#so complex. so fun. 10/10

[engagemy-others]

Viktor is NOT a leftist, guys. He does not fucking know of your morality culture. He is just some guy who later decides on eugenics.

[crafting-mojo]

The Factory!

[fischlich]

what flower/plant would you associate with BSAR?

i did not. mean to take 10 thousand years to answer this. why did it take so long? i couldnt decide and it was Haunting me. what plant fits BSAR best... it kept me up at night

planty wise usually i just put misc moss and ferns and shrubs but i really wanted to play around with flower symbolism so i decided to choose gladiolus and asphodel! (chosen with the help of my friends bc i was hopeless at deciding on my own lol) Gladiolus because they (according to google) represent strength of character and moral integrity, which i thought would be fitting since the Nation frames BSARs as divine tools of liberation. Asphodel too however because (again according to google) they represent death and mourning, so i thought it would be fun to include them as a reference to BSAR actually being nothing more than tools of death and destruction in a senseless war. i put way too much thought into this. anyways heres a sketchy doodle of 777 my favorite bussard all plantied up with gladioluses and asphodels. dont look to hard at the gladioluses though i got really lazy

[ryssbelle]

Commission done for @arecaceae175 ! This is one of the phone commissions!

Thank you for commissioning me!

[jabberwockprince]

Hello! I've been seeing your post about the Spina Venatores. They're so cool and I'm kinda interested about your girl Poultry, I'm wondering can you talk more about her?

YEAAA glad you like em!

Poultry is my beloved, stressed, constantly struggling, perfectionist girlgenius chicken! <3 ohh where do I start with her ... she's the only human in Spina Venatores, a girl who figured out how to mix mankind's logic and the arcane. her role in Spinas

i'll put the rest under a read more bc it got a bit long o7

she's the little girl mentioned in Darley Clatter's in-game Stories! Lilian! at least until bluepoch releases a Darley Clatter anecdote where they show the actual Lilian lmfao

they don't explicitly state that Lilian is a human afaik, but since her father is hiring an arcanist to get her the best horse in the world, I interpreted it as how humans will hire arcanists for frivolities like this

(screenshots taken from the wiki because I can't be bothered with opening the game rn lmfao)

either way, Poultry is that little girl; spoiled, bratty, precocious, too smart and observant for her age, eager to have adventures and have everything she asked for. she was so enamoured with her childhood friend Darley Clatter and arcanum as a whole that she asked her parents to make her into an arcanist despite being a pureblooded human--when she found out this is Literally Impossible, it sort of ruined her friendship with Darley Clatter due to resentment and jealousy, and she put all of her time and efforts into finding a way to BECOME an arcanist, to mix both humanity and arcanists into one, instead of having humans recreate arcane skills with machines and whatnot

and she ACTUALLY succeeded, she figured out the differences between human and arcanist physiology through experimenting with arcane creatures and critters, and then regular animals with arcamun similar to Pickles and whatnot--horrible horrible stuff going on, stuff that leads sometimes into creating homunculus and chimeras and things that should not be alive! which got her kicked out of her university!

now. I'm fully aware that, as far as we know in canon, it's impossible for pureblooded humans to become infected or to make use of arcanum the same way arcanists do--one needs the smallest amount of arcanist heritage, no matter how diluted through the ages, for that to happen (like Semmelweis). it's all biology and physiology and science stuff. so for Poultry, her theoretical process of becoming arcanist involved a lot of. well. forcing her body to naturally adapt to arcanist cells and produce them. which could only happen through unethical self experimentation, something she could only get in Manus Vindictae

Venison recruits her on a whim, convinces the higher ups that her knowledge and experiments could be weaponized against mankind, and in turn, they give her the resources needed to go through her dream of becoming an arcanist. and these resources are Spina Venatores! because everyone there has specific arcanums related to the human body--flesh, blood, bones, etc! and it fucking works! frankenstein's monster! her body can NOW slowly adapt to arcanum!

