The Awakening – Occultists Anonymous

Vampire: The Masquerade – Boston by Night

Chronicles of Darkness – Tooth and Claw

Deviant: The Renegades – A Cautionary Tale

Get watching for some fantastic insight into how to run these wonderful games and subscribe to us on Twitch, over at twitch.tv/theonyxpath

Come take a look at our YouTube channel, youtube.com/user/theonyxpath, where you can find a whole load of videos of actual plays, dissections of our games, and more, including:

Changeling: The Dreaming – The Last Faerie Tale – E11 – https://youtu.be/Vxqy6JgB9wk

Scarred Lands – Surprise Meatgrinder! – https://youtu.be/iqiIEsvIslE

Scarred Lands – Purge of the Serpentholds – S1E14 – https://youtu.be/Ie-rITGhaAs

Hunter: The Vigil – Uptown Shadows Episode 4 – https://youtu.be/2qdLBpMu0lE

Realms of Pugmire – Paws and Claws S2E14 – https://youtu.be/ZcSdsNK-VI0

Subscribe to our channel and click the bell icon if you want to be notified whenever new news videos and uploads come online!

Tom Murr continues with his amazing They Came from Beneath the Sea! audio drama over on his YouTube channel!

Radio ReScience Episode 2: Military Entanglement, can be found right here: https://youtu.be/qiTprIriV7Y 

And Episode 3: Spycraft is here: https://youtu.be/qqS5rM3GA5A

Systematic Understanding of Everything is a new Exalted Explainer Podcast by Exalted Dev Monica Speca and Exalted Writer Chazz Kellner that is breaking down Creation in 45 minute chunks in preparation for Exalted Essence.

Their most recent episodes are available over on https://www.exaltcast.com/, with their newest covering the stunning terrifying Abyssals!

The Story Told Podcast continues their Fall of Jiara Exalted chronicle, and you can find their newest episode right here: https://thestorytold.libsyn.com/fall-of-jiara-25

Our good friend The Primogen concluded his Changeling: The Lost actual play a couple of months ago, and has kindly assembled a useful playlist of every single episode. Go give his excellent tale, Littlebrook Reunion, a watch: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2GEMzqGEGIg6pT79zt-FyFYoPjzn8YM5

GMS Magazine produced a review of Dystopia Rising: Evolution over on their channel! https://youtu.be/Q0Ih1KkUhS0

Here’s a blast from the past: last year, Tabletop Spotlight reviewed Monarchies of Mau for us. If you’re interested in some in-depth views of this corner of the Realms of Pugmire, please give their video a watch: https://youtu.be/gV48x2eQMU4

Vorpal Tales assembled their playlist of They Came from Beyond the Grave! actual play episodes as well, and you can find all six of the episodes of this series right here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9fUj4KdqE4BTnVZv9pZUkSk7GpwnyKXG

Please check these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games! We’d love to feature you!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

We’re told that the App Dev is currently creating an updated version for the latest devices, so keep an eye open for those!

Virtual TableTop!

Introducing a Virtual Tabletop adventure: the Gauntlet of Spiragos for Scarred Lands on Astral TableTop!

Scars of the Divine War, which ended less than 200 years ago, have still not healed. One such scar is the Chasm of Flies, a rent in the earth created when the titan Spiragos the Ambusher was smote down by one of the young gods, Vangal the Ravager. Now, the Chasm is inhabited by spider-eye goblins and their spider allies, but it is also thought to be the resting place of powerful artifacts from that elder age.

Gauntlet of Spiragos is a Scarred Lands adventure designed for 1st level characters, although it can be easily modified for characters of up to 5th level.

Astral TableTop is the easiest way to play any tabletop RPG online, free. Astral already supports popular systems like D&D and Pathfinder, and Astral can support virtually any tabletop roleplaying game. Get started quickly with built-in support for most popular game systems. Whether you’re brand new to TTRPGs or a veteran tabletop gamer, Astral‘s ease-of-use and built in automation is designed to streamline gameplay.

Astral is browser-based and uses the latest technology to streamline your storytelling experience. Connect with your party online and run your campaigns however you like. Astral offers tools optimized for phone, tablet, and desktop devices, no installation required.

Build epic battlemaps using Astral‘s enormous collection of scenery, props, and tokens or upload your own. Pro users gain access to over 12,000+ assets and fresh new packs every month. Add weather, visual effects, triggers, and so much more with easy-to-use tools

Build your own adventure, or choose from pre-generated game kits like Gauntlet of Spiragos. Create character sheets, craft maps, or just jump right in to connect with your friends and start your adventures!

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to provide our traditionally printed books out into your local game stores. Game stores can order via their usual distributors, and can also contact Studio2 directly. And individuals can check out our projects via the links below!

You can pick up the traditionally printed Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau main books, screens, and the official dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

Now, we’ve added Chronicles of Darkness books such as Changeling: The Lost Second Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Our Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition books are also available from Studio2 in the US: https://studio2publishing.com/products/vampire-the-masquerade-chicago-by-night-sourcebook

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And now Scion Origin and Scion Hero and Trinity Continuum Core and Trinity Continuum: Aeon are available to order

As always, you can find Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, the PDF and physical card PoD versions of three decks of magic Items for use in Scarred Lands go on sale on DTRPG!

Conventions!

Though dates for physical conventions are subject to change due to the current COVID-19 outbreak, here’s what’s left of our current list of upcoming conventions (and really, we’re just waiting for this last one to be cancelled even though it’s Nov/Dec). Instead, keep an eye out here for more virtual conventions we’re going to be involved with:

PAX Unplugged: https://unplugged.paxsite.com/

We’re still waiting on word for this one, as a TTRPG publisher we weren’t included in the companies contacted for PAX‘s virtual con replacing their usual electronic gaming con(s).

And now, the new project status updates!

Development Status from Eddy Webb! (Projects in bold have changed status since last week.):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep.)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

The Devoted Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

Prometheus Unbound (was Psi Orders) (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

No Gods, No Masters (Scion 2nd Edition)

Scion Fiction Anthology (Scion 2nd Edition)

TC: Aeon Novella: Dawn (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

TC: Aeon Novella: Meridian (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Legacies of Earth (Legendlore)

Redlines

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

CtL 2e Novella Collection: Hollow Courts (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Squeaks In The Deep (Realms of Pugmire)

Trinity Continuum: Anima

Second Draft

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hundred Devil’s Night Parade (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Novas Worldwide (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Exalted Essence Edition (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Saints and Monsters (Scion 2nd Edition)

M20 Technocracy Operative’s Dossier (Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary)

Wild Hunt (Scion 2nd Edition)

Adversaries of the Righteous (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Development

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Assassins (Trinity Continuum Core)

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

V5 Forbidden Religions (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

M20 Rich Bastard’s Guide To Magick (Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary)

Manuscript Approval

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Dystopia Rising: Evolution Fiction Anthology (Dystopia Rising: Evolution)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

The Clades Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

V5 Children of the Blood (was The Faithful Undead) (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Post-Approval Development

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Mission Statements (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Editing

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

TC: Aberrant Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

LARP Rules (Scion 2nd Edition)

The Book of Lasting Death (Mummy: The Curse 2e)

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Dearly Bleak – Novella (Deviant: The Renegades)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Under Alien Skies (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Dead Man’s Rust (Scarred Lands)

V5 Trails of Ash and Bone (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Post-Editing Development

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

They Came From Beyond the Grave! (They Came From!)

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Indexing

Art Direction from Mike Chaney!

In Art Direction

Tales of Aquatic Terror – AD’d.

WoD Ghost Hunters (KS) – KS page to Paradox for approval.

Hunter: The Vigil 2e

Mummy 2

Deviant – AD’d.

Legendlore

Technocracy Reloaded – AD’d.

Cults of the Blood God – Artists chugging along.

Scion: Dragon (KS)

Masks of the Mythos (KS) – Fulls recontracted.

Scion: Demigod (KS)

They Came From Beyond the Grave! (KS)

TC: Adventure! (KS)

Geist: One Foot In the Grave – Artists are working.

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness) – Breakdown brokedown.

In Layout

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad

Vigil Watch

Trinity Core Jumpstart

Aberrant – Layout done with the power section. Art still coming in.

Proofing

Cavaliers of Mars: City of the Towered Tombs

Yugman’s Guide Support Decks (Scarred Lands)

TC Aeon Terra Firma – Sent back to Josh, looking good.

V5 Let the Streets Run Red – 2nd proof out this week.

At Press

TCFBTS Screen and Booklet – Files at press.

They Came from Beneath the Sea! – Shipping from printer to KS fulfiller.

Pirates of Pugmire – Shipping from printer to KS fulfiller.

Pirates of Pugmire Screen – Files at press.

Dark Eras 2 – Files printing.

Dark Eras 2 Screen and booklet – Files at press.

Contagion Chronicle – Press prep, PoD files uploaded and ordered.

Contagion Chronicle Screen and Booklet – Files at press.

Lunars Wall Scroll Map – Shipping to KS fulfiller from printer.

Lunars Screen and Booklet – Files at press.

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate – Prepping files for PoD and press.

Scarred Lands Creature Collection – Shipping from printer to KS fulfiller.

Sunken Bones – Pugmire pirate adventure – Errata collecting from Backer PDF.

Titanomachy – Errata collecting from Advance PDF.

Magic Item Decks 1-3 (Scarred Lands) – PDF and PoD card versions on sale at DTRPG and DriveThruCards this Wednesday!

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Labor Day! Traditional end of Summer and start of the school year holiday in the US. Except, of course, now the school year starts before Labor Day and anyway, everybody is in virtual school, and Get Off My Lawn!

[vickie-believe]

Soooo. Yeah. Ahem. This might be a long post but I’m gonna just put a read more after a point.

I redesigned an OC from last year. And this is a major change (I have her old design in one of my art dumps). And it isn’t just that, I did more for her in both writing and character development. I also have more art stuff I did on her past self but gonna put that as a separate post.

Anyhow, this is Mad Jack, the Wild Dog. My Dying Light 30-year-old-plus crazy  OC with a sorta like Chloe Frazer, Rachel from Animorphs and Junkrat mash personality, I created for my fanfic, The Descent.

And you can see a year between different styles, levels of art and all that. So I wanna say that no matter how many years, you’ll get even better. You’ll learn new tricks and techniques, new things every day by keeping at your passion. You’ll get better. Any form you did whether simple, stick-man, anything is still a good art because you’re doing it - you’re not stopping because someone says it’s bad, you’re doing it for yourself. And you keep going and seeing the improvements that prove those people, you can create something awesome. 

So keep drawing. There’s absolutely no stopping, not even for me. I’m still going to improve myself. 

Now then, more on the character. Boring stuff. X’D

SOOOO, the story behind this character creation. I really enjoy Dying Light and I wish the best and all for Techland on their release with Dying Light 2 (and PLEASE GOD BRING THE BROTHER TWINS BACK so that my friend can go “shiiiiit!” X’D I really mean it! He hates them! AHAHAHAHA) and the Following. It was thanks to the ending that got me to start a writing about what happens to Kyle Crane days after the ending. Which means he becomes a sentient zombie in the fic.

What got me into making Mad Jack was two things: one is I realized Crane would need a middleman because you know, he would kill people uncontrollably (and that person needs to be mad enough to even stick with infected Crane) and two, three characters in Dying Light got me thinking of Jack as a common person between them. 

So yeah. Fic’s summary is Crane’s back, he meets an ex-kickboxer from the Outskirts of Harran in the middle of a city named Scanderoon and he learns she and a group called the Ravs are trying to find out why the virus recently spiked up with new mutations, affecting the zombies and the survivors, in hopes that the virus isn’t adapting too fast for a cure to beat it. 

Now the read-more cuz I don’t want you ppl seeing me as a rambling idiot.

Alright. Let’s get to the meat. So for one, when I first thought of the fic, I was thinking Crane is, of course, the main protagonist but with a few elements: he’s kinda like the Mother (sorta, I need to make his character design now lol) but as a Night Hunter sort and would still be himself. His character development would be on the verge of struggle and insanity between himself and his other self. So I couldn’t see himself being able to fully control himself without someone helping him, regardless how strong his willpower is after going through everything. So he needed someone to keep him in his grips. Jack in my fic is sorta of a red-herring first protagonist but is actually a  deuteragonist.

There’s also another point that I wanted to tackle his struggles from the main game, that meeting someone who knew the people he met and learning they’re gone would be the ultimate, powerful and bittersweet development for him. Which is about the three persons I said earlier that is what I based around for Jack.

So the three people were Harris Brecken, Jade and Rahim Aldemir. When I first played the game, I always found it strange how protective Brecken was to both of them which made me wonder if they had a backstory before the outbreak. Sure, many could say, Rahim was one of Brecken’s students or Rais was after the Scorpion before Crane came into the picture. A lot of theories anyone of us could think of. I still felt like there was someone in their lives that crossed paths. The first person I went brainstorming more on was Jade and her kickboxing career.

I made Jack, aka Mad Jack, as Jade’s previous rival and opponent for the last martial arts championship. The Scorpion versus the Wild Dog. The professional 3-year world champion versus the rising star until Jade won and Jack retired. And since their first meeting, the two kids have been friends with her with Jack being that kinda guardian looking out for them. I made Harris be, surprisingly, Jack as that unwanted cousin who you both love and hate a lot. Cough. But with whatever happened to all of them in the past gave me a better structure of why Brecken would care more about the kids if they knew someone who cared about them. Not directly but enough that Brecken wouldn’t tell his cousin they’re gone.

