#there’s so many comics to draw source material from like

[demeterdefence]

even ignoring everything else wrong with lore olympus (which in itself feels impossible) there is just something really egregious and insulting at the way a "modern retelling" over an ancient greek myth just full-heartedly whitewashes the entire culture and mythos.

and it's not like rachel is the first to do it - greek myths and legends have been whitewashed for centuries, depictions of the gods have been categorically stripped of their ethnicity and origins long before rachel got a hold of them. it's the fact that rachel goes out of her way to insult the original myths whenever she can, that she emphasizes and pushes a western-centric mindset and viewpoint over and over and over and not only reinforces the whitewashing, but continues it down the line.

like, this is the first episode.

rachel goes out of her way to mock the original styles and wardrobes of the ancient greek world, and i get her attempt was to make persephone feel "out of place" with the more "modern" clothing that the other gods wear, but it really just does more to a) demonize demeter, who is almost always in traditional clothing, b) sexualize persephone.

go even broader with it, move away from the clothing itself, and rachel doesn't even bother to use any of the ancient traditions that are core to the myths. like for the love of god, she uses a christian wedding for persephone and hades!

greece is the birthplace of modern democracy and had a powerful judicial system, and rachel instead uses the modern / western iteration of court because ... why not

(completely unrelated but the inserts of everyone except eros and aphrodite come from the stupid zoom session zeus had back when he first charged persephone with treason, meaning we have proof yet again that rachel isn't drawing the characters into the scene, she's making pngs and sticking them into pre-arranged backgrounds downloaded from stock images)

and there are ten thousand more examples i could pull, because this is just the whole entire comic. you can look at a lot of modern adaptions and see where things have been modernized respectfully, and where they are done with disdain for the source material - no one is claiming percy jackson, for example, is perfect, but the author took a great deal of care in his research, and the love for the original myths and culture shine through. lore olympus has zero respect for the original stories, exemplified in how rachel demonizes demeter - the actual crux of the myth. it's bad writing and bad research and further attempts to whitewash a rich and storied culture that had people from so many walks of life, who existed in full spectrum of lgbt identity, who did not conform or even know of the world that exists today. you can modernize without erasing it, and rachel's refusal to do so is one of the many issues tacked to lore olympus.

[willowedhepatica]

Here's my humble offer to @lovelooksgudonu for the comic she drew about dark!ava. Of course the credit goes to her (and simplykorra) for parts of the dialogue she wrote, (I wanted to stay true to the source material)

Her art is absolutely amazing, go check it out if you haven't! (I hope this is okay, I got inspired)

—

The first thing that hits her when she wakes up is the stinging smell of sulfur. The distant remains of the fight that carried through in ash and dust, leaving her dazed and bewildered.

Ava had struck her in the back.

She hadn't even hesitated.

A chuckle comes from somewhere behind her and Beatrice shifts, the movement sending a sharp pain through her wrist and left arm. The rope is tied harshly, digging into her skin and keeping her there.

"That hit really did a number on you, huh Bea?"

Ava walks in front of her, brown eyes piercing. There's an easy smile on her lips, almost teasing, as if she found this situation amusing.

Beatrice leans forward, her voice hoarse. "Ava-"

"No. Don't give me that look." She cuts off, a sudden shift by the downturn of her mouth. She walks closer, leaning down to look at her properly, tied to the chair and bruised. "I've been merciful towards you, after all. Haven't I?"

Her hand comes up and takes a hold of her jaw. "You should be grateful."

The touch turns on several signals in her body at once. She sucks in a breath, the alarm battling with the craving of wanting more.

She hadn't felt her touch in so long. God, she'd missed it. Yearned for it.

But this wasn't her. This wasn't Ava.

"Snap out of it."

Her hold shifts, forefinger etching into her skin. "What was that?"

Her hands shake. They curl into fists as she looks up at her, meeting her eyes. "Snap out of it!"

Ava hums and for the first time Beatrice finds that she can't read her expression. Can't find any trace of the woman who showed emotions like the glow of a sun, drawing everyone in by her mere presence. She only shifts her hand, cupping her cheek as her thumb goes over her lip.

Beatrice can't suppress the shiver.

"Would you betray them for me?" Ava mumbles, face so close, breath skimming over her cheek, nail digging down into the flesh of her lip. It splits open with a sting of pain that slowly makes the blood spill out and drip across her jaw.

"Ah." Her voice cuts out and Ava's smile grows.

She leans even closer, teasingly drawing her nails over the part where her throat meets her jaw. "Yes?" It's a whisper. It's a lure. Her lips tickle against her own and she forces her to meet her eyes as Ava sinks down fully in her lap, keeping her jaw in a tight grip.

"You never were very talkative." She mumbles, her other hand trailing down her collarbone, her chest.

Beatrice tries to prevent the swelling in her chest, the pleasant tingling in her body over finally being touched.

"Let me make it easier for you." Ava continues, "if you say yes, I'll reward you. Shit, I'll even give you a little treat. If you say no however..." Her hand stops at her shoulder, eyes distant. She looks up at her. "What will it be?"

Beatrice thinks back to Camila, who had stayed up several nights in order to figure out Ava's position. She thinks about how much she's grown, how much she's overcome, how much they've gone through together.

She thinks about Mary and how she would scowl at the situation, telling her to not even dare make that decision.

She thinks about the OCS, the order she practically grew up in. It shaped her to who she was today. It took her through some of the worst periods of her life.

There had been so many sisters before her that had laid their life for the cause. For them. For her. She can't toss all of that away.

"I can't..."

Ava's jaw tightened. "Right. How could the perfect sister Beatrice ever do such a thing?"

"That's not-"

"Quiet."

Beatrice shuts her mouth. It's automatic.

The sharpness in her tone keeps her on edge.

"Maybe you'll come to better thoughts if I alleviate your pain a little." Her eyes fall down to her wrists where Beatrice is tugging against the restraint. "You'll never get anywhere like that."

"I'm fine." Beatrice bites out.

Ava tsk. "You're being stubborn." She brings something out from her pocket and her weight shifts in her lap by the movement. "I know you hurt your wrist in our fight, this will help."

She brings the pill up for her to see.

"I won't..."

Before she can finish Ava presses her thumb against her lips. This time they part open by the force and she continues by dragging it against the ridge of her mouth, scraping across the clench of her teeth. "We may not be on the same side yet, Bea, but that doesn't mean I want to see you hurt, baby."

Beatrice doesn't answer. In a way, she can't. Ava is still keeping her in a vice grip, a glint in her eyes that tells her she's planning to do something Beatrice won't be able to stop.

At least that part was still familiar to her.

Ava plops the pill in her own mouth, voice husky as she slowly inches forward. "Don't worry, I think you'll enjoy this technique..."

Before she knows it Ava's lips press against her own, mouth hot and tongue nudging to get more access. Beatrice gives in with a slight whine, feeling the pill slip inside. She swallows it and everything else falls away as Ava answers by pushing forward, body rising and kiss deepening. It's electrifying in the worst possible way.

"Mmm, see, the way you respond tells me you're not as restrained as you pretend to be."

Beatrice whimpers.

She wants more. She needs more.

She can't.

Finally - far too soon - not soon enough, Ava pulls away, resting her forehead against her own. She exhales, open-mouthed and smiling and when she speaks she's grown considerably softer. "The medication won't kick in for a while, would you like me to distract you some more?"

“Ava… please…”

She traces a path down her cheek. “Look how red you are, don't tell me you don't like this?” Her fingers skim across her ear as she tucks away a strand of hair that had gone loose. “Don't tell me you haven't thought of this ever since our time in Switzerland.”

Beatrice looks away, teeth clenching.

“Hm? Not speaking?”

“That's okay, let me show you just what I've been thinking about during my time across the arc.” Her hand leave her cheek and nudges at the end of her shirt. “You remember that night when we got drunk at the bar?”

Beatrice watches as her hand slip under the fabric and graze across bare skin. Her stomach ripples by the touch.

One nail starts to press down ever so slightly.

“Bea, answer me.”

“Yes- yes I remember.”

She smiles, satisfied. “I remember it too. I've had a lot of time to replay that moment.” She leans closer, close enough that her lips skim over her ear. “A lot of time to let it derail too.”

Ava doesn't wait for her to answer before she continues, nails scraping lightly across her skin. Like a game. “I thought. What if Beatrice noticed me? What if she knew that when I looked at her all I wanted to do was to let her pin me against a wall and fuck me.” She glances down to their position. “Looks like things have taken a slight turn.”

“Ava.”

Ava tuts. "Not yet. It was my turn, remember?”

If Beatrice knows Camila correctly, she's searching for her. She will find her eventually. She just needed a little more time, a little more information…

She shifts. "What more?”

“Excuse me?”

“What more have you thought about doing?”

Her eyes glint with slight surprise and then approval. “I'm so glad you asked.”

[oftlunarialmoon]

Ciao lovelies! I have written before on the topic of Age Regression many times, from explaining what Age Regression is, to Age Regression Self-Care, to Age Regression Journaling. I never explicitly said before now, but I, myself, am an age regressor to cope with stress (and some other mental health reasons). The reason why I have officially decided to come forward and say so is because I feel that I want to keep writing posts on the topic of age regression, some with personal experience perhaps, so I want to be open with you all and let you know why I continue to write on this topic. I’ve also noticed some of this blog’s audience is made up of age regressors like myself, and I want to provide you all with some content from a safe, welcoming, and open-minded source. All that being said, today I’ve decided to write down 101 activity ideas for Age Regressors/ Things to Do When Bored, Age Regression edition. Please be sure to let me know in the comments (yes, you can even comment anonymously!) if you like these ideas, please be sure to tell me your favorite!

