#was intended to made it 2 page comic thing but here we are

[fugeoni666]

YeehanWeek2022 Day 6 2/2: AU

 C:"Where am I... Am I dead ?" H:"You will, if you don't do something about it, is been 3 second on earth, one more breath and you're gone" I recreated the iconic intro scene from KK and Akito, so if you guys like more details, you can check the cutscene, but yeah this game visual design is off the chart

[growingupgerudo]

@silverwolfs-stuff @sheiks-the-best

Hello to you both! I've been meaning to write a response about the hiatus so consider this an answer to your question as well as others who are wondering!

We did update Patreon with 2 pages on Monday to start a weekly buffer, having two pages ready to post while others are being made. We will update later today so stay tuned. :) I fully intend to return to GUG this month and we've already started on Patreon.

There are also some personal reasons why we haven't updated the public.

(cw: death mention, child death)

I've been busy with my middle school teaching and there was an event that made it difficult to post the public pages. The reason I started GUG was to help come to terms with my father's cancer treatment so GUG was a way to cope with the idea of mortality and the relationships with the people who raised you. I intended to keep this theme as there is a major character death coming up in the public pages.

A month ago I had to deal with the hardest reality of being a teacher -- losing a student far too early in his life. It was a difficult time for the students, the school, myself to take the news. I wasn't ready to post the upcoming pages while dealing with these issues IRL. Sometimes art helps us cope with reality, sometimes it hurts too close so I kept this in mind for myself as well as the audience for GUG. I was able to create these pages last year with a better mindset, but it was hard for me to post them now.

With that in mind, I appreciate your patience and I look forward to updating all of you again with this comic. :) Bad things will happen in GUG, just like growing up in real life, but I assure you guys that there will be sweetness in the end.

Here's to the New Year!

-Junior

[divineerdrick]

Homestuck: Beyond Canon Upd8 for 2/10/24

We got our news post a little late and our upd8 a little early. I'm struggling today and behind on progress for everything, but I still want to read.

James is being a bit hammy, but he's teasing some good news. It looks like we'll be getting [S] pages in the future. Hopefully with more than one person and a slower upd8 schedule, they won't ever need to pause for them.

Kinda curious about the VTuber mentioned. I like watching people experiencing Homestuck stuff! It's the whole reason I started live blogging.

Now onto the upd8!

Looks like I might have been right about Yiffy potentially having something to do with that ominous red glow. Let's see what's going on.

Like all teens, the worst thing that can happen to her is public parental affection. Though Jade is laying it on thick! Where's Rose with a quip about contacting CPS? Although she'd be calling them on herself.

Not sure how I feel about the gag, honestly. It's pretty cliché, and Tavvy is right there. We don't know how badly Yiffy has suffered, but like Tavvy it's been real abuse and neglect. This comic does have a habit of trying to make child abuse a joke, though.

Kanaya is obviously still struggling, and I can't blame her. Yiffy is one of the most controversial aspects of this comic, supposedly handed down to us from on high by AH himself. One of the great complaints about the Epilogues is that it takes the characters in directions that were intended to challenge fans. But even then, the idea that even a Candy Rose would cheat with Jade to have a secret love child and hide it from her all this time is so fucking out there. Everything about it feels wrong.

And then, of course, they get into a silly dare and name her Yiffany Longstocking Lalonde Harley!

But I'm not saying things that haven't already been said a million times. It's always felt like one of AH's epic troll moments, like the ones I both love and hate in the original work. And I hoping it will eventually pay off to something.

Looking at the text here, Yiffy's color could definitely be the red. Hah! Pepis.

Yiffy's mind is also on Kanaya it seems. We're also getting a sense of her attitude much more clearly now. I'm kinda getting Susie vibes.

Oh wow! They're actually calling it "The Yiffy Reveal" in universe!

Wow! Wow! Fucking wow!

The fuck!

I think my jaw just splintered the floor at my feet!

Rose used her power. She actually used her fucking power! And not only does she believe this will all be fortuitous (it's practically fated since it gives us a set of four kids), but that fortune would dictate Kanaya's eventual forgiveness.

She didn't just decide on, "Easier to get forgiveness than permission." She believed it inevitable, so that made it okay!

The fuck!

We're digging a little into Jade's adult life now. And yeah, it's just as bad as we probably imagined it was. Doesn't justify them going behind Kanaya's back, but you can understand her yearning.

That . . . that oddly makes sense. It still seems wrong, but it's the kind of backward logic that might occur on Candy Earth C. I don't know if AH had this explanation as part of Yiffy's backstory, or if it's writing we can attribute to one team or the other. But it's an actual explanation for how we got here.

Still not enough to pay off the trolling yet.

How . . . Tavvy, what were you doing?

Yeah, no. I'm betting right now Kanaya is feeling a lot more forgiving towards Jade and a lot less forgiving towards Rose.

That's Meenah's symbol, so we know who to expect a call from next time at least.

Of course a lot of attention is payed to the captchalogued corpse in Jade's possession. Did she find Dave's body and is still not dealing with it? Has she considered her taxidermy tradition dealing with it enough? Is this somehow another corpse considered fitting for the Harley traditions?

Tune in next time!

[vikenticomeshome]

Cyberchase Character Discussion (for your local Cyberchase trivia quiz) - #2: Matt

I made a post while back talking about archiving material from the Cyberchase website, including the now-removed character bios. I made a post about Inez, intending it to be the first in a series, and then I put it aside. Now I'm getting back to it.

#2: Matt

So, let's start with his character bio in "Meet the Cybersquad". This was released in 2001, before the series started airing in 2002. I don't know how much of this is still canon, given how much time has passed.

We learn that Matt, like Jackie, is 11 years old. He is presented as Cyber-detective, which is interesting. All of the kids engage in problem-solving. I never really thought Matt was into detective stuff specifically. He is big on the use of his yo-yo when thinking, and he does come prepared with tools in his backpack.

His favorite color is green, which makes sense, as he wears a green turtleneck in almost every episode. He enjoys pizza and pancakes. He enjoys Brian Jacques's "Redwall" books, so we know he isn't squeamish. I love that his favorite is "anything by Will Smith". This bio really is a product of its time. His favorite movie is "Star Wars". He might be referring to "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope" back when it was titled just "Star Wars", or he could be referring to the franchise as a whole. I wonder if he canonically liked "The Phantom Menace", which would have been the only movie from the Star Wars prequel trilogy out at the time.

His listed pet peeve is waiting (for anything). That part is definitely still canon, though he has gotten less impulsive and more patient as the series has progressed.

He also has a ton of pets, and this isn't even counting any livestock his family owns on the farm. He has:

A Bearded Dragon named Boomerang

An Armadillo named Spike

An African Water Frog named Sharky

An African Water Frog named Fins

A dog (mixed Golden Retriever and Yellow Lab) named Obi Won Kadoggie

I didn't even know pet Armadillos were a thing.

That's it for the "Meet the Cybersquad" page. I'm a little surprised that they didn't mention that Matt lives on a farm with his family. They also didn't mention his love for Greek Mythology.

We can also look at his introduction from the official Cyberchase prequel web comic, "How It All Started: Episode 3", for this information.

Narration: Matt lives on a farm with his family, and dreams of being the homerun champ. Little does he know he'll soon be a hero of a different kind.

Narration: Matt is into Greek Mythology big time!

Here is Matt's official Cyberchase trading card.

His favorite line, as listed here is "OK, what do we know?". I thought that was actually one of Jackie's common lines, right next to "Let's get organized". I would have used "Touchdown!" here. It also talks about him being interested in magic. I don't remember that interest coming up, even in the Shari Spotter episodes. He's great at skateboarding, yo-yo tricks, milking cows, and trying new things.

He can also be ruthless, like that time he threatened to destroy The Hacker's Grim Wreaker ship.

We can talk about his impulsiveness and recklessness, like in Season 2 Episode 8: "Whale of a Tale". He saw a steam-filled death pit, where he couldn't see the other side, and tried to jump over it. He thought it was only one meter, due to a partially-obscured sign.

It wasn't one meter.

This is not good! This is not good at all!

Off topic, I love how expressive they made Inez in this episode.

And of course, he wants to try again.

He was also at the center of the Cybersquad's disastrous attempt to promote Motherboard's re-election campaign against The Hacker in Season 2 Episode 4 "True Colors". He accused The Hacker of lying about his good deeds without any proof, and it turned out that The Hacker was telling the truth about them after all. Matt's efforts to bring up The Hacker's prior crimes were also seen as mud-slinging.

I'm not here to bash him as a character. I like Matt, flaws and all. He's a member of the Cybersquad. All three of these actual children have been in way over their heads since the start.

Even in these two instances, the show is careful to show that he learns his lesson. In the incident with "Whale of a Tale", he is one who has Glowla re-check her work and catch her addition mistake when she is computing Spout's new shutdown code.

In the incident with "True Colors", Matt admits that he was wrong in his emotional accusation against The Hacker. Then, he corners The Hacker with the question about curing the virus, which forces The Hacker to lie about the cure. Finally, the Cybersquad as a whole catches The Hacker in the lie about the triangle-based cure. I really need to do a full post on that episode, as it was brilliant.

Let's look at something else. Matt is quite strong. Here he is in Season 2 Episode 6 "Mother's Day" with Inez standing on his head, while Digit stands on Inez's head.

And here's Matt effortlessly lifting the "Good Vibration" artifact, which is bigger than him, from Season 2 Episode 9 "Double Trouble". Even Jackie and Inez are fleeing from his power. Okay, so they were probably fleeing from The Hacker, who was off-screen, but still.

What else can we say about Matt? Well, he was originally going to be called Kyle, who had a different haircut and smaller feet. Apparently, Kyle wasn't considered a good name for a farm boy.

No disrespect to whoever made Kyle, but I prefer Matt's final design. We have the Who's Who document. It does give us a few nire pieces of information. For example, he loves jokes and puns, which I don't remember coming up much in the show. It also confirms that his favorite cybersite is Radopolis.

I swear that I read some source that claimed he was the "leader" of the Cybersquad. However, I cannot find it now. I didn't think this team structure had a true leader, since all the kids here equal partners.

That's about all I can think to say about him for now.

EDIT: I forgot that Matt had a bio on the Nelvana website as well. I thought only Jackie got one, since I found one for her. I never found one for Inez, Dr. Marbles, Motherboard, The Hacker, Buzz, or Delete. It doesn't help that they used a picture of Jackie on Matt's bio.

I like the line about him inventing trial and error. If he can collect royalties off that, then he is set for life. It talks about his hands-on learning style, which was a major point in the episode "Problem Solving in Sangri-la". This bio emphasizes him charging forward without a plan, which is a well-known character flaw.

[linesonscreens]

Let's Read Peanuts (Yup, still at it) – May 1954

There are lots of great strips I just don't have room to comment on. I strongly encourage everybody to read the full month at the official GoComics page. Today's month starts HERE.

May 3, 1954

~tugs collar~

Yeah... About that.

May 9, 1954

Aw yeah, here we go! I was wondering when this would pop up.

May 15, 1954

1) That's not a joke

2) Yes, Violet. I got that from him kicking the radio.

Also I hope you enjoyed this strip because “Charlie Brown doesn't like coconut” is now a running gag.

May 16, 1954

This definitively proves that adults exist in the Peanuts Cinematic Universe, they just happen to be 20 feet tall for some reason. Or maybe the kids are like 2 feet tall? It depends on how you look at it I guess.

May 23, 1954

Oh man! What's going to happen!? I'm freaking out!

May 24, 1954

Lucy is so unbelievably awful to Linus in these early years. Granted, she's literally four(?) years old so I can cut her a bit of slack but god damn do these kind of interactions not endear you to her.

Weirdly enough though, I actually like that the strip doesn't punish her for doing stuff like this. Others have made this observation long before I came along but the fact that Schulz is willing to just sort of... let bad things happen without immediately having the universe make an example of the perpetrator or teach them a lesson is one of the things that sets Peanuts apart from the competition. Life just kind of be like that sometimes and it's OK to show it.

May 30, 1954

(No, really. That's the last one)

Thoughts:

The golf tournament arc is kind of notorious and nobody really knows what the hell is up with it. You have continuity in the Sunday strips (very unusual due to how they are made), weird off-model art, the cast acting out of character, and of course, on-screen adults. Then it all just kind of... stops. It's very odd.

I've heard people speculate that this might actually have been ghost drawn (is that a term?) by another artist but I'm not sure if I buy that. The art is a bit different but it still very much feels like Schulz to me, particularly in how he draws his backgrounds. I ~do~ think there might be something to the idea that this is a repurposed experiment from another project though.

What this feels like to me is Schulz experimenting with “bigger” stories, perhaps something intended to be sold as a proper comic book rather than just a collection of strips. The art looks different because he's trying to set it apart from the strips by adding more detail and action (kind of like when an animated TV sitcom gets a theatrical movie).

As for why it just ends like that? Well that's a sort of punchline Schulz does in a lot in his daily strips so it's not actually that weird if you think about it. I think he just didn't realize that this kind of anticlimax punchline works with a 4-panel strip but not a 4-page event comic.

There's no official word on the matter though so your guess is as good as mine.

[3d-bear]

My main internet hangouts in my early internet days were oekaki image boards, deviant art chat rooms, and the Doodle page on the now defunct Bennetonplay website. That last one I am feeling very nostalgic for in the moment. It was such a specific thing in a specifc time that hasn't really been recreated.

Benntonplay was an online game website that was made by the fashion brand as an experimental protosocial gaming space. They had a variety of games, that they called toys, that invovled collaborative creation in some form.

The one I spent my time on was simply called "Doodle" How it worked is that you were given a square to draw in and small smattering of colors to use. Once you finished your drawing you would send it and it would go into a big chronological image board along with other people's drawings. You could copy someone else's drawing to edit or add to it. Here is a very old video of it in action.

It was intended as a form of exquisite corpse but it became something else entirely for a small group of people, of which I was included. For about 2 years it became a sort of drawing based online chatroom. You would have an OC that represented you. You would draw them with speech bubbles of text to communicate. You would copy someone else's drawing and add your OC to it so you could interact with other OCs. It was all pretty innocent and mostly us talking about movies, comics, TV shows, that kind of thing. Here we're my OC's -- I don't have any art of them from the time so I redrew them.

It was a bit rude of us to monopolize this space like that -- since there were no other "rooms." There was only one Doodle. Some people would come in and leave once they realized it was being dominated by middle schoolers RPing with their OCs. Sometimes though people would see what was going on, make their own OCs, and join in.