An incident did also cause a bit of friction from Jade’s victory, and that’s something I’ll reveal in my fic later on. And it also did change Jack a lot. The current Jack is more ballistic, unhinged, daring, hungry for a fight and uh...kinda scary the more I describe her now that I think of it. She’s still a good person (sorta) who helps those in need because she’s used to it before, being a legend that inspired people in the past. I even had a small idea that she sings a lullaby to calm the Screamers or infected children before killing them. She thinks of wild ideas that don’t often go the way she wants, a trait Rahim picked up, which is what made him decide to blow up the nest. Go Wild or don’t, which is one thing why those two connected well in the past. Jack’s an unlikely character on the search for why the virus had a kickstarter and being Crane’s hired wingman. 

Moreover, it’s a slow trust building between these two. Jack’s philosophy is sorta kinda like Rais and Crane can see that in her. There are also secrets she has that will put that trust to the test but it won’t just be her but Crane testing that trust with his own sins.

What makes this fic so interesting to me the more I write isn’t just Crane’s constant regret that he has to work with this loony woman in a desperate hope of finding that cure and the funny banter development between a sane zombie and a crazy human but the fact Crane’s past will catch up to him and Jack will learn about Jade and Rahim’s fates. And it’s not just Jack herself but others he’ll learn had some connection to someone in Harran. And that moment he can’t keep the lies in anymore and has to tell Jack the truth, that will be something powerful and heartbreaking - that he met a person who knew them and has to give the grim news they’re gone. Because no one had told Jack yet. What’s more, this will reflect on Jack too - that her influence on the two kids was what got them killed like her way of thinking in going big for Rahim and her philosophy in kickboxing got Jade to sacrifice herself.

From there, well, there’s more I have up my sleeve. And hopefully not break these two in the process. :Y

I made Jack for a long of reasons but the one main thing is, I realized after everything Crane’s gone, he really needed someone, an emotional pillar of support for sure. And he hasn’t had that the entire time in Dying Light or the Following - everyone sought him as a hero and never questioned it. Which...I kinda thought was a little sad. So yeah, I made Mad Jack - someone who had fallen from grace and accepted her current self, be that dog of Harran who fully takes in the fact the whole world has gone to hell and has pulled off the chains. Jack’s history, which some parts I won’t go into details, sorta reflects his that she had done a lot and sacrificed a lot before and during the outbreak came. And with Crane being stuck as a monster for good with moments of losing his shit, he’d need support a lot more than ever. The same goes for Jack with her own problems to deal with that Crane decides to help her like he has always done for people in the main game. And how this will all end, I dunno. I know exactly what might be a fitting end for Jack but how all of this will end, that’s something I’m going to have to see towards the end and how Crane would rise back from his descent thanks to Jack. Whether good or bad.

And there you go, Mad Jack. She really had a huge development based on so many people, as well as Crane himself. And I really enjoy pushing that development further into her, to see how far her trials go on her moral and psyche. 

uh....hope you get it. Probably a bore though. :Y I’m open to anything btw if you think it’s silly or bad. Been editing a lot in this character, others and my writing.

If people are interested, there’s already 15 chps, 1 small intermission chp and the next one is being worked on. Here’s the fic.

I feel like a dork...Im gonna draw other DL fanart. Maybe like banter between the Wild Dog and Scorpion in the past or something...

[shiobookmark]

Voltron Ending

So I binged the series and OH BOY

Point the First: Shiro

So when the whole Shiro thing came up I wasn’t too angry. It was a really shitty thing to do but if they hadn’t made all this marketing surrounding the fact Shiro had a boyfriend I wouldn’t have cared much. It’s just that they have one scene together where they’re sitting apart, Shiro on a couch and Adam at the table drinking tea. He asks Shiro whether he matters to him at all because he keeps flying off on dangerous missions and if he takes this next mission (which ends up being the one that has him captured and kickstarts the series) he won’t be there to welcome him home. That’s it. Honestly the scene didn’t so much say relationship as ‘annoyed friend.’ Like if you squint, or tweak it just a little, Adam could have been anyone to Shiro. A brother, a friend, a cousin.  We don’t know what their relationship was like, why they loved each other or how long they’d been together. We don’t know what they did for fun. All we know is that Adam is called Adam, he’s a fighter pilot and Shiro was sad when he blew up while he was away. It doesn’t count as representation. We got shit like this in the 80s. Go look up Matt Baume’s discussions on different sitcoms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPHBtW2-c8A The Golden Girls did queer representation a heck of a lot better. And it was in 1986. That’s pathetic Voltron.

But whatever. I could have forgiven it if they didn’t then draw attention to it with all the marketing. That’s just shitty. I can still let it slide, even then. Hey, maybe they make up for it in season 8? 13 episodes is plenty of time to introduce a side character that Shiro bonds with, even if it doesn’t develop into a full blown relationship just a hint would be- Oh. 

That’s it. That’s what we get. A slide at the end. ‘He married a guy and left the battlefield.’ *Sighs into infinity* Okay let’s break this bullshit down: 1. I could write about a five page comic giving Shiro a boyfriend that could have easily slotted into season 8. There was at least two episodes of downtime. Why couldn’t they have dedicated one to Shiro’s new beau?

Seriously cut out the episode which is just found footage by some random fighter pilot we know almost nothing about and develop this guy. 2. Shiro got married and left the battlefield. Uh. No.  You mean to tell me Shiro is the only character who doesn’t find a meaningful new cause to champion? He’s not that old for fucks sakes! He’s what, 27? At the oldest?? Everyone else finds something they love to carry on with. Pidge builds new defensive tech, Hunk cooks food to bring diplomats together, Lance stays with his family on earth to live a quiet life according to Allura’s principles, Keith both rebuilds a peaceful Galran empire and provides relief aid- For a moment, imagine Shiro is a woman. Everything else about him is the same, but he’s a woman. Imagine how backwards and shitty it would be for ‘her’ to then find some random man no one has heard of and abandon her career just to be a wife? Like, just a wife. Not a housewife. Not raising a family. Not being a teacher. Nothing. Because being a wife or homemaker is a worthwhile cause, I just don’t buy that it’s Shiro in particular unless you show me that! Show me the kids he has! The family he builds! What he does in his spare time! How does his arc end?  Heck, Shiro should’ve been a professor at the academy. Or exploring the furthest reaches of the universe on a diplomatic mission to unite people. Or something. Boiling it down to ‘he gay’ is insulting. Your life doesn’t end when you find a spouse. Okay now that Shiro is out of the way, let’s talk about Allura. Point the Second: Allura I’m against the ending they chose for her and not just because I blubbered like a child. Allura is an empath, a strong leader, she feels the pain of others deeply and it makes complete sense for her to choose to sacrifice herself to save all of existence.  But here’s the thing: Being self-sacrificial was her biggest flaw. She never stopped blaming herself for things that were beyond her control. Truly ridiculous things. She blamed herself for so much, she blamed herself for all suffering ever.  I actually really liked when she took that dark entity into herself because I could see how that self-sacrificing nature could become twisted. She’d be willing to sacrifice herself to great evil in order to save everyone. I was expecting that they would defeat Honerva, only to have Allura become the new threat as she tries to remake existence to wipe out all war and pain and suffering. Then the team needs to remind her that pain and sorrow are what lead to growth and rebirth. Allura needed to learn how to distance herself from the pain of others so that she wasn’t crippled by it, instead she succumbed to it. Imagine for a moment if they stopped Honerva in say, episode 10. Allura is then drawn by the power of the entity into taking Honerva’s place, punching through the fabric of reality specifically to get to the core so that she can remake existence according to her wishes. The team has to bust through without Voltron. Get to their friend who is at the centre of the universe and can feel everything - all the pain and sorrow is overwhelming.  But gradually they teach her to tune into the good things, the happiness and laughter and see how all these things are connected. True happiness is only precious because it’s fleeting, because it isn’t something you have automatically. Pain can be valuable. Pain is part of life. I think Lance would be uniquely suited to that scene. Because he values family and he’s had to be separated from them for so long. Allura misses her family so badly she wants to bring them back, but Lance helps her recognise that they can build a new family together. Hell, have him propose. Not in a ‘will you marry me’ way but a ‘please, live your life with me’ way. Think Fullmetal Alchemists ‘I’ll give you my life if you give me yours.’ Keith could help too, remind her that he was in pain from his Galra heritage but with her acceptance he reached new growth. ‘I wouldn’t have the bond I have with my mum now if it weren’t for you.’ Then perhaps they end up having to sacrifice the Lions. Return them into the flow of existence. So their physical forms are gone but their consciousness and all their knowledge still exists to be passed on somehow in the future. It doubles as a safeguard against future powers using Voltron for evil, as Zarkon did. That would have been a better ending in my eyes. Give Allura that space to grow and lead her people. She’s never had a people to lead. Instead of her becoming a martyr, who will eventually fade into a mere ideal of purity and goodness, let her be a full human being who grows and changes and helps other people to change. (It’s also always a woman sacrificing herself and c’mon) Okay. Accepted. That’s my canon now. I can let it go.

[hxmmatron]

Hireath -part 5 (Epilogue/Valentine special):

Daddy!CEO!Luke

A/N: Here it is :’) the last last part. *sigh* this took a while, it was actually supposed to be for last year’s Valentine but life just had other plans :’) um, I guess this is a thank you to anyone who has ever read the story, anyone who has ever liked it or reblogged or left a comment. I can’t ever begin to express how thankful I am for that. I am so so grateful for the time I spent here,and the community that surrounded my blog. Thank you for all the love, and for all those lovely people who still cared about the story and asked about it. 

Here it is. 

Thank you. 

Word count: 3.2k

Plot: A divorce is not so easy to go through when your lingering feels and son keep getting in the way.

part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4

The tentative rays of sunlight peeked through the colossal windows taking up the whole walls, falling smoothly against the desks and chairs lettering the office in an organized puzzle. The atmosphere was still quiet, unbelievably quiet in comparison to the usual commotion shaking up the office, in the form of footsteps shuffling around, phones ringing periodically and voices merging into an undeciphered chaos.

As your heels clicked against the flooring early in the morning, you were only met with soft good morning’s, voices still partly heavied down with sleep and with the fresh, mouthwatering smell of coffee seeking to kickstart the day with a much needed dose of caffeine.

With the office still drowning in the quietness and slowness of a sleepy morning, it was hardly surprising to see that the red circle marking today’s date on the calendar remained ignored. Even more so, you would easily expect it to remain that way an hour later, when the office comes back to life, regaining its full, hectic atmosphere and falling into its usual fast pace.

But the little heart marking your own February calendar has been present on your mind for the past week, making your footsteps livelier and much more energetic than the whole office combined.

Your original destination changed halfway through the long corridor leading towards the grand office, the unmistakable gold plate stapled to its door. It was the slightly ajar door that lured you in, making you peek your head inside, fingers following (right on tow) to knock on the wooden surface.

“Good morning!” Your voice chirps happily through the office, pushing the door open and making your way inside.

Ashton’s head shoots up from his morning paper, a smile stretching his lips to greet you.

“___!”

His hands work on folding the newspaper in his hands, attention focused on you -more precisely,on the gleeful tone in your voice. “I wonder what’s gotten you so cheerful this early in the morning.”

There's a teasing glint in his eyes, but you're hardly bothered. Instead, you move closer to sit down, smile still bright.

“I can list a thing or two.”

Ashton seems to let this slide, despite the way his eyes narrow and a chuckle leaves his mouth. The conversation falls into a pleasant talk about how his family’s doing, before you're leaning against your elbow, on the wooden desk and ask;

“So, you’re still up for babysitting Jace tonight. Right?”

Ashton’s face suddenly breaks into a huge grin, and it's almost like a lightbulb went off inside his head.

“Aaah, I get it now.” He manages between breathy laughs, adding with a wink, “A little valentine date, with Mr. CEO?”

Your only reply is a chuckle, because you can’t really deny that he is actually right. But even that is enough to get him smiling wider, highly amused by this conversation.

“But aren't you guys past the dating stage?” He comments, lifting his hand up and pointing out his ring finger, “Like, way past it?”

That draws a scoff from you, almost in defense. Because you know that, technically, the papers had never been signed. You were still

But Ashton was very right. Your relationship did not fall under the category of your typical married couple, and the reason behind that was more than just you living separately. It was the late night dates, driving you home and kissing you at the door. It was the random movie dates, and daily texts. It was the slow restart, the tentative steps and the fear of diving in too soon.

It was all the little things you had lost the habit of doing, along the way.

It was, as Ashton pointed out, everything that made it seem as if you were a new couple still basking in their honeymoon phase, rather than a husband and wife with a long line of history.

Yet, despite the accuracy of Ashton’s words, you only  lift a hand up to shoo him away, eyes rolling; “we are not dating.”

“Oh really?” He taunts, seeming to take that as a challenge, leaning over his desk on his elbows. “Cheesy dates on the weekends, flirting shamelessly on the phone -during work hours, mind you. And let’s not forget,” He stops with a smirk you know well enough to dread whatever’s coming next, “Hot, steamy, not-so-secretive sex in his off-”

You most certainly don't allow him to finish his words, interrupting him with a loud shout of his name and threatening to throw the closest thing at hand -the framed picture on his desk, hardly effective as a weapon- at his face.

