#i have different plans for upcoming robot drawings

[suranet]

(me referring to Char) somewhere out there, there's a circus missing one of its biggest clowns.

[samfosho]

I hate to do this, but not asking for help is how I ended up with tens of thousands in medical debt to begin with and I'm getting desperate.

So, hi. I'm Sam. I'm a queer, autistic & ADHD living with mountains of medical debt that has accrued after working a decade at a job I believed in for just pennies, with nothing to show for it but burnout and depression. (Yes, I know there are charities that buy medical debt. I did not know about them before I took advice from An Adult That I Trusted and Thought Was Smart years ago now, who said just put it on a credit card. I have learned and suffered for that mistake)

Fortunately, I've got a good job now. Unfortunately, that doesn't solve all my problems overnight. Currently, I have about $36 to my name, which isn't even mine if you think about it (see: debt), and I don't get paid for a week. I'm working on the Big Shit, but there are two things I really need help with:

Immediate: I have a car payment coming out today for $156 that I can't cover

Less Immediate, but still looming: I NEED to have my wisdom teeth out. I've put them off for a long time, and I'm currently dealing with a lot of pain as I wait for the appointment next month. Insurance came back with them covering half, but that still leaves $1400 out of pocket.

I thought I had everything budgeted a little better this month, and all I had to worry about was the upcoming wisdom teeth appointment. I had a small car issue (tires needed replaced) and I forgot my rent went up this month and not next.

This is a huge ask, and I know we're all struggling, so I'm not asking for that full amount.

That dental appointment is the soonest I can get in, at the least expensive office that takes my insurance, so moving to a different doc isn't an option. They DO offer payment plans, however they only offer 6 months, and the full amount is too much of a monthly payment for me to make and still pay rent/make car payments/feed my cats.

If I can make that first payment on the day as big as I can, and cut the monthly payments, that would be an immense relief.

SO, my goal is $600, if at all possible, in the long run, so I don't lose everything

But my immediate, PLEASE if you can, so I don't lose my car or miss rent or get hit with overdraft fees that will just hit me even harder goal is:

$200

This would get my car payment and a little extra to get as many cheap, non perishable groceries as I can so I don't have to worry about what I'll eating the next few months.

If possible, literally anything is a huge help and amazing. If not possible, a little boost would be amazing.

If you would like to receive an actual, physical thing—like, say, a cussy piece of embroidery—you can go buy something from my Etsy store. Stock is limited, cuz I have been working enough that I haven't had time to make a lot of things or get new supplies, but I have some stupid mushroom earrings I can add to the shop, too, when I get a moment, and some stone jewelry that I made and have been meaning to sell for YEARS.

I also have a comic that I haven't updated in forever, because of the aforementioned busyness, burnout and stress. So I will draw you a little robot or something if you donate if you want

Here is a pic of my cats, they would also appreciate eating

Thanks for taking the time to read, I greatly appreciate that, too 💚

I put my links under the cut, so they're not just out there in case this post travels past my need of it

Venmo @ SamFoShoBro

cashapp $SamFoShoBro

Message for paypal. I have it, I just don't like using it.

[just-animaxiz]

Fuck it - I'm gonna make these guys into reoccurring characters into RC9GN because they're underrated (Especially the leader)

Starting off with lore bits for:

Spike

He is the leader of not only the Punk Bots, but also the leader of Scrap City. Ever since he failed to defeat the ninja and thus scrapped away, he gained enough sentience to start rebelling against McFist and Viceroy, shouting out the way they mistreated the robots like that.

He is the least scrapped Punk Bot out there, and that is due to his self-taught experience with mechanical repairs. He then began to take whatever parts out there and used them to fix the other bots, gaining their respect for him and vice versa.

Spike, as designed, is a punk, so he fonds over Punk music and guitar - Fortunately, McFist dumped other materials such as magazines, old guitars, and other items into Scrap City. In the middle of the heap is an untouched shiny red guitar. Spike claimed it as his and named it, "Ruby Bolt.

During their imprisonment, Spike realized the heaps of cars and vehicles stacked up like ladders. To test his theory, he created a rope out of cable and started to climb the stack. It took him 12 tries before he finally made it on the wall. Looking down, Spike found himself at the edge of a long fall, so he lasso'ed the cable to a glued object, like an impaled stick or heavy pole, and climbed down.

Once he made it, he learned that no one came after him. He's free... But then he looked up at his mates and realized they're still trapped and too many escaping can lead to getting caught. So Spike devised a plan. He talked this out with the group, and using hacking skills and convincing, they pulled in outside help into it. At a precise time, Spike and his punk bots leave Scrap City. Then when the humans are occupied (At a grand party or very busy), the Punk Bots trashed down a McFist establishment.

While they trashed the area, Spike stole a few items for personal reasons, and when they came back to Scrap City, Spike used them as upgrades.

He made upgrades on himself - making him faster, stronger, and more agile than ever. Additionally, he made personal upgrades like having sharp teeth, a tongue piercing, and a cool new torso.

He also had stolen photos of not only Mcfist and Viceroy, but the Ninja too. He kept drawing personal threats for his revenge.

As much as everyone agreed to vandalize at a specific time, Spike would sometimes go out on his own to take a breather. Wearing long sleeves and a hood over his head, he hides himself from interacting with humans... Or McFist.

A person caught his eye - A young bright boy with purple hair and a red shirt, like his. He's enjoying a night out with his family, meeting up with his best friend, and talking about the girl he has a crush on... Spike wished he could've been that boy, instead of being a scrappy mistake.

Thorn

Thorn is the yellow punk bot, and personality-wise, he's the "I may be sweet but I'm not merciful" type.

He is Spike's Right Hand Man and he always inform Spike about upcoming events or news from the outside.

Thorn may not be as scary or threatening as his brothers, but he can be with his words alone. Spike taught him that!

When McFist dumped random trash into Scrap City, Thorn found an abandoned set of manga. That caused him to be addicted in different types like Shojo, Isekai, and Shonen. He would spend all night reading, learning small Japanese words.

It was until Skewer, the green Punk Bot, gave him a book he found about Japanese culture and their language. Thorn thanked Skewer for the gift and dedicated into learning about his interests.

Before Spike fixed him, Thorn used to be the most damaged. He lost his head a dozen of times, cannot run as fast, and he had a squeaky arm. Even after he's repaired, the squeak's still there. It made him feel like a repaired doll but they still have cracks on their face.

When Thorn joined his brothers out to vandalize McFist stores, he would sometimes steal manga, figurines, or Japanese books to fulfill his interests. He even made theories about Yokai and think they're real, so he showed respect whenever he passed by small statues or paintings.

He's not the type who just sees Japanese as a trend or media thing, but he truly respects their culture and wished to travel to Japan just to learn more and appreciate its beauty. He wondered if they would accept a broken doll like him over there.

When Thorn learns that the Ninja came from Japan, he wished to meet them during a fight so that he could ask them questions about their occupation, wanting to learn their moves and their history.

He would be the type to punch a jerk if they disrespect his interests or even embodies humiliation towards it. Like I said, he's sweet but not merciful.

Skewer

The scariest Punk Bot. Every bot, except for his brothers, feared him.

It's not his fault though; Skewer was made with the scary face by Viceroy and McFist, which made others back away whenever they felt like he's glaring at them.

Despite this, he's also the smartest. He helped Spike set up the upgrades and hacking. This is due because of the dumped items in the heap.

Skewer found a guide to hack and a manual to repair and rebuild. He also find trashed books from Math and science (Thanks Bash) and took them in for his research.

There, his intelligence became stronger than ever, storing data after data and using them for important tasks.

The data also led him to his fond of chess and checkers, which annoyed a specific chess-obsessed robot.

Even though he's smart, he still lives up to the scary bit - He's the frontman, the bulldozer, and the brute of the pack. Someone messes with him or his people, and they'll be skewered.

Bots cannot even tell what mood he's in, questioning if he gave them compliments or subtle threats.

When he and his brothers vandalized McFist Industries, Skewer made observant notes of everything. He noticed how Thorn would stare at a store with Ancient Japanese antiques, or how Spike gaze at a happy boy before he soberly looked away. Other times, Skewer made notes of seeing a red light on a camera, or hearing an annoying voice from a distance.

If they needed time, Skewer would purposely cause a destruction somewhere else as a diversion and make an escape route to go back to his brothers in time.

Skewer questions the Ninja's existence and purpose. He learned that they had been in Norrisville for several years, which is impossible for humans. (Wink) And he discovered from articles that the Ninja came in different forms, wondering if there's a deeper reason behind it.

He also wondered why McFist would go out of his way to built world-destructive robots just to destroy one Ninja. It doesn't make sense in his way.

Hope you enjoy some lore bits I made for them!

[lightning-storm-studies]

No-stress Summer Learning Challenge 🌞

Where did the idea of the no-stress summer learning challenge come from 🤔?

I see do many posts about summer studying, that it makes me worried. People spend their time studying during summer holidays, already preparing for the upcoming semester/school year. It's your free time and, as someone, who already has a full-time job (and is trying to finish her thesis to get a master's degree), I can tell you, that you probably won't have that much free time in the summer once you start working. Yes, it's sad and unfair, but unfortunately, it's real 🙁. So please, take your time, use it for something else, than worrying about exams, preparing for school and getting stressed and burnt out before school even starts. Don't waste your energy sitting in front of your PC/laptop, or with a course book, learing stuff by heart, while the sun ☀️ is shining outside, children are playing and other people are going out with their friends and families. And if you already work full-time, but also are still a student, don't use whatever free time you have on summer to study even more. Unless you absolutely have to, of course (I'm in this kind of situation, I have to write my thesis during summer, because the deadline is in September), but even then, don't use all your time for schoolwork. Although I consider summer studying an unnecessary stress factor, there's a difference between studying and learning. Studying is for school, learning is for yourself 🙂. I'm not telling you to be lazy the whole summer, but to consider learning something, that doesn't include schoolwork. It may be related to what you're studying in college/at school, or it may be something totally different. It may be something about technology 🔌 (programming, robotics, electronics...), art 🎨 (drawing, painting, embroidery...), nature 🌱 (gardening, foraging, birdwatching...), music 🎶 (singing, playing an instrument, making electronic music...), foreign languages 🗺️, sports ⚽, cooking 🍲, baking 🍩, kintting 🧶, sewing 🪡... the list is endless. So, as an alternative to summer studying challenge, you can start a no-stress summer learning challenge.

The main rules 📑

The main purpose of this challenge is to find motivation to learn for yourself 😀 again, so no exams, no homework, no grades, just you and your goal .

You're free to choose what you're going to learn, based on your own passions, dreams and ambitions 😍, without worrying about other people's judgement and expectations.

It's supposed to be stress free 😌, so there are no fixed schedules or deadlines. It's up to you to plan your learning and decide, how long it's going to take you.

To stay focused, please choose one topic and stick to it. It doesn't mean, you can't learn anything else. Actually you should, because staying concentrated on one thing for too long can make you burn out quickly, but have one main goal 😎.

Remember to take proper breaks 🥱. Learning all the time will only make you sterssed and tired. It's not school, so you don't need to worry about any fixed due date or preparing for a test.

Don't be too hard on yourself and remember that mistakes are a part of learning 😯, not a failure or shame.

Preparing for the challenge and completing it 📚

Think about, what do you want to learn this summer. It doesn't have to be very specific at this stage. For example, it can be something like "I want to learn about cats 🐈", or "I want to learn to draw 🖼️", or "I want to learn about tea 🫖".

When you know, what you want to learn, do your research, to be able to set a more specific goal. Read about this topic, watch some videos, maybe try to find people, who have more knowledge about it, than you, and talk to them. Let the "I want to learn about cats" become "I want to learn proper cat care 😸", the "I want to learn to draw" become "I want to learn to draw manga 🎏" or the "I want to learn about tea" become "I want to learn, how to brew various kinds of tea 🍵".

You've done the research, so now it's time to find your "why", because to stay motivated, you need to remember that you're doing it for a reason and that this knowledge is useful. The "I want to learn proper cat care" becomes "I want to learn proper cat care to make my cats healthier and happier 😻", the "I want to learn to draw manga" becomes "I want to learn to draw manga, because I'm interested in art and Japanese culture 🌸" and the "I want to learn, how to brew various kinds of tea" becomes "I want to learn, how to brew various kinds of tea, because I like tea and I want to make it even better 🍃".

Once you find your motivation, look for the learning resources 💻. It can be an online course, internet articles, scientific papers, books, YouTube videos, TikTok videos... whatever, depends on what you're going to learn. You can also contact someone, who is na expert in what you're learning, and ask them for help. While learning from blogs, videos, etc., remember to check the sources, to make sure the person, who created this content, knows what they're talking/writing about.