However, eventually some of us moved on. A few would say official say goodbyes, but mostly we stopped showing up one by one. Sometimes a few of us would check on Doodle and see if anyone was around, sometimes two or three of us would check in at the same time and catch up. Eventually though, we all stopped coming back for good. Then the site was closed down.

That is really not much else to say about it. It was a fun time I am remember fondly. Just wanted to wax nostlagic!

[okaystoptellingmetomakeanaccount]

Okay. K - Diari Del Klondike has got to be one of the goofiest, dumbest, most illogical series yet with only 2 episodes. Barbieri is all like: yeah I'm going to make these stories to be consistent with Rosa and fill up the parts that he didn't write. So you expect that he's going to think about continuity. Then this episode he introduced Glomgold in the Klondike. You serious? That's not only going against Rosa, that's going against BARKS! BARKS?! You don't contradict Barks, that's sin in the Duck comics world. Scrooge doesn't know who Glomgold is until when they meet in the first ever Barks story. Rosa went around this by making sure that Scrooge never learns Glomgold his name in LaToS Chapter 6 The terror of the transvaal. Gervasio went around this by just avoiding these characters to directly interact in the past. They don't meet aside from that one Rosa appearance, so he makes sure that they don't meet. Glomgold can take over Duckburg and fake his curriculum vitae all he wants, but he doesn't interact with Scrooge. Meanwhile Barbieri is all like:

Does he just not know or does he not care? 'I will be building upon Rosa' is a pretty big claim. But that's obviously not the case here so, like, huh, what, why,, i am confusw.

Then look at the random new 'lore' he creates that only rivals the bullshit Kari Korhonen pulled in the McDuck Diaries(funnily enough also a diary. It seems Scrooge has a lot of those together with the secret one that Donald finds). Korhonen had literally every single character be ancestor or family member of present day character. It was weird, but I don't mind it too much compared to what Barbieri did.

Cause for some reason we need Blackheart Beagle to also show up in the Klondike with a new name?????? Huh?? Where did that come from? Why? That's the goofiest thing ever.

Then we need to give Scrooge this treasure that he actually holds very dear even though we have never seen it before.

Then we need to give Scrooge a dog sidekick that he just has had through his Klondike period.

Then we establish that he was actually best friends with Goldie all the time even though she drugged him, he kidnapped her, she stole from him, they beat the shit out of each other, and Rosa shows that their relationship is very rocky and terrible which is what made their love story so good. But no now they're bffs. Sure.

And I don't get the whole diary thing either? What point does it serve? It only makes everything more annoying to read because it gets broken up by HDL talking. Is it just to fill up pages? Idk

Then Scrooge's glasses why does he need those why why why why why

You get the chance to write about the Klondike, arguably one of the most exciting things in the donald duck universe and you decide to write the lamest stories ever. It's not like Barbieri can't write cool shit.

Some of his Wizards of Mickey chapters are the only wizards of mickey stories ever that are in the inducks top 10000. If you somehow manage to write good wizards of mickey stories you're a goddamn wizard (pun not intended).

So why is K so incredibly dull? I don't get it. I only have questions it's so weirddd

Why does it have references to life and times even though it directly contradicts it? You don't have to adhere to the Rosa Canon but then why do you say that you do? I don't get it.

Why is Flintheart Glomgold just chilling with Soapy Slick? This feels like a fever dream. You were somehow allowed to do this, this is crazy, so why is the result so boring? How? How can Soapy slick and Flintheart Glomgold be boring? *insert Tumblr blabbering*

There's so much goofy stuff. Scrooge as hulpsinterklaas is canon.

Only the Dutch will understand that this is a big deal.

Why would panini want a new series taking place in the past? Why did they ask Barbieri to write this? Or was it his own initiative? Even then, why would Bertani give the green light? The Klondike is a holy part of the duckverse. Or can people just do this if they want to? I can't imagine that. Rosa and Korhonen couldn't just write about Scrooge's past. They needed to have a reason (the reason usually being demand from the publisher). But if panini wanted it, then why don't they promote it? They have only placed these stories in issues where the cover could be something else.

A big new part of Scrooge's past is revealed!! That will sell well! How do we let the people know? BY MAKING THIS

THE COVER OF COURSE! (tbf they probably wanted a last chance to use it before it fell in the public domain. A last time they show everyone lmao look we can use this and you can't)

It's just such a strange series. And all the random OC's that pop up as well, but those are the least weird thing.

Anyway what I said was mostly ranting because that's funny. If you want to see people actually discussing this weird thing then you should read the papersera thread (use Google translate if you don't speak Italian it works fine)

[oathofkaslana]

I saww someone ranting about it earlier today; and since you’re the #1 collie fan I know, how do you feel about her treatment from the comics to her appearances in game??💜

GOD. DEAR GOD. ok this will take a moment. be patient w me

short answer: 2 me. in game collei is a poorly done adaptation of webtoon collei (which. i feel the need to note. was not perfect at all i just think her story was done better there). in game collei is wasted potential and mischaracterizes her for the sake of profit over artistic direction which honestly. leads to a bit of ableism and misogyny.

long answer: DEAR GOD. COLLEI. ok. the comics are in no way perfect. they're incredibly racist (particularly with barnabas's design), and they're not at all the perfect portrayal ever of a kid with cptsd. but with webtoon collei we got this story of a little kid who was so angry at everyone because she'd been hurt time and time again to the point where she genuinely believed that other people would always hurt her and she was just inherently a bad person. she believed her chronic illness was a sign of the archons hating her. she believed that the archons didn't care about her. she believed that she was inherently worth less than other people, ESPECIALLY those with visions. so we start off w that lil kid who's so rightfully angry and had to fend for herself using powers she was forced to have (the archon residue that actively feeds and stokes her negativity)! she literally kills people without remorse the first three pages we see her!!!!!! and it only turns around when amber (a vision user!!) is unrelentingly kind to her and keeps reinforcing this idea that collei is a human that is deserving of good and is capable of good. amber makes collei believe that she isn't doomed for some awful destructive fate. amber is the first person that shows collei that she believes her life matters. amber is the first person collei has met that unrelentingly believes in her humanity and goodness and makes an active effort to reinforce it. that kindness! and the want to believe she can do that! (the want to believe in amber) is ultimately the thing that spurs collei to action!!!!! her arc os essentially about kindness, finding humanity in yourself, and finding and believing in agency for yourself. and obv cyno plays a big part here and its the start of her rebirth symbolism ofc. etc etc etc.

then the game. i do think the game got some things correct! like i do generally like the change in character and i think that's expected for someone like collei who idolizes amber so much to the point of wanting to be her. i also really enjoy her character stories and a lot fo ehr voice lines. and i really really like how she's still obviously dealing with her cptsd. i like that it didn't go away! she still has triggers! she mentions anxiety! our first introduction to her was her having a nightmare!!

lsBUT the game also does a lot wrong imo. i think the game has a tendency to reduce collei a lot. while i do think the initial direction w her sweet nice girl facade was intended to show her admiration towards amber and lack of real identity/faith in identity for herself, i think it's been too. vague. and led to this becoming her Actual personality instead of a facade she's attempting to become. like while i don't think its inherently insidious i do think it's kinda suspect that they allow characters like scara (who's very similar to collei) to keep the asshole parts of their identity with their healing arcs but never let collei express that part of herself when it was such a huge part of her original character. (her cynicism being fostered by her environment and a protective thing for her and made her a nice character foil to amber). also the magicuring. i fucking hate how they handled eleazar in the game. like even if it weren't incredibly ableist for them to be treat chronic illness as a narrative device that's always meant to be cured, it was actively corrosive to collei's character bc so much of her arc is realizing her own worth and healing mentally even while her eleazar was getting worse. it means so so much for collei to be at a better state and actually have some sense of compassion for herself when she's experiencing flare ups from her chronic illness that everyone told her was the reason why she was worthless in the first place! and taking that away from her! taking that away from disabled players in general! sucked a lot!!!! i also think the game just does not want to acknowledge what collei's arc actually was and how much anger and exploitation it involved. especially in the 3.5(?) windblume event where she was compared to sucrose because of anxiety when their anxieties are so different (both being incredibly valid ofc but sucrose's social anxiety and fear of abandonment can not aptly be compared to collei's anxiety thats a byproduct of her cptsd from yk. experiencing discrimination and almost dying multiple times and human experimentation etc etc..) it often feels like they're rebranding her entire character to be more focused on this particular anxious nice girl image for the sake of consumerability (its how the fandom sees her and its easy for her to fit into tropes like that), this easy to sell found family w her tighnari and cyno (like i love their unit but dear god. i hate the way they've been written sometimes bc it feels like she's an accessory to those two who are also being flanderized), misogyny (again. collei is so much more similar to scara than she is sucrose and the difference between how they’re treated makes me so sad). AND because she's a four star she's so often side-lined! it's really disappointing to see how little of a role she played in sumeru when. honestly i think adding her to a larger part of sumeru could've benefited the story esp bc she's literally the first sumeru character we've seen and has been teased in the game since 1.0.

basically. collei is colleinations collective oc now :3

[tamberlanecomic]

July Newsletter

Hey everyone! Here are some general updates for everything that’s been going on and what you can expect for this month and throughout the summer.

Health Update

As some of you may remember, right after the Kickstarter closed I was knocked out by a one-two punch of a fibro flare and Covid. While I’ve been put through the wringer, I’m FINALLY feeling like I’m crawling back out from under this extended period of sickness.

I’m still dealing with some pain and fatigue due to my fibro flare-up, but it’s more or less back to the “normal” levels of what I’m used to, so overall I’m doing pretty good. I took some extra time to recuperate from Covid in the hopes of avoiding any long Covid effects, and while I am still taking it easy, I take a lot of joy in drawing and being forced to not indulge in any of my creative pursuits have made me all the more eager to get back into the swing of things. So, I’m still being careful, but I’m also easing back into work. 

I got so many amazing comments from patrons, readers, and Kickstarter backers all encouraging me to take as long as I needed to get better, and I can’t thank you enough for the kind words and well wishes! It was measurably easier to take some time off to rest knowing I had so many people cheering me on and encouraging me to do so, so thank you so much for taking the time to say something and for sending me words of support. <3 You da best!

Comic Updates

We’re moving right along, with 12 pages currently in the pipeline at various production stages. In fact, I’ve just put three new finished pages into the buffer for $10+ patrons today! Our priority right now is to get a healthy buffer so that I can have ample time and space to catch up on other work without impending deadline pressures.

Patreon Rewards

Next, I plan to knock out a good chunk of Patreon commissions for my $50+ folks. I’ve already been doing that here and there, but I want to make sure that the oldest ones are finished first. 

Likewise, due to the chaos of a sudden move and a lot of life changes, Ari didn’t send the May postcards out until today, so I apologize for the delays there – we’re getting back on track! June’s postcards have already been sent.

Speaking of, I’ve included some of the patron reward art I just finished last week!

Kickstarter News

We still need to finish the internal book edits, draw up the Q&As, format the information in the book, and finish formatting annotations. These are all things I had intended to get done both during and after the campaign but I was simply unable to keep up with it due to health reasons. Curse you, chronic illness! 

I am also going to explore another option for getting the softcovers printed locally, which is something I will only go with if the quality is up to my standards. But we're less than $5k away from being able to reprint Chapters 1-3 so if we're able to get a cheaper local deal with a good printer, I'm willing to explore the option! 

By the way, we are now officially sold out of Chapters 1 and 2 books, but you can help us reprint them by preordering them and other stuff through our Backerkit shop!

Preorder Here

We’ll be streaming edits in the Foxglove discord server, so be sure to keep an eye out on there!

New Pride Merch

For Pride month I launched two new apparel designs as part of our Pride collection! Choose from Agender or Non-Binary Ainsley or Biromantic or Transgender Marie on comfy shirts available in a wide range of colors and sizes. 

This collection also features downloadable Tales from Treehollow comics dealing with LGBTQIA+ themes. Come check it out!

Shop Now

Artfight

I’ve never done Artfight before, but I’m gonna try this year! It’ll be fun to have little warmup drawings I can squeeze in here and there between larger projects. 

If you’ve never heard of Artfight, it’s an annual art trading game where you “attack” by drawing other people’s characters. It seems really fun! If you’re participating and want to add me, here’s my profile:

https://artfight.net/~Cvilbrandt

Thanks all for reading! May this month be ever better!

[popculturebuffet]

Transformers More Than Meets The Eye Retrospective Season 1 Finale: Remain in Light (Patreon Review for Brotoman.exe)

Hello all you happy Autobots. It's been over a year, two spotlight issues, a two issue prequel, an annual and as of this review, 22 issues but we've done it we've reached the end of more than meets the eye season 1.

It's been a long project but one of my faviorites, one I always wanted to do but simply didn't have the time on my own and was more than happy when Brotoman commissioned these. I owe him a world of gratitude for his support and patience. Without him I woudln't of been able to talk about gay disfunctional robots every month and for that, i'm eternally grateful. This is one of my faviorite comics and re-reading it slowly and intently has only solidified that.

So a few things before we dive into this wonderful story: The first is something I forgot to mention last time that brotoman pointed out, something important I missed in my tired daze: How big a moment Rewind saying "I Love You" To chromedome is.

See before this, the series was coy about the two: It made it damn obvious the two were a couple.. but also used terms like them being "friends" and no one using words like couple, common law husbands or pound pals. The two were just a duo at first and if you were a mite thick headed like yours truly, who at the time I first read the comic didn't look for gay subtext like a bloodhound after a cheeseburger, you'd miss it. It was still obvious, the way they act around each other, their history, the way they fight.. the two are ENTIRELY an old married couple and act it and anyone looking closely could see that. But Roberts knew that those three little words were, to quote an interview with Sequart Orignization, a step up.

All that said, the Chromedome/Rewind relationship stepped up a gear – and moved fully into the open – with issue #16, when Rewind tells Chromedome (not for the first time, but it’s the first time we’ve seen it on the page) that he loves him. I was conscious that this was really nailing certain colors to the mast, and I was ready to make a case for those three words to stay in the script. But both John and Michael Kelly at Hasbro were incredibly supportive and encouraging, and the declaration of love survived the editing process. The reaction to the first Transformers gay couple was amazing – overwhelmingly positive. To be honest, I thought most people would be pretty cool with it, because most people are sensible and decent, but it was still encouraging to see. Hooray for Transformers fans."

I"m happy to hear that the reception was entirely positive and that Hasbro was supportive. I'm sure there are still a few idiots who were again it here and there, but like those who actively deny huntlow happened.. their a few idiots who can't accept objective reality and there's only one way to deal with them

Moving on to Remain in Light itself, We need to talk about the big shockwave shaped elephant in the room. Dark Cybertron is intended to be the finale for both this and Robots in Disguises' first season, a big epic crossover to shake up both series status quos and onboard us into season 2.

