#like dude if you have been illustrating for so long you know how to point eyes in the right direction.

[colleendoran]

Great Big Good Omens Graphic Novel Update

AKA A Visit From Bildad the Shuhite.

The past year or so has been one long visit from this guy, whereupon he smiteth my goats and burneth my crops, woe unto the woeful cartoonist.

Gaze upon the horror of Bildad the Shuhite.

You kind of have to be a Good Omens fan to get this joke, but trust me, it's hilarious.

Anyway, as a long time Good Omens novel fan, you may imagine how thrilled I was to get picked to adapt the graphic novel.

 Go me!  

This is quite a task, I have to say, especially since I was originally going to just draw (and color) it, but I ended up writing the adaptation as well. Tricky to fit a 400 page novel into a 160-ish page graphic novel, especially when so much of the humor is dependent on the language, and not necessarily on the visuals.

Not complainin', just sayin'.

Anyway, I started out the gate like a herd of turtles, because  right away I got COVID which knocked me on my butt. 

And COVID brain fog? That's a thing. I already struggle with brain fog due to autoimmune disease, and COVID made it worse.

Not complainin' just sayin'.

This set a few of the assignments on my plate back, which pushed starting Good Omens back. 

But hey, big fat lead time! No worries!

Then my computer crawled toward the grave.

My trusty MAC Pro Tower was nearly 15 years old when its sturdy heart ground to a near-halt with daily crashes. I finally got around to doing some diagnostics; some of its little brain actions were at 5% functionality. I had no reliable backups.

There are so many issues with getting a new computer when you haven't had a new computer or peripherals in nearly fifteen years and all of your software, including your Photoshop program is fifteen years old.

At the time, I was still on rural internet...which means dial-up speed.

Whatever you have for internet in the city, roll that clock back to about 2001.

That's what I had. I not only had to replace almost all of my hardware but I had to load and update all programs at dial-up speed.

Welcome to my gigabyte hell.

The entire process of replacing the equipment and programs took weeks and then I had to relearn all the software.

All of this was super expensive in terms of money and time cost.

But I was not daunted! Nosirree!

I still had a huge lead time! I can do anything! I have an iron will!

And boy, howdy, I was going to need it.

At about the same time, a big fatcat quadrillionaire client who had hired me years ago to develop a big, major transmedia project for which I was paid almost entirely in stock, went bankrupt leaving everyone holding the bag, and taking a huge chunk of my future retirement fund with it.

I wrote a very snarky almost hilarious Patreon post about it, but am not entirely in a position to speak freely because I don't want to get sued. Even though I had to go to court over it, (and I had to do that over Zoom at dial-up speed,) I'm pretty sure I'll never get anything out of this drama, and neither will anyone else involved, except millionaire dude and his buddies who all walked away with huge multi-million dollar bonuses weeks before they declared bankruptcy, all the while claiming they would not declare bankruptcy.

Even the accountant got $250,000 a month to shut down the business, while creators got nothing.

That in itself was enough drama for the year, but we were only at February by that point, and with all those months left, 2023 had a lot more to throw at me.

Fresh from my return from my Society of Illustrators show, and a lovely time at MOCCA, it was time to face practical medical issues, health updates, screening, and the like. I did my adult duty and then went back to work hoping for no news, but still had a weird feeling there would be news.

I know everyone says that, but I mean it. I had a bad feeling.

Then there was news.

I was called back for tests and more tests. This took weeks. The ubiquitous biopsy looked, even to me staring at the screen in real time, like bad news. 

It also hurt like a mofo after the anesthesia wore off. I wasn't expecting that.

Then I got the official bad news.

Cancer which runs in my family finally got me. Frankly, I was surprised I didn't get it sooner.

Stage 0, and treatment would likely be fast and complication-free. Face the peril, get it over with, and get back to work. 

I requested surgery months in the future so I could finish Good Omens first, but my doc convinced me the risk of waiting was too great. Get it done now.

"You're really healthy," my doc said. Despite an auto-immune issue which plagues me, I am way healthier than the average schmoe of late middle age. She informed me I would not even need any chemo or radiation if I took care of this now.

So I canceled my appearance at San Diego Comic Con. I did not inform the Good Omens team of my issues right away, thinking this would not interfere with my work schedule, but I did contact my agent to inform her of the issue. I also contacted a lawyer to rewrite my will and make sure the team had access to my digital files in case there were complications.

Then I got back to work, and hoped for the best.

Eff this guy.

Before I could even plant my carcass on the surgery table, I got a massive case of ocular shingles.

I didn't even know there was such a thing. 

There I was, minding my own business. I go to bed one night with a scratchy eye, and by 4 PM the next day, I was in the emergency room being told if I didn't get immediate specialist treatment, I was in big trouble.

I got transferred to another hospital and got all the scary details, with the extra horrid news that I could not possibly have cancer surgery until I was free of shingles, and if I did not follow a rather brutal treatment procedure - which meant super-painful  eye drops every half hour, twenty-four hours a day and daily hospital treatment - I could lose the eye entirely, or be blinded, or best case scenario, get permanent eye damage.

What was even funnier (yeah, hilarity) is the drops are so toxic if you don't use the medication just right, you can go blind anyway.

Hi Ho.

Ulcer is on the right. That big green blob.

I had just finished telling my cancer surgeon I did not even really care about getting cancer, was happy it was just stage zero, had no issues with scarring, wanted no reconstruction, all I cared about was my work. 

Just cut it out and get me back to work.

And now I wondered if I was going to lose my ability to work anyway.

Shingles often accompanies cancer because of the stress on the immune system, and yeah, it's not pretty. This is me looking like all heck after I started to get better.

The first couple of weeks were pretty demoralizing as I expected a straight trajectory to wellness. But it was up and down all the way. 

Some days I could not see out of either eye at all. The swelling was so bad that I had to reach around to my good eye to prop the lid open. Light sensitivity made seeing out of either eye almost impossible. Outdoors, even with sunglasses, I had to be led around by the hand.

I had an amazing doctor. I meticulously followed his instructions, and I think he was surprised I did. The treatment is really difficult, and if you don't do it just right no matter how painful it gets, you will be sorry. 

To my amazement, after about a month, my doctor informed me I had no vision loss in the eye at all. "This never happens," he said.

I'd spent a couple of weeks there trying to learn to draw in the near-dark with one eye, and in the end, I got all my sight back.

I could no longer wear contact lenses (I don't really wear them anyway, unless I'm going to the movies,) would need hard core sun protection for awhile, and the neuralgia and sun sensitivity were likely to linger. But I could get back to work.

I have never been more grateful in my life.

Neuralgia sucks, by the way, I'm still dealing with it months later.

Anyway, I decided to finally go ahead and tell the Good Omens team what was going on, especially since this was all happening around the time the Kickstarter was gearing up.

Now that I was sure I'd passed the eye peril, and my surgery for Stage 0 was going to be no big deal, I figured all was a go. I was still pretty uncomfortable and weak, and my ideal deadline was blown, but with the book not coming out for more than a year, all would be OK. I quit a bunch of jobs I had lined up to start after Good Omens, since the project was going to run far longer than I'd planned.

Everybody on the team was super-nice, and I was pretty optimistic at this time. But work was going pretty slow during, as you may imagine.

But again...lots of lead time still left, go me.

Then I finally got my surgery.

Which was not as happy an experience as I had been hoping for.

My family said the doc came out of the operating room looking like she'd been pulled backwards through a pipe, She informed them the tumor which looked tiny on the scan was "...huge and her insides are a mess."

Which was super not fun news.

Eff this guy.

The tumor was hiding behind some dense tissue and cysts. After more tests, it was determined I'd need another surgery and was going to have to get further treatments after all.

The biopsy had been really painful, but the discomfort was gone after about a week, so no biggee. The second surgery was, weirdly, not as painful as the biopsy, but the fatigue was big time.

By then, the Good Omens Kickstarter had about run its course, and the record-breaker was both gratifying and a source of immense social pressure.

I'd already turned most of my social media over to an assistant, and I'm glad I did.

But the next surgery was what really kicked me on my keister.

All in all, they took out an area the size of a baseball. It was  hard to move and wiped me out for weeks and weeks. I could not take care of myself. I'd begun losing hair by this time anyway, and finally just lopped it off since it was too heavy for me to care for myself. The cut hides the bald spots pretty well.

After about a month, I got the go-ahead to travel to my show at the San Diego Comic Con Museum (which is running until the first week of April, BTW). I was very happy I had enough energy to do it. But as soon as I got back, I had to return to treatment.

Since I live way out in the country, going into the city to various hospitals and pharmacies was a real challenge. I made more than 100 trips last year, and a drive to the compounding pharmacy which produced the specialist eye medicine I could not get anywhere else was six hours alone.

Naturally, I wasn't getting anything done during this time.

But at least my main hospital is super swank.

The oncology treatment went smoothly, until it didn't. The feels don't hit you until the end. By then I was flattened.

So flattened that I was too weak to control myself, fell over, and smashed my face into some equipment.

Nearly tore off my damn nostril.

Eff this guy.

Anyway, it was a bad year.

Here's what went right.

I have a good health insurance policy. The final tally on my health care costs ended up being about $150,000. I paid about 18% of that, including insurance. I had a high deductible and some experimental medicine insurance didn't cover. I had savings,  enough to cover the months I wasn't working, and my Patreon is also very supportive. So you didn't see me running a Gofundme or anything.

Thanks to everyone who ever bought one of my books.

No, none of that money was Good Omens Kickstarter money. I won't get most of my pay on that for months, which is just as well because it kept my taxes lower last year when I needed a break.

So, yay.

My nose is nearly healed. I opted out of plastic surgery, and it just sealed up by itself. I'll never be ready for my closeup, but who the hell cares.

I got to ring the bell.

I had a very, VERY hard time getting back to work, especially with regard to focus and concentration. My work hours dropped by over 2/3. I was so fractured and weak, time kept slipping away while I sat in the studio like a zombie. Most of the last six months were a wash.

I assumed focus issues were due (in part) to stress, so sought counseling. This seemed like a good idea at first, but when the counselor asked me to detail my issues with anxiety, I spent two weeks doing just that and getting way more anxious, which was not helpful.

After that I went EFF THIS NOISE, I want practical tools, not touchy feelies (no judgment on people who need touchy-feelies, I need a pragmatic solution and I need it now,) so tried using the body doubling focus group technique for concentration and deep work.

Within two weeks, I returned to normal work hours.

I got rural broadband, jumping me from dial up speed to 1 GB per second.

It's a miracle.

Massive doses of Vitamin D3 and K2. Yay.

The new computer works great.

The Kickstarter did so well, we got to expand the graphic novel to 200 pages. Double yay.