the DOWNSIDE is that the constant exposure to arcane creatures guts and blood of all sorts (one of Spina Venatores' jobs is to hunt down mythical beasts, aside from hunting down important targets) actually caused Poultry to become infected with the Beyond Disease--the Manus Mask she wears was explicitly given to her by the higher ups to fuel her extremely weak arcanum into something actually useful (think of Enigma's explanation about low tier vs high tier arcanists and batteries). but ALSO to slow down the Beyond Disease, because Manus is invested in seeing if they can genuinely turn a human into an arcanist with the intent of creating more cannon fodder to turn into Disciples and Followers (yknow, the monsters arcanists turn into when they wear the masks)

so unbeknownst to Poultry, she's become an experiment within Manus Vindictae!! and shes probably going to die very soon!!

a fun fact is that her arcanum is both related and powered by delusion and belief, becoming stronger the longer she believes herself to be arcanist like any other, but also hinting towards the Beyond creature that infected her being a fairy of sorts.

[necrotic-nephilim]

For the ask game: A Damian who never got the sex talk or a consent talk from Bruce (both bc he assumed that Dick, son-wife extraordinaire, would take care of that and bc he thought that Damian would be ace or celibate or something) and so in his teens after only learning about sex from the internet he just becomes like, wildly inappropriate about his crushes, including unfortunately his older siblings, especially Dick, Tim and Cass

This includes not just the bat-typical stalking online and irl, but also making comments on their bodies, flirting excessively, and one notable time, masturbating in the living room of Dick’s apartment

Everyone is torn on how to address it, if they should be saying anything at all, I mean, he’s just going through puberty, it’s just a phase right?

for the ask game!

i LOVE it when Damian has like. zero concept of how relationships work and no one thinks to talk to him about it, leading to wildly inappropriate behavior. it's my fave flavor for any Damian ship.

obviously, his first crush is Dick. and because Damian has had such little interaction with healthy romantic relationships, he doesn't even *realize* that's what he's feeling. in concept, he understands sex. but he has a very clinical definition of it, viewing it as coupling to produce an heir. (100% influenced by Ra's) so sex as a pleasurable thing, as something driven by romantic interest, that's foreign to him. he refuses to show weakness and he needs to be hyper-independent, so he falls down a google rabbit hole. i love the idea of Damian accidentally stumbling into like, forums and subreddits based on what he googles that are for people with incestual fantasies and it ends up giving him the WILDLY wrong idea about what's normal. he makes his own account and becomes mildly chronically online about it. at first, it's just a safe outlet for him to vent about his feelings. bc deep down Damian *does* know this is a little wrong and weird, he knows Dick doesn't exactly reciprocate and he understands there's a difference between familial and romantic love. but the more Damian is reading other stories online, the bolder he gets. and he starts getting more open about his attraction.

not only does he get more open about it, but his attraction spreads to Cass and Tim. for Cass, it makes sense. they grew up similarly, if anyone understands the guilt of being raised to be an assassin and now trying to atone for it, it's her. Damian respects her raw ability and naturally it turns into a crush. for Tim, it's harder to explain. he hates Tim with his whole being, doesn't see Tim as his brother. it starts as sexual attraction first, with Tim. for Dick and Cass it was romantic first, but not Tim. watching Tim train shirtless, Damian almost hits himself in the face with the workout equipment he's using. since he's never considered Tim a brother, he's never considered Tim seriously when he's thinking about incestual feelings. it startles him to be attracted to Tim too. honestly? fun concept that Damian gets so in his head with an incest kink that he finally accepts Tim as a brother to him because he's attracted to Tim, therefore this must mean that some part of Damian views him as a brother because Damian has just. entangled those feelings internally.