In practice.. it's the big showy finale to Robots in Disguise with the MTMTE cast guest starring. It's still VITAL to MTMTE, I would've simply recapped it like I intend to recap RID if that weren't the case: Nautica and Nightbeat are introduced, joining the crew in season 2, Megatron has his heel realization that leads to him also joining the crew, Cybertron finds out Prowl didn't kill MOST of the lost lighters (RIP Rewind I), and Chromedome powerbombs the motherfucker off a cliff.

I'll unpack this scene more when we properly get to it but I cannot see Prowl get powerbombed off a cliff while he's somehow SHOCKED this happened despite begging for it. It's Dellliccciooousss.

The fact is while a crossover was inevitable the death fakeout meant both books were completely isolated from each other, and thus their plots.. really don't intersect much. Prowl's actions have consequences and his baiting Chromdome leads to bad shit over in RID, but for the most part the two books are their own stories and their own spheres and by the time they intersect it works well enough... but it's clear they just work better on their own. It's likely why the third addition to this line, Windblade (both volumes) was made to stand on it's own while having an easier time intersecting back with Cybertron as our heroes are one teleport away versus the lost light being deep in space and in it's own character stuff. Windblade, btw is fucking great and I intend to cover it at some point, just not as part of this retrospective. It's it's own beautiful thing.

So while Lost Light was going to get into the Dark Cybertron hype, it needed to cap off it's own story first as it would've been a bit much to try and cram two series with a wide buffet of ongoing plots and plans together. So we get Remain in LIght where a LOT of character arcs are paid off, a few questions are answered, and a few things are set up for both next season and the eventual finale of the series. As usual it's remarkable how much Roberts set up, but here's where it gets to payoff more: last arc paid off the overlord conspiracy and rewind and chromedome's relationship, this one pays off magnus' breakdown, the circle of light and even where we found skids and just what was chasing him. It's a true epic and I can't wait to share it with you under the cut.

Part 1 picks up exactly where we left off: Tailgate is running to tell Cyclonus some "stupid news" while Rodimus, Blaster and Ambulon look over the security footage since Ratchet was busy telling Tailgate he gonna die. And to remind us Ambulon exists before the carnage to come.

For now Blaster's friend Mainframe is able to track the shuttle, so Rodimus is rounding up a crew to go find Magnus, with a determination we've scarely seen and a grimness we really haven't.

Meanwhile it turns out Tailgate's sickness... is cybercois, a condition that slowly kills the trnasformer, taking away their movement , speech and eventually memory.. and given memories of this place are all Tailgate really has he didn't take it well. Cyclonus urges tailgate to face his death with dignity and head on, agreeing to keep it secret and leaving... to mutilate his own face with a large scrap, enraged the one person he has on this ship is about to die and he can't just cut his diseas in half.

Hot Rod leads the crew to a big hole, making it very clear that he dosen't care what they ahve to say their going in... and for once his impusilvness pays off as what he finds is Luna 1, cybertron's missing moon which was mentioned before and I honestly forgot was the setting for this arc but it's a brilliant payoff and a way to have Rodimus have acomplished something big: he found one of the lost moons. Even if the quest has gone nowhere, this is still pretty damn big and he has perceptor confirm it. What's more curious, even if Perciptor dosen't buy it? Luna has a BILLION PEOPLE on board.

So Rodimus assembles his crack team.. and this is the first time we really see what we'll call Team Rodimus come together: While Rodimus has interacted with all these guys before, this is where it becomes clear how much he cares about them as more than just his crew:

First recurit is Rung whose surpised after Rodimus' outburst last time they talked. Naturally that's exactlyw hy: Rodimus flipped out largely because it was something he didn't want to hear... and with magnus gone he NEEDS that opposing opinon.

The rest of the team includes Brainstorm, whose happy to go and is already packed (holds up suitcase), Ratchet as the Medic, Perceptor as the more stable science guy to Brainstorm's mad scientest, and Whirl... who Rodimus flat out admits he just needs to throw a punch. Also going along is Chromedome, who Skids begs to help him: Since LUna 1 is allegedly's a giant treasure trove, Skids wants something to repair his memory. Swerve also wants to go but is harshly turned down by rodimus due to limited capacity, while Cyclonus agrees to go and take Drift's place as spirtual advisor, since he's the most religious person on the ship left, which he agrees to if Tailgate can come.

What I really get from this is while Rodimus is asking most on qulaifications, only being really straight with Rung.. like I said this shows who he really cares about: his team has to be small and he's a dick to swerve.. but it's likely more he knows Swerve might be in danger here and if there were room, skids and swerve would be along. These are who he can count on, who he's leaned on, who he needs without his two main supports on the ship. And this team will only grow as time goes on.

For now Team Rodimus heads to the planet, with Tailgate hoping to find a cure and Cyclonus.. thinking hope is a lie and telling him to never hope. And also he killed his puppy. He made him a puppy and then he stabbed it. A bunch. And then he showed tailgate the pictures.

Anyway our heroes land on the seemingly barren moon only to find...

IT's a hell of a reveal, and one that will be vastly important down the line... it won't really have any consequences for NOW but just remember this in a few years when we get to the final arc. For now jus tnejoy the sense of wonder on everyone's face: even Ratchet, the crankiest of crank and Tailgate who

We then find out what constructed cold means as Tailgate asks... granted I think I covered this definition back in chapter 1, but as a reminder; cold construction is making a cybertronian via "Spark splicing" using a bit of someone elses to craft a new one. This was in part due to demmand: Cybertron couldn't expand out into the cosmos if it didn't have enough people. Problem is as we've seen like any society Cybertron is quick to prejudice, and thus once Nova Prime who invented the process left, many a city started trying to "prove" constructed cold bots were inferior, something Chromedome is still bitter about and rightfully so.

It's about then things go to hell: On the ship commuincation is suddenly blocked between the bridge crew and away team, and Skids hears some clanking. on Luna 1, our heroes are soon swarmed by decepticons as Lockdown arrives

Okay probably not the right reaction but for those curious who this guy is, Lockdown was one of the handful of original characters from Transformers Animated, my faviorite transformers show and the one that reignited my spark for this fandom. And then this comic did it again, it's a bit cyclical. Point is even if I badly need a refresher on that series, Lockdown was their kraven the hunter, a bounty hunter who hunted down autobots for the decepticons, mostly working for them out of necisity and largely being his own man, so he fits for being a gun for hire for someone else. He sadly dosen't get as much to do here, at least in this season I can't remember if he shows up again, but it's just nice to see something from Animated imported as later installments tend to either make new transformers or stick with the core ones.

On the ship.. things are worse... Skids is confronted by those mysterious robots, who i'll just go ahead and call by their proper names: Legislators... only this time their giant sized and emerging out of the oil pool. What's worse is they soon creep up on EVERY deck of the ship, all shouting the same thing: 1984. Oh and in case you thought things couldn't get any worse as Team Rodimus flees... Ratchet is shot down and isolated....

We pick up from the siege in issue 2: the ship's overrun, our heroes are outgunned and only Swerve is able to land a solid hit as only one came to Swerves

... admitely I just wanted to show off the my first blaster. (Clears throat)

SAY YOU, LITTLE AUTOBOT. YOU WANT TO SHOOT THINGS WITH ALL THE BIG KIDS BUT YOU CAN'T FIRE THEIR BIG OLD GUNS FOR BIG OLD BOTS WITH YOUR WIDDLE BITTY BABY HANDS? TRY MY FIRST BLASTER! MY FIRST BLASTER IS A GUN DEISGNED FOR LITTLE FELLAS LIKE YOU. jUST POINT SHOOT AND MY FIRST BLASTER WILL TELL YOU IF YOU DID AND SUPPORT YOU IF YOUR NOT. MY FIRST BLASTER, FROM BRAINSTORM INC A DIVISON OF BRAINSTORM IS SMARTER THAN YOU LLC.

WARNING: NOT SELLABLE ANYWHERE EXCEPT THE LOST LIGHT. DO NOT GIVE TO BOTS UNDER 1. DO NOT USE WHILE DRUNK UNLESS IT'D BE REALLY FUNNY. COPYRIGHT VIOLATERS WILL BE HUNTED DOWN AND DIPPED IN ACID.

Meanwhile Skids continues his fight and easily wins using his super learning, able to predict his new foes attack easily and counter it.. the problem is while it's a great skill when your fighting a few of Legislators.. it's not so great when your fighting NINE of them and they'll likely keep coming.

So back on Luna 1.. it isn't much better. Whirl and Cyclonus get seperated from the group, and Rodimus, while finding out Ratchet got taken down from tailgate.. simply can't go back for him.

Rodimus then procedes to do some dope as hell sacrlige as he plunges into a titans corpse to give him more room to evade their captors. Sadly while his moves are dope as fuck and Lockdown is sure to give them the slow clap they deserve.. he's already gotten everyone else. After taking a second to tell pharma everyone else hates him, a worthy use of his time. What a legend.

So our heroes end up in a jail cell where, for the past two issues, Rodimus has been recapping these events to Minimus, his cellmate.. who looks an awful lot like someone a certain dead bot was looking for.. hmmm. Questions for later.

For now Rodimus admits they weren't just dumped in a cell first, as Rodimus correctly figures Lockdowns taking them to his boss: a long lost moon as a base, teleport tech.. all of this screams big bad.. and Lockdown is at the end of the day a guy just doing his job. Pharma mentioning a collective "lord and master earlier" already told us this, but it's a nice character bit, shows that beneath his reckleness Rodimus is far smarter than he appears and far more capable than most give him credit for. He's an idiot, sure, but he's one with great skill and intiution.

And sure enough there is a big bad behind all this.. and of all people it's..

I was as shocked as rodimus but it's a clever rug pull: We've seen Chief Tyrest brought up a lot, his accords are what Ultra Magnus is duly appointed enforcer of and back in Last Stand of the Wreckers, he's the one who oversaw the Aquetius trials. So seeing him show up is a suprise... but seeing him be BEHIND all this is a nice swerve. He also makes a perfect contrast to our crew: the embodiment of order and rigidity veruss our far looser, far more human crew. Metaphorically I mean thir still giant robots.

Tyrest is being an obstinante dick, proving he really is Magnus' boss, charging our heroes with crimes against creation. We find out our ambus ISN'T dominus, but his brother minimus, an allged energon trader who hasn't tried to escape because he's waiting for his day in court, a BIGGGGG honking neon sign of a clue at who this guy is. But more on that later, for now Tailgate has a bit of a breakdown, with no one knowing why since he didn't tell anyone present he's dying and could be trapped here for what days remain.

Meanwhile Ratchet.. is not doing any better, with Pharma torturning him, showing off his new shapeshifting hands which can become TWO chainsaws. That double groovey. He's no less stable than last time, but now he dosen't need to PRETEND to be and is honestly an even better villian on return: he has a joker style quality to him as he fiddles with his double groovy hands and plays with ratchet making him ask what's in THE BOX

Turns out 9 robots vs skids does just mean send more legislators and we get a nice speech from the guy, with him pointing out how the Lost Light took him in, cared for him and welcomed him no questions asked.. and

Unfortunately while Skid is totally badass.. he's also wiped.. and thus dosen't see this coming

We'll get into who this fine bastard is later, for now he knocks out Swerve too.

Back in Prison, Tailgate asks about tyrest, noting Nova Prime had a chief science offer of the same name.. the same guy. We get Tyrest's backstory: He was a nobody until the war when, with Dai Atlas' help , they helped 10,000 neutrals off world. Tyrest returned to TRY and broker peace, simply two city states, one for each side, but naturally since one of those sides was Megatron that never went anywhere. It instead lead to the Tyrest Accords, a series of rules of engagment the biggest being not exporting cybertronian weaponry. It's thanks to him the universe isn't a smoldering crater and thanks to Optimus he's chief justice.

As for what he's doing here... no one has a clue. He was last seen during the Aquetius trials, which Rodimus helpfully recaps: trials using a judging machine that 100% predicts guilt, and hasn't been seen since the trials. They also pass around energon sticks, something equivlent to either gum or cigarettes or autobot slim jims

Rung offers Minimus to snap into one.. then delberately spills it and spills it more, causing him to HAVE to get them off the ground and organized... and proving what Rung's figured all along:

Yup, while Ultra Magnus was indeed Ultra Magnus... he was also Minimus Ambus. It's complicated and naturally Hot Rod's a bit confused, so Magnus backs it up slightly: he war bought into luna one and reparied... then smacked in the face by tyrest.

Tyrest decides just bitchslapping Magnus PHYSICALLY isn't enougH: having read his logs and found his actions disgraceful, both the micromanagment and the various fraternizations, he disables the armor and left ambus as he was.

As for why Magnus was a fancy suit of armor, turns out Ultra Magnus is a legacy of brave autobots, all one percenters.. but smaller rewind sized ones, Loadbearers. So while their not super tanks from the start.. it means they can be heavily modified and thus wear the Magnus Armor. The Magnus Armor was forged after the original Magnus, a real brave bot, died: Tyrest saw what fear and awe he imposed and realized he could exploit that and thus created an "immortal lawman". If this is sounding very sinestro to you and making you nervous, that's the idea. As for why small transformers it's simply that most cybertronians can't get fancy armored add ons" too much and they freeze up. A loadbearer has plenty.

So our magnus, Minimus was the latest.. and seemingly last. He also has ten days left.. but it turns out Pharma wasn't lying: Tyrests doctors can work miracle.

Back in the flashback, we get a recontexulization of Magnus character from Tyrest, who isn't exactly reliable , hence why I didn't think too heaviyl about his words before.. but in hindsight.. they make perfect sense and the interview I mentioned backs it up: Magnus.. had a nervous breakdown.

For most of the lost lighters the war ending is a fresh start: the war is over.. but for the bulk of them the war wasn't something they fit into. They were fighting because they had no real choice or had been for too long. And in the case of some like Chromedome the war simply took one terrible thing they were forced into and swapped it for another. The war ending means a chance ot start over and do anything else.

Magnus... fit perfectly. He was a stickler for order, a natural talented combatant, and while he was the latest to wear this armor, he more than earned it. The war was chaotic and horrible, but it also had rules, a clear bad guy (even if this book shows there's still plenty shades of grey in the autobots), and a clear end goal. Life.. dosen't have those. LIfe is just doing your best and hoping today is good. It's not perfect, it's often messy, but it's just how it is. Magnus didn't really have to worry about small talk or what he does with the rest of his life.