I'm running late, but everyone on the Good Omens team is super supportive. I don't know if I am going to make the book late or not, but if I do, well, it surely wasn't on purpose, and it won't be super late anyway. I still have months of lead time left.

I used to be something of a social media addict, but now I hardly ever even look at it, haven't been directly on some sites in over a year, and no longer miss it. It used to seem important and now doesn't.

More time for real life.

While I think the last year aged me about twenty years, I actually like me better with short hair. I'm keeping it.

OK. Rough year. 

Not complainin', just sayin'.

Back to work on The Book.

And only a day left to vote for Good Omens, Neil Gaiman, and Sandman in the Comicscene Awards. Thanks. 

[valeriefauxnom]

Unintentional Comedy - Dragalia and Feh Artwork Edition

So, remember Alfonse, from FEH?

Y'know, this dude?

For an okay crutch for those without Gala Euden or Albert or other handy light swords they didn't want to invest in, he was rather popular, only partly owed to any pre-established fondness FEH players had since they already knew him. People liked the more expanded personality we got than FEH's bare-bones story, additionally before they started trying to spice Alfonse up in more recent books.

In his story, however, one of the events that happening is Euden falling off a cliff, shortly followed by Alfonse.

Miraculously, cliff-falling isn't quite as dangerous in Dragalia Lost as in real life (also demonstrated by Leonidas in Stranded Scions, etc...), and the two survive. Alfonse has some sort of injury to his foot, however, conveniently hampering his ability to move but not much else.

Euden, being Euden and unwilling to throw anyone to the wolves, comes up with this idea:

Nothing atypical here, right?

...Well, as it was revealed in a book published two years later than his debut in Dragalia, Fire Emblem Heroes Character Illustrations, Volume 1...

Alfonse is 180cm tall, AKA 5'11.

...Is it any surprise coming from 195cm/6'5 and 180cm/5'11 parents? Someone check the Askran royal food for steroids that Sharena has apparently not been consuming, presumably because she's instead dining with heroes in the barracks.

I digress.

Now, as I've gone over before here, here's where it gets hilarious in retrospect.

In short, Ranzal, the resident big buff burly dude of Dragalia...is stated to be 6'1/185 in the joke comics.

...And while literally nobody else got an even vaguely-official number to their height, Dragalia instead opting for a 'comparison heights' to keep track of who's shorter and who's taller in a pair... Euden often seems to wind up in the 150-155cm/5'0-5'1 range or even shorter when in illustrations with Ranzal:

At most, I've seen him crack about 5'9/175cm in the comics, which aren't exactly a stable source of art, as demonstrated by these two panels, in which both seem to be on flat ground and standing pretty straight:

I need to stop before I mindlessly repeat the other post, but my point remains:

Euden, by most depictions, is tiny. A literal short prince/king.

And yet, no matter what way you slice it, he's trying to carry a dude that seems to be quite a bit taller, let's say. How much, we'll never know, but the fact remains he'd likely need to pull out a dragon phone to search 'how to carry people much taller than you?' just in case and hurriedly read a wikihow 10-step article explaining some strats, were it not for the fact that dragons would have destroyed smartphones in Dragalia a long time ago (good move, dragons....?).

I will admit that there are a few arts that frame them as the 'same height' but I would more point to the fact Euden, when drawn with crossover characters for promotional art, is usually portrayed on an 'equal footing', so as not to have one take up more space/attention. Also, the Feh team might not have even decided on a height for Alfy boy before!

Even then, he's still portrayed as shorter than 5'9/175cm Joker in some art:

So yeah. Crossover art is not exactly consistent, and all I can do is look to the general trend in the 'canon game' of him being absolutely dwarfed by Ranzal.

Now, it's one thing for Euden to be lugging about Alfonse for a while.

The idea he might have done so with such a potential height disparity is pure comedy.

No wonder he's so tired after a while, lugging about another human who is both taller, heavier, and also wearing armor!

Not only that, he later tries and partly succeeds in fighting heavily armored soldiers (who are admittedly aiming to capture him and kill Alfonse) with Alfonse 'draped across his back like a sack of potatoes'. Talk about determination, adrenaline, and/or the simple principle of 'small but mighty'!

Maybe that's why Alfonse was saying "I don't think that's wise" at the start there before he quickly found other rationale besides 'you sure you can give a piggyback without my feet dragging along the ground the whole way?'

My case rests, Your Honor: they unintentionally made part four of Alfonse's personal story a lot funnier to envision by publishing an art book 2 years after he first existed in Dragalia Lost!

[maireyart]

Dude, I just had the best image: so it’s Obito-Lives AU, and part of his capture and house arrest and stipulation to his living is all his criminal assets are turned over and searched. That includes Kamui. So Kakashi goes to Kamui to search for the items Obito admitted are stored there, and he returns so appalled. Because, yes, Obito put bodies and important documents and items there, but he also just dumped a lot of junk. There are stacks of old magazines, dirty clothes piles, an assortment of bento box containers that were too nice to throw away, souvenirs from different places, crap Obito stole just for shits and giggles and Kakashi recognizes some of the stuff as things he “misplaced” over the years. “This was my favorite shirt.” “I knew that.”

Hi anon! And I'm sorry it took me so long to reply :3 The way it played out in my imagination was angsty and a little melodramatic, so no funny illustrations this time 😅 Ok, I admit Obito did call his dimension a "trash basket" (屑かご kuzukago) once in canon, and there must have been blood splashes, debris and not only from his battles, but something tells me he didn't use it as a literal trash dump xD (I guess he could just burn all that junk with a good katon jutsu). But I love the idea of him storing there something curious, something unexpected. I imagine he didn't want any reminders of his friendships, after everything... Even for shits and giggles. They could mess with his evil plan. Evoke the memories he didn't want. He was too vicious to be sentimental anymore, but he could take there something accidentally! Imagine the ANBU Kakashi period. Obito was often spying on his old teammate, and at one point he teleported into Kakashi's room to inspect it or look for specific papers and documents he could be interested in. Instead, he found something unrelated to his objective, something personal -- an old letter from Rin to Kakashi (that Kakashi seemed to have been in the mood to reread some time prior, wallowing in his sadness, so it was right on his table). Obito was standing there deep in thought, looking at the letter, absently analyzing the handwriting, but not really taking in the words yet, and then suddenly felt that Kakashi had shunshinned nearby ->

Obito had to return to Kamui immediately, but forgot to put the letter in place! It stayed in his hand, and then forever in Kamui; he never brought it back. Having read it for the first time, he felt anger and only anger and threw it away somewhere. The letter got lost among the gray blocks. He forgot about the thing altogether. But way later, when he was in his late 20's, or maybe even not long before the war, he found it again, and the words kept ringing in his head till the very end.

This old letter was… Rin's letter about Obito! The real Obito, the kid Obito, which the current Obito had killed in himself once.

It went something like this: "Dear Kakashi, I'm writing this letter to you because it's not easy to talk about these things in real life, but let me try to express my thoughts here. I know you can't stand Obito, but please, please, for the sake of our team, try to understand him, because he's… that and that… (describes his loneliness, and kindness, and potential, and aspirations, and dreams). Maybe if you just show him a flicker of warmth, he will open up, and you'll see for yourself how much it will benefit us as a team and in all other possible ways. I'm his friend and I know him well, and it's so worth it! Just please believe in Obito, just please try, and you'll see how much it will change things."

Obito was so irritated when he read it for the first time. He couldn't feel the message at all, they were just words of a ghost, of an unreal Rin, and that unreal Rin was babbling something about that miserable unreal Obito, the helpless one. Trying to reach Kakashi's heart. How futile.

Later, when he found the letter for the second time as an adult, he wasn't outraged anymore; he was too numb inside for that. But what he didn't like was that the words made him think. They were haunting him, and he hated that. And then, when the Juubi almost destroyed his consciousness, he made himself recall what had made him whole and hopeful once, and Rin's message sparked in his mind's eye again, more brightly, and it helped him take control of the Juubi. But only after the change of heart he finally started seeing the truth in those sentences and even hearing her voice saying them in his head; the words became alive and almost prophetic. And Kakashi's faith in Obito… It did finally touch his heart (as did Naruto's, of course), did finally reach him… and it DID change everything. * Now, Obito lives! And Kakashi somehow keeps the Sharingan eye or gets it back from him. He goes to Kamui after the war to "turn over his criminal assets" and finds that letter…

He brings it from Kamui and gives it back to Obito.

Obito, scratching the nape of his neck: "Ah… Sorry, I accidentally stole it from you ages ago." "I never noticed." "You didn't?" "I… memorized it so well that I never needed the original piece of paper anymore, the words were ingrained in my heart, is all…" "Why did you bring it back?" "I feel like you still need it. …Besides, thanks to it being in Kamui, it wasn't destroyed by Pein, unlike the contents of my whole apartment. When he attacked." "…Sorry." "Albeit losing things is nothing, in comparison with losing people." "Sorry." "I'm glad you're back..."

[azumasoroshi]

minidura chapter 4 react

simon i SWEAR ill get you out of there and that horrendous art style

also though. TEENAGE SHIZAYA CHAPTER LETS GO???? idk if narita made the minidura or if it's a separate illustrator but they are giving the FOOD rn

i was wondering where the official knowledge that simon forced izaya and shizuo to eat sushi together came from. i mean i guess this isnt official and it was probably stated in the anime somewhere but still, good to see it illustrated pff

AAAAAAAAA ive seen this image around tumblr but i didnt realize it was from minidura 😭 i thought it was fanart or smth (<-dumbass)

wait im actually going crazy over this akwjhkjdshs they're washing dishes together!!! now we just need them to do laundry and taxes and-

im going to go over the image limit this time on god

wow cant believe they're bathing each other too (<-delusional)

something about the first shizuo panel reminds me of aggretsuko. which is. actually. huh. arent they both like adults with anger issues. durarara aggretsuko au when

also deadass i forgot dennis existed until i read about him in a shizaya fanfiction and i was like "who's dennis" pfgfkhkd

so true though never throw kitchen knives kids

LMFAO HE JUST GAVE THEM MORE WORK INSTEAD OF RESPONDING

they're gonna be here all day at this rate. actually shizaya as fast food/restaurant staff au when because they'd have the stupidest rivalry known to man and i need it

fucking imagine shinra walks in and sees shizuo and izaya working by the counter

i hope izaya gets to eat fatty tuna by the end of this though. god knows he's gonna look cute as hell

made funnier by the fact that izaya at least definitely knows how to cook with how long he's been on his own and needed to feed his sisters

damn ive actually never seen someone's vein burst in a way where blood sprays out in anime akshGKJHJKSD thats impressive actually

dont look now but this may or may not inspire me to make a mermaid/pirate au (<-obsessed)

who needs kaiju battles when you can have blue fin tuna vs crab

they're literally never leaving this place bro they're gonna be stuck here for eternity. anyway here's a literary analysis of durarara pointing out why russia sushi is actually representative of dante's inferno /j

i want to read those blurbs so baddddd screams sobs bangs table

rip dennis dude he doesnt get paid enough to deal with shizaya

rippp time to listen to izaya pine hopelessly for the man he cant stop annoying for five seconds

simon had the right idea. too bad shizaya are shizaya

what is that face izaya. i cant tell if he's irritated that simon's right or irritated that simon cant understand how instinctual their hatred is or amused that simon thinks he and shizuo could be friends or amused because he thinks meaningless fighting is hilarious

oh......that kind of hurts actually

i can imagine izaya suggesting it as a joke and then lying in bed that night thinking about how it's never going to happen and it really sounds like a funny joke huh? (he is not crying)

i cant believe simon's been dealing with these bitches for like 7 years now like dude has the patience of a saint