101 ACTIVITIES FOR AGE REGRESSORS

Outside Activities for Summer

1.       Play on a swing-set!

2.       Play hopscotch!

3.       Color with chalk!

4.       Build Fairy houses with materials you find outside!

5.       Take pictures of your toys in nature! This works especially well for dinosaur toys, animal toys, et, because they look like they’re meant to be in nature!

6.       Jump rope!

7.       Go swimming!

8.       Go fishing with a net and play catch and release!

9.       Go to a beach and find cool seashells!

10.   Read a book outside in the sun!

11.   Go for an ice cream!

Outside Activities for Fall

12.   Find leaves and flowers and press them into a journal. You can also do Leaf rubbings, where you put a piece of paper over a leaf and use a crayon to rub over it to get the imprint of the leaf on the paper!

13.   Carve a pumpkin!

14.   Go to a pumpkin patch and take lots of pics among the pumpkins! You can even pick out one to take home and make into a Jack-O-Lantern (like #12)!

15.   Collect cool leaves and make a leaf arrangement/wreath!

Outside Activities for Winter

16.   Build a snowman!

17.   Build a snow-fort!

18.   Have a snowball fight!

19.   Try to catch snowflakes on your tongue!

20.   Make snow angels!

21.   Play hide and seek in the snow!

Outside Activities for Spring

22.   Collect flowers and make bouquets!

23.   Make flower crowns!

24.   Play tag with some friends!

25.   Weave grass into cool shapes!

26.   Collect cool rocks/gemstones…You can even pretend to be a dragon who’s collecting rocks for their hoard!

Indoor Activities for Any Season

27.   Redecorate your room!

28.   Clean your room! (I know, bleh, but if you clean then you’ll have a clean slate for #27!)

29.   Change your phone’s wallpaper/lockscreen (check out our Instagram Highlight for some of ours!)

30.   Play with makeup!

31.   Try out new hairstyles!

32.   Play dress up!

33.   Play with some dolls!

34.   Play pretend! You could pretend to be a teacher for your dolls/toys, or even have your stuffies go on super cool adventures with you!

35.   Craft! You can make accessories, décor, toys, clothes, anything! Check out our DIY tag for lots of fun crafts!

36.   Read some kid books!

37.   Stim! I like crinkles when I’m small, and I also like slime and flappy hands!

38.   Play with squishies!

39.   Walk around a store and look at all the toys and kid stuff!

40.   Go on a Dollar Store shopping spree! You can get a lot of stuff at a dollar store for under like $20!

41.   Color in some cool pictures!

42.   Design a new OC (Original Character) 

43.   Draw some comics! They can be of yourself or of your OC’s!

44.   Cosplay your OC’s/any character you like!

45.   Do a photoshoot!

46.   Make a sensory bottle!

47.   Set up a dollhouse!

48.   Make beaded bracelets!

49.   Make yourself a snack!

50.   Or a meal!

51.   Bake some cookies (just be careful with the hot oven, okay?)

52.   Have a dance party with your stuffies!

53.   Make a playlist to regress to!

54.   Find new regression YouTubers!

55.   Play some video games! I love Slime Rancher , Animal Crossing, and more!

56.   Play with some phone apps! I love Animal Crossing Pocket Camp, Pastel Girl, and Pokémon Go!

57.   Try to mix your own perfume!

58.   Design a picture using glitter!

59.   Draw some fashion designs!

60.   Start an age regression journal! 

61.   Practice some age regression self-care!

62.   Make a self-care box!

63.   Make figures from modeling clay!

64.   Paint your nails!

65.   Give your stuffies/dolls a makeover!

66.   Find cute regression music! 

67.   Make posters for your room!

68.   Make gifts for your friends!

69.   Find a new penpal!

70.   Write letters to your pen-pal!

71.   Start a sticker scrapbook!

72.   Open some blind-bags!

73.   Watch some toy youtubers. Our YouTube Channel has some toy videos, my other favorites are Cookie Swirl C and My Froggy Stuff!

74.   Make your own YouTube Channel!

75.   Create a mystery to solve with your stuffies!

76.   Solve a Crossword Puzzle!

77.   Solve a Wordsearch!

78.   Finish a puzzle!

79.   Design your own puzzle!

80.   Make an escape room for your toys!

81.   Paint something!

82.   Watch cute anime like Himouto Umaru Chan!

83.   Watch cute shows on Netflix like Twelve Forever or Hilda!

84.   Watch fun shows on Hulu like Gravity Falls!

85.   Go to the library!

86.   Play chess or checkers!

87.   Watch a movie! I like Welcome to Monster High!

88.   Go see a movie in theatres!

89.   Make temporary tattoos using food coloring!

90.   Make your own T-shirt using a blank T-shirt and fabric paints!

91.   Take a little nap!

92.   Put on a play with or for your stuffies!

93.   Make clothes and accessories for your stuffies!

94.   Make clothes and accessories for your dolls!

95.   Make furniture for your dolls!

96.   Make your own blindbags for a friend!

97.   Upcycle your old clothes and jewelry by designing them into something new!

98.   Visit a thrift store!

99.   Go to a museum!

100. Go to the mall!

101.  Visit an Arcade!

WHEW! I hope that is enough ideas for you bored little ones out there. Have a great day!

[sharonisthebettercarter]

we need to talk about common comic opinion for the boys

so i read the comics.

was curious for a while, buddies wanted to do it, finally bit the bullet and MAN OH MAN~<3

there's common opinion that swirls around from people who *have not read the comics* need i remind, an opinion that they are merely *meaningless edgelord drivel* or the like.

i'm here to bust that misconception, smack it upside the head and drag it around the fuckin' town and kick it till it's caved in because it couldn't be more *wrong* if it tried.

first thing i'll say is that the comics *don't* compare in what you'd call 'gratuitous edginess' to the show. while they have their 'bit on the nose moments', they're drawings that go panel by panel. even what they *could* show wouldn't compare, and it honestly doesn't. (coming from someone who's also watched the show too many times over now and got a nice fresh read in)

robin's death is more brutal *in the show*. there is more blood and gore. *in the show*. the arguably edgiest thing between both of them is a guy exploding another guy from inside his urethra, which *only happens in the show*

and for those that have no clue about the big twist or comics homie and try to make blocks of analysis for a character they have zero actual information or decent research on.

homelander is worse. *in the SHOW*.

granted, both have similar enough structure with reversed character development/reveal, but i digress

butcher is just THE biggest fucking bottom by the way, lord satan i CAN NOT with that boi--

anywho~<3

the 'meaningless' part? well that's just a big fat lie and i'll say it up front. that shit needs to stop. this thing was definitely an emotional rollercoaster, and while it may be true that it's not for everyone, it was far from meaningless and actually brilliantly written and even researched.

it's raw, it feels real half the time, it teaches valuable lessons, and even when you're in the notion of 'okay, where is this going, it's sus', when you stick with it? you get rewarded fucking beautifully.

there are moments you'd disagree with the characters actions in a way that makes them feel humanly flawed. of course they might do the wrong thing or say the wrong thing, so do real life humans?? there are cross cultural miscommunication references and conversations that show ennis knew what he was doing and why he did it a certain way. and yeah, it can be too much to handle for some,

*but if you honestly feel that way you shouldn't be watching the show either*

and here's what it's not.

meaningless, ill-thought, pointless, edgelord drivel.

it *is* an intricate and well done, brutally *honest* creative critique of the *military industrial complex*, *corporate capitalism*, and a couple other things expertly squeezed in. even touching on *abuse* and hitting all the right spots for how it can psychologically fuck with people. the ending punches you in the fucking feels as you could appropriately expect it to with a hard side of begrudged satisfaction.

good fucking satan these things were an excellent read that compelled me to want moar from start to finish, and yeah, if you have watched the show then i *highly* recommend them because the important topics and themes touched on are presented much better in the comic, even with the sometimes wonky ass art in place of hawt actors to distract you, lmao

but seriously? the lot of you that keep spouting nonsense from your clenched up assholes without actually bothering to look at the source material need to stop. all you're doin' is actin' damn fools and showing off high and mighty opinions based on complete mis-education if not un-education.

and f.y.i.... also being the damn fools both the comics AND show make fun of.

so remember that line billy says?

'but the main reason you don't hear about it is cause the public don't want to know about it.'

that's y'all. legit, at this point. more specifically, y'all would be the 'public' that wants to live with rose tinted glasses instead of acknowledging that reality is more brutal than we often want to see or admit.

why else would you keep denouncing and dismissing the comics and source material of something you allegedly love?

because some other schmuck on the internet said a lie, gave you hearsay, or a rumor they heard through a grapevine on a game of telephone that said it wasn't worth looking into yourself?

well i'll call bullshit on that straight up but what are y'all so afraid of??

couple other things i will say, if you hate butcher for being the biggest worldclass cunt, you will absolutely feel vindicated and have your feelings or possibly lovehate boner (like mine~) completely validated with what happens in these comics (and if i'm being honest about the direction of the show, weeeeelllll...~<3 lemme not tho lmao<3 still def the biggest bottom, out bottoms hughie by far, i wanna see him get railed by vas/love sausage)

i will also say, billy is 100% wrong in the comic and the show is slowly but surely unraveling that truth there as well, if it's not clear enough by now. what he does isn't for becky/becca, and definitely not for ryan either. it never was.

it's for his father, no i will not elaborate cause read the damn comics. (but also, people need to stop fucking forgetting that HUGHIE is the *actual* good guy here, not billy... billy is a bad guy... billy is objectively worse than homelander in many MANY canon ways and remember that reverse character development i mentioned--.)

contrast, if you *love* butcher, you will likely be disappointed in the show, but the comics will help prepare you for it (they also make too many things CLEAR)

unfortunately, you do not get sweetheart noir in this and while i love his show counterpart, bearing with cunt 9000 noir is worth it. (it also sparked fic ideas for me cause why not both~<3)

LOVE SAUSAGE IS UNREAL AND PERFECT~<3<3<3 if nothing else, comics love sausage at least deserves your full attention.

homelander's as always is a fun boi, show homelander by comparison is basically *final stage* comics homie (full throttle evil berserk type shit/just before it hits) take everything you thought you knew about (comics) him, and throw it out the fuckin' window.

boi does some fucked up shit... and ALSO has fucking mental breakdowns and visceral reactions like throwing up to doing evil shit because he literally can't stomach it and is trying to convince himself that he is the bad guy because he's been gaslit--.

and i'ma stop there. read the fuckin' comic if you actually wanna know just how deep that homie rabbit hole goes.

and i will absolutely use the idea of him having legit *adverse reactions to doing evil shit* in a fic because FUCK. YES. that was a sad but lovely detail and would make for a perfect fuckin'a alibi<3

anywho~<3, if you recognize he's a victim in the show? the comics. read them cause OOOOOHHHH--.

