#sal sad sack

[bunny-yuck]

ding dong

[meanbossart]

cover for my short inbetween chapter for the SAD SACK series. You can read it for free here! 18+ only

[hunnymcbunny]

•you know you’d trade your life for any ordinary joe.•

[oathbreakerapologist]

been drawing Sal from @sadsackcomic because that comic has utterly consumed me. I haven't read Sortie yet so this is based solely on Sad Sack alone

been thinking about Sal as a representation of the duality of the mission of the group overall—on one hand, a sense of righteous retribution, justice, healing; on the other hand, incredible violence increasingly for its own sake—and as a Levinasian duality, the Face and the Other condensed into a single man, a denial of both self- and other-ness (relations denied, that is, to himself as much as those around him)

[barbatusart]

hey that ask/answer about sad sack/sortie semiotics reminded me to ask u a question I've been thinking/journalling about for like weeks now: how deliberate/intentional/meaningful is the symbol of mask-wearing in sad sack? I've been concocting a theory about the significance of Garv being the first to take his mask off in A Small Plot of Land & Sal being the only one still wearing a mask in AMF & how the concealing/revealing of the face maps to shame/acceptance of their own acts of violence, and I'd love to know if I'm reading into it way too hard lmao

along those same lines when I read the lil scene towards the end of A Small Plot of Land in which Stone can't take his own mask off by himself, I immediately interpreted it as a metaphor for Stone having something to hide about his own motivations in his relationship with Sal, which. uh. hoooooo boy I was not expecting the direction that would ultimately take but MAN it was fascinating to see that go down

you do some amazing work dude, you're an incredible storyteller and I'm stoked to see the direction that sortie goes (I haven't read any of it yet bc I read sad sack like a month ago and I'm waiting to read sortie until I feel like I'm done rereading/thinking about sad sack)

ahhh fuck goddamnit you caught me on glass no.2 hahaha. ah man im thrilled about this ask, thank you for taking the time to really mull over the visuals! putting this under a cut because it's long winded + includes some spoilers for SAD SACK & SORTIE alike

the mask is extremely deliberate & something i use as a touchstone for sal's psych profile work specifically. (though arguably the entirety of these comics are about metaphorical Masks lol) sal is an incredibly dissociative individual by the time SORTIE rolls around but arguably kind of always was - i deliberately went out of my way not to write DID, but i wanted to explore the space of fugue states & the messiness and muck of first person dissociation by the time we hit SORTIE.

he has a perception of his Self that exists in fragments, which all serve the purpose to continuously pass the buck on any responsibility for his present poor behavior. he in fact sees his normal self that people on the street as "the mask," and the ski masked man as his true self, ie someone selfish who takes what he wants through brute force. simultaneously then the masked man is "the mask," because whatever violence he engages in as this persona isnt something he himself (the normal everyday man) would do. you're 100% on the money on the reveal of The Face being this sort of full blunt acceptance, which sal in particular cant handle - even on the street, he goes out of his way to obfuscate himself in that manner.

he's incredibly low EQ with zero concept of his own inner world, overall. with that being said, there is a great deal of Headless motif in SORTIE that im excited for you to hit when the time comes, with all this in mind

also, garv taking his mask off first in SADS2 was absolutely deliberate as well lol i was trying to paint him as the odd man out from the very start (the first tip-off was him being conspicuously absent from the epilogue) to start planting a sort of ? seed about him.

[roguerebels]

Bounty Hunters: Raid on the Vermillion Favorite Comic Series Moments!

The Knights of Ren! Dengar getting wrecked again! More Nar Kanji! Sad Valance! Death by black hole! Check out Sal's favorite moments from Bounty Hunters: Raid on the Vermillion comics! #StarWarsComics

T’onga’s crew infiltrates the Vermillion, interrogates Vukorah, and bodyguards for the Pykes with all kinds of surprises in the mix! The Knights of Ren! Dengar getting wrecked again! More Nar Kanji! Sad Valance! Death by black hole! Ethan Sacks continues to bring dirty underworld dealings and great characters to a boil with plenty of action! Here are my favorite moments! SPOILERS…

[pastabadguy]

reccomend us :

- 3 movies

- 2 games

- 1 show

- 3 random other things of ur choosing

Movies:

- Riders of Justice: very cool take on/deconstruction of vengence/revenge narratives. Plus Mads Mikkelsen if that's your type of guy.