😭give him his 50,000 yen simon

we can see that the crack in the sign is actually fixed now too ahhh time really flies when you're stuck in a relationship of mutual hatred

chibizaya is so cuteeeeeeeee

im sure he intended to paint himself that way in his recollection though pff

THATS RIGHT SHIZAYA BE THE PORCUPINES. SNUGGLE. DO IT

step aside erika, simon is the face of the shizaya nation now. especially with that "you just have a shizuo complex dont you" quote that i found the other day which i still havent recovered from

HAUDGHUSDH orihara izaya, pro unreliable narrator

hilarious how we never see tom's face. just his dreads lmfao

dennis and simon are so done with like izaya bro i think they can tell at this point that he's horrifically pining and has no healthy outlet for it. the bills go to him because they're bullying him

it'd be funny if they billed him 50,000 at the end actually pft

I KNEW WE'D GET THEM EATING TOGETHER!!! I HAD FAITH

they're so cute oh my god can i make that my header or something

10/10 chapter im going to punt izaya into a wall and get simon flowers

[glitchphotography]

If u think losing a gig to an AI is hard, try losing gigs because your bosses are racist or xenophobic or homophobic or sexist, or try not getting gigs at all because bosses dont think your work is as legitimate as the dude who can draw 100 identical spidermans.

There are serious structural issues with pay-to-play AI services like Dalle2 and it’s centered on how these companies data laundered copyrighted works using fair use laws and research institutions to privatize a tech that should be considered public infrastructure for everyone.

But AI Art itself isn’t evil, its a tool that has been used by new media artists for at least a decade. There’s obviously ethical ways to create AI art: train your own models, create outputs based out of your own works, attribute the artists you use in your prompts, etc.

But suddenly caring about copyright like you are now team disney and team nintendo is weak. And seriously, most of your artstation works aren’t original either. Yall living off of borrowed aesthetics from 100 years of comic books and cartoons and illustrations.

AIs can’t plagiarize the way humans do. You are seeing a calculated average of images. The reason shit looks like your favorite illustrators is because a lot of these illustrators make similar art, and most people writing AI prompts have similar basic tastes. Making great AI Art from prompts takes time and patience and a keen sense of poetics.

But seriously, y’all don’t hate new tech, you hate capitalism and the corpos and bosses who are out to expropriate you.

AI Art, if anything, is the new folk art. Same repeated motifs made by anyone with a clue. This is a wonderful mingling of collective creative energies. Embrace it!

