#A BIG 360 FROM MY LAST EDIT POST

[lanesrequiem]

now that i have an rc dedicated acc i can post these little edits i made using capcut templates

[rykno-j]

my j/jk s2 ep5 thoughts.. welcome onboard the pain train.

under the cut (spoilers)

-

AGEHSHSHHHS WELL THAT WAS..

1. the way they made g/eto's eyes so tired.

2. the way g/eto went from hair tied up proper and whatnot to wearing baggy clothes and his hair everywhere, literally went from 1 bang to 2 bangs. it really brought out how down he was feeling. and i love yet hate that so much.

3. N/ANAMI'S FKING VOICE ACTOR KILLED THAT SCENE WHERE HE THREW THE CHAIR. HE SOUNDED SO DAMN BROKEN AND UPSET IT STUNG SO HARD argshh. YOU CAN LIKE HEAR THE SADNESS IN HIS VOICE AND HOW DISTRAUGHT HE WAS. his va..

4. g/ojo when he realised g/eto killed his family and everyone at the village. the way he scrunched his fist until he bled.

5. the street scene where they last talked. oh my god. when g/ojo went into a fighting pose but couldn't bare to kill g/eto. his va DID SO WELL. I COULD TOTALLY TELL HE WAS IN A DILEMMA JUST FROM THE WAY HE EXHALED.

when his teacher told him about g/eto loosing it. g/ojo's reactions was so.. so.. argshhh..

6. the way g/eto always puts s/atoru first. when h/aibara asked what snacks he wanted. "s/atoru might want some too, get something sweet"

7. g/ojo at the end saying he wants m/egumi to get strong. "you need to get strong quickly, strong enough so you won't be left behind by me" OR SOMETHING TO THAT EFFECT, I FORGOT THE EXACT WORDS. BUT OH MY GOD he feels so bad for leaving s/uguru behind doesn't he.

8. the way g/eto so coldly became the leader (dictator) of the organisation. he really did a 360° didn't he :c

9. im jumping around so much BUT THE START WHERE G/ETO HAD A MONOLOGUE. the "s/atoru is getting stronger..", "im spending more time alone now.." part. oh. my. god. HE SOUNDED SO DAMN SAD AND LOST.

10. it never hit me before even though ive noticed it while reading the manga. but y/uki kinda played a big part (my opnion) in making g/eto turn to the dark side. like without her putting the idea of killing all non-sorcerers into his mind (ofc i know she did it unintentionally) he wouldn't have gone down that path so quickly. at least thats what i feel.

11. of course the village mission with the 2 locked up girls played a biiiiig part with that. but like the fact g/eto said smth like "i have to choose" (between leaving or staying, rmb when y/uki pointed to the escape door then at j/jk high) means that she kinda pushed him to make a decision faster than he might have naturally.

(do i make sense?? im quite bad at putting thoughts into words..)

11. then finally the part he woke up and m/egumi asked him why hes laughing. g/ojo answering with a playful "nothing"

12. also. the groans g/ojo made as he woke up. HELLO I SWEAR IM NOT INSANE FOR NOTICING (and maybe playing it over a few times). argshhsh

these fucking eyes. also if you zoom into the base of his eye, there's DEFINITELY a mark under it. TEARS? DID HE CRY IN HIS DREAM? baby..

i have no idea if im allowed to post photos of the episode, like if ill get striked or something.. i hope not..

ANYWAY THATS ALL MY THOUGHTS FOR NOW i might come back and edit it if smth else strikes my mind..

what a great episode as usual.. gna go back to lessons and daydream about g/eto's eyebags and n/anami's broken voice

▪︎•▪︎

[gamerdadchronicles]

The Beginning

This space is intended, really, for me. However, if you find it, please know this is a documented thought experiment and something I have talked to one of my best friends about. It is an attempt to understand my own enjoyment of video games and how fathers my age view and enjoy video games. The success of this site and this content is not the end game. I am going to be journaling in this space as I play through some of my favorite video games of all time. This experiment, as I am calling, is very organic. I know of one or two titles I will be playing through and have thought only that far.

It is my intention to add merit to enjoying a form of entertainment that has evolved tremendously over the course of my lifetime. I believe myself to be an academic of sorts and let’s be honest, the idea of executing an experiment focused on video games is something that piques my scholarly side, my gamer side, and through writing and hopefully some video editing, my creative side.

There are currently no sponsors for this experiment , no deadlines, and no grand expectations. I want to find out what it is about gaming and certain games, in particular, that have affected my life and have made gaming my number one form of entertainment.

For background, I am a husband, father of two beautiful daughters, and a lighting/performance engineer. That last title is something my company has developed for me. I went to college for Music Education and then obtained a Masters degree in Theatre.

Enough with the formalities, I want to get to the goods. I began playing video games at the age of five when Santa brought my a Nintendo Entertainment System on Christmas. Now, at the time, the system was definitely for my father who was the ripe old age of 24. A kid with kids having an exciting buy video games. Fast forward quickly almost 35 years and I too now buy my five year old video games so she, I mean I, I mean we can play together. Along side the NES, I was blessed to add an original GameBoy some years later. From there I owned a Sega Genesis, bought my very own PlayStation (lots of yards were mowed to dang that bad boy), a PlayStation 2, an XBOX, a PlayStation 3, an XBOX 360, an XBOX one, and a PlayStation 4, before finding my sweet spot with a Nintendo Switch, an XBOX Series S, and yes even gaming’s master race, the PC. Over the past three years, my switch has seen the most play. The convenience of being able to play on the big screen and then take the game with me with little to no stops cannot be beat. Also, as my family has grown, the ability to stop most games and turn them back on when I have a minute is amazing. Again, no sponsorship here, but the Switch has been the most clutch during the period of diapers and bottles for our family.

I digress. The point is, I have played a lot of games across a lot of platform forms and there have been a select few that have transcended the rest. The first two games I want to run through this experiment are World of Warcraft and Skyrim. In the next post I will lay out my World of Warcraft data collection, goals, and my history with the game.

[unlimitedtrees]

the earliest build i have from my very first game, 'Mr. Waffle Lover'

wat da freak ... im about to make Three posts in a row ?? impossible... so Hi. in case u havent seen my Last Big Post, one of my first projects was a game called 'Mr. Waffle Lover'. it started in early 2014 until late 2017 and it went through Tons of wildly different iterations. and also, if u read da last post youd know i lost nearly All of those builds of the game.

Despite losing like, 3 years of my own history, ive managed to find a few builds from multiple iterations of my game, with this one being the earliest iteration i have. this is the Third iteration of the game's development.. and there isnt a whole lot to say about it. it is a Very Basic, Very Primitive platformer made by an 11 year old. this build in particular has only Two levels . i Think more were made at some point, but it's hard to remember. at one point, i made a ""mobile version demo"" of the game for the tablet i had at the time (the game did not work on it), and thats the version u see in the video i posted. For Some Reason, i decided to strip any other level that may have existed in the game and just made it a demo even though i was the Only Person who could play the game.. so i dont have much from this iteration. i Do have an Earlier build that i put on github, but there isnt a whole lot of differences to this demo version.

Anyways, i think, for the rest of this post, imma go a little in depth about the Origins of this game and what it was actually Supposed to be .. click the Read Me thingy if u Dare !!!

So, it all started in 2013 . i was a Bored little creature who liked to draw things and was Deep into Minecraft for the Xbox 360. and one day i created a little comic with a character called 'Mr. Waffle Lover'.. And He Looked Like This:

That's Right , my very first OC is Just a skin from one of the minecraft xbox 360 edition skin packs. this was the skin i played as a lot back then, and 'Mr. Waffle Lover' was my self insert in the comic. why is he called 'Mr. Waffle Lover' you may ask? because i liked to eat waffles a lot. that became his main character trait. Eventually, when the game became A Thing, i would slowly change his design from just a copy of a minecraft skin, first giving him heterochromia and Gloves which spawned TNT, then later giving him a yellow shirt to match with his love for waffles, and then i just make him a Girl (but That is a story for Another Day . .. )

Anyways , on my birthday in 2014 i got a windows 8 laptop, and then in october i learned about construct 2 and decided i Needed to make a video game. ever since i was a fetus ive always wanted to make a video game,, with one of the earliest ideas for a game i remember having is when i was like 5 and wanted to make 'New Sonic the Hedgehog Wii' (a copy of New Super Mario Bros. Wii but featuring multiple colored Sonics).

ANYWAYS , one of the first video games i ever made was Mr. Waffle Lover......... Well Actually, Technically that is not true, as a few months before i tried using some Random in-browser game program that i dont remember the name of to make something called the 'Egg Game'... but it never went anywhere beyond me putting a stock Egg image into the program and then giving up.

my initial inspiration for making a game about the Mr. Waffle Lover character was when i played a game called 'Ms. Splosion Man' on the xbox 360. i thought the game play was interesting but i got stuck at one of the puzzles so i was like 'I Want to make this game but Better and with MY character !'. And So, i thought of the idea of Waffle Lover having Gloves that spawn TNT that he uses to jump high like in Ms. Splosion Man....... but i never got to actually implement it until the 'mid 2015' build that i posted earlier... and i removed it entirely afterwards and just made the game a Basic 2D Platformer for awhile.

so yea. this game was supposed to be just a simple 2d platformer featuring my sort of self insert OC based off a minecraft skin. there wasnt really much to it conceptually... just wanted to make a video game! that's all my ideas were at the time.. the only "Story" this game has is 'Waffle Lover gets his Waffles stolen by some Scientist People and he needs to Stop Them !!!!'. the game eventually got some sort of story over time... but for now all u need to know is that this game is A Game that I Wanted To Make. it doesnt get purer than that.

with the first iteration of my game being my first game Ever, i had No Idea how to do things. all of the small sprites were stretched out to fit the HD screen resolution, making everything blurry. the gameplay was Very Basic and the levels were simple. the HUD didnt even stay centered on the screen... instead it used the 'pin behavior' to be pinned on the player object (which did not work and the HUD would move around the object). And the worst aspect of it was that i did Not know how to make layouts in construct 2 use other event sheets or Objects from other layouts..... meaning every layout (meaning every level) uses Completely Different programming And objects .... Not Only That , but i only had the Trial version of construct 2 at that time.... so i could only use 100 'events'... meaning i could only put So Much code in the game before i reached the limit (and with every level using its own separate events for everything, i ran out of events Pretty Quickly and couldnt make any more levels.

I So Desperately Wish i could show that first iteration of the game with you. it was Very Weird and Bad but it was so Lovely. to say the least.. it was quite the learning experience ! I can Vividly remember me making the very first layout in the game,, with it just being the Waffle Lover sprite moving around a white background and a bunch of badly placed collision objects. it was a Sight to Behold . But Sadly... when i decided to completely redo the game, i deleted the whole project file for it, and its pretty much Lost forever now. the only remains are some random sprites from it i still have... other than that there Was a trailer i made for it once and i Think i released a demo for it once... but both of those are Long gone now.

anyways. for the second iteration of the game i decided to make it an ""HD"" version of the game, using higher resolution sprites and a 3d animated version of Waffle Lover.... However this 3d version is Actually just a minecraft skin of him made in Mine-imator, an Old 3D animating software Exclusively made for making minecraft animations. So , the game had a bunch of bad tilesets and a badly animated prerendered sprite of a minecraft skin for its player character. i dont remember much from that point of the game's development other than it did not last very long and it looked Funny. i dont even think it got past one level... as i struggled with making high resolution art (i only had ms paint and construct 2's built in image editor, so, yea). i Think everything from that era of the game's development is Gone, HOWEVER i THINK i might have the files for the Mine-imator animations Somewhere... maybe. i Think i saw the files on my old laptop for some mine-imator project but i was unable to open them and i dont know if i saved them anywhere so. Idk.

and now, this leads us to the Third iteration of the game... which is the one i showed in this post. as you can see in the video, i finally figured out how to make pixel art look not blurry. i also figured out how to make different layouts use the same event sheets. i even figured out how to make a HUD... incredible ! other than all of that, there's not much to say about it. it's just not as silly looking as the earlier iterations were... and its not really Fun to play. its not even all that janky.. its just basic. i worked on it for awhile, but then i gave up on it and moved onto the mid 2015 iteration.. and the rest of the game's history is a story for Another Time..

if there's anything i can say about this old game.. it's that you can Definitely see how much ive grown since then. whoever is reading this, i Really hope this is not your first introduction to my work.... cus my stuff nowadays is Insane compared to this... a lot has happened in the like, 8 years since ive started game development. and i have so much stories i want to share,,, i hope i can keep sharing those stories with you. oh and also, if you Really have never heard of my work before... um.... Play UNITRES Dreams on Newgrounds dot com. LOL!!!!!!

That is All i want to talk about for today i think. I Think. hope my posts are comprehensible to u ! Oh , And Before i forget , the build of the game in the video i posted is in the ProjectWaffle google doc archive ... and the Earliest Build i have is on github. check it out If U Wish !

[bitchassmcgrass]

More info under the cut. I'll try to make future updates (if any) short or with cuts to avoid clogging up your dashboard.

The point of this project is to make a programming block (usually six hours, since that's usually the max you can get on a standard vhs tape on EP) containing videos from YouTube and Newgrounds, currently looking at Eddsworld, Tomska, Smosh, AVGN, and maybe Filthy Frank videos, all of this including adult swim esque bumps in between.