- Excision: blended horror/coming-of-age story with some of my favorite visuals in any movie. Love this fucking movie. It's got John Waters in a minor role.

- The Devil's Rejects: one of my all time favorite movies and probably my favorite example of villain protagonists. It's probably good to look up the content warnings if that's something you do.

Games:

- XOXO Blood Droplets Beta Build: I'm sorry I gotta bring this up whenever I can, it's a reward for giving $15 (I think) to the patreon, it's got way more routes than the free game (at least one for each boy, Everett's second route is by far my favorite), it's my baby my love my favorite

- the first 4 episodes of Sally Face: the style, the hidden bonus content, and the building of the story itself is just very cool and engaging to me. And Sal is such a good protagonist imo. The last episode of the game kinda sucks ass and doesn't even give a satisfying ending, so maybe just play through 4 and let it have a tragic (but great) ending.

Show:

- Venture Bros: adult swim cartoon that grows a dramatic plot. I'd definitely recommend it on a "get through the first 2 seasons" basis. S2 is actually pretty fun also but it starts getting really good around 3. It's very early 2000s in its humor tho

Misc.:

- Sad Sack: (comic/webcomic) oh my god read the warnings and description but it's seriously good, the art is amazing, it's funny and disturbing and thought-provoking and that ending my god

- Japanese Breakfast: specifically their music videos. I'm not sure what it is about them but they have inspired my style (art and just visual/fashion) a lot. Road Head and Machinist especially. Something about the strong themes/filming style?

- Wolf 359: my favorite podcast and one of my formative pieces of media. It starts kinda silly but grows into such a good serial drama/tragedy/thriller? Not sure what to call the genre (other than science fiction). I am so attatched to these characters. Everyone is flawed and forced into tough decisions and desperate times and it's great. The music is gorgeous as well. Fuckable villains. Human experimentation. Really strong, interesting, not-clearly-defined emotional bonds between characters. What more could you want

[honeygrlvintage]

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: 1988 Leaf Baseball's Greatest Grossouts SAD SACK SAL Trading Card Single.

[neriumxoleander]

Tag List

This will be my directory for every single tag on this blog. If there's something you don't want to see, go through this and blacklist any tags you'd like. Don't hesitate to ask me to tag things; I'll add them to this list as well.

(I often mix up tags, so there may very well be doubles; I will put these multiple yet same tags side by side. There's far too many for me to sort through and correct to the right tag @-@ )

General tags

#art

#irl photo

#irl gore

#gif

#video

#shitpost

#blood

#guts

#skeleton

#plants

#weapons or #weapon

#animal or #animals

#insect or #Insects

#medical

#teeth

#cannibalism

#partial nudity

#nsft

#MC (used for BTD/TPOF ocs)

#Gatobob (archived art)

Character Tags and their Sources

#BTD

#Strade

#Rire

#Ren

#Lawrence

#Sano

#Akira

#Rire

#Cain

#Vincent

#TPOF

#Celia

#Mason

#Derek

#Komodo

#Dragon

#Jack

#Machete

#Sad Sack

#Jake

#Garv

#Sal

#Stone

#Malik

#Killing Stalking

#Ghostface

#Saw

[taibobo]

just finished @dddrawfucker ‘s sad sack last week and i want to applaud them for making a character i love drawing but i want to shake him in a cardboard box and lob him into a river

[rjalker]

if you weren't in the Miraculous Ladybug fandom back in 2018/2019, you may be wondering, "What the fuck was going on?"

You want to know what the fandom's excuse was for turning Alya into a vicious, physically violent murderous bully who's been terrifying Marinette since the day she met her?

You want to know their excuse for saying that Alya shoves all her babysitting duties off on Marinette and then doesn't pay her?

Their excuse for saying that Alya steals literally millions of dollars worth of food and material from Marinette's parent's bakery and from Marinette herself?

Their excuse for saying that she suicide baits Marinette and purposefully poisons her food with things she knows she's allergic to, and rips her sketchbook to pieces and strangles Marinette half to death before throwing her into the river to drown while the rest of the evil irredeemable class stands there cheering?

What's their "excuse"?

Chameleon.

The episode Chameleon.

That's the excuse they all reached for. That's the best they could come up with. Chameleon.

These racist pieces of shit were pretending that all of this absurdly racist shit they were writing about Alya and pretending was her actual real personality, is all based on the events of Chameleon.