When you know your resources, plan the whole thing ahead 📝, considering your other summer plans (like traveling or going out with friends), to make sure, that you have enough time for learning and that the time you're going to spend working towards your goal is fairly evenly distributed to avoid stress and burnout, but remember to make your schedule flexible, so you don't have to worry about learning at a fixed time. Again, it's not school.

You've planned everything, now set reminders in your phone 📱 and/or write it down in a planner 📔 or on some post-it notes 📄... whatever works best for you to remember about your goal and the time you've decided to spend learning.

To minimize the risk od procrastination, divide the tasks into smaller tasks. You can write to-do lists ☑️ (either digital, or on paper), so you can see your progress and know exactly, what needs to be done.

To avoid getting burnt out 🤯, step away from what you're learning once in a while. Don't overwork yourself, you're not preparing for an exam.

To ensure you have enough energy ⚡, take care of your health, both physical and mental. Take breaks, sleep long enough 😴, go out with your friends, stay hydrated 💧, exercise 🏃🏻‍♀️, spend some time in nature 🌲.

Last, but not least: remember to post regular updates about your progress on your blog. It can be every day, every three days, once a week... you decide. It can include photos, but doesn't have to. Just make it regular and tag it with "no-stress summer learning challenge" or "no-sslc" 😊.

[twistedy]

What have I been up to?:

(Super long read)

The read is worth it tho

Summary:

(I play a drawing video game and learn some stuff to improve my art abilities. New full render coming out on Sunday. Get excited.)

What was I doing?:

While I was gone, I was playing a game on roblox called "Spray paint". And basically you just paint anything on the walls of an abandoned skate park and let other people view and like your drawings. I have made a few pieces and this game really helped me develop a new style that utilizes zero black lines to convey realistic attributes. With this development, I have also changed the designs of two upcoming characters that will be featured in my comic!

Who are the featured characters?:

The two (new) bots have gone through some major design changes as I got to play the game more. One character who already has their named revealed to be "Raven" is reserved for a future robot piece. Her latest design is the very first picture in the collection. The second new bot will remain unnamed at this time until a post showing off his full design comes out. His latest designs are in the 8th and 9th pictures.

The third bot you should see (in the very last picture) is a redesign of "Aleister". He now has four large bat-like ears, bigger hands, two red horns on top of his head instead of the sides, and two metallic antenna cylinders on the sides of his head. I don't know why I decided to redesign him but now I realize that I needed to spice him up a bit more.

Different art style?:

As you can see throughout the pictures, the box-head robot; and "Raven" have very drastic changes between each piece. This is when I was deciding on what their canon design should look like. And eventually to come to an reasonable design that I am satisfied with. These are my two first ocs that have been created with the assistance of Roblox. And I am happy that I also have developed a new art style along with this. I am planning on using less black lines in my art to make the pieces look more realistic. At the moment I am still learning how to use this new style in Procreate, so further adjustments will have to be made.

When do we get new robot post? I'M HUNGRY!!!:

Don't worry my followers, turns out that I have been cooking something while I was gone. My next robot piece releases on Sunday at 1 PM like it always has been. This new piece will reveal the name of that box-head, skibidi toilet TV man looking, robot dude (The robot is not a reference to Skibidi toilet), and showcase a new experimental style that can enhance my photo-realistic ambitions! So stay tuned for that!

[creativeprojectdevelopmet]

FMP Artefact, Documentation and Presentation- Learning & Reflection

BLOG 27 24/7/2024

I recently looked at the robots designed by TEL YUKA and realized that I have borrowed a lot from his designs in my own work. In particular, I adopted the design of the waist. I feel that his robots have more mechanical layers than mine; his robots have three layers, while mine only have two. Additionally, the level of detail in his parts design surpasses mine.

This has made me realize that in future designs, I need to further enhance the depth and level of detail in my work. TEL YUKA's designs demonstrate how incorporating additional mechanical layers and meticulous part design can enhance the complexity and realism of robot models. I plan to introduce more layered structures and carefully examine the details of each component in my upcoming projects to improve the overall sophistication and depth of my designs. Additionally, I hope to draw inspiration from TEL YUKA's work to explore different design styles and techniques, enriching my own creative methods. This will not only enhance my design skills but also help me create more unique and striking robot designs in future projects.

Reference

TEL, Y (2014) "Courir2_v00" [image]. https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3o0NJ [Accessed at 12 July 2024]

[floorbe]

Adora x Fem!Witch!Reader “Secret”

Request: can i request an adora x reader oneshot where adora discovers the secret that her s/o is a witch who was born with dark magic after her s/o defends her in battle?

A/N: uhh I guess this is set in like... season 4? 

Warning(s): Season 3 and on spoilers, mild angst, angst with a happy(ish?) ending

Summary: You’ve been hiding the fact that you can use dark magic from everyone around you, including your girlfriend, Adora, for as long as possible. Eventually, time runs out. 

Pairing(s): romantic Adora x Reader

Fandom: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

Word count: 2,096

~

You’d managed to keep it a secret from everyone so far. You’d gone out of your way to not use your magic, even going as far as pretending you don’t know a thing about magic itself to throw off any suspicions. Granted, it had made battles more difficult than you would like, but you managed. It was tough but necessary. You need to protect yourself, even if your friends and allies seem to be more understanding than most. Being a natural born dark magic user isn’t something taken lightly, no matter how kind someone is. The reputation behind it will always follow you, no matter how inherently good you are.

So, hiding it seemed like your only option. It was safe, it wouldn’t risk you or anyone around you if no one knew it even existed. It went smoothly for a while, it wasn’t hard to keep up the act as long as you still had time to yourself prepare and keep your lies straight.

Though that was before you started dating Adora, A.K.A. She-Ra. 

Adora was with you a lot more after you started dating, and while previously you could manage your facade with briefer interactions, it slowly became harder as you spent more time together. You would accidentally spout out a correction about dark magic, or a fact that no one knew, something that hinted at your secret. You always brushed it off as something you’d overheard, something you’ve read, but your facade was on the verge of crumbling. 

You could only keep it from people for so long now, but what would they think? Magic itself is used by almost everyone in all the kingdoms, but dark magic? You saw how Shadow Weaver was treated when she was taken to Bright Moon. Even when she had tried to help others, she was still treated as an enemy. (Part of why is Adora’s past with her, you reason, and the fact that she used it to hurt others. But the other part is her dark magic, which probably only furthered the stain on it since she used it for harm, you remind yourself, and deflate any hope sprouting within you.) You’re sure you’d be more readily accepted than her, but there would still be the crack of distrust from everyone around you. 

Even if Shadow Weaver had switched sides, dark magic was still treated as a taboo, even if used in their favor. What would be the consequence for you? Not only for using it, but for hiding it? While not all dark magic is innately harmful, a great deal of what’s known about it is. For someone to be using it so naturally and as their primary source of offense... It wouldn’t bode well for you. 

Dark magic users are not to be trusted. Even while dating She-Ra herself you couldn’t be excused from that mentality that was instilled in everyone around you. You figure it will just be easier for everyone to continue hiding it for as long as you can, though a part of you knows that you’re slipping up more than usual lately. It’s only a matter of time before someone starts to get suspicious and starts snooping around. 

But, as it turns out, it never even reached that point before it was revealed.

-

You wake up alone in the bed that you and Adora share. Groggily reaching over to her side of the bed, you vaguely realize that it’s cold. Adora must’ve gotten up much earlier. Sighing, you drag yourself out of bed, sleepily going through your morning routine. You wondered where Adora went, she doesn’t usually get up before you... Maybe she had a She-Ra thing? Probably. While not often, she had been known to “sneak” (in reality she just didn’t want to wake you, she believes you need all the sleep you can get) out of bed to attend business that didn’t really require you. It was sweet, but sometimes annoying when you’d wake up to find out something had happened while you were asleep.

Finishing up getting ready for the day, you head out to go find Adora. Walking around the palace, you don’t find anyone but the usual guards (and Shadow Weaver, but you’ve made it a point to avoid her at all costs in case she somehow just... knows, so as soon as you see her you turn the other direction.) who point you towards one of the planning rooms. Huh, did she have a battle meeting after all? Why weren’t you woken up?

Opening the door, you find Adora and the rest of the princesses (and Bow, of course) circled around the round table. They all turn to you, greeting you in a friendly manner. Adora bounds over to you and pecks you on the cheek. “Hey! I just sent a guard to wake you, but... I guess I didn’t need to,” she chuckles, sliding her arm around your waist and tugging you to the table. Okay, that explains why you weren’t woken up. “We were just discussing what we think Catra’s next plan is going to be.” 

“Oh, okay,” you say, leaning into Adora while glancing at the map rolled out. Your eyes flicker around it, tuning out the rest of the discussion as you try and think. Eyes traveling around the colorful markings of the map, you follow the red trail, symbolizing Catra’s path of wrath, scrawled on it.

“What do you think, Y/N?” you hear Bow ask, and you snap out of your daze. 

“Huh?” 

“I asked what you think Catra’s next plan is?” Bow repeats kindly.

You think for a moment, absentmindedly tapping on the table with your fingers, “I think she’ll-”

*Boom!*

“-strike soon,” you finish, mostly to yourself as the palace shakes around you. You all sprint out the door, running down the halls to the entrance of the palace. Bursting through the doors, you met with row after row of large metal robots, all seeming to take aim at you. You all immediately jump into battle, Adora drawing her Sword of Protection. You vaguely hear her exclaim, and there’s a glow from the corner of your eye. Glancing over from the enemy you’re about to engage, you see Adora, now She-Ra, slicing down robot after robot, showing no hesitation. It’s admirable.

Taking out your weapon, you start attacking the robot in front of you, silently cursing yourself for your lie of not knowing any magic. Battles are now always much tougher than they needed to be when you couldn’t use your own powers, and it’s something you’re still getting used to. You’re usually taking down multiple opponents at once, but now you’ve been weakened to barely being able to take on one... There’s no use in crying over it now, you decide as you nearly get hit by a blast. You need to focus on not getting hit, not thinking about- is that Adora about to get blasted?

Your head snaps to the view you’d seen in the corner of your eye: Adora with her back turned to an upcoming robot, ready to blast her. She has to hear it, right? The clacking of its mechanical legs are so loud even you can hear them, but she’s not showing any sign of turning around. Panicking slightly, you let out a shout towards her, but she’s too far away to hear you yell. You eyes flicker to anyone who could be around her to help her, but the only person close enough is Glimmer, who’s back is turned- Adora still hasn’t noticed the robot, and to your horror you realize it’s about to send a blast through her skull.

You barely comprehend your hand coming up, a dark glow encapsulating it as you concentrate on the trickle of energy coursing into your hand. Allowing the magic in your hand to intensify, you thrust your hand towards it, shooting a black stream of magic. It surrounds the robot like a coil, destroying it as you clench your fist harshly. The sound of collapsing metal alerts Adora, (Really? That’s what got her attention?) spinning around just in time to see the inky glow of the magic fade from around your hand. 

She looks at you in confusion, and it only then dawns on you what you’ve done. Quickly turning away from her, you continue your battle against the other enemies, ignoring the dread filling your stomach at the thought of talking with Adora afterwards. You could just take some time to yourself first, come up with a good explanation to why you’ve been lying to her this whole time, and it would all be fine, right? Right. 

-

“Why didn’t you tell me you could use dark magic?” Great. You’d tried to avoid Adora the best you could after everything had settled, almost immediately heading into the palace to try and find somewhere private to calm down and think. Guess you weren’t fast enough.

She doesn’t sound angry, but when you turn around you can see the tenseness in her frame. She may not be angry, but she’s certainly upset, and you don’t blame her. You stutter, trying to form a coherent sentence, but everything in your head is jumbled. Any attempts at explanation in your mind are overpowered by overlapping fearful thoughts about what she must think of you now. 

“I-I just-” you bite your lip, taking a deep breath. You slowly let it out, clearing at least some of the doubts in your head and sorting through the mess of words. She waits, eyes boring into you with an emotion you can’t quite place. “I-I thought you would hate me,” you admit finally, avoiding her gaze. “Dark magic isn’t... something people take lightly,” you vaguely remind her, rolling your shoulders back uncomfortably at the reminder.  

“So you hid it from me? The entire time we knew each other?” she emphasizes, eyebrows furrowing. She continues after a moment when you don’t respond, “Why would I hate you for using dark magic, Y/N? You.. you know I wouldn’t judge you based on something you can’t control.” The way her tone lowers in understanding makes something in your mind click; Adora didn’t choose to become She-Ra, either. Though it’s still different, you think, however similar your basic situation is, She-Ra is revered, and people like you are killed. She may understand, but she doesn’t understand.

Your hands come up to clasp together, seeking some sort of comfort from the slight edge in her tone, “That’s not how everyone thinks, Adora. I’ve met people who’ve tried to kill me just because I know dark magic. It isn’t exactly praised around here.” You pause, biting your lip, “You can’t blame me for being worried about it.” 