[thankskenpenders]

I somehow completely forgot today was the day, but today is, in fact, Archie Sonic's 30th anniversary. (TKP also turns 8 in a few days)

Well... maybe today's the day? The main Sonic wikis list November 24th, 1992 as the release date for issue #0 of the original pilot miniseries, while Sonic Retro lists November 4th as the date based on an ancient news group post about comic releases from that week, and Wikipedia lists November 22nd, which was... a Sunday? And of course the cover date is way off and says it was for February 1993. Whatever! It was 30 years ago this month, is the point. So I should say something

While this blog has become sort of a go-to source for learning about the many weird and bad parts of the series, Archie Sonic will always mean a lot to me. It was the first comic book I started actively following as a kid, and it was what really introduced me to the world and characters of Sonic. I might have joined during one of the worst eras of the series, but the expansive mythos that had been built up over the prior decade really grabbed me. I'd pore over Penders' bullshit character bios and take them as gospel. I'd trace over panels to make Shrinky Dinks. For a time I cherished the climactic 10th anniversary issue, #125, as my prized possession, keeping it in my parents' fireproof box meant more for things like, you know, the deed to our house. I fell out of following it in middle school, but it was pretty crucial in shaping my tastes. I can easily trace a direct line from the stuff I'm working on now back to Archie Sonic

It's been almost six years now since the series was canceled. At the time it was hard to believe this was even possible. Archie Sonic was an institution. Everything else came and went, but "those weird Sonic comics with their own continuity that were still using the SatAM characters" were eternal. At this point I've made peace with it, in no small part due to the existence of the IDW series. But even if they're gone and never coming back (continually delayed projects from a certain writer notwithstanding), they're definitely not forgotten. I still see people drawing fanart, sharing individual moments, coming up with AUs to fix things that didn't work, redesigning the cast to fit in with Sega's Sonic. And I'd be remiss not to mention that we just got the first mainline Sonic game ever written by an Archie Sonic writer. A game that has some surprising parallels with certain pre-reboot Archie material, intentional or not. (Given the lawsuits and Sonic Team's disinterest in Archie, I'm guessing "not," but it's certainly there.) The spirit of that series lives on in small ways, even if characters like Sally and Rotor are currently relegated to fanon

Archie Sonic remains one of the largest branches of the franchise, rivaled in scope only by the games themselves. And people are still coming back to it, either as returning readers or as new fans discovering it for the first time. I'm happy to have been a small part of that

[spongebob-connoisseur]

@bluebellthesponge

Hmm I dunno tbh. I guess he's just easy to caricature. Bug eyes, crooked teeth, short stature, creepy voice. Even describing it probably puts a handful of characters in your mind.

According to the book The Animated Peter Lorre, there's at least 700+ lorre caricatures/impressions in cartoons. Tho he does include igor-type characters and impressions of an impressions but still, that's A LOT. Too bad the author doesn't give an explaination as to WHY Lorre is so parodied.

I know Looney tunes parodied Lorre because he was one of the popular stars of the day, Looney tunes parodies a lot of famous stars from the 40s so it's not really surprising. I also know in the 90s Looney tunes reboots you have a lot of lorre caricatures because the animators were fans of his movies.

I've heard a story about how Lorre stuck up for the animation union at Warner Brothers and got fired for it and that's why he is caricatured so often as a way to honor him. I kinda doubt the story is true because I can't find a source (and Lorre was more likely fired for beefing with Jack Warner) but if the story is true then it's super wholesome.

Something that is official is Charles Addams (the creator of the Addams Family) telling Lorre that he based Gomez Addams off of him. I know people hate on the 2019 Addams family movies for making Gomez ugly but it's comic accurate because he was based off of Lorre (and the governor of new york in the 30s but that's not important)

I've also heard Lorre parodies are possibly an antisemetic caricature because Peter Lorre was Jewish (his birthname is Laszlo Löwenstein and you can guess why he avoided using it) and let's be real, they often give him very unflattering portrayals. He barely played horror yet is the most affiliated with it, and his "creepier" roles sometimes hinged on the fact that he's a foreigner. It's not a good look. I get that he often avoided telling others he's Jewish and apparently a lot of people didn't know but there's still a weird layer of xenophobia to it that I kinds feel like kinda bleeds into some of the caricatures? That's just my opinion. Most Peter parodies are such copies of a copy that they're pretty far from the original source material. Still, it's food for thought. Especially when making your own Peter parody.

As far as I do know Lorre did like the caricatures, keeping some of the drawings fans sent him and even finding it amusing when others tell him how to do an impression of HIMSELF. Some of those saved fan drawings are still online. My favorite is the drawing of him as a turtle <3 Most of the caricatures was because he was pretty famous for the time.

The most amusing thing about peter parodies is that it's gone on so long that nobody really knows who lorre is, but they can identify his "image" in cartoons. Tim Burton didn't even know Lorre's name when he added Maggot in corpse bride, but he did know the voice and look. That's how it is. (Check out this maggot pin I got recently)

I know for Slappy, Kaz is actually a fan of Peter Lorre and collects his movies, hence why we have Slappy. I remember from Kaz's Facebook where he mentions Slappy saying he never knew just HOW many characters were inspired by lorre. There's also John K (creator of Ren and Stimpy, I know he's terrible) who mentioned on his personal blog that he's a big fan of Lorre which is why Ren from Ren and Stimpy is based off of him. I've notice Ren quotes some Peter Lorre movie quotes, aside from his famous catchphrase "YOU EEEDIOT" of course. (Check out this Ren and Stimpy comic where Ren meets Joel Cairo, a character Peter Lorre played)

I just think it's neat. He shows up everywhere all the time :) I made a joke Thomas The Tank Engine Peter Parody but @thekhaotickrab messaged me saying they found an actual Thomas character with Lorre's voice which is pretty hilarous. Many of these I find amusing because there's no reason for it to exist. Yeah, there's a Peter Parody transformer named Cosmos and he likes scaring people because he's lonely. Yeah, there's several in Scooby Doo for some reason. Yeah he's GOMEZ ADDAMS. He's also a GPS in hotel Transylvania 2. He's also a literal egg with legs in digimon. He's also a lamp.

I heard Lorre's dream was to continue to act forever. He sorta got that wish because he keeps respawning in cartoons forever. I hope this tradition keeps up. Slappy gets a lot of shit but I'm forever grateful to that ugly little fish for introducing me to all of this <3 May the Peter Parody live on forever!

[monosminecraftmania]

Color!au [hermitcraft fantasy au]

so i got two notes on the previous post so here i go talking about this

(yes this is going out like a month late but shh i had stuff ;a;)

here's a full roster of everyone and everything. Hopefully this will turn into motivation for me to write but yeah. until then here have this

again, if anyone is interested in seeing close ups/detailed drawings of anyone just send me an ask and i will gladly draw them. pls im desperate

if we get 3 notes i'll. share pictures of the kingdoms.

(long long post. read at your own risk >:3)

Going Alphabetically

Bdubs - Astronomer of Flax - Lives at the top of the castle - Comically small. No don't ask it's a sore subject - Made himself a glittering cloak of "stardust"

Beef - Resident of Varie - Lives on the outskirts of the kingdom - Travels only for paints or supplies - Good friend of Etho's

Bigb - Cerule resident - Has a cloud frog as a familiar - All it does is make his shoulder slightly moist - Runs a cookie shop

Cleo - Naga, Resident of Uaine - Graveyard guardian - Made herself arms of enchanted scraps the dead leave behind - Her human disguise is a gigantic ballroom dress.

Cub - Dungeon engineer of Mauve - Will never share the recipe for totems of undying - Creates labyrinths and puzzle rooms with a small chance of death - Sources most materials from Scar

Doc - Cursed Archeologist of Uaine - Pissed off a moss spirit so now his skin's green - Can't breathe good - Cut off his own arm and made a new magic one

Etho - Crown Prince of Varie - Half fox, but vertically - Has a heavy limp so people speculate he carries old battle wounds - Very bad at hiding the fox bits.

False - Royal Knight of Amara - Gilded Eagle Hybrid. Eagle wings and colors but the feathers appear to be shimmering like metal - Kingdom is usually very calm so she spends most of her time hanging out with Stress and fishing - Kicks ass when she has to.

Fwhip - Fisher in Ochre - Gem's business partner and the less violent one of the two - Deals more in accounting than actual fish - Fixes boats on the side

Gem - Fishwife in Ochre - Not actually married. Married to THE GRIND. - Runs a fishing boat and market by the widest bend of the river - Can and will use this trident.