it's when Damian is attracted to them as well, that they all start to notice. Cass notices first, and she asks Tim about it, since she can tell Damian's feelings are toward Tim and Dick as well. they have a conversation about it and ultimately decide they can't change Damian's feelings, and they don't want to embarrass him about it because he's young and going through puberty. Tim had his own childhood crush on Dick, it happens, he really gets it. they loop Dick in, who is absolutely thrown by the concept. for a while Dick doesn't believe them. he's convinced they're reading into things. until Damian starts getting more bold. going from openly staring that could be interpreted a lot fo ways to excess compliments and flirting. Dick's used to comments about his body, they slide off easily. but when Damian very loudly makes a comment about Tim or Cass' body, Dick balks. he tries to. carefully tell Damian that there are boundaries to certain relationships and he needs to be more respectful. Damian doesn't take it seriously because Dick won't address it head-on and is dancing around the topic. Damian either doesn't think Dick is serious, or he thinks Dick doesn't understand the depth of his emotion outside of sexual desire. so he starts trying to be more romantic. flirting, gifts and gestures. it's very sweet and almost childlike, how hard Damian is trying. Cass thinks it's cute and doesn't mind it. Dick is trying carefully to let Damian down gently. and Tim is just baffled, not really sure what to do with the *very* nice new bo staff Damian got him that's reinforced and admittedly, very well balanced.

Damian gets bolder. his touch lingers, his comments get more sexual. and of course, the breaking point: he jerks off in Dick's living room. he does it when Dick is busy in another room, taking a shower. Dick comes in just as Damian reaches completion, gripping one of the throw pillows on Dick's couch. Dick leaves the room, pretends he didn't see anything and gives Damian the chance to clean himself up. but when he comes in the room, they both know that Dick knows. Dick decides he has to be more firm with his boundaries. he sits down and tells Damian it's okay to have a crush, but this is not okay. Dick repeatedly calls it "puberty" and a "phase", and Damian gets more caught up on Dick denying the realness of his feelings than the rejection. he doubles down, because he perceives the issue as Dick just not understanding how real Damian's feelings are. this isn't some silly teenage phase to Damian, he knows his feelings. obviously, the issue must be that Dick, Tim, and Cass don't understand that. so he does his best to act more like an adult. he's far more reasonable on patrol, he doesn't pick fights, he's independent. all the issues Dick has been having with training Damian suddenly vanish and well. Dick knows why, but he has to admit, it is far easier to work with Damian like this. at this point, Tim just finds the whole thing funny. Cass doesn't enjoy the sexualized comments about her body, she's always been hyperaware of how others will oversexualize her, but she still sees Damian as a young kid and doesn't lash out at him over it. she's dealt with far worse, and she doesn't want to make him feel bad about a crush.

if i were writing this, i think it'd be fun if Damian's feels do eventually fade. he stops going online so much and he gets other things to focus on trying to be a good vigilante and soon his efforts aren't about his feelings, he's just genuinely focused on himself. he grows back and Dick, Tim, and Cass breathe a sigh of relief about it really just being some phase. that is, of course, until someone new joins the Batfam and the cycle starts again. maybe it's Duke, maybe it's someone else like Terry. but at the end of the day, Damian's incest kink wins out and maybe this time, he actually succeeds. he gets his new person of affection to reciprocate with all of the attention he gives them and Dick just has to watch from the background, facepalming. bc at the end of the day, Damian will always get what he wants, sooner or later.

[ferronickel]

Hail, flatter! This one, who is a layperson of the arts and comixcraft, has a query for you:

So like, what is flatting?

I've seen your flats in Wifwulf, and I've read about the flats in Looking Glasses, and generally get that it results in an image with similarly coloured areas sharing the same false-colour.

But like, how is it then used? The final images seem to contain more colours and shading, so why not just go straight to this? Why do false colours get used instead of the real ones? How do you pick the colours and how many get used?

How come this is a thing that a whole other person can do separately? I guess that's because it's time consuming - so it saves time somehow?

Thank you! I come in the spirit of humility wishing to relieve my ignorance of your noble craft!

OHOHOHO!!! You've activated my trap card and now I get to ramble about comics craft! And in my area of professional expertise, too! Be prepared for a long post

I'm going to start with the last part of your question:

How come this is a thing that a whole other person can do separately? I guess that's because it's time consuming - so it saves time somehow?