The last project had no video editing, purely relying on recording footage that others have recorded, as if I was recording the source footage to a tape myself (albeit a little out of order chronologically at times). The Real Will Wood tape was also easy to edit, as I just stretched the movie from 16:9 to 4:3, and then added the fbi warning and some commercials for the movie at the start, and threw in some bonus scenes at the end. (I also edited the credits sequence, once the lights are turned off during the green screen bit on the left, it's nearly impossible to make anything out on a CRT, so I scaled the credits up on the right to take up the whole screen, making them much more readable. Makes literally no real difference except to me.)

This project is going to be me basically making my own programming block. Picking music for the bumps, adding short introductions to videos (or just rambling about whatever) for the text, and editing videos that may have been presented in 16:9 in 4:3, either by stretching the video or by cropping it down to just the most important parts.

Why am I doing this? For two reasons.

1) It's YouTube on a VHS tape, how fucking cool is that?

2) I have a feeling that the Xbox 360 internet service is going to die soon. With the XBL marketplace being shut down last month, I feel I have very little time before I won't be able to watch YouTube on the Xbox anymore, and I'll have to upgrade to a more modern console or system of watching youtube on my TV. I would like to avoid that hassle as much as possible, and think rather than having another device to put my information into in order to watch YouTube with ads, I can simply just port as much as I can to DVD or VHS (or even just download to my computer) and watch that way.

Is it a very stupid reason? Yes. Is that going to stop me? No. Why? Please refer to Reason 1 above.

The working title of the project is Digital Guillotine. I will have that in the tags of any potential future posts in order to let people block me rambling about this project from their dash. The name Digital Guillotine comes from the idea of blocking every celebrity and big account on social media, in order to disconnect from drama, and live a more peaceful life. I didn't know about this when I came up with the name, I just thought the name sounded badass and googled it to make sure I wasn't stealing someone elses name. It turns out that the name was quite fitting.

Anyways, that's about all I wanted to say. If I know you irl, you'll probably end up seeing a bunch of these tapes scattered around my living quarters. I'll also make some update posts if anything notable happens, or if I just feel like rambling.

I've decided that since I can no longer find any archived adult swim tapes, I am going to start making vhs tapes with old youtube videos that I like on them, mostly flash cartoons and shit.

[femmefatalevibe]

Can you give us more details about freelance writing and your personal experience?

Hi love! Yes, gladly.

So, I started out writing for my college's fashion publication and Collegefashionista right before my freshmen year of college (unpaid, of course). After a few PR and editorial internships through my late high school/early college years, I finally heard back from a major outlet that they were seeking freelance fashion writers. I was super excited because of the big name and audience.

I started writing for this publication and got a lot of views on my articles, so I got a lot of emails from publicists/brands and found my way into the world of press previews (seeing new collections a season ahead), meeting with designers/brand VPs, and attending events like Fashion Week. Writing for this outlet gave me the confidence to start pitching stories to several other outlets over the rest of my college career. Some worked out favorably, some didn't, but it's been a very rewarding and great learning experience.

Around my last year of college, I started to also dabble in the blog/copywriting space (where most of my work is now) and found the pace/general lifestyle of this line of work to me more appealing than freelance journalism as my main hustle (I still love doing some work in this field on the side, though!).

Fast forward to post-grad, I started working on a bunch of different types of projects – from editorial assignments and journalism day shifts to copywriting, content writing, content strategy, and fashion styling & creative direction.

Over the past year or so, I've found ways to streamline my freelance writing business by understanding that, at the end of the day, it's a business and it's MY business. Aka my business, my rules (within reason of course – every contract & terms of a project should be mutually beneficial). So, now, I mainly work with different brands & entrepreneurs in the fashion & beauty space to work on all different types of editorial and content/marketing strategy, copywriting and editing, creative direction, consulting, styling, etc. Essentially, I'm a 360-copy and content strategy agency of one. Understanding that I'm a business, not an employee, and have work that demonstrates to other business owners that I'm an expert in my field has been the biggest game-changer for me.

If you have any specific questions on pitching/how to get your foot in the door, please feel free to schedule a time to chat! I know freelance writing is a tough industry to break into and sustain, so I'm glad to offer any advice that I can. Link to my calendar is here: https://calendly.com/femmefatalevibe/30min?back=1&month=2022-11.

Hope this helps xx

[blazehedgehog]

So.... How about that Sonic Color port?

I don't get the white-knuckle outrage people have about it.

One, bad ports and remasters like this happen a lot. Sonic Colors Ultimate was not the first, and will not be the last. I've told this story before, but it's the one that sticks out the most in my head:

Back in 2011 or 2012, a company called "Just Add Water" announced they were going to remaster Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath. This was important, because Stranger was an Original Xbox exclusive, came out at the tail end of the console's life span, and was a commercial failure. The game was essentially left to rot on the Xbox.

But Stranger's Wrath was a critical darling, people loved that game, so the idea that finally, FINALLY, it would be getting proper PC and modern console releases was a big deal. An easy slam dunk for Just Add Water.

They released the remaster on PC first, a straight-across port from the Xbox hardware, and it was a technical disaster. Tons of effects were broken and it barely ran, especially if you were unlucky enough to have a Radeon GPU.

At the time, there was a thread on the NeoGAF forum (years before it imploded) and developers from Just Add Water were posting in it, seeing how people liked the port. There were a lot of posts from hopeful fans complaining about it being broken on their machine (I was one of them). The developer's response was to make fun of people for having weak PCs, while revealing that "the game usually averaged 30fps at a resolution of 800x600" on their test machine, which was a somewhat high end system for the time. 30fps for a six year old Xbox game on a ~$700 PC build. At a resolution of 600p no less, when we were approaching the dawn of 4K games on PC.

It was disgraceful. I was mad. They were proud of this. They were arrogant about this. What a great favor they had done for us bringing Stranger's Wrath to PC where only the top 25% of their install base could run the game acceptably at low settings.

Just Add Water, perhaps realizing the growing number of scorned users, vowed that they would improve the PC port "soon." In the mean time, they ported Stranger's Wrath to every other platform under the sun. Playstation 3, Vita, Xbox 360, I think even Wii U. The PC version remained in the same broken state. They made announcements for other Oddworld games. They started porting Munch's Odyssey to other platforms, as well. Finally, something like three or four years later, after they'd already wrung everything out of the Oddworld franchise everywhere else, they went back released an updated version of Stranger's Wrath for the PC that looked and played correctly.

That was their definition of "soon."

Sonic Colors and Stranger's Wrath still aren't the only examples of this. I mean, Gearbox's original PC version of Halo was a complete mess of arbitrarily changed effects, and only now, 13 years later, did The Master Chief Collection finally fix that broken port.

Or what about the original 2007 PC port of Resident Evil 4? That looked like this:

The game originally shipped with a complete lack of any lighting whatsoever! It was also a port of the PS2 version, so the textures were visibly worse than the original Gamecube and Wii versions. AND it still ran like unoptimized garbage, too! It took Capcom another 4-5 years to put out the "Ultimate Edition" port we have today.

All of these ultra-dramatic Sonic fans out there like "SEGA WILL PAY THE PRICE FOR HAVING CROSSED US THIS DAY" are like... yeah, it sucks that the port could be better, and we did not deserve to have it be this bad, but could you tone it down just a little?

I mean, we knew going in to this that the port looked a little funky, based on videos Sega was putting out that featured clearly broken effects. Sure, there was the hope that things would get fixed before release, but that's all it should have been: hope. Cool your jets, wait and see. But you don't have to go full Skeletor.

Based on what I've heard, from people I know and from what other rumors have said that seems to line up, it sounds like Sonic Colors Ultimate was a victim of covid-19. I was first informed that Sega was prepping a Sonic Colors remake/remaster in 2019, and it seems like the originally targeted release date was Christmas 2020. However, apparently, in early fall 2020, a performance evaluation revealed the game was in no state to release thanks to covid guidelines gumming up the development, and apparently Blind Squirrel was brought in to rescue the project.

That's probably why Sonic Colors Ultimate is this weird mishmash of original game code + an implementation of Godot bolted on over the top of it. Blind Squirrel tried to clean up the mess as best they could, but it wasn't good enough. The Switch version caught it the worst.

This isn't an excuse for the quality of the remaster. It sucks and we deserve better, but you could say that about a lot of things during this pandemic. We just don't need the big theatrics and the bickering over what is just another mediocre remaster.

I canceled my pre-order and I'm waiting to see if it gets any significant updates before I consider buying it.

[simplybakugou]

three year anniversary post

genuinely can't believe this blog has made it to three years. i didn't even think i would be able to keep this up for one let alone three.

this year has been hectic and unfortunately i wasn't able to make an event like i had initially wanted but instead i'd like to thank some people that i've met along on this three year journey :)

@nejiraez izzy my rock, my love, my wife. i genuinely cannot thank you enough for your friendship. the fact that we've been moots for almost three years is insaneee. you were one of the first blogs i followed on here and i couldn't believe it when i got a follow back but now look at us, sending tiktoks to each other and shit LMAO. ilysm and tysm for always hearing me out whether that it for my thousands of smau ideas or in general. again ily

@lovely-angst you were one of the OG blogs i followed and i remember screaming when you followed me back. i loved watching your blog do a whole 360 from writing bakugou angst to giyuu and now back to bakugou lol. i love your content and tysm for being a part of my three year journey

@bakugou-tm the original bakugou stan account omg. your blog was what inspired me to make my own bakugou writing blog and i remember loving our interactions, especially since you've fueled my villain!bakugou needs lmao. i love your content and it makes me so happy to see you writing again :)

@sipsteainanxiety SHAYY MY LOVE. i miss you :( and i loved everytime i saw your comments on my fics. i was so excited when i found out you were desi as well and it has just been a pleasure to be able to call you my friend

@shoutogepi rosieeee hi :) i know we haven't talked that much lately but i genuinely want to tysm for being such a genuine part of my tumblr experience. you're so sweet and ily

@dimplesum faye omg i still can't believe we're moots LMAO. you were always one of those "big" blogs to me (for obvious reasons cause you're so talented and deserve all of the support you get) and i've always wanted to created content the way you do. ty for always being so sweet and lovely to me

@rat-zuki ANNIEEEE you're probably one of the moots i'm most surprised to be mutuals with LMAO only cause you're so cool and i remember being so blown away by your blog/content when i first followed you. i couldn't believe someone as talented as you followed me and you'll always have a special place in my heart, my fellow mallu

@mirakeul bianca i always appreciate the comments you've left on my work. it's been such a pleasure reading your content and i can't wait to see how your account grows in the future

@kurinhimenezu i've always loved and appreciated every comment you've left on my work. your username always feels so familiar when i see it and i can't ty enough for your support

@sassi-sunflower SUNNY it's been so long since we last spoke but it's always so fun to talk to you. you're comments give me LIFE and ilysm

@xtsundere-princess @boosyboo9206 @serowotonin @life-is-not-daijobu anytime i see any of your comments on my work, it makes my day. you're the type of people that i think of whenever i'm writing and i smile whenever i see your usernames in my notifs. ily all so much

@reddriot z, you're so talented and such an angel. i know we haven't spoken in a while but i love going through your account and seeing your edits and your work and you never fail to amaze me

@sheerxradiance SHEEEEER my first emoji anon and the first anon i had like a whole little friendship with. i remember being so shocked when i found out you were the 🥰 anon because i would always try and figure out who you were but i was way off. i remember seeing your username pop in my notifs from time to time and everytime i talk to you i can't help but smile, ilysm

@todosweetheart val :) you're so talented and your art blows my mind everytime. it's such an honor to be able to see your art and call you one of my moots. ilysm

@katsuhera hera i know we haven't known each other for long but your writing is the epitome of *chef's kiss* i remember screaming when i found out you listen to GD/bigbang and i got so excited. thank you for being a part of my journey

@k-atsukidayo fey i know you haven't been active lately but i hope you see this. you're one of my favorite writers on this app and i hope to be able to write like you someday. your writing is so magical and jaw dropping and i cannot believe i get to call you my moot. ilysm

anyone and everyone who has supported me:

i started this blog july 9 of 2018 without any expectations. i used to write on wattpad and after i got into bnha and falling in love with bakugou's character, i immediately wanted to write scenarios about him. never did i imagine that i would still be writing three years later. it feels surreal. it's even more surreal that i've got so much support. every single like, comment, reblog, and follow makes me overjoyed and i always see anytime anyone interacts with my blog. these interactions are what keeps my blog going most days.

here's to three more years hopefully lol so i hope you look forward to the content that i'll continue to make :)

[twh-news]

Loki’s production designer on the Modernist inspiration behind the show’s stunning visuals | The Art Newspaper

By Helen Stoilas

Kasra Farahani explains why the Time Variance Authority waiting room looks so much like the Breuer building, and how the inside of a Fabergé egg became an alien train carriage.

Fans of Modernist design can find a lot to appreciate in Loki, the television series starring Tom Hiddleston recently released by Marvel Studios on the streaming channel Disney+. The stunning production is clearly influenced by Brutalist and Neo-Futurist architecture, as well as Soviet Socialist art and sculpture. Visual references can be seen from the very first episode, in which the magic-wielding god of mischief is apprehended by a universe-spanning police force known as the Time Variance Authority for “crimes against the Sacred Timeline” (stay with us).