Grian - Geologist in Claret - That's some funny lookin floating rocks - Owns a mansion that's shared with several other people of science - Named one of the rocks Brian. Pronounced like Grian.

Hypno - Beekeeper in Flax - Has a little bee farm that he sells honey and candles out of - Has a little magic and mostly uses it to make his flowers bloom - Honestly just happy to be here :3

Impulse - Service Demon in Flax - Resident fiekind (trickster demon). Does favors for gold or food - Invented the farming plow for a request once - Will absolutely abuse vague requests and play as many tricks as possible

Iskall - Magic Blacksmith of Uaine - Makes magic weapons of all kinds, mostly swords - Has golems to help him with his work, mostly just handling hot metal - Charisma + 20. He will flirt with anything that breathes.

Jevin - Slime Amalgam - Hides in the topmost tower of Azure's castle. - Stole pieces of gargoyles to camouflage and has been collecting feathers for wings - Just a silly little guy, living his best life.

Jimmy - Whistler - Guardian of the Wishing Cave - A great guy until you realize he's evangelizing for a cult - Hasn't touched grass in years

Joe - Magic researcher in Viridian - Puts random mushrooms in his mouth - Purely curious and gets a pass from most forest spirits - Looking into the forces of death to write a funny book

Joel - Strength Bryd (forest spirit) in Uaine - In the common tongue it's pronounced Ogre - Covered in tattoos that may or may not be his past victims - Fell in love with a fish. How did it end up like this.

Jono - Local Bard of Amara - Half Dog musician who's found a nice spot in Amara to settle down - Shirts are for losers - Can beatbox amazingly well with sharp teeth.

Keralis - Holy Water Spirit - Currently napping in the big ball chained to the temple roof - Granted Xb his wish to safely walk on land - Kind to a fault

Lizzie - Resident of Amara - Half fish hybrid - Washed up in the marshes of Uaine after a storm once and rescued by a handsome ogre. - Has an army of cod.

Martyn - Servant of Claret - A Watcher - Ren's shadow - Really needs a hug

Mumbo - Wizard of Claret - Subject of all of the bad luck - Collects scriptures and studies the magic of his kingdom - Also hosts a great magic show for kids

Pearl - Royal Architect/Librarian of Azure - Started as a stable girl who threw a tomato at the design for the royal library. And instead of being arrested, she was hired to redesign it. - In charge of the upside down library - Her dragon is named Bikkie.

Ren - Crown Prince of Claret - Half dog and proud of it. - Twins with Jono who moved away to the neighboring kingdom - Curious to a fault

Sausage - Mauve Resident - Construction worker for the many dungeons and attractions - Works well with wood in the morning - Way too enthusiastic

Scar - Travelling Merchant - Sells all the wares! Even wares that don't exist! - Yes the cane is magic - Makes an annual trip across the country to Mauve

Scott - Azure Merchant - Collects fashion articles from all over the country - Runs a ferry business on the side - Might know something.

Skizz - Resident of Cerule - Chosen by a phim and gifted a pair of angel wings and a halo - Encourages body positivity! Because love yourself you jerks - Trusts blindly and with open arms.

Stress - Goat/Beast hybrid in Amara - Retractable fluff for an instant winter coat! - The hooves are more like paws, but she's got incredible balance - Runs a tea shop with odd but tasty blends.

Tango - Fire spirit - Holy spirit of fire who's honestly just confused why he's so popular - Kidnapped by Scar and escaped to Gem all within a week - Hides in Gem's fireplace

TFC - Blacksmith of Varie - Specializes in actual tools, not weapons - Has a side business of stone sculptures. Buy one get two small ones free - Has a familiar, but no one knows what it is

Wels - MC - Surname revoked. Formal title "Wels, Knight of the Realm" - Banished from his home and travelling to a faraway land - His horse is named Worse, but pronounced like 'horse'

XB - Resident of Azure - Book collector and moved out of Amara to pursue his love of books - Got a blessing from a water spirit so he doesn't suffocate - Learned flight magic and swims through the air

Xisuma - Vagabond - Originally from Mauve. Travels the lands at every opportunity - No one has ever seen his face - Incredibly helpful travel guide

Zedaph - Royal Engineer/Alchemist of Mauve - May have invented cocaine. And gunpowder - Designs elaborate gauntlets for the bold to test their strength - Decided two extra arms were a good idea

[danphantom]

oh hey i wanna talk abt smth thats been on my mind both lately and on and off for a while in general. sorry this ended up being a hella long post lol. but i have a lot to say

so...for context, ive been in the phandom for 10 years--since 2014--though it has admittedly been on and off in terms of engagement from me. in 2017 i got into dragon ball and all but dropped danny phantom completely with a few small drawings here and there. it was only like..within the past week that i actually got back into the phandom legitimately again, actively making art and posts about it and engaging with the source material and etc

anyway, i was obsessed with dp from 2014-late 2017 (until i got into dbz). i made lots and lots of fanart, played the gba games like all the damn time (i got to where i could speedrun tue lol), rewatched the show regularly...i was even one of those fans that bought obscure merch and learned useless trivia that ive since forgotten. in 2015 a lot of you may remember that i made @doppelgangercomic, a comic about an au i had where dan got a redemption arc (albeit a bumpy one) and future vlad was there and stuff happened (go read the comic LOL). it got a LOT of love and traction! it made me really happy to see all the positivity around my work like that :) i actually got a lot of positive responses towards my work in general. i had a really great time in the phandom back then

then i changed fandoms and kinda fell out of the phandom space. after being on a hiatus from the phandom until literally a week ago, i honestly have to say ive felt like i kind of...faded into obscurity in the phandom's eyes? basically i feel like old news. people dont generally know what doppelganger is now. they may have seen my art in passing here and there but they dont know who i am anymore. i think the only place people actively still find my old danny phantom art from when i was heavily active is...deviantart lol. i get notifications from favorites literally every day there. but uh anyway--im not saying this to garner pity or tell a sob story or anything! im just expressing some thoughts and feelings ive had for a long time lol.

the reason i bring this ^ up though, is because like...i know its not true? logically, i know that i DID make an impact in the fandom i loved/love so so much. i left my mark on both the fandom in an artistic sense, and also the people in the fandom, and sometimes i forget that because i get significantly less engagement on my posts than i used to. but i know that doesnt mean that people dont like my stuff anymore, or that ive been forgotten.

i actually got a message from someone today--a friend i made kinda recently who approached me bc they liked doppelganger actually. they told me that basically its surreal to them that theyre talking to me as a friend because they remember reading doppelganger when they were younger and looking up to me because of it. and it really reminded me of what i said previously--ive not been forgotten, and people still do appreciate and love what ive put out into the world (specifically about danny phantom in this case). ive made an impact on people's lives even when i dont realize it or see it physically. the message and sentiment made me feel really really good and nice and happy and honestly relieved, because the phandom and danny phantom as a media has been an extremely important and impactful part of my life ever since i got into it ten years ago. i literally changed my name to dan because of it lol. it was the reason i found stephen silver's work and went down that path of my art journey. its the reason i found so many amazing people and friends and artists and continue to do that even now. i owe a lot to danny phantom and the phandom as a whole, and i try to give back in the only ways i know how--mainly thru showing my passion through my art and posts.

anyway erm. yeah. all of this to say i wanted to thank yall--the phandom--for supporting me all this time, whether youve been with me from the beginning or if youre just joining me recently. youve been an absolute delight in my life and i know youll continue to be for a long time. :)

[olderthannetfic]

Hey writer, take the write what you want to read further. Use it in original works too, you will feel so free.

Also, like read what you want to write and read a lot of it. My biggest struggle with both writing and reading has always been that I just really don't like the tropes that are used by native English romance writers. Now I love a good trashy romance, but English romance isn't even good. It's just the writing equivalent of a daytime soap. Like English publishing just feels like they don't treat romance very seriously since it's main demographic is women or queer folks. (Which I feel is why those are the groups who mainly flock to fanfic).

Korean and Japanese light novels and comics have been an absolute boon for me. (Chinese ones still come off as a bit too daytime soap for my personal enjoyment).

As a kid I went from tearing through anything I could get my hands on to reading as much fic I could as a teen to practically not reading at all for a good portion of 4-5 years because nothing could really grab me. All the romance for adults either had no plot or acted like sex was practically nonexistent and sometimes both. And if you like that, it's great but, it started to make me hate reading. Then I stumbled across the way that demographics work in japan and got curious enough to try again but with manga to see if I could get interested in what writers had to offer again. I was blown away honestly, I started tearing through comics (both Japanese and Korean) so quickly I was finishing and catching up with comics that had sometimes over 200 chapters in days. I started running out of things (because I have very specific taste but still my comic library is 3000+) so I started looking into light novels (god bless novelupdates)

A big part of my personal draw towards Japanese and Korean publishing is probably that even shoujo/teen girl demographics don't outright ignore sex, it's talked about and even happens in comics ment for teen girls. Like very fee that I've read ignore it. Also just in general the plots don't frustrate me as much much of English pub thrives off of avoidable misunderstandings that frankly give me second hand embarrassment (most English romance lit give me second hand embarrassment anyway cause the characters just suck but I digress) where as Japanese and Korean pub feels more like understandable misunderstandings? (English lit being mainly jealous/assumptions/cheating vs jap/Korean lit being hearing things out of context/rivals making misunderstandings/mistaken\double identies) summing up many English romances thrive of stupidity keeping the leads apart where as many jap/kor romances keep them apart via external forces. But I tangented oops.