Addendum for all the reactionary responses out there:

~~~~~~~~ Artists should be getting royalties from OpenAI, Midjourney, et al. And they should be able to opt in or out of having their work included in training models. This is a given and I would never argue against compensating artists!  ~~~~~~~~

This isn’t about defending these corpos either, but machine learning tech has been around before these companies started their thing and experimental artists from around the world have been using machine learning to make great art.

Another thing: the moment you post your digital art to a platform, you sign away much of your consent w/r/t how your art is used. Thats what those really long TOS are about. ArtStation and istock were scraped for data under the pretext of Fair Use, which allows or mass scraping internet data for research purposes. Fair Use is like the one law that for the most part, protects artists from the disneys and nintendos of the world. I wouldn’t be able to glitch video games without it. Emulated videogames wouldnt exist with out it either So the question is, why are corporations allowed to use Fair Use as a cover for developing privatized pay-to-play services? People who know a thing, will point out that Stable Diffusion is open source, and that’s great, but why are privatized services allowed to be built on open source infrastructure? Especially when this tech hasn’t been properly vetted for racial biases, pr0nography, etc

Yes its shitty, but these arent arguments against AI tech but against juridical structures under capitalist regimes.

[mazyb0i]

Other RnM fans?

Rick n Morty fan creator/artist here, trying to make friend brohs with ppl who are also obsessed with the show. I have a hard time reaching out due to my anxiety. (proshippers DNI)

tldr; you're also a neurodivergent queer artist nutjob that makes crackpipe art an shitposts, heavily kins a character at one point or another, and we should be friends because we can be insane together LMFAO

Fav show ships: BP x Rick all day, (I love flesh curtains, and their dynamic is just so yes... I...) Morty x Alaska (i named the vat of acid gf Alaska because the Alaska trip..) Summer x that one girl... Morticia X Jessica, Rickcest/ Rick selfcest is aight, I obsess over Miamicop. I think selfcest in cloning / multiuniverse theory is harmless, but don't come at me with any of that proshipper/inc3st/rickorty shit. I will block you, report you, and put you on a DNI beware list; this is a threat & a warning. That shit is never EVER ok.

if we become friends/wanna know about;

I'm diagnosed Audhd, I'm a transmasc demiboy, I like to be referred to as nonbinary and a transgender male with He/They pronouns. Panromantic Demisexual.

I'm a rick kinnie, just means I identify with rick, in another universe I could be him XD, I relate to him, we share the same personality literally (ENTP 7w8); he's my self identifying comfort character. But my big interest with this show/comic is probably due to some kind of autistic hyper fixation and imprintation.

Hobbies: Crafting, Digital illustration, Fursuit /Costume making, Youtube, 3D designing, Making silly video skits, Writing, Character design, Shit posting, Creating ai voice bots for fun n fandom purposes (will make le memes), Trying to be a youtuber like Imbrandonfarris and Britany Broski, collecting stuff, VRchat, Collecting fluffy soft shit like stuffies, pillows, blankets, and hoodies. I SLEEP IN A NEST OF ALL OF THESE

Personality?: Chaotic, Unhinged, Tired and fed up with this shit, All the Energy AND NO ENERGY, I'm so tired please god help me, i'm an enigma. Ambiverted. If ur looking for a cool crazy cat dude broh who draws weird ass digital art and is always tired but jacked on coffe, adderall, and Naproxen i'm your guy.... :'}

I do alot of art and have alot of burnouts due to my adhd- I've been told I'm  innovative, clever, and expressive. I can jury-rig your glasses easily with a paperclip if you're screw comes out and loose frames causes the lens to pop. I'm very detail and idea-oriented, i come up with thousands of ideas, questions, and theories. Because of this, I tend to come up with one idea after another without actually going forward with plans and actions because i get so overwhelmed with my massive brain XD

Even tho I'm socially awkward, I love people, I want to make friends. I like being alone a lot but I hate feeling lonely. :C When I get to know you I'm very very chatty; as long as I'm not too tired or piled with heaps of assignments. I would say I'm pretty laid-back and easy to get along with, I get so stuck up in my personal world up in my head that I lose sight of important things around me, I blame the adhd. I'm an observer, I like to watch and see how things happen, I am a very hands on person.

I'm constantly learning, i love science with a passion. I got hyperfixated on evolution of different animal clades a while back. I am immensely curious and focused on understanding how the world operates and functions. I'm looking for mental and intellectual stimulation, lettuce skip casual conversation about wheather- whats your favorite dinosaur? (fuck ignore my dyslexia) and before you say a pterodactyl let me stop you right there- they aren't dinosaurs. if you like understanding the world through learning various things about science, technology, or culture, I'm your guy. but I'm also just a silly hoo hoo aah smart ass.

god this is finally done... I've been writing this for an hour......

[chalkrevelations]

So, I’ve been catching up on podcasts about TLOU during the commute to and from work or while I’m running errands. And I’ve developed this habit that I subject spouse to on a regular basis, which I call “Today On ‘How Dudes On Podcasts Are Wrong About The Last Of Us.’” And this week, I just feel really strongly about a couple of things re: Ep 8, and so all y’all get to be subjected to this week’s installment, too.

(I definitely need to go back and watch all of the show again, because I feel like it’s going to unfold beautifully on a second watch, but I don’t actually have the patience to wait until I get all the way around, back to Ep 8 again, before hashing through this particular stuff, so fuck it, we ball.)

I just feel like I’m listening to a lot of guys 1) being weirdly precious about the cannibalism and 2) missing the point of the cannibalism.

I mean, all of this is with the caveat that I realized a long time ago, I’m kind of missing the automatic cannibalism squick that most people have. I’m not down with killing people specifically to eat them, and I wouldn’t particularly want to eat another person, but I do appear to be more pragmatic - at least theoretically - than about 96.5 percent of the population about the idea that dead bodies are meat, that living people take precedence over dead people, and that if you’re in a starvation situation without other options and Joe next door kicks it, as long as he wasn’t carrying any communicable diseases, I don’t have a lot of practical or ethical compunction about you looking at Joe as a source of protein. All that being said, I’m listening to people acting not only like the cannibalism in Ep 8 is some freaky weird shit - which it is! don’t get me wrong, being in a situation where your only option is to eat people is inherently fucked up! - but that it’s a narrative choice that illustrates a moral and ethical vacuum in this group of characters, which completely misses the point? I’m hearing things like the fact that they didn’t immediately butcher the horse while people are neatly strung up for storage shows that they’d rather eat people, and how voraciously they were eating their “venison” stew shows how they are indelibly marked and changed by eating human flesh - even when they don’t know, I guess - and I’m like, no, they’re HUNGRY. They’re literally starving. That’s why they’re sucking down that stew. And I’m sure they’ll get around to butchering that horse as soon as David’s done terrorizing and molesting Ellie, which brings me to my first point:

The cannibalism is not what makes these people monstrous. What makes them monstrous is that they allow David to openly prey on children the way he treats Hannah and Ellie. What makes James monstrous is that he knows their raiding party attacked Joel and Ellie without provocation and Joel killed their guy in self-defense (don’t start none, won’t be none, m’fkr), and yet he still wants to revenge-obliterate Joel and Ellie. What makes David monstrous is the way he preys on the people in his care and particularly on the children in his care, like Hannah and Ellie. “Freaky cannibalism” is not what makes any of these people monstrous, it only means they’re starving and desperate. What makes them monstrous is their other behavior, that they could control, unlike starving to death if you don’t eat Jim-Bob when he kicks it and all you have otherwise are three cans of stewed tomatoes for a group of 25+ people.

Also, I realize I’m coming at this with hindsight because I’ve finished the season, but particularly if you’ve played the game, I feel like you should see this coming: The narrative point of the cannibalism isn’t about these people at all. It’s not even really about David. The cannibalism is about Joel. Joel has to see those bodies strung up in the back of the steakhouse, Joel has to understand that David and his group are - in Ellie’s words - cutting people into little bits, Joel has to understand that this is likely what they’re going to do to Ellie, and Joel has to see that he wasn’t able to rescue her from that, that he failed her again, that she only survived because she saved herself. Joel has to see those bodies stripped down to meat because it literalizes what’s going to happen in Ep 9, when he wakes up in the Firefly facility and Ellie is gone, and Marlene tells him she’s already headed into surgery - they’ve washed her, prepped her and are getting ready to expertly butcher her, to kill her and strip her down for parts, cut her into little bits, just like those bodies he saw hanging back at Silverlake would be, just like Ellie would have been if she hadn’t saved herself. He’s failed her again and again and again, he told Tommy, back in Ep, what? 6? 7? He fails her again in Ep 8, and she is fucking traumatized. You think he’s going to fail her this last time, if he can help it?

And that’s why, sure, people can argue the ethics of his actions all they want, but the overall story is so very VERY narratively satisfying, because Joel was never going to do anything other than what he did, and that’s what the story is ABOUT. This is the most cohesive story I’ve seen, on a character level, in a LONG damn time.

But I do think part of the ethical argument of whether you do or don’t agree with Joel’s decision should be informed by the fact that David’s group and the Fireflies are paralleled in Ep 8 and Ep 9. Maybe Ellie would have said yes to Marlene, but Marlene didn’t ask - she doesn’t care any more about Ellie’s consent than David did. Is Ep 8 repulsive because it’s happening in the back of a steakhouse and Ep 9 OK because it’s happening in an operating room? You’re going to be all “Ew, cannibalism, beyond the pale” when it’s about desperation and survival, and the meat is (usually, at least) already dead anyway, and a lot of other people would starve to death if you just let it rot, but you’re OK with Ellie, who’s still alive, being butchered to keep other people alive? No - to maybe keep other people alive, because this is all hypothetical, the Fireflies don’t even know if it will actually work? So, if it doesn’t work this time, how many teen-aged girls are you willing to butcher on a possibility? At what point does it become too many? Do we rebuild the world on the bodies of dead teen-aged girls? I submit this is part of the moral calculus that has to be considered at the end of S1, and it’s put into stark relief by what we see in Ep 8.

And that is the point of the cannibalism.

[tiredstressedemotionalmess]

i remember you saying at one point that ghoul would have some tattoos, mostly of sentimental value. i would absolutely LOVE to hear more about that if youd like to share :)

okay so most of his tattoos are things that relate to his past crewmates/people he's cared about who've been ghosted:

- a green eye on his forearm for the first joy he can remember being with, who looked after him when he was a baby/toddler. they died when he was still super young, around four or five, and so the oy thung he can really remember about them is that they had green eyes like him

- below that hes got this sort of scattering of little screws and bolts and things like that which wraps around his arm to represent the next crew that took him in; a bunch of gearheads who sort of sparked his passion for machines and building shit

- he definitely has one for the man that took him in after that (the guy referenced at the begining of ttid who drops him off with the crew that be meets jet in) but idk what it would be exactly. i need to think abt this one more 😅

- (a more ttid specific one here, and yes mentioning his and poison's tats is a revision i need to make leave me alone its not my fault i kept forgetting to mention them earlier 😭) he has a little chain of small wildflowers around his wrist on the opposite arm from the first two. there were always a BUNCH of flowers that grew around the old gas station they lived in, so flowers sort of always remind him of that time in his life

- also in reference to that time! he has a star on his chest, just a simple black outline right over where his heart is. hmmm i wonder if thats supposed to be a sort of memorial for anyone in particular 🤔 yes i promise i will bring this up in ttid

- minor ttid spoiler for this next one ig? idk its not anything super relevant but just in case you somehow care abt waiting to find out why ghoul knows how to read.

anyways, after being separated from the crew with jet, he gets found by this old bookbuzzer dude who lives in this doomsday bunker library type thing underground! he always talked about the value of reading and stories as vessels for the truth, so he makes it his mission to teach kid ghoul how to read bc its "his best weapon against bli, one they cant take from you", so he gets this open book on his shoulder. the pages are sort of fanning out, and theres a little illustration of a knife on one of them

- when he was older, like early teen years, he was running with with ine crew for a WHILE, almost as long as he had been with jet and that group. he basically thinks that hes found the people he's found his family, his permanent crew for the foreseeable future, so he gets a cluster of little bees and other bugs bc the group called themself "the hive" or "the swarm" or something dumb like that.