The real truth is that these people were and are literally just racist sacks of shit who wanted to write about Marinette being bullied with No One To Rely On except for the fucking random batman character of the week they were having her date, and since they're racist sacks of shit, no, they couldn't just go with the path of least resistance and also the path of logic and have Chloe being doing the bullying. You know, the way she has been Marinette's whole life?

Nope.

They're racist sacks of shit, so since Chloe's white with blonde hair and blue eyes and they thought she was hot and The Coolest Feminist Ever, (Yes, these people were pretending that Chloe's a feminist. No, I'm not joking. Nothing in this post is a joke), they decided, because they are racist, that Alya is the best choice to be the Vicious Unrelenting Tormentor of poor sweet fragile Marinette who is pale and sad and can't do anything to defend against Alya's wrath.

And Lila need not even be involved at all!

Sure, some fics pretended that Alya was 'taking Lila's side even after she tried to murder Marinette and sent her to the hospital with broken bones' and had Lila egging on Alya's violence, but some of them weren't even trying to pretend to be anything other than what they were. Which is racist piles of steaming shit.

And these racist asshats genuinely believed with every fiber of their being that these Alya salt stories they were writing were true. Were real. Were based on canon and absolutely likely to happen. These people had convinced themselves that canon Marinette is just an innocent victim of the vicious bully Alya, and that Chloe is the only one Marinette can trust and rely on.

And this wasn't just one or two posts. No. This wasn't even "just" a dozen posts.

This was hundreds. Literally hundreds of posts. Dozens of new ones every day. I'm not even exaggerating when I say that every third post in the Miraculous Ladybug tag was turning Alya into an unrecognizable racist caricature and then being graphically punished for her crimes against the pale and thus pure innocent victims, Marinette and Chloe.

I wish I were joking. I wish this was an exaggeration. I wish literally any of this was hyperbole. But it's not. Every example here is something I literally had to read. That these racist scumbags were insisting was in character and based in reality and actually what was happening in the show!

And a lot of these people, when confronted for their absolutely fucking atrocious levels of anti-black racism, would try to spin themselves as the victim! They were bullied in school, so they're venting about it!

Then why not have Chloe, the literal vicious bully, be the bully, you're asking?

Because that would have required this deluge of "Alya salt" to be based on something besides racism, which it wasn't.

This shit went on for months on end. More and more racist fic being churned out by the day, and if you dared to call it out or criticize it, even without ever approaching any of these people or calling them out by name, you were met with a flood of aggression and harassment, not just by the authors themselves, but their fans who wouldn't hear a negative word against them.

Oh and it also must be remembered that, when Lila was involved in these "Salt fits", the bigotry was not just anti-black racism, it was rampant and uncurbed ableism. Of every fucking imaginable kind, though most usually hatred for people with personality disorders and psychosis.

I remember one infamous fucking line that said, and I quote, to justify Gabriel murdering Lila,

"That girl is a psychopath. I have empathy, I can tell.”

That's a literal direct quote. No, I am not joking. Here's a fucking archived version of the post, which has finally been edited to be less ableist. But also please fucking note that the original person who created the prompt in the first place is a fucking pedophile, who writes disgusting shit about Lila that you can't pay me enough to repeat. Block gale-gentlepenguin, who was then known as gale-of-the-nomads.

And guess what happened when I made a post about how ableist this line was? Not even mentioning the fic author by name? Hmm? Go ahead and guess!

That's right! I got dogpiled by the angry ableist fans who flooded my inbox to tell me it's not ableist because uh-- *checks notes* ableism is only bad if it's against physically disabled people! No, I'm not joking!

This fandom has always been fucking filled with atrocious levels of bigotry, justified and defended under the flimsiest of excuses.

If you don't believe me, find the old posts. Go through the "Alya salt" tag and keep fucking scrolling. Go back all the way to when Chameleon was first released. Go back and see the fucking history of this fandom which you are so desperate to defend.

This fandom hates Alya Cesaire far past what she deserves for anything she has ever done or will ever do in the show. I am writing this post on June 26th, 2022. I have seen the scene from Multiplication. And yes, it's fucking horrible.

And I am telling you as someone who has been in this fandom for years, nothing Alya will ever do from the moment onward, no matter how bad, will ever be bad enough to justify the hatred and violence and racism that has been directed against her for years.

Nothing Alya will ever do in the show will ever come even remotely close to matching up to the hatred she receives just for existing as a Black girl.