Point being, it has finally given me direction in my own writing. I want to write in a way that emulates Japanese and Korean writing styles, I want to use the tropes that they more commonly use and a similar basic outline and story progression.

I can write and read again and it gives me genuine joy that I thought I had lost, that fanfiction simply can't fill for me anymore (the fandoms I'm in are starting to slow down due to age and most of the things that have active fandoms I'm just not interested in the source materials) anyway main point being sometimes you just need to branch out and look at less common places. Reading outside of English works finally ended my writers block and has given me a few small fandoms to interact with and while most of what I read has no English fandom I have such a treasure trove of orginal content that I very rarely need fic.

Thanks for letting me use the ask box as a little stage. I think you're wonderful for allowing your blog to be that kind of space!

-@botanicbones

--

[aerypear]

Hi hello? I heard you were the resident expert on Ratatosk :>

Any ideas/hcs on how he'd look in his true form squirrel coughhh anyway I am back to the DotNW fandom after 10 years and taking a swing at a fan design.

Your art is very beautiful 💜

Welcome to the Ginnungagap, how may I take your order? /lh

Your art is very beautiful 💜

Thankyou!

Any ideas/hcs on how he'd look in his true form squirrel coughhh anyway I am back to the DotNW fandom after 10 years and taking a swing at a fan design.

In the course of typing this out, this got very long, so it's under a read more for other's Dashboards sanity

I've drawn various versions in the past... oh god I'm old, this game needs to stop aging- 15 years. Imagined him in all sorts of ways. My favorite is personally the squirrel design another Artist made (I unfortunately don't have their username and nothing comes back when I reverse image search it so someone feel free to supplement that info if they know)

But we do know that on some level of Canon (Thanks to the manga), Ratatosk has a humanoid figure with a physique similar to Regal and Origin.

Isn't he sexy? /jk 🤣🤣

We also know, thanks to the manga, that the Sword Emil uses is not the same style blade Ratatosk is demonstrated as owning in the comics.

(Png Rendering I made ages ago for Cosplay referencing) Which leads to reason that Emil and Ratatosk developed a new fighting style over the course of the story and the only hints that the style Ratatosk knew are in Ain Soph Aur.

Emil likes to use the sword like an extra long fencing style sword, where Ratatosk winds up for the Ain Soph Aur attack like he's wielding a Back Handed Blade aka Reverse Grip sword. (which is just a sword with the grip handle that allows for it to be held backwards. You can see this technique in many Rogue type characters, and even in Naruto when they hold their knives backwards along their forearm) **Note that you can use backhanded blades forward like normal blades**

Richter mentioned (more like aqua but who's paying attention) that Ratatosk was very strong in whatever fighting technique he knew and that he had been injured going toe to toe with Ratatosk. And Before I go into my dissertation that Ratatosk would be an AMAZING volleyball player, I'll move on. >u>

Fortunately you won't have to labor too hard into imagining what Humanoid Summon Spirits look like as the First game gave us plenty of source material to work with.

As you'll see across the spread is that, except for Maxwell, Clothing is optional. Origin put on Boots and called it FUCKING GOOD ENOUGH. I also think it's interesting that Origin and Ratatosk have very similar looking blades.

Finally, I must Add that on the Centurions themselves (and I mean aqua and Tenebrae) you can See elements of their core on them. Color scheme, Markings bearing similar strokes etc. We also know that On Undine, Celsius, and Luna that they do have physical Markings.

We also Know what Tree Spirits look like thanks to Tales of Phantasia Narikiri dungeon.

Featuring Ratatosk's "Daughter" Norn. (She's made from the cuttings of his Tree)

So if you wanted to run off with a completely unique Idea, Here's a bunch of info that uses Canon source materials to help you along.

As for my Head canons... Cutie with red eyes, either Red or Raven Hair (but I like to draw him with white because that's fun too). Outfits I like to do a spin off of his Knight of Ratatosk attire that only the Darkness knows because I get the Sense Tenebrae fashioned it after something Ratatosk was comfortable wearing. Something that isn't super rough around the edges because Ratatosk's dissention into a harsh personality set was triggered by the death of his tree. Mithos (in Tales of the Rays) recalled him being a very Kind Summon Spirit, Seeing a lot of who Emil is in what he recalled of Ratatosk, but still sees that Kindness in Ratatosk. (That Ratty pants totally swears he doesn't have. And Nothing gets me more than Ratatosk having enough character growth to accept what happened and forgive his old Friend for what transpired. 😭I was expecting a hoe down drag out brawl and they gave me FEELS.)

I found One of the pieces where I based him more so off Norn's design elements. Old piece is old, made back in 2019. But I'm not seeing the other versions. I'll have to see if they are stored elsewhere.

[moomingitz]

Satam is overrated AF. Prime is far superior to it.

Not to mention the art in satam is ugly AF . Sonic's and Tails character model was pretty ugly too.

All I said is that it's kind of dumb to use comparisons from the franchise that came long after SatAm was cancelled, and a game the average fan back then didn't play because it was on an expensive console add-on, for why Western fans who grew up in the 90s shouldn't think the show as a dark take on Sonic.

And I'm gonna have to disagree on Sonic Prime being the better show in general. I gave it a fair chance and came into it with an open mind. I was actually intrigued by the whole "Shatterverse" concept when the details of the show first leaked. But I unfortunately have many problems with it that keep me from fully enjoying it. I'm just gonna say that the show, in my opinion, feels aggressively mediocre, if that's the best way for me to put it. I feel like the characters are either just there or unlikable(especially Nine and Thorn Rose). Yet this show claims to take place in the main game canon, despite there being so many inconsistencies with Sonic's characterization alone(and do I have problems with how he's portrayed). At least SatAm, and by extension Archie, never claimed to be canon to the games at all. Prime, the cartoon that is supposed to take within it's source material, feels more "fan fiction" like, than the dark and gritty early 90s cartoon adaption.

I don't disagree with how Sonic was drawn in the Dic cartoons hasn't aged the best, especially when nobody could seem to be on the same page on how to draw his quills, which was not exclusive to SatAm. But, SatAm's overall art direction is something I would hardly call "ugly AF". Not when Sonic Underground and Sonic the Comic existed in the same decade. It just looks like another typical 90s furry cartoon. Prime's animation looks off-putting a lot of times, and it's just another reason why I would rather have something be animated low budget 2D instead. The character designs and models looking so close to their game counterparts only makes things stick out even more when you see something that just doesn't seem right with them.

As much as I have nostalgia for SatAm and it's characters, I do get annoyed with how fans act like as if it's the only adaption that was during that decade, or them immediately going, "OMG ARE THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS GONNA RETURN?!?!" whenever a new game is announced or piece of Sonic media is announced. But at the same time, I can't stand the whole "Acktually SatAM was never good!" purist garbage, without even trying to at least understand why the Western side of the fandom liked it so much back then. I've long had my fill of that fandom elitism crap from seeing it since the early 2000s.

I'm the kind of person who has watched things like, Felix the Cat: The Movie, more times than what should be considered normal or acceptable. So you're wasting your time when I'm someone who has not only seen the most bottom of the barrel stuff, but still finds value in even "bad" media.

[ot3]

I actually think the orv webtoon pretty much fails as an adaptation. In the novel you're meant to identify with kdj and relate to him heavily, it's even written in first person for this: it's not "he did smth", it's "I did" ("You did"). This works right into the ending which wouldn't hit half as hard without it. And in the webtoon he's only a character. A protagonist. There's no identifying with him like this. The way he's drawn there doesn't help either...

i would definitely have to agree that the orv webtoon just absolutely does not have the same feel the webnovel does, and that it's much harder to get in kim dokja's head. but i would have to agree in that it fundamentally fails as an adaptation.

for starters, i think the idea that you can't identify with/project onto a character unless the narrative is actively holding your hand in doing that is a pretty baseless claim to make. there is quite literally nothing that could stop a person from looking at any kind of fictional character and saying 'wow hes literally me for real' no matter how much distance the narrative puts between you and them. it may take a little bit more active desire from The Girl Reading This but I don't think it's nearly as much of a stretch as you're making it out to be, especially as the story progresses and we get to the arcs that serve to make kim dokja feel a little more believably 3 dimensional than he does in his early epic isekai protagsweep cringe behavior.

also, even if what you were describing was true for every webtoon reader - that kim dokja is just A Protagonist, and not as much of a vessel for projection - i think that's genuinely an adaptation of orv that has a lot of merit and a very interesting meta-relationship to the source material. when you consider the webtoon's publishing schedule, webtoon readers are going to be operating on a timeline much closer to that of KDJ reading the original wos updates. He essentially is yoo joonghyuk to everyone who has begun reading it now, a sort of impossibly resilient protagonist they could choose to lean on for the better part of the next decade. and i think that's super interesting. kim dokja has never been more yoo joonghyuk than he is in the orv webtoon. that's not a bad adaptation at all! that is in fact very interesting to me!

the thing about adaptations that's really tricky is that it is 1. physically impossible to 'accurately' adapt a story from one medium into another. the medium is so intrinsic to storytelling that by necessity things are lost, changed, and gained in switching from one to another. and 2. considering the wide range of opinions people have about a source there really is no consensus about which exact things about a text have to be 1:1 translated in order for an adaptation to be 'faithful'. im very far behind on the webtoon but everything i have seen so far i think has done the best job it can translating it into a comic.....

.... except for the art style

i really do not like the way this person draws people, yeah. the same face is so rampant that it's genuinely difficult for some people to tell the characters apart. it's got super uninspired character design which i think is a crying shame that does a lot of these characters a huge disservice. i wish they had picked something less generic looking. but in many ways, generic looking exteriority fits orv. i can aaaalmost appreciate it from that angle, and im sure it's helping orv gain traction with the kind of people who regularly read webtoons (i am not one of these people) but. yeah. i find the way sleepy c draws people to be pretty ugly, if we're being honest.