“That doesn’t mean that I think that way,” her tone softens, “You’re my girlfriend, Y/N. Using dark magic doesn’t change the fact that I care about you.” 

And then something else clicks in your head, that this is Adora. Adora your best friend, Adora your number one supporter, Adora who tries to empathize with everyone. She’s been there for you since the beginning, supporting you through every thought and decision you’ve had to make, and you her. Guilt fills you as you realize just how harshly you’ve been judging her, how little credit you’ve been giving her. You had just assumed she would be judgmental, even if that was the farthest thing from Adora. “I’m sorry,” you murmur, gaze lowering to the floor. 

You hear her sigh, stepping closer to you. She gently takes your hands in hers, “It’s okay, I get it. I just wish I had found out from you, and not from a battle, y’know?” she admits, squeezing your hands softly. You nod, raising your eyes to look at her, not expecting the small smile that greets you. Your lips quirk up similarly, grasping her hands tighter. The weight in your chest lifts. It’s okay. Things are... okay. 

You sigh softly, leaning forward to lean your head on her shoulder. She lets go of your hands in favor of sliding them around your waist, resting her chin on your shoulder. “You looked pretty cool back there,” she admits, and you can almost hear the grin in her voice, “The dark magic glow really brings out your eyes.” 

You snort quietly, hands resting on her hips as you nuzzle into the crook of her neck, “Thanks, Adora.” She hums in response. You stay there even after you’ve both gone silent, content being wrapped in each others arms for as long as you need. 

[violence-as-a-love-language]

2 + 19 for artist ask!

2. 5 favourites of your own work?

Oof well, warning first that I rarely have finished works, but heres some of the ones I do quite like.

Five

[I.D. A digital painting of a dark green sea monster. The creature has two, sightless blue eyes and one orange eye on its forehead, facing vertically. It has huge curving horns and long frills framing it's face. Its mouth is open, showing large, sharp teeth and a long tongue. It's exhaling bubbles. /end I.D.]

I had gotten frustrated trying to draw and just decided to play with the paintbrushes in CSP to see what I could make. And this was the result. Dunno what it is, but it was a fun exercise.

Four

[I.D. A digital drawing of a tricolor border collie, wearing a large brown vest covered in various pockets, straps, and buckles. Attached to the vest is a robotic arm, currently curled in a resting position. The border collie is also wearing green tinted goggles and strapped on shoes. /end I.D.]

This is one of the drawings I've done of my OC Marlow. They're a 30-something year old bioengineer that got cursed to turn into a dog due to some... questionable experiments. I plan to play them in an upcoming MotW game and so worked really hard to make some art for their normal setup. Only I got a little too invested.

Three

[I.D. A digital drawing of a tricolor border collie. They are sitting down, one paw raised with their mouth open as if they're speaking. /end I.D]

Another drawing of Marlow. I really love this one just because I actually managed some shading and a simple background.

Two

[I.D. A digital drawing of Mothman from the shoulders up. Everything but their head is obscured, however, by the massive wings held up in front of them. They have huge red eyes, semi-transparent antenne, and a disturbingly realistic moth-like face /end I.D]

One of my namesake, Mothman! I ran a campaign that just ended that featured Mothman as a key NPC, and so I figured I had to draw them at least once. It was really fun to play with brushes to make their face.

One

[ID: A digital painting of a cathedral style stained glass window. The window has partially shattered, and is currently on fire. All that remains of the glass is small bits at the bottom and top, as well as two mosaics. One is of a peacock facing the left, the other is a lamb facing the right. The peacock has various shades of reds and pinks behind them, while the lamb has various shades of yellows, whites, and a few oranges on the edges. The very top of the window has a partially destroyed mosaic of Christ on the cross, with a burst of fire ripping through the middle of him. /end ID]

This one is definitely my best piece. Made for my friend @/crack--attack, who authored the amazing fic the lion's devotion (the lambs downfall), this is one of the few pieces I worked on nonstop for days. I got to paint fire for the first time, which was more fun than expected. I also got to play with stained glass motifs! This one has a lot of detail, so I suggest viewing it in a different window.

19. Favourite character(s) to draw?

That has to be Marlow at the moment lol. I'm obsessed with them. I'm sure I'll make quite a few more pieces of them when I play them, since I'm excited I can actually draw one of my characters. I'm not that great at drawing humans, so it's a relief to not be playing one (technically).

[a-table-of-fics]

Cull to Adventure, Chapter 5, Draft 1

[[As Tumblr increased the size limits for posts, I can finally put this chapter draft all together.]]

Marie was already in a sour mood, having woken up far earlier than preferred. But it got worse as she realized she might as well have slept in; hardly anyone was around today. The heat wave, combined with the fact that all games were postponed until the respawn points have power again, meant that no one was around. Marie knew she couldn’t move too far from where the Outpost was without drawing unwanted attention, but it was a bit demoralizing. She was glad she had the parasol for the scant shade it provided in the midday sun, but she still tugged at her kimono every so often.

Well, if she wanted to find her cousin and the stolen Zapfish, she would have to do it herself. She didn’t want a second celebrity disappearance to cause more chaos, but she didn’t have much choice. Agent 2 would have to complete the rescue mission alone.

As she looked in the Outpost for her Charger, she debated whether Gramps should be alerted at this point. She decided against it, still; he was probably stressed enough about his mission with Agent 3, and she didn’t want him throwing himself in danger trying to find Callie. That was her job, darn it!

She opened a drawer and found her charger waiting, but…where was her uniform? The armored hoodie, the short, the boots, even the headset were all missing. She rustled around; maybe a bit of disorganized Callie rubbed off on her…but no, they were gone! Someone was in here! They took the Splattershot and one of the Ink Tanks, too!

A flash of panic came over Marie; someone had come in, and the outpost was breached! But… wait, why wasn’t her charger taken? Or any other supplies? Just the Agent getup and weapons—Oh.

Oh no.

She ran out of the shack, stumbling over her kimono a few times as she went for the manhole to Inkopolis. She had to get to Ammo Knights, and fast. It was lucky there wasn’t really anyone in the Square; while Marie took care to make sure she wasn’t immediately recognized by the adoring public, she didn’t care as much in the rush she was in.

The doors to the Ammo Knights store burst open the moment she unlocked them. Sheldon barely had time to look up in shock before the idol was in the back, frantically booting the computer up. Several monitors came up, each showing different angles of a new part of Octarian territory. None of the cameras could see anything, but when Marie put the headset on and heard panting and slight whimpering, her suspicions were confirmed.

Cull had gone into Octo Canyon alone.

Marie took a deep breath, turned the mic on, and coughed politely.

“Eh—” started Cull’s yelp, before he remembered where he was and clammed up.

“Oh good, you remembered the headset,” Marie said, keeping her voice level. “Okay, I think we can get you through this, but… I’m not sure where you are…”

“C-came in a-and made it to ch-checkpoint…”

Marie checked. The simulated sunny beach area in Octopolia did have a trail of green, including some inflated sponges. And it led right to a smaller respawner, directly in front of a massive road of pink ink. From where the camera was situated, Marie could see a Balloon Fish, but there were a few things behind it that were too blurry to see.

“They got some- some kinda robot b-bombs!”

“Octopods?” Marie asked. “Shouldn’t be a big deal, right? They just run at you.”

“…B-but that one at the start was so fast…C-can I really take more than one in a f-fight…?”

Marie leaned back in her chair, noting where the blurs were.

“You don’t have to, ex-Agent 4! If you can take that Balloon Fish, the Octopods should all pop with it!”

“B-but if I go up there, w-won’t they pop it and…?”

“Nah, they’ll run up to try to blast you. The Balloon Fish’ll be fine!”

Bad time for a joke, Marie realized, as she saw something shake in the respawner.

“Look, look,” she said, frantically trying to clear Cull’s head of some of the anxiety. “All you gotta do is keep your distance! Pop that balloon before the Octopods get to you.”

Cull finally surfaced, out of the respawner, and swallowed. He looked at the expanse of Octarian pink before him; it was going to take a lot of ink to even get to the Octo-bombs. He started firing, and Marie saw that his attention was divided between his path-making and the upcoming encounter.

“Hey, eyes on the prize, kid, not the road!”

Well, now the kid’s movement was slower, but at least he seemed more alert.

A thought came to Marie.

“…Ignore that when you start driving, ok?”

The Octopods started to rush in, but it was too late. Cull had already hit the Balloon Fish, taking the bombs and their weird red balloons with them. Octarians had the strangest ways of holding Power Eggs.

“Nice.”

That just left a layout of crates in a flattened “u” shape against the wall, a wall which had two Balloon Fish attached to it. As Cull looked up and around, Marie took a moment to swap through the cameras, finding a launchpad at the top, and the next camera showed a checkpoint. Thankfully, nothing between there and their current position Cull would have to worry about.

“All right, so just pop those balloons and swim up there. Nothing to worry about.”

Cull looked, hesitantly, but nodded. The Balloon Fish made short work of those boxes and covered the wall in green. But… he hesitated, rubbing the back of his head. Marie could hear sheepish mutters of “uh” and “oh boy” over her headset. She was about to ask what the holdup was, maybe throw in a joke about enjoying his handiwork, but all that came out was “wh” before she realized the problem – he was a slow swimmer when it wasn’t a vertical slope.

And she had seen the kid climb, too. This looked like a tougher thing to scale, sure, but his grip back then was impressive, and she was sure he could have figured something out. At the very least, it would probably be better than him struggling to swim up like he would have to now.

“Okay kid,” she said, attempting to hide her haste in correcting this, “I don’t usually recommend this, but you might want to try a running jump here.”

“O-okay…”

Marie watched as the ex-Agent stepped back, steeled himself, and sprinted to the wall. He jumped, and Marie thought he was going to slam into the wall, his squidforming was so close. However, it wasn’t close enough to conceal the fact his tentacles were… well, half-gone. He disappeared in the ink in a flash, but Marie could still tell, especially as he splashed and struggled to get the vertical movement.

Marie couldn’t do much more than watch; explaining how to swim to a fellow Inkling would just be dumb, and she wasn’t good at motivational platitudes. Still, she could try to encourage.

“Almost halfway there. Just keep breathing.”

“Just got past the second Balloon Fish; you’re almost there!”

Cull finally slipped over the edge onto wooden floor again. He couldn’t even kidform, and Marie could hear him panting and fully view his squid form.

His fins were much more disk-shaped than most, making his silhouette look less like an arrow and more like a mushroom with a point on top where his mantle ended. His skin had a spotted texture, as if someone had lightly sprayed him with darker green paint. More prominent, however, were his eight arms, all irregular stumps of what was expected, clearly from an injury long ago. His two tentacles, while about as long as most Inklings’, were notably thinner, and showed the same signs of being cut off at the end.

And Marie had sent him headfirst into danger. Worse yet, he refused to leave.

Cull wasn’t panting for too long; he soon kidformed, and was silent on his walk to the launchpad. Marie wasn’t sure what to say; she may like snarking, but humiliating someone was something else entirely.

A few quick key presses, and Marie could watch him land on the next section, where there didn’t seem to be much going on. There was a single sponge floating in the middle of a gap in the road, but not much else to see other than a few pillars. As Cull tentatively clambered down in case there was something, Marie switched to the next available camera. She could see Cull fill the sponge with ink to make a bridge in the distance, but more importantly, there were patrolling Octarians moving in a synchronous circle on some grates that were jutting out of one of the pillars.

“Octotroopers above you,” Marie called out, as Cull walked forward. She could see him step back onto the sponge, looking up and spotting the enemies. He tentatively moved forward, but never so much that he committed to a plan before stepping back. Thankfully, neither Octo seemed to have seen him, their gaze focused squarely on what was in front of them rather than what was below.

“C’mon,” Marie said, after about fifteen seconds of this, “You gotta do something if you wanna get outta here!”

“Uhm…”

“Oh for— just go! Take ‘em out and find a way up!”

Well, at least he was moving forward. The bad news was, the Octarians saw him, and began firing shots through the grate. At least the ex-Agent 4 was aware of this, and trying to zig-zag a little bit. He made it under the grate, with only a few spatters of pink on him for it. When he shot straight up and splatted one of the Octotroopers, however, his reflexive ducking was not enough to stop himself from being coated in green ink.

Despite herself, Marie had to stifle a snicker. Maybe it was just a needed release from stress, but there was something adorable about that pratfall. It reminded her of something that happened when she herself was younger, when she played one-on-one with Callie. The exact same thing happened to her, except she completely missed Callie…

“Y-you there?”

Marie took a breath, composing herself. Cull didn’t need the idea that she was laughing at him, nor did he need to hear her worrying about the other Squid Sister.

