diltonsstrangescience

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It is absolutely wild that I just now happened to come across this post by coincidence. Because this is startlingly relevant.

I'll fully respect anyone who wants to take canon material and run off into their own little fanon corner where they flesh out paltry characters and relationships into something they want to play with. I will NOT respect the person who does this and absolutely insists the author meant it that way from the start and everyone else just doesn't get it.

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I am mad. I’m mad that the Time Police writers insisted on girlfriendifying our aromantic king. I’m mad.

But I also want to enjoy these comics, so I’m ignoring how mad I am. I’m pretending this is the one universe in the multiverse where Jug is allo and actually falls in love for real. It’s fine. I can tenuously tolerate it for the sake of time travel.

And despite everything… I do appreciate that (so far) allo Jug still acts like himself. They haven’t butchered his personality in order to give him romance plots.

Jug still remembers and acknowledges his own criticisms of Arch’s romantic pursuits. Just because he’s in the same boat now doesn’t make him forget his opinions. He’s not blinded by love, he’s just as rational as ever.

Jug thinks about how his choices will affect the emotions of the people he cares about. He understands the unfairness of Arch-style love triangles, understands that it’s not good to bounce between relationships like this. Unlike Arch, he actually wants to make a choice and commit to it, and he does so relatively quickly.

They have not forgotten Jug’s love for food. Dating people doesn’t suddenly become the one important thing in his life, and sometimes he prioritizes food above the people he’s dating. He even met one of these girls through her father’s restaurant—I’d like to assume they have a shared interest in cuisine, and bond over this.

So like… I’m obviously not thrilled about this romantical turn of events. But all things considered, they could have done a lot worse. This is actually more okay than I was expecting.

I do have to say though, if the writers were that determined to make Jug fall in love with a freckled redhead named Andrews, they jumped through SO many hoops to avoid the most obvious way to go about that.

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morning coffee

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"Snowbound", preview of Archie Jumbo Comics Digest #35, written by Frank Doyle, art by Bill Vigoda

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t shirt that says i <3 overanalysis

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dipsy doodle

Move this one from color to the normally standardized black and white.

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Some more fanart from last year, this time of Archie, or specifically my Retro Riverdale AU. It's based on the 70s Archie comes that eventually goes into modern times. I really love this au and would like to draw more of it.

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in honor of mantle monday have some peak mantle moments

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Is this a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Reference??

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I got the notion to doodle tiny D&D with the ants, because I thought it was cute how they became allies, and I wanted to depict the ants slightly closer to photorealism. You would think this would be easy to do. But first I had to spend fifteen minutes on the internet trying to determine exactly what species of ant is the closest match to the one D&D encountered, to make sure I drew them even slightly accurately. And then I had to spend far longer writing about my findings before I let myself draw anything.

I have determined that these ants could have been Argentine ants, a species that can be found in urban areas. As in the comic, Argentine ants are reddish brown. Their colonies have multiple queens, and the queens remove their own wings after mating, so it’s logical that the one in the comic is wingless. (It is not logical that it has a tiny crown and eyelashes, but whatever.) Argentine ants nest underground, and the entrances to their nests are only built up an inch or two above ground (as opposed to larger anthills), which is a closer match to the hole in the comic, the opening of which was level with the ground. (There is probably an even closer match for that in some species, but my research wasn’t especially thorough—I just seized upon the first option I saw that seemed to fit.) Argentine ants can also infest buildings, so hopefully the ants on the lunch at the end of the comic came from the picnic table and not from inside Dilton’s house. (He should probably check on that.) Notably, Argentine ants are an invasive species, and negatively affect other ant species and local ecosystems in general—if we’re meant to agree with D&D’s refusal to harm the ants at the end, I should maybe assign them a different species that’s not invasive. However, in a narrative sense, Argentine ants make sense as friendly allies. They have multiple queens because they have multiple connected nests, and there’s little or no fighting between these nests, so one could anthropomorphize the ants as friendly and cooperative. Additionally, Argentine ants are mutualistic allies with insects like aphids and scales, offering protection from predators in exchange for the sugary “honeydew” liquid they produce (and allowing these plant-harming insects to spread out of control). Argentine ants are willing to protect other creatures from harm in exchange for sugary snacks, so if D&D had any food on hand, using it to barter for protection in the nest could have been an interesting learning moment. (I’m not necessarily advocating for feeding ants junk food, but like… they could have. I doubt comics this old would worry too much about the health concerns of wild animals, especially ants.)

This is. Way more thought and detail than I ever needed to put into this. But I think this is what D&D would have wanted. Now I know all these neat facts about a specific species of ant! Who says comic books can’t inspire learning? Anyway, here are the drawings, finally:

(Once I had chosen the species, basically all of my information about it came from this source: https://entnemdept.ufl.edu/Creatures/urban/ants/Argentine_ant.htm)

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I wasn’t sure what I was expecting from the “do it yourself experiments”, but I thought it’d probably be something like a baking soda volcano that everyone’s seen a million times. Dilton, I’m sorry I doubted you and the publishers of comic books from the 80s. This is actually legitimately really cool.

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Guys. You and Dilton are on the exact same wavelength here. This has been his plan for the shrink ray from the start. Just hang back and don’t mention the invasion stuff, and Dilt will do all the hard humanity-shrinking work for you. It simply doesn’t get any more convenient than this.

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What, this? Oh, it’s just the single dark cloud that inexplicably hovers over my house sometimes. Definitely nothing to worry about.

I have never seen such a blatant lack of scientific curiosity. That thing is doing some cognitohazard stuff to Dilly’s brain if he’s normalized it already.

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There are multiple issues with Dilly’s proposed plan here. But mostly I’m just very curious about how he thinks he’s going to get away with shrinking every single human on earth.

I was expecting his grand plan to be “shrink all the landfills” or some other bandaid solution like that, but no, he went straight to “permanently shrink all people forever.”

And of course it can’t stop at people. You’re going to have to shrink all buildings and objects and everything else people have built. I can only imagine the havoc that might wreak with building foundations and roads and such. For starters.

You’ll also have to shrink all animals on Earth too, unless you want to get eaten by a housecat the size of your newly-shrunken house. And who knows how that might mess with species whose survival is tied to their size? And if you’re shrinking everything to insect size, then you’re going to have to shrink all the plants too, which I’m sure will have it’s own share of problems.

You’ll probably need to put some thought towards measurement systems. It’s not enough to simply shrink all the rulers and redefine their distances, because we measure things off of Earth as well, and need proper context for records of pre-shrunken Earth. I suppose smaller existing measurements would become commonplace? So much pre-existing information would need to be converted.

Ideally you would need a person’s consent in order to shrink them. But there’s no way every single person on earth would agree to that. And we can’t have some people giant and some tiny. That would go badly almost immediately. So either you just can’t do it, or you’re going to have to be evil about it and shrink everyone against their will.

There are plenty of practical uses for a shrink ray. Scientific studies, easy extraction from wreckage or cave-ins, making even smaller computer parts, etc. But I don’t think “shrink everyone forever” would ever be practical.

The main reason that it would not be practical, however, is that, with its current design, this shrink ray can only affect whatever is in front of its beam. And while I’m sure that, if this plan was to enacted, many more shrink rays would be created…

…I’m entertained imaging every single person and thing in the world patiently lining up single-file and waiting their turn.