It also explains why he took the lost light: it was seemingly close to what he'd been doing: going through space, righting wrongs, etc, all. Cybertron would've had more order.. but it was also filled with thousands of bots who resented him for everything he'd had to do over the war, and a new world he understood even less. It was the lesser of two evils, so he overcompesated by becoming anal retintive in the extreme. He's a soldier who simply couldn't cope with the war being over, a tale sadly as old as the nasty institution itself and didn't get himself the help he needed.

Magnus replacement.. was Star Saber, that guy we saw make Skids into a kebab. Magnus was mostly talking to them though.. because he was curious. He asked to be put in there as.. nothing is adding up: the decepticons, the titan, and now this "crimes against creation" charge that wasn't in the laws before. magnus, still being a tad naive even after all of this, goes to talk to tyrest.

While he does, WHirl and Cyclonus have escaped having killed a bunch of decipticons themselves and after their done getting to the numbers, see a cell block above... identified as such because it's directly over a giant smelting pool, as whirl puts it "a prison you can dunk" Whirl of all people is the logical one here: They need a ton of weapons to go rescue the others, and he can sniff an armory. Somehow. Honestly I'd question it but if anyone could find weapons through sheer force of will it's whirl.

Back with the head tha twouldn't die, Ratchet assumes this is about revenge.. and it is, Pharma wanted to hunt ratchet down, but his main goal

Thing is Pharma's a mite bit paranoid and hasn't removed them because their hard locked, and he assumes rigged to explode. Ratchet uses this to his advantage: he calls Pharma a coward, stating that he really didn't do it because he's scared he can't and essentially challenges him to a surgery duel: first to fix it win. Honestly Chicago Med and Grey's Anatomy could use WAY more of those. I'd watch every episode twice if it was a death sport race to see who can surgery faster. Get it on it Dick Wolf and Shondra Rhymes!

So back with the bicker twins, Cyclonus and Whirl argue, with Cyclonus pointing out byu this point.. Whirl could've had his own hands back and his face if he wanted, with Whirl genuinely worried if he stops being angry, he wouldn't be him anymore. Cyclonus gets stabbed from behind for our THIRD stabbing this story and our FOURTH in the last few issues, but it's not fatal, Whirl saves him.. and our dynamic duo find the prisoners: not our heroes, who are as it turns out somewhere else.. but the circle of light. It's why they have so many swords avaliable.

Back with Ratchet he made a bit of a tactical error.. while his gambit was clever.. he forgot that Pharma is basically the joker now and thus had ambulon and first aid brought here as swerve and skids were to Team Rodimus cell: their going to be the guinea pigs and despite ratchet's begging, he can't get the contest called off. This is happening. And unfortunately for ambulon instead of across the waist... Pharma decides to go lengthwise.

Semantics point is ambulon is super fucking dead and purple chainsaw blood is all over. It's a brutal, horrifying death.. and tha'ts really the only reason it works. That Pharma set up this horrifying death game, when he could've just done minor surgery and used one of the Legislators, since they aren't really sapient at this point anyway. Otherwise.. Ambulon is a guy we barely knew who disappeared entirely: Pipes was also mostly absent till his death.. but Pipes felt like an actual character and had enough characteirzation up to his death. Ambulon.. feels like he was kept on just for this chainsaw death since First Aid had more to give. It's not a bad death, I mean... look at that gore, but it's not as weighty especially coming after two big tearjerking ones.

Back at the cells, Swerve fills the rest of the crew in: the legislators have locked down the place, and he tells them about Star Saber, who it turns out in this unvierse is a notorious evangelical nutball who tried to do atheist genocide. So you know the MOST stable person to give a big sword. Star Saber being made into a villian.. was a bit contervseral according to tv tropes. Saber Originally was the optimus prime equilvent for one of the G1 animes, Transformers Victory, having a neat design and big old sword. So making him into a sociopathic religious nut wasn't the best for some. Me I think it's fine: the series already has plenty of heroic autobots and it helps reinforce the idea that being on the autobots .. dosen't make you a good person. Same with Tyrest.

He shows up to drop off a new prisoner.. and it makes Chromedome have a relization: when Skids memory was begging for estape it was asking for getaway... the autobot whose now being loaded into their cells.

Minimus goes to confront Tyrest who couldn't give a shit what Magnus thinks.. but is willing to explain what his grand evil plan is and why he's doing all this supervillian nonsense: guilt. Turns out Tyrest is one of the archetechts of Cold Construction, and instead of using sparks.. it used the matrix. This is a brilliant move and explains why, with cold construction only stopping fo ra bit because it was assumed the matrix was dry when really someone stole it assuming this was blasphemous.

And sadly. Tyrest has started to agree. The Aquetius trials drove him around the bend, with all the guilt and horrible actions of the autobots on trial getting to him.. to the point he started to drill into himself, hence the holes.. including one in his own head. Huh Egon WAS right it would've worked.. as Tyrest saw something beckoning him and thus the space bridge is a portal to cyberutopia itself. But being ... unhinged to say the least, Tyrest has decided he has to atone first... since all the criminals on trial were constructed cold, he assumes their an abomination and plans to use a literal killswitch to kill every last one tommorow. And beofre Minimus can stop this.. he has a legislator squish the poor guy's head.

Onto Part 4. After a reminder of the various gushers of blood abound, we cut to a fight with Whirl, Cyclonus and the Circle of Light. Turns out the circle had been cut down a bit, but is still a massive army, allowing for an epic battle while everything elses going on and the revelation that will come in hand in a bit that Cyclonus, being a true believer, can power their faithswords, which use energy from a spark to do something something something religion. Look I'm being as through as I can, but this is a MASSIVE story arc.

In the Cell Getaway TRIES to have a reunion with Skids, while also introducing his catchphrase bomp.. basically a sort of fistbump he used to annoy skids. At any rate Skids can't remember anything but Getaway can and fills the rest of the cast in on Tyrest's madness, which is a term I try to be careful with as someone with a mental illness myself.. but really appleis to a man whose drilled a thousand holes into himself and is trying to do holy genocide right about now. When Rodimus mentions Ambus not being back yet... Getaway drops the bomb on him baby, he drops the bomb on him... that Ambus LURED them here.

Back with Team Holy Genocide, Tyrest explains how the hell he knows this switch will work to someone who was there for it: He kidnapped Pharma because Pharma is apparently famous for being Forged, so he could prove it wouldn't kill Forged transformers. THe attack on the circle of light? A whole cities worth of test subjects, taking ten thousand down to one thousnad. Speaking of which given the Circle is a mite testy about the genocide, Tyrest decides to handle the situation by.. letting the equally religious genocidal monster he keeps on payroll handle it.

Skids has a bit of a breakdown over his missing memories so not wanting to see his best friend break down further, Swerve asks Gateway to fill him in on what he's missing. Skids and Brainwave were partners in the Dipolmatic Corps... which was really Autobot Special Ops. What good would being spies be if they broadcasted that fact? They had a similar job as the wreckers, impossible missions and such, but while the Wreckers were more Impossible MIssions Force, going in somewhat subtle and always ending loud and dangling themselves off cliffs, the ASO were more the stale beer type of spy: get in, do the mission, maybe surivive.

Their mission this time was to put a mind bullet in Tyrest's head.. not kill him, to Skids relief, as the binary gun, that gun Skids couldn't find when he was introduced, wasn't designed to kill, simply implant a thought, and a very simple one at that: Resign. As for why, while Skids boss didn't know the fulls cope of what tyrest is doing he got the feeling something bad was going down given he was chasing down titans and talking to the decpticons. Sadly .. Skids missed, Tyrest set his horeds on them and while Skids escaped, he followed one last protocol: after all the binary gun had two bullets... and the other was used on him to erase the mission

To no one's suprise, Prowl's the spymaster here and to even less shockity shock, him prodding the already deranged man with a god complex led him to speed up his plans. The good news of all this though is Getaway.. can get the mout. He's an escapeologist, a master escape artist, macguver as a transformer and the only reason he hasn't busted out? He didn't have a fresh set of keys.

While Getaway plans his way out, so does Ratchet, who has an argument iwth first aid: First Aid makes the valid point that Ratchet has a savior complex; he hasn't really retired.. because he dosen't think anyone else can do the job as well as him. Turns out this isn't it: Ratchet didn't let first aid help.. because Ambulon was long dead by chainsaw to the face, and he simply was stalling to weaponize his corpse, a nice little callback to drift doing the same. The two argue over what to do with Pharma, Ratchet not wanting to sink to his level and First Aid wisely feeling Pharma will just come back to haunt them again, if probably not the one to do it since i'ts clearly out of anger his friend we saw maybe once just got chainsawed in half by the guy.

The argument is interupted by Team Rodimus. Turns out the keys... were all the stuff on everyone and using Brainstorms breifcase straps (he had it on him as it's designed that only those who KNOW it's there see it) and Chromedome's fingers to create a dart gun, knock out the guard then have everyone use the sticks on the bars at the same time. THeir out, and Tailgate is hopeful he can find a cure. And what I like, and forgot to mention is HOW Luna 1's a treasure chest: it's not because it was lost. Luna 1.. is just luna 2 with a diffrent name. But since Tyrest took up refrence he also took every bit of treasure the magnuses had built up with him and thus he really CAN work medical miracles. It's juts without Pharma.. they might not be able to.

For now it's time to light up the stage cause it's time for a showdown. With team two guys , a religoius leader an an army it's not great as the legislators won't stop and there's a LOT of them, and Star Saber makes it worse. While Dai Atlas does his best against his polar oppiste.. Saber snidely tells him "Primus hates you and stabs the life out of him"

Team Rodimus don't have it much better.. they arrive, point a gattling gun at Tyrests face.. and tyrest simply activates his staff and the bodies hit the floor. It's a subsonic suggestion they can't move, so powerful they don't even belivie it when he tells them and with that.. he pulls the switch. Brainstorm and Chromedome start to fade.. and they aren't alone...

It's a brutal sequence ending with the scavengers... and with that tyrest has almost won, and all he has to do.. is step into the light of his portal as it activates.

So as the final chapter opens, Tyrest is about to get his big prize when...

It's a clever save: Tailgate's condition had been front and center for most of this arc, Ratchet outlined loss of functions.. it's poetry. I also love him jamming his finger in the head hole, it's a detail I did'nt notice till writing this but I love it.

WIth that the rest of the crew can rally.. but Tyrest uses tailgate as a human shield with Tailgate revelaing his condition so Rodimus can shoot.. but Rodimus has grown from the incident with fort max and can't bring himself too... thankfully..

Before we can process "how the hell is magnus still alive", we cut to the battle outside and we get an awesome fight with Cyclonus and Starsaber, with Cyclonus stabbing the fucker in the eye.. before he gets teleported away. Where? Well.. that's al ong ways off from being answered, but for now he's away from gutting people range so that's good at least. Back with Team Rodimus, Rodders asks what we're all thinking "What the hell". Turns out in a clever, if still somewhat labored twist... Minimus didn't tell them HOW many loads he was carring. This is as far down as he goes, but it still makes a lot of sense. Tyrest not KNOWING this dosen't, but we can handwave it as Tyrest assuming he got the heads and just.. not carring enough about magnus to double check the corpse, a mistage that made him into one.

Our heroes need to scramble to find someway to shut off the killswitch though as Tyrest was still sane enough to not put a shutoff on it. Before they can deal with that properlyt hough, Pharma heads into the portal with First Aid giving chase.. and Pharma saying far more than he needs to, chuckling and grinning about all the autbots at delphi and bursting into laughter about his lengthwise joke... and soon bursting from the head as first aid shoots him.. and then collapses, not able to deal with taking a life for the first time

It's a powerful moment. Pharma absoltuely deserved to get his head burst... but it's still a life and it dosen't, as first aid clearly hope, make the pain of everyone he's lost go away.

So while this goes on Perciptor has a hail mary: he hooks rodimus up to it, which MIGHT hurt him and will defintely destroy their matrix piece, using it to undo the code. While Rodimus makes a "there goes our map" quip.. it's very clear he has no intention of backing out: personal glory isn't worth the deaths of everyone.

So with Death on the way he decides to clear the air with Magnus, ask if he really betrayed them. Turns out.. yeah he entirely lured them out here, having become disturbed with Rodimus' increasing irresponsiblity. It wasn't a full trap as he had no idea Tyrest was so far gone, he just wanted him to give Rodders a lecture, snap him out of it, tha tsort of thing not you know, nearly kill them all and then try to commit genocide as an encore. It speaks to who Magnus is: he's orderly.. but he's not the zealot his former boss is. He just wants to do the right thing.

And so does rodimus..w hich leads to one hell of a confession

It's a powerful moment an da wakeup call for rodimus: while he's still carefree after this... it's him realizing he's been way too caviler.. and let his own ego and pride get people killed. And he needs to , instead of hiding from it like he did, face the conseqeucnes of his actions. It's also a nice moment in that instead of seeing his sacrifice as a way out or a glorious way to redeem himself as he might have before the incident... instead Rodimus just hopes he lives long enough to begin the real work.

As he writhes in pain, Tyrest.. turns out not to be dead and says one word: one... which sends all the legislators their way.

In the meantime Skids ends up on Cyberutopia.. yeah... in a big reveal it, or some form of it exists and skids ended up there due to taking the portal: it was blocking anyone who had guilt in them, and Skids.. finally felt free enough to try it.

What he saw there will be important later but for now the plan worked: everyone is saved and Whirl celebrates, deciding to put the past behind him and cyclonus... and after a quick murder fantasy Cyclonus agrees. He has somewhere more important to be.

Back in the control room the legislators swarm and Skids shows up to help.. while something takes Ambulon's corpse through the portal. No time to dwell on that setup now as the legislators need to be stopped..a nd it's tailgate who once again saves the day in a brilliant way too. Remember how Magnus had him memorize the law and just about everything including the dimensions of the kitchen sink? Well when finding out the law computer is right there, this allows tailgate to easily write a new one REPEALLING them all. the legislators freeze, our heroes win the day, and Tyrest vanishes. And sadly while Tailgate won the day.. he passes out.

Thankfully we have a solution: on his deathbed we get a very poginant line from Tailgate, the little bot who simply wanted to be special and important...

It's a small line.. but one that sums up the comic> life isn't about being a big hero or saving the unvierse, though our heroes certainly did that.. it's abotu living it. It can be hard, messy and often rediculous.. but it's more than worth it.. and with that Cyclonus gives Tailgate the gift of life.. by stabbing him in the chest

And for once.. IT IS HEALTHY as it was a way to do a spark transfusion, one Whirl of all people brought up. It was risky.. but it was worth it.

So as Rodimus decides to bounce, deciding this big discovery wasn't really wroth it with one crew member dead, first aid traumitzied and brainstorm in his lab, unknown to all having taken the super spark, and the rest of the sparks having gone quiet after the matrix became dust.. he's lost.