“Ashton! What are you- where did you even get that from?” the flustered face you make, along with the way you trip over your words only manage to rile Ashton up further. And not even the hard stare you shoot him (or at least try to, unable to fight back a smile) makes his incessant laughter come to an end, as he seems to find immense pleasure in your reaction.

Ashton only gives you a knowing smile, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back against his chair. “Like I said, not so secretive.”

“Ash!” You try to sound scalding, but a chuckle still breaks your frown, Ashton joining you as well. “Would you not?”

“Anyway,” You are quick to add, getting up from your seat and fixing your skirt, “I have to get going. I’ll wait for you tonight!”

Protests from Ashton follow you even as you close the door, about how you’re ignoring your friend to go flirt, and you can barely hold back a laugh at his words.

~

The light knocking on the door makes Luke lift his head up from his papers scattered over his desk, and a smile quickly takes over his face when your face comes into view.

“Good morning~” You greet, stepping inside and closing the door behind you. Getting up from his desk, Luke meets you halfway, arms wrapping around you naturally and bringing you into a hug.

Pulling away just slightly, Luke’s lips meet yours with a kiss.

“Happy valentine’s day, baby.” The words are whispered against your lips, Luke’s hand moving to hold your face, before leaning in for another kiss, deeper this time. And it’s only when he’s had enough that he pulls away, his hand holding yours, leading you back towards his desk. Luke sits down on his chair, facing you as you settle on top of his desk.

“Did you sleep well?” You ask, lifting your hand and running it through his hair, just the way you know he loves it.

“Yeah”, Luke nods, eyes momentarily closed, enjoying your touches. “I had to stay up late, but that’s ok . Did you n Jace have a good night?”

Before you manage to reply, the ringing on his phone breaks through the silence, getting him distracted momentarily by it. But Luke only spares a single look at the caller ID, before he silences it. Turning back to you with a smile, his hand moves to rest on top of your thigh.  

“Do you want some coffee? Some breakfast?”

“No, no need.” You answer, “I need to get to work in a bit.”

Your reply draws an involuntary frown from Luke. One he doesn’t notice, but you do, making you lean in for a kiss. You keep it short, leaning away too quickly for his liking.

“Baby, I think you need new blinds for your office.” You whisper, making Luke’s eyes open.

“Why? What’s wrong with these ones?” He asks, genuinely confused.

His eyes move away from you, focusing on the mentioned blinds behind you. But your hands cup his face, redirecting his attention back on you, and explain; “Apparently, they let out our steamy, hot sex out to the open.”

Luke’s startled for a moment, before he breaks into a laugh. Getting up from his chair, he leans over, settling his arms on each side of where you sat.

“Baby, I think it’s more about your state when you walk out.” Luke whispers, lips touching yours with every spoken word, before he gives in and goes for a deep kiss. Eyes closing, your arms move from his face, to wrap around his neck and pull him closer,legs opening up just a little bit more to bring his body closer. It’s almost as if time freezes, and everything else escapes your mind, until Luke pulls away.

“Say,” another kiss, “did you talk to Ash about babysitting tonight?”

“Yeah” you nod, “he’s talking Jace over to yours, so we-” you pause, a flirty smile on your face and your hands moving back to Luke’s face, -”can can go back to mine and have it to ourselves. All night.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

~

Leaving Luke’s office, that day, was something you couldn’t get out of your memory. The moment you had stepped a foot outside, all eyes fell on you. It had taken a solid minute of silence for everyone to look away and carry on with their work, trying to act subtle. But you knew that everyone had heard what was supposed to happen in the privacy of Luke’s office. Sympathetic smiles followed you as you exited, along with concerned eyes and hopeful hearts.

It was a while before Luke’s assistant went into his office, too worried to be barging in too soon. The whole office walking on eggshells, holding their breath and sharing hushed murmurs about what had went on.

On Jace’s birthday, Luke had showed up, but almost an hour late. You had opened your door to find him breathless, cheeks flushed and words of apology rushing out, explaining how the traffic had been slower than he expected.

Truly, Luke had expected you to shut the door at his face. Because you had given him only one task and he had failed it already.

But you smiled at his state, and lead him inside.

A loud evening was promised, of birthday songs and happy wishes, of little kids giggling and running around while adults lounged around and exchanged their news. But when night came and everyone had left, your little birthday boy soundly sleeping in his room, Luke stayed back, offering to help you out with the cleaning.

Luke had never felt as hesitant as he did that night. He only knew to keep enough of a safe distant, waiting for you to determine the next move, to choose where to go. But, as he let his eyes linger on you, standing oh so close to him, drying the dishes he finished washing; it had filled him up with an overflowing feeling of homeyness, making him want act upon it. He had wanted nothing more than to have his hands rest on your waist, and lean in to kiss your lips until it was all marked into his memory.

But he did not kiss you that night.

Or the next time he saw you, when you had invited him for lunch. It was at a restaurant close to his office, and you had picked up Jace from his school as well.

Or the time after that, when you had all met up at Calum’s house for a little gathering.

He was walking on thin ice, Luke knew that. And he would be damned if let himself ruin things again. But he was determined to work hard to prove himself, to be there for whatever his family needed. Until then, he would let you lead, at your own pace, and hope that you wouldn’t want to push him away.

Luke had only gotten a taste of your lips the night he stayed over for a movie night, helping put Jace to bed.

It had felt like the first drop of water he had in a year of drought, making his whole body come back to life. You had pulled away far too soon for his liking, but then you asked him for a coffee date at his office, and Luke’s heart felt like bursting at your words, oh-so sweet to him. 

~

As expected, the tables were crowded with couple holding hands and making oaths for forever, the waiters rushing back n forth, from table to other. Rose petals decorated each and every table, along with red candles and heart shaped candies.

But your table was in the far back, private enough to feel like it was just you, and just him.

The lace dress you wore was a gift from Luke, chosen with care and left on top of your bed for you to find, along with more packages that you didn’t get the time to go through just yet. It suited you to a wonder, and Luke couldn’t have felt any more blessed, his hands finding it harder to stay away from you for too long.

“It’s been a while since we last celebrated Valentine’s this way.” The comment leaves your mouth without much thought, smiling in contentment. But then your eyes lift up from the menu you were reading, and the look on Luke’s face instantly makes you regret it.

It’s a look you see on his face more often than you wished. It was a look that betrayed his thoughts whenever he was falling into the pit of remorse and regret.

Last Valentine, you couldn’t even remember the day clearly. You’re sure that it was nothing but a delivered bouquet of roses and chocolates that had a card too bland to be personally sent by Luke. You knew that it was a last minute order after his assistant -most likely- reminded him of which day it was. You’re not sure if the year before that was that special either.

It had indeed been long since you both celebrated the day this way. You knew that. And he knew that.

“Hey,” You whisper, frowning. Your hand reaching out to hold his, giving him a gentle squeeze. But Luke only shakes his head, replacing the look on his face with a smile instead.

He knew that he wouldn’t find a way out of the maze of regret any time soon. He knew that his mind would always go back to little details and remind him of every wrong decision he wasn’t aware of at the time.

But for tonight, Luke wants it to be special. He wants it to overpower the memories of times he didn’t take the time to celebrate special days with you.

For tonight, he just wants it to be just you.

~

The lights in the living room are kept to a low dim, an old record softly playing in the background.

Once dinner was over, exquisite dishes savored and sweet desserts shared, it was time for you both to go back home and enjoy a little more privacy. The ride back was just you two and your wandering hands, the driver disposed for the night.

Your drinks remained on the table, long forgotten as you got drunk on each other’s lips instead.

“I don’t like this house very much” Luke breaks slightly away from your lips, his mouth moving to pepper light kisses on your jaw.

“What?” You ask after a little too long, his lips distracting you from his words, “why?” You draw out, pulling away a bit more and looking around your apartment. “I think it’s fairly nice.”

Luke hums, resting his arm on the back of the couch, around your shoulders.“It is nice. But it's not home.”

A minute of silence follows his words, Luke’s eyes simply gazing into yours and studying your reaction. The beats of his heart drum against his ear, so loudly that it drowns out the music still playing from the corner of the room.

Fear slowly makes its way into his heart, sending strings around it and caging it in, making it throb painfully in his chest. It’s the same fear that keeps creeping up on him; the fear of taking a wrong step, taking it too fast and potentially breaking down everything you have been rebuilding. The fear that he would once again risk losing you.

But then you look into his eyes, with that special way of yours, and the words just tumble out of his mouth.

“Come back home.”

Your heart flutters again at his words, stronger this time. Not only because it’s the first time he bring this up, but it’s in the way he spoke his words. Hesitant and unsure. Just like the very first time.

“I- I don’t know. Are you sure?” You question, mind feeling unprepared.

The look Luke shoots you is enough to tell you that he is more than sure. And the small smile on your lips knocks a little more confidence into him.

“Come on, think of all the positives.”

You squint your eyes at his words, smile getting wider and your hand moving towards the side of his neck, allowing your fingers to run through his hair.

Luke’s smile grows at your words, lifting his hand to rest on your forearm. His thumb moves in little circles against your skin, his head turning slightly to meet the patch of skin and land a soft kiss, before he leans away. “Hm..” he pretends to think, “We get to have breakfast in bed?”

“I don’t think you really thought this one through,” You tease, “Mr. I-wake-up-in-the-ass-crack-of-dawn.”

Luke chuckles at that, shaking his head, “On Sundays then, how about that?”

An attempt to tame your smile goes down the drain, so you simply let it be.

“Carry on..”

“No more driving late at night, or having to pack clothes.” Luke continues, “We’re always over at each other’s anyways.”

You lift your eyebrows, slightly nodding your head, a teasing smile still playing on your lips. Luke shakes his head with a laugh, just as amused by your behavior. Deciding to play along, his head dives in, lips finding the skin of your neck and leaving featherlight kisses.

“You get to wake up to this lovely face every morning.” He hums against your skin, kisses punctuating his words. “Slow, early morning sex before-”

A loud giggle falls past your lips, your hands holding Luke’s face and pulling him away. But he still goes for a kiss on your lips, before leaning back into the couch.

“___, …”

The tone of his voice drops all its playfulness, getting serious. With honest eyes never once leaving yours, he speaks;  “I mean it, I want you to come back home. I miss you being home. It’s not the same anymore. You don't have to do it anytime soon, I’ll wait. But I just need you to think about it.”

His words knock the breath out of our lungs, leaving you struck for a moment too long, before warmth overtakes your heart. You can feel tears starting to pool in your eyes, and your hands reach out to pull him in for a deep kiss.

A little shaky, teeth clashing and breaths mixing together. But it’s nothing short of perfect.

“Ask me again” You mumble against his lips, hands still holding his face.

“Please come back home.”

Your answer comes in the form of another kiss.

~

(Bonus: Luke proposes again, 6 months later.)

[cryptoriawebb]

My extensive, expansive Wonder Woman review

So I’ve been working on this for about a week now, and I’m pleased to say I’ve finally finished. 

I didn’t expect this movie to resonate so deeply, so please, bare with me. I’ve got a lot to say.

Wow.

Just wow.

I am beyond blown away by Wonder Woman. I wanted so badly for it to be a good movie, beyond the reasons floating around on the internet. Yes, she is a female super hero, yes, she’s the first one in this modern era to receive a solo film and yes, and yes, in many ways, and yes, she’s the most well-known female hero, dating back to the Second World War. Those are all impressive and important things to recognize…but Wonder Woman, Diana, is so much more than simply an icon with impressive credentials. Going into this movie, I wanted to get to know her as a character, follow her along her journey; experience what she did and feel what she felt as she evolved from Amazonian princess into the wise and worldly hero protecting our modern world. I wanted to like her, vouch for her, the way I never did beyond my own cultural nostalgia. She was one of the few highlights in the train wreck that was Batman v Superman; I wanted more of that.

Needless to say, this movie delivered and more.  Diana not only stood on her own, offering in my opinion a protagonist everyone could root for and relate to in some way, but she also existed harmoniously with her co-stars, forming real, heartwarming (and heartbreaking) relationships that evolved in what I believe was a natural way as she did as a character. There were so so many ways this movie could have gone wrong because of the socio-political environment in which it came to fruition; instead, we received a beautiful awe-inspiring piece of art. Perhaps it is my Greek blood speaking here, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a super-hero film delivered with such elegance. I’m not sure if it was the director, the script, Gadot herself or perhaps a combination…everything just worked…and for this new DC Universe, that’s really, almost impossibly impressive.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually enjoyed Suicide Squad and parts of Batman v Superman; it goes without saying, however, neither were enough to survive for long in this age of Super Hero cinema. For Suicide Squad, there just wasn’t enough even or original momentum, and B v S…well, that should’ve stayed a little longer on the editing table. Even Man of Steel, one exhausting fight sequence aside, isn’t praised or remembered like Marvel Studios and even some of the X-men films are. I think Wonder Woman is different. I think it will stand the test of time. Not just because she’s the first female with a solo film…but because there really is a film here. A fluid finished picture with an even pace, balanced tone and as much heart as there is action.

I thought opening the film with narration worked very well. It’s such an iffy tactic in any genre, and so far I’ve only really seen it in the X-men films. Sometimes it’s worked (X1, Days of Future Past) and sometimes, not quite as efficiently (X-men Apocalypse.) Overall though, they’ve done a decent example; some movies, like Disney’s more recent Cinderella film I felt relied far too heavily on narration, ‘telling’ where ‘showing’ would have done the job just fine. One could argue perhaps this was done intentionally, adhering to the ‘fairy tale’ technique; I disagree. I found it distracting. I thought Wonder Woman’s use enhanced the film. It presented us with tone of voice, foreboding the pending tone of the film as well as who she was to become. In contrast to the X-men films, which use the technique to warn of heartbreak and disaster, Diana’s voice contained a hint of pain grounded in an almost maternal knowledge, a teacher from antiquity’s time preparing a lesson for her student viewers. This was all done without stating too much or sounding cliché. My attention held and I looked forward to the next scene.