“Yeah, um… look for a way up the pillar. Looks like the grating goes to another floor… Just watch for that Octoslob and you’ll be fine…”

But Cull wasn’t looking up now. His attention was caught by something out of range of the cameras. He fired ink offscreen, slowly and carefully. Marie didn’t hear any return fire or Octarian shouts from his microphone, but all the same, this was concerning.

“Uh, I said ‘up’ the pillar…”

“Th-there was a lot of pink ink over here…J-just want to be sure…”

“I understand that,” Marie said, quietly kicking herself for not thinking of the possibility of an ambush, “but they’d have a hard time chasing you up. You might be better off—”

She heard the sound of wood breaking, and hoped to the Crane that Cull was alone; she’d be hard pressed to help him if she couldn’t see.

“Huh…Is that…?” he said, after a pregnant pause.

“Hmm? What was that?”

“N-nevermind, I must be mistaken…”

Marie heard some paper rustling, and then some grunting and splashing before Cull emerged from behind the pillar, now on the second floor. He took a few breaths, leaning against the column, before finally heading to the wall.

After making a break through a few more Octarians and some kind of wall-cleaning robot, he made it to a dead end. Behind a bunch of crates destroyed by a nearby Balloon Fish, there was nothing but a sheer drop to the facilities miles below. To his left, he could just see a large wooden wall, with the launchpad there. He groaned.

All Marie could say was “Sorry, kid, but you gotta make it through this.”

Cull stepped back to look, but he didn’t know if he could make another climb like that so soon. Instead, he looked to the re-inflated Balloon Fish, and then at the wall; not even at the launchpad!

Marie was at a loss for words when she saw the kid start clambering onto the enormous ink bomb, and rather quickly at that. Sure, Cull slipped once or twice, but he never once lost his grip. Within fifteen seconds, he was wobbling on top of it, looking almost like an eight-year-old bouncing on a waterbed. He sat down and started rocking, as if he was trying to get comfortable.

“Okay, look,” Marie finally said, “I get it may be tiring, but that’s no excuse for lazing around and…”

She stopped when he stood up, the Balloon Fish rolling back so far that Marie stood up, shocked at how far over the ledge Cull was. Cull, for his part, had an expression like he swallowed a sunfish whole, but kept his eyes to the wall he had to climb. He took one step forward, waiting for the Fish to roll enough…

And then he jumped. His hands reached out, and he was able to grab onto the ledge. By all accounts, he shouldn’t have been able to keep his grip, but it was dawning on Marie that he was a whip-lash squid.

He hoisted himself up, finding another piece of Sardinium, then looked over the edge to see about that launchpad. It was a simple swing down, and Cull was on his rapid way to the next area.

Marie was there to witness each remaining step. The ambush from above, where Cull leapt screaming into his first Splashdown. The attack immediately after, where he managed to actually take one or two of the Troopers before they even landed. Cull getting splatted again by the remaining Octarians, though he didn’t gasp as frantically when he respawned this time. He was able to finish off the other Octotroopers and make it to some more sponge-scaling situations and an easy battle.

After a bridge made from sponges filled with Balloon Fish ink, Marie’s eyes widened. Up ahead, a bulbous flying thing she knew all too well, and she was about to cry out a warning, but stopped herself. She was already dealing with a bit of a nervous wreck; no sense in giving him a heart attack in all three of his.

Instead, she said, as plainly as she could, “An Octobomber. Gross.”

“What—” Cull started, before yelping. He just saw a Splat Bomb land by him, and it wasn’t his.

Marie sighed as he respawned. Even if she didn’t want to scare the kid, that warning may have been less than helpful.

“Sorry, squid,” she said, apologetically. “Didn’t want to scare you…”

Cull walked back over to where he was, far more slowly this time. Shooting gobs of purple at him was one thing, but now they were hurling bombs at him!

“Ugh… how close is the Zapfish?”

Marie blinked. She hadn’t even been looking for the Zapfish; she was just making sure this kid got out alive.

“Um…”

She could see Cull looking around, mostly up and at the corners of platforms. She assumed he was looking for the camera, but he was nowhere close. At least it kept him safe while she re-calibrated the ZapSeek program that Sheldon wrote.

“Let’s see… the Zapfish is… uh…”

“Ye—?” was all Marie heard in response, before the computer suddenly went black. Her eyes widened, and she frantically mashed the power button, but all she heard was the equally frantic clicking of the button.

Sheldon opened the door behind her, frantically pulling out a set of keys. He dashed to a caged area behind the computer, where he kept the generator.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said, trying each key in turn as fast as he could, “Without Zapfish, we gotta rely on this generator, and as you know, this is an old thing, and the fact is, it’ll take a bit to refuel it and start it up again, not to mention the computer booting time—”

“Sheldon!” Marie said, sharply. “Just tell me what I can do to help get it back! There’s a kid lost in Octopia here!”

“Right, right,” Sheldon’s capped silhouette nodded. “Sorry. So, I need you to take the rip cord here and wait to give it a good yank! There’s a coupla things I gotta keep in place over here while you do that…”

Marie walked over, but saw multiple cords that looked pull-worthy.

“Um…”

“You got the rip cord?”

“No…”

“All right, hold on…”

The sound of Sheldon pouring whatever the generator needed slowed to a halt, and he patiently walked over, instantly finding the correct cord and handing it to her.

“I’ll let you know when to pull. It might take a few tries for it to start, but keep at it.”

Marie nodded, not understanding when she heard a variety of switches being flicked, as well as some clatters.

“All right, you ready?”

She pulled the rip cord. A rumble, but nothing else.

“Okay, try again.”

It took a few more pulls, but the generator eventually roared to life.

“Now, lemme take care of getting you started, and I’ll be out of here…”

Marie didn’t dispute that. She was a lot of things, but she was no computer squid. She waited for the slow booting, the password entry, the appropriate programs written by Sheldon…

It felt like hours, but everything Marie was used to was back up. Sheldon saluted, then went back to working on his weapons.

Right, so she could flip through the cameras again, and find Cull who was… still standing at that checkpoint. Her audio wasn’t working, but she could tell he was just calling out, trying to get a response.

It took a minute for Marie to find the volume and fix it, but she was greeted with a quiet, almost fearful “…hello?...Yes?...Is the Z-Zapfish close…?”

“Yeah, hang on,” Marie said, putting on a practiced smile. “It was just a technical thing, sorry.”

“O-okay…”

“Just keep moving forward, m’kay? That Octoslob might have bombs, but he’s pretty slow, so just keep on your guard, okay?”

Cull gulped, but still started taking steps forward. It was slow and halting, with him looking around as if he was expecting the Octobomber to have flown to where he was.

Marie wasn’t going to spur him too far forward; the camera systems for other areas were still loading, and she didn’t want Cull dying down there, especially if it would be from something super avoidable.

Suddenly, after some tentative advancement, Cull ducked into the ink. Marie switched from the loading screen back to him the moment she heard a splash. He was nearing the Octobomber.

“Remember, kid: those Splat Bombs have timers on ‘em. Keep moving, and don’t let ‘em catch you! That’s a rule of the battlefield!”

Cull wasn’t moving.

“Come on, this is no time for hide and splat! You gotta move forward! Once you get to the Zapfish, you can get out of there!”

“But…” Cull whispered, still not so much as swimming an inch, “I-I don’t know…”

“Look, kid,” Marie sighed. “If you want to find your way home, you need to get past this guy. I already told you; keep moving and you’ll be a harder target for him!”

After a second (presumably waiting for the fat flying octopus to look away, which Marie had to admit would be a decent strategy), Cull emerged and started running, firing wildly as he did so. The Octobomber flinched as ink hit them, and they spun around, quickly lobbing a bomb at the Inkling intruder. Cull kept running forward, barely out of the blast’s range. He kept shooting, somehow missing half his shots as he did so.

It gave the Octobomber enough time to fire another bomb. Marie would have congratulated Cull on his plan of circling to avoid the explosives, but she was too busy gasping as he inattentively moved towards the edge.

“Kid, watch it—”

“Yeah, just keep movin’! Works great!”

He cheered as he splatted the enemy, but the cheer was short lived as he fell off the ledge.

Marie didn’t see his ghost swim up. She waited, desperately scanning every pixel, rotating every camera, but she saw nothing.

She started breathing again when she saw his hands inch onto solid ground, followed by the rest of him.

“Oh, thank Cod,” Marie said, more under her breath than anything. “Right, so….”

The hacks into the next area of security cameras finally loaded. Marie wasn’t sure what the delay was. Something about cache? She’d have to ask Sheldon later, but for now she looked into the next set of cameras, and…

“Hey, good news!” she said. “You’re almost to the Zapfish and outta there!”

“Uh, y-yeah…” Cull said, sounding like Marie did when she first learned how to fake smiles. “Uh, al-almost might be a strong word…”

“What are you talking abou—oh.”

A quick pan of one of the cams showed the problem. A series of dry sponges formed a line from the floor Cull was on to the floating island the Zapfish was on. Even if he used the Balloon Fish lined across the sides to fill them up, this would be a struggle for him to swim up what most Inklings could with just a bit of effort.

“Er… yeah, this might be tough…” Marie trailed off. “I’m sure you can make it up there, though…”

“Nnn…”

She saw him standing there, craning his neck to see the sun-shaped wall far above him. She couldn’t see his expression, but she could tell he wasn’t exactly readying up for the climb. Heck, he was walking back to a ledge (thankfully, a part with a railing this time). He looked around a little, but he didn’t see anywhere else he could try to go.

The blue skies made from blue monitor light surrounded him on all sides, illuminating a sparkling blue sea under him. Looking out on the wooden platform into the distant waters like this was filling him with nostalgia, back when he could only be halfway between squid and kid at most. He remembered having to brush his tentacles off his eyes a lot, to see a cloudless sky like this, with rocky beaches and wooden docks. The false sun was still a good one, adding to the illusion pretty well. Even if the air was still the stale air you’d find in caves, it didn’t matter; the atmosphere was so much like that of a beach, giving a very surreal vibe of familiarity along with the floating platforms, debris, and screens. This was inspiring.

“You okay, kid?”

“Hmm? O-oh, yeah, j-just needed a moment…”

He pulled himself away from the view, having calmed himself a bit. He took a breath, and looked at the challenge before him.

He fired at the first sponge until it was dripping with ink. He took a breath, and climbed up to the top of it. It was easier to just climb up the one, and he still had a dry, shrunken sponge in front of him.

He stepped onto the dry sponge, and was about to fire to inflate it as well, but he realized he’d have to do still more climbing with the other pair up ahead. He wasn’t sure if he’d be up to that; even that one small swim took effort. He still wanted to get the Zapfish in something resembling a timely manner, so he looked either way. It’d be a tricky thing, but he’d done crazier tagging a spot on Moray Towers the one time.

Standing on the tinier platform, he looked at the Balloon Fish on either side, and popped one.

Marie’s jaw dropped. She just saw Cull get flung like a ragdoll as the sponge exploded out to its full size under him. He flailed and hollered, but not as intensely as she thought it warranted. Heck, it almost seemed planned, as he landed flat on his back on top of the next set of filled sponges. He grunted, but he quickly got up and leapt at the final wall between himself and the Zapfish’s platform. A couple of grunts and kicks against the wall, and he could move from dangling by his fingers to actually getting onto the platform.

From there, Marie could view him freeing and petting the Zapfish. He sat down as the platform moved to the exit, the Zapfish on his lap. It was kind of adorable, honestly.

[kryptidkat]

sneak peek!

in honor of the extremely kind and talented artists who made fanart for my prank war series (thank you again @angelface-the-robot-cowboy @poisonviles and @ravenxbones!) here’s a scene from the upcoming sequel to Give Party a Heart Attack — Make Kobra Move To Australia. Going along with the spirit of good ol’ platonic fun, I’m hoping to have the whole thing finished in time to release for Palentine’s Day on Feb. 13, but meanwhile...enjoy. 

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

Snap. 

Kobra started, jostling Cherri’s patched-together computer setup. 

“Stop bumping the thing, I’m trying to get all these cables in,” Cherri admonished. 

“Sorry.” Kobra shot a glare across the room at his brother before returning his attention to their project. 

Cherri was trying to read a usb drive he’d found, but the only working computer they had at the moment was a Commodore 64, so they were trying to wire that up to a television screen and assemble a chain of like, 30 different adapters so they could find out what was on it. 

As far as the prank war went, he and Kobra had more tricks up their sleeve (and had burned their original battle strategy poster in the shed lest anyone find it; they were way past organized planning now) but they were still biding their time, hoping to catch Party off guard. 

Party himself was in fine form this morning, doing absolutely nothing useful and getting in everyone’s way while doing it. He was sporting heavy eyeliner and one of his shortest crop tops and sassily chewing a massive wad of gum he’d gotten from somewhere, popping extremely loud bubbles with it. 

Snap. 

Cherri grimaced a little. Only Party could make something as innocuous as Juicy Fruit seem so...obscene.