One early scene, for example, was filmed on a custom-built set that bears a striking resemblance to the lobby of the Marcel Breuer building in New York which once housed the Whitney Museum—and now houses the Frick—while another was shot on location in the Neo-Futurist Atlanta Marriott Marquis hotel, designed by the architect John C. Portman, Jr (with some monumental statues later edited into the soaring atrium). The Art Newspaper spoke to the series’ production designer, Kasra Farahani, about his inspirations for the look of the show.

The Art Newspaper: Loki's director, Kate Herron has called this series a love letter to sci-fi and you see a lot of visual homages to films like Brazil, A Clockwork Orange and Blade Runner. But there's also a clear influence of Modernist design on the look of the series overall. You studied industrial design early in your career. Were there specific examples of Modernist architecture and design that you were looking at when you started working on the series?

Kasra Farahani: So many, everyone from Frank Lloyd Wright to Breuer, to Mies van der Rohe to Paul Rudolph—you have a shot in the John Portman building—to Oscar Niemeyer. And then a lot of Eastern European, Soviet-influenced Modernism played a big part in it as well. I can honestly tell you that my first and foremost inspiration was Modernism. Part of that is because the TVA (Time Variance Authority) is a bureaucracy and I think, archetypically, so much of what we know a bureaucracy to be is that post-war, highly funded institutional look. And there's a lot of different versions of that, whether it's the Washington, DC version, like the Hoover building, or whether it's what we had in Los Angeles, where I grew up, where there's a huge amount of post-war architecture built for the population boom. Like the elementary school, middle school and high school that I went to were all mid-century Modernist.

I was also looking a lot at Brutalism and the Modernism in former Soviet states, that are heavily influenced by Socialism and Soviet architecture, and where scale is such a big driving force of the design.

The size of some of the buildings in the show are kind of overwhelming. I know that some filming was done in the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, with that huge soaring atrium. You just completely get dwarfed by that kind of architecture.

Yeah, that's right. That one we used for the TVA archives because we couldn't justify building a big set, but once I scouted it, I saw that we could bring in these massive Time-Keeper sculptures at the scale you would typically only see in an exterior, which is a fantastical thing. The TVA sets themselves, which were almost entirely full 360-degree sets, were very much designed as an intentional paradox between the stoic, large-scale Brutalism form language, and the surfacing and palette and whimsical patterning, which is very much taken from American mid-century Modern. Those two things create these spaces that feel at once super intimidating and then uncomfortably inviting and warm at the same time.

That’s kind of the irony of a lot of Modernism, Brutalism especially, it had these utopian ideals of creating affordable social housing, but then a lot of the people found it really oppressive to live in.

Yeah. Modernism has been that way the whole time—it was designed to be super cheap and utilitarian and routinely it ends up being the most expensive kind of architecture. Another thing readers may be curious to know about is the TBA expanse, which is essentially the view outside some windows.

That futuristic cityscape you can see….

Yeah. They had very strange and unique parameters to try to design that. The TVA exists outside of the physical world—so there's no weather, there's no roofs, there's no difference between interior and exterior, there's not necessarily even gravity in the way that we know it. But there are these meandering colonnades that we took a lot of inspiration from Brasilia—and obviously a lot of the super cities that were drawn in comics. But also there's some really beautiful conceptual sketches that Frank Lloyd Wright did of a version Los Angeles in the early 20th century that had Roman-like colonnades and plazas and a lot of that fed into what the TVA expanse is.

You mentioned all the sets you built for Loki, especially for the TVA. There's two that where used a lot. The Time Theater, where so much of kind of Loki’s personal story gets told, and looks like its straight out of the Barbican in London, with these huge colour-coded directional numbers on the walls. And then there's the Miss Minutes waiting room with those circular lights that looks almost exactly like the lobby of the Breuer building in New York—to the point where I reached out to the museum to ask if you’d filmed there. You even got the silver-tipped light bulbs right.

We were very inspired by that, but it's different in some very subtle, but for me, very important ways. Number one, the size of the bulbs is much smaller, they were manipulated to create eyeballs, basically. Another important difference is that in the Breuer building, they have these dishes hanging in space, whereas in ours, they're negative space, there's a solid ceiling. It creates a matrix of eyeballs peering down, like the always-watching Time-Keepers. And maybe the most important difference is that the ceiling is slammed down—you know the cheapest apartment you can go into has an eight-foot ceiling, this is six inches shorter than that, and our actor is about six-foot-three. The idea was to create a sort of trash compactor feeling in this claustrophobic space with this matrix of eyes, watching as all of this is happening.

The time theater was for me very inspired by Pier Luigi Nervi.

I liked that waffle coffered ceiling you have in that room.

Thanks. We were very happy with it, and it created this kind of forest of light columns which helps set the neo-noirish, interrogative nature of the space. And the unnecessarily large super graphics that you mentioned are a very Paul Rudolph sort of a thing, he did that in his building too, and I love that.

For me, it’s very important not to reference a set design from other films, that why I reference architecture, painting, photography, these other art forms, more than anything else, because inevitably when you’re working in archetypes, there’s a lot of overlap.

And as Loki goes into different times and locations, you get a completely different design environment in those places. There’s a scene on a train car, that has a very Art Deco look.

That was inspired by the inside of a Fabergé egg, Art Deco meets Alien.

And when you finally meet the Time-Keepers in the most recent episode, it’s like they're in a pre-Colombian pyramid or a ziggurat.

I was looking at Indian stepwells, this almost fractal quality with these descending stairs going into one another—but we imagined them going out every direction, with an Escher-like quality, like they are tessellating themselves to infinity.

I read on Twitter that you literally bought a bowling alley from Omaha and brought it to Atlanta to create Loki's Palace in the Void in the last episode, which is this crazy, surreal, amusement park, junk yard-like place.

We bought the floor of a bowling alley, everything else we built. That was a lot of fun because the script gave us a lot of runway. The proposal was to do this bowling alley because essentially everything in the Void has been discarded from time, and more things fall into it and accumulate and so you end up with these strata. I liked the idea of like a bowling alley that's been smashed over your knee or something. The net effect is when you first enter, you have all these lane lines pointing down at this throne, which was supposed to be stolen from a mall Santa. And then there's these crazy alien plants that are growing through it that have taken parasitic hold of the place. In many ways, I think its a narrative microcosm of the Void itself, which is like a salad bar of these disparate aberrations slammed together. Things like the bowling alley all have these micro-narratives that we in the art department have come up with to help flush out the design and make them specific. For example, there's portraits on the wall of like bowler of the month, and they’re not quite human. It's not in the episode, but those things are important for us in the art department.

At the very end of the most recent episode, we get a glimpse into this city that Loki and Sylvie (played by Sophia Di Martino) are walking into. Can tell us anything about what inspired those scenes, what we're about to see?

You can call me back in a week. All I can say is that the TVA is definitely the visual and narrative anchor of the story, but there's a lot of great worlds to see. And I think what people are responding to is the breadth of the visual variety of the show. And episode six won't be any different. It's really cool, and maybe some of my favorite stuff.

[popculturebuffet]

Scotrospective: Scott Pilgrim Vs the World (The Comic)

Hello, Hello, Hello scottaholics! And what a beautiful day it is: After decades lost in the lost woods, at least it had that catchy tune to keep it company, Scott Pilgrim Vs the World: The Game is FINALLY back and performing for you on all platforms!

Even Stadia, the platform most likely to disappear like this game did for a while! Cheap shots at the stadia aside as a huge fan of the franchise as a whole and of this game who played it back on the 360, and had since sold said 360 so I had no way to get it back or ever play the dlc packs. Seriously who didn’t want to play wallace but never got to? Everyone, everyone is the answer. But with those the entirety of what I consider to be the main cast is playable, it has online so you can beat up hipsters, guys in costumes and robots with your friends, it’s a good damn feeling.  And since i’m in a celebratory mood, naturally i’m also feeling like a review. And since it just so happens the next volume up in my look at the comics is Vs the World, seriously I planned this review for this month without thinking to have it come out on the same day as the game until a week or two in, I felt there was no better way to celebrate the biggest day for Scott Pilgrim fans in some time.. and for Brian Lee O Malley as he’ll stop getting twitter asks about it. So with all the exposition taken care of LAST TIME, and the link right there if your curious, we can jump right in. On with the show!

After our opening titles, and yes this comic has opening titles, with Ramona sitting solmely in the rain. 

And Scott caught in the title. The rain shot is real pretty by the way. But yeah once we get past those we’re taken back 7 years ago. Finn found out his father was an asshole, and voiced by Stephen Root so hey you take the good with the bad, Steven just learned the horrifying truth about Gem Monsters, Guardians of the Galaxy saved the MCU and I was trying to find work after college.. wait... sorry sorry that was 7 years ago from THIS year. The comic came out in 2005, though the comic takes place on a sliding timescale where only like 2 years pass so I dunno when this is. Let’s just say 98.  Okay so 1998: Bill Cllinton’s sex scandal breaks, and puts way too much of hte blame on the young intern whose life came to be defined by one stupid mistake she made with a man who was way older and should’ve known better, the tide of the Monday Night War turned in favor of the WWF as Stone Cold Steve Austin became a household name, and it was an utterly standup year for video game relaases with Ocarina of Time, Banjo-Kazooie, Crash Bandicoot: Warped, StarCraft, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, WWF: War Zone, Pokemon Stadium, Spyro The Dragon, Pokemon Yellow, WarioLand 2, Oddworld: Abe’s Exodus, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Pokemon: Trading Card Game and Sonic Adventure. It’s like someone took a good chunk of my childhood and squeezed it into one year holy shit, I did not expect this when looking up what came out in 98. 

And while the movie pool wasn't’ quite this amazing, we still had The Wedding Singer, The Big Lebowski, the dude abides, Batman and Mr Freeze: SubZero, The Truman Show, Mulan, the good one not the one made near concetration camps that makes her into a demigod, Saving Private Ryan, Blade, Simon Birch, Scooby Doo on Zombie Island, Rushmore, Bride of Chucky, HalloweenTown, Plesantville, and the Prince of Egypt. And in music Weird Al changed from his first signature look to his second, getting Lasik and growing out his hair. Seirously had no idea that was this year. Good to know. Also Elton John got his knighthood. Super shooters. I could go on with 1998 triva for days but I cannot go on for 8 weeks so let’s get to the point here.. during alllla this  Scott Pilgrim, age 16, was starting St. John’s Catholic School and a couple of guys who were up to no good started making trouble. . by threatning to beat him up for no real reason. A fight insues and we cut to the principal’s office as Scott’s still a minor and not allowed to get into death fights just yet under the people’s freedom of choices and voices act. 

It’s here he meets Lisa Miler, a peppy and sarcastic blonde, who’s intrigued by the fact Scott somehow got beat up after being here just 15 minutes and wants to be friends. Naturally for scott next we see him he’s busy playing video games, and annoyed someone else is around and wondering who this person whose now in his basement is. God no wonder teenage me related to him. So for the next few pages we see their friendship in time lapse: Lisa joins him at lunch, then geninely wonders since Scott’s Untentionally a dick if he hates her.. it’s part of why I think Scott has some form of autisim. And not just because I tend to belivie a character is on the spectrum all the damn time, it’s because of the way he acts: while he is nice and charming at times.. he also clearly has trouble relating to people or realizing how his actions effect them and as seen here in a younger form can often be compeltely distanced from normal social queues, not getting how his actions might be seen until Lisa outright talks to him about it. I mean.. it’s not a huge stretch, and it dosen’t mean he’s nto responsible for his own actions, but it does EXPLAIN a lot of them better: why he just sorta forgets about Knives post-ramona but at the same time still cares enough he dosen’t want to hurt her despite you know, that ship sailing just by having moved on. 

But now the two are friends and his parents, who we meet for the first time and sister inquire about her being his girlfirned.. and by next jumpcut his parents apparently don’t want him hanging out with girls? What exactly the fuck? Also they mention Laurence, Scott’s brother whose missing for most of the books and has no real payoff for not being around. Next cut we get KIM!

Thank you Prissy. And she’s.. not all that different, assuming, correctly that their partner project, how she meets scott will just result in her doing all the work.. which not only is how these things usually went when I was in high school a decade later, but reminds me of the time me and my friends curtis and justin were put on a project and when asked who the alied powers were, guessed “Germany?”.... you can understand my fear. And also Curtis punching him for getting nothing done.. and not hard or brutally mind you just once quick in the gut and with full warning. Ah... the adaquate old days. 

So back to Lisa as, since Scott’s Mom has a guitar.. a fact I.. never honestly thought about. Seriously I never realized her children, since the Bass Scott has for most of the books is Laurence’s, getting into music was probably due to her. Also Lisa makes her case for WHY be a band: the school has a regular event called Lunchapalooza, where everyone goes to and since by teen logic, just being in a band is automiacally cool, she figures they can jump from not QUITE being in any cliques to being super cool. Which honestly yeah... while I didn’t know any bands in high school, the fact one of my friends, ironically named Scott, was a DJ automatically made him pretty damn cool once he got past his awkard phase. I never got past mine but somehow was loved by all except that one douchey kid in our group who mocked me for naming my Luxray kim, assuming it was based on Kim possible and not Kim Pine... though frankly how that’s an insult when Kim Possible was a fucking awesome show and character is beyond me but he was just 17 and also a douchebag, it didn’t have to make since it just had to piss off the easily pissed off kid with aspergers. So Scott poses how they can be a band with just their guitars and Lisa concedes drums WOULD help.. I mean it’s what MADE Shallow Gravy. 