I’d also like to point out I thought the visual choices to accompany this audio worked as well. We see a glimpse of present-day Diana in BvS, and we know she’s lived a very long time (I still maintain that revelation should have remained a post-credits scene, and Wonder Woman herself, however cool she was, should not have appeared beyond the photograph.)   It almost adds to the excitement, at least in my case, knowing her origins would take us back not only to 20th century wartime, but to the ancient world as well. Not only because, again, I am Greek, but because I love the idea of heroes existing before the modern era, seeing how they affect an older world and their importance. World War I is something of an area of fascination for me, although I admit I’d thought at first they’d have set the film during the 1940s. I wonder if that was to separate from Captain America. I’m only familiar with her basic information and backstory; recent comic history and adjustments are beyond me.

I loved the architectural choices for Themyscira. Very clearly Greek-inspired but with an exotic flair all its own. I will say, as someone who has studied Greek art over the years, technically, the synonymous white should have historically been painted…but this is fiction, and as fiction, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited by how very in line with antiquity it was as it was. I’m not sure what I was expecting; Diana’s armor contains notable Greek accents…perhaps it’s simply how I’ve seen her and her Island portrayed before, drawing from Mythology by name and character without doing so historically. We all want to see our roots up there on the screen, and this was the first time in a long time I really felt like I was outside of a loose adaption or certain romantic comedies. As someone with a strong affinity for Super heroes, well, this means a lot to me. But moving on.

I’m also impressed by how well the Amazons blended the lines of beauty and ferocity (or is it sex-appeal and practicality?)  They were sexy, unmistakably, but to me it did not appear as though they were designed with that as the primary thought. They were sexy because they were fierce, beautiful because of the natural, historical sense in their design—or what I imagine as much history one can put into a mythological race. They weren’t super-model skinny or movie-star-glamorous, and yet these women carried about them a fearsome power I personally felt unworthy of. This of course extends to Diana and her iconic armor. None of her accessories felt corny or outdated to me, even the lasso, which I was a tad wary about. My association with it comes from dated comics and cartoons; I wasn’t sure it would translate seriously into this modern era. I think the director handled its inclusion perfectly, adding humor whenever as Pine’s character struggled to resist (or prove himself honest) and demonstrating its later use as a weapon against Ares. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’m so relieved Diana’s true purpose remained a secret until the end. I know some more learned fans than I have complains about the chosen direction, but I’ll get into that later. I’ve seen a lot of movies reveal far too much before needed and it really hurts the film. X-men Apocalypse, for example. However it pains me to talk down about my beloved X-men films, so many scenes talked through too much too early on, harming the pace and suspense of the film. If they had been removed I know for certain the movie would have done much better. Wonder Woman did none of this…which is actually very embarrassing for both Singer and Kinberg in comparison. In hindsight, it’s very, very impressive for both a lesser-known director and a character who hasn’t been given a fair (or successful, if we count that one pilot) solo screen-time venture since the 1970s.

To go along with her purpose, I loved that the Mythology/ancestry/storytime sequence resembled Renaissance art. I’m sure at this point it goes without saying but so many Greek Myths were illustrated and interpreted during the Renaissance period; in this particular case, I thought of Michaelangelo’s work on the Sistine Chapel, specifically the Creation of Adam and the Last Judgment. I know neither of them feature Greek mythology, but the style and articulation in the film really felt reminisce of Michelangelo. I like this artistic choice in direction; shooting a live action sequence would have felt grittier and clunky while none at all might have dragged and failed to grip the viewer’s attention in the same way. Plus, Diana is a child, and one from antiquity; choosing to illustrate the story like a story, as well as in a style reminisce of a time period that heavily featured antiquity as its subject fit perfectly.

Before I move ahead to the second half of Diana’s journey, I’d like to say I’m glad Hippolyta and her sister were close. They did not agree with everything, but there were no signs of dangerous tension (a la Thor and Loki, Charles and Raven, or taking it back to the 90s with Scar and Mufasa.) I’ve seen enough sibling drama in the movies; it was nice to see their conflict presented in a mature way that did not push their relationship past a breaking point. I loved that Antiope genuinely loved Diana and did not train her for personal or selfish gain. I will say her death didn’t resonate as deeply with me as it might have if she’d played a larger role in the movie but returning to Themyscira would have bogged down the pace. This is an origin film and if someone isn’t betrayed, they’ve got to lose a loved one; I wasn’t happy of course, but I guess if I had to pick I would rather Diana’s mentor go because a) it illustrates the importance of different bonds and b) I am tired of the whole ‘death of a parent kickstarts a hero on their journey.’ I know Antiope was Diana’s aunt but it wasn’t quite the same thing. I also like how this tragic ‘passing of the torch’ didn’t hang over Diana’s head the way it could have; she wasn’t a hardened, brooding heroine. Antiope died for love, and was in many ways the first step (unless you count the tale of Zeus protecting the Amazons) to her eventual drive to protect and fight for love. I know saying it like that sounds like a magical girl but I in no way think anything about this movie falls within that realm. There’s nothing pop culture or cliché in Diana’s character and I’ll get to that in a minute.

I thought Diana was the right amount of naïve, if that makes any sense. She wasn’t ditzy and the mistakes and little embarrassments she caused Steve and Etta were cute and quirky as opposed to cringe-worthy. I didn’t expect her to know of men, being the only Amazon born on Themyscira; I’m really glad she and the others weren’t treated like archaic idiots by the director or Chris Pine. I guess I was expecting something a little more similar to Thor’s treatment in his first film, which, while funny, earned him this ‘dopey puppy’ stereotype that’s really overshadowed any depth he’s gained in the MCU. I was also pleased to see Hippolyta was able to see Diana’s side of things, or rather, place her bond with her daughter over fear for her safety. I’ve seen so many films and TV shows where the rigid, overprotective parent becomes unlikeable.

On the flipside, I’m also glad her intellectual and physical abilities did not corrupt her view of man. She never once held herself in a pretentious, superior manner. This is something I’ve unfortunately seen in a lot of media of late…I adore this influx of female protagonists beyond the realm of…well, I guess Diana is a princess but she’s also a warrior and superhero. That said, it’s a personal turn-off when they’re treated above their male co-stars and see themselves as such. I want a good female protagonist as I said, but not if they’re going to act like they’re better than everyone else. There’s nothing, at least not to me, relatable or likeable in that. I’m not stupid; don’t pander to me like I am.

Diana, fortunately, breaks the mold yet again. There was only one moment I can recall that might be taken as intended superiority; when she was discussing her knowledge of men with Steve, how they were necessary for procreation but not so much for pleasure. While she seemed to know he probably wouldn’t like the consensus it came more from a courteous (if not somewhat humorous) place, rather than haughty superiority. That and much of what Diana said in that regard she likely took from not only her reading but her elders, growing up. Which in itself might be a form of naïveté but I’ll take it over a high-and-mighty attitude. I will say I found the ‘slave’ comment a bit out of place and (going out on a limb here) deliberately for the audience. It was like ‘and now we’re going to step away from ‘Diana-vision’ and insert ‘21st century activism. Please stand-by.’ I know why they threw it in, and I’m sure Diana said it with the same honesty she did everything else, but that one thing specifically didn’t work for me.

Another example superiority could have infiltrated her character: reading Doctor Poison’s stolen book. Diana seemed genuinely surprised no one else could read it, and given her origins, it wasn’t surprising. This evolved into a more amusing scene later on, using her language to elude the flirtatious Sammy. By then (kudos, character development) she’s gotten some idea not everyone has this skill, so it makes sense, as she grows more familiar in her surroundings, that she’d want to stop him in his tracks by literally making him eat his words. Yet again, there’s no malice or pretentiousness. Instead, a playful challenge ensues, with Diana emerging the victor. I admit, when Diana started speaking ancient Greek (provided that was, of course, ancient Greek) I squealed a little bit. It really is a personal thing but I just love how much this version of Wonder Woman and Themyscira embody their mythological/historical roots. Even though she wasn’t at the top of my superheroine list before (but damn, that’s definitely changing) I’ve always had an affinity for Wonder Woman because of her origins. She’s the beautiful, powerful and empathic Greek heroine I’d love to be, if only in essence.

But I digress.

I was a little worried about Chris Pine’s character, going into this. As noted above, I was afraid both Diana and the director would use this movie as an opportunity to belittle his importance, as well as the role of the ‘standard male protagonist.’ Thank Hera that wasn’t the case. Steve Trevor had his faults and humorous quirks but he was equally important and well-rounded. I admit, I take the first World War very seriously (well, all wars, but the First was such an unnecessary, heartbreaking mess I’m a little defensive in its regard.) So with that said, I was so, so impressed by him. He reminded me a lot of Steve Rogers, except of course, without the excessive stubbornness. He was stubborn, but it didn’t transcend into the comic book realm which is an odd thing to say, I know for a comic book movie. I guess I mean that I could have seen him star in a period piece without Amazons and Greek gods and still felt the same about his performance. He was a man, a man of the times, but a good, honest man who’d seen a lot and would do anything to stop even some of the senseless killing. He saw mankind for what it was, the good and bad—his speech about wanting one individual to blame really resonated. I think a lot of us in life believe we could blame the bad things on one particular individual…and I’m sure so many people during the Great War thought that as well. I’ve been trying to articulate just how Steve helped Diana become who she is; it’s so simple but complicated at the same time, so unlike any relationship I’ve seen in a superhero film. He didn’t transcend time to speak with an elder version of himself, didn’t banish her to Earth and shatter any familial bond…he just loved her. Believed in her. And in the end, sacrificed himself for both. I may not be one for the love interest sub-plot but my gosh, it played out so beautifully here.

When I first jotted down my initial thoughts about the movie, I kept drawing comparisons to Tarzan, only in reverse, with Time separating Diana from the rest of the world, as well as remote location. I can see now that was a very, very trimmed down comparison and almost…not insulting but simplified their characters and the bond they shared. Steve and Diana might be from different worlds, and Diana, as I said, was a little naïve, but Steve, too, underestimated her; they grew together as the film progressed, as equals. Only instead of Jane returning to the jungle with Tarzan, Diana remains in Steve’s world, fighting for the people he found so important, and who she believes are worth protecting, too.

I really liked the supporting cast as well. As I said, I’m a little sensitive about World War I and I think having such a diverse cast of characters really helped emphasize how encompassing it was, and how many different people suffered, because. Sammy was probably my favorite, but Charlie especially pulled at my heartstrings. I don’t know anything about these characters, if they exist outside the DC Expanded Universe or if they were specifically crafted for the film; correct me if I’m wrong but it seemed implied that Charlie’s character was once a soldier, perhaps earlier in the war, but trauma, like it did to so many at the time, shook his core. I’ve read and researched a lot about this war; it was the first ‘modern’ war with ‘modern’ weapons…and the first where Shell shock/PTSD really gained professional attention. I wish we’d learned more about Charlie, it isn’t often you see the staple ‘comic relief’ character backed by such tragedy. All of them, I’d have liked to spend more time with. For that reason I almost wish in some way the franchise in itself could stay in this time period. Alas, it’s not to be.

Oh, there is something else I’d like to point out, although I’m not sure where to fit it, exactly: the scene Diana reads from Doctor Poison’s journal illustrates, at least I think, the divide between the soldiers at the time and those from whom they took orders. Disregarding Ares for a second, I was really happy, although that’s not quite the right word, to see this included. So many people died precisely because those in higher power rarely set foot on the battle field. They remained in large part oblivious to trench conditions; to them, soldiers were expendable pawns in a political game.

Now then.

Diana’s run through No Man’s Land has to be my favorite scene. Not only is it the first time we really see ‘Wonder Woman’ in action but there’s so much power behind it because of the history I actually cried. I couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened out there, a hundred year ago in the trenches, if a brave Amazonian warrior had stormed No Man’s Land and ceased the gunfire so expertly. It does pain me a little to say that; I don’t believe any soldier on either side should take the blame for what happened a hundred years ago. Nonetheless, the Germans were painted as the enemy for most of the film (until you consider Ares trying to stall their armistice from the opposing side) so in lieu of that, I did cry when the soldiers rallied behind Diana.

My personal feelings about this period aside, she looked amazing. And by amazing, I mean badass. Deflecting bullets, braving fire with her shield, the way she just maneuvered on the field…I know she’s named after Artemis but she reminded me strongly of Athena, at least, how I envision her. It was just so…cool, to see her out there, see how far her character has come in media. While I am not an activist, nor do I seek political refuge in my movies I couldn’t help but like, feel a sense of pride, watching this female super hero take charge, watching everyone follow her lead and depend on her. It was like…I was seeing everything I wanted in a heroine. With the exception of X-men’s Rogue, who has always been my favorite female hero (disregarding the movie interpretation.) Not only that, but in that moment I really felt like I finally connected to Wonder Woman herself. I know I’ve emphasized my heritage and her redesign before, so I won’t go into that. There’s more to it, personal things I’m not comfortable discussing…but this incarnation is a big deal to me for so, so many reasons. I can’t thank Gal Gadot and Patty Jenkins enough for bringing her to life.