Magnus however.. is found. He may not know what his future is.. but he's finally at some sort of peace.. and has a ncie gentle talk with cyclonus

Remain in Light was one of my faviorite arcs of lost light.. and re-reading it only clinched that view: it's a tense epic that's fast paced but manages to cover a LOT of ground without anything feeling underserved, and the result is stunning. It's a worthy end to season 1.

And it WOULD be where we leave off.. but before dark cybertron we have one issue left, issue 22.

Little Victories is a nice Coda to the season, an issue I skimmed over the first time I read the comic due to the art... not being great. Artist James Raiz takes over from here through dark cybertron and his art style isn't bad, being kind of sketchy and gritty. Not my cup of tea but not bad art. The problem.. is that the art style dosen't fit lost light at all. I mean look at this panel with cyclonus

It's a good joke, but it looks just so dead serous and grungy. It just dosen't fit what's entirely a slice of life issue, showing a recuritment film Rewind made before his untimely passing.

That said giving the issue a second chance or two i've come around... once your ready for the jarring art shift, you can enjoy the story with plenty of fun documentary gags including Magnus having part of the film removed and getting editiing rights, as well as having Swerves swears censored.

There's two plots here: The first involves everyone being curious what Rungs alt mode is, with Swerve having a bet as to who can get him to show it first, leading to a really great, really stupid joke

I love this comic for it's deep characters, engaging plot and world building.. but I also love that a large part of the comic is just roberts letting these robots act like jackasses. It makes them so damn relatable. I mean someone had to try this.

The other is Thunderclash, what a guy. Thunderclash is a legendary hero and the king of the parody sues, a guy so noble and kind that even optimus looks up to him, a hero unparalleled. He's this series Ace Rimmer, and intentionally too as Roberts is a big red dwarf fan, something that isn't a huge suprise but is welcome.

For those not familiar with Ace, he's the alternate counterpart of Red Dwarf's Arnold Rimmer, an uptight attempted ladder climber who usually fails due to his own incomptience and ego, while Ace is everything Arnold WISHES he could be: Smart, handsome, good with a joke, beloved.

So naturually someone like Rodimus, full of ego and self importance himself, needed someone just simply better than him doing the same job who everyone on his crew unabashadely loves. Thunderclash is just.. that nice and I love the ways they bend over backwards to make EVERYONE fall for this guy, from him being one of the few autbots to be nice to cyclonus and earn his genuine respect with his knoweldge, to teaching Perciptor of all people something. It's just great fun and it's just as fun to watch Hot Rod gnash his teeth over someone else getting all the attention.

There's also a third kinda plot as the crew runs into the Ammonites, a group of robots fighting a forever war with some bug aliens that whirl seemingly end sin ten minutes. We don't know how and tha'ts how I sleep at night

All three collide at the end: Thunderclash's ship needs a jump, esspecailly since, while an epic hero of epicness, he's dying: the ship is Thunderclash's life support and being the autobot's own personal jesus, he's naturally using this time to save everyone he can. It's why his crew's behind on their own quest for the knights.

Sadly one of his crew turns out to be an ammonite spy and they turn out to not have been the good guys, thankfully Rung has an idea and turns into a blunt insturment. Or is it an object. point is he's blunt, hard and blunt. As for WHAT he is...

This will be important going forward, and in hindsight may be one of the most important little bits in this issue. Thunderclash will be too.

We then get the ending which is... eh in my eyes. I like Lost Light's comedy, I point you to just a few paragraphs ago with the stupid alt mode night joke. But this bit.. feels a bit of a stretch: it turns out the film was being screened to the circle of light who ALL, every one of them, boo hiss and complain about them all being fuckups. Besides being more than a little harsh... the film was made by a DEAD AUTOBOT. Rewind DIED before this was made and i'm damn sure they told them that. I like the jokes and I don't mind shots at how little the crews acomplished, it's a decent runner but here.. it just feels mean. Doubly so since the lost light JUST SAVED THEIR ASSES and the ENTIRE UNIVERSE, and not a one of them think tha'ts neat. We get a heartwarming ending showing how much it means but this joke.. just really dosen't work at all. One of Roberts rare misfires but boy is it off target.

That said the issue overall is fun and i'm glad I gave it a second shot. It's good stuff and like seemingly EVERYTHING before the finale itself, it's got a lot of setup.

Next Time: Before we can get to DARK CYBERTRON we have to see what everyone else has been up to

Thanks for reading

[marvelgirltm]

#marvelgirltm. Multimuse madness of MARVEL COMICS ( & MCU ) children loved by Isabel aka Betty (she/her, 30). Highly canon-divergent, with comic-book and film influences. Once within my grasp, they more or less become my original characters and I treat them with great, enthusiastic care. Affiliated with these pack of amazing losers: @ppctts, @risingod, @butscrewmefirst, @wormholxtreme, & @chingonaclaws.

My current batch of misfits include: Rachel (Summers) Grey, Jean Grey, Emma Frost, & secondary muses including: Meg Frost, Tony Stark & Scotty Logan Howlett.

 General Rules/Guidelines: 

1. This blog is MUTUALS ONLY. I do not do follow for follow, if I am following you I intend to WRITE with you.  But, PLEASE NO God-Moding.  2. No stealing. The icons on here are capped & made by me.  3. I love to plot, but pre-established relationships are fine too, so long as you don’t just assume we’re going to ship.     4. It’s very rare that I will  follow duplicates.  5. Reblog from the source: gifsets, photosets, songs, memes, etc. etc. reblog from the source. I am not a resource blog & especially if we are not mutuals? I will block you if we are not mutuals and you like random things from my page or reblog from me. Please, reblog from the source!  6. Real life does come before RP.  7. OOC =/= IC VISE-VERSA!  8. This blog does contain bloody/violent themes, and I am happy to tag triggers.  9. I will use COMIC BOOK INFLUENCES, but for the most part some things are based on my own canon/viewpoint, etc. etc. So plotting is sometimes key.  10. Have fun and please do not take anything too seriously.  

[kurt-wagner-official]

Post #35: Wolverine issues 1-4

Wolverine's first solo series is a self-titled four issues mini is written by Claremont with art by Frank Miller. It opens with one of the most iconic Logan sequences of all, him hunting a bear through the Canadian Rockies. He tracks it to its cave and kills it in a brutal battle. It seems like Logan is as much a wild beast as his quarry, until we learn why he was hunting it- a hunter shot it with a poisoned arrow. It wasn't strong enough to kill it, just drive it mad with pain and bloodlust, going on a rampage to kill 16 people. In one scene we're presented with the person that Logan appears to be in the surface and are then introduced to a what lies beneath the surface: mercy, honor, and a drive to protect the innocent. But the sequence isn't done yet, as Logan tracks the hunter to a bar to seek justice. When he confronts the man, he tries to hit him and blow him off, to Logan's pleasure. He beats the man up but lets him live and brings him to trial. We cut to a few weeks later, after Logan has returned home to find Mariko, his girlfriend over the last few years, has returned to Japan without warning. He's on the next flight out to Tokyo, but when he tries to go through immigration he comes up on several watchlists because of his checkered past. He's confronted by Asano Kimura, a Japanese secret agent and an old friend. He tells him that Mariko's father, one of the most powerful crime lords in the city, has recently resurfaced and made several deals, one of which involved marrying Mariko off to someone. Asano tells Logan he can't understand what she's going though and going after her could hurt her more, but he refuses to give up and goes to find her. Her estate has new guard dogs, which he intimidates into letting him pass. He says he's glad, because unlike people, he doesn't like killing animals. He finds Mariko, who tells him that she loves him but that he shouldn't have come. When he gets closer, he's horrified to see her face covered in bruises. He begs her to get a divorce, and she refuses, showing him a pair of swords that have been in her family for hundreds of years and to her represent her duty to family and tradition. This story puts an uncomfortable amount of emphasis on the idea that Japanese people live their lives by honor and tradition, which is obviously problematic and unfortunately pretty common in eighties comics. There's no defense, but I will say that at least the artwork isn't as racist and caricature-y as in a lot of comics. The writing here is at least better than Claremont's stuff with Sunfire, but that's not saying much. Anyway, Mariko's husband, a business associate of her father named Noburu, walks into the room and starts yelling at her, and Logan threatens to kill him until she begs him to leave. He's walking out the door when he's hit by poisoned throwing stars. They're meant to kill, but because of his powers he wakes up in front of Mariko and her father, Lord Shingen, who challenges him to a battle with wooden swords. Logan is weak from the poison and out of practice with swords, but Shingen expertly hits pressure points intending to kill. Logan has to pop his claws to defend himself, and realizes he's played into Shingen's hands- Mariko doesn't realize her father can kill with this weapon, so it looks like Logan is attacking unprovoked. Logan's heart isn't in it anymore, and as he loses consciousness, he hears his opponent tell Mariko that he's nothing more than a mindless animal, unworthy of her. The last thing he hears is her agreeing with her father. He wakes up broken in body and soul on the street, where some muggers approach until they fall to the ground, murdered by a mysterious savior. She's a woman who approaches Logan, telling him that she's hers now as the issue ends.

Issue 2 starts with Logan waking up in the apartment of his savior, who introduces herself as Yukio, as they come under attack from dozens of Hand ninjas. The battle lasts several pages while Logan narrates exposition and his own powers for any new readers. With a different artist, this might be a tedious sequence, but Frank Miller is never more in his element than with street level battles against hordes of minions. When the dust settles, Logan and Yukio are the only survivors, and they flee as the police arrive. Later, at another apartment, they get to talking. Yukio keeps her motives mysterious, but she says the Hand were sent by her enemy, a powerful crime lord. She then comes on to him, but he still loves Mariko and shuts her down. We cut to Yukio arriving at Shingen’s building, where we learn that she’s working for him. The Hand were sent to drive Logan into her arms, but unknown to Yukio, they were also sent after her to test her skill as Shingen’s top assassin. Shingen has arranged a peace conference with his crime lord rival, Katsuyori, planning to send his daughter and son in law to lull him into security. Yukio returns to Logan and says that Katsuyori is the one who tried to kill him, and he agrees to go with her to put an end to it. He hopes to resolve it peacefully by intimidating Katsuyori, but Yukio plans to start a fight that’ll end with Katsuyori and Logan both dead. Logan sneaks them into the peace summit while taking out the guards, without killing them, to Yukio’s displeasure. The summit is at a performance of a Kabuki play about the tale of the 47 ronin who embarked on a suicide mission to avenge their master. Logan is shocked to see Mariko and her husband alongside Katsuyori and his wife in the audience, but he puts it to the side for now, entranced by the performance but keeping his eyes open for the trap from Katsuyori that expects to come. At the climax of the show, he realizes the weapons are real- the performers are assassins that Katsuyori has brought to kill Mariko. Logan intervenes and takes on the entire troop to defend his love. Katsuyori and his wife try to slip out, but Yukio kills them in their getaway car. Inside, one of the assassins finally gets a good hit on Logan, driving him into a berserker rage that quickly ends the battle in his favor, although he still leaves many of them breathing. It’s the first time Mariko has seen Logan’s berserker side, and it sickens her as she leaves.

A few weeks later, Logan is on a drinking binge and dating Yukio, going to bars and getting in fights with whoever he can find. He’s approached by his friend Asano, who asks for his help in taking down a criminal empire that’s growing in power and threatens the country. To the reader, he’s clearly talking about Shingen, but it’s unclear whether Logan has put those pieces together, and either way he doesn’t care, turning Asano down and leaving with Yukio. She brings him to what she says is her secret favorite place, a place on the train tracks where they start making out. Logan, completely wasted, doesn’t realize until the last second that they’re playing chicken with a bullet train that they dodge at the last second. He’s angry that she would risk their lives like that, but she says they’ll die someday, so they should live and die spectacularly. Logan passes out and dreams that he’s a samurai fighting his way through an army to reach Mariko. But when he gets there, she says she could never love a beast like him and shoots him in the soul. In the waking world, the Hand tell Yukio that this is her last chance to obey Shingen and kill Logan. She responds by killing all of them and shaking Logan awake, but he calls her Mariko and she knocks him back out. She runs off, cursing Logan for winning her heart without giving her his, and lamenting her imminent death at the hand of Shingen. But the first person to come after her is Asano, who she murders. Logan comes to his hotel room, hoping to find her, but instead finds the corpse of his old friend Asano. He smells the poison on Yukio’s knife in his throat, and realizes it’s the same as the poison that took him down when Shingen first kidnapped him. He puts all the pieces together- Yukio has been playing him from the start, and the Hand was working for Shingen. When she enters the room, he tells her to kill him now or he’ll kill her, and she runs. He catches up to her in a rooftop Zen garden and prepares to avenge Asano when they’re both attacked by the Hand. When the fight’s over, Yukio is gone, and Logan is standing alone in a wrecked garden that was supposed to symbolize tranquility. He reflects on his failed relationships- Yukio accepted the monster in him, while Mariko wanted him to grow and be better. Logan loved them both but lost himself in the confusion. But as he restores the Zen garden, new patterns emerge in the gravel, and realizes that even if he can’t change his nature, he wants to try to evolve and see where the journey takes him. He’s a man, not an animal. Shingen was wrong about that, and Logan says it’ll cost him.

Logan travels through the city, crippling Shingen’s operations everywhere from street drug deals to lieutenants in their bases. He tells everyone he takes out to deliver the message to Shingen that he’s going down. When he’s ready, he sends a note to Shingen challenging him to combat. Logan has been gathering weapons from all the Hand assassins that have come after him, and is ready to take down their employer once and for all. Meanwhile, Mariko prays for guidance. She loves Logan, but felt obligated to marry to serve her father. She realizes now that he’s evil, but is torn between her love for her family and her conscience. She enters her fathers room when she hears a commotion, which turns out to be Yukio here to kill him to redeem herself in Logan’s eyes. He tells her to take her best shot, but he overpowers her and is about to kill her when Mariko stops him. They’re interrupted by Logan’s arrival outside the building, where he has killed the Hand army with their own weapons and is here for Shingen. Noburu takes Mariko and flees while Shingen waits to confront Logan, but Logan finds them first. Noburu takes his wife hostage and shoots at Logan, but is killed by Yukio. Logan hates her for killing Asano but is filled with gratitude for saving Mariko, so he lets her go, not knowing what to feel. He leaves Mariko silently to go find Shingen, who he kills in a silent, brutal duel. Mariko arrives and picks up Shingen’s sword, one of the two that she showed Logan in the first issue. He expects she’ll kill him for killing her father, and does nothing to stop her. But she tells him that the honor of the swords should not belong to the head of the clan, but to the one who is worthy of them- Logan. She herself planned to kill her father and then herself, but luckily that didn’t happen, and she embraces the man she loves. A few months later, he and Mariko are engaged, and send an invitation to the X-Men.