anyways! long story short, these fuckers screw him over, his face gets cut up yadda yadda yadda you know the drill, and so he covers the bugs with a raven to represent his bad luck that seems to follow him whenever he joins a crew,cand serving as a reminder for why he goes it alone for so long as its by far his biggest tattoo

- a few years after he officially joings party and kobra and jet, he gets each of their symbols tattooed in a line undernath the raven, and maybe theres some sentimental little quote or word undernath them but idk what id be lol ill get back to you in that

- also! he and poison have matching tattoos of bombs that say "shiny" across them! i talk more abt this in my list of party poison's tatoos that i still need to post so look out for that ig

- the final tattoo he gets is done a few days before they go into the city to save the girl. its of her boombox with the words "keep running" above/ around it and he gets it as sort of a prayer for her own safety, and so he can die with a reminder of her bc he jusg knows hes not making it out of that city alive.

i might think up some more later down the line for little moments or important things in ghoul's life, but these are all the biggest and most important ones to him!!! thanks for asking i fucking loved the excuse to talk abt all this :D

[adanaac]

Could I ask about your OC's? Specifically Ophicucus and Tsuru, I love how majestic Ophi is drawn and Tsuru fascinates me both with the concept and also how lovely you have illustrated him.

I hope you are well, and thank you again for helping me with my questions o7.

Sincerely HMAD.

oh good i get to talk about my son!!

my blorbo my beloved my babygirl he means everything to me

i made him in 2017 so hes sort of grown up with me (or i've grown up and realised things about him that i couldn't have when i was younger. i have so many complicated feelings abt this that i made a short comic about it last year)

to preface this im not a great writer dont expect good writing from me lol all i have is my personal experience and stealing tropes from stories i like

(got a lot to say so its all going under the cut. also a lot of death mention)

So. who is this dude

Tsuru (not his real name in-story, i havent come up with one im happy with), 18 years old, a ghost

he has a little sister, Ori, 15, who was meant to be my sona but then i just drew him more and like drawing him more anyway

first 2 drawings i ever did of him. he was based off natori natsume yuujinchou at this point, i dont remember why or if i even liked natori that much, but i remember distinctly hes based off him

u may have noticed he sort of looks older in my older art. this is because first of all art style drift lol but also as ive gotten older ive figured out that 18 isnt actually that old.

theres also a black haired version of him (two actually) its basically something like this ⬇️

important to know that everything about this dude is a convoluted metaphor

i lovingly summarize white tsuru as "people pleaser" and black tsuru as "nihilist prick" in my head and those are the things consistent throughout all the AU versions of him

(important differences only to me) alive tsuru doesnt act like black tsuru at all thats just his warped self perception (he also doesnt act exactly like white tsuru either)

also alive tsuru has black eyes and the shortest hair, black tsuru has blue eyes and slightly longer hair (also white tsuru is slightly taller than both of them)

if they all existed at the same time they would hate each other on sight but fortunately (unfortunately?) he is just 1 dude with issues

the general vibe is white tsuru is the "yippee floaty trickster" brand of ghost and black tsuru is the sort of ghost in horror media that stands just outside your field of view in the darkness dripping with blood

for the longest time only white haired tsuru was a "character", "black haired tsuru" existed just as his corpse at most, a footnote

but over the past 2 years ive figured that hes actually really fun to draw and play with, and in a different way than white tsuru

(wait fuck isnt this just abe trio. i do always almost accidentally draw tsuru when im trying to draw haruaki.... fuck.....)

(ive had tsuru for long enough that i just keep tacking details from my fav characters onto him.....)

halls smp

so ive been on this minecraft roleplay server called halls smp with other artists for the past 2 years, theres a new season of it every few months with a different theme each time to keep things fresh and ive just been making AU versions of tsuru for it so ive had a lot of opportunity to think about him

season 1 - halloween - jiangshi tsuru

this one is almost entirely unchanged from his base characterization because i didnt want to rp too much and also didnt know there would be future seasons at this point (also basically after the first day i gave up on being called "tsuru" bc its too hard to pronounce and everyone called me canada anyway)

same basic story, guy dies and theres now a white haired version of him (actually this is the same for all the AUs). in fact im pretty sure the black haired version of this one is exactly base alivetsuru. basically what ive been interested in exploring is different kinds of death, the events leading up to it, and what kind of person he becomes afterwards (but also in equal amounts im interested in making fun designs and playing minecraft and fucking around)

(this feels like the start of the beginners guide...)

i associate him with doves and at the time, tarot card 18: the moon, but in retrospect i now think he's card 0: the fool.

season 2 - winter - ishmael

guy who died at sea and eaten by a interdimensional whale and got isekaied. loosely conceptually based off moby dick, although i havent actually read it LOL but i did spend a week reading up on drowning and hypothermia

strangely, his death didnt create a white haired version of him, perhaps because he didnt have anything in life to give up his identity and replace it with. (and also remember the hair color doesnt actually mean dead/alive)

im only calling him ishmael now in retrospect, at the time he was just tsuru/canada

while designing him i had the biggest crisis bc i didnt want him to look to much like this old old oc i had (pic 1) but then i sucked it up and went with it anyway

i never got around to drawing it but his fingers are black from frostbite thats why he wears gloves all the time.

hes one of my favorite iterations of tsuru he looks so mad or upset all the time it makes me want to tease him, and also i think the grey skin and eyebags are very cute

i associate him with whales and tarot card 18: the moon

season 3 - golden grove - fox tsuru

honestly i think this is my favorite design of him i kinda popped off. i think im just a lot more comfortable working with warm colors. and also i associate white tsuru with foxes anyway (black tsuru is totally a catboy btw) (why is he not associated with cranes if his name is tsuru you ask?? bc cranes are hard to draw next question. he did start out based off cranes tbf, thats where the white hair and the tallness comes from)

dead fox possessing his dead human friend's body (although thats only the most literal interpretation of events; in all these iterations there's only ever been 1 person) the white tsurus are mostly interested in "moving on", whatever that means to each of them

btw my banner on this blog is him

hes sort of a set with s2 tsuru to me, mostly bc theyre the ideals that "white tsuru" and "black tsuru" hold taken to the extremes, and also theyre on opposite ends of the "hates people hates talking" and "loves to talk and mess with people" scale

anyway. hes tarot card 10: wheel of fortune to me

season 4 - wild west - mirage

the desert dragon, mirage. this is the season i started giving them actual names that arent "tsuru" and putting actual thought into the story lol previously it was just vibes-based character design. i have a short thing written about him thats meant to be the script for a comic, but i never got around to drawing it.

a sandworm-esque dragon that got tired of being a dragon and took up a passing witch's offer to give him a human form. this is all a metaphor i think. he has longer hair bc i wanted to spice things up a little

(also i consider this a form of death bc he left behind a giant sandworm/dragon skeleton somewhere in the desert)

the mirage-dragon thing comes from the shen 蜃 (which is used in the chinese word for mirage, 海市蜃楼 haishi shenlou, literally translating to "ocean city and shen's castle"). it's a clam-like dragon that produces foam that creates mirages over the ocean.

if u read "even if you slit my mouth", this is what the "shinkiro" or "shin" in recent chapters is. (i had one of those "smug because i already know all about the mythological creature a story is referencing" moments, which i also had with the four gods in yohaji bc i used to translate a game that mentioned them too)

isnt it romantic in a way? that the two places mirages are most known for happening are the ocean and the desert.

i dont have too much art of him because around this time i was uhhh (checks calendar) got back into yohaji and got consumed by it for a couple months lol (can u even blame me. it was july to september that was when like chapter 91 came out lol)

an earlier version of his design that i didnt end up using but i still really like this art

hes tarot card 9: the hermit to me

season 5 - fairytales/medieval - ophiuchus

NO FUCKING WAY YOURE NEVER GOING TO BELIEVE THIS for this one i actually ironed out what kind of people the black haired and white haired versions of him are. and also specifically this one isnt black tsuru but alive tsuru

i have a short poem thing about him, to summarize its like so many other fairytales about grateful animals granting their saviors something, but it doesnt end well for anyone

hes based off ophiuchus and asclepius of course, but also a lot of other snake stories in general, like the lindwurm and baishezhuan

to reiterate, for none of these stories do i consider there to ever actually have been 2 separate people, its always just 1 fucked up guy

i also sort of consider him to be a set with mirage, for both being serpents, and also for being "black tsuru whose personality is like white tsuru" and "white tsuru whose personality is like black tsuru", thereby codifying for myself that to him, someone who's stuck in his own head a lot, what matters most to him is his ideals, what all his actions are in pursuit of

he's tarot card 12: the hanged man to me

bonus: dnd character - alba

i also have a version of him i play for dnd, named alba to match with my party who all have color themed names. a halfling ranger who's very small and very loud. except he has amnesia and cant remember anything from before he was 12 (hes around 18 now according to him), including that he's actually a changeling who just transformed into a halfling to seem older than he is to work at a bar and nearly died in a bar fight.

(if you spend as much time fretting over semantics as me, you may note that changelings are medium sized and cannot transform into halflings which are small sized, for which my explanation is that he's been in halfling form since he was a kid, and after the amnesia he thought he actually was a halfling. this is also why his hair is white btw bc changelings have white hair. pre-amnesia in his "actual" halfling transformation he had black hair. i care too much about semantics but hey isnt dnd the semantics game anyway?)

anyway congrats alba for being the only version of tsuru that hasn't outright "died"!! if only because dnd has actual rules and i can't pull my usual death-ghost nonsense as easily!!!

hes very ship of theseus to me, all versions of him are. what makes up a person? what defines them? is it their face, their appearance, their name? their personality, their memories, their ideals? if you slowly replace each of those, one at a time, with a copy thats very similar to the original, at what point are you a different person?

as thanks for reading all of this i'll reveal what some of the metaphors are, the core of who tsuru, as a character, is to me. maybe this is fairly obvious, but all the death and personality weirdness stuff is a convoluted metaphor for depression and autism, as well as the experience of reading the things you've written years ago, seeing old photos and others talking about who you were years ago and finding that person wholly unfamiliar, that you understand the thought process of that person no more than you would a stranger's, as a result of having taken apart your identity and replaced it piece by piece with things from people you like more than yourself.

im always scared of scrutinizing tsuru too hard because he's just a weird reflection of myself, and i think i'll only be able to write a version of him thats more of a "whole person" once i figure that out for myself. the only way you see your own reflection is through a mirror after all, a flattened 2D surface.

haha this got kinda weird and depressing and personal at the end (mostly bc ive been writing this in the middle of the night, its now 4am)

after seeing my soul laid bare like this, if theres one takeaway, i think its pretty obvious why i'm so enamored by the parts of yohaji that i talk about often (huh wasnt this a post about my oc why did it become about yohaji)

oh yeah i just realised u probably also wanted to hear more about my yohaji version of tsuru specifically. honestly theres not really more to it i just like drawing him in situations. like of course the same themes apply but i just like drawing this dude thats 90% the reason hes my sona. like heres a pokemon au of him i drew recently bc i wanted to draw them as kids and also as pokemon gijinkas

anyway thats all. not really bc i could go on and on about him but this is way too long and also way too personal at this point. i think about him a disproportionate amount, i only have 2 other ocs i remotely care about and the extent of my thoughts for those guys is "i think hes fun 👍"

this has probably also been like, the 3rd most comprehensive description of tsuru that ive made, 1st being the thoughts in my head and 2nd being the past 5 years worth of DMs with my friend who i talk about tsuru with

(why was this sort of structured like the beginners guide. if youve seen the beginners guide tell me if im right or delusional. if u havent, go watch a playthrough of it, have an existential crisis, and then afterwards tell me)