So while Kim wonders if Scott is dating Lisa, because teenagers don’t really get girls and boys can be friends without wanting to be together, though not often as teenage boy brains can be rather stupid and horny... can confrim from personal experince. So it becomes clear Scott has a thing for Kim, and when Scott tries broaching it with Lisa she dosen’t take it well and he backpedals to asking her to be her drummer and plans to monday, proving Scott has somehow not gotten better at reading women, or anyone after 7 years. Can relate. 

So yeah he decides to ask Monday, same day as their presentation.. and thankfully missed the bus as he arrives to find the Benvy Tech boys came in, took everyone out and abducted Kim. Because yeah, just in case you were wondering Scott’s life was always like this.. or was it? Questions for later. So one Canadian Version of River City Ransom later, Scott’s made his way to simon... who, since most of you have probably seen the movie or art of the movie.. looks an AWFUL lot like Gideon. Hrmmm. Simon is naturally the final boss here and wonders if this is the best St. Joels can muster. Scott quips back as only Scott can. 

So cue an unsuprisingly awesome actoin sequence. IT’s part of why I love these color editions: While they already LOOKED thoroughly fantastic the added colors really help the series shonen manga meets old school video game vibe REALLY fucking pop. So Simon pleads mercy which like Scott delivering a good quip.. should’ve really been a red flag to younger me and is foreshadowing for later in case I was too subtle. He then does what any noble hero would do.. kicks simon into the sunset, tells Kim how he feels and asks her to play drums. They then make out. Awwww. 

Lisa suprisingly takes it well as the next montage shows.. granted we’ll learn in Feburary she wasn’t QUITE as over scott as it seemed, but the three, along with a friend of Lisa’s whose name I forgot and who DOSEN’T come back so I’m not going to bother learning, form their own friend group, Scott and Kim get an A, and Scott, Kim and Lisa’s band is dubbed sonic and knuckles, which is an objectively awesome band name. Something the series really does great: Video Game Based Band Names. Crash and the Boys, Sex Bomb-Omb, Clash at the Demonhead... we need more bands like this in the real world dammit. So then they play their big game, the two loose their vrigniity.. and then Kim asks scott “your moving to tornoto?” And.. for now.. that’s that. 

While the framing of that will be VERY important in the last volume, as notice how KIM’S the one who brings it up and it’s not explicitly stated scott actually told her, this flasback is great. While it does contribute to the volume’s drifty pacing, more  on that as we go, it brilliantly sets up a LOT of stuff for later, paticuarlly Lisa who I assumed wouldn’t be back and younger me’s jaw fucking DROPPED when she popped up in Volume 4. Granted i’m spoiling that suprise for you now but odds are most of you reading this have either alreaddy read these or were probably wondering if the girl from the animated short ever had any actual relevance in the books. So yes, yes she does. She’s also the pink haired girl you see pop up in the game in the background, as a nod to O’Malley’s comic strip style which had her and Kim as the leads.  Also yeah for fans of the game or movie or even the comics who were unaware.. this prologue got an animated adaption on adult swim to promote the movie. Naturally Micheal Cera and Allison Pill reprised their roles as Scott and Kim, with Mae Whitman voicing lisa.. and honestly being perfect for the roll, and Jason Schrwartzman voicing Simon naturally. While the animation is slightly limited, it still looks decent and expertly translates O’Malley’s art, while sliming things down slightly where needed to fit a short, and the anmation takes a huge bump for the fight scene which like the comic is short but awesome. While it has no real bearing on the film as Kim’s former relationship with Scott never really comes up or has any impact, as the Film while good was based primarily on volumes 1-3 with small pieces of 4 (paticuarlly the iconic “Lesbians gag”), with Wright working off outlines and drafts of 5 and 6, so the last half hour or so is mostly Wright’s invention. 

Not a bad thing as it’s still awesome and not o’malley’s fault but it means kim dosen’t get to do much, and is a big reason why I want an adaptation on netflix or hbo max. While i’d still want changes both because there’s no sense doing an adaptation if your not going to make some tweaks of your own and because it’d be intresting to update the series to modern day, both in societal conventions and so everyone stops saying the r word. Seirously the most telling sign of the series age is that word showing up quite a bit during the first half of the series. Point is there is merit in doing another remix of the story and doing a longer form one so we can get more of the characters, as well as flesh out ones like Steven, Neil (Who was done WAY better in the movie adaptation thanks to the wonderful Johnny Simmons), and Stacey who got the shaft in the books. Again, not slagging off the movie, it’s really great. Just saying there’s always room for more Scott Pilgrim content and we all know it. 

We’ll get back to the comic proper, and the present day of 2005, after the cut. 

So the story proper opens with Scott dreaming of playing video games... because of course he is with Ramona walking in. and finding it charmingly pathetic but wanting her boyfriend to you know, get out of bed. It’s 11:30.  So with Scott’s ass out of bed, we find Scott, Age 23 idiot with a heart of gold and Wallace, 25 king of all gays, on the bus as they talk it getting warmer and Lucas Lee, movie star and jason lee stand in coming to town to film a movie.. and Scott being Scott gets him confused for Luke WIlson. He’s also seen Bottle Rocket which.. good on him. Seriously while not wes anderson’s best film, those were made long afte this comic was published, it’s still a damn good one.. where was his career at this point... looking it up life aquatic was his most recent films and is still one of my favorites. So yeah he was in a good place career wise. 

Scott proudly talks about having Ramona over in a couple days so she can see his place and meet Wallace. But as explained by Wallace for those of us just tuning in, he already met her last volume. You know during that time Stacey thought she could magically make her date not be attracted to someone else.. and yes even almost a month later not letting that one go. Stacey should know better. Not saying i’ts right Wallace keeps poaching her boyfriends, but she still shoudlnt’ try and force a relationship with a guy or even finish a date with one who makes out with someone else, regardless of gender, mid date. She deserves better. In general not just in this one scenario but we’ll get to that. 

Point is while Scott, as usual, is a bit pissy about this Wallace.. has no time for that and issues an ultimatium

And he’s not bluffing, as he fully intends to tell Ramona the minute she walks in the door if he dosen’t break up with Knives. It really shows Wallace off at his best and why he’s Scott’s closest friend: Kim and Stephen do care about him but Kim both has a LOT of unresolved issues and sexual tension with him and keeps eveyrbody including Scott at arm’s length. And Stephen.. while he will OCASIONALLY call Scott out mostly just enables him, either ignoring his college buddy’s shittier behavior or playing along with it and backing him up when Kim rightfully calls him on being a dickhead. While both love their friend they just aren’t the best at dealing with his shit or getting why he does the things he does good and bad.  Wallace on the other hand geninely likes Scott. He’ll lock him out of the house and tell him to sleep elsewhere so he can bang one out, he’ll not wear pants if he dosen’t have to and he’ll certainly hit on Scott just to get a rise out of him, phrasing.. but he also genuinely cares for the guy’s well being. He lets him sleep in their house basically rent free since scott has no money, buys most of their stuff, and is, as we’ll see in this one, the ONLY one of his friends to take an active part in the fight against the exes, training Scott and researching his opponents when he can get info. He won’t baby Scott as seen here, but he will help him, and he will be the harsh voice of reason his friend needs.  And he did TRY doing a softer approach last time, simply telling scott to break up with his fake high school girlfriend. Scott had every chance to dump Knives during the last third of the first book.. it’s just a combination of both Knives and Ramona being in the same place and Scott getting panicky meant he balked. He NEEDS to be pushed into leaving Knives or he’s not gonna. And he also gets it’s not just Scott being a shifty coward: Scott DOES like Knives.. he just found someone who actually challenges him, intrests him and connects with him on his level, versus someone who worships and adores him like a puppy who just happens to be skilled with knives. The relationship with Knives. was an ego boost, an unequal paring that gave Scott the illusion of moving on from Envy. Ramona is him ACTUALLY moving on and given how badly Envy fucked him up, which comes into play in this book and the next, Wallace recognizes that Scott does need her... but this relationship can’t go anywhere if Scott is seeing someone else, and they both know it. Wallace is just the one who’s willing to do something about it to force scott to do something about it. He’s doing this for Knives too: it’s very clear he cares about the girl, was against this from the start, and knew this was going to end in pain and the faster Scott rips off the Band-Aid the faster she can move on to someone closer to her age and far more equal to her. Scott.. takes this about how you’d expect, even calling Double Standard, as Wallace does sleep around.. and while Wallace will be a homewrecker to Stacey.. otherwise it’s not remotley the same. Wallace does his sleeping around either casually or when he does get a partner, with their consent from what we can tell. He never cheats or anything, he just likes to bone. So yeah Scott doesn’t have a leg to stand on and acts accordingly. 

One of my faviorite gags in the series and one that’s etched in my head for keeps. So with a justified Ultimatium over his head Scott calls knives to hang out. Knives.. shows off that as adorable and trusting as she is.. she’s also kind of creepy and shows up just outside the phone booth he’s calling her from.  So the two go to a record store and Knives tries to get Scott into Clash at the Demonhead, her faviorite band. But since i’ts you know, headlined by Scott’s ex as we’ll find out, he’s not into it. But before that can get awkward.. it gets awkward in another way as Knives invites Scott to dinner at her parents place. Which is an objectively bad idea even before you get into the fact Scott wants a way out and as Volume 4 will show us her dad is both not happy with the idea of her dating a white guy and willing to use a katana to prevent it so he dodged a bullet there. Scott TRIES weasling out of it, but his “I’m too old for you” thing falsls on deaf ears.. and actually explains why she thinks this is normal: her parents are 9 years apart. of course obviously two consenting adults with a decade between them is a mite bit diffrent than 5 years between a teenager whose taking this way too seriously and a grown man whose taking this not seroiusly at all and dosen’t get how effed up this is. But Knives is too naive to get that, and papers over any possible concerns about her parents not wanting her to date a white guy with i’m in love.  Seeing that he has no EASY way out of this, as he shouldn’t, Scott just rips off the band aid and bluntly breaks up with her, saying it’s not going to work out. Knives.. is clealry devistatd. To her this was a serious relationship.. and Scott realized that too late.. and thankfully while he didn’t break up with her in the best way, at all, simply syaing i’ts not going to work out and confirming to her he means it, it’s clear from his face this hurts to do and he knows he’s REALLY hurting her and REALLY shoudlnt’ of dated her to begin with. IT’s why Scott dating a teenager dosen’t make him a morally rephrenisvie monster: because he was genuinely intrested, didn’t use her sexually, and there are tangible consequences for his actions. Knives just dosen’t disappear neatly into the sunset so he can be with ramona. The rest of the series covers her emotoinal recovery from being with Scott, and how she very horribly handles it and that’s why this plotline works at all: she’s not some act one contrivance to be thrown away, sh’es a human being, and more than that a young woman who got hurt REALLY bad and got way too in over her head with someone who just..wasn’t the one fo rher no matter how much she can’t admit that. 

We also get one of my faviorite sets of pages as Scott relfects on things and the sheer devistation on Knives face, which credit to a series that even at this early point loves it’s big bold facial expressions.. her’s being more subded just makes it sting MORE. 

This bit to me is vital to keeping Scott sympathetic and to his character. We see he really does regret what happened, dosen’t know how to process it and genuinely feels awful. As I said instead of some exgerated face that would still hurt him.. her face is quiet, clearly unable to process this and clealry lost and hurt.. and that hurts more than any fuck your or sobs he was probably expecting. Just her clearly not getting WHY he’s doing this or why he hurt her, and he KNOWS why he just knows telling her the truth would hurt her even more. But.. as he thinks.. his thoughts move to something else.. and the WHY of why he did this. 

He did it for Ramona. Wallace was as harsh as he was right: he needed a clean slate to actually give this relationship a shot and the smile comes off less as him being a calous dick whose just happy to move on, I mean he is a little, but more jus tsomeone READY to finally move on. He found the right person, he let the wrong one go if clumsily.. he has a future to look forward to and he can smile about that. 

Granted he’s still his usual unteitonally callous self and his way of telling his friends he and knives broke up is to casually say so and say “dont’ worry you’ll meet my new girlfriend soon.” Their reaction.. is my own. 

Look just because Scott is a nuanced douchebag dosne’t stop him from being a Douchebag. It just means he isn’t intolerable to watch and you actually care about him growing as a human being is all. 

So with that out of the way, it’s date night and Ramona is coming over.. also Scott is considering calling her Ramy which no. I'm genuinely in favor of a pet name that’s just a variant on someone’s name but a bit cute, as it’s just the right level of obnoxious, but no, just no Scott. No.  Ramona enters, meets Wallace again and sits down while Scott tries to shoo him out.. because turnabout is fair play bitch. They also see Ramona’s new hair as she dyes it something new for the first time, in this case a very lovely two tone, the purple from last volume but with a darker purple bellow it. I honestly wish she went for multiple colors in her hair again, but likely didn’t since the book was originally in black and white... which still dosent’ make sense as it would’ve been EASIER that way. Regardless Wallace makes himself scarce proving that he’s more than willing to be equal in terms of one of them spending the ngiht elsewhere. What a guy. 