It wasn’t just his and Kobra’s nerves Party was getting on. Jet was already rolling his eye appealingly to the ceiling. And Ghoul was getting steadily more and more tense as he hunched over a table messing with a tangled mess of wires. 

Party looked over Ghoul’s shoulder, chomping noisily. “Whatcha doin’?”

“Very sensitive bomb stuff! Sans detonator, but still. Stop, you’re gonna get that shit in my hair. What is your deal?”

Party gave him a sharp smile, obviously dying to be asked. “Devil May Dare game tonight.” 

“So I’d heard,” Ghoul said. 

“And this time, I—” Party came around the table opposite Ghoul, pulling a broken-off matchstick out of his pocket to show him with a flourish— “am the Devil.”

“Seriously? Again?”  said Ghoul. “Please tell me you didn’t rig the straw-drawing.” 

“What’s Devil May Dare?” The Girl came running in. 

“Suicidal,” Jet said. 

“No one’s died!” Party protested. 

“Yet.” 

“It’s not that bad!”

“Oh really?” Jet said. “Last time you came home with double shiners, Nick O’ Time broke his nose, Daisy Dukes got stabbed in the spleen and Pony went head over skates into the Cactus Pit of Death, and you still think it’s a good idea?”

“That was one time! And my championship is on the line here! I have a winning streak to keep up, okay?”

“By running around in the dark trying to get yourself and other joys killed?” 

“BUT WHAT IS IT?” the Girl yelled when no one answered her fast enough. She tried to climb up Jet. “I wanna know!”

Jet sighed and hoisted her up piggyback style so she could hold on while he kept checking batteries and shoving dead ones into their charging docks. 

“Imagine the unholy union of guerrilla paintball, capture the flag, and lasertag. In the dark,” he told her. “Idiotic people bet on it, and even more idiotic people play it.”

“Sounds about right,” Party said. 

The girl wrinkled her nose. “Doesn’t sound that dangerous. Can I come?”

“No,” Jet said.

“Aw, c’mon! My whole life is a game of lasertag, Jet pleaaase.”

“When you’re older,” Party said. “Maybe.” He popped his gum right next to Ghoul’s ear. Snap.

Ghoul’s hands clenched into fists. “Stop. Don’t you have stuff to pack or something?”

“Oh, I’ve been packed for days,” Party said. “Glow-in-the-dark paint, flashlights, the works.”

“Where is it this time, Poison?” Cherri wanted to know.

“The old amusement park.” 

“Oh, fuck you!” Ghoul exclaimed, envious. “I wanna go now.” 

“Hey, don’t blame me for you getting yourself banned!” Party said. He hung over Ghoul’s the back of Ghoul’s chair again and purred, “Explosives were clearly prohibited in the rules.” 

Snap. 

“Would you quit that?” Ghoul said, jerking his head away and rubbing his ear. The noise had to be deafening with his hearing aids on. “They were just flashbangs. I don’t know why everyone raised such a fuss about it.” 

“Who’s going?” the Girl said.

“Anyone stupid enough to join in,” Party said with a grin. 

“Your words, not mine,” Jet said.

“Hail the brave of heart, and dumb of ass,” Cherri couldn’t help muttering to Kobra, whose mouth twitched.

“Burners, mostly,” Party went on, regally ignoring them. “Some rock’n’rollers. Pony. Chimp. The Buzzkills usually get in on the action, too.”

“Next time I’m totally going.” The Girl declared. Curiosity satisfied for now, she slid off Jet’s back and ran off again. 

“It’s gonna be hella rad.” Party said dreamily, already there in his head. He was still hanging over Ghoul’s shoulder, chewing obnoxiously. 

“Party,” Kobra spoke up, sounding unhappy. “Are you su…”

“I let you race all the time!” Party shot his brother a get off my back look. But he must have picked up on the genuine concern in Kobra’s tone that Devil May Dare these days sounded like a panic attack just waiting to happen, because he added breezily, “Pony’ll be there, remember? I’ll radio if I die.” 

Cherri guessed the game might be good practice, actually. Controlled environment, no life-and-death stakes. 

“Shiny. No way relying on Pony could go wrong.” Kobra grumbled, but he let it drop. “Just be careful. Second input, Cher. Blue cable.” 

“Sorry, try this?” Cherri switched cords. 

Party started to blow another bubble, and Ghoul kicked his chair back with a screech of metal on tile. 

The sound was so loud it turned everyone’s heads. 

“I said, stop.” Ghoul put a hand on Party’s chest, backing him up until he ran into a chair and couldn’t retreat any further. Party’s eyes went wide. 

Nose inches from the taller joy’s, Ghoul stood on his tiptoes and bit the giant bubble himself with a snap of teeth. 

It deflated onto a completely flabbergasted Party’s face. 

The diner fell into stunned silence. 

“I’ve got 17 carbons riding on you.” Ghoul’s voice had dropped to a husky growl. “So you’d better score big tonight.” 

Ghoul reached up with his free hand, stripped the gum off Party’s face, and shoved it into his own mouth. Staring Party down the whole time. 

And walked away. 

Party sank into the chair, expression blank with shock. 

“Witch almighty,” Jet said faintly. 

“I knew Ghoul had personal space issues, but. Damn,” Cherri murmured to Kobra. “Are they usually like that?” 

Kobra gulped. “Totally,” he said. “They...they fight all the time.” 

[fandom-necromancer]

Stories from another life

This was prompted by the amazing @smolandangry001! Enjoy!

Fandom: Detroit become human | Ship: Reed900 (Warnings: talk about self-harm and past violence, self-consciousness about scars)

The sounds of rugged breaths filled the large bedroom of Nines’ flat. Hands travelled across their bodies, still guarded by a sheet of clothing as they both were unwilling to stop what had run out of control just minutes ago. It had been supposed to be a quiet evening to celebrate their last successful mission that finally made them draw level with Hank and Connor in numbers. It had dipped into more than slightly romantic cuddling between them and both their bodily response and eagerness had only increased until the movie, hell, the whole world was forgotten as Nines had simply lifted Gavin up to carry him to the bedroom after they managed to separate from one especially long and deep kiss.

There had been a time Nines had hated the continuous sound of humans breathing near him. A time he had hated to touch humans or be touched by them. Not out of disgust or some feeling of superiority, but because it felt wrong. How could he ever fit in with them if he didn’t have to breath, if his body supported him for a long time without having to care about it. If his skin only looked real, but was cold and without real structure, just a simulated sheet. He never even dared to think of intimacy as something he would ever experience, because that was something reserved for humans only. But all these thoughts were gone now with Gavin. With the human breaking every one of these rules that only existed in his head, staying close to him no matter how much he fought for distance and granting him something most humans still thought his kind wasn’t capable of: love.

And that was a sight to behold beneath him: Gavin lying in his bed on his back, hair sticking to his forehead, lips reddened from their kissing before, body pressed flush with Nines’ own and smiling up at him. Gavin did not smile. At no one. Nines couldn’t be prouder of himself. It meant a rush of whatever androids had instead of adrenaline and he couldn’t help but be excited for what was about to come. He wanted to see this human, feel him, all of him. And maybe even more than this: be seen and felt in return. Because that doubt still sat in the back of his head and wouldn’t leave him alone until it was proved wrong.

He shuddered under Gavin’s hands that had slipped under his shirt and maybe it was an unconscious decision, but the android found himself imitating it, running his fingers over sharp hipbones and hard muscle. ‘I want to see you...’, Nines grumbled in a deep voice, half static, and started to pull the human’s shirt off, sinking in for another kiss, wanting to be as near as possible to him. But he halts as there are only a few millimetres separating their lips. Something had changed: The human was tense suddenly, pressed himself into the mattress away from him. Immediately Nimes gave him more space, wanting to back away completely as his mind was screaming at him he had taken things too far. No human would willingly be naked and helpless in easy murder-distance of the android soldier designed to stop the deviants, right?

But in contrary to the first response, Gavin reflexively grabbed his hips, holding him hovering above him. ‘No, Nines, stay!’ It nearly sounded panicked, if not embarrassed. ‘Please’, was a hushed addition as the man looked away to evade the other’s eyes. ‘What’s wrong, Gavin?’, Nines asked, well hiding his upcoming fears and doubts from him. ‘N-Nothing! Really!’, he stuttered quickly. ‘It’s nothing with you, just…’ He still didn’t meet the android’s eyes. ‘Just… Could we… Could I leave on the shirt?’ Nines grunted disappointed at that but nodded. ‘Of course. If that makes you more comfortable… Just… may I ask why?’

It took a while, gears visibly turning in Gavin’s head. As he answered it was impossibly silent and not more than a murmur, he knew Nines would have no problems picking up. ‘I don’t like how I look. It’s not exactly…’ The android knew he had to interrupt. However intense his desire to be near him was, this was more important. He let himself fall to the side, laying next to the man and wrapped an arm around him, so Gavin had to turn towards him and look him in the eyes. He was careful to keep the fabric of the shirt under his hand though. ‘Beautiful, gorgeous?’, he supplied. ‘Breath-taking? Absolutely perfect?’ He smirked at the man who finally looked at him again. ‘Gav, I thought we wouldn’t lie to each other.’

‘Phck you, you sappy plastic!’, Gavin exclaimed growing red around the nose. ‘Shut up!’ ‘Come on, Gavin.’ He pulled the other man closer, smiling weakly. ‘What do you think is wrong with your appearance?’ ‘Nines, phck, where should I even start?’ He angled his head down to lean his forehead into Nines’ chest. ‘I don’t even know why you like me, most of the time.’ ‘Stop that right there!’, the android demanded. ‘Just tell me what you think I wouldn’t love about you, so I can prove you wrong.’ Gavin sat up, shrugging off his arm. In a slow, motion he pulled up his shirt to his chest to reveal several thin lines, white against the human’s natural skin colour. A few blotches followed suit, scars from stab wounds, gun shots and medical procedures.

Nines was fascinated, he hadn’t known there were more marks next to the one on the bridge of his nose. ‘Would you… Would you share with me how you got them?’ ‘Why would you like to know?’, Gavin asked Nines precariously. ‘They are stories. Parts of your past. I had only been activated for a few years, I can’t even imagine what over thirty years of experience feel like.’ ‘Real shitty, tin-can. Life wasn’t good most of them.’ Nines just carefully stretched one digit and hovered over a long line that disappeared right below the waistband. He waited for his Hand to be swatted away, but as nothing happened, he continued and brushed over the lighter skin. He felt Gavin shiver and smiled, pressing just a touch stronger against the soft tissue. ‘What’s this from?’, he asked softly. ‘That’s err… That’s from when I had my appendix removed. Had some issues with an inflammation.’ ‘And you can live without it?’, the android asked in honest surprise, before he leaned down to plant a kiss on top of the scar. Androids had no part they could function without, but nature seemed to have evolved that miracle. ‘Heh, yeah, kinda cool if you say it like that.’ ‘What’s about this one?’, Nines asked, hovering over what looked like a knot or star. ‘Was shot on the job. Still a rookie back then. Thought I was invincible. Well, I wasn’t.’ Nines leaned in to kiss that one too.

‘You plan on doing this to all of them?’, Gavin asked and couldn’t supress a low chuckle at that. ‘Oh, yes’, was the android’s answer to that, as he searched for the next scar: A set of weirdly symmetrical lines. ‘Oh, that… I… I used to cut myself.’ Nines looked up. ‘Why would you do that?’ ‘Life wasn’t the best and I know it was unhealthy. I just didn’t know what else to do to cope. I’m not doing it anymore, though.’ The android decided to take extra time for them, running his thumb over them and then gently kissing every one of them each.

‘I love you so much, Gavin’, he said, while he slowly, gently mapped every scar he could find, trying to think of all the different reasons for them. Each time he was hurt leaving a mark. Some regretful, some proving this human was brave regardless of his fragile body, the only one they had and that he willingly sacrificed to help others. That he shared with him now. ‘You are so beautiful. I am so thankful to have you, to share my life with you. Don’t you ever think low of you. It would be impossible for you to be anything but perfect in my eyes.’

‘You goddamn lovesick robot, phck.’ Gavin was a deep red again. ‘Who the hell programmed that shit?’

‘I’m afraid I developed that with deviancy’, the RK900 smirked, pleased that the tension from before had left his body completely now. ‘Now come here!’

He pulled the man close, still tracing the scars under his shirt, but taking his lips in his. When the human next to him had to stop to take shaky breaths, Nines used the time to whisper in his ear. ‘You are so unbelievably beautiful. You fascinate me so much. You are lovely, gorgeous and perfect and I love you.’

It took a while, Gavin getting lost in these gently, hushed words, eyes watery with emotions.

‘I love you too, toaster. Thank you for this… Thank you for being here.’