[zmediaoutlet]

for the Bro Bone Bang, bc I had an afternoon free and why not, and isn't that in the spirit of bro boning, really?

rating: E length: 3100 tags: Established Relationship, Post-Episode: s10e06 Ask Jeeves, Face-Fucking

summary: Sam's looking for an old book; Dean's looking for a distraction.

for the @brobonebang prompt: in a dusty occult bookshop

***

“Dude, what is taking so long? I think I’m spontaneously developing asthma down here.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Sam says, but absently, because he’s paging through this book and—this might actually be the real thing, he’s thinking. A lot of it’s gibberish and there’s a lot of really fanciful business about dancing under the moonlight in the altogether (along with illustrations, which he really can’t show Dean or he’ll never get the book back), but some of these demon-summoning sigils look legit, and if those are legit then maybe this part, this part toward the back where the writing gets more serious—

“I’ve got the black lung,” comes Dean’s voice, a whole lot closer, and a hand settles on Sam’s lower back at the same time that he jerks, feeling caught somehow. Dean coughs, high and fake and pathetic, his flashlight pointed up toward his chin like a horror story. He mimes big sad eyes for a half-second and then smiles at Sam, perfectly irritating. “You know, that movie wasn’t half-bad.”

“If you ever say blue steel again it’ll be too soon,” Sam says, half-hiding the book. He doesn’t know why—Dean’s not interested.

Dean narrows his eyes at him, makes a half-hearted version of that stupid face, and then swings his flashlight up through the hanging crystals and the overly-gilt mirrors and the dusty bookshelf Sam’s been raiding, because on their way back from Connecticut he remembered a note in the Letters’ archive about an occult shop outside Trenton that had been a real marketplace, at least back in the ‘40s, and at this point Sam’s in the market for absolutely anything that will get that foul sore thing off of Dean’s arm.

Not, again, that Dean’s interested: “Can we go? I don’t know why you need more of this crap, not like we don’t have enough back home.”

“Why are you so antsy?” Sam says. He shoves the book into his bag, along with a few other odds and ends he’s picked up. Dean was playing with a huge brass-engraved magnifying glass downstairs—it’d be a good surprise, for when they get home, if he can pick it up without Dean noticing. Dean’s slow to answer and Sam zips up his backpack, turns around, finds Dean twirling the flashlight back and forth in his hands, making a weird zigzag pattern on the dusty carpet. “Dude, seriously. You’re like a little kid with a sugar rush.”

Or a murder-addict who’s just done a murder, his brain supplies.

Dean lifts a shoulder, sets the flashlight down on a table filled with faux-magical dreck—pointed up, like Sam’s, so that their little nook up here is filled with a thin barely-there light. “Want to get home,” he says. Surprisingly sincere. “I don’t know. Been a while. And—” He bites his lip, flash of white teeth in the dark. Sam raises his eyebrows, and Dean lifts a shoulder again. “Well, it was—kinda weird. Everybody knew we were brothers. Felt like—best behavior required, you know, when I just wanted to tell those cougar broads how big your dick really is.”

Sam blinks. Dean smiles at him, wide as a shark. “Wow,” he says, flat, “so—not a sugar rush but more of a—”

“A dick rush is totally a thing,” Dean says, crowding in, and Sam holds up his hands but just in surprise, really. He’s caught between the bookshelf and a curio cabinet with all manner of weird taxidermied birds and ugly cameos of people long-dead and Dean’s thigh sliding warm and easy along his, his hands on Dean’s chest and then on Dean’s waist, Dean immediately and thoroughly here, the smell of him, his heat. Feels like he burns hotter, since getting the mark.

Sam isn’t actually turned on by books in dead languages, no matter what Dean says, but with all this in his arms he’s getting there. Dean murmurs, “Maybe it’s a ball rush,” and he snorts, and Dean pushes his nose up against the bolt of Sam’s jaw and breathes out hot along his neck and whispers, “or a jizz rush, you think? All hopped up on your spooj?” and Sam groans, pinches Dean’s side, feels Dean’s mouth stretch into a grin against the hollow of his throat, and then he kisses there, and Sam gets a hand in his hair, feels it. Nice. Sweet, but then there’s teeth against his collarbone and it’s less sweet, and his dick really does start to wake up, then, a warm surge from his balls to his guts, Dean’s hair soft against the underside of his chin, Dean’s hands creeping up under his flannel, scratching through his undershirt.

“Thought the whole point was you didn’t get any,” Sam manages, and Dean hums against his throat, where he’s reapplied his mouth, with a hint of teeth. “Can’t be a jizz rush if you haven’t gotten some, right? Don’t you dare give me a hickey.”

“Like you wouldn’t love it,” Dean says, with enough of an edge that Sam’s eyes open again onto the half-dark, surprised—turned on—hard to tell, at this point. He does bite, but only a quick sharp nip, and Sam grips him by the freshly-cut hair, pulls him back, looks down, and Dean’s smiling, lazy, wide. His eyes are so dark they almost, almost look—but then Dean turns his head and Sam catches the white edge and his heart restarts, and thumps heavier in his throat, his fingertips cold, his dick—yeah, he’s interested.

“What are you thinking?” Sam says. He drags a hand down Dean’s chest, feels the soft of it, his giving skin. Only been a week or so, since they finished up that job with Kate and did quite a bit of celebrating—it should be easy to wait, but. Dean comes in against his throat again, pressing against him full-body, and Sam maybe sees what Dean means, about the rush. There’s a motel that they were vaguely heading toward before they broke in here, but maybe they could get one a little closer.

“I’m thinking,” Dean says, soft, “how that table could probably hold our weight,” and Sam gets a chance to say, what, before Dean drags him bodily backwards, and they stagger two steps with Sam matching Dean’s strides before Dean’s ass hitches up against the table and—it shifts a good four inches but holds, against the carpet, and some overpriced glass thing goes crashing over the edge, but who cares because Dean’s getting his legs around Sam’s hips and dragging Sam down over the top of him by his hair and Sam barely catches his weight on the table but then he’s kissing Dean, so everything else seems kind of secondary, at that point.

Dean kisses—fiercer, now. Wanting more, now. Sam thinks he knows why and it should worry him but it’s frankly hot as fuck, and he gets a grip on Dean’s hip and gives as good as he gets, biting Dean’s bottom lip and making him groan, smearing his mouth along Dean’s jaw, biting there—hard pressure between them, Dean’s nails dragging against his neck, heat rising. Fuck—yeah, it’s good, Dean wanting him this badly. Like those first heady days, a decade ago, when they were scared and young and hurting and only this made it better, except now—

“I will pay you ten dollars if you suck my dick,” Dean says, and Sam laughs, goes for his belt right away, says, “Little low, don’t you think?” while he crushes his crotch right up against Dean’s, grinding through the double-layer of denim, and Dean blinks at him all stupid and doesn’t seem to know how to let Sam’s hair go, his thighs clenching around Sam’s hips. Sam grins at him, takes another taste of his mouth—hot, absurdly plush—whispers against his lips, “Buy me dinner, at least,” and breaks Dean’s hold to slide down his body and haul his jeans and boxers down the requisite distance and Dean’s dick slaps up against his stomach—christ, he really is hard, has been—maybe was getting hot for it downstairs, dicking around while Sam was trying to work, and Sam goes down on his knees while Dean pushes up on the table—some heavy curio sliding off and slamming into the carpet—and Sam doesn’t waste time, knows Dean’s dick and knows what he likes and spits on him, slicks it down with a fist, following right away with an open, soft mouth, gets Dean to groan like he’s been shot, gets him to give it up.

Yeah—better now, so much better than when they were younger. Sam’s only ever blown this dick and at this point he’s familiar with its behavior. Just the taste is good: bitter, always, because Dean’s diet is appalling, but the salt, the slight sweat—yeah, it’s good. Sam screws down to the base, knowing how to open right up, and Dean yelps, his hips arching, his thigh jerking against Sam’s shoulder. Sam lets him. He can hold Dean down but it’s more fun to have him all body-shock, sweating and staggered, helpless to whatever Sam wants to do to him. He releases the head from his throat with a gasp, lets the gooey spit track down as he slides his lips along the shaft, holding it in a loose grip while he licks firmly at Dean’s balls, dragging his tongue between them, almost-harsh in a way that Dean pretends he doesn’t like but always makes his dick spit wet.

“Christ alive,” Dean says, faint up above, and Sam smiles. He sucks in one nut, careful but not too careful, and Dean curls forward over him, groaning, gripping Sam’s hair hard enough that it really pulls. Another little pulse in Sam’s gut. He breathes through the noise he can’t help, drags soft teeth up the side of Dean’s shaft, goes back to work more seriously, shutting out the dust-smell and the worry that’s with him all the time these days and focusing on the fat soft sweetness of Dean’s cockhead under his tongue, the easy give of the slit when he drags his tongue through it, the way the ridge pops through his lips when he pulls all the way off, breathes hot over it, goes right back down. Dean came back from being a demon all clean-shaven, a bizarre surprise, but Sam likes it now, likes tracing over Dean’s soft skin and dragging his fingers down between Dean’s legs and finding him sweaty, bare, nothing between Sam and his goal.

Dean spreads his legs as wide as he can in his jeans, lets Sam play around. Sam nurses at the head of his dick, digs two knuckles hard into Dean’s taint and takes the drip of precome like a reward. Hard, low groan, and Dean cups the side of his head, fingers tangling in Sam’s hair, says, “Fuck, Sammy,” all thick and satisfied and admiring, too, like he forgot somehow that Sam would do this once a day if he could, like he doesn’t love every minute of getting Dean flat on his back and making him come so hard he forgets everything in the world that’s not this.

A shift, though—Dean’s thigh drags down Sam’s shoulder and he gets his boots back on the ground. His jeans slide down to his knees and Sam helps them along, enjoying the flex of Dean’s hamstrings, the pop of muscle in one quad when he shifts his weight. A hand on the back of his head, then—and one on his shoulder, keeping him close—and Dean feeds his dick all the way in, to the back of Sam’s throat, makes him cough—and he pulls back, lets Sam adjust, but he doesn’t let go. Sam blinks the tears away, looking up, and Dean’s looking right back at him, steady, mouth open and gleaming wet in the dim. Sam kneels up higher, palms Dean’s ass, takes a deep breath, and when Dean feeds in that time Sam takes him all the way to the base, nose ground against the shaved skin so tight he can feel the prickle of new growth, Dean’s ass flexing hard against his palms. Trying to get deeper. When Dean pulls out Sam gasps for air and says, raw, “Do it, come on—do it, if you’re going to—” and Dean shoves right back in, hard enough that Sam almost chokes, and he swallows and opens wide and pulls Dean in tighter, nails in his ass, and Dean laughs soft and high-wild up above him and says somewhere deep past the ringing in Sam’s ears you’re the best brother in the goddamn world, you know that? and then he fucks in, and Sam gives himself over to it, mindblanked, free.

Dean comes in his throat. He coughs and Dean ignores his coughing, crushes in deeper, groaning loud and keeping Sam ground down right against his crotch. Sam swallows, lightheaded, gripping Dean’s hips, and it’s not until Dean says fuck! and releases his hold on Sam’s hair that Sam can even taste him, thick and bitter and bleachy-familiar, this instant flush of absolute want thrumming through him the moment it registers. That flavor that’s meant Dean for a third of his life.

After coming Dean’s hands and thighs and knees are weak. Sam gets a hand on his wrist, knocks his legs out from under him, and he drops hard enough that it sounds like it hurts, but at this moment Sam doesn’t care, with his lips sore and his throat bruised—and Dean doesn’t care either, swaying against Sam as he gets to his feet, helping while Sam shoves his jeans out of the way, sliding boneless warmth over his hips, his waist, opening up easy for Sam’s dick, letting Sam slot it in past his throat in one quick slide. Fuck, the heat of him—the slick soft of him—his body so easy, opening up all around Sam, like it’s the only thing he’s wanted all day. The unaccustomed sharpness before is all gone and he takes Sam fucking into his throat like a doll, closing his lips and breathing heavy through his nose and looking up with this heavy-lidded addict’s gaze while Sam rides his face, his body loose, his skull heavy in Sam’s hands, his tongue fat and slick and everything about him the only thing, the only thing that makes it worth—the reason Sam—

Sam pulses, shuddering. He pulls out after the first furious flexing pump, creaming Dean’s throat and then jerking himself through the rest. Before he can pull away Dean kisses the head, takes a pump against his lips, and then his cheek when Sam slides his dick hot-eyed against his stubble, the prickle of it a spine-tingling jolt, Sam’s balls spasming and giving up another helpless spurt that jets across Dean’s cheekbone, gleaming in the dim.

“Lunatic,” Sam breathes, brain circling the drain, and Dean licks his fat lips and looks straight up at him and the jizz starts to drip, sliding into the hollow of his cheek, and Sam reaches down and hauls him up his jacket in one furious pull, drags him in against Sam’s body—they crash back against the curio cabinet and something smashes—and he licks in one broad swipe from the corner of Dean’s mouth to the corner of his eye, his own come saltier, strange—and Dean opens up easy when Sam feeds it right back into his mouth, kissing him deep, shoving in where Dean’ll have to swallow it.