[pluckyredhead]

Not on the ask list, but a question I've been curious about and I respect your writing a great deal. Obviously feel free to ignore this anon ask but: Do you think that fanfic authors need to read comics in order to write good fanfic of those characters? And accepting that there's going to be some nuance to your answer that I cannot anticipate (it would be bad form to ask a question I know how you would answer after all), is there any specific take, overarching or for specific characters, that you wish fanfic authors would drop?

I'm going to say "you" a lot in this answer but I mean the general you and not you specifically, anon!

No, I don't think you need to read comics to write good comics fic. I personally love the source material, and I love fic that is deeply embedded in the source material - where I can tell the writer is drawing on specific moments in the comics and has an understanding of who the characters are in canon and not just the fandom versions. So as a reader, that's always what I'm going to be drawn to. But I've certainly read and enjoyed plenty of fic from writers who have read very few comics, or none at all.

I do want to note, though, that this isn't an all or nothing question. There's a really wide gulf between reading as many comics as I have over the past 20 years and reading absolutely zero comics. I recommend reading some comics, however many or few as you want - not to write good fic, but because reading comics is fun and I like it and you might like it too!

What I don't like is the position some fans take that not reading comics is somehow morally superior to reading them, or that their opinions are superior or more correct because they're untainted by the source material. It's a weird take and it's rude. It's also not gatekeeping when a comics reader says "Here is what happens in the comics." It's just...describing what happens in the comics.

In terms of fandom takes, I say this a lot, but...the DC universe is not the Batfam and then all of their supporting characters. Clark and Hal have had their own comics for many decades, they do not exist to provide emotional support for Bruce. (It's genuinely HILARIOUS that fandom thinks Hal Jordan can successfully identify even one (1) emotion and respond in a helpful way. The man thinks "willpower" is an emotion.) Wally does not exist FOR Dick, Roy for Jason, Kon for Tim, Jon for Damian, etc. Those guys have their own books, their own histories, their own stories, their own families. They also all have Wikipedia pages to get you started on learning more if you understandably do not want to read 80 years of comics.

Also, zeta tubes are only a YJTV thing, they don't exist in the comics. People just walk or whatever.

[secretgamergirl]

StarCraft 2's story- Good or garbage?

I'm kind of lurking in the discord of a new RTS that's running a kickstarter right now. I don't know how strongly I want to endorse that because while what they have in the can looks darn good in terms of mechanics and gameplay polish and the people involved seem generally cool, I don't think anything at all is really pinned down otherwise. At the very least though it looks very "I'll make my own StarCraft 2! With blackjack! And hookers!" and I'm down for a game with that flavor of mechanics doing well when made by anyone other than, you know, Blizzard.

It's impossible not to draw comparisons when a game is pretty nakedly marketing itself as "we want to divorce the things we like about this one game from the monsters who made it" of course, and so now I'm thinking about just how powerfully terrible the writing was in StarCraft 2, but I'm not going to go off about it in some poor people who I don't know even have a writer yet's forums. I'm gonna ramble about it on my blog.

Now there's two ways to look at this one. We can look at the story of this game on its own, in a vacuum, or we can look at it as a continuation of the story of StarCraft. It's terrible by either standard, but let's start by looking at it as a continuation first.

Now, I'm not going to jump in here and just slap you with a novella long list of all the flagrant plot holes, direct contradictions, and unrecognizable characters if you actually go through these beat for beat. I've done so in the past. Might have done so on this blog. I mean when StarCraft 2 came out I was absolutely insufferable to everyone around me shouting about these things. Like... I don't even know how you can drop so many balls like that. Maybe they were doing that thing where they didn't even glance at the source material and were just poking around some fan wiki populated with random crap from tie-in novels and comics by people who were just going off on their own things... I do always have to mention though that whether by intent or incompetence they seem to have totally dropped the expansion's story from the canon, at least before 2's expansions came along years later.

But no, I want to focus on just basic themes and character arcs here. So the original base game of StarCraft breaks its story into three arcs, each from the POV of a character from one of the three playable factions in the game. This isn't the greatest structure for maintaining narrative cohesion throughout, especially when one of those factions is the communal hive mind of a big swarm of space bugs who at the end of the day just want to eat everything. And if I'm being brutally honest, there isn't a whole lot to write home about in the back third either. They kinda slipped back into old habits there and it's kinda just the sort of stock fantasy story you tend to get with games. Decadent ancient space elf empire ignores a big obvious problem due to hubris and a frankly incompetent leader, turns out their ancient traditions and prejudices are total BS, go quest for some magic rocks, have your big grand final battle where the hero self-sacrifices to blow up the monsters.

That first third though, and some threads that carry through the rest, have some good stuff going on. We've got a newly appointed magistrate (the unseen unvoiced player) and marshall (Jimmy) on some backwoodsy wild west sort of planet. They're pretty young and idealistic. Space bugs attack, they try to help, trying to help gets them in trouble with their higher ups who don't really buy the seriousness of this space bug invasion. Desperate for anyone to help fight the good fight, they fall in with a fringe militant cult leader (Mengsk) and his right-hand gal (Kerrigan) who he busted out of some government psychic supersoldier program. Jimmy immediately crushes on her, she doesn't reciprocate.

The gang goes along with all of Mengsk's plans, overthrowing the government to gain control of their armies and psychic experimentation programs to deal with these space bugs, and the level of moral compromise this involves gradually ratchets up until everyone finds themselves complicit in Mengsk killing the whole civilian population of the capital by having Kerrigan set up a psychic murderbug attractor and nobody bother's to evacuate her afterwards.

The other two realize they made a really bad choice of who to throw in with, smash up some major military hardware in the process of bailing on Mengsk as he's setting himself up as dictator for life, and eventually throw their lot in with the protagonists in the third arc, just kinda helping out while they do the whole deal of defying the orders of the ancient space elf council, learning the magic arts of the misunderstood outcasts, flying a big spaceship into the main brain controlling the space bugs. Kerrigan meanwhile gets converted into a space bug/human hybrid super soldier which... honestly feels like it's setting stuff up for a big showdown that just kinda never happens.

Still, we've got characters, they've got arcs. Mostly we have Jimmy (and the silent player character) learning the hard way that long-established power structures tend to be too inflexible to be helpful, and you should never trust anyone openly seeking personal power because they will just exploit everyone around them. It all even roughly follows the classic 3 act structure (and I mean, there's literally 3 acts mapping to that too, just that act 2 is all shown from a villain's perspective). In other media, this is sort of just the bare minimum, but games rarely bother with characters growing, changing, or having real setbacks that make them question things along their way.

This was followed up with the expansion, Brood War, which mirrors that same structure. One long story arc for each of three playable factions. Space elves largely doing standard fantasy beats, middle third switching to a villainous POV so radically different the main narrative gets largely put on hold, and some really good stuff with threads stretching through the whole thing.

Here the villain interlude is that it turns out Earth in this setting is run by full-on fascists, they caught wind of everything going on in this region where there'd previously been a big rebellion, and swing back in to clamp down again. They don't interact with the actual protagonists much (generally, they see the space nazis sweeping in and run off to lay low), so we mostly just have them swooping in and quickly mopping up Mengsk's little newfound dictatorship, with the actual story being the relationship dynamic between the guy in charge (DuGalle), his right hand man he's known forever (Stukov), and a local rebel welcoming them with open arms (Duran). Long story short, Duran's actually a double agent and very gradually pits the other two against each other. DuGalle eventually has Duran kill Stukov thinking he stabbed him in the back, realizes that's dumb, ultimately fails at his whole invasion, and in the epilogue kills himself, which if you read the relevant bit of my FF14 summaries, you know is how I like my stories about clear nazi analogues to end.

In the main narrative though, we pick right back up from the big heroic sacrifice with the bummer of a reveal that killing the primary brain of the psychic space bug collective didn't really get the job done, because some of its secondary brains (refreshingly not a concept pulled out of nowhere, these were firmly established to serve the dual purposes of having clear military targets for a giant pile of bugs, and a way to actually have enough characters for dialog exchanges in that third of the story) are trying to put the band back together. In their current disorganized state though, Kerrigan is no longer a semi-autonomous corrupted bug minion, but totally has her free will and sense of self restored, while still being all chitinous and at least somewhat capable of commanding the other bugs.

So as the whole expansion plays out, and the perspective shifts from the space elves doing some real desperate migration and defense because the plan to save their home world from the big bug invasion ultimately failed, through the nazi invasion, and ultimately to the POV of the secondary bug-brain you'd previously played as who'd been buggified Kerrigan's baby sitter essentially, now forced into taking orders from her, we are mostly dealing with this big hanging question of whether she's really good and trustworthy again, or secretly still under bug control, or if she's good for now but any minute that hivemind could properly come back online and take her over again. And of course, Jimmy's all angsty and pining because he never got over that one-sided crush.

While there's plenty of red flags about her being trustworthy over the course of things, the narrative actually manages to play things close to the chest well enough for the ultimate reveal to be a pretty fun twist. She absolutely 100% is fundamentally herself again, it's just that for a series of mostly pretty well-justified reasons, she absolutely hates every other character in the story. Either they've been trying to kill her, they abused and manipulated her, or they've totally objectified her. Or they're nazis who just showed up, who you don't really need a personal reason to want to kill, but just for good measure they're trying to revive and mind control the central bug mind, so, yeah, that's a threat. So at the last minute the whole thing just reveals itself as a big elaborate revenge story with a fairly strongly gendered theme about being denied agency and being othered, where the actually quite clear-headed just ruthless girl wins.