[houseofvans]

ART SCHOOL | IN SESSION WITH ROB SATO

From vibrant rainbows to familiar yet alien landscapes occupied by strange beings, LA based artist Rob Sato’s works are filled with creative energy in a loose minimalistic style. From watercolor, digital medium to acrylics and oil, Rob’s artworks and illustrations have been shown in various galleries from Giant Robot 2 to the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, where recently his original paintings for a comic called 442 were exhibited. We’re excited to chat with Rob about his work, his various collaborations and what he’s got coming up for the rest of the year.  Take the Leap!

Photographs courtesy of the artist.

Introduce yourself Hello, my name is Rob Sato. I’m an artist, illustrator, and writer. Something people might not know about me is that I was a kid I was so fanatical about the Oakland A’s that when they lost in the World Series I threw a tantrum so big that I destroyed my bedroom and after that I felt so stupid I quit following baseball. Also, I’m told I have maybe one of the great poop stories of the world. It can only be related in person, so ask me about it sometime if we ever meet.

How would you describe your work and style? Eclectic? Kaleidoscopic? I’ve never had a concise answer to this question. I tend not to pin myself down because I think if I did, I’d stop making things. 

Art is my outlet for the cryptic and obscure as well as the gushing spillover of foolish idealism and wild fantasy. It’s the only place I’ve ever found where you can healthily play with unhealthy thoughts, where you can explore undefined emotions, things that lurk out in the corners of consciousness that may be embarrassing or uncontrollable.

I love to make entertainment and decorative work, things that tend to be obvious, that communicate very clearly and reveal all their cards, but I also love to make work that hides things, that actively resists easy understanding or recognition and risks being super personal or unrelatable and strange. This can make things difficult, especially in the ongoing deterioration of attention spans, but I can’t help but pursue things outside of a pop sensibility and logical thought. I have to be, much of the time, in mental wildernesses. It’s hard to get there, hard to be there, and hard to come back, but it keeps me going.

Tell us about how you really started getting into art, and how that turned into what you do now? Was it something you always intended to pursue? I’ve drawn every single day for as long as I can remember. I never really thought about it. It just seems to be what I do. It’s how I have fun, how I solve problems, how I think. I’ve wanted to pursue other things like make movies or write books, but I always find myself drawing. Before I know it, it’s time for bed again.

When you are working on a new piece or upcoming exhibition or show? What’s your process like? What themes do you find yourself taking on? I explode. I used to plan things in a very directed way, but lately I’ve just let my brains spill out everywhere. I make a ton of drawings and paintings, and try my best to be fearless and open. Most of it produces failure after failure, but it shows me what might be worth building on, plus many exciting surprises reveal themselves in the process. As a show nears I start seeing what things fit together, what needs to be edited out, and how it all might form a cohesive exhibition. Sometimes the subject matter is the glue that makes everything stick, other times it’s the aesthetics. Alongside the explosion I usually have 2 or 3 pieces going at any given time that I’ve had long term plans for. These pieces can take take months or even years. 

Thematically I’m all over the place. War and peace, realism and surrealism, grim realities and escapism, sober observations and dumb jokes.

What are some of your go-to art making materials? Are there mediums you want to explore that you’ve yet to get your hands on? I feel pretty comfortable with anything you can use to make a mark on a piece of paper. I’ve mainly used watercolor and various drawing tools for the past several years. I’m been having fun with acrylics and oils again, and I’ve started to play around with photography a little. I’ve had ideas for sculpture and film for years that I’d really like to finally get to. What I really want to get my hands on is more time.

Where do you find inspiration? What kind of things or people inspire what you make? Watching someone pick their nose listening to headphones and singing softly to themselves in line at the grocery store. Just watching my cat live her weird life. Even though the final artwork may not really show it, these places are usually where my ideas originate. Art has also been a place where I can put memories that have some abstract need to be recorded.

I made this series of drawings called “Bad Hands”, which started out with me laughing at these dumb hands I was drawing with academically incorrect anatomy. Abandoning correctness felt so good. In the process it triggered a memory from High School. I had been forbidden from drawing in one of my classes, so I was contorting my hands into different shapes at my desk to amuse myself. There was a hysteria over gang activity in the school at the time and the teacher freaked out thinking I was throwing gang signs and I ended up getting sent to detention. 

At detention I was talking with a friend and made fun of the teacher for her mistake. A kid who was in a gang overheard and then HE misunderstood and thought I was making fun of gangs or something. On my way home from school he and a couple dudes punched and kicked me for a bit while I tried and failed to explain. I think it’s funny. 

So embedded in that piece is this tumbling series of misunderstandings, these multiple layers of hands being perceived as bad, speaking in an absurd language that communicates different things to different people. I know people aren’t going to see all those layers in the final piece, but that’s where it comes from and I hope it at least sparks some thoughts about talking with our hands, and where else can you follow this kind of train of thought except in art?

I get inspired by artists who seem to approach art as an intuitive discovery process rather than a  pursuit of mastery, that play is one of the more important aspects of making things. My wife, Ako, has been a huge influence on me in this respect. She’s continuously playing with various materials around her at any given time and finding out what she can do with them. Everywhere she goes she abandons a nest made of fresh creations she’s manifested out of mud, string, packaging, plants, uneaten rice, her used drinking straw, lint and whatever else was within her reach

You’ve done a lot of collaborations with companies, museums and art galleries. Do you have a favorite collaboration, and what about the collaboration do you enjoy the most? I’ve recently been collaborating with Tiny Splendor, an indie publisher and printer who have studios in LA and Oakland. It’s been really great working with them, Cynthia Navarro in LA on risographs, and with Max Stadnik, who runs the print shop in Oakland. 

Max has been returning to lithography, my favorite traditional printing medium, and he printed a piece of mine inspired by mushrooms called “Growerings". It’s a full 5 color print, which means it took five separate plates and each print had to go through the press 5 times. It turned out more beautifully than I could have hoped for. Litho is a super difficult but also very fun process and the results are so rich. 

I think I particularly love this collaboration because the image fits the medium so well, and the combination of the two elevates the final piece of work, When it works, the artwork and the print become more than just an image on a piece of paper. It’s more alive in some undefinable way.

Since we’re called Art School, we always ask the artists to give us their favorite art tip? Never force the thing you think you want, you’ll probably miss out on the really interesting thing that’s happening. Also, don’t drink too much coffee. I have trouble taking both of these pieces of my own advice every day.

What do you enjoy doing when you’re not making stuff? How do you chill out? I read and run. I love coffee and I love gossip and talking nonsense with friends. Also, I cannot stop watching Terrace House.

What is the last art show that you went to? What artists should folks keep an eye out for? I recently went to the Velveteria in LA’s Chinatown, which is one man’s collection of paintings on velvet. A very entertaining and very fucked up experience. I went to a life drawing session at Subliminal Projects and got to draw surrounded by Chad Kouri’s fun abstracts. I’m actually typing this interview inside an art show right now. 

I’m here at my wife, Ako Castuera’s, show “Soil” at the Weingart Gallery at Occidental College. We’re here feeding worms. She sculpted this beautiful ceramic vermiculture composter for the show. It’s a grand temple for worms. The show is an act of gratitude for the exchange we have with the soil which provides the clay for ceramics, and for the worms who turn decay into healthy earth to grow new life in. 

She sculpted a menagerie of creatures out of the worm poop that also populate the show. Super fun. Speaking of Ako and Subliminal, her show there with Hellen Jo and Kris Chau this past December was one of those once-in-a-lifetime powerhouse gathering of forces. That may have been the best show I’ve ever seen.

What advice would you give someone thinking about following in your footsteps? What’s something you learned that you want to pass along to art making newbies. Don’t listen to advice if it is extremely quotable. Pay no attention to it especially if it accompanies a photo of a famous artist and fits perfectly into an instagram post. If it’s easy to remember then it’s probably empty, crap inspiration. Those things are entertainments and not words to live by.

 If you’re interested in making art you’ll keep making it. It takes day in, day out patience and exploration and mutation to discover how you really work, not some idea of how an artist works. 

Sometimes it will be very hard, sometimes it will be so breathtakingly easy you think that your problems have been solved forever. Neither situation ever lasts, but cultivate and nurture your curiosity and what you love, and you’ll find ways to make it through the rough times and keep on making things one way or another.

Who are some of your favorite artists to follow and/or see in a show? Lately I’ve been really enjoying the work of Nathaniel Russell whose work makes this great space where funny, grounded matter-of-factness and sweet nothingness sit comfortably together. His drawing also reminds me of Ben Shahn, my all-time favorite drawer. 

I really like Amy Bennet’s oils, these intimate studies of isolation in suburbia where mundanity overlaps with quiet drama and melancholy. Her work obliquely reminds me of Edwin Ushiro’s work, though his stuff is the opposite of melancholic. He captures almost incidental but haunted moments from growing up in Hawaii and infuses them with warmth, and it’s in a style influenced in a super personal way by animation. It reminds me of Satoshi Kon’s movies in its well observed, slice-of-life elements. Edwin’s sketchbooks are a treasure too.  Esther Pearl Watson’s recent autobiographical paintings, Hellen Jo’s latest badass watercolors, Amber Wellman’s funny, playful oil paintings, and Matthew Palladino’s watercolors are also favorites. 

Megan Whitmarsh’s work is some of my favorite to see in person. Her installation with Jade Gordon at the Hammer’s “Made In LA “ show was maybe the funnest work I’ve ever seen and interacted with. I went to see the Ai Wei Wei show at the Marciano Foundation, which I thought was impressive in scale and execution but still somehow lame, but I stumbled on a Mike Kelley installation/ video piece I’d never seen before in the upstairs collection and loved it so much, but I can’t remember the name of it at the moment. 

It’s 2 videos shown side by side of the same guy wearing a cape singing almost the same song simultaneously, but each version has different words at different points. It’s a love song but one version is more bitter and mean and one is sickly sweet. Anyway, highly recommended!

What do you have coming up the rest of the year that you can share with us?  For just a few more days there’s a show up at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center with a bunch of my original paintings for a comic I illustrated about the 442, the Japanese American Army unit of World War II. Plus it has some personal work about Japanese American Incarceration and images from my family’s experience in the concentration camps. My grandfather was incarcerated in the Arkansas camps, and he was a soldier in the 442. 

Next up, I’m in a slew of group shows all happening within a few weeks of each other this month. Poor scheduling on my part as usual, but it’s nice to be invited to so many. I just sent off my piece to the “Seeing Red” show curated by Jeff Hamada of the BOOOOOOOM art and culture blog. That show will be at Thinkspace in LA. Giant Robot has been kind enough to host another solo show for me in September. 

I’ve been busy experimenting with some more 3d stuff that pushes the more narrative side of my work which I hope to show there. We’ll see how the experiments turn out. I’ve also been working on a ton of prints and ideas for books. This year I want to focus on working in print, making zines and comics, and writing a lot more. 

FOLLOW ROB | INSTAGRAM | WEBSITE | SHOP 

[uomo-accattivante]

The upcoming (November) online issue is still sold out, so below is a transcription of the Empire Star Wars article:

(NOVEMBER 2019)

IT ALL STARTED with a Jane Campion retrospective. The Lincoln Center in New York was entering night two of an in-depth celebration of the Kiwi filmmaker’s work when, during a sold-out screening of The Piano, one member of the audience received a text message. He then received another. And another. Hunched down in his seat towards the middle of the auditorium, screenwriter Chris Terri glanced furtively at his mobile as yet another text pinged to life on his screen. It was from J.J. Abrams. Just like the last. And the dozen or so before that.

It was 10 September 2017, and several hours earlier Terrio had received the first in what would become a torrent of communication: “I’ve just signed on to Episode IX,” it read. “We’re gonna write a new script. Would you consider writing it with me?”

“He didn’t even say the words ‘Star’ and ‘Wars,’” recalls Terrio with a laugh. “He didn’t have to. I’d been about to go off and direct a small movie, but when you hear Star Wars, everything else goes away.

Terrio agreed on the spot, planning to join Abrams in California as soon his schedule would allow. But the texts kept coming. Throughout the afternoon, thoughts, ideas and questions popped up one after the other; Abrams’ frantic thumbs tapping out the first seeds of story and flinging them across the country to his newfound partner. As so, with Michael Nyman’s haunting score swelling around him and a still-buzzing handset in his grasp, Terrio stood up, shuffled apologetically along a row of seats, and walked out of the cinema, leaving Campion’s Oscar darling behind.

“J.J. is constantly brimming with ideas and, in the very best way, he’s very impatient about them! So we just started getting into it then and there. I got on a plane to LA the next day.”

Less than a week earlier, however, Episode IX’s future hadn’t looked nearly as certain. In development fo the past two years under the auspices of Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow, the film had abruptly flown off the rails on 5 September, when it was announced that Trevorrow was off the project. Rumours of script disagreements circled, but regardless of the reason, Lucasfilm had a serious problem: arguably the most important film in Star Wars’ history suddenly had no director, no story and a release date drawing nearer by the day. So Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy sent up a flare to the one man she knew without any doubt could safely take Star Wars over the finish line.