Ramona finds out a few things about Scott: That his apartment is VERY small, just one room with a bed, a cabinet, a small kitchen and a bathroom, which despite what scott says I REALLY dont’ count as another room. Just common sense. She also learns that he can COOK. Yeah while you’d expect Scott to just get a wad of “I did the ultimatum thing okay now gimme” money and buy dinner but no.. he made the whole thing himself from his own recipe.  And once we cut to them eating on the floor.. turns out yeah he not only can cook but is REALLY good at it. She wishes there was a table which, small as the place is.. fair point. I mean at least get some tv trays. You have chairs. Or at least the easy chair. You can get nice padded folding chairs so you have a second chair guys. I know your poor but come on. Also Scott leanrs bread makes you fat. Good stuff. Also Scott freaks out when , while making out with Ramona in bed later, she mentions his hair’s getting kinda long and could use a cut... which turns out to be a thing for him. He isn’t an ass about it he just panics a bit because he’s partially convinced his last relationship’s nightmarish breakup was because of a bad haircut he got. As we’ll see next week, that’s a no but as someone whose a touch neroutic myself I get blaming a larger issue on something trivial. 

So we then get to the next chapter where it’s KIM’S turn to have a dream.. and the only time we see someone else's dreams. Honestly.. I really would’ve liked if it was a recurring device, even have Ramona pop into other people’s Not used ALL the time but I could easily see it being used with Knives to convey her obsession with Scott and her pain or kim again to help move her plots along or Wallace because I want to know what’s going on in his head. It must be a maze of male gentalia and fine liquor the likes of which has never been seen. It’s scotts funeral as Simon killed him and Scott’s corpse wonders if she dreams about this a lot. 

So we see her get ready and wake up her roomate Sarah whose a bitch. And as we’ll see in one of the backups, so’s the rest of her roommates. So drifting into work. Hollie is a character I really liked... the past tense will be explained later. And the first scene is probably why as her and Kim banter effortlessly, with Kim suggesting maybe she was a happy kid... only to admit quickly no she wasn’t, she was pretty withdrawn and then pretty angsty over someasshole who will be named Scott. “Your a holy terror kim, and i’m glad your on your side”> It’s a short scene but the kind this series excells at: just realistic, fun little exchanges bursting with character. I also GENUINELY wish we got more of this kind of thing, as only Knives really gets these kind of scenes to herself for the most part. There ARE scenes without Scott, but not enough like this that just give us as look into what his friends lives are like during the moments they aren’t putting up with his dumbassery or watching him engage in mortal combat. It’s why i’ve been hoping a spinoff will happen even though it likely won’t SOON. I’m sure O’Malley will return to this world some day, but between Snotgirl and Wicked World, which will come out when it’s ready but should be good.. he’s just really busy. But i’d love to see more of Kim.. or Wallace or Knives. The latter two are a no brainer: Knives is the tritagonist of the books, and it’d be intresting to see what she’d be like 5 years at the book, at the same age and stage in life as Scott. And with Wallace it’s because we really DON’T see his friend circle, life or what goes on with him. We hear him talk about a new boyfriend, who we don’t meet until near the end of the series, though you can see him in stage 3 of hte game if your curious, we see him with some random friends in volume 4, but we really don’t KNOW what hyjinks and lojinks wallace gets up to. He’s pretty isoalted from the rest of the main cast, something I hope an adaptation could fix as while realistic i’td be curious to see what his relationship with Kim or Steven would be like. Just food for thought. 

Point is this was a good scene. But as is typical for Kim’s life just when she has some serenity her ex crashes back in. In this case Scott needs to rent some movies, kim works at a rental store and god teenage me really wanted a clerks style spinoff.. but enough spinoff talk. Scott asks kim to bororw them, of course and explains he’s training for his fight with Lucas.. which Kim reacts to finding out her second best friend is in a series of death matches. 

She has understandable questions such as how the hell doe she know that and is he stalking Lucas and just hoping he’s an ex.. which let’s face it would be a very scott move. But nope Wallace told him, likely learning in an interview he dated Ramona or is coming for scott because he knows everything. We also get one of my faviorite exchanges when Kim wonders why Wallace and Scott are roomates.. a valid question he deflects by saying i’ts a long story. 

Also yeah, as much as casting Micheal Cera backfired for the movie.. that panel there proves there wasn’t another choice at the time. When you want a loveable, somewhat douchey, but also somewhat innocent and oblivious slacker.. who you gonna call. Also before we move on.. Kim.. how are you this suprised. You were there for the fight with Matthew. And Ramona giving out the exposition on why he’s there.. and you even did that whole weird space channel 5 thing no one ever did agian and to this day I will never understand what O’Malley was going for and only know the refrence by hearing that’s what it was. Point is you shouldn’t be this suprised.  Anyways we next cut to Ramona and Stacey, as Ramona enters her workplace, second cup, and they talk and Scott’s spider sense goes off... 

I mean it’s just a bad feeling but still.. weird. WE’ll get back to that later. Scott is in the middle of his training.. and I love the mentor side of Wallace and feel it didn’t get used enough as the series went on. As said before he cares about Scott, so he serves as his Shounen Mentor and a great one: he’s stern and makes Scott work, but he also gets his student and what Scott needs to work. I just wish he’d taught Scott some actual combat, but as we see Wallace’s combat skills boil down to yelling useless info from the sidelines.. I mean he can be useful, we’ll see that next week, it’s just he’s not an action guy. But spirtually he’s the guy scott needs to kick his ass into shape. That being said his “training” consists of watching Lucas’ movies, playing tony hawk and when Scott wants to play more Tony Hawk, having Scott do pushups while Wallace plays Tony Hawk.  Before we turn... there is an elephant in the room I just gotta shoo out: Lucas.. is easily the worst setup of the 6 exes. Patel SEEMINGLY comes out of nowhere but his letter and email hint SOMETHING is coming up, and his flashy dynamic entry intro is damn cool and is what turns the series on it’s head, from an indie comic about a guy getting it together.. to that but with huge shonen dustups with epic visuals. Todd is introduced masterfully here, and is a presence from the start of volume 3 as a result, Roxie gets a slight tease in the free comic book day issue, and her not attacking for two months not only sets up tension but allowed for a red herring.. im’ not only hiding that the fourth ex is a she because anyone whose seen the movie or played the game knows the fourth ex is a woman. The cat’s out of the bag, no sense hiding it. The Kentangis show up pretty early on and Gideon is hinted at and built up, as this towering, mysterious figure, his relationship with Ramona, who he is, why he set up the league, and just how fucking strong he is is all obscured, with his only four apperances simply teasing the big final showdown and giving him that much more mysitque. 

Lucas.. is just sorta intorduced like “Hey I gotta fight this guy”. There’s just.. nothing. Scott’s just gotta fight him because he’s next up and Wallace knows that because plot convience. It’s VERY lackluster given what comes before.. and frankly while I like Lucas, he’s the weakest plot and character wise. HE’s not even really EVIL, just a sellout and is more doing this because he has to I guess, and likely because of stuff we find out in Book 6 but sssssshhhhh. We’ll get more into that when the fight happens but it’s one of the books weakest points. The evil ex.. just feels like an afterthrought again despite there being no reason to. Thankfully this would never happen again as I said, but it dosen’t make this any less frustrating. 

So we cut to Sex Bomb-Omb practice, and after that we get more tease for Clash at Demonhead. And Stephen.. is cool with them and entirely happy one of them made it, while Scott is understandably pisssed off about it and not happy one of his best friends is you know, promoting the band of his ex who broke his heart and as we’ll get more into next time, said rising career is what tore them apart. So yeah Stephen’s a dickhead, and I was wrong last time that he got better. He really.. dosen’t. He gets less CREEPY.. but out of the main 6 characters he’s the weakest: he dosen’t have much of an arc, does some very questionable shit in the second half, and his being around means we have to suffer through Julie. I’ll tear into him more on a case by case basis but for once Scott’s not overreacting. While Kim does nothing she also has no idea just HOW bad things were and Scott won’t tell her. Stephen was there the whole fucking time. He just saw Scott’s rebound with a teenager. He knows he was kind of messed up after this. Dosen’t justfiy knives but still he looses the moral high ground he tries to have at times. 

So while Scott shops a song for Ramona to her, Knives calls Scott’s place clearly setting up another suprise apperance. Wallace.. figures out what sh’es doing quick and simply gives her a stern “You have to go” And to me it’s not him being a dick.. he’s both trying to save her from seeing Scott with Ramona and fucking her up worse... and is looking out for her. She needs to move on and moving up to stalking Scott’s not going to help that. Scott dosen’t WANT her anymore, and while he handled it bad, Wallace gets she needs to see that. Granted he could’ve you know explained it to her and tried talking, but as i’ve said he’s not a perfect person and he was also on a time table to get her out of there in case Scott you know, showed up with his new girlfriend and made things a billion times worse. And the two are indeed headed to his place to watch one of Lucas’ movies, and part of that weak setup is that Ramona.. just has no connection with him. It was high school. Scott also pretends he dosent’ remember his. You are a lying liar sir stop that.  So they watch the film together hanging out, and it’s.. really bad. The good one was rented out. I miss rental stores.. a magical time. I mean i’ts better now, streaming means 80% of movies are avaliable if you have a bunch of services and even if you just have netflix or hulu or hbo max, you still get a pretty decent selection each month. Plus digital rentals are super easy. Do miss redbox though. I mean it’s still there I’m just warry of something that relies so heavily on touching things in a state with a lot of trump morons. You CAN get Covid twice and I don’t wanna. Also we get some dated Dialouge as Scott commenting on Lucas being hot, he is good taste Scott, is given a “good job convincing me your not gay”. He and ramona end up having sex though so .. yay? I dunno. The series has a really weird thing about not getting bisexuals exist and as someone whose bi, and really against bi errasure it bothers me, it bothers me a lot. Though given O’Malley apparently has not only far more queer rep in snotgirl but a bisexual lead, he’s clearly learned so i’m not going to drag him too hard on this. It was the early 2000′s. People were pretty damn stupid about this. Creators have gottten MUCH more important issues much worse. 

So the next morning, Scott gets a call from his well meaning but ditzy mom, and reacts like you’d expect. His parents are in Europe to keep them out of the action and what not. Though apparently according to the last book his mom did read volume 3 at least. Or Wallace told her about the relevant bit. You make the call. 

So i’ts Ramona’s turn to meet Sex Bomb-Omb. The group hang out and discuss Gordon Downie. 

Look I don’t know indie bands. I have no idea who the tragically hip are I just know the name is really hipstery. We also get the recipe for Vegan Shepards Pie. None of them are vegan they just wanted to try it and I.. really want to make this some time. Just to see if it’s any good. But yeah it’s in general a fun casual scene, as Kim reveals she and Scott dated, just to break the tension, and Scott tries out Rammy but quickly backpedals. Just fun slice of life stuff. Oh and Knives is watching them from the window and takes Scott dating someone else as well as you’d expect. 

So she gets some hair bleach to do some highlights and calls her friend Tamara over. We met her last volume as she dragged her along to the show, but it’s here we really get to know what she’s like.. i.e. the sane one in the duo, rightfully pointing out Scott’s not that great. Also Knive’s points out ramona’s “fat”, which is thankfully portrayed as petty sniping as while Ramona does have some curves it’s you know.. not remotely a bad thing and the kind of thing a teenage girl would harp on. Still she’s just in STEPS from this happening. 

But yeah.. it’s clear here Knives has some underlying issues to address and really needs therapy  not to go after her ex’s current girlfriend with knives. I mean it’s in the name but still. Then again volume 4 has her dad going around with a katana or something like it wanting to murder her daughter’s older ex boyfriend he dosen’t realize is ex so it’s clear her whole FAMILY needs some therapy. But this does round her out and show there’s more to her.. a pretty violent and obessive side sure, but it shows she wasn’t just some one dimensional ego boost for scott but a person. One whose just as flawed as the rest of the cast.. but more sympatheic because they’ve all got about 6 or 7 years on her and at this age that’s a lifetime. And while Scott DID set this off by dating her which was objecitvely a bad idea... the rest of this isn’t remotely on him. He handled things BAD.... but all he wanted was for both of them to move on. Knives.. simply can’t admit Scott is not a nice person, was probably two timing her as Tamara points out, which as we know he 100% was, and is not some perfect guy she can’t replace: like Knives.. he’s just a person with faults and she’s too blind to see that. 

So before we can get to the crazy stalker ninja fight, let’s instead get to Scott and Ramona hanging out where we meet Gideon, Ramona’s Cat who i’ll call Cat Gideon, both because I love steven unvierse and because it’s less confusing. This is a pretty slight scene as Ramona admits not a lot happened with Lucas and Scott’s apartment is a hole.. which yeah, yeah it is. Also she DEFINTLY dind’t cheat on him with any cocky pretty boys. Which would come off worse if it wasn’t for the pact Ramona was clearly doing it out of regret and Scott just liked like 50 pages ago about rembering his exes when one of them is his second best friend.. which neither would admit but you know it’s true. Stephen is third where he belongs. 