So the thing about comics is that it is one of the most intensely time consuming mediums to create. One person can make comics on their own fairly easily, but it takes forever to produce. Consider that I've been working on Looking Glasses for 18-19 months and have drawn about 87 pages. Now, the western comics industry expects issues to be produced monthly, generally 24 pages in length. It's very difficult for a single person to work at this rate, so the labor of producing comics has been divided. Generally these jobs become:

Writer (writes the script)

Editor (edits the script)

Artist (draws the lineart)

Colorist (colors and renders the art)

Letterer (adds balloons, dialog, and sfx)

Flatter (sometimes 'color assistant' they take the art and prepare it for coloring)

This isn't comprehensive though, there are a bunch of other jobs, like designers and layout artists. Occasionally the artist job gets broken into Pencilers (who sketch the art) and Inkers (who ink the sketch). Basically, by splitting the work amongst a number of people you can produce comics much faster. Not all of these jobs are required, and creator-owed books might have artists do their own coloring and lettering, while big work-for-hire books might have twice as many people working so they can pump out a spider-man book every other week.

Okay, so why Flatters?

Flatting at it's most basic level is just coloring inside the lines. You take a black and white page of art, and you have to fill in every part of the page that will eventually be colored. It's a pretty time consuming task depending on how involved your lineart is.

Flatting a page of Looking Glasses doesn't take me all that long, usually less than a half hour, which is pretty quick. Looking Glasses pages tend to be... optimized for flatting though. There are only ever a few characters and there aren't a ton of background details.

You mentioned Wifwulf (created by my longtime friend and collaborator Dailen Ogden), here's one of it's pages:

Basically everything that's a different base color, (every tree, plant, bit of moss, character, etc.) needed to be picked out separately. Each page of Wifwulf took me a few hours to flat. If Dailen had been doing that themself, those hours would have really added up, but instead they could spend that time drawing and coloring. Now, that said, these pages have a lot of texture, so it's hard to see exactly what I did.

Here's an example from a comic I worked on early in my career. (Lineart by Patrick Custodio)

The writer for this comic loved to put in these incredibly complex crowd scenes, which is something the artist excelled at drawing. I was coloring and flatting at this point on the book, and before I could even start coloring properly, I would need to flat for like eight hours. (I have a much more efficient method these days) It was frustrating because I just wanted to work on the actually creative part, but the majority of my time was spent on something monotonous. As soon as I got the writer to hire a flatter for me, coloring a page would take me only one or two hours, not nine or ten.

So that's why flatters exist, mainly to ease the workload on colorists.

But like, how is it then used? The final images seem to contain more colours and shading, so why not just go straight to this?

Flatting serves a couple of purposes. It's main function, like I said above, is just coloring in the lines. After finishing your lineart it has to get colored in, so in a layer below the lines, you add colors.

The secondary function is preservation. I like to work in a way that is non-destructive, basically, at any point in the process I can restore an earlier version of the drawing if I make a mistake or don't like something. Flats are integral to this.

In digital art, there's this thing called anti-aliasing, where the edges of a line or shape have a drop off of pixel color or opacity. It makes the edges look smoother or blurrier. The three dots on the left are Anti-Aliased, while the one on the right is Aliased, there's no drop off, just hard pixels.

Anti-aliasing is fine until you need to change the color using the paint bucket, or select using the magic wand...

See how the anti-aliased art doesn't play well with these tools, but the aliased art does? So with something like Wifwulf, the final art is going to be full of texture that makes it impossible to select anything again once it's painted. By having a dedicated aliased flats layer under the rest of the artwork, you can always re-select any part of the image you want.

I always leave my flats layer alone, and do any detail work in layers above. For example when I was painting this, it really helped to be able to select just the titan so I could work on those paints without worrying about brushstrokes overlapping the rest of the characters.

One of the other things you can do with flats is quickly selecting certain elements. On most pages, I flat my panels, figures, and background elements separately. Later, with a single button press, I can select just the characters in the scene, or entire panels at a time, which makes things like shading a whole lot easier.

Why do false colours get used instead of the real ones?

If you're flatting for other people you often don't know what the final colors are going to be, so you just pick random ones. Garish colors can be helpful because it makes it obvious that they're not the final colors. Why don't I use the correct colors on my own pages when I'm flatting? Habit, mostly. It's also faster to grab random colors than to track down the correct ones. Sometimes two different things will have the same final color but I like to flat them with different colors so I can select them individually if I need to.