“Getting involved in IX came as a bit of a shock,” recalls J.J. Abrams. “I had completed VII, Rian [Johnson] was doing VIII, and I was not meant to do IX at all. But the opportunity to not just finish the trilogy, but to finish the story that George began -  this trilogy of trilogies - was too compelling and too tempting to reject.”

After delivering The Force Awakens, then the third-biggest movie in history, Abrams had taken a bow and walked away, returning to Bad Robot and a pair of TV pilots he’d been meaning to write. It was here, in his self-imposed exile, that Kennedy sought him out. Sure, it was an office just over a mile from Santa Monica pier rather than the grassy bluffs of Ahch-To, and Kennedy hadn’t so much climbed 500 hand-carved steps as punched ten digits into her phone, but like a vision of Episode VII’s final moments, there she was. Unexpected. Holding out something Abrams had thought lost and daring him to take it back.

“It’s exponentially the most daunting thing I’ve ever been involved with,” Abrams admits, eyebrows raised as if he still can’t quite believer the magnitude of the task. “But it was more exciting than it was anything.”

The director sits across from us in his suite at Beverly Hills’ Montage hotel, not far from where we last met, six years previously, when he’d just started work on a treatment for what would eventually become The Force Awakens. Abrams’ return as Star Wars’ Supreme Commander was announced just one day after Trevorrow’s departure, allaying the fears of both fans and shareholders alike: voices just a day before crying out in terror, now suddenly silenced. But with only two years to end a saga that had been four decades in the telling, it was clear from the outset he was going to need some help. And so he composed a text (then several more) and sent them flying towards a movie theatre 3,000 miles away, where the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Argo was attempting to watch a film.

“I’ve admired Chris Terrio’s writing for a long time. I called on him because I knew it would be a challenge. But I didn’t know it would be quite as challenging as it was.”

In a time when vast, interconnected stories have become commonplace, and breadcrumbs to the payoffs in Avenger’s Endgame can be traced back ten or even 20 films, it’s hard to believe that the Star Wars sequel trilogy didn’t have its course firmly locked in before Episode VII ever left the spaceport. But, just as Abrams himself left neither chart nor compass for Rian Johnson to navigate with, so he began work on The Rise Of Skywalker with nothing to guide him but his wits. It is, by Abrams’ own admission, his preferred method of working. An instinctive storyteller by nature, his impulse is to do what feels right in the moment, rather than slavishly adhere to some pre-ordained master plan. Very appropriately for a franchise so rooted in this exact philosophy, Abrams’ inclination has always been, as Alec Guinness once sagely advised, to stretch out with his feelings.

“You can’t plan everything in advance - which my ‘Revenge of the Jedi’ poster proves,” he says. “You have a better idea and then you implement it. When I was working on VII, I’d be lying if I said I knew everything that was gonna happen in VIII and IX. I had some ideas, but we had a release date that required us to work on VII!”

So Abrams and Terrio started from scratch. They spitballed ideas during the day, swapped rapid-fire-texts at night and, piece-by-piece set about exploring the fundamental questions this final movie had to address. Not least of all the aftermath of The Last Jedi, in which Rian Johnson, continuing Abrams’ story, had made some rather significant changes.

THERE’S A WELL-WORN dramatic principle most commonly ascribed to Anton Chekhov that insists if you see a gun in the first act of the play, it must go off by act three or you’re simply wasting the audience’s time. The same, it appears, is true of dark side degenerates as, despite being sidelined in The Last Jedi, Chekhov’s Knights Of Ren will finally go off in The Rise Of Skywalker.

The Knights - from which Kylo draws the latter part of his name - are a nightmarish squad of enforcers who do the bidding of the former Ben Solo. A rag-tag band of thugs and killers decked in black just like their leader, though far more battleworn. Armoured in disparate styles - one sports a cowl, one an angry welder’s mask, another a checkered draughtboard faceplate - they pack a similarly eclectic arsenal, from multi-barrelled assault cannon to oversized, anime-style sword poleaxe and a wicked-looking mace.

Referenced portentously in The Force Awakens and glimpsed so very briefly during Rey’s vision on Takodana, the Knights and their role in Kylo’s fall from grace were set up as a major piece of the Star Wars puzzle. That is until Johnson, who clearly didn’t share Abrams’ interest, dropped the idea, sweeping them briskly under the rug next to the mystery of Rey’s parentage and the bisected corpse of Supreme Leader Snoke. “Let the past die,” instructed Kylo Ren in The Last Jedi. “Kill it, if you have to.” A sentiment, one could argue, that cut to the very heart of Johnson’s film.

“We thought about that line a lot,” says Terrio. “Rian did something that any good second act would do, which is create the antithesis. In The Force Awakens Luke Skywalker is a myth Rey’s obsessed with and there’s a warm embrace of the past. What Rian suggested is the past is a mixed bag and you can’t rely upon it to tell you where to go in the future. What we’re doing with Episode IX is trying to create a synthesis between those two points of view.”

And so, just as the investigation into Rey’s lineage looks set to be reopened, so too are the Knights back with a vengeance (not to mention Abrams talisman Greg Grunberg as pilot Snap Wexley). With Johnson’s tenure over, we’re playing in Abrams’ yard once more, although our suggestion that he might somehow be trying to course-correct is given short shrift.

“I never found myself trying to repair anything,” Abrams interjects. “If I had done VIII, I would have done things differently, just as Rian would have done things differently if he had done VII. But having worked on television series, I was accustomed to creating stories and characters that then were run by other people. If you’re willing to walk away from the thing that you created and you believe it’s in trustworthy hands, you have to accept that some of the decisions being made are not gonna be the same that you would make. And if you come back into it, you have to honour what’s been done.”

And what has been done is significant. Luke Skywalker is dead, passing on his knowledge and the mantle of last Jedi to Rey; The Resistance has been all but wiped out; Snoke is gone; and Kylo Ren - now Supreme Leader Ren - is more broken than ever, riven by conflict through the unlikely bond he forged with Rey. Bold and decisive, Johnson’s decisions changed the board entirely, his sharp turns and gear shifts delighting some while earning the ire of others.

“Any time you are telling a story that people deeply care about, there is bound to be discussion and debate,” says Kathleen Kennedy. “That is something that has always been fundamental to the fabric of Star Wars.”

For Abrams and Terrio, meanwhile, the new landscape also brought with it new possibilities.

“Some of the most interesting scenes in The Last Jedi are the conversations between Rey and Ren,” says Terrio. “We’ve tried to pick up that complicated relationship that really has been present ever since the interrogation in Episode VII. When Ren takes off his mask, there’s a nakedness about him with Rey that he doesn’t express to anyone else. Rian developed that in fascinating ways and we’ve been able to develop it even further.”

Ren, left pointedly bare-faced by Johnson throughout VIII, now hides his face once more. It’s a development that, while not a rebuke to The Last Jedi, demonstrates the difference touchstones that resonate with each director. Although, Abrams expands, reuniting Kylo with his mask is about more than just sinister aesthetics.

“Having him be masked, but also fractured, is a very intentional thing. Like that classic Japanese process of taking ceramics and repairing them, and how the breaks in a way define the beauty of the piece as much as the original itself. As fractured as Ren is, the mask becomes a visual representation of that. There’s something about this that tells his history. His mask doesn’t ultimately hide him and his behaviour is revealed.”

Ren’s temptation by the light, like Rey’s temptation by the dark, forms the spine of a moral ambiguity that Johnson built on in VIII and very much carries over to IX, bringing with it a sense that George Lucas’ more clearly defined duality might be a relic of a simpler time. Neither light nor dark, The Rise Of Skywalker and its characters exist more within what could be considered the grey side of the Force - something underscored by the tantalizing footage of ‘Darth Rey’ (complete with cowl, hangover pallor and double-bladed red lightsaber) that closed Abrams’ D23 Expo footage presentation in Anaheim in August.

“I’d rather let that one lie,” he deflects, when pressed on the subject. “But I will say that the movie has a number of things that you wouldn’t expect to have happen and that you wouldn’t expect certain characters to do. There are surprises along the way.” He smiles, mischievously. “And that’s one of them.”

THE VALLEY OF The Moon in Southern Jordan has seen its share of action. Cut into the red sandstone cliffs near Aqaba, the striking lowlands known in Arabic as Wadi Rum have been visited by both real and fictional Lawrences of Arabia, stood in for the face of Mars, been the birth place of the Alien in Prometheus, and will next year double as the eponymous desert planet in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune. It’s no stranger to stormtroopers, either, having played host to the ill-fated Jedha outpost in Gareth Edwards’ Rogue One. Today, though, Wadi Rum is a different part of the galaxy entirely, standing in for Pasaana: a new locale in the canon, and home to the bedouin-like Aki-Aki: a nomadic race of walrus-like aliens with twin tentacles dangling from their maws in place of tusks.

Pasaana, along with the nippier climes of snow planet Kijimi, is one of several new worlds visited by The Rise Of Skywalker. But most importantly, it’s a place where the heroes we’ve become acquainted with over the past two films will come together at last.

“The heart of Star Wars for me is the group of unlikely bedfellows on a breakneck adventure,” says Abrams. “And in Rise Of Skywalker it’s the biggest and most dastardly threat the galaxy has seen. The opportunity here was to have this group that has now become a surrogate family have to deal with this massive horror: the war to end all wars. Not just on the outside, but on the inside, which is to say it’s meant to be as much of a challenge personally as it is physically.”

Abrams’ war of wars has been well equipped: “The First Order is stacked with new brass in the form of Richard E. Grant’s Allegiant General Pryde, neo-fascist ranks swollen by triangular-winged TIE Daggers and blood-red garrisons of newly commissioned Sith troopers, their angular crimson armor giving a fresh twist on the faceless squaddies - much to Hasbro’s delight. The Resistance, too, will see its share of reinforcements, including Billy Dee Williams’ Lando Calrissian - reprising the role after 36 years. Even General Leia Organa will return: the late Carrie Fisher making an appearance thanks to the discovery of unused footage that somehow fit the narrative perfectly.

The action itself has been teased in the barest of glimpses: Rey and Kylo duelling on the wreckage of a Death Star; Rebel X-Wings and blockade runners fleeing destruction; a sky bristling with Imperial Star Destroyers, their numbers great enough to block out the stars.

The presence of Old Empire firepower, easily overlooked, points to The Rise Of Skywalker’s biggest curveball to date. Back in April, when Abrams showed the first trailer at Star Wars Celebration in Chicago the real of the film’s title was almost eclipsed by the familiar cackle of the original Emperor echoing over those final frames. The Ian McDiarmid himself walked out to demand, in full Palpatine rasp, that the projector “roll it again”, all present lost their shit in unison. How could this be? Is he a clone? A Force projection? Did he survive that fateful plummet down the Death Star shaft? Could Palpatine have been telling Anakin the truth when he spoke of Darth Plagueis The Wise’s cure for death? Irrespective of the fine print, Star Wars’ biggest of bad is officially back in business.

“Some people feel like we shouldn’t revisit the idea of Palpatine, and I completely understand that,” Abrams concedes. “But if you’re looking at these nine films as one story, I don’t know many books where the last few chapters have nothing to do with those that have come before. If you look at the first eight films, all the set-ups of what we’re doing in IX are there in plain view.”

The sheer scale of the task he’s undertaken cannot be overstated. Star Wars has been, by far, the most enduring and influential story of the modern era. Having to put the capstone on a saga that has shaped both childhoods and adult lives for several generations is something neither Abrams, nor producer Kathleen Kennedy, looking ahead to what the future holds for Star Wars, take at all lightly.

“We don’t have a crystal ball” says Kennedy. “We tried to look at Solo and see if we could do two movies a year, and we found, ‘Hmm, that’s not going to work.’ So we backed off of that a little. But that doesn’t mean we don’t think about lots of different stories. That’s the exciting thing about this universe.

“It’s been an honour to inherit and continue this iconic saga that has touched audiences for so many years, and we feel the weight of that every time we set out to tell these stories.”

The wider universe will, of course, live on. Whether through The Mandalorian on TV, or all-new movie sagas currently in development by Johnson and Game Of Thrones’ David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. But for the core story, what for so many people is Star Wars, the final destination is now in sight.

“I’ve always loved the start of something,” says Abrams, “because of what it promises. Endings are hard. A great ending not only needs to honour everything that’s come before but, whether it’s a novel, a series or a film, you want to have it feel like it could end no other way.”