I will always prefer stories like this to Weapon X conspiracies. Logan works best in the context of X-Men, but when he does have solo stories, they should be like this- a fish out of water grappling with his own nature without the guidance of his family. The X-Men have helped him grow and see that he can be more than his worst nature, but this is the first time that’s been put to the test without them there. And really, Logan being an honorable, cultured samurai type fighting his animal nature is so much more interesting than him just being a murder machine. I really dislike Frank Miller as a solo writer, but as an artist and a collaborator with Claremont he’s really well suited for this series. The fights feel intense and dangerous, which is exactly what you want in a Wolverine book, and I love the way he draws Logan’s face. Overall, this was a great book. I haven’t read much solo Logan stuff cause I’m not a fan of most of the stuff I’ve read, but stories like this make me want to find more stuff with him.

[multi-lefaiye]

sAME ANON! I really do think there was a deal made in that moment, especially in the context of the pages. We see Scoob remembering how Shaggy gave him his life, a friend, EVERYTHING, and it almost directly parallels how Deedee got her powers, so I rlly do think Scoob made a deal to save Shaggy- lmk if im remembering wrong, but the Toones think that bc Shaggy has no Ballyhoo, he has like an empty equipment slot for Ballyhoos right? But to me it just seems Scoob's ballyhoo got boosted to apply to living beings too, it's probably gonna be a huge plot-twist when Shaggy cant use any other ballyhoos?

ALSO I SAW ON A COMMENT ON ONE IF THE PAGES THAT SHAGGY IS GONNA GET SUCH A BIG POWER BOOST WHEN MICK/SHAGGY 2 DIES BC WE AS THE VIEWERS GIVE HIM BALLYHOOS. I also have a huge theory about how their universe's humans cant give Ballyhoo but OUR universe (as in irl) can but im gonna Avoid writing a 5 page essay for now until later unless u wanna hear it

ANON I AM SHAKING YOU BY THE SHOULDERS (affectionate). Literally these asks are making me SO excited omfg I'm so excited to talk about this series!!!! It's SO fucking interesting and exciting and I think it deserves so much more attention.

Okay because I have mutuals n' besties who want to read Scoob and Shag, I'm gonna put my thoughts under the cut for ~spoilers~. But just know anon I am so delighted by these asks thank you for this food

First, I 100% agree with you about the deal--I feel a little silly that I hadn't considered this before, but I think you're right and that's what I think happened!!! Even if it hasn't been confirmed in the sense of us actually SEEING Cyan directly, I do think that's what was intended here. The parallels!!! I'M LOSING MY SHIT.... Also I don't think you're remembering wrong at all, and these are all good points--my brain's kinda mushy rn but I cannot stop thinking about Daphne's dialogue in the new update, as well as some of Shag's dialogue earlier in part two.

The ambiguity surrounding why Scoob's Ballyhoo was able to work on Shag is SO FUCKING FASCINATING to me!!!! I think you're onto something that it was expanded to work on living beings, because that aligns more with the themes and story we've been giving so far than literally saying that Shag isn't really a PERSON, if that makes sense. Daphne referring to him as a thing seems to be more her personal perspective than anything, and I'm really intrigued to see this explored more going forward. Because I really want to know--HOW personal to Daphne is this? Has she always felt that way, to some extent? Because at this point we don't know how many Shag clones there've been. Idk I'm just so interested. Shag being a clone is something I really want to see be explored more going forward, honestly.

ANYWAY BACK TO THE POWERS. I'm actually wondering a bit now if Cyan's deal is meant to tie Scoob and Shag together in some way? I don't know how much sense that makes b/c brain mushy, but idk I think that'd be really interesting thematically.

ALSO YEAH THE ISSUE OF SHAG'S BALLYHOO...... VERY INTRIGUED TO SEE WHERE THIS GOES. And also I think you're onto something with the idea of Us The Viewers giving him a Ballyhoo--the comic has broken the fourth wall before, especially with Bugs in her first introduction, and I think that'd be a fun way to tie that all together. I don't think it's going to happen for a while, but I also have no idea how long Dingo is planning for this story to be, so I guess we'll find out :)

Also GRASPS YOUR HANDS GENTLY... PLEASE SEND ME YOUR ESSAY..... I REALLY WANT TO KNOW YOUR THEORY..... (no pressure ofc but genuinely I'm really interested to know your thoughts)

this is me rn

[Image Description: The Pepe Silvia meme, which is a screencap from the TV series It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The meme depicts a man with dark hair and a beard, wearing a blue button-up, khakis, and a large tie, with a frantic expression on his face as he gestures towards a wall covered in papers connected with red lines and string. End ID.]

[nitnendoswinch]

TIM REREADS HOMESTUCK PART 1: PAGES 0-21

In which John messes around in his room for a bit, and I discover maybe the only reason for me to regret switching to a more privacy-focused web browser.

Liveblog Archive

First, while I wait for the Unofficial Homestuck Collection’s asset pack to finish downloading, some housekeeping to get out of the way:

First off, this is my fourth time reading Homestuck. Wait. Actually. Hang on. Is it my fifth? I’m writing this paragraph as I think this over, this isn’t a bit, I’m genuinely not sure. I guess I’m gonna have to go over it one reading at a time:

I was a serial reader, first catching up close to the end of Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 2 in 2013.

I read it all the way through for the first time in 2016, a couple months after it ended.

THIS is the one I wasn’t sure about. I feel like I remember rereading it in 2018? But I’m not really sure. I was thinking of looking way back in my browser history to check but I recently switched from Chrome to Firefox and can’t conveniently check on my desktop and mobile chrome doesn’t let you filter your history by date.

Another reread in 2020 because I was feeling nostalgic for it during initial covid lockdowns, appropriately I started on 4/13 this time around.

So there you have it, this is at least my fourth read-through of Homestuck.

Next up, the structure of this series of posts. My intent here is for this to eventually be a dialog of sorts with the podcast I’ve been listening to, Homestuck Made This World (I’ll just be referring to it as “the podcast“ from here on to keep things from getting too bloated). So first, I’ll be catching up to the point in the comic they’re covering (currently in the early parts of Act 6, about halfway through the comic). I’ll be publishing posts like this one as I go every couple days, whenever I feel like I’ve written enough. After I’ve caught up to the podcast, I’ll publish one post covering the same material that’ll be covered in the next episode, unless that makes the posts too long, in which case I’ll split it up into multiple posts. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. I’ll be tagging each post “#tim rereads homestuck” for convenient searching (or blacklisting) and will be keeping an archive post updated to make it easy to jump from one post to another.

As I alluded to above, since Flash is dead I’ll be using the Unofficial Homestuck Collection. This is essentially an app that lets you read the whole comic in a sort of offline browser of sorts, making Flash and other elements that may be unsupported in modern browsers work as intended. It has some features to make the experience even better than reading on homestuck.com would be, like inline music credits with links to the official bandcamp, a “spoiler free mode” to hide things that might spoil future events for archival readers, and even mod support to add things like author commentary and replace some of the slurs in the early parts of the comic. I’ll personally be running mods to add author commentary and news posts, as well as mods to translate things like that one morse code segment and Damara’s dialog in A6I3. This is my first time using the collection, so while this isn’t my first reread I do hope it’s my best!

Without further ado, let’s dive in:

The first thing you see when booting up the collection for the first time, after a brief intro page, is a list of content warnings. For whatever reason, Tumblr’s post editor won’t let me add text to a post after copy-pasting these, so I can’t show the full list. If I explicitly comment on anything that warrants a warning I’ll include it at the top of future posts. After that, there are some prompts to configure spoilers, locate the asset pack, and we’re off to the races!

I’m not gonna screencap every page but I can’t not include the first one. It’s so iconic at this point!

Also, I learned listening to the podcast that the name “Zoosmell Pooplord” is a reference to an old AH webcomic called “Zoosmells”, which I’m... probably not gonna read as a part of this project.

Another comment relating to the podcast, one of the hosts says at one point that “Andrew Hussie is really good at describing a type of guy.” The description of a new character’s interests are always some of my favorite bits to read. They start to get a little silly after Act 5 but the early ones are great. I feel like a 13 year old with this exact set of interests probably existed somewhere lol

I didn’t react much to the fake arms bit as I obviously knew it was coming, but it was pretty funny the first time around, taking what you think is a joke about the art style and using it to mess with you and all that. I know now that this is a running gag of sorts in MSPA - I wonder how many of those I still don’t pick up on considering I haven’t read Problem Sleuth or the other adventures (Maybe I will at least read PS this time around but no promises).

Another quick note: I don’t have a whole lot of programming knowledge other than a little bit of Python from college - Homestuck basically is all I know about What Data Structures Are.

And a few pages later, we get the first perk of the collection: instead of linking to Youtube, the Con Air clips linked when John examines his poster are archived within the collection itself! I gotta say this is pretty terrific, I wonder how many jokes I forgot the punchline of because they depended on a dead link?

And with that, oh shit I have work in the morning and this post has gotten pretty long anyways. I’ll probably keep the next one in my drafts til I’ve read a somewhat decent chunk, but it shouldn’t be more than a couple days. Thanks for reading!

[sineala]

Tony Stark and Arthuriana

Coming to you by special request, a very long post about 616 Tony's interest in Arthuriana, with a focus on all of Tony's run-ins with Morgan le Fay!

I feel like I should disclaim the extent of my knowledge here, which is that I still haven't managed to read anywhere near every issue of Iron Man -- at least, not yet, anyway -- so I'm just going by the things I know I've read, and Morgan le Fay's Marvel wiki entry is frustratingly under-cited, so it's very possible I've missed something relevant, but I'm pretty sure I've got the big stuff down. My other disclaimer here is that I'm not as big an Arthurian nerd as Tony is, which is to say that most of my familiarity comes from modern retellings -- T. H. White's The Once and Future King, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave, Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset -- and not so much the usual classic sources on the Matter of Britain, though I've read bits and pieces of them.

(This is because I wanted to read versions of them that were as close to the original as possible but so far have not ended up finishing any of them because, well, that's hard. So I've never read the Mabinogion because I do not know Welsh. I've got the Norton Critical Edition of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, which is probably the best student edition if you're looking for something without modernized spellings, as I was. I've also got -- well, okay, it's my wife's but I'm borrowing it -- a relatively recent Boydell & Brewer edition (ed. Reeve, tr. Wright) of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), which is, you guessed it, in Latin with a facing English translation. I haven't gotten very far in it because, in case you didn't know this about Latin texts, the beginning is pretty much always the hardest, so I gave up and read some Plautus adaptations instead. Anyway, if for some reason you too want to read Geoffrey of Monmouth in the original Latin I'd recommend that one, but I can't recommend any particular English translations because I've never read one by itself. I bet you didn't think you'd be getting Latin prose recommendations in this post. I mean, maybe you did; it is me, after all.)

Okay. Right. King Arthur. Here we go.

We've got:

Flashbacks to Tony's childhood in late Iron Man volume 1

A brief discussion of Morgan's origin story and Avengers #187

Iron Man vol 1 #149-150: Doomquest

What If vol 1 #33: What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?

Iron Man vol 1 #249-250: Recurring Knightmare

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom #1-4

Avengers vol 3 #1-4: The Morgan Conquest

Civil War: The Confession

Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11: Time Is On No One's Side

In terms of universe-internal chronology, we know from Iron Man #287, from 1992, that Tony has been a fan of King Arthur since childhood. This is an issue of a fandom-favorite arc which features Tony having a lot of childhood flashbacks, including the famous "Stark men are made of iron" line (in #286) that for some reason MCU fandom decided it loved; I mean, seriously, I've seen that quoted in way more MCU fic than 616 fic. But slightly later, in #287, we get an entire page devoted to Tony's love of King Arthur.

The narration reads: "Over the next few years, I learned as my father intended. Discipline of body. Strength of character. But in what free time I was allowed, I worked my way through the school's library. At thirteen, I discovered Mallory [sic], who showed me a whole new world. A world of dedication to a cause greater than oneself. Of chivalry and honor. And the fantastic deeds -- of armored heroes."

The art shows Tony as a child sitting under a tree, reading a book labeled Mort D'Arthur by Mallory [sic] -- no, don't ask me why nobody at Marvel checked how to spell either the name of the book or its author -- and daydreaming of King Arthur, the Sword in the Stone, knights, et cetera. Just in case you somehow missed the extremely blatant hint that we are meant to understand that Tony's knight obsession heavily influenced him becoming Iron Man as an adult, we see one of his armors mixed in with all the drawings of knights. So, yes, canonically Tony is Iron Man at least partly because he's a giant King Arthur nerd, which I think is so very sweet. I love him. He's such a dork!

(This issue is currently in print in the Iron Man Epic Collection War Machine, should you need your own copy.)

This isn't actually the only reference to Tony as a King Arthur fanboy in this era of canon, either; a little later, in IM #298, we see that one of Tony's passwords is actually "Mallory." (Yeah, no, they still couldn't spell. But it's cute.)

But in terms of actual publication order, this is definitely not the first time we have seen in canon that Tony is into Arthuriana, as I'm sure you all know. I would assume, in fact, that giving Tony a childhood interest in Arthuriana is because Doomquest is one of the most beloved Iron Man story arcs of all time, and that all started at least a decade before IM #287 here was published.

The villain of Doomquest -- the one who isn't Doctor Doom, at least -- is Morgan le Fay. Yes, that Morgan le Fay. Yes, Arthur's evil half-sister Morgan le Fay. Yes, all of this King Arthur stuff is canonically real history on Earth-616. Morgan's first appearance in Marvel, per the wiki, was in Black Knight #1 (1955), which I have not read, and judging by the summary I feel like this is probably just supposed to be a straight-up comic retelling of Arthurian legends for kids; I don't think Marvel really had the whole Marvel Universe in mind as a concept in 1955, so I'm not sure this was meant to connect to anything else. I feel like this is another one of those instances of Marvel discovering that they can write comics about characters in the public domain for free -- like, I'm pretty sure that's how we also ended up with, like, Norse, Greek, and Roman mythology wedged into 616.

As far as I can tell from the wiki, the first time Morgan tangled with the Avengers (or indeed the larger 616 universe) in any way actually predated Doomquest -- it was in an early arc in Spider-Woman (#2-6) and then Avengers #187, which came out in 1979, actually right when Demon in a Bottle was happening over in Iron Man comics. If you read #187, Iron Man is not in it because he's off the team due to his drinking problem and also his accidentally murdering the Carnelian ambassador problem. So Wonder Man's filling in instead. This issue is part of Michelinie's rather sporadic Avengers run, which makes sense, I guess, considering where we see Morgan next.