Dean swallows. Sam presses their foreheads together, catching his breath, and Dean holds a flat hand against Sam’s chest, where his heart feels like he’s just coming down from a marathon. Their noses brush and Sam covers Dean’s hand. His breath slows, and the world comes back in like a lazy tide: the nine pm emptiness of the store; the smell of dust and cheap incense underlying the smell of sweat and come and warm end-of-day bodies; the way the carved edge of the cabinet might actually be doing something permanent to his kidney. He doesn’t want to move. Screw his kidney.

“How much magickal crap did we just break?” Dean says, soft against the edge of Sam’s jaw.

He doesn’t sound like he cares, much. Sam sighs. “We’ll leave Eleanora some cash.”

Dean huffs, and gets his other hand up against Sam’s chest, and pushes off with a groan. Sam’s eyes are well-adjusted enough that he can see every detail of Dean’s face. The crow’s feet, the easy relaxed curve of his mouth. Freckles, even, when they’re this close, and he lifts a hand and drags his thumb over Dean’s wet cheek, the skin tacky before it’s rough with growing beard. Dean looks back at him, steady. All his sharpness and frantic edge just… smoothed away, until he’s only Sam’s brother. The truest part.

Dean’s hand slides up to the side of his neck, squeezes softly. Heat at the back of Sam’s eyes, from nowhere, just from—how many times has Dean held him, just that way—and then Dean says, gentle, “My ass is getting cold here, man.”

Sam snorts. “Yeah,” he says, and the corner of Dean’s mouth lifts, and he ducks in and kisses Sam quick and close-lipped and then pushes entirely away to drag up his jeans. Sam zips up, redoes his belt, sitting still in the pool of warmth that feels like it’s issuing from somewhere around his breastbone. His head full, again, but only of—that last, best part. What counts, in the end, for everything.

“Damn,” Dean says, and Sam looks up to find him holding what looks like a pair of glass scales, cracked and refracting the light a hundred different ways. “I’m blaming you for that one.”

“Don’t even,” Sam says, and Dean smirks, but when they leave they pile the broken crap on the big old-fashioned cashier counter along with the four hundred bucks in cash they have between them. When Dean’s back is turned Sam slips the magnifying glass into his bag, too, and adds an extra twenty to the pile.

They re-lock the back door, re-arm the sad excuse for a security system. “Guess it was worth the pitstop after all,” Dean says, rocking on his heels in the damp alley.

“Guess so,” Sam says, thinking of the book in his bag. Cursed marks, damned souls.

Dean grins at him and it sparkles and that just hits Sam in the gut, like it always does, every time. “I’m thinking—a beer, and then we hit the motel in Wilmington, and in the morning we get those cinnamon rolls, you remember, at Sue-Ann’s? Big as your head, and that really is saying something?”

Sam sighs. “Sounds like a plan,” he says, and Dean says, “Awesome,” and Sam follows his brother to the car, loving him despite everything.

[kinocomix]

untitled project devlog 8: themes, and pain

At first, when I said I wanted to discuss the themes of my project, I thought that maybe there would be some convenient article, book or philosophy deep dive I could reference, which does not seem to be much the case, seeing as how my approach to themes is very personal. so… here’s some thoughts.

In case it’s not abundantly obvious by now, the story features a band and music quite prominently. One of my original elevator pitches for the comic was “think metalocalypse meets bandslam, but with the scope of Ernest et Celestine and the presentation of a black and white Wes Anderson film” which is the vaguest shit ever and I’ll eventually get my head out of my ass long enough to stop worrying about spoiling the story. My point is: the act of being creative is at the forefront of the story. What drives it forward is something I won’t mention in this series, but a lot of ideas emerge when you decide to write something as personal as making art. Things like purpose, belonging, self worth, expression, communication, validation are things that every artist or musician deals with quite regularly and no story about creativity would be complete without them.

The first post ever made to this blog was a webcomic name fancomic that, looking back, isn’t bad but remembering the reason why I made it is what makes me cringe. I wanted attention. When I started making art I expected to be famous in 100 days. literally, I wish I was exaggerating. 

In every artist’s journey with art, they reach the point where they realize that the only things really worth pursuing are the things they’re passionate about. Sometimes this is drawing commissions, other times people do commissions to keep themselves alive. A lot of times, the art people are passionate about barely gets any attention at all. It's a fact that a lot of creatives secretly know that people who get successful doing something they love are very lucky. 

It takes maturity to be happy for people and proud of their hard work as opposed to being an envious child but that doesn’t mean we don’t secretly want success as well. If I could have enough dedicated readers to make my comics for a living but never be famous I’d do that in a heartbeat. Every big shiny thing is destined to accumulate dust, I don’t want to be a big shiny thing, I want to be a reliable hill you can trust to be there year after year. It took me a while to get to the mindset I work with today. 6 years might not feel like a lot when you consider the insane careers some artists had, but as far as people go 6 years is a lot. I graduated, finished a book, worked on 2 short film productions that have both won awards (one of which for my sound design!!), moved house, freelanced, started a stable job, been to therapy, gotten an operation, nearly lost people, been through an explosion, an economic collapse; and I think that’s just the stuff I’m remembering off the top of my head. 

Finding documentation and sources about this kind of stuff is pretty difficult because this is not what gets publicized about media. However, if you pay enough attention some similarities start to appear.

The manga Berserk is pretty famous for its elaborate artwork and story. It doesn’t really need an intro and I’ve been told I need to read it which I plan on, but that’s not the point right now. As you may know, Kentaro Miura, the author and illustrator of the manga passed away in 2021. For fans of the series, while very tragic, this wasn’t all that surprising. The dude doesn’t fill in black. he crosshatches everything. An admirable feat, which makes you thankful that a friend of his, Kouji Mori, decided to finish making the manga after he passed away. 

Many other manga share this. Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue, has been known to frequently go on hiatus. So has Hunter x Hunter by Yoshihiro Togashi. A lot of times, an artist’s undying faith to their work is because of how passionate they are about it, the people involved in making it or even the audience. I forget the exact interview this is from, but Linkin park has gone on record for saying that sometimes they need to consider the audience. you see them always excited to talk about how experimental their music is, which is great, but when you know someone’s on the receiving end of what you’re making, it’s bound to make you think a bit differently. 

This video of George RR Martin and Stephen King chatting kind of outlines the different approaches they have to writing. One of the most iconic quotes is “how do you write so fast?” Spoken by Martin. Now I’m not here to talk about Game of Thrones, trust me I couldn't care less but it does bring up one point worth talking about which is inspiration, discipline and what that has to do about your malleability as an artist.

This is the trailer for H.E.R.A., one of the short movies I worked on as a sound designer and general handyman. It was written and animated by my friend Alaa Fleifel with the help of some wonderful fellow artists and animators for some of the scenes. Alaa and his studio Phat Chik are an example of what I’m talking about.

pictured: Alaa. 

When I talk about being malleable, I don’t mean that in the X-men mystique “I chameleon my way around the world” school of art though that can work in some cases, sure. What I refer to is one’s ability to keep making their art. During the production of H.E.R.A., there were at many points obstacles that would have shot down most movie productions. The sound designer had to prioritize staying alive so he had to unfortunately quit the project midway. Alaa had to juggle a fulltime job, commissions and a rapidly decaying economic system that meant most clients didn’t want to pay well anymore so he had to outsource some of the background art and scenes to friends and animators that he paid out of pocket. The production timeline lasted a year and 8 months, most of that time was spent patching up the team in the background. Working on H.E.R.A. taught me that there is no project in existence that is the result of one human being. Everyone has at least one person to give them advice, someone who goes “hey, I know a guy” and very often that is not just one person. When band line ups change, it’s sometimes treated with an air of disregard.

“oh, it’s just the drummer”

“it’s the rhythm guitarist, their job is pretty easy anyway”

Had Alaa waited around for inspiration or permission to make his film, it would have never happened. Sure, a lot of why we get to watch the absurdist sci-fi acid trip that is H.E.R.A. is due to some luck and connections, but a lot of it is also due to a rejection of the notion that inspiration is what primarily fuels creativity. 

So what does that say about the story? usually I find it helpful to present my themes in the form of questions, so here’s what i’ve been able to come up with:

Who does art/music belong to?

How much of the soul of art and music gets lost in translation? 

How do you balance making stuff for yourself and an audience once you have one?

How much does inspiration really matter?

I need to be honest with you about something. 

I’ve been kind of avoiding talking about the more… personal themes at play here.

it’s not because I don’t know what they are, really. They just come from a place of deep discomfort and humiliation for me. I’ve obviously become a much different human being over the course of my 27 years on the rapidly traveling rock in space but it’s never not weird for me remembering the dumb things I did or said growing up or while I was finding my footing as a writer. There are entire projects and dozens of pages of things that I threw out the window before I felt confident enough in something to be able to share it. there’s a lot of fucking up you do while growing up and not surprisingly, I feel more comfortable seeing my weird feelings in fiction than I do laid out in bullet points in a devlog. So I promise you this:

the people in the story are going to be human. Faults, warts and all. The only thing I ask of you is to know that while those warts are real, they are not mine anymore. Every day that passes, I grow a little bit more, and maybe at some point I’ll grow tall enough that the light trickling through the trees will feel safe enough to fly.

Merry Christmas, and may every year bring a little bit more sun.

Devlog updates on tuesdays. 

[basedkikuenjoyer]

What? No no, let’s back this whole thing up. Shut it down. I need a full explanation and entire story behind Granny Ori here. Welcome to the inner circle of only the finest minor blorbos girl. I love her. And Shanks’s blasé attitude telling her to worry about old age. Good to know Cavendish, Leo, and the rest of those dudes are solid allied captains. Naturally, if we’re looking at them being involved in Egghead then any amount of fleshing out such a concept in parallel stories bolsters the hype. This has been an idea floating around, needing to have some discretion when it comes to followers. We’ll see a terrific climax for this chapter leading into a break week but ultimately my main takeaway is that 1079 is a bit uncommon in Egghead for simply building on what 1078 started. The more this unfolds the more it all seems to be coming together rallied around a central thematic core.

Figure I’ll finish the thought because we’re back to time not really mattering all that much. It isn’t just seeing Shanks’s interactions with his fleet, we’re getting to see a lot more of how the man operates than we’re used to. Is it not consistent with the type of growth we’ve been on about for Luffy? Especially when you add in the Giants. It’s that whole incidental impact, the idea Kid made things a lot worse by making a pretty stupid faux pas. Shanks is just so damn brutally efficient here and I love every panel of it. Especially the very cool display of Foresight. Put a pin in that. Oh and hey, here we are also answering a little lingering question about Wano’s end again. It was just like Kaido @ Marineford; Shanks consistently seems to be interested in something a little beyond simple good and evil. I’d say it’s consistent with someone who knows his fate is to be “in between” so he’s made his journey about protecting what he fancies. But he lacks a certain drive to be the one to actually pull the trigger. This is what’s always stuck with me about him:

Just doesn’t seem like the type to have grand ambitions of his own and he can be a little too conflict averse. If we’re getting this involved though, and especially with the echo of how nice Uta parallels from Film Red, I think it’s time to give the weird element of how similar Kiku ends up being to Redtaro its due. That’ll come tomorrow and I hope you all enjoy it. As for Kidd? I hate it for the guy but it’s right up our alley here. You had every chance to learn the lesson in Wano and refused, that came around to bite you. Just like Ace & Izo...shoulda listened to Killer dude. He’s the one I really feel sad for. Kidd’s acting like Luffy used to, Luffy on Egghead is at least acting more like Shanks now. There’s a solid point there Kidd is useful for illustrating; seek freedom, but too much of a rebellious spirit and unwillingness to play the part when it’s advantageous leads to things like making new enemies incidentally. The Giants by all accounts should welcome one of the men who ended Big Mom. The Blackbeard ship showing up is interesting too for what it could say about Law...but that’s more nebulous since we don’t even know if it’s actually Blackbeard. Anyways, time for time shenanigans. It’s very cool to combine a big Foresight Haki scene with...