And so it comes back to feeling. In a world of meticulously planned franchises and strategic, multi-phased rollouts, Star Wars, at its core, has always trusted in The Force. Abrams had not expected to be here, had not expected to finish this tale. But now, as he places the final pieces of the puzzle, he feels like it was always meant to be. There’s a symmetry to him being the one to deliver The Rise Of Skywalker, just as there is in the fact that, faced with this near insurmountable challenge, his impulse was not to assemble story groups or worry about the top-down view, but to switch off his targeting computer, let go his conscious self and act on instinct.

“This story is alive, and you have to listen to it,” he says. “When you land on something that give you the chills, that’s the only way you know if it feels right. You can deconstruct it all you want and try and make sense of how you found it, but somehow it finds you.”

He pauses, reflecting for a moment. “I don’t know how to explain it. Just the way I can’t quite explain how we had this footage of Carrie that we’re using. You can say, ‘Oh well, it’s just luck, it just happened to be,’ but i feels like something else. And I neither can nor want to explain any of it.”

Just as every saga has a beginning, so too will this one find its end. Abrams and Terrio have taken Lucas’ vision to its conclusion, and the story that began on 25 May 1977 will end on 19 December 2019.

“It’s been a pretty crazy ride,” reflects Terrio. “When I was a kid watching Return  Of The Jedi on loop, I felt like I was the only person Yoda was speaking to. And then there I was all these years later, sitting in a tent in Jordan doing this film. You have this highly personal relationship to Star Wars, and then, suddenly, you find yourself right in the middle of it. That feeling is sort of indescribable.”

It’s one that, at the very least, is almost certainly worth having a movie interrupted for. 

STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER IS IN CINEMAS FROM DECEMBER

###

Il materiale di origine: Empire Magazine via Imgur

[satoshi-mochida]

Gematsu recently spoke with Yoshihiko Toda, supervisor of the Nippon Ichi Software Second Production Division Development Department and director of the upcoming Destiny Connect, in an e-mail interview where Toda shared new insight into the time-themed RPG.

Get the full interview below.

The first thing one might notice about Destiny Connect is its unique art style compared to other Nippon Ichi Software titles. What was the inspiration behind this style?

Toda: “The goal for early production was to keep the feel of ‘90s Japanese Super Nintendo Entertainment System RPGs. It was also intended to keep the nostalgic feel while promoting highly unique 3D graphics (specifically EarthBound, Chrono Trigger, and other classic RPGs).

“Therefore, this project purposely employs a relatively unrealistic art style with cartoon-ish expressions. For example, you might see buildings rendered realistically, but the colors palettes are calm, few in number, and high in contrast.

“The art direction wasn’t particularly derived from any single inspiration more than it was a product of trial and error.

“The director intentionally emphasized the notion of actively avoiding the same aesthetic style as other Nippon Ichi Software games. He believed other directors were capable of creating games following the Nippon Ichi style, so for him to create this game as his own unique creation was a product of his creative deviation.”

The art style reminds me quite a bit of an old American computer animated television series called The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. Have you ever seen it?

Toda: “Sorry, I actually didn’t know of this until I was asked. I had to go look up Jimmy Neutron online. The game does feel like it has similar aspects, but it was not intentionally drawn from. As mentioned, the style wasn’t targeted directly as a result of external influences, but was a product of several unrelated contributing factors.”

Who is the main art designer and composer on the project?

Toda: “The art director is our company’s 3D designer, Yu Inaba. Our composer, Yukinari Irumagawa, works with an external company.”

When did development begin? Can you give us an idea of how the pitch went for this project?

Toda: “The early conceptualization began at the end of 2016. Our company, who usually specializes in 2D games, initiated the project with the decisive vision of making a 3D game. It was also during this time the art direction and the time travel concepts were developed.”

What kind of RPG is Destiny Connect? For example, is it hub-based with fields that players access by opening a map?

Toda: “The fundamental gameplay of Destiny Connect is an RPG where the user gets to control the main character, Sherry, through Clocknee Town. The stage unfolds in Clocknee Town, with the underlying objective of exploring the town. The story will unravel as you travel through the present, past, and future of the town.”

Destiny Connect uses a turn-based battle system. How did you approach adding flavor to combat while still trying to evoke a sense of nostalgia?

Toda: “Command battles have been around for a while, I felt that the core system remains loyal to the classics, and from there, we designed battles to include Isaac’s ‘transformation’ and unique ‘skills’ to effectively carry out battles in a manner that’s refreshingly nostalgic.”

Were there any specific video game-related inspirations for Destiny Connect in terms of gameplay systems?

Toda: “I didn’t really draw inspirations from any single games directly… It was more of an accumulation from an entire era of RPGs that formed a single amalgamation that was the nostalgic feeling from reminiscing about my youth playing those games.

“For Isaac’s transformation, however, I did draw inspiration from the Japanese TV hero-drama Kamen Rider and how they transformed, shifting abilities for each of those different forms.”

What were your goals in terms of creating the cast of Destiny Connect?

Toda: “The main characters being a girl and a robot was established in early conceptualizations. There was a base story of the girl and a robot facing dilemmas together, and from there, we added her friends to give more substance to the story.”

Can you speak to the overall length of the game?

Toda: “Playing normally, it will take roughly 20 hours to complete the game.”

Will there be any additional activities outside of the main story, such as sub-quests?

Toda: “In early production, we did have sub-quests that strayed from the main story, but many things happened, and we needed to focus on development of the main story. For that reason, there are no sub-quests in the game. If an opportunity arises in the future for a sequel, I would definitely like to include them.”

Isaac can change forms, which in addition to specialized abilities grants him different outfits in battle. But will there be additional outfits for the human characters?

Toda: “Only the main character, Sherry, will have a ‘changing’ feature where she will be able to change her appearance. You will be able to unlock a number of outfits for Sherry by collecting items throughout the game.”

Will Destiny Connect have voice-acting?

Toda: “Unfortunately, voice acting is not planned at this time.”

Can you speak to the game’s performance on each platform? What resolution and frames per second is each platform targeting?

Toda: “Both PlayStation 4 and Switch run at 30 frames per second.”

What do you hope players will take away from Destiny Connect?

Toda: “I’m sure all of us at some point experienced excitement as children, reading adventure books and watching movies (they vary from person to person, but some common ones include: Back to the Future, The Goonies, and The NeverEnding Story). I would like people to play this game with the same intent of re-experiencing those classic adventure films and books, and would be overjoyed if people felt the same sense of nostalgia as if reminiscing on their childhood experiences.”

And of course, we have to ask: are there plans to release Destiny Connect in the west? If so, can you share an expected release window?

NIS America Staff: “Please look forward to announcements from NIS America.”

Thank you for your time!

[brevoorthistoryofcomics]

The arrival of this issue of DC SPECIAL was the second part of a one-two origin punch that began with the origin of the Justice League about a month earlier in JLA 144. I loved these two comics, their sense of history, their primal secrets revealed for the first time. It doesn’t hurt that both of them are great stories, well told. The Neal Adams cover sets the mood and the tone here.

The Origin of the Justice Society was the work of the regular ALL-STAR COMICS creative team of Paul Levitz and Joe Staton. Levitz would have a long career with the publisher, ultimately becoming DC’s President and Publisher, but that this point he was a tyro writer and editor who was just starting to get his feet under him creatively. Artist Joe Staton likewise was at the early part of his career, one that would go on to include a long stretch on GREEN LANTERN, his favorite character. His work was always a shade cartoonish, but in an appealing way. Here, inker Bob Layton helps to shift his work a bit more towards the super hero mainstream for this important story.

It had to be a challenging story to work out, both for the size of its core cast (ten super heroes) to say nothing of the spread of their abilities. Whatever brought the Justice Society together for the first time, it needed to be a menace that would be functional for both grounded Mystery-Men heroes such as the Atom and the Sandman and also the cosmic world-beaters like Dr Fate and the Spectre. Researching the period, Levitz relates in a text feature that he came upon references to an abandoned invasion of England by Nazi Germany at around the right time frame for this story, and all of the pieces fell into place for him.

The story opens with a prologue set in Washington DC, and a meeting between President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and an envoy from the British spy mastermind, “Intrepid”, a real historical figure. FDR is given evidence that the Nazi war machine plans an invasion of the United Kingdom that winter. And while FDR’s hands are tied–his countrymen still believe in a largely isolationist stance on America’s involvement in what would become World War II, he does suggest to the envoy that perhaps this new breed of mystery-men crimefighters might be the answer to his needs.

So it is that, a few days later, Batman answers the Bat-Signal from Commissioner Gordon only to find two other costumed crusaders already in his office–the Flash and Green Lantern. The envoy has asked Gordon to summon them all, and after he recounts his information, the trio is swiftly on board a transport, carrying them to far-off Scotland. There, they attack a Nazi spy stronghold attempting to get more information about the upcoming invasion. (There’s a goof at this point, where Green Lantern uses his powerless-against-wood Power Ring to battering ram their way through some wooden gates–oops!) The trio is whipping the hell out of the Nazi spies until they unleash their ultimate weapon, a crude robot that turns the tables on our heroes.

Fortunately for our heroes, as they are transported back to Berlin for trial, their plight is discovered by Doctor Fate, scanning the world with his crystal ball. Fate stops only to scoop up a very surprised Hourman before heading into enemy territory to rescue the other heroes, turning up just in time to prevent Adolf Hitler himself from unmasking the Batman. Unfortunately, while the appearance of Dr Fate would seem to have brought this story to a premature conclusion, such was not to be. For Adolf Hitler has the Spear of Destiny in his hands–a mystic artifact previously showcased in an issue of WEIRD WAR TALES that once pierced the side of Jesus Christ himself. Using the Spear, Hitler summons up a horde of Teutonic Valkyries, the sword-maidens of myth, to carry his attack to victory.

Even Fate is hard-pressed to hold his own against the Valkyrie hordes. More urgently, the signal has been given to begin the invasion of far-off England. In desperation, Dr Fate casts a spell designed to bring other heroes into the fight. And so, back in America, the Sandman, the Atom and Hawkman find themselves snatched up by mystic tendrils and carried to the beaches of Dover,where the invasion is under way. The Hawk, Atom and Sandman give a good accounting of themselves, but it’s clear that they’re no match for the Nazi war machine and all of the troops massed for the invasion. Fortunately, though, Fate sent four summonses–and it is the all-powerful Spectre who answers the last one, arriving like the cavalry to help rout the foe.

Back in Berlin, the beleaguered heroes get their second wind, and with Dr Fate leading the charge, begin to push the Valkyries back. Hitler cant believe what is happening here. In anger, he orders his bomber squadrons to take off, setting a course for Washington DC, to bomb the America capitol in retaliation for the attack of the mystery men heroes. It’s fortunately an experimental long-range bomber, one capable of making a flight from Germany to the United States without refueling, or once again this would be a much shorter story. The Valkyrie take up positions around the bomber, intending to shepherd it to its ultimate target.

Back in Dover, the invasion of England has hit a permanent snag in the undead person of the Spectre, who makes short and fatal work of the invading forces.At this point, the nine heroes involved in this adventure so far gather on the beaches and make introductions, taking the first steps towards the camaraderie they will exhibit in years to come. But there’s still work to do: even with England secure, the experimental bomber is still on its way to Washington DC, guarded by a Valkyrie honor guard.

The assembled Justice Society battles on for literally hours, but they are unable to halt the flight of the Valkyries and their deadly charge from continuing towards the USA. Eventually, the coastline appears over the horizon and all seems lost, the heroes’ spirits sag. And then, in the best stand-up-and-cheer moment in the book, Green Lantern spies a figure leaping up from the press building–it’s Superman, who destroys the bomber and catches its huge payload single-handedly.

But even with the bomber destroyed, the Valkyrie will not relent, intending to carry out the mission given to them by Hitler–the assassination of FDR. Green Lantern is knocked unconscious, and without his Power Ring to keep them aloft, the Sandman, the Atom and Hourman plummet to the Earth. Despite being rocked by the fall, a clinging-to-consciousness Atom manages to pull himself to the Oval Office just in time to take the shot aimed at Roosevelt himself, a true act of heroism.

 From there, it’s all clean-up, as the Valkyrie, their mission a failure, disappear. The Atom is wounded, but not fatally. A grateful FDR suggests to the assembled heroes that they remain together a s a sort of Super-Battalion–but Superman rejects the notion of them becoming a military unit, saying that they’ll only fight in the cause of justice. And so, the Justice Society of America is born. It’s a hell of a story.

A two=page text piece in the back not only described the germination of the story I had just read, but it went through the entire roster of the Justice Society through all of the issues of the golden age ALL-STAR COMICS as a bonus. Using this text feature as eh basis of my research, I created my own illustrated guidebook to the Justice Society, showcasing drawings of all of the different members and a rundown of what stories they were active in. I can remember no doubt boring my Uncle Jerry to tears during a visit to the home he and my Aunt shared with my Grandparents as we pored over the work I had done. Sadly, that hand-made Justice Society roster book that I made has disappeared over the intervening years.

[tange78mcconnell-blog]

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