You can see the process a bit here. In my flats, Lancer's spade (eye? eyes? thing) is a different color from his tongue, even if they end up being the same white in the final image. This would help if I ever needed to select just his eyes for some reason. You can also see how I select his body fur color and then add details on top, like his colored fingers and the grey on his arm. Those elements have blurry anti-aliased edges, and it would be impossible to re-select them without flats.

How do you pick the colours and how many get used?

I use the default "additional color set" palette in clip studio and just work my way through it. I pick row and work my way down (for a change of pace I vary which row I start with). How many is mostly dependent on the artwork. You just keep going until you run out of individual objects to color. I have worked on pages where I've run out of colors on this palette and had to start making up more. Typically a page of Looking Glasses only needs around 20-30, though.

So! That's flatting! It's a little known job, and it's how I got started with my comics career, so I have a lot of thoughts on it. I was trying to be concise (lol), so I hope this all makes sense, but I'd be happy to clarify or answer any other questions about this process. I know I didn't really go into how I flat my work, so I can make that post if anyone is interested.

[feelingthedisaster]

dont you ever write a scene and are like how am i ever going to top that?

[mewwile]

thank yall for the recommendations because i caught up to sousou no frieren and i love it.

here she is..... the Queen Of Inattentive ADHD, the Dumbass of All Time, the sleepiest bitch in the world. i love her so much.

(one of the most wrong things she has ever said)

[anamdreams69]

I prefer learning about a character by people yapping to me about it than looking thru the source of said character.

[lesbian-cowpoke]

Probably an unpopular opinion: I don't like a lot of modern Dazzler appearances. Like after New Excalibur. I thought her 4ish issues in Astonishing were pretty good, and A-force v2. That's it really. Essentially every more modern Dazzler comic and appearance feels like it's trying really hard to re-create Dazzler v1, and that's not something that can happen, or even should happen. Ali has had so much growth and experiences past v1, and even in v1 you can tell it does start to shift from fun cameos to actual character growth, around the time she killed Klaw. And while I think callbacks to the silly storylines in v1, she is more than that. Especially post Dazzler the movie, and the gross relationship with Roman. And her time with the X-men and Longshot are important, too. She became more serious, more hardened cause she went through some shit. And like you can balance serious and silly that like never happens. Like most of her modern appearances really feel like they are completely reversing her character growth and it's. Frustrating and annoying :/

That's all I just had to rant about her character loss 👍

[princekirijo]

Well that happened. That was a DLC.

[du-hjarta-skulblaka]

Stuck on the first few eps of Farscape after finishing up Fantasy High s2 and maybe its the whole most recently consumed bias but I'm really struck by how much it feels like a dnd game??? Bunch of weird lil renegades slapped together and put in weird situations, honestly it would make a really interesting starting point for a game

Anyway John Crichton is a bard/wizard; he does a lot of persuasion as performance and that scene of him collapsing to the floor to write slingshot equations is THE most wizard shit- perhaps Artificer would be more accurate to him but it's not a class I'm familiar with.

[vamptastic]

romancing astarion has thus far made me exponentially less attracted to him. can we go back to you serving face in the background and contributing the occasional quip while i go do my hero things? i can't listen to the pickup lines i cant. they're bad they're not good they're bad. and i don't know if hes doing this on purpose as some kind of sick and twisted test of faith or he thinks he is a master casanova. also if astarion can't lift a backpack full of plate armor he sure as hell cannot lift up my entire PC. sorry.

[khruschevshoe]

My Hot-Take/Controversial Ranking of Doctor Who Seasons (excluding specials bc my special order is really unhinged)

3 > 1 > 10 > 4 > 5 > 8 > 11 > 12 > 9 > 7b > 2 > 6 > 13 = 7a

Disclaimer: I have favorite episodes that come from every single season on this list, including 7a. For example, even though Season 6 is low on the list, the God Complex, Almost People/Rebel Flesh, and Impossible Astronaut are some of my favorite of the show. I do really love the Power of Three. These are based on season arc/average feeling per episode/rewatchability on a subjective level.

[lucky-aces]

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