Okay…let’s get back into this.

There is one little thing I wasn’t super thrilled with, but for this movie and in this context, it worked wonderfully. I’ve said my piece about the love interest and why I don’t mind Steve and Diana falling in love, I just…have issues with implied sex scenes. And it isn’t a political thing or a religious thing, it’s more...at least I think it’s along the lines of things I’d, at least for now, prefer not to discuss. So I’ll say in general I don’t care for it but it does work and I can’t fault the film because I know it worked. Just a personal thing.

I’m going to talk about Ares now.

I did not see that revelation coming. Maybe I should have, but I expected something along the lines of ‘Ares has been watching silently the entire time and suddenly booming laughter erupts and the ground parts and glows like lava; suddenly the god of war appears, sinister approval hanging from his lips.’

I much prefer how things actually played out. I’ve seen and read a lot of media featuring the Greek Gods and not once was Ares ever portrayed as a ‘posh British man.’ I think there’s a lot of symbolism in that; both in regards to the war itself and, if you want to go there, perhaps in this modern era itself. I’m going to talk about this in context of WWI because again, I want no part of modern political activism. In the war, as I said, the Elites controlled the strings. They gave orders their army had little choice but to carry out and rarely did they involve themselves directly. Some of them, upon realizing what was actually going on, were struck with horror. Others didn’t understand or care. Ares falls under the latter. I mentioned it before but the history fan in me would have liked to see more of this interpretation of the war itself, the people—civilians, soldiers and even the elites—and seen the struggle inflicted by Ares’ influence, how the armistice stalled and all. The super hero fan in me is more than okay with how the film played out. This is Diana’s movie, after all.

It was a teeny bit difficult to see this prim and proper man in full battle gear, only because, apart from maybe Ian McKellen’s Magneto (and even then, it’s not the same) I’ve never seen a live-action comic book villain portrayed that way. It’s jarring, but fascinating, too. It also fits into the overall elegance of the film. I wouldn’t expect someone like Loki or Apocalypse to show up in Wonder Woman’s world. Not to say she couldn’t handle them, because let’s be honest, that would be one badass fight. It’s more like…I don’t know. Historical context. Perhaps their ancient, otherworldly blood. Anything else would have hampered the tone and created a clunky feeling. Besides, we got to see his indirect brutality in the form of Doctor Poison’s gas. This Ares, until the end it seemed, was the puppeteer who kept his hands behind his back, free of blood. I loved it. Alternative interpretations rock the boat and keep things fresh. Even the final battle felt different, as odd as it was to see this Englishmen throwing punches in his blocky armor. Their representation also served to illustrate that ‘ancient elder figure’ trying to teach or tame the ‘reckless younger.’ That I have seen a lot in this genre, saw it recently in Guardians of the Galaxy 2. Diana, however, is such a different character from Peter Quill, and Ares, while on similar lines to his father whose name escapes me right now, is his own kind of destructive, with his own brand of motive that, like his half-sister, distinguish him from Marvel’s Celestial Kurt Russell.

There are two small qualms I have with the climax. The first is Ares’ revelation: Diana is the god-killer, not the sword. I don’t know why, but the impact failed to stick the way I wanted it to. Maybe because I’m unfamiliar with her New 52 origins, and I actually expected her to be Ares’ daughter (fun Mythological fact, the Amazons were actually Ares’ children, but I know that’s not the case in DC.) I thought perhaps Hippolyta kept the truth from her because she knew if Ares discovered he had a child he would try to corrupt her. Which I guess played out in some form anyway, even if she wound up being Zeus’ daughter instead. I’m okay with that; as I said before, Diana reminds me of Athena, also a child of Zeus, and came to be through unconventional means. I guess it’s just strange to me, to see so compassionate a character without the same tragedy circling Bruce and Clark…then again, I do primarily watch Marvel (and X-men) films and they practically wrote the book on character heartache. I mean, discovering the horrors of the mortal world and losing Steve are tragic, I guess I just expected something more? Perhaps more emphasis on the god-killer itself, or for greater impact when Diana found out. Did she know Zeus was her father? Or did she take her mother’s story in a more figurative sense? I know (the nurse?) was surprised to see her injuries so quickly healed, so I’m going to guess Diana herself wasn’t aware. That may be why I didn’t feel the same punch I was supposed to; I got a bit confused. Either way, I love Diana the way she is; we don’t need another jaded DC hero.

Before I forget, I want to give a shout-out to the human villains, too. Perhaps it was the era or the tone of the film but I personally felt that Doctor Poison and Ludendorff belonged in a German Expressionist film from the 1920s and 1930s—in a good way. I’ve seen a lot of old ‘mad science experiments gone awry’ films, some American, some British and some, of course, German. Doctor Poison especially, with her mask, and characterization felt very reminisce of Doctor Mabusa or Caligari. Again, it could have been the setting of the film, but I don’t know…their motives mixed with the overall elegance of the film felt very close to that old school horror I so love. I really wanted to know more about Poison’s mask, what happened to her face (although I’m assuming we’re to imply her work damaged her, physically, at some point.) Ludendorff was more the standard villain, something you might find out of SHIELD, but that they worked together, that he sort of…not spoke for her, but seemed to run the operation coincided with that same horror; two sides of the brain; the mad and the meticulous. Together, a fluid recipe for chaos.

I thought the final fight was awesome. Diana goes all out and we really get to see just how this twenty-first century Wonder Woman stands apart from her previous interpretations (movie and TV specifically.) As I stated earlier, I used to think Diana’s accessories and costume were, admittedly, a little cheesy and gimmicky. I don’t have the same nostalgic fondness for Diana that a lot of people do, I’m sure. I was too young to watch the live-action series and as I also said I never really connected with her animated version. This film for me rewrote my previous opinions. Her bracelets, and especially her lasso are awesome and the perfect aid for her. Of course BvS helped, but she was hardly in that movie and shoe-horned additions aren’t the same as a solo journey. On Ares’ end, there was also an appropriate amount of lightning. BvS completely overdid the lightning, to such a point it gave me a headache. Here, such effects felt appropriate for each character. With one tiny little exception: Diana’s grief.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved the direction they took Steve’s final moments, and his death hit so many poignant marks. Even though I kind of expected him to die, because he was so prevalent throughout the film part of me almost thought he might survive at the last moment, spared by Zeus or something. I’m glad he didn’t. A hundred years have passed, and I just don’t see her living with Steve until he died of old age.  I do, however, feel like I missed something when it came to Diana’s grief. It felt almost too sudden, too explosive and while it didn’t go over my head, it was like preparing for an undertow that failed to carry me all the way under. I’d like to see this movie again, see if I can figure out why that failed to strike. The DCEU is known for their flimsy editing choices; to find it in an otherwise well-done film is surprising. So perhaps it isn’t a creative choice, but something I personally missed. I’ll have to go back and watch it.

The only other gripe I have, and it is a small one, is the CGI. At least 95% of it translated successfully, from the lighting to the slow-motion (which isn’t really CGI but an effect nonetheless.) Kudos to the slow-motion, by the way. While used more than it probably ought to be, Diana looked so damn cool I don’t care. I was, however, bothered a bit by how evident the computer generated effects came into play whenever she was thrown or jumped into the air. It’s a small thing, but bothered me no less. I love watching these super beings call upon their powers. It’s something I’ve always wished I could do, so the noticeable imagery took me out of the moment. To go along with that, the last shot of the film lingered for far too long. I’m not sure what alternative might have fixed it, I just know it lingered because it felt long, and when some portion of a film feels long to the audience it’s generally a sign something’s got to be reworked or cut. Maybe fading to black and then having Diana’s voice linger instead…I’m not sure.

There is one last thing I’d like to talk about: Diana’s declaration she believed in love. I didn’t intend to leave it until the end, things just sort of unfolded that way. It is important though, so perhaps discussing it now is a good note to end on. I have seen so, so many movies, read so many books and watched enough TV I know how overused that concept is for a character’s turning point. Whether it be someone like Chris Eccleston’s Doctor, who may not believe in love necessarily but learned how to embraced it enough to die for it, or Kiara’s understanding of ‘we are one,’ or even the overall presiding theme of classic films like the Princess Bride. It’s everywhere, it’s been everywhere for a long, long time. So how this movie managed to use it, say it point blank, and avoid the expectant groan is beyond me. It’s so fitting, right? Female heroine falls in love and becomes a stronger individual for it. I hate that concept (I’m sorry, I do) but it works so well here. So well in fact that a small part of me cheered and a part of my heart hurt. It’s been nearly a week and I’m still baffled by my reaction. Maybe it’s this new connection I have with Diana, or something about her character and the little details in her journey that stand her apart from other heroes. Maybe I’ve become so embittered by my own life that finding someone like her (someone, again, I’ve learned to connect with) understanding at last these flawed humans through her lost love and his sacrifice instead of seeing this world strictly as good vs bad…or perhaps it is the world I live in now. A world so stirred by blind, rigid hatred with no room for that deeper understanding. Whatever it is, again I say, kudos to Patty Jenkins and kudos to Gal Gadot. You’ve successfully recruited me aboard the Wonder Woman fanboat. Never in a million years did I see that coming.

I’m sorry everyone, I didn’t expect this to be so long: this movie just hit so many buttons for me, both nerdy and emotional…which I guess sums up Wonder Woman’s overall appeal. She’s ancient and brazen, feminine and empathic: she’s a woman in every sense of the word and that is her greatest strength.

[perilouspretenders-blog]

Monsterhearts 2 Tabletop Roleplaying Game Review by Kristy Cutsforth (Perilous Pretenders podcaster) 

Alright, I’m probably going to get crap for not writing a gushing review for Monsterhearts 2, but I just wanted to be honest since I’m a working artist and I have to be careful what my money goes towards. I love supporting indie role playing games and am even designing my own game currently (inspired by the Hulu tv show, Harlots), but I can’t help but feel slightly underwhelmed by this updated version of Monsterhearts. The thing is, I already LOVE the first book and Monsterhearts is one of my all time favorite games, so you know I felt torn about writing this piece; but I felt I should present the differences between the books so you can make your own choice as to whether you feel you need to buy the 2nd edition or not. If you are a fan, you probably will no matter what I say, this is just my own personal opinion as a Monsterhearts lover and MC. 

I purchased the first book last year, so I felt pretty late to Monsterhearts party already. Maybe if I hadn’t JUST bought the first book, I might not have been so hesitant to purchase this particular update. If I’m going to have to fork over another $10 for a pdf copy, the game better have significantly changed and given me more material to work with as an MC. Avery is already great at understanding queer culture, and the social dynamics of the paranormal romance/teen monster genre. I really enjoyed her inclusion of Asexuality and that she hired a game designer of color to write the section on including racial tensions and dynamics in your towns (probably my favorite new section in this book and the must useful to me as an MC, as I really do care about creating characters of different races in a non-stereotypical way. 

I was hoping to see her expand on the paranormal aspects of the game and include skins from different folklore and cultures. Maybe include more spell options for the Witch? I also feel its important that she explain how to help facilitate and create a horror setting for those who aren’t familiar with the horror genre or who haven’t spent their teen years obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There is a tongue in cheek aspect and humor to good supernatural melodrama ,which may be difficult to grasp if you are only used to straight slasher flicks or paranormal romance that is far too dull to be witty (*cough* Twilight *cough*).

Instead of referring me to a list of movies and books to read for inspiration, please provide me with some inspiration directly from your book. The town maps are a good start, they are included separate from the book for ease of printing in the ebook format, but really don’t include the level of detail I was hoping they would (I would have loved to see illustrated maps with these since the kickstarter did incredibly well).  There are so many wonderful roleplaying games that build rich worlds through their text and give me tons of inspiration to draw on, so I feel it is an industry standard, even for rules light games. Since Powered by the Apocalypse World games are highly dependent on creating worlds on the fly, there needs to be more inspiration to draw on so MC’s don’t get stuck on what to do with supernatural situations and folklore that they may not be familiar with. These could simply be supplemental materials, not all this needs to be included in a core rulebook....it would just be a nice addition she could add in the future.  

Things I really did like about this version of Monsterhearts: I really do like how the moves have been streamlined a bit and that strings are now actually their own separate move on the player reference sheet so that players are reminded to utilize their strings on other PCs and NPCs more frequently.  I like how instead of having the MC pick a stat to highlight and then the PC character with the most strings pick the second, highlighted stats are done away with entirely. My players never remembered to write down XP for using their highlighted stats and how was I supposed to remember who had what stat highlighted? Now, it simply states that XP is earned by rolling 6 or less, which is how I was doling out XP in my games already. Much less confusing this way. Also, you get two set stat blocks to pick from now, based on what your skin would naturally be good and terrible at. I like that a lot, especially for people who like to min-max instead of thinking about what their character is actually good/bad at.  For the move, Lash Out Physically, a change that was made that I really like is that on a 10+ not only do you deal harm, but the opponent is also at a disadvantage because they are “choked up.” Gives more of an incentive to roll 10+ on that particular move, but I guess I would specify more about what that means mechanically from the MC’s point of view. I understand that it will depend on the situation, but it would be nice to have a specific in game mechanic to deal with that, since combat is already so rules light in this game. For me, I would probably give the next person to attack that character an advantage if it happens quickly after they took the first hit and still retain the “choked up” condition.  “A few different moves in the game can lead a character to choke up momentarily. What this means varies depending on the context of the specific situation, but generally involves a temporary faltering or inability to act. It might mean a character going beet red and stuttering, experiencing a moment of panic-related blackout, or letting out a terrified scream and shielding themself from further danger. The consequences vary situationally as well – this might be an embarrassing moment in which a character loses esteem, or a dangerous opening for an enemy during a fist-fight.” pg. 22 Monsterhearts 2 by Avery Adler I also really like how the choices given in some of the moves have been reduced, like in Gaze Into the Abyss in particular. I hated having to read through the long list of choices every time someone picked that move, and it comes up a lot in this game. Now, on a 10+, you get the visions lucidly and instead of having a number of questions to ask the MC, you get a +1 Forward to addressing the situation in game. Makes things more fluid in game to the player and MC that way. On a 7-9, you get the visions, but you are confused and alarmed, that works nicely as well. 