And then, a decade later, we get StarCraft 2. And what's the main narrative of StarCraft 2? We spend the whole time focused on Jimmy, who has somehow gone from this young idealistic biker/space cowboy with thinning hair, talking like a hippie and bouncing around getting in way over his head trying to rescue people from space bugs by just lending a hand to whoever else seems interested in doing that and crushing on this girl Kerrigan who couldn't be clearer about not liking him back to uh... some sort of gruff jaded old former military general with a bunch of old war buddies, a drinking problem, and a full head of hair, cruising around on his big personal battleship saving various worlds from the big space bug threat pretty much singlehandedly, and hoping to rescue his love interest Kerrigan from space bug mind control, with the help of some kind of prophesied magic space rocks you can build a big totem out of. It even completely de-buggifies her in the end, leaving a helpless little naked girl to chivalrously scoop off the ground and carry to safety. P.S. She's white now.

This isn't like, "oh whoops, we forgot the main character lost one of his boots at the end of last season" nitpicking. This is doing complete 180s on the character arcs and backstories of the central characters here. Kerrigan not needing to be rescued from zerg corruption is the ENTIRE point of Brood War's story. Which also establishes there's no longer really a zerg threat of any sort beyond what she personally wants to tell her mindless bug pals to do. And really, even if you want to de-canonize all of that for whatever reason, tacking a "hero saves the girl" ending onto the story we had in the base game of the original StarCraft still just does not work. You're taking a story whose whole theme is "putting faith in the wrong sort of person has serious consequences" and then turning around and going "actually no it doesn't."

And you know, speaking of Mengsk, it's a much lesser point, but StarCraft 2 depicts him like he's some sort of grandiose emperor from some ancient dynasty. Big imperial palace, little silver spoon in his mouth prince of a son who wants to break from his family's legacy, the whole nine yards. Again, this both fundamentally misunderstands his part in the whole central narrative, and everything that happened to him in the expansion (where not very long at all after his big power grab the UED showed up and completely took him apart, and would have executed him but Kerrigan prolonged that to watch him squirm). And when did he have this kid of his? With who? And where is Jimmy getting all these war buddies? He didn't have'em at the start of things or he wouldn't have had to join up with Mengsk. And his war buddies from that war would just be the magistrate and the surviving protoss characters who act like they barely know him here.

So, no. This does not hold up at all as a continuation. How about if we just look at it in a vacuum then?

Nope, still bad. It leans heavily on a backstory we don't get to see. And I don't mean we're missing a ton of StarCraft 1 flashbacks. I mean, we have all these "old buddy" characters, especially Tychus, but we don't get into how they became friends or do anything to show how they still are, so there's no real emotional stakes to where that ends up going. We start with him drinking his life away in a bar over how he misses this apparent old girlfriend, but we never get into the history between them and even the depressed drinking never comes up again past that shot. We vaguely establish some bitter history with this Mengsk guy, but that never really leads anywhere at all. We just kinda have these various vague and generic handwaves at Standard Protagonist Backstory Stuff. Then we actually dive into things, and it's this very episodic affair where you just hop around from planet to planet either showing up to rescue people or showing up to collect a magic rock to help build the magic Toblerone that cures being half-space-bug. And I mean, I already covered how this sort of simplistic no tension, hero always wins, collect all the treasures for victory sort of narrative is the general baseline for game writing, but other people have been trying to move things forward the last couple decades and this is just sitting at the starting line with a princess to rescue.

Now to be fair, the original StarCraft absolutely also had questing around for magic rocks. The protoss have a totally magic rock based electrical grid, the overmind wanted to eat their special magic rocks to make them more vulnerable, the last protoss mission even had a big ancient temple that did an energy blast, but that one just killed all life on the planet outside of its immediate vicinity, which feels like a more grounded thing for an ancient alien artifact to do than... vaporize/purify space bugs and leave everything else alone. And it wasn't scattered in little bits everywhere.

And then of course there's the expansions to StarCraft 2... well the good thing here is they're so divorced from anything in the original game, and even from the base game of StarCraft 2 that you don't have to worry about them messing with the legacy. I mean, OK, Heart of the Swarm has this whole weird reset where we have Kerrigan mostly human again, just so she can go on a big spirit journey and bug herself up again, so that she's strong enough for her ultimate goal of... showing up to take down Mengsk... again. And you somehow end up with a zergified version of Stukov which... OK that's just the weirdest possible way to double back and recanonize that expansion. I'm not sure that Kerrigan and Stukov were ever even really aware of each other's existence, and he died to a bullet through the head in a military base with no zerg anywhere near it. I mean, unless you remember that Duran was a double agent working for Kerrigan. Except the thing there is if you know the plot of the secret epilogue mission you'd know he was ACTUALLY one of the secret ancient aliens who created both the protoss and the zerg just pretending to a horrible bug monster spy for Kerrigan, in turn pretending to be a normal human. And that's a pretty obscure detail I'd forgive someone for missing except that literally in the mission where you're playing as Zerg-Stukov, the whole reason you're playing as Zerg-Stukov is that Kerrigan is busy doing one of those things where the two wizards fire big energy blasts at each other like some kind of tug-of-war with weird phallic overtones, and the big energy phallus she's trying to squish back is FROM Duran, in his revealed-himself-to-be-that-whole-mess glory. They remembered one thing only to get it wrong basically.

But yeah, otherwise that one's just so wild a departure I don't even know what to say. There's just... named zerg characters? They're all like bug centaurs? Because we need people to talk to and they just totally forgot they had cerebrates to get around that problem? Instead of the ancient ancestral zerg being like, psychic ringworms gradually specializing their hosts over generations, here they're like... talking dinosaur puppies who steal each other's "essence" to get huge? Past a point there's so little resemblance to the source material that I can't even be mad. And then the protoss expansion just kinda decides that the whole casting the dark templar out of their society over irreconcilable religious differences is something they've actually done like... 3 or 4 times? So we've got the outcast invisible jedi and the outcast robots and the outcast Darth Vader wannabes with some sort of society-wide ordered queue where there's exactly one person directly ahead of everyone they're allowed to kill to move up in the world. Oh and we're claiming this one robot centaur is Fenix somehow. Despite Fenix being very dead, and this robot centaur neither having that goofy muppet-y orc voice nor the overwhelmingly positive attitude. And he also somehow doesn't notice that he's a robot centaur and not a guy in a life support pod inside a robot spider. They also expect us to believe this little naked twink turned into this pile of steroids and shoulderpads somehow:

Oh! I almost forgot but also there's this thing called the Khala and it's unambiguously this set of religious teachings defining a caste system and such... but then here someone watched Avatar so we're retconning that into some sort of psychic spiritual network you connect to through your hair. You don't plug your hair in though it's just like a wifi antenna. Also it only works if you're part of the main society that keeps throwing other people out none of these other people have hair wifi. Also like the entire deal here is that protoss just are not psychic, it's their one flaw. There's this whole thing with them representing physical perfection but being held back by being a bunch of very religious idiots, while the zerg are mentally perfect what with the hive mind but physically just, like, a ringworm, so the ultimate life form their creators really wanted to create requires the zerg to take over the protoss, or just going screw it and hybridizing the two in a lab. Again, this is one of those really obscure details, it only comes up in the weird backstory in the manual that doesn't even get touched on in the game outside the one secret mission in the expansion... but here we have the same scene both acknowledging that deep lore and totally contradicting it.

But yeah, taken as their own independent stories... well... what stories? Kerrigan wants to be a big buff bug lady so she can depose a jerk she already deposed, and she does that. There are no complications or twists along the way. "Artanis" has to go collect all the protoss the in-group don't count as people, because Satan got into their hair wifi and anyone who didn't just get a haircut turned evil. So he goes and does that. Again, no complications of any sort along the way. Also no real ideological conflicts.

The deal with the robot protoss is some idiots went "hey what if we took all of our greatest most celebrated heroes and we copied their minds into robots in their entirety" and then got super confused that they still, you know, want to be treated as people with rights and such and not just mindless robots. So, you know, simple fix there. Then the... actually just evil ones are... lead by John DeLancey. Everyone likes him. So, problem resolved? And the dark templar are already befriended from before, so nothing's needed there besides going to their homeworld to pick them up. Their uh.... home world everyone already evacuated to and then that was compromised and their leader was replaced with puppet and then everyone maybe died? But yeah they're fine.

So then after all the racism is solved forever by just... deciding not to do that anymore, Kerrigan jumps in some kind of magic pool to transform into a giant naked golden angel, and she does this to become the embodiment of purity of essence we apparently need (which also purges all zerg-ness I guess?) and... look there's no easy way to say this. It turns into Homestuck. That whole convoluted thing from Homestuck where there's this eternal cycle of universes being created by light and dark themed people teaming up to create the next one and in theory kind of operate as it's gods but not if they don't feel like it... we're just ripping all that off wholesale for this complete asspull of an ending. And then everyone shoots space satan in the face. He's a big squid. And then Kerrigan turns back into a normal human girl so she can go on a date with Jimmy. Oh and then there's a third expansion recycling the scrapped plot from that action game they were going to do back on the N64 or whatever but I learned how awful the company was before getting curious enough on that one.

It's just bad. Even by game writing standards, it's bad. And I didn't even get into how bad it is with women in particular. We've got the big doe-eyed scientist who needs to be rescued from the scary bugs and then oh no it turns out she got bit by a bug and now she's turning into one and has to be put down (and no, this has never been how that worked). Then we've got Kerrigan who aside from needing rescuing and purifying and coming out naked has this whole expansion to herself where in theory she's totally in charge and self-directing every decision, but every time you click anywhere the confirmation is just her getting all pouty and whiny? Like a toddler you're telling to put shoes on so you can go to the doctor or something? Like, is it just me? Is it the direction? Is it the voice filter? Was the actress just miserable in the recording booth?