Anyway, Avengers #187 is the classic issue where Wanda is possessed by Chthon, but what you may not remember from Chthon's backstory (I sure didn't!) is that he was summoned by Morgan le Fay because she was the first person who tried to wield the Darkhold to summon him. As you can imagine, this did not work out especially well for her and her followers and they had to seal Chthon away in Wundagore Mountain, which was where Wanda found him. (The Spider-Woman stuff is only slightly earlier and also appears to be about Morgan and the Darkhold; the Darkhold is not one of the areas of 616 canon I am especially conversant with, alas. It's on my to-read list.)

Doomquest, as you probably know, was a classic Iron Man two-parter in Layton & Michelinie's first Iron Man run that set up Tony and Doom as rivals; Doomquest itself was IM #149-150, in 1981, and then in their second IM run they came back and did a sequel in 1989, Recurring Knightmare (IM #249-250), and then the much later four-part sequel to that was the 2008 miniseries Iron Man: Legacy of Doom, which was also by Layton & Michelinie but generally does not seem to be as popular as the first two parts. They've all been reprinted, if you're looking for copies; I have a Doomquest hardcover that collects the first four issues and then a separate Legacy of Doom hardcover. Currently in the Iron Man Epic Collection line there's a volume called Doom, which confusingly only collects the 249-250 part of the storyline (as well as surrounding issues), because for some reason the first Layton & Michelinie run isn't in Epics yet but the second one is. So the beginning of Doomquest isn't currently in print, as far as I can tell. I'm sure you can find it anyway.

So what's Doomquest about? Okay, so you remember how Doctor Doom's mother's soul is stuck in hell for all eternity? Well, Doom's obviously interested in getting her back, and the strategy he has embarked on is to try to team up with other powerful magicians who can help him out, and he thinks Morgan le Fay would be a good choice, for, uh, his quest. Doom's quest. A Doomquest, if you will. (If you've ever read Doctor Strange & Doctor Doom: Triumph & Torment, you're familiar with the part where he later ends up waylaying Strange for this and they go to hell together. And if you haven't read Triumph & Torment, you really should, because it's amazing.)

So Doom is off to his time machine to go team up with Morgan le Fay and Tony thinks Doom is up to something -- Doom has been stealing components for his time machine from a lot of people, including Tony -- and he follows him and it turns out one of Doom's lackeys has a grudge and wants to trap Doom in the past forever, and Tony gets caught up in it. Now they're both in Camelot. Surprise! #149 is actually all setup; they don't get to Camelot until #150.

IM #150 begins with Doom and Tony thrown back into the past; there's a fandom-famous splash page of them locked in combat, only to realize that they have found themselves in Camelot.

They are then discovered by knights; Doom would very much like to attack them, but Tony, who naturally would be happy to LARP Camelot forever, persuades him to play nice. Also Doom thinks Iron Man is only Tony's bodyguard so he keeps referring to him as "lackey," much to Tony's annoyance. Somehow everyone thinks they're sorcerers. Can't imagine why. The knights take them to meet King Arthur himself, and Tony has clearly had his introduction all ready to go, as he introduces himself in a timeline-appropriate manner, says he's here to apprehend Doom, and demonstrates his "magic" by levitating Arthur's throne. Doom's response is essentially "I'm the king of Latveria," which is, y'know, also valid. So they're guests at Camelot for the night while Arthur figures out what to do with them.

We then have a page devoted to Tony alone in his room, musing sadly about how alien he feels, how he doesn't know if he'll ever get home, how he could never fit in here without his beloved technology. Then a Sexy Lady shows up to keep him company for the night, and he decides maybe it's not all bad. Thanks, Marvel. I guess they can't all be winners.

Doom is using his evening much more productively; he compels one of the servants to tell him where Morgan's castle is, because he's still interested in having that team-up. Then he jets off. Literally. He has a jetpack.

The next morning Arthur's like "one of you is still here and one of you has punched a hole through the castle wall and flown off to join Morgan so I guess I know which of you is more trustworthy." He then explains to Tony who Morgan is, because Tony professes ignorance, because clearly we had not yet retconned in Tony's love of Arthuriana. Tony offers to go fight Doom and Morgan with Arthur; meanwhile, Morgan and Doom have teamed up and Morgan has offered to help get Doom's mother out of hell if he commands her undead armies against Arthur because for Reasons she can't command them herself anymore. So that's a thing that happens.

So, yes, it's Tony and Arthur versus Doom and Morgan. Fight fight fight!

Tony tries Doom first but then decides to hunt Morgan down, and in the ensuing fight we get what I think is Tony's first ever "I hate magic," a complaint that we all know he still makes even to this day.

Anyway, Tony freezes a dragon with Freon (mmm, technology) and Morgan gets upset and disappears, so the battle comes to an end, and of course Doom is extremely mad at Tony because he blames Tony for Morgan not sticking around to save Doom's mom, because I guess Doom trusted her to keep her word? Weird. (Like I said, for the next chapter of Doom saving his mother, go read Triumph & Torment.)

Doom says if he and Tony work together, the components in both of their armors can send them both home. So Tony has to trust Doom. Which he does, because he really has no other choice. They build a time machine and Tony makes Doom agree to a 24-hour truce when they get back, so they can both get home. So it all works out okay, and they end up in the present, and Doom tells him, ominously, that they will meet again. Okay, then. That concludes the original Doomquest. It's fun! You can see why fandom likes it.

So that's all well and good, but you might have noticed that Tony's ability to get home hinged on Doom actually being trustworthy. And Doom was. But what if Doom hadn't been? What if he'd just stranded Tony in Camelot forever As you may have surmised from the form of that question, that is in fact a question Marvel asked themselves, because, yes, there's a What If about this! What If v1 #33 is "What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?"

The divergence point from canon, as you can probably guess, is the very end of Doomquest. Instead of Doom bringing Tony home, he deceives him and leaves him in Camelot. And since Tony cannibalized a lot of the tech from his armor to make the time machine, he doesn't have a way to go home.

This is not a story where Tony comes up with a way to go home after all. He really doesn't get to go home. But instead of drowning his sorrows in mead -- because, remember, Demon in a Bottle has already happened and Tony is sober now -- he decides he might as well just play the hand he's dealt. So with what's left of his armor, he defeats some enemies that Morgan rounds up to send against Camelot. And for his services, he's knighted. He is now Sir Anthony.

Tony acknowledges that he is both living the dream and would also like very, very much to go home.

He does end up having some fun in Camelot; it's not all miserable. But he obviously doesn't want to be there.

So if you're at all familiar with King Arthur, you know how this goes, right? Arthur fights Mordred and Mordred kills him. And that does happen in this version. Except Tony is right there, and with his dying words, Arthur asks Tony to rule Camelot... and Tony agrees.

So, yes, Tony Stark becomes king of the Britons after Arthur's death and he never goes home again. The end. Man, I love What Ifs.

Heading back to main 616 continuity, there is still more of this arc to go. The original Doomquest was only two issues, yes, but it was popular enough that Layton & Michelinie did a sequel a hundred issues later, in their second run of Iron Man, and that's Iron Man #249-250, Recurring Knightmare. (In the intervening issues were Denny O'Neil's IM run, specifically the second drinking arc (#160-200), and then Layton & Michelinie came back and most famously gave us Armor Wars (#225-232). I would have to say that Armor Wars is definitely the standout fandom-favorite arc of their second IM run; for their first one, I think a lot of people would have a hard time choosing between Doomquest and Demon.) But anyway, yes. Recurring Knightmare.

Recurring Knightmare is... well, the best way I can describe it is "a trip." It is definitely a sequel to Doomquest, and it is also definitely not a sequel you  would ever have expected to see for Doomquest.

Much like #149, #249 is pretty much just setup. Fun setup, but the big action is in the next issue. We open with Doom in Latveria, on his throne, pondering which of his servants he should have disintegrated. Anyway, he's just hanging out there when a mysterious object appears. In California, Tony is suited up and entertaining the crowd at a mall opening when the same object also appears! He takes it to his lab. Please note that this is after the Kathy Dare incident, so Tony is still recovering and is walking with a cane. Doom sees on the news that Iron Man has found the same object, which cannot be carbon-dated, and he shows up at Tony's house. He criticizes Tony's taste in art.

Anyway, Doom basically orders Tony to work with him. Tony refuses, and then Doom sends some robots to attempt to steal Tony's version of the object because he thinks if he has them both he will be powerful. Doom manages to steal it, and when he puts the pieces together, both he and Tony disappear.

So where do they go, you might ask? Camelot?

Not exactly. The future! There is a great callback to the Doomquest splash page.

It turns out they are in London in 2093. Merlin brought them there. Tony still hates magic. And in the future, King Arthur is still there, except he is now a child, because he has been reborn. But he does remember Tony from Doomquest, at which point Tony kneels. Doom, of course, is not impressed. He asks why they have been brought to the future.

The answer is that things are going wrong in the future. If you do not personally remember United States politics in the 1980s, I need you to google the words "Strategic Defense Initiative" right now. I'll wait.

Back with me? Okay, so this is a future where Reagan's Star Wars program actually happened the way he wanted it to, and the satellites are still hanging around the Earth in the future and messing everything up, and Arthur and Merlin need Tony and Doom's help to stop them. Doom once again flies away with his jetpack, of course.

Tony is game to help, but he's not in an armor that can stay in space for long. This is when Merlin takes him and Arthur to the mall and Tony manages to get everything to upgrade his armor at Radio Shack. You see what I meant about this issue being weird.

Tony is out in space trying to disarm the SDI platform, which is where he runs into his future descendant, Andros Stark, who is in armor you will probably recognize from Iron Man 2020. He is referred to as "the resurrected spawn of Iron Man 2020" so I assume he's actually directly related to Arno rather than a direct descendant of Tony; Wiki confirms that Arno is his grandfather. This is all from way before Arno was contemporaneous with Tony in canon. Anyway, he's fighting Tony.

Oh, by the way, Future Doom exists. Future Doom would like to rule this future Earth and for some reason Andros would like to help him. Meanwhile, Present Doom finds out from Merlin that he can't leave except by magic and he can't leave without Tony, so he is reluctantly on Tony's side.

They need help from the Lady of the Lake, except the lake has been paved over and is now a parking lot. Merlin makes the lake come back and then of course they get Excalibur. Arthur is a kid, so he can't wield a longsword; Doom assumes he's going to take it because he is basically a king, and he's pretty grumpy when the sword picks Tony. Tony then uses Excalibur to destroy the space lasers, and I bet that is a sentence you never thought you would read. It's pretty cool. Tony concludes that magic has its good points. Tony stops Andros and Doom stops, uh, himself, and the world is saved and they get to go home. Also, Doom finds out Tony is Iron Man, but when Merlin sends them back he conveniently erases their memories, so neither of them remember anything about this and Tony's secret is still safe. And that's the sequel to Doomquest.

And if you think that's weird, wait until you see Legacy of Doom.

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom is a four-issue miniseries from 2008, also by Layton and Michelinie. Even though it's from 2008, it's set during a much more classic time in Iron Man, continuing on from where we left off in this Doomquest saga. We start with a framing story in 2008. Tony, who has Extremis now, is busy scrapping some of his older armors and reviewing his logs when he suddenly remembers that there was a whole thing with Doom that happened that he seems to have forgotten about until right now. So the whole thing is narrated by Tony in flashback.

Tony's in space fixing a satellite when a hologram of Doom shows up and summons him to Latveria. It's not really clear why Doom needs Tony's help in particular here, but Doom tells Tony that he's discovered that Mephisto would like to bring about the end of the world, which Doom finds, and I quote, "presumptive." So Doom has his Time Cube, and with it he takes Tony to hell.

(Yes, I promise this is relevant to Doomquest. There will be some Arthuriana shortly.)

Doom brings Tony to Mephisto, and it turns out it's a setup! Doom trades Tony for an item he wants from Mephisto, leaves, and Tony's going to be trapped in hell forever! Oh no! (I mean, he's not. But it's quite a cliffhanger.)

At the beginning of issue #2, we find out what the Arthurian connection is, which is that we learned that after the events of Doomquest, Morgan had been granted sanctuary by Mephisto in exchange for a shard of Excalibur that she had somehow stolen. Doom still wants Morgan's help with some magic -- he doesn't mention what it is here, but he says he needs someone of Pendragon blood, and that'd be her -- so he traded Tony to Mephisto in exchange for, I'm guessing, Morgan and the Excalibur shard.

I have probably mentioned this elsewhere, but Legacy of Doom #2 is one of my favorite issues of Iron Man ever, solely because of the next scene. We return to Tony in hell. Howard Stark is also in hell, and he is now a demon, and Tony has to fight him. Mephisto brings popcorn and watches. This is the one time in canon when Tony actually confronts his father, and okay, yes, it's a fistfight in hell and Howard is a demon, but that's comics for you. Howard spends several pages insulting Tony -- specifically insulting his masculinity, but that's a whole other essay -- until he finally insults Maria too, and that's when Tony fights back, because his mother taught him to be good. Honestly if you're a Tony fan I'd recommend this issue just for that scene.

Anyway, we go back to the Doom and Morgan plot, and Morgan casts the spell Doom wanted, which was fusing the Excalibur shard with Doom's armor. Then Doom sends her back to Camelot rather than hell, because he's still mad that she never helped him get his mom out of hell like she said she would.

Tony freezes Howard with Freon -- yes, the same trick he pulled on the dragon back in Doomquest -- and tells him, "You're no father of mine." It is immensely satisfying.

(I had been going to mention that I thought it was a shame that neither canon nor fandom seems to have really engaged with this confrontation, and I know canon never believes in narrative closure but fandom sure does -- and then, anyway, it occurred to me that since the framing story of Tony remembering this is set when Tony has Extremis, there's a very good chance that he no longer remembers remembering it. Goddammit, Marvel.)

(If I got to retcon one canon thing about Tony, I think "the entirety of World's Most Wanted" is up there. I mean, okay, a lot of things are up there, but WMW is definitely on the shortlist.)

Okay. Tony has now engineered his way out of hell, and he's back with Doom in Latveria. Doom has Excalibur. Doom would very much like to fight him. While wielding Excalibur. You get the sense that this is going to be bad. Another cliffhanger!

Legacy of Doom #3 opens with Tony destroying Doom's lab to buy time and running away from Doom and Excalibur. I should probably mention that Doom still doesn't know Tony is Iron Man (anymore), so he thinks he is dealing only with Iron Man, Tony Stark's lackey. Meanwhile, some scientists at SI think there's something weird going on with space. Meanwhile meanwhile, Tony is in a forest taking a breather when a mysterious old man walks up to him.