[bunny-yuck]

number 5, obviously.

[ sad sack spoilers ]

[meanbossart]

Another ask compilation!

There already is some! If you search up "orin the red" in my blog there's some art to be found of them together (after you scroll by all the essay length replies to asks I've gotten about her 🤦) and I definitely want to draw more of it in the future.

(This ask is referring to mine and @barbatusart comics, not my silly BG3 stuff, just in case anyone gets confused) ALAS, Sad Sack and Sortie seem to be what me and Nick have taken to calling part of the Unpublishable Triad: It's Gay, It's Violent, and it's too long. The point is that publishers don't want anything to do with it. We've actually gotten really close once, signed a contract and everything, but then the place gained some traction and decided they didn't want us in their repertoire anymore.

We've considered self-publishing again and again, but unfortunately we don't really have the financial means for something like that. We hope as we expand and entertain slightly less erm outrageous stories that we will come across some new opportunities.

(more asks below the cut)

AGREED, I don't think there's much of a way for me to both keep him in character AND keep her alive (since she has such a problem with Shadowheart) but if Shadowheart hadn't been mega racist I bet Lae'zel and DU drow would have had a lot of funny conflict (he would have relentlessly looked down on her blind faith) broken up with their mutual love for senseless violence. Probably at least 1 rage fuck in there before Astarion came peacocking in.

Thank you!

Not really, I don't really like dividing my attention with other things when I draw, not to mention that I do a lot of picking things up and putting them down again which doesn't seem very apt for art-streaming.

THANK YOU SO MUCH DUDE! I Nick is the sole writer behind the original series and of 95% of Sortie (I butt in there here and there because I'm also a huge Sal fan lol) so all the dope semiotics and symbolism are thanks to him and his big, beautiful brain. I'm beyond lucky to have found someone so talented to work with.

Thank you so much again for your patronage and support, I'm glad you have been enjoying the rest of our work!!!

THANK YOU!!! I draw a lot of inspiration from western comics, and I'm a big fan of the art of Sean Murphy and Jason Shawn Alexander. I was also reading JtHM and Hellsing in middle school which I'm sure caused some kind of irreversible damage to my psyche.

LOL, IT'S AN HONOR TO BE THE FREAK OF THE FANDOM, and it's a joy to hear that I've given you and your friends some good laughs. Thank you!

---

I have a ton of other sweet messages that I can't reply to individually without risking turning this into a LOOK-AT-ME fest, but as always thank you so much to everyone who decides to drop by with a nice word of encouragement, support, or just to let me know that they enjoy my characterizations, I very much appreciate it!

[hunnymcbunny]

•The gateway to the world; still outside the reach of him.•

[oathbreakerapologist]

Sortie Thought Journal 1: Christ, Antichrist, God, Bog

(subtitled The Moment I Read that Sal Was Catholic I Knew that Detail Would Become Important and Oh Boy It Has Become Important)

I can't keep adding onto my long-ass Sad Sack thought journal post so these are gonna be separate but in my heart this is just one long reblog chain. anyways.

Question 1: Is Sal a Christ figure?

Several relatively shallow indicators say yes. Firstly the name Salvatore is an obvious connection, then there's the look—while a tan-skinned man with long wavy hair isn't always a Christ figure those two characteristics certainly don't hurt—and then there's the overarching narrative of a man performing work mandated of him by God despite its (physical and emotional) cost to himself (which is not exclusively a Christ narrative, of course, but is similarly suggestive of it). We might also read SADS #5 as a Passion of sorts. On page 170 in SADS #5, Sal takes a sledgehammer to the head, and that sort of head trauma doesn't exactly tend to leave person capable of walking out of a warehouse a few minutes later; in some sense his survival here has the taste of the supernatural.

So we have a Passion of Christ, a rebirth, and, perhaps, a Holy Spirit that now follows in the wake of the reborn Sal—speaking of course of the masked man, masked Sal, who in Sortie differentiates clearly into his own person, as we can see in Sortie #1 circa page 118, that is, as long as we take the emaciated minotaur in that scene to be Sal (I take it to be Sal) (the inscription on page 120 is probably relevant here)—and all that seems suggestive of a Christ figure.