So next morning it’s fight time, and Scott is glad wallace is going with him. It’s awkard going to fights alone. Which leaves me to wonder if before this comic Scott just.. fought random guys letterkenny style. Like they’d call up, schedule it and then he and one or more of his friends would go beat up a guy. It’s just.. hilarious knowing that this kind of thing is common in canda minus the ki attacks , flash effects, wizards, vegan psycics, ninjas, and roboticists. But damn I now want a scott pilgrimized letterkenny now more than ever. You know you do too don’t deny it. I”d love to see the hard right jay fight but iwth a loud “KO!” when he gets his ass knocked out. Also Casa Loma is a very real, very cool Toronto location, as I never realized as a kid, to the point that the lucas fight was filmed there for the movie. 

So Scott approaches Lucas a bit star struck and upon finding out scott is.. punches him out as seen in the header image and throws him into a tower. When Scott regains conciousness, Kim and Neil have arrived and Lucas calls a time out. And it’s here we get to, while being the weakest of the 7, why I like Lucas.. he’s actually a pretty nice guy. At WORST he sold out. But the two have a pretty nice conversation over ritz and baby carrots, with it turning out, unsuprisingly Ramona did cheat on him with a cocky pretty boy, and while like Ramona he’s clearly moved on, it still hurts a bit and understandably so. He also warns scott while she might seem nice i’ts an act. 

I mean it isn’t ALL an act, but she does have a tedency to put up walls and act pretty badly as we’re slowly finding out.. though given Scott does the exact same it only means.. she’s human. She’s not MUCH higher above him in terms of morality and this is where we get our first peaks into the fact the series isn’t just about Scott’s development but hers. But it’s understandably absent from volumes 1 and 2 since we need to know her first, and this volume is about getting to know her a bit and get a feel for who she is, something I ddin’t really get a grip on as a teen, but do now. We see more of who she is good and bad as the walls go down. She’s more SURFACE LEVEL functional than scott, but beneath it has a lot of the same exact issues.  Lucas and Scott continue to GENUINELY bond, as Scott genuinely thinks the guy is talented and Lucas want’s an Oscar this year.. maybe not for the current film which is a romantic comedy with a teen star but hey, stars have done far worse in their Oscar years. I mean at least he’s not making a comedy about himself in a fat suit domestically abusing himself in a wig while he also plays an asian sterotype. He explains he almost didn’t get into the league but felt too important to ramona’s past.. plus he looks cool. Plus they let Patel in despite barely being in a relationship with her and being kind of a tool so they kinda had to let the handsome affiable movie star in. Scott wonders “wait league” and Lucas is understandably frustrated to find out Patel just sent a letter Scott didn’t read.. and at Matthew let’s be clear. I mean.. Gideon has to have known Scott wouldn’t read that since he’s been in his head. We’ll get to that in part 6. Point is they formed a league, hence why their organized enough to come after him like this and Scott understandably glares at Wallace for you know, having him play tony hawk and watch movies yet missing the fucking obvious clue they were all working together and they were only coming at him one at a time by choice. 

Lucas offers to just.. take a bribe and SAY Scott beat him, Scott calls him a sellout jokingly and Lucas proves that while not AS bad as the rest of the League, he’s still a dick by telling him to kiss ramona’s sweet ass goodbye pilgrim. Okay either he’s seen her since high school or he’s fondly remembering a high schooler’s ass. Neither one is nice to think about. But Scott gets out of his ass beating by pointing out a ramp, real thing too used for the movie, and asking him to skate down it. Lucas says i’ts impossible, and Scott just whistles. So Lucas tries skating the impossible and dies via velocity. Yes really. Scott collects his change and gets a gift, a mytryil skateboard he.. can’t use because he dosen’t have a proficency for it and bemoans not picking it up in 5th grade. Also he didn’t get his autograph. He does get some coins though so neat.   Yeah I mentioend Lucas was the least of the exes and I stand by it: He’s an intresting character, not a GREAT person but clearly a charming and nice enough guy who likely offered the bribe not because he’sd a sell out but because he genuinely liked scott, and is easily the best adjusted of the exes. But obviously a near non existant setup and a really hilarious and unsastifying finish just.. don’t really feel sastsifying. I mean i’t slampshaded, but after all the build up of her having 7 evil exes, the next one is just..filler. Not BAD, but not really anything special and giving Scott a an early pokemon victory, but unlike ash having done nothing to really DESERVE it.  Thankfully both adaptations so far VASTLY improved on this. While Lucas is still affiable in the movie he’s also smarmy, if on better terms with Ramona, saying “he seems nice” after the tower throw and throwing in some stunt doubles. His fight goes from one of the least satisfying and weakst of the series, to easily one of the best of the movie. We’ll talk about that more there but obvious Chris Evans version is far superior, keeping the good traits while giving us an intresting fight.. and still keeping the skateboard death because it’s fucking hilarious and the movie improves on THAT too by having scott give flat wows as he slowly dies. The game likewise keeps teh skateboard death, if shortening it, and the skateboard, and while not changing his apperance does make him a hell of a tough boss. Took three tries and some online grinding to take him out. Still a hell of a fight. Point is while I genuinely like Lucas story wise.. this just dosen’t work for me and is pretty damn weak, even if it gives us some godo character insight we could’ve got that, and a fight and still had the finish we did. 

That being said.. we DO get a fight instead, likely why the Lucas fight was so truncated. Next chapter and that evening or the next day or whatever, we pan over the real life tornto refrence library. It is a VERY nice touch thatt the comic and it’s adpations use either real places in toronto or reasonable subsittues. While not canadian myself I love the place and hope to visit Tornoto some day when the world isn’t a living nightmare and it’s really nice that like New York for Marvel, Brian Lee O malley really makes the city feel integral to the comic, like it’s own character. But Knives is ominously perched above.  At second cup Scott is horrified to find Julie. Seconded. Julie takes the moment to give out to scott about him dating Ramona despite telling him no. Okay... 

Yeah as you can probably guess I don’t like Julie. She’s not a good character. The movie did her better, with the bleeping gag and aubrey plaza’s performance, but in the comic.. she’s just the worst. She sucks bad. If she were an ice cream flavor she’d be pralines and dick. While she’s fine on OCCASION, and actually works in the next volume, outside of that she just gets more unplesant, more unlikeable, more bitchy, more unfathomabbly assholish every. damn. volume. I”ll give out about that a bit then too but I have to put up with her for the entire damn comic. Now her being bitchy to Scott is fair to a point: Scott is a mess, and she’s loyal to Envy in the breakup, and Scott’s own friends drag him on a daily basis.  The problems are that she’s like that to EVERYONE, even Knives who isn’t about to stab her much as i’d like that. She’s unberable to Stephen whose tolerance for her is unfathomable, though the ending bits of volume 6 show maybe he just has terrble taste. She’s just a throughly unplesant, social climbing bitch who thinks she’s better than everyone. And it sticks out badly against the main cast; Scott is very bad with women and relating to people, but is also nice, charming and most of the damage he does is not intetional. Ramona puts up walls to keep others out but is also a responsible adult and often cuts through Scott, and at times others, internal bullshit. Wallace is an alcholic, but still a very responsible, very loveable guy who clearly cares about scott and supports him finacially and emotionally. Kim is VERY emotionally distant, very misntrhopic.. but also a good person who as we see as the series goes, has an inner light to her and often drags on Scott because she’s been putting up with his shit the longest and WANTS him to be better. Knives is an obessive and violent stalker.. who was also deeply hurt by an older man, dosen’t GET that her realtionship with scott was wrong and uneven, and is clearly not emtoinallyr eady for the deep feelings she’s having. And Stephen.. well he’s a talented guitarist but also enables scott and julie. Especially him enabling Julie. 

Point is their all pretty well rounded, llikeable characters with flaws. Julie.. is just an ass. And this scene demonstrates that with flying colors. While Scott does ignore her because he’s too worried about his sister and girlfriend becoming friends, understandably given Stacey knows all his dark secrets, Julie spends two pages giving out and treating scott like some bad guy for persuing Ramona against her orders. And i’m going to break down why.. this dosen’t work.. on any level for her.  1) Ramona is not Julie’s property. She’s a big girl with her own free will. They aren’t even remotely close: Julie met her only barely before Scott, and given the dream thing probably not even that. And you could say Julie is just looking out for her... she dosen’t know Ramona well enough to KNOW if Ramona is still smarting over Gideon. She probably was.. but she readily, once the awkwardness passed, went out with scott and dove right into the relationship. While there’s still some scars as we’ll see.. she CHOOSE to move on and that’s her choice. If she wasn’t ready, she woudl’ve turned him down or broke it off by now realizing it was a mistake.  2) Scott has no reason to listen to her. She hates his ass, somewhat justifably but still, she hates him and has been against him since fucking colllege. She took his exes side in the breakup despite Envy still being partly in the wrong but paints him as some abusive dickhead and not just an insesntive dickhead. To him he’s just some villian she needs to reign in for her cool friend who wants nothing to do with her and grows to justifably hate her over time. Scott and Julie TOLERATE each other. They are not friend,s they do not like each other and never will. They are around each other because of Stephen. That is it. If Kim , Wallace or Stephen had asked, or at least made him wait for kinves. he probablyw ould’ve or at least considered it since while they take the piss out of him, they genuinely care about him and actually have shown they care about something other than themselves! Speaking of which the cou de gras 3) She’s a selifsh bitch: She is NEVER not  in any volume seen as out for anyone but herself, and thus scott has no reason to trust her judgement. She berates Stephen, him and anyone who will listen, is only so loyal to envy because she’s famous, and as I said treats EVERYONE like dogshit.  And given Scott is still a very flawed guy.. it takes a LOT for him to be so right and he runs out screaming when Julie mentions her.

So back at the library, Ramona brought Stacey along because the place is a maze. Scott calls Stephen and calls julie evil.. which given the last two paragrahs. Yeah. She is. She really is. But that goes nowhere as he dosen’t have Stacey’s number. He also thinks Julie was responsible for this which while she’s very much not.. would it REALLY be that suprising that if Julie were there she would’ve introdcued the two and set up their little hangout just to piss scott off? God I’m  so sick of talking about her. 

So the two after dropping off Ramona’s package decide to hang out a bit.. not long as Ramona’s got shit to do, but hey I agree with her logic i’m curious about this palce too. But before they can go up an elevator Ramona spots incoming.. and thus we get the fight of the volume. Though given the next one has two climatctic fights and one or two before that, they easily could’ve had both.. this is still the highlight of the volume.  So Ramona snaps off a railing and before Stacey can give out about that she finds out WHY as Knives attacks with a pair of sais. And O’Malley did his homework as while you’d THINK it was just another dumb white person mistake.. O’Malley is asian, thoughw ether he’s candaian korean or canadian chineses, as his last name is korean but he has a large chinese cast in this very comic that might come from experince, I do not know and if you do know tell me. I’d like to refer to him properly as I don’t LIKE lumping all asian cultures into one basket. But not only that he did his home work, as Sai’s, while popularized in Okinawa Japan, were also used in other countries. I bring this up since I assumed it was just a simple mistake even knowing Brian was mixed-race, and was plesantly suprised to fine that know, I was the moron. And i’m fine with admitting that. 

So we get a damn good fight.. and Knives figures out Scott WAS cheating on her. Granted she assumes so due to seeing Ramona at the refrence Library, before he actually cheated and clearly blames Ramona for it, but still, it fucking hurts. Plus while her attacking Ramona, who initally assumes she’s gideon’s doing, which.. yeah sending a teenage assasian just to mess with her head does sound like him. So while Stacey does complain “ramona you can’t just tear out art objects” to which I say... yeah high, Stacey? NOT THE POINT RIGHT NOW SCOTT’S EX IS TRYING TO KILL HER. SHE’S DEFENDING HERSELF.  So we get one hell of a fight. It not only shows off that Ramona is one hell of a fighter herself, as is knives, but just how immature knives is, resorting to constnat fat jokes and taunts showing just how immature she is.. and unlike volume one where it was endearing and we just saw how sweet she was here it just comes off as mean, bitter, and uncomfortable. But again part of the series biggest charm is the main cast are all well fleshed out and throughly human. She’s doint this because she dosen’t know better and was raised in a house where, again as volume 4 will bear out, finding out her dad is going after scott with a samurai sword just warrants a “dad’s are so weird aren’t they” my point is her frame of refrence is a mite skewed. Plus this is a world where everyone but Stacey just calmly accepts big shonen fights break out, so it’s not that unsuaul to want to settle things with a fight and while i’ve joked about her killing Ramona we genuinely don’t know that was the goal> Could’ve been, easily given murder is peachy in this setting and just leads to a respawn according to O’Malley and would’ve just sent ramona back to her apartment. But I genuinely don’t think she has it in her to do it and while she could’ve planend to, she never would’ve. Plus Ramona easily leads the fight as while Knives uses hit and run tactics and tries make her follow.. Ramona is more annoyed than anything as she has shit to do. Knives only gets one hit in and while i’ts a pretty nasty scratch on the cheek, if thankfully not scarring.. Ramona shrugs it off when she brags about it and easily takes knives down with a potted tree. Knives runs and while she tells herself it’s to fight another day.. its really because her opponent was WAY stronger and way more ready for something like this than she probably planned on. She did defintely want a fight, she just wasn’t prepared to be outmatched so handily. It’s also a nice  parallel to last book’s fight: Like with Scott and Matthew,  while the fight SEEMS pretty even, in reality our hero/heroine was alwasy teh one in control and easily took care of the less experinced and less ready upstart, who likely wasn’t expecting a fair fight much less to loose. 