More of this with York! I love S-Snake’s lil “You got it dude” thumbs up. Shit...that means she could petrify me doesn’t it? I feel like I might be able to resist the real Hancock. It’s on brand, we’re seeing York in a light very reminiscent of Monet with the Punk Hazard kids mixed with a dash of this motif of rules and hierarchies. It’s also York, who we argued revealed herself as a pretty solid foil for Kiku last time, using a bit of that same mindset and aptitude. This same logic is why Kiku ran and hid behind Zoro before fucking with Urashima, of course she knows she’s twice his height.

Very trendy, very heirophant. It’s the narrative structure I’ve been looking out for a long time though. Reveal the mystery, go back and fill in the gaps that are all there around the breadcrumbs that were always hiding in plain sight. Like I said last time though, this just feels a little more like a prelude than a payoff. It’s too insular when you have so many ways to roll in what’s come before. The real meat of Egghead is still to come, and I for one am very excited.

[theowritesfiction]

'City of Walls and Secrets'

I remember my first viewing of ATLA and getting a look at proper Ba Sing Se inside the inner wall and going... oh fuck that is astonishing. BSS isn't the beating heart of Earth Kingdom. It literally IS the Earth Kingdom. Everything else just feels like backwater - and I suspect that is the attitude in Upper and Middle Rings of the capital.

Joo Dee's faraway smile remains the stuff of nightmares. There's no war in Ba Sing Se, indeed. It was interesting to see Aang and the Water Tribe kids getting their first good look at what inequality truly means. Giving the Avatar and his friends a posh Upper Ring mansion to butter them up makes so much sense. Honestly, the political situation in Ba Sing Se is set up so fascinatingly, and also realistically. There's something very chilling about the Dai Li stranglehold on information.

Jet's obsession with Zuko just fascinates me. Smellerbee and Longshot: dude, we were supposed to be starting over here. Jet: shut up, I have entered stalker mode. <3 And boy, does Jet become obsessed with Zuko and Iroh. I just love how earlier I praised Jet for his plans both to destroy the village (obviously horrible, but it was an efficient plan!) and stealing the food for refugees. Here he's just... I'm done being clever! It's gay sword fight time! But watching Jet get dragged away was more depressing than I thought it would be...

I enjoyed the plan of sneaking in on the king during a party. I had to laugh at Toph writing Aang and Sokka off as nothing more than busboys. Katara and Toph made for very fetching young ladies, though. After the rocky start to their relationship, we're seeing more instances of Katara and Toph working together very well... even if they ended up soliciting the help of someone they really shouldn't have asked. Long Feng is the kind of opponent that the group have never faced before. The Gaang don't think like Azula and don't have the tools to beat Long Feng at his own game.

I know that the party for the bear is supposed to be cute and funny, but to me it's illustrative of the neglect that Kuei is showing for his subjects, living in a bubble and indulging in excesses. This reminds me so much of the apocryphal story of Caligula making his favorite horse a consul for the year. Kuei gets 50 Jerk Points before we've even seen him.

Sokka's plan of sneaking into the party is so dumb that even Aang shuts it down right away. Sokka is now 1 from 2 for plans this season.

Lastly, Long Feng telling the Gaang how things work in Ba Sing Se while in the meantime, Jet is being brainwashed by the Dai Li... that was very chilling. Also, using Appa to threaten Aang and keep him in line is a major dick move. Welcome to the Jerk Points contest, Long Feng, you have been awarded 60 points.

Jerk Points for Book 2:

Iroh - 550 Azulon - 300 Ursa, General Fong  - 200 Aang - 160 Zuko - 120 Ozai, Toph Beifong - 100 Sokka - 70 Long Feng - 60 Bumi, Lao Beifong, King Kuei - 50 Pakku - 30

[shinraapologist]

light novel reread, vol. 2 ch. 6: sword and stress

i LOVE THIS CHAPTER. i love this chapter. i have so much to say but i have no clue how much of it is intelligent whatsoever.

it has what could be one of my favorite yasuda illustrations of all time as the chapter cover. i LOVE him. look at him. i can't believe he isnt more popular. do you guys know about him. has he been posted on tumblr yet. ill post him again as his own post because i love him so fucking much.

this is the first instance of shizuo's point of view. i. cannot stress enough how much i love him.

shizaya people, i get it. this is blatantly homoerotic. my toxic trait is loving when media is unintentionally queercoded. like youre wrote them that way dont get mad at me

i love haruna, honestly. she's kind of a stereotypical yandere side character, but she's also the perfect foil to nasujima.

this chapter does so much for both anri and shizuo. this is my favorite chapter in the 2nd novel, i think.

nasujima is such a scumbag and the fact that he 100% gets what he deserves is just so satisfying. insert mikados rant where hes like "i LIKE happy endings! i LIKE cliches!".

this is a turning point for anri. i like anri a lot, but i feel like i'm going to end up really loving her as she gets some actual development in the novels.

this is the moment that anri accepts herself as a wielder of saika, i think. i really wish i could see this reveal for the first time again.

first of all. sad little wet puppy of a man. i love him so so so fucking dearly. ive said it before but i love shizuo on like. a level amount as i do shinra. i LOVE shizuo. shinras just my blorbo because i have a long standing obsession with very normal looking and pathetic men. another toxic trait im afraid 😔 second of all, im really dissapointed that narita chose to say there was "no one in his vicinity" and make a random homophobic aside about izaya (and not even that they hate each other. that izaya is a man), rather than acknowledge that shizuo already receives love and has people in his life who have already been shown to care about him but currently isnt able to accept it. in the first two novels, it's already been established that he's incredibly close to tom, who's stuck with shizuo since middle school, that him and simon think well of each other despite simon's strong pacifist personality, that he's been friends with shinra since he was like five years old, and that he and celty are each other's best friends, not to mention that his family is supportive and loves him unconditionally, especially kasuka. it's just lazy/bad writing to say shizuo is unlovable and then follow that with a passage about him believing "he wasn't allowed to have love for anyone".

narita: this man is a freak. hes a monster hes unlovable. narita, writing celty immediately after: this freak is SO cool. i fucking love this guy

as president of the shizuo and celty are best friend fanclub, this screenshot is something that can be so precious to me, personally, (its saved on my laptop as badass dude)

narita: everyone is scared of shizuo. theyre too scared to love him narita, writing shizuo: thats stupid! im the one whos scared!

it could be my processing issues, but i feel like this is so much clearer in the novels than the anime.

no further comment.

the way that shizuo speaks to his anger as if its a seperate entity from him is very interesting to me. baby boy please go to therapy <3

she's so real for this. i love her.

this is the last chapter of volume 2. all thats left is the epilogue/next prolouge

[stop-him]

Be Honest, Art is Worthless to You

I remain - well, I don't know - surprised? baffled? dismayed? - at the number of takes that cross my path that complain about AI art, and how it's stealing from artists. That itself isn't the issue so much as then those same people turn around and almost in their very next breath justify some form of art piracy - music, movies, and so on.

I submit to you: this is the world you built, and you have no standing upon which to express outrage over AI now, because this is simply the logical extension of how we treat art. One poster put it like this: "companies need to learn that they're competing with free". That right there is brilliantly accurate and at the same time the very symptom of the problem. Why go see a movie or buy a DVD when you can sign up to a streaming service with hundreds of shows for the price of one each month? Why sign up for a streaming service when you can bum a password off a friend or relative? And then you loudly complain about how some new season's special effects are crap or the animation's all janky, and my dudes, that shit costs money, money which you are dead set against spending.

I get it: times are tough, the economy sucks, sure. And you are fortunate enough to live in a time where technology enables the taking of art without paying money. Let me tell you (cue someone with the Man Yells At Cloud meme), when I was young and I couldn't afford all the albums I wanted, I had to budget and make hard choices and set priorities, because stealing a vinyl LP was not nearly as easy as freeloading off the Internet. Nowadays, people can get anything they want all the time, so they come to believe they are entitled to everything, all the time. At least as far as media goes.

And in the graphic arts, like drawing and such, it's not like the signs haven't long been painted in bright day-glo colors, warning of exactly this fate. Anyone who's an artist or follows artists has heard horror stories of the entitled would-be commissioner who demands high-quality work and then is outraged to the point of abusiveness when expected to pay more than a couple bucks for it. We hold these people up as assholes of the highest order but then expect a band to let us have their music for free. "Go on tour! Sell merch!" we say. A person spends their youth practicing guitar or the drums so they can become a glorified t-shirt salesman.

So how could it be any shock or surprise that AI developers would treat the entire visual library of the Internet as their own personal reservoir of data? Why not? What ethical rule do we use for media that would stand in their way? Why should graphic artists and illustrators be treated any differently than musicians or filmmakers?

No, this is the life people asked for, only some people didn't expect that system to turn around and bite them.

Frankly, I've lost the will to argue with people about piracy itself - the rationalizations are too entrenched and cross-pollinated. Cue another meme, of the two muscular men clasping hands: one is a Communist who thinks all art should be free and the other is an Anarcho-Capitalist who's certain that free is the perfect market value as long as you can get it.

So you do you, kids - but admit it, to yourselves if not out loud, that you don't actually value art that much, if you can't give an artist so much as the price of a value meal at McDonald's in exchange for their work. And then, when the crowd clamoring for free art eternally and always turns and begins to chew at your own art and industry, don't be surprised when you encounter a certain lack of sympathy.

[semi-imaginary-place]

the diofield chronicle ch 7

how did empire forces get so far into diofield. their ships only ever landed on the south and east costs but somehow there's encampments all over diofield? weird.

yeah fredret is like cracking under the weight of his own expectations, he's much harsher, desperate? fevered? now. and andrias is also acting odd, frustrated? resigned? an odd meeting over all defeating the remnants.

yeah they both seem more hostile towards each other and i dont know why. really what has gotten into them, why has fredret abandoned strategy

yeah rigyare strand was bait. persona bait too.

the noble who raised andrias was important! still dont know who. when andrias says fred is the same person it sounds like he's repeating a line.

so they did plan to kill them all anyways treaty or no treaty. good to know that is a story about grey vs grey there's at least one black. where's andrias in this final battle.

wow its taken me to long to realize that zevatian is coverart dude. yeah I got spoiled on that ending bit. nice bit of foreshadowing earlier about andrias valuing only power. did he choose the empire because they were stronger?

A one of my bigger complaints is that the game lacked a few lines about fred's change after assuming the throne. I would have liked that to have been fleshed out a bit more, like is it the pressure and power of the position getting to him?

andrias changes are easier to follow the logic of as his big plans entered their endgame and crunch time is on. Though I do wonder how necessary it all was. There must have been plenty of ways to draw out zevatian and if he didn't think fred worthy there was no reason to set him up as king (i think this was mainly to put himself in a better position). im assuming the empire planted him originally for levantia's assassination, i wonder if he kept receiving orders after that. Would they really just let go a highly trained agent to go live in the countryside instead of repositioning him back into court? oh an option could be andrias was genuinely on alletain's side up until fredret became king at which point he became disillusioned with him and alletain in general.

Over all this game is decent but not great (cant speak about gameplay since i only played the tutorial map and it didn't jive with me). I found the plot to be interesting but i like political dramas. rather than have some 16 playable characters I think with its limited development resources they should have focused on fewer characters that were more fleshed out. gameplay wise it seemed a little redundant too since you can only deploy 4(8) at a time, a large chunk just wont be used. i find it interesting that in this game everyone gets along less the further into the game you get. not that many games go this path (rdr2 off the top of my head).

i don't know what happens to iscarion so im gonna choose to live in the reality where he's alright and off being robin hood or something.

oh also i wish they had used the 3 modeling artists that made tales of arise, that style of character model would have better fit the character illustrations.

its weird how few people have played this game its not a masterpiece but its not a bad game (well not that i played it either really jsut watched ~10 different playthroughs to get all the dialogue)