Making the Strings into its own separate move works very well, as I mentioned before. Not only that, but instead of having a huge list of options to choose from, which I think made players less likely to use their strings as they didn’t want to read through all that text (and they were on the back of their player reference sheets), there are only 4 in game options to pick from now:  Tempt them to do what you want, Give them a Condition, Add 1 to your roll against them, or Add 1 to the harm you deal them. 

I knew going in that Avery wouldn’t be including any more skins in the book, but in addition to not creating new official skins, she took away The Chosen from the regular skins selection. I think, what I would have personally done, was  to find a way to make The Chosen less powerful, or given tips on which games to include The Chosen in and which kind of themes won’t work with a superhero type of character. This was already done in the pre-made towns section; they mention which skins would be great to include for the town specified, which I thought was quite smart. 

After running my first game of Monsterhearts, I knew that for my next game I would pick skins that I thought would work well with the scenario and the game was definitely easier to roleplay between the different characters without feeling as forced. I would say if you don’t want The Chosen to be an option, or any of the more mechanically difficult Skins, just leave them out of the pile that players choose from. 

I have run Monsterhearts with one of my players choosing The Chosen and it turned out just fine; I knew she could handle it and that she wouldn’t try to hog the spotlight. I think that is key, making sure you pick a player that is playing for the storytelling aspect, not a min-max style player. You can still pick up The Chosen skin on her website, but if you are going to take out a skin, why replace it with The Hollow (which is basically the character Dawn in Buffy the Vampire Slayer). If you could play Buffy or Dawn, who would you rather play honestly? That’s what I thought.  Oh, and can I mention that I’m psyched that The Ghost skin actually has a more detailed description now for players to read aloud? I mean, “Ghosty ghost, you’re dead” is funny, but c’mon.   “ You used to have a future. Growing up was a painful tumult at times, but at least you were growing. Now you only have a past - unfinished business to take care of before you can leave this world behind. Life is precious. You understand that, now that you’ve lost yours. You just want to help. You just want to be seen. But sometimes even the simplest desires feel so difficult to grasp. Ghosty ghost, you’re dead.”

If you have trouble with world building and creating your own town settings, the second book does have eight towns written up by various game designers. They are only 1 page a piece, however, and mention references to folklore without giving you more information in the text. So regardless, you will still have to do significant research to run games with these towns, but they will give you a place to start.  

If you don’t already own the first book, I wouldn’t hesitate picking this, there is really nothing wrong with it. It is a well written book with streamlined rules and the text reflects that Avery really understands the themes presented. The whole metaphor for teens feeling alone, different, odd, or afraid to reveal their sexuality and playing as secret “monsters” works incredibly well and is the reason this game resonates so much with me personally. Hell, I’m 31 and I’m still figuring stuff out daily, trying to get my life together.  If you already own the first book, maybe wait till it goes on sale and then pick it up? The rule changes can be pieced together through the player reference sheets, skins, and mc reference sheets already available on buriedwithoutceremony.com. 

[yasbxxgie]

'BLACK' Imagines a World Where Only Black People Have Superpowers

When it comes to people of color taking ownership of their own narratives, the fight for sovereignty has been long and ongoing. In 2013, Steve McQueen became the first black filmmaker to win Best Picture for historical drama 12 Years A Slave, after decades of white filmmakers receiving accolades for their own work on black narratives. The struggle has been similar within the comic-book world: While comic-book companies have recently seemed more eager to put more people of color on the page, they've also showed a reluctance to actually hire them to write, draw, or letter the comics in question. More than ever, though, creators of color are taking matters into their own hands—which is how BLACK came to be. The new comic asks the question, "What would happen if superpowers were real? And what if they were only given to black people?"

Recently, I exchanged emails with Jamal Igle, Kwanza Osajyefo, Khary Randolph, and Tim Smith 3—the creators of BLACK—to hear more about the ideas, production, and challenges surrounding a work that presents such a potentially dangerous question.

VICE: The premise of BLACK is that blackness imbues superhumanity and thereby justifies extreme violence against us—something seen all too frequently in the real world. What were the conversations you had with one another around that? What were you worried about? Jamal Igle: I wasn't worried, particularly because even discussing the base premise would be (and was) considered in some corners as controversial. I walked into the project from the outset with that in mind, so I had no reservations about it. Kwanza, Tim, Sarah [Litt, the editor], and I had a conversation over dinner where we talked about the project in the abstract, and Kwanza and I lined up perfectly on the concept of race, representation, and superpowers.

One of the problems I've had as a comic-book reader and being a casual fan of the X-Men was the idea that the only thing that set mutants apart from characters like the Thing, the Hulk, and the Morlocks was how they were marketed to the public. If Warren Worthington didn't run around in a costume with giant x's all over it, he had enough resources to have the people believe he was an alien—or an actual angelic being. The "First Class" of X-Men were all pretty white kids going to an exclusive private school in Westchester. It's not exactly a bastion of individuality or fear for one's safety, unless you're ginger.

The first cover—a kid in a red hoodie, standing in "hands up, don't shoot" position—is immediately evocative and directly confrontational with white supremacy.  I'm curious about what led you and the rest of the team to take such a brute force technique with the covers. Khary Randolph: We don't pull any punches on these covers. They're brutally honest and don't hold back on what they are about, and I think that's necessary when you're dealing with subject matter that's this serious.

My normal day-to-day comic-book work looks nothing like this. It's much more colorful and pop art. I don't normally do political work, but this was personal—to all of us. We knew we had something to say with this book, so from the moment Kwanza and I first discussed what the book would be about, I knew I had to approach things differently. The very limited color palette, the street art feel, the compositions, and the themes are all very deliberate. On a purely emotional level, this was by far the hardest illustration job I've ever had to do, and I'm very proud of how it's come out.

BLACK is monochromatic—black and white—which isn't the absence of color per se, but is definitely in defiance of the color palette of most modern Western comics. What do you feel like you gained from this technique? Kwanza Osajyefo: I felt that BLACK is a story that readers bring their own experiences to. It won't be the same read for everyone. I thought adding color would, in some regard, distract readers and entertain their imagination less. You could read into it as a metatextual absence of color as a reflection of blacks absence in comics.

Randolph: For the record, I love color. But with this project, not having it lends to the gravitas of the themes that we tackle—and it helps us stand out in a marketplace that's full of oversaturated color. It's a point of pride for us that this is the kind of book and story that really can't be told at the major publishers. We're striving to do something different, and that extends even to the lack of color.

There's some pressure, but also some freedom, in drawing, writing, or creating a black body. How does it feel, emotionally, to work on a project like this? What's the work like? What does it bring to your day-to-day life? Tim Smith 3: If you want to break into mainstream comics, you better know how to draw all kinds of people—but you'll be drawing Caucasians the most. But when you work on a book that's mostly black faces, it will make you slow down and get it right because it's not in the norm of comics. Not every black person looks alike, nor does any other person of any other race. But working on this makes me stop and think about making them look like people. And a part of that is to give each of them a look that unifies and separates them from one another.

I talked to a woman who said she hadn't drawn in years, so when she did draw something, she drew the face of a black woman. Now mind you, she herself was black, but she found it difficult to get some of the facial features to her liking. Looking in a mirror her whole life didn't seem to bridge the gap, nor did looking at her family and friends and TV and books—yet she seemed very comfortable drawing a white face. It's ingrained in our culture: the image of what is to be considered the norm. Artists should break out of the bubble and draw all kinds of people. Test your limits, and don't be told what to draw or settle for what everyone has been drawing. For me, drawing BLACK is a fulfilling means to being an artist and an artist of color.

All of you are men, and while the comic definitely makes strides toward inclusion, the voice and perspective is also rather definitively cisgender male. What conversations did you guys have among yourselves about the absence of women from your creative team? Osajyefo: We're all painfully aware, and it's never lost on me that I need to make extra effort on my contacts list. If black men in comics are unicorns, black women are pegacorns. Fortunately, that's quickly changing.

We were able to have Ashley Woods draw an alternate cover for Chapter One of BLACK that has a Harriet Tubman homage on the cover. I would love work with more sisters on future stories in BLACK, but I'll admit I'm only now just introducing myself.

In one of the issues, a Jamaican man uses the term "batty boy"—a Jamaican pejorative generally meant to target queer men. Could you describe your intent with the phrase and how it fits in with the narrative? That character is SAVAGE, and he's not a good person. He's a hardcore gangster and murderer. I like to write villains who do bad things, so it stands to reason that they also say bad things. Considering he eviscerates people in the chapter that he appears in, why is name calling the focus? Are we that desensitized to violence?

Black characters are not just these one-dimensional tokens to assuage publishers obilivity and pacify readers of color. All that stated, I also know thatIdon't know all the deep roots of all these aspects in blackness, but I wanted readers to have these characters exist.

You guys made a point to have AAVE as a clear part of BLACK's vernacular, which is, as is everything, a clearly political choice. Am I right in thinking you're big believers in showing multitudes to counteract stereotypes? A lot of writers don't use the vernacular, pidgin, etc. Maybe that's a fear of making black characters sound ignorant—or perhaps the issue is that there is not enough diversity to allow for it. Name the last black supervillain from a mainstream publisher. They want black faces on their characters but don't have the internal depth (black people on staff) to show our humanity—good and bad. The fears is backlash of presenting us in a bad light, but they also aren't hiring us in positions to influence that content.

In BLACK, we're attempting to show the spectrum of blackness—on our own terms. I love accents, and black people have them. To me, it would be a disservice to gloss over that for pretense.

What are the elements each of you are hoping readers take from your work on BLACK? What's the one thing you'd like us to pay attention to or notice? Smith 3: This project started as a Kickstarter. I don't know what or where it would have gone if not for that. But we did it there. We were committed in doing it one way or another. But the people wanted it as it was funded so here we are! (Thank you KS and all those helped make this happen!) I want folks to understand that there are no rules to making comics. Whatever you think of the book, know that we got up, did it, and it was accepted and wanted. Now I hope you enjoy something that truly breaks the norm.

[pogueman]

4 devices that'll take the shakes out of your amateur videos

In the olden days, it was easy to tell the difference between amateur and professional video. Even if the composition was identical, pro video had obviously better picture and sound—and it was stable.

Over the years, the video and sound quality of phone cameras have dramatically improved. But in general, the stability of the picture is still a giveaway. Pros use tripods or Steadicam rigs; amateurs hold their phones in their jiggly, unsteady hands.

To help out, the tech industry has devised a whole raft of mobile stabilizing rigs to hold your phone or GoPro (GPRO), like these.

Four ways to stabilize your video.

They’re not as good as an actual Steadicam, the expensive, professional, body-worn rig that lets you walk or even run while still allowing the camera to float, bump-free. (That shot of Rocky running up the Philadelphia art-museum steps was an early, famous Steadicam shot.)

The one and only Steadicam.

  But they’re infinitely better than trying to shoot with your hand, as my video above should make clear.

(A note about stabilized phones: Some high-end phones have built-in, optical stabilizers—the iPhone 6s Plus, 7, and 7 Plus, for example, and the Galaxy S6 and S7. They work at least as well as the inexpensive stabilizers described here, but not nearly as well as the motorized ones. Lots of people get truly amazing footage using a stabilized phone in one of these stabilizing products—but lots also report that the two stabilizers sometimes fight each other, resulting in an unpleasant “judder” [shudder/jitter] when you’re panning. The solution would be to turn off the phone’s built-in stabilization—but most phones offer no way to do that. You’ve been warned.)

There are, by the way, dozens of these stabilizers. I tested four of them in a range of designs and price tags. Here’s what I discovered.

StayblCam

Weirdest darned thing you ever have seen. The StayblCam ($75, a Kickstarter hit) is a 10-inch, white or black plastic capsule/stick thing. You wedge your phone into the rubber grippers. You pull the plastic capsule ends apart, revealing a metal extension pole In the center of it with a ring on a ball bearing.

Weird and somewhat effective.

The central idea is that you’ll hold onto this ring, allowing the stick to swing freely like a pendulum.

To set this up, you must first fiddle with the ends of the StayblCam until it balances on that ring horizontally. Getting that right is fussy, and there’s no way to memorize the positions of the end chunks to make the setup faster the next time.

Once it’s perfectly balanced horizontally, you can turn the whole thing vertical. You wrap your thumb and index finger around the ring, and use your ring and pinky fingers on the pole itself, to prevent the whole thing from swinging as you walk. Even then, the swinging can be a problem, especially if it’s windy.

The correct technique.

If you compare the footage, there’s no question: Your video is smoother with the StayblCam than without it.