So Ramona and Stacey wisely get out while Stacey explains Knives is indeed Scott’s ex, though is unaware of the cheating thing. Speaking of Scott he’s playing sonic and knuckles, and in fact kept wallace on the line before just to get advice because of course he did hence why stacey didn’t get through to him, but gets a call... from Envy. 

This is easily the second best sequence in the boook, which was lovingly and wonderfully adapted to film and as a result I cannot read it without hearing Brie Larson’s voice for Envy , a nice mixture of seduction and condescension. It’s CLEARLY painful fo rhim, and we do get some things established as Envy toys with him, that it’s been about a year and that she left him for a cocky pretty boy, familiar.. and while Scott claims to not know what he looks like.. given Todd is clearly on her band cover... it’s not exactly hard to put two and two together. So after some awkard catchup and Scott telling her about ramona against his will, we get to the reason she’s here with Scott understanndbly being supscious and calling her a user.. which while Envy denys.. she ends up admitting to. She’s coming to town as estalbished and her opening act backed out, and since Scott has a band, and one that 2/3 of which she knows, she wants them to open for her.  Scott naturally isn’t too intrested and thinks it’s just pity. The sequence. is masterful, using a watchmen style 9 by 9 panel layout and intercutting scott’s pained reactions and clear lack of comfort with flashes of envy on her side.. never showing her proper, but showing his memories or what he’s seen in magazines. It’s really striking and really sells the sheer discomfort Scott’s going through.  So soon after Wallace gets home.. and finds Scott, drained and miserable on the floor, not even responsive. And this really is the scene that shows me that Wallace cares for the guy and cements that asshole he may be, he loves his buddy. He goes through possible scenarios that fit scott: Food poisoning, finding out Wallace saved over his final fantasy save (though he rules it out as last time that happened he was crying), that ramona dumped him.. before Scott let’s out a pathetic and miserable “Ennnnnvvv”. Wallace , who was at ground zero for that relationship as we’ll find out, realizes this and lets out a little shit, unsure how to help and pissed off at that bitch for once again hurting him like this. As I said it shows how Wallace knows scott in and out and loves him dearly.. and how he knwos about this paticuarly heartbreak better than anyone but Scott and Envy themselves. IT’s just a really tearjerking scene, as we get a sense of WHY scott spiraled into an ego boost of a relationship: His last one REALLY tore him in half, and he’s still not completely healed from the emtional bisection. 

So Scott gets more bad news next chapter as Stacey tells him about the fight and he’s worried he’s going to loose ramona on top of this. I mean he desrves it.. .but it’s clear she’s the best thing to happen to him after a really rough year of denial and poor decisionss and loosing her will likely only make him WORSE. He also breaks the bad news, to him at least to the band about the gig. Stephen, being kind of a dick who while understandbly excited about a big gig fails to see his friend REALLY isn’t happy about this nor remembers you know, that the person offering this tore his heart out indiana jones style and while they should take the gig despite the risks, it’s too big an opportunity not to, he should be fucking senstive about this. Kim however... has a suprising and heartbreaking reactoin to this. Which is spread over a few panels but i’m gonna string into one image for convince sake. 

Just.. DAMN. I honeslty missed this both as a teenager and as an adult when I read through the books last time but holy shit is this a heartbreaking little moment, even more with the development she gets in later books. Keep in mind, over two books so far, Kim.. really hasn’t shown a lot of emtion. The most upset she’s gotten was getting a bit pissed about another a girl drummer. The only other time we’ve seen her sad was at 17 when Scott left. Her only emotions that we could see were angry and surly. But here? She’s genuinely upset and we see her walls break down for the very first time.. and it’s with the clear indication she NEVER really got over Scott. She never got proper closure and while she hasn’t let it so.. it’s been VERY clear she's been grossly uncomfortable with how he just likes to brush off their history, something that very clearly still bothers her and understandably so: 6 years , while a lot of time, still really isn’t long enough to just .. FORGET your first boyfriend , how he made you feel or the fact he took your virginity and you took his. Stuff like that sticks with you.. I’m ony assuming on the virginity thing but my point remains: To Scott it’s SEEMINGLY nothing, when really he’s probably just trying to brush it off because he dosen’t like dealing with things and given how Kim is wrongly assumed she can’t feel pain. I mean to anyone else i’d be a fair assumption and even i’m not convinced if she touched a hot stove she’d burn, but that’s phsysical this is emotional. DIffrent playing fields. Point is Scott’s kind of a dick and not having ANY closure for anything, Kim is still smarting from him leaving as much as Scott is smarting from Envy dumping him.  And it somehow gets MORE painful.... which should’ve been the tagline for Bojack Horseman now I think about it but yeah: her line is what cuts me up the most “I saw her on the cover of Now. She’s pretty”. It’s a little line, it’s easy to see why I missed it .. but the subtext really stings. It’s that despite being VERY pretty, I had a crush on her as a kid and I still do now.. Kim just can’t help but compare herself to someone whose now a glamrous rock star.  Their equally attractive but all Kim can see is ANOTHER person who Scott cared about more than her. Which seems petty but again he just.. abnadoned her. His moving wasn’t his choice but his not telling her as was framed earlier sure as hell was. And then just.. look at the next people he dates: A glamorous rock star (She wasn’t at the time but that’s for next week), a much younger girl who can’t possible challenge him, and an ultra cool american. To her.. it must feel like he just looks right through her to every other person intersted in him and never even consdered her as a person anymore. I mean.. jesus christ that hurts.. and makes me hate Stephen more since you know he dosen’t notice any of this.. though at least unlike with Scott it’s a bit more understandable because Kim’s so unflappable and he’s already ignoring very obvious and transparent emotional pain why shouldn’t this be any diffrent.  So yeah no one’s happy about this, and that ends up including Stephen as he’s so insecure about his band’s talent he’s pretty sure they suck when their probably at least adaquate. 

So while Scott dosen’t say anything, it’s clear he’s at least consdiering the offer as when we next see him he and ramona are heading to Envy’s show. And honestly it’s just a really sweet scene as Ramona asks about envy and the two banter and hold hands. A really nice palletee clensar since hte last few pages were like I was the one lucas socked in the gut. Also she assures him she dosen’t hate him, and asks about how the breakup happened, turning down any offers to hear the good times.  It was new years eve one year ago, and he mentions it was over her leaving to meet some guy named Todd.. and Ramona finds the story familiar but brushes off Scott wondering if her todd and Envy’s todd wer ethe same guy as a douchey joke. When prying about what happened otherwise, Scott admits it was all a blur.. Ramona isn’t ahppy with the answer.. but it’s nto like it’s that unresonable: he was in deep with Envy, and the breakup was damn bad to the point it took a year for him to recover and end up in the relationship he is now and the one before this was clearly a cry for help. It also helps reinfroce just how much Wallace was there for him and probably WHY Wallace hates Envy so much. They probably live together simply because Scott needed a place after college, was in zero condition to get a job or do anything given his zombie like state.. and Wallace just had him move into his bed, platonically and into his place. It’s probably why while Wallace will complain ocasoinally he isn’t that on scott to find a job. He dosen’t need a paying roomate, they do fine just on his sallary and he has a steady, secure job in some sort of calling office, probably working in medical stuff like my mom. He needs his friend to be safe and happy, then he can get on his ass about being functional, as he is in present day. If nothing else this volume made me realize just how good a person Wallace is.  The one thing he CAN remember, to Ramona’s disbelif is a restraunt opening up, the job story he hinted at last volume: basically it was a fancy tex mex place called, and this is one of the best restraunt naems in the history of fiction brace yourself: The Gilded Palace of Flying Burritos. Naturally, as would I as I love tex mex and that name, Scott loved the place, ate there most of the week and like me with some places I liked waited impatietly to get a job. He did and they were even super generous as the food was FREE.  Which is a euphoric feeling I relate to, though I also liked any discounts I got. seriously when I worked at Bagel and Bagel a good chunk of my paycheck was eating there for dirt cheap every shift. I miss that place so much. Like even after I left there I still like a good bagel sandwitch. And it wasn’t covid or anything it was just low staffed and slowly coming apart due to a lack of a solid manager after Crystal, the manager who hired me, transfered to a store closer to her home, which I do not blame her for. 

Point is I get it even if Ramona thinks this is all made up. Anyways at Lee’s Place, based on the real life Leo’s place, everyone’s gussied up: Steven got an awful haircut and Kim... 

But no time to dwell on how great kim’s..everything is.. who DID  Neil bring to the concert? 

While Kim is VERY much enjoying this, everyone else is a bit freaked with Ramona getting assurance her and Scott dated breifly, with Kim quipping her and neil will probably date even breiflyer, and Stephen.. freaking out, wondering if she seduced him, and asking if they should take him out back and kick his ass.. 

Just..... that’s a lot of douche to unpack and this review has been VERY long and suprisingly hard already.. but fuck it, we don’t have much left to go let’s do this. Okay one did she seduce him.. I mean I GUESS, but really let’s be clear here: Neil is a horny, lonely, monosolobic 19 year old who lives with his sister’s college friend and whose life revovles around said guys band. Knives is adorable. She likely barely had to flirt with him to get him to say yes .As someone who was a lonely 19 year old doofus, I guarantee no matter the red flags I probably woudl’ve said yes provided she was 18 instead of 17, despite the abudant red flags such as neil vaugely looking like scott, neil being the one single man within scott’s circle to get her way back in, as Knives hasn’t realized she’s bi yet or given how much she looked up to Kim, she probably WOULD’VE gone for it. As would any sane person, which neither knives nor I entirley are. So she didnt’ so much seduce him as offer him a girlfriend he didn’t have and him being too intrested in having a sweet, caring girl on his arm to see the giant army of adrestian soldiers needed to carry all the red flags this presents. 

And as for “do we need to kick his ass. “ Stephen.. did you kick SCOTT’S ass? No, you fucking abetted him and only stepped in for the good girl thing. You did NOTHING to stop his relationship with knives or tell him he was screwing up or look out for that girl’s well being. This will bite him in the ass even harder in volume 5, but even now it just makes him look REALLY fucking bad that, even if he probably dosen’t mean it, that’s at all on the table. Also.. Neil, unlike scott is doing slightly less wrong. While he is 20 to her 17, three years.. it’s HALF of what Scott and her’s age diffrence is, and far more equal in power structure. It’s still not.. GREAT, but my point is you did NOTHING when Scott did this, for far flimiser and less forgiavble reasons.. but when NEIL, whose been nothing but weirdly loyal to you dates her, you want to kick someone’s ass. I mean yes he’s being stupid: in a clear role reversal of the Scott and Knives situation, it’s obvious just from her expression that KNVIES is the one in control here, and the one using someone to ease her own pain. Granted it’s wrong, if not as wrong as Scott should techincally know better and Knives very clearly dosen’t, as well as get into a show of her faviorite band. Is what she’s doing wrong.. yeah... while she can’t see it again it’s what Scott did just not QUITE as fucked up due to not being AS embalanced. Should neil probably be dating her after scott did ? No. But should you be threatning him and not scott for you know, setting all this in motion? No. Jesus christ you suck Steven. 

Thankfully while Scott presumibly calms Stephen down, Kim spots Hollie and her roomate Joseph, who will be suprisingly important. He’s very gay, very quite, very bearded and is only hear because the bass player is hot and when prodded on it....

Well said. Also I read that with John Heder’s voice fo rsome reason.. don’t know why, his career ended as quickly as it began because he REALLY did not pick his films well. He saw that he was going to be in a film with David Spade and Rob Schinder and didn’t fire his agent for suggesting it. Meanwhile Scott and Ramona run into Sandra and Monique, Scott’s old classmates who just sorta.. show up every so oftne, often backing up Julie because every Alpha Bitch needs a posse. As Boscha has proven once you loose your posse you loose your bitchy powers. They also ask if Scott and Ramona are an item which leads to a fantagious visual gag. 

Also Stephen awkardly talks to the new couple, about how much Knives loves the band, and because why start reading the room now just sorta.. CASUALLY slips in the fact he knows her is because she and scott dated. 

Granted Knives action this book really EARNED her that curveball.. but still, it’s transparently clear she’s both not over Scott and Neil’s a placebo, and that she loves the band... how the fuck did you get through college, much less get two loyalish friends Steve. 

Kim tries to hide when she runs into Sarah whose with.. someon O Malley does not know, literally captioning it “I don’t know htis girl”. Fucking love that gag even if SOMEHOW kim is the roomate they all hate. Despite hte fact as the side story will bare out, her roommates are all pretty obnoxious, so i’ts probably because she’s the only sane person in that group and their VERY lucky kim just dind’t set the place on fire on her way out and let god do what he should’ve a long time ago. Also we meet Lynette, the band’s drummer who smokes “She must be evil” “Still hot though”... both accurate. Also Luke wilson is there.. no really. Just holy shit that’s awesome.  Okay so with all of that out of the way, it’s time for the show. So after a full volume’s build up , and a really cool build up in the page before we finally properly meet clash at the demonhead, and miss envy adams. 

Heck of  a reveal and not the only one as ramona realized what the audience probably already guessed....