But there are several good reasons to take him as something other than a Christ figure. Perhaps reason number one is that he does not seem to view himself as a Christ figure, at least not as far as I've seen yet. His dependence on Father Morgan for direction is particularly relevant here, as if he were a Christ figure, it's almost non-negotiable that his relationship to God would require no intermediaries. What Sal is told in the confessional booth in Sortie #1 is similarly instructive: the quotes (see Sortie #1 pages 39–42ish) are from Philippians 2:13–15ish (which itself references Deut. 13:5), which is a Pauline epistle, so it's written to an audience at some significant distance from Christ, and that's possibly a relevant indicator of Sal's own narrative position.

But perhaps the most interesting reason to reject Sal as a Christ figure is that the events of SADS #5 are 100% a Passion of Christ, but not for Sal. I read SADS #5 as a clear Christ allegory for Garv (fascinating)—I ought to write a bit more about this but this isn't the post for that—and, well, there's only room for one Christ on the cross. In that reading of SADS #5, Sal still has an interesting part to play (he probably plays several parts, which a better exegete could figure out, but my Christology knowledge is weak enough that I'm only really solid on this one so far) as St. Longinus, who pierced the side of Christ with the Holy Lance as he hung upon the cross. Compare SADS #5 page 224.

So Sal is in fact the killer of Christ (not exactly a canonical understanding of St. Longinus, but, I mean, that's what he did) in a Passion reading of SADS #5.

Question 1.1: Is Sal an Antichrist figure?

I'm gonna work on this question in more detail in a later post, but for now, suffice to say that for other reasons (enumerated in more detail in the Long Ass Sad Sack Thought Journal Post) he certainly appears to be an anti-Garv, so, fill in the blanks. (That's not really an answer, and I'm not committed to reading him as an Antichrist figure yet, but I do think that's a good place to start answering that question.)

[barbatusart]

❄️❄️❄️❄️💨💨💨💨

DIAGNOSE THOSE FREAAAAAKS!!!!! ❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️🌬🌬🌬☃️☃️☃️💎💎💎💎

❄️❄️❄️❄️☃️☃️☃️☃️💦💦💦💦

i didnt know what you meant for a split second LOL but word ok I GOTCHA. i did write everybody with cognitive "touchstones" in mind but used it more as one of multiple building blocks in shaping everybody's personalities & tried not to have anybody be a stereotype of their neural makeup. SPOILERS ABOUND BELOW THE CUT HEADS UP!

jake i wrote pretty explicitly as autistic. im not autistic myself but i have multiple close family members who are; ive been around it since i was little to present day & wanted to try my hand at writing an autistic character. i think i had it that his father is also autistic so his parents caught on pretty quickly & got him all the tools he needed growing up to live happily. unfortunately hes also extremely gullible & a firm believer in geek social fallacy

sal is a case of C-PTSD (compounded with the multiple head injuries sustained at the end of sad sack by the time sortie rolls around if thats illuminating at all) which is something he combats by making himself as physically large & intimidating as possible while using that as a social shield if that makes sense. he has this concept of himself as something he needs to mask (often literally) in order to behave as his "true" self, which also is a concept of himself that is "Not Me" that he shucks off anything he may have ever done wrong onto so he never has to take responsibility for anything. i deliberately did not write DID here but he is highly dissociative with poor emotional regulation & deeply low EQ (again: see sortie)

mal is a very nebulous anxiety disorder in an extremely extraverted person. his treatment of it involves trying to "shout" over his anxiety even louder to try & drown it out which goes about as well as youd expect; he actually nearly breaches into a full-on panic attack in book 3 where hes trying to light his cigarette. self medication is also 2 packs a day & his BP is like 220/120 at rest, but he doesnt go to the doctor much or declines blood pressure on the regular cus if he doesnt see it then nothing's wrong. nothing's wrong! he's also got some shit going on with not being able to perceive himself in any positive light unless he's positioning himself to be praised as a hero or directly comparing himself with somebody he considers "lower" than him, which when you put that up against the context of book 3 is like get the fuck away from me dude. more on that later, i got comic-related plans for mal lol

stone is a deep depression mixed in with barely functional alcoholism (starting to not so subtly breach over into alcoholic psychosis) which all roots back into an unmanaged grief thats turned into him looking for you-know-who in the people around him (ie romantic partners, this dudes a mess) he kinda laid his shit bare in 4 so the less said about that the better, his whole situation honestly skeeves me out bigtime

garv ive gone into his nonsense on here plenty but he is an unintelligent sociopath (no childhood woes he just got born that way) with the added issue of being raised on /b/ LOL