Then she's got this little bug girl assistant who hangs down from the ceiling, kinda like the adjutant from the original StarCraft, but instead of being all detatched and robotic she's all uwu pwecious? And the protoss campaign just kinda keeps turning women into mouthpieces for Satan. It's... a whole thing.

So yeah, badly written stories all throughout, no matter how you slice it. No continuity, no consistency, no character arcs or tension, just be the big cool action hero, do some getting the band back together stuff, collect some magic rocks and ritual circles, purify this girl here with the big magic circle (3 times no less) and then whatever there's space Satan. It's a mess... did I even have a larger point with this?

Probably not, but it was entertaining I hope? Maybe throw a little cash my way?

[wfagamerants]

Anyone that follows me for a while has likely seen me bring up this character at some point. Heck, she is my profile picture for this particular account.

Her name’s Kinoppe and she is from the Comic BomBom Mario manga series. Why do I bring her up a lot on my blog a lot, despite her not being a Wario character?

Because I like her. Yeah, that’s really it.

A thing to answer is then what it is about her that draws me to her to this degree, that I consider her somewhat of a signature of mine now, given her obscurity.

There are a lot of obvious appeals, like of course she’s adorable and I have also been very vocal that I am a Toad fan, so a character tied to him and his species is gonna get my attention a lot, but even that is only part of it.

As someone that digs deep for stuff, I am a big fan of obscure content, so Kinoppe as a particularly out there, yet quite prominent character in her own series (20 volumes where she pops up) ticks off that box very well as well. 

Even taking all that aside though, Kinoppe to me is a great showcase of how different things were at the time, when it comes to Mario tie-ins.

Early media, regardless of whether it was the west or Japan, had very different views on how to portray the citizens of the Mushroom Kingdom. Whether we are talking about individual characters or regular members of the species, you saw many different interpretations.

And even among all of them, Kinoppe still sticks out.

Aside from the mushroom hat she looks fully human, it’s completely unlike anything you’d see nowadays especially…and it’s precisely that which I love.

Companies nowadays are far more protective of how their IPs are handled by other parties and that makes total sense, but the 80s, 90s and to some degree even early 2000s, were a different time.

It was a wild west where there was much less of a vision of how something like say, Mario, would be portrayed in anything outside the games. The games didn’t have much of a plot, the pixel art left things up to interpretation and on the whole, there weren’t many standards for how adaptations would go about things.

Because of it, everyone who got handed the Mario license was essentially left to their own devices and from that, we got many different takes on Mario.

Of course we in the west have our own examples, from the short-lived comics, to the three cartoon series, to:

I am thankful for all of these, even the movie, for being such a wild ride of different takes on Mario. The Super Show and SMB3 cartoon even cemented my love for things like the Mario, Luigi, Peach and Toad team or the Koopalings, which still holds true today. Having gotten to experience all these in some form during my childhood, I think all of these have a merit to be seen by fans, just to have a fun time capsule to a very different era of licensed Maro media.

While the west had all of these, Japan had its own share of media. A notable one being the anime movie Super Mario Bros: The Great Rescue of Princess Peach. I’m a particular fan of this one for both taking a lot from the games, while doing a lot of its own thing that I love from early media, like its early, greedy interpretation of Luigi.

While that’s all good stuff, there is one medium where Mario has a very extensive history in, manga:

Not that easy to come by and not extensively documented, I have grown deeply fascinated with the many, many flavors of Mario manga that exist.

A number even date as early as right after SMB1 released. With such a limited pool of source material, the people behind these really had to scramble to come up with ideas of how to translate this game into manga form.

Even as more titles came out, the lack of a defined world and minimal stories meant there was still a lot of open room for interpretation and the need to fill in blanks.

Cue BomBom Comics’ very own KC Mario:

The origin of Kinoppe and the longest running Mario manga besides Super Mario kun, KC Mario stuck around for a whole decade and is one of my favorite pieces of Mario media out there.

In a lot of ways, KC Mario sticks remarkably close to the source. The stories tend to follow the world to world structure of the games, with the heroes dealing with the exact same kind of challenges the games provide the players. It goes so far that even things like Super Mario Land’s Bonus Game, make an appearance:

Of course, these stories still need more to them, which leads to many things. Characters like Luigi, Daisy, Peach, Toad, Bowser, Yoshi or Wario get inserted into stories of games they had no part in, to help flesh out the narrative for instance. This can lead to entirely new sub-plots, such as Wario kidnapping Daisy during the SML2 story and turning her into a Walu-Daisy.

Seeing the simplistic stories of these games fleshed out like that is an exciting prospect, but the series has even more to it than that. It’s remarkable how deeply this manga delves into Mario in all its forms, it’s to the point we got a piece of western Mario media recognition in a Japan-only series.

On top of all of that, the series has a very distinct flavor to it, much of it we would never, ever see these days. It’s a unique mix of a lot of things, be it the occasional pop culture reference:

Art that goes raw:

Some surprisingly raunchy moments:

And complimentary stories, often used as basically epilogues to the game adaptations, which tend to be wild. Gangster Bowser here, trying to get money Peach owes him, speaks for himself:

It is absolutely wild and really underlines what I said before about old Mario media. It was a wild west that took whatever source material there was and ran wild with it and I will never not be glad we got so much of it, when the chance for it was there.

Manga was the only really ongoing media outside of games Mario was consistently present in and aside from Super Mario kun, even that well has dried up significantly. As a result, we haven’t seen many takes of this sort of Mario ever since.

Until now at least.

The Super Mario Bros Movie is a big event. After staying away from lending out the IP for adaptations besides Super Mario kun for so long, we are seeing a large-scale new attempt at a Mario movie again at last.

Of course a lot of time has passed since and all those adaptations I talked about before, yet at the same time, I think a lot of the core appeal of old adaptations stay intact here.

The movie stays close to the games and that is a big part of the appeal. It’s a huge hollywood production that is proud of its source material, instead of feeling the need to alter things for mass appeal. It’s incredible to see and that room for interpretation still remains.

It’s the little things like seeing the way the Mushroom Kingdom society is interpreted in this movie. It sticks so close to the abstract world of platformers, but also shows it as a proper world with people living in it, as the Game Awards movie clip has greatly demonstrated. It’s a natural expansion, while doing its own thing.

How the characters are presented matters too.

The Brooklyn backstory, contrary to popular belief, was never just something made up in localization, but Japan did phase it out much quicker. Seeing it brought back in a major production under Nintendo’s watchful eye, is incredibly surreal, but as someone familiar with all the old media, also a delight.

The way the cast are presented is also wonderful. Bowser is awesome, Luigi as you’d expect him to be, Mario getting a origin story like this is great and while I gushed about Toad before, him and Peach getting to be part of the adventure absolutely feels like the work of people who are as attached to the SMB2 team as I am.

At every corner there is so much to see. Mario Kart here. Snifits there. Donkey Kong, oh MAN the DK representation. Seeing someone as Swanky really brings me back to manga, where Mario meeting the Wario or even Diddy Kong Racing cast, was not out of the question:

I love it, all of it and knowing Foreman Spike is gonna be in it still feels unreal, but as a Wrecking Crew fanboy, I can’t wait to finally see him.

The Super Mario Bros Movie manages to be a kind of faithful movie adaptation that seemed unthinkable, given industry standards, yet also manages to capture the imaginative and unique feel of old adaptations and personally, I am beyond excited.

[freetheshit-outofyou]

As a comic book fan since the 1970's I loved much of the MCU, more so the early MCU because they gave the back story of the characters. Maybe more importantly we were given an emotional attachment and investment into the characters. The Thanos snap was so impactful because we were emotionally invested. Ironman, Captain America, The Guardians all had very full back stories, wins and failures we were invested in, hell even the Red Skull had a back story that was interesting'ish'. But Marvel got money hungry, they wanted to jam as many second and third tier characters into the movies and shows as possible to maybe fill out later with little to no real back story or a back story so different from the source material that they are really a different characters all together, yes I'm talking to you Adam Warlock. The MCU loves to completely murder then "rebuild" characters, Moon Knight and Captain Marvel are two such examples. Both characters I loved in the Comics. Their back story is lacking so our investment into them is equally lacking. As a fan I would love to see some of those lower tier toons get some screen time and a flushed out story, toons like: Beta Ray Bill, Always one of the coolest pop in and out characters in the Comics and has made a back handed appearance in the MCU.

Nova (Frankie Raye, not to becomefused with NOVA Richard Rider/Sam Alexander), the former herald of Galactus would make a much better strong female characters an a female Silver Surfer from Juno's 4 page appearance in the comics from an alternate reality (Earth-829) in 2010. I loved her in the Silver Surfer comics. I drew this sometime in the 1990's.

Since I'm talking about Heralds Morg, Firelord, and Terrax the Tamer would make great villain's. I might even add Stardust to that list since The Eternals are already established in the MCU. It would also open the door for a Bata Ray Bill entry, just saying. Because The Quantum Bands are no in the MCU thanks to The Marvels, we could, and hopefully will see the introduction of Quasar, I liked him and is one of the 1990's Avengers to not get screen time as of yet. Alpha Flight, would make a great long term project with all the connective tissue already existing in the MCU and the addition of the X-Men would be such a nice fit. Of course my altime favorite comic book hero with a great back story...

Norrin Radd's story deserved to be told in a proper format not that crap F4 movie. (Also my drawing form the 1990's.)