It's Merlin! Surprise! Merlin wants Tony's help to stop Doom from doing whatever he's doing with Excalibur. The sword makes you invincible and the scabbard makes you invulnerable, so Merlin sends Tony to Scotland on a fetch quest for the scabbard. Doom has now magically sent the sword in search of the scabbard, so the sword flies away to meet it and Doom follows. Turns out the thing that's wrong with space is a thing that's going to hit Earth at the exact place Tony and Doom are. What a coincidence! So Tony and Doom get trapped in a stone circle and fight some stone warriors and then Tony ends up with the scabbard. And by "ends up with," I mean it fuses to his armor. Next issue!

Legacy of Doom #4 is when things really, really get weird. A giant demon made of eyes (???) appears, and this demon is apparently what Doom had been preparing to fight (because it's mad that Doom stole one of its spellbooks), and now he can't, because the sword and the scabbard aren't together. Thanks, Shellhead.

That's when Merlin shows up and says all is not lost. They can defeat the demon... if they put the sword into the scabbard.

"But I'm the scabbard now!" Tony says, uncomprehending.

"Yes," Merlin says. "You are."

Then Tony gets it.

So, yes, Doom has to, um, penetrate Tony. With Excalibur. I love comics. I love comics so much.

So that's a thing that happens.

And then Tony flies off and, I guess, resolves to never, ever think about any of this again.

We head back to the framing story, in which Tony, now having remembered all of this, flies to Britain, buys the land the lake is on, and paves it over, presumably so it will be there for Merlin to bring back in Iron Man #250. The end.

Whew.

Okay, yeah, I know I didn't have to summarize the whole thing, but Legacy of Doom here really is one of my favorite Iron Man miniseries. And I just want to share the love. Please read it. It's great.

But the Arthuriana fun doesn't end there! In fact, now we get an Arthurian-themed arc that actually isn't in Iron Man comics. It's in Avengers! Iron Man is involved, though.

(There is also apparently a Morgan arc in Avengers #240. I actually haven't read it. It seems to be yet another Spider-Woman arc. I get the impression that this isn't really Arthuriana other than having Morgan in it fighting Jess, though, so it doesn't seem quite as relevant. Morgan also apparently has some appearances in FF, Journey into Mystery, and Marvel Team-Up, but those seem like more of just basic villainy. Also, probably not involving Tony.)

Kurt Busiek's 1998 Avengers run, volume 3, is in large part the kind of Avengers run that is a nostalgic love letter to older comics. Heroes are heroes and villains are villains and good triumphs over evil. The Avengers all live in the mansion and are BFFs. I love it. It does assume that you are already a fan of the Avengers, because it starts out by summoning pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger and is available to the mansion, and that is... a lot of people. Thirty-nine, by my count. Also, when the entire team is magically whisked away, we are treated to the following narration, as Steve disappears: "And Captain America's last thought, as the world goes white around him, and he with it -- is that Iron Man would hate this."

The narration doesn't tell you why Iron Man would hate this, or how Captain America would know that Iron Man hates this. This is not explained later on. But if you have read comics -- or if you have read the above summary of Doomquest -- you know that Tony is absolutely, one hundred percent, thinking, "I hate magic." And Steve knows it.

The reference is not relevant to the plot; if you don't get it, you'll be fine. But that's what I mean when I say this is a nostalgia run. There are definitely Easter eggs for people who have read a bunch of comics. Busiek does this a whole lot in his work -- there's a reason you can buy an annotated edition of Marvels -- and, yeah, it happens here too. Just know that there will be references you're not getting, if you're new to comics.

Anyway. So Busiek's run actually starts out with an Arthurian arc, #1-4, "The Morgan Conquest." The name is a dead giveaway. Yes, Morgan le Fay is back. Again. For once, Doom is not involved.

The Avengers are all back from their sojourn on Counter-Earth after fighting Onslaught -- don't worry about it -- and mysterious things are happening. There are a lot of monster attacks. So pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger is summoned to the mansion, at which point we learn from Thor about some mystical artifacts that are being stolen. (They are the Norn Stones and also the Twilight Sword. That sounds like something from a Zelda game, doesn't it?) The Avengers go to try to stop this, end up in Tintagel, and then they run into Mordred. He wants to capture Wanda, presumably for Magic Reasons. Morgan le Fay casts a spell on all of them, reshaping reality. Yes, all of them. Surprise!

So now all the Avengers are living in a medieval castle and/or town; Morgan is their queen, and thanks to the power of mind-control they are all basically living in Ye Olden Times. The Avengers are all some variety of knight, except for Wanda, who is chained up in the dungeon so Morgan can steal her magic and use it to fuel all this reality-warping.

Wanda calls for help, and that snaps Steve (Yeoman America!) out of the mind control (or altered reality or whatever you want to call it) pretty fast, because Steve's always been very good at resisting mind control, and then Steve promptly goes and snaps Clint out of it, because I guess Steve is also good at inspiring people to snap out of mind control. "Oh, man!" Clint says. "Not another alternate reality! Not again!" (I assume he's referring to Counter-Earth? Maybe?)

So Steve and Clint go around reassembling the Avengers and orienting them as to reality. They get Jan and Monica easily, but then Steve insists on trying to get Tony because, I guess, he likes Tony and would really like to hang around Tony, who is half-naked and asleep in his bedroom, and certainly I am reading nothing whatsoever into this. Clint tells Steve it's not going to work. Tony has historically been fairly susceptible to mind control; it was only pretty recently at this point that he'd been doing Kang's bidding in The Crossing. But the more serious impediment is that this is Tony Stark and he would obviously like to LARP being a knight forever and ever. Tony, therefore, does not believe Steve, and throws him and Clint out of his bedroom and into the barracks.

"Iron Man's a good guy, normally," Clint says. "But he's waaay too into his whole nobleman/lord of the manor trip. That spell musta hit him right where he lives!"

Clint speaks the truth, clearly.

Anyway, they go around and manage to make pretty much every Avenger in the room other than Tony snap out, and attempt to rebel against Morgan while Tony is stil fighting them because he is Still A Knight. There's a lot of punching, because some of the Avengers still aren't free; they weren't ones Steve found.

The day is saved when Wanda manages to channel Wonder Man and break free. This gives the Avengers a fighting chance against Morgan and the Avengers are all lending Wanda their power when Tony finally snaps out of it and is on the side of good. 

Then they take Morgan down, go home, and attempt to figure out which of these thirty-nine people should be on the active Avengers team. Hooray.

But that's not the end of Morgan le Fay showing up to screw around with Tony's life! There's more to come! Not much, but there is one that I know of, and at least one more memorable reference. 

(I haven't read all her appearances or anything, but one of them definitely involves Tony; I can't swear that he doesn't appear in any of the other books Morgan shows up in, but it'd be a cameo for him, because I only know of one more arc that she's in in a book that Tony stars in.)

In a few more years, we have now entered the part of Marvel Comics history where Brian Michael Bendis writes all the Avengers books at the same time for, like, seven years running. It was sure A Time. There were a lot of word bubbles.

And the thing about Bendis is, Bendis looooooves Doomquest. If you're familiar with the very end of his tenure at Marvel where he made Doom be Iron Man after Tony got knocked into a coma in Civil War II, you have probably figured out already that he likes Doom. But he also likes Doomquest, specifically.

I mean, if nothing else, the giant splash page in The Confession where Maleev redrew the climactic Doomquest fight while Bendis had Tony talk about how deeply meaningful to his understanding of the world this all was -- and how it allowed him to predict Civil War -- was probably a big clue, right?

As far as I am aware, Morgan le Fay makes exactly one more appearance in Tony's life. And that's in Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11. Only one of those issues is named, so I'm going to assume the arc is named after it: Time Is On No One's Side.

You remember Mighty Avengers, right? The deal with the Avengers books at the time was that after Bendis exploded the mansion and made the team disband in Avengers Disassembled, the main Avengers book was no longer called just Avengers. Instead, the main Avengers book was New Avengers, and that was the only Avengers book. Then Civil War happened, Steve got killed, and New Avengers became the book about what was left of the SHRA resistance (i.e., Steve's side) after the war. So about halfway through New Avengers, Mighty Avengers starts up, and Mighty Avengers is about an extremely fucked-up and grief-stricken Tony Stark trying to run the official government-sanctioned Avengers team, with Carol's help. This is the comic with the arc where Tony turned into naked girl Ultron. You remember.

So, anyway, there's this Mighty Avengers arc where Doom is Up To Something (there are symbiotes and a satellite involved) and somehow Tony and the Avengers end up in Latveria, punching Doom. Also, by the way, Doom is visiting Morgan in the past because he likes her. The Avengers attacking his castle made him have to come back to the present, so he's kind of cranky. And he fights Tony, and in the course of the fight, his time platform explodes and sends Doom and Tony and also the Sentry to... the past.

This is one of those times where you should definitely look up the comics if possible because the way the past is visually indicated here is that it's colored with halftone dots the way you would expect old comics to be colored, although they have modern shading and color palettes. It's very charmingly retro.

So the three of them are stuck in New York in the past, and naturally they would like to leave. There's one person in this time who has a time machine and it is, of course, Reed Richards. Doom and Tony have a lot of banter in this arc; I think it's entertaining.

Sentry has to be the one to break them all into the Baxter Building because of that power he has where no one will remember him. So they do that, travel forward in time, and end up in Latveria in the present again except Doom is gone and also things are currently exploding where they are.

Doom, of course, has made a side trip to visit Morgan again and he asks her to help him build an army, because I guess this is what their relationship is like. So the rest of the Avengers are captured by what look to me like Mindless Ones and are in a cave in magic bondage, because comics. Jess comments that at least they aren't naked, because she too is remembering that memorable New Avengers trip to the Savage Land. Doom threatens Carol in some creepy sexist ways and eventually it turns out that Tony and the Sentry are fine and everyone kicks Doom's ass. Business as usual.

And the last page of the arc is Morgan alone, wondering where Doom is. So technically Morgan and Tony don't come face to face here, but I think she counts as being at least partially responsible for ruining Tony's day here. And then Secret Invasion happens and Tony has a very, very bad day.

There are a few more Morgan appearances after this, but, as I said, I don't think any of them involve Tony. She shows up in Dark Avengers, apparently, which was one of the post-Civil War Avengers titles I didn't read, and I know that recently, on the X-Men side of things, she's been in Tini Howard's Excalibur one, which I have only read a little of. No Tony there. Just a lot of Morgan and Betsy Braddock and Brian Braddock and the Otherworld.

If you are interested in Morgan's other appearances, you might like this Marvel listicle that is Morgan le Fay's six most malicious acts. I pulled some of the Darkhold backstory from their discussion, but it's not really focused on Morgan and Tony.

So there you have it! That's everything I know about Tony's love for King Arthur and every run-in I know about that he's had with Morgan le Fay! One of two terrible people in Tony's life named Morgan! Actually, I don't think we've seen Morgan Stark in a while. I wonder if he's alive. There should be a Morgan & Morgan team-up. I should probably stop typing and post this.

The tl;dr point is that you should all read Doomquest and its sequels, especially Legacy of Doom. They're great!

[winterhawksamplers]

Who is running this? I like the idea but I feel like it's highlighting the same authors and not anything too old either which is disappointing.

Hi, anon, thanks for this opportunity to clarify some of what this blog is about! 🙂 First, remember that this is tumblr, where anonymity is a privilege. This should not be a surprise to you, as an anon who submitted this ask anonymously.

It's unfortunate you feel disappointed by how this is running so far; you are entitled to your opinion, just as any blog on tumblr is entitled to do whatever it wants within community guidelines. Please note the numerous places where it's indicated that anyone can make suggestions about fics to include via dm, ask, or by adding to the list in comments or reblogs. This blog has received 5 dms with fics to add to future lists already, which is awesome! Go community! It's also worth noting that currently only 2 of a planned 23 lists are posted, so your conclusions are based on a very small and inaccurate sample size. One of the two lists currently posted includes fics from as early as 2015– other WIP lists go back to 2012. There are 19 authors whose fics are included on these two lists alone. At this time, the WIP document includes the fics of 62 authors. Perhaps that alleviates some of your concerns. If not, read on:

There is fic bias in terms of age and authorship: we are well aware and have been very cognizant of that as we try to include less well-known fics, while aligning with the purpose of this blog, which is to come up with fun little appetizer-like preview of tropes/themes in this ship. Older and well-known fics are likely to appear here because as a comparatively small ship made up of two characters that don’t interact much on screen/in comics, people rely pretty heavily on the canonical fandom texts (ie: sort by kudos, first five pages, or authors who have been around long enough to accumulate years worth of writing and subscribers) to help define how Clint and Bucky’s relationship is perceived. Younger and less-known fics are what we actively try to read enough of to incorporate, in order to reflect changes in the ship as well as to counteract the bias that occurs when people sort by kudos and/or popular authors. It’s a complicated balance, but it’s one that is an enjoyable challenge. The hope is to be able to do justice to the themes we all love while bringing exposure to newer and/or lesser known authors and fics.

The masterpost indicates clearly that these are “samplers”. They are not be-all end-all lists. They can’t be: these lists include a limited number of fics. Including more would turn this into simply sorting on ao3 by tag. The disclaimer is in the bio and header: each list is an incomplete, analytical appetizer. To quote the masterpost: this is intended to show diversity within themes. This isn’t even a rec blog; nowhere does it say “here is a list of the best five xyz trope winterhawk fics”. Instead, these lists show (again, quoting the masterpost): different methods of addressing particular themes. The words “rec” or “recommendation” are not used anywhere on this blog because they feel too charged and exclusionary.

Now, all of that to say, anon, here are some key things to remember:

This is one blog. Ignore it if it bothers you. You control how you peruse the internet.

AO3 allows you to sort fics however you want. Feel free to cater to the content you want on your own time.

You, too, can make a list of fics you think people should read. The more the merrier! Interaction with fics (and other fanworks) keeps fandom alive.

You are entitled to your opinion, but you are not entitled to the information of strangers on the internet, nor are you entitled to make people feel shitty about something that they’re doing for fun. So, for the sake of clarity, and to be completely blunt, you should know: coming into a blog’s anonymous ask box with an ask phrased like this is rude, and was, in fact, successful in making people feel shitty about what they're doing for fun and for the fandom they love.

To you and everyone else: a reminder that your suggestions for specific fics to include on these lists are very, very welcome! Your input is appreciated! Hopefully you find some cool fics on these lists that you either didn't know about, get to see in a different light, or get to fall back in love with all over again! 🥰 💜