But this is a polarizing pole; on Amazon (AMZN), people tend to give this thing either 5-star or 1-star ratings. It’s goofy, it’s clunky to set up, and it only kind of works.

On the other hand, it’s waterproof and rugged. It never needs charging. You can unscrew the phone holder and replace it with a threaded mount for a camera or GoPro. You can turn the whole thing upside-down, for smooth ground-level (or pet-level, or baby-level) video that’d be hard to shoot otherwise. And poles telescope out quite a bit—enough for the phone to sit 3 feet above your hand.

Steadicam Smoothee

The Steadicam Smoothee is another steady-er that uses gravity as its stabilizing force ($90). This time, though, you’re holding a pistol grip, and a curved arm places the counterweight directly below your fist.

From Tiffen, makers of the original Steadicam.

Here again, the first step is to make sure everything is balanced; this time, you use two little red knobs to tweak the rig’s center of gravity. Also here again, the pendulum effect both helps you—by stabilizing the phone or camera—and hurts you, by swinging as you move. And finally here again, you’re supposed to keep additional fingers on it, to keep it from turning off the axis you want.

The footage is indeed much, much smoother than what you’d get handheld. Like many stabilizers, though, the Smoothee’s weak spot is quick pans. When you’re pointed in one direction—shooting a skateboarder just ahead of you, say—it’s a champ. But if you suddenly whip your hand to a different angle, you get a delayed reaction and an overcompensating swing.

Note, too, that you can’t hold the Smoothee upside-down, as you can the other products here. You can’t shoot those great dog’s-eye-view videos.

Incidentally, the gravity-based handheld stabilizer concept is available from copycat brands at much lower prices. I found these on Amazon:

Copycats abound.

I haven’t tried them, but it’s likely they’ll offer the same pros and cons as the Smoothee.

GoPro Karma Grip

You may recall (or maybe not) that GoPro, the struggling sports-camera company, unveiled a drone last fall, the GoPro Karma. (Here’s my review.) One of its chief virtues was the stabilizer that held the GoPro itself—a stabilizer you could pull out of the drone and use handheld.

Incredible smoothness–for GoPro only.

The Karma drone is a flawed product (and not just because it was recalled when a glitch caused some units to shut off in mid-flight). But the Grip, sold separately for $300 (GoPro not included), is a cool idea.

This is a motorized gimbal. You can move your hand all around, and the camera just sits locked in space, as though freed from the bonds of physics. It’s freaky in the way that a spinning toy gyroscope is freaky.

You have to charge it up before you use it; fortunately, the Grip also charges the GoPro attached to it.

The stabilization is unbelievable. It’s miles better than the gravity-based steadiers. In fact, no other product touched the fluidity of the chase shot it produced in my tests (see the video above); I mean, it looked exactly like a Hollywood movie shot. I tried it again, holding the Grip upside-down, with the camera down by my feet. Once again: GORGEOUS, smooth, floating video.

Since it’s just a handle, something like a flashlight, you can also stuff it into your jacket or backpack strap, point it forward, and let it film your skateboard, skiing, or mountain-biking run. You will be so happy with the results.

On the other hand, the Karma Grip has a couple of forehead-slapping drawbacks. First, it can’t hold a phone; the only thing you can put on it is a GoPro Hero 4 or 5 (be sure you buy the correct version).

Second, the gimbal mechanism spends most of its time blocking the Hero’s screen—and covering up one of its microphones. Oops.

DJI Osmo Mobile

DJI is another drone company that has branched out into stabilization products. The Osmo Mobile ($300) is another motorized gimbal, but this time, your smartphone is the camera. (It’s a spinoff of the regular Osmo, a much more expensive device that has a built-in camera.)

King of the motorized stabilizers (for now): Osmo Mobile.

Here again, the results are astonishing. You just can’t believe this video came from your phone. It looks like it was shot from a helicopter or a camera on a dolly (“train tracks”).

But it gets better—much better. There’s a four-way sliding button on this handle that motorizes the pans (side-to-side) and tilts (up-and-down) of your camera. The Osmo not only stabilizes your phone, but it also motorizes its movements, smoothly and gracefully. Between your own arm’s motion and this button, you can create spectacular, cinematic moves—either at arm height or, held upside-down, way down low.

The grip has dedicated shutter buttons for video and still photos, too. On the far side, there’s a trigger; hold it in with your index finger to make the camera lock its gaze. Now you can raise or lower your arm; the camera tilts to stay focused on the subject.

You can use your phone’s regular camera app. But if you download DJI’s companion video-capture app, you get some bonus features. One of them lets you draw a box around your subject—and then as you move (or it moves), the Osmo automatically tilts and pans the phone to keep the subject in the frame. So cool.

Another app feature is designed for time-lapse video: It stretches out a pan or a tilt over a very long time.

SteadiCam Volt

The whole stabilizer field is about to get a jolt with the Volt, which is SteadiCam’s motorized consumer stabilizer. If it were a movie, it would be called “Volt: SteadiCam’s Revenge.”

Revenge of the Steadicam.

It’s only a Kickstarter prototype right now (although one that’s already shot way past its goal), so I haven’t tested it. But once it’s a shipping product, it will offer two killer advantages.

First, its price will be $200, not $300. Second, the company says that it doesn’t lag when you do quick turns—like sudden pans or tilts—the way the Karma Grip and even the DJI Osmo Mobile do. If you want to do a whip pan, do a whip pan. (The Kickstarter video shows this feature in action.)

Of course, $300 or even $200 is a lot if all you ever film is your toddler’s waddles or your roommate’s antics. But it’s next to nothing compared with the $50,000 SteadiCam rig whose steadiness these motorized handles resemble. If you’re aspiring to be a YouTube celebrity, journalist, extreme sportster, or budget filmmaker, a stabilizer could be a powerful way to upgrade your work without changing cameras.

And you know what? Even one of the cheapies works better than your hand.

  David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, welcomes non-toxic comments in the Comments below. On the Web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s @pogue. On email, he’s poguester@yahoo.com. You can read all his articles here (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/david-pogue/), or you can sign up to get his columns by email (http://j.mp/P4Qgnh). 

[level99games]

Building Seventh Cross v1-v7

This blog entry is mostly going to be about the creation of Seventh Cross as a project, not so much the world and high-level gameplay. If you're interesting in that kind of an overview, check out the project's page!

Last year, our project of two years, Millennium Blades, became a success on Kickstarter and sold out on its launch day. After fulfilling and successfully reprinting Millennium Blades (which is coming out February), I decided that I wanted to devote my energy to creating new large-scale game projects that would provide an immersive experience, much like Millennium Blades.

I decided to begin with a project that I had been thinking about for a while, Seventh Cross, a game that was heavily inspired by Bloodborne, Castlevania, Devil May Cry, and Shadow of the Colossus.

After about 6 months of development, we are currently on version 8 of Seventh Cross, and hope to have the core game finished up by this Fall.

Starting out the project with EXCEED

To begin with, I knew we were going to have to start early on art and design. I found an artist that would provide a stylish vision for the game and who was familiar with my source material, Ian Olympia. After planning a bit about the world and the setting, we set out to start by creating a series of illustrations for our fighting card game, EXCEED, that would introduce the characters and serve as a springboard for the larger volume of art that a big board game would require.

Currently, Ian is finished up with the designs and establishing arts for the cast of the EXCEED season (16 characters), and is in the process of finishing up their attack illustrations. It's taken a little longer than expected to get everything ready, which makes me happy that we started on it so early.

The art budget for the project is pretty large, and pairing the art needs of the board game with an intermediate project like EXCEED allowed us to do two things: First, to introduce the characters and build some excitement for the series earlier in the year. Second, to cover some of the art and development costs of the larger board game with EXCEED's revenues, since we knew already that the full game's development would be an extended project.

Deciding on a Vision

With Seventh Cross, we wanted to deliver the experience of delving into a mysterious haunted castle, exploring in an immersive narrative fashion (more like a survival horror game), and fighting against colossal bosses. The game would be about the players and about the bosses, so it was clear from the outset that we didn't want to have 'trash mobs' or stat based combat. An encounter was going to be about the player's decision and the real outcome of that decision, not just a dice throw or a mechanical comparison.

We also wanted to make the game fully cooperative. Seventh Cross is about unraveling a mystery and encountering horror. A human agent on the other side may be able to put up a more convincing fight, but knowing that someone is on the other side of the table, with balanced rules on their side, makes for a more competitive experience rather than a frightening one. You don't want to trust that the other side is playing by the rules when you're in a horror setting.

Coming up with the world and the gameplay, it was important to settle on one central idea that was going to form a central theme throughout the narrative. In a game this big, it would be easy to lose our way without focus. I chose a theme of Transformation for the game. The monsters in Seventh Cross are all humans who, corrupted by a magical force called Anathema, shed their humanity and became something else.

The fear of change, and particularly of becoming something we don't understand or something that revolts us, is a core human fear. It also formed an exciting foundation for the game, since it meant that each of the players had that monstrous potential inside their character as well. Perhaps they could use it for good where others chose evil. Or perhaps such thoughts are hubris, and they would be consumed too in the line of duty...

Building Version 1-4

In versions 1 through 4 of Seventh Cross, we focused specifically on the narrative sections and adventuring.

In version 1, players had simple stats and equipment cards, and moved through a castle board, encountering paragraph adventures as they traveled. The paragraphs were large, and complex mini-adventures, often requiring 2 or 3 decisions throughout. While it was a fun adventure for the reader and player, we found that the decisions often relied more on the player's stats than their decisions, and complex paragraphs often created too much downtime.

The main thing we learned in this version was that resolution was going to need to be based on a decision the player made, not a stat. Stats would have to be removed entirely, or else players would always make the choice that favored their stats, and lose agency.

In version 2, we implemented the first versions of a combat system. Players possessed various combat verbs, rather than just stats. So a choice between using a Slashing weapon or a Fire weapon would be an important one. Monsters fought by telegraphing the first part of their attack "... the monster raises its axe..." and then the player would have a chance to read their intentions and parry with the right kind of damage type. Combat was clunky, however, and the encounters were rather long, creating far too much player downtime. Also, players didn't really know what they wanted to do with so many options–the right move wasn't always clear.

The most important lesson in this version was that combat and exploring were going to have to be a group affair. The idea of players splitting up and exploring on their own was scrapped. We also found we needed to give more cues about how to interact with challenges that came up. 

Version 3 was an attempt to merge v1 and v2 together to create a combat system that would allow more narrative freedom while giving some mechanical guidance. It featured items with small stats on them, allowing a player to be more skilled at using some types of items and less at others. The hope was to give players a little bit of direction on what they would want to do in any encounter. This version used an Arabian Nights-style grid of responses to structured encounters. Players entered an encounter, selected one of their possible actions, and made a check to determine the outcome.

In v3, we encountered some of the limits of writing ability. It wasn't possible to have failure and success paragraphs for each of 4-7 possible decisions for every single encounter. More significantly though, we realized that neither success nor failure were very interesting outcomes. To be interesting, a narrative outcome always needed to be success with slight repercussions, or failure with some redemption. 

Version 4 was our first attempt at a more traditional combat system. In this version, players visited a town where they would interact with characters and gather information during the daytime, then fight creatures and defend the town at night. While it was a neat idea, it felt a little bit too off-target for me. It's important to try something off the beaten path though, just to see what's there.

Version 4 formed the basis for a combat system that would evolve in v5 separately from the narrative system that we had built up. We also learned that players preferred meaningful social and mythos encounters instead of "you find a treasure chest, how do you try to open it."

Combat Test Versions 

After v4, we started focusing on versions of the game that were more combat oriented. Part of this was to explore whether the whole narrative nature of the game was unnecessary. The other was due to the fact that the narrative combat seemed inaccurate to capture the more action-adventure style of gameplay that we had in mind.

Marrying these two concepts of Action Combat and Narrative Adventure was proving pretty tough, but before any integration could take place, we had to think about what the fighting was actually going to look like.

In Version 5, we gave players action cards to use against bosses that occupied space on a board. I'm very against space-by-space combat, so we used a zone board, where there are only about 6 or 7 spaces on the board, and a single one can hold multiple characters. This was also the first version to really embrace the 'rogue-like' nature of the game. Players received randomized weapons and gear, and had to figure out a strategy as they played. The boss used a system of aggression based on the damage it took, where players would draw damage tokens from a bag, then keep those tokens as aggro.

Version 5 was somewhat well-received, but it became a bit too easy for players to figure out an optimal move and use it repeatedly. Additionally, the zones offered little incentive to move around, and the boss had difficulty moving around the board and choosing targets without a human operator to resolve it.

Version 6 focused more on implementing the Transformation theme and fixing gameplay of v5. Characters were given weapons that Transformed with each use. These were implemented simply, as guns that needed to be reloaded, swords that powered up on use, and more. The boss was still held back by the zones and its own difficulty in responding appropriately to the player's moves.

Version 6's transforming weapons were very well received, but the combat itself was not. After several plays, we decided to move to a new style of board and a new method of AI control.

Reasoning that we were going to be building combat that revolved around one large enemy, the idea came to make all movement and positioning relative to the boss. Effectively the boss would be printed on the board, and the players would move around it, forwards, and away. This led to version 7, which implemented a point-targeting system on the boss. You could move around the edges of the creature to attack its flank, or strike its head to try and disrupt attacks. You could fight recklessly on the front line for damage bonuses, or safely at the back for extra defense. We also tempered the transforming cards in this version, only making primary weapons transform, not every spell and item. Instead, we gave players the chance to Transform their characters and activate monstrous forms mid-battle. Finally, combat was made free-form, allowing players to act in any order, and placing the monster in a purely reactive position.

Version 7's new board layout was very well received, and the monster's AI worked better, but not spectacularly. We learned a lot about what informs a player's decisions when they go into a battle and what makes for interesting play in terms of player actions. We also found that things had become a little too complex in the course of building the new combat system, and that we should pare things back significantly to keep the player turns quick and action-packed.

Preparing for Version 8

So with all that, you've caught up on the last few months of serious development on the game! I'm currently in the process of building version 8, with these objectives:

Re-integrate the narrative portion by putting verbal options onto the tools players find, giving them both combat and exploration uses.

Building a thematic test scenario that will build up to a final conflict with the boss as the players explore. Player choices during this narrative section will influence the powers and difficulty of the boss they face.

Remaking player weapons to be more thematic and decision driven. Version 7's weapons and tools were heavily number driven, and v8's need to be more strategic in nature, so they can lead to emergent gameplay.

Reducing the complexity of player turns and how players track their actions and abilities in combat.

Integrating the thematics of the boss with the narrative, so that when players meet the boss, they know the person they are up against.

This last one is my biggest and most interesting challenge. While working on the combat versions, we found that playtesters had a much lower interest in defeating the boss than in the earlier narrative versions. My hypothesis on this is that a boss needs to be more than a meme. A good ghost story is not just a description of a terrifying monster–it's an exploration of the descent of another person into horror and how it changed them or what they found there. If I'm going to make a boss fight really immersive and terrifying, it needs more than an image and a skill list–it's got to have the right build up from the narrative side of things too.

I also have to be a bit wilder with my boss's abilities and with the possibilities of the narrative adventure. The players need to be convinced that anything terrible could happen to them at any moment, and that nothing is safe or off-limits. At the same time, this has to be tempered with good gameplay, so that setbacks don't prevent the player from being a part of the experience. Basically like any horror theme park experience–you have to frighten the audience without actually hurting them.

Version 8 will involve linking together everything I've learned from the previous versions of the games and building it back together into something cohesive. I'll post some more news on it once it's ready, and our results after we get it to the table! Once we have a game version that we're confident in, we'll move on to more open playtesting, though that's a step that is not to be rushed.

During these months of playtests, we've also been working on the lore, conventions, and theming of the game. Each version brings some new good idea that's permanently improved the game. Not all were mechanical inventions (like the transforming weapons), so there are quite a few things that I didn't talk about in this development-focused article. Next time, I'll talk a bit more about how the the game has evolved from a narrative point of view, as the storytelling style has shifted from version to version.

See you next week for more news on Seventh Cross!

[dawnajaynes32]

Future Fonts on the Future of Fonts

As a type designer, what if you had an idea for a typeface, and had begun experimenting with its design, but didn’t have the resources to continue the work? Future Fonts could help with that. Or as a graphic designer, you were looking for “fresh fonts” that haven’t been used over and over again—wanting something new and exciting, perhaps getting it even before it’s been released? Future Fonts could also help with that. Future Fonts is a new endeavor brought to life by Lizy Gershenzon & Travis Kochel of Scribble Tone, with OH no Type Co.’s James Edmondson working as an advisor who’s focused on education and helping to build the community.

Gershenzon sees their platform built for type designers to raise funds, get early feedback, and sell typefaces in progress. Edmondson says Future Fonts has elements of Kickstarter, Patreon and Github. Gershenzon, Kochel and Edmondson shared their insights about typography, their thoughts on starting Future Fonts, and what the future of type and type design could look like.

Q. Future Fonts is not only a smart idea, but it also fills a gap—and fills it well. There’s a lot of interest in type design, with people jumping into the game constantly. Why haven’t we seen something like Future Fonts before, especially since type design has been blowing up, with new fonts constantly coming out?

Travis: I think we haven’t seen something similar because it’s terrifying to put something out there that’s unfinished or imperfect. We can’t take all the credit though. Various foundries have experimented with releasing fonts that don’t have a full family of weights or limited character set. Production Type’s Lab, and David Jonathan Ross’ Font of the Month Club come to mind. Some designers have used Kickstarter to fund the process. OpenSource fonts use this model. I think we’re the first font retailer that has made it a core part of the platform though.

James: Swiss Typefaces also had the “Lab” thing maybe even before Production Type.

Lizy: It’s a new idea for typeface design, and it could be hard for a small independent team to take on a bigger project like this. You need to be tied in to what’s needed in the type scene, have the skills to design and build a custom digital product, and get designers behind it. I think the three of us have unique talents that complement each other well for this sort of project.

Q. What about the name, Future Fonts? Why not Font Starter or Fontstarter? Or is that too similar to Kickstarter? Actually, it is too similar to Kickstarter. Bad question … anyhow, what other names were you thinking about, and why did you stick with Future Fonts?

Travis: We went through a lot of names in the early days. AlphaBetaType, clever, but there are a lot of similar names out there. Incremental, a little too serious. We almost went with ‘Not Defined’, which is the name of the glyph that gets swapped in when a font is missing that specific glyph. We were worried it was a little too hard to get if you aren’t a type designer. Future Fonts is a little too obvious, but it’s fun to say. People seem to have an easier time remembering it and are quicker to understand what we’re doing.

James: At first, I hated the name Future Fonts because I thought it was corny. A few days after I had described it to my partner, she asked, “What’s up with that Future Fonts thing?” I realized she remembered it after I had mentioned it once, so that despite being maybe a little obvious, it was memorable and straightforward.

Future Fonts shares reverse contrast principles at their blog in a post by James Edmondson.

Q. James, you wrote a nifty post on the blog all about reverse contrast, and it’s a very educational piece. Do you worry that you’re giving too much away? Would sharing too much of your secret sauce, or any of the ingredients that go into a Future Fonts creation, harm the growth of Future Fonts in the long run? Or are you counting on people creating, designing and building, and then sharing those typefaces on the Future Fonts platform?

James: I don’t worry about giving too much away. From my experience learning in school and teaching, I know how difficult it is to impart a meaningful understanding of type design on students. I am completely happy to teach people because there are many benefits. First of all, people realize how difficult it is, which lets them understand why fonts cost money. Secondly, I think it would be wonderful if designers were more able to treat type like a raw material, rather than simply clip-art. There is an understandable fear of editing/ customizing/ tweaking type. Maybe with a little education in this area, designers will have the confidence to insert more of their own voice to get the type working better for the project and produce unique work. These ideas are more important to me than hoarding information in the name of shortsighted financial success.

Lizy: We are also hoping to grow Future Fonts out more as an educational typeface design resource. First, we were thinking about how to dissect the progress of a typeface to help people better understand what they were getting and learn more about the process. A blog was a nice addition to help designers teach about making typefaces and designing with them. We hope to build out more educational tools for Future Fonts.

Q. James, you occupy a special place at Future Fonts as an advisor, and when it comes to things like that blog post, you’re also an educator, writing about and teaching people about type on the Future Fonts site. For all that you’ve put into Future Fonts up until now, and what you will put into it in years to come, what’s the big payoff for you and why?

James: Education is important to me because of how many great teachers I had. Angie Wang was my first typography teacher, and taking her class was a huge awakening. In that one semester, I learned so many things I still think about daily; in fact undergrad through grad school was one awesome learning experience after another. I hope I can be that teacher for others, and selfishly, being around students allows me to maintain enthusiasm in my own job. After I left grad school, it became annoying to hear my teacher’s voices echo in my head as I was working. Now I’m hearing my own voice echo in my head as I’m working, which is way more annoying, but it keeps me practicing what I preach.

Q. At your site, your FAQ section states that you “don’t require that every typeface is eventually finished,” which makes me wonder, what would you consider to be a successful year or quarter? If 80% of the typefaces get finished, or more like 20%? Or do you not worry so much about the numbers, but perhaps, you define success another way?

James: Forgive me if my opinions don’t reflect those of my colleagues, but on Future Fonts, I define success by the catalog we offer. This is as much about pushing type design forward with interesting contributions as it is about offering a new model for sales. If we were primarily concerned with the numbers, that would lead to a library that was considerably more boring.

Travis: Yeah, I agree. I don’t think finished is something we’re using as a measure of success. The idea of what qualifies as “finished” is very subjective. Even well-polished “finished” fonts usually have room for expansion of character set, weights and widths. The three goals I’m most interested in are: 1) providing a safe place for type designers to experiment and grow their ideas, 2) offering a great library of typefaces, and 3) trying to close the gap between type designers and type users. They’re not really quantifiable, but just things to help guide decision making. However, I definitely hope to see the typefaces progress, and will be sad if they get abandoned. We’re trying to pick designers that are serious about their work, so I hope the number of abandoned projects will be fairly low.

Q. Future Fonts looks and feels inclusive, as if you won’t say “No” to any submission—and I think that’s really cool. But, where would you draw the line? What won’t you accept into your catalog, and why?

Travis: We have turned down quite a few submissions actually. In the early going, we feel it’s important to set expectations for both the designers and customers. While the typefaces are in-progress, what is present should be usable, of high quality and creatively interesting. In the long term, we would love to create a more open environment, but it would probably be a bit separate from the Future Fonts brand. We’ve also floated the idea of making a critique section where anyone could post work to get feedback and help.

Q. A critique, education and feedback area would be wonderful. Would it be similar to, different from, or the same as Type Drawers? Do you see something like what you’re envisioning being a replacement for Type Drawers, or adding to what Type Drawers already has in place?

James: We want to have designers feel comfortable giving any feedback related to using the type. Other communities of type designers can offer critiques to make it be the best expression of it as a typeface, but we feel that feedback that comes from a user, or an actual paying customer might be more useful.

Travis: It’s not something we’ve given a whole lot of thought about yet. Growing and maintaining the current library and feature set has been keeping us pretty busy. But, I think we’ll probably want to take it a little further than Type Drawers if we do it. The forum format works, but it would be nice to create a more helpful interface for critiquing, with type design in mind. Again though, this is probably pretty far off in the future, and separate from the licensing side.

Q. Lizy, your bio at Scribble Tone says that you have “a gift for connecting with people and making a project come alive.” What are some of the ways you hope that contributors’ typefaces will come alive when they work with Future Fonts, and how will you be a part of that coming alive?

Lizy: We created Future Fonts as a way for typeface designers to get their projects out sooner, so others can use their useful designs. Hopefully this early feedback loop will encourage designers to keep working on it, get fresh designs out there quicker, and help them make some money along the way. It has also been fun to see typeface designers on the platform and from the design community support each other with feedback, advice, and helping spread the word on new typeface releases. Throughout this project, I’ve tried to take Travis’ initial prototype of releasing typefaces in versions and push the vision so it’s more exciting to a larger design community. Figuring out things like how will type designers upload and sell their work, what’s a nice way to browse and show-off typefaces, and how do we make it feel like a community that’s supporting each other. Lately, I’ve been focusing on getting more designers to check out Future Fonts, and how to help make the product better.

Travis Kochel’s FF Chartwell is a unique typeface that goes far beyond letters, numbers, and symbols.

Q. Travis, you have experience with type design and technology, such as pushing the envelope with FF Chartwell and its OpenType capabilities, creating a font that calls on typography, mathematics, programming, color and graphics. That font appears to be the perfect blend of your experience and interest in typography, graphic design and backend development. How has that experience, and your other experiences with type design and technology—as well as your entrepreneurial spirit—factored into your vision for Future Fonts, and where you want to take it five, 10, 20 years from now?

Travis: I’m always looking for ways to bring together all of my separate interests. I’m not the best at any one thing I do, but my strength is in bringing different perspectives to fields or technologies that don’t usually talk to each other. It’s been really important for me to explore new technologies and ways of thinking, and to be OK with spending a lot of time learning something that may not directly relate to what I’m working on at the moment. With Future Fonts, I hope to keep that same spirit of learning and exploration going. We have a good backlog of useful and necessary features for the site, but I think it’s important that we follow our curiosity and mix in some things that are more satisfying on a personal level. As a platform, I hope we can help encourage this in the designers as well. I’m so glad James is involved in this project. He’s done an amazing job of curating and encouraging exactly that in the library.

Q. With a name like Future Fonts, people might presume you have an eye on what’s next in the type world, for type designers and also for graphic designers and everyone else who uses type. What do you see happening next in the world of type design, specifically for the type designers making type, how they work, their distribution model(s), and also the way people use their type?

James: We are in the golden age of type design. The education, tools, and communities around it have never been stronger, so the only trend I can count on is that quality will stay high. For type designers, I hope they can realize the importance of owning their work. With the internet, the importance of huge foundries goes down. Everyone can process credit cards, and everyone has international reach. That will hopefully allow for more designers to stay independent, and not be a part of the Monotype ecosystem that is continually swallowing up the entire business. Monotype has the tendency to buy foundries up and forget about what made them cool in the first place. My hope is that by keeping the decisions about what type gets made out of the hands of huge companies, it will allow for more progressive and boundary-pushing work.

Lizy: I agree, Future Fonts is a new tool to give type designers more control over their work, which is really needed in today’s type industry. I also see it as a place where designers across disciplines can discover interesting new typefaces and support independent creative work happening today.

Control, discovery, support and creativity—sounds like a bright future for type designers and also graphic designers. You can see more of Future Fonts on Instagram & Twitter.

Edited from a series of electronic interviews.

The post Future Fonts on the Future of Fonts appeared first on HOW Design.

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