Dun dun dun! And since I don’t like leaving a cliffhanger dangling lest I have to... we’ll be getting to this next week.. what you thought i’d say right now or tommorow? This was a lot. But no i’m not leaving you too long. Next week, Evil Ex Crossover! Ramona and Wallace become BFF’s! We learn what the deal with Scott and Envy is! Scott faces the Ken to his Ryu! And Wallace gets a boyfriend. All this and more next week. for now...

Final Thoughts: This one.. was a VERY rough one to review and it ties back to this volume’s biggest problem: it is not paced very well. Like the series as a whole it has a pretty easy going, slice of life pace. The only ones without this kind of easy pacing are 3 and 6, and even 3 has some slice of life bits, their just both more focused due to the events going on. This one... well....

Pretty much. While this one has very important stuff going on, Scott and ramona getting closer, ramona getting more fleshed out, Wallace showing how deep his character is, Kim also getting fleshed out quite a bit, Knives showing off her crazy side, setting up the next volume, the second ex fight.. it’s all just kinda.. jumbled together. It’s not really until the knives fight onward the book takes on some really solid pacing and really gets going.It’s not a BAD book: ther’es some REALLY good character stuff as I dug into.. but the pacing is just really loose and without the Evil Ex fight as an anchor and with ramona and scott just sorta.. getting to know one another, in both biblical and non biblical senses, it dosen’t have either of the series main narrative thrusts. Even the knvies subplot really amoutns to nothing for now, as Ramona dosen’t find out Scott’s a cheater, and only distrusts knives now. That’s about it. It does improve on book one in characterization, with eveyrone being MUCH cleearer in terms of who they are and settling into their iconic selves nicely. Wallace’s more selfless and protective side pops up, Ramona starts to show mroe of her personality good and bad, Scott’s better traits are mixed a bit mor eeven with the douche ones,  Knive’s far more unstable and violet stalker side emerges, and Stephen.. well fuck him, point is things are coming together.. but O’Malley still isn’t quite at peak power yet. Not bad and still worth a read like last time, just a bit uneeven is all. That being said... if you want O’Malley at his peak.. well then come back next week. Until then i’ll be doing my usual buisness of reviewing birds, refrencing simpsons and letterkenny, and putting my eyes back in after kim’s look up there. For now the sun’s setting and i’m out of here. 

[endgamesdakidd]

I've been working really hard on the concept, and only need to make a post about it. anyway this post is going to be a little bit longer than most of my other posts but it's important that I write it out because Hollow Eternal is a really big deal to me recently. I named the album Hollow Eternal because there's this certain feeling when it comes to numbness then no one can explain it's really different like feeling depression or like feeling the anxiety so I wanted to describe it out in this album, that meaning Hollow. Eternal is for my new scene in the underground which I'm so grateful for that a lot of fans have been mentioning that my music is very underground and it feels very underground and I really appreciate the motive behind that and I really appreciate that people are liking my music for that idea. Anyways so the Eternal feeling of forever in an underground sense of an emotional state and experiencing that and wanting to explore more into it, Meaning eternal. The album concept is about underground it's about hardcore it's about emotionless greed. And it's about numbness no longer taking over your life.

We going to it a little in detail in the storyline that like the previous saga A thousand Suns the whole picture is about storyline and living your life to a story that is very apologetic. The dreamy attitude is setting a mood or an emotion down for you when you feel it you'll know it.

Then there's the altitude the story has a lot of ups and downs and feelings and emotions that you feel and that you go through the entire time and you feel like wow this is powerful when you're listening and it's healthy and helpful and creative and a journey in itself. And most of all is fun. it's about that feeling that one day you can fly away from everything and never really have to come back.

Then there was the Fi5ve Dolls.

Much like my album aesthetic or my album even the aesthetic behind this album really points to a subtleness that really points to a doll like figure that gets everything that it wants it's a spoiled little bratty doll that everybody wants much like a Barbie but way more epic. To be Fi5ve Doll you have to be very well trained, understand a lot about the world, an emotionally you connected with this album. Being a Fi5ve Doll was being settled. You'll feel a lot when it comes to this album and you'll feel drained and incomplete but by the time that it's over you'll love it.

Being a Fi5ve is one of them five limited edition dolls the alternative kids long to be if you relate to this album or even remotely listened and like to key points about being a fi5ve doll and the subtleness then you can be a fi5ve doll but remember there's only five of them.

The concept of the album is so important it's really relevant and new so everybody can relate to it even though I feel like it's not as new as sacrilegious hahaha but I think it's still really relevant. Please stay tuned for more information on the album I'll be posting more and making more videos at the time comes until the release date of my album.

The next part of the concept is the hardcore. This album is dark and Moody and you can relate to it and the concept is great and the playlist is amazing in the song selection is even better. I worked really hard on queuing a lot of interesting songs together all at once. So that the album makes sense. I put a lot of hard work into really toning myself and getting ready for the music industry because that's what I'm hoping for and really toning myself for the experience to get better every time and for every person that's played to be heard in a good way. I'm hoping that I get picked up and signed to a studio for everybody that doesn't know and I hope that I get a record deal to make music full time even though I'm making music full-time already hahaha. I don't really need to get signed but I would love to.

Anyway I want my music to be better than a 360 deal I want my music to last longer than 10 years I want my music to be relatable and catchy. I want my music to be incredibly relatable.

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

‘The Absent Father and Spider-Man’s Unfulfilled Potential’: Rebuttal Part 1: Introduction

Master Post

Back in 2012 I read a very interesting book called ‘Webslinger: Unauthorized Essays on your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’. 

As the title suggests it was an anthology book made up of several different essays about Spidey (and edited by Gerry Conway himself).

The essays are an interesting read, though there are questionable points made and some inaccuracies. 

Today though I’d like to debunk some points made in the essay titled ‘The Absent Father and Spider-Man’s Unfulfilled Potential’.

The reason for my desire to debunk parts of this essay is partially due to my inherent instinct to debunk problematic or misinformed stuff surrounding Spider-Man generally. However it’s also partially due to the author, J.R. Fettinger.

Fettinger is the creator and author of the essays found on ‘Spideykicksbutt.com’ and a regular panellist on the Spider-Man Crawlspace podcast. I respect both and the content they provide though there have been times I’ve disagreed with both and other times where quite frankly I think they’ve put forward statements that are outright wrong.

Fettinger and his work was the inspiration to an extent for me even choosing to write so much about Spider-Man, helped bring me back into fandom and his work helped me reconcile some things that I had felt made me an uninformed minority within fandom.

However, there have been times, more and more as the years move forward, wherein my eyes have narrowed at Fettinger’s statements regarding Spider-Man.

He once said something to the effect of ‘alcoholics are just stupid people doing stupid things through no fault but their own’.

He has repeatedly attested that it is morally wrong for Spider-Man and Batman to not simply murder characters like Joker or Carnage.

He has said that Otto’s actions towards Peter in Superior Spider-Man render him the worst enemy Peter has. This is in spite of him being a huge Norman Osborn fan.

He has essentially stated criminal killers like Shriek or Vermin (who suffer from severe mental disorders) deserve no sympathy.

He has said Kraven’s Last Hunt was flawed (to put it more delicately than he did) because Peter ‘never settled his score’ with Kraven.

He has even said that whenever DeMatteis gets into the psychological aspects of the characters he ‘goes off the deep-end’.

These views are most especially chronicled in his on-going segment of the podcast ‘Spider-History’ wherein he takes a month’s worth of (usually 616 Peter Parker) Spider-Man comics from a bygone month decades ago, recaps them and analyses the stories.

However, what is so frustrating to me about these segments as time has gone by is that Fettinger is overly critical and incredibly cynical. He has put forward his opinions as fact with little analysis or consideration of an alternative point of view.

To be blunt with relatively few exceptions he surmises each month in this section as mediocre-bad unless it contained something by Marv Wolfman or Roger Stern, two of his personal favourite runs.

Even then he puts across reductive summaries of the events of the book, in particular phrasing things to make certain characters (like Spider-Man himself) come across as worse than they actually are in the stories in question.

This is particularly a problem in my view because Fettinger’s status as a long read, knowledgeable and analytical fan confers onto him a certain degree of authority in regards to his statements about Spider-Man.

And you know what? It should.

He really does know A LOT about Spider-Man and he has made some incredible assessments about stories and characters related to the wall-crawler.

I cannot recommend you check out his website Spideykicksbutt enough.

But here is the thing...I do not advocate blind trust in his word, or anyone’s for that matter. Not even my own. I know A LOT about Spider-Man but I’m far from infallible.

Think for yourselves, do your own research, present your own arguments and counterpoints.

It’s what I do and why Fettinger frustrates me. Because he’s so belligerent to changing his views, most of which are adamantly cynical and judgemental.

Some people I’ve spoken to about this attribute this to his age. Most of his writing and podcast work has been produced when he was in his 40s or 50s.

It is often said that everyone becomes more cynical, grumpier and more stuck in their ways as they age.

I disagree with that in so far as not everyone becomes like that. And 40-60 is not a point when you are ‘done’ becoming who you are going to be and beyond changing.

It is the prerogative of old men to speak their minds but the WISE men are not adverse to changing them.

This is the root of my problems with Fettinger and his cynicism. Not to mention, I find cynicism simply lazy and foolish under most circumstances. Much as I find Fettinger’s ‘kill all criminals’ mentality to crime to be lazy and foolish.

These thoughts struck me when I re-read his essay from Webslinger. I read the essay upon first discovering his work but I apparently have changed in 6 years as I find much of it ill-considered, cynical, judgemental and problem riddled.

Hence my desire now to debunk it.

The gist of the essay is Fettinger talking about how Spider-Man has lots of unfulfilled potential and attributing this to the loss of his father figure Uncle Ben. He goes on to list off different father figures Peter has had and what the end result of their roles in his life might have been. For context this was written around the time of Civil War 2006.

My first and probably biggest bone of contention lies in how Fettinger frames Peter’s ‘unfulfilled potential’.

It’s here where you start to see his overly cynical and judgemental side.

I will not quote him word for word here because it’d take too long. But early on he writes that Spider-Man’s powers come at the price of his happiness, peace of mind and the normalcy that we all take for granted.

This is partially true but still misinformed.

Peter’s mind is most definitely not peaceful most of the time and his life not normal. But there is that key phrase ‘most of the time’. Not all of the time.

Even during his career Peter has had several moments of grace. Most of the stories transpiring in the immediate aftermath of Mary Jane’s return to his life in ASM v2 #50 come to mind issue #51 even calls out that nothing bad has really happened to get in the way of Peter and MJ’s reconciliation.

This oversight is particularly egregious since that period had only been a few years before the writing of this essay.

But it’s not as egregious as the other thing Fettinger said. That being Spider-Man has cost Peter his happiness.

Er....no.

There have been many things that have made Peter unhappy in the course of his superhero career but as ASM #500 clearly confirmed for us Peter, in spite of all that, is  ultimately happy. Which was a big deal as Peter had just relived all his old battles at once.

The omission of ASM #500’s ending is telling because Fettinger actively dislikes the story and the scene with Uncle Ben particularly. He’s labelled it as ‘banal’ and essentially said if he could talk with his own deceased father the conversation would’ve gone very differently. Problem is the the story was not about him and his family but about Spider-Man and HIS family!

Fettinger then asks if when Peter dies he’d be labelled as someone who fell short of his potential. He illustrates the point by comparing 15 year old Spider-Man to adult Spider-Man circa 2006.

He claims Peter made few adjustments to his fighting skills. Not true. The older Spider-Man beyond the Silver Age did in fact adjust some of his fighting skills, noticeably in regards to ramping up his speed during combat.

He also took martial arts lessons from Captain America in FNSM v1 #1, putting the techniques he learned from that into practice in the very same issue. That issue was published just a year before Fettinger’s essay by the way.

Granted these do not seem particularly significant.

But let’s flip the script a little bit. Let us presume Fettinger to be correct, Spider-Man between 1962-2006 had never evolved his fighting style significantly.

Is that really   an example of Peter doing himself a disservice, of not fulfilling his full potential...or is it that the fighting style he had was not only adequate for the life he lived but in fact optimum?

Spider-Man after all has an incredibly effective and sophisticated fighting style. It is impossible to truly replicate by anyone exempting those of similar powersets to himself.

His immense strength allows him to plant himself on the ground and exchange simple punches, kicks, etc. with a lot of power behind them.

But with more room to manoeuvre his speed, wall crawling, web-slinging and agility allows him to augment that raw power to deliver a lot of hits in a short space of time from a near 360 degree axis. See his battle with Firelord above)for proof of this. 

His webs can be used concussively, to distract, to incapacitate and can even act as a defensive shield.

(I know the Spider-Girl image isn’t 616 but it might as well be if you know the contex behind the story) 

And then there is his ace in the hole, the Spider Sense. This ability is linked to his reflexes and intuitively enables him to know an attack is coming. It almost automatically makes him adjust his movements accordingly in conjunction with his immense reaction speed and agility.

This fighting style had been enabling him to defeat a wide variety of foes across what was then 44 years of published stories.

So was it really that Peter was slacking off in not evolving it? Or was it more that he early on developed something extremely effective that didn’t need any real reinvention?

Moreover isn’t it impressive (rather than a point of condemnation) that Spider-Man essentially figured out the best way to fight with zero instruction or training when he was just a teenager. That’s incredible so it’s far from something to chastise him for simply because he hadn’t radically altered it.

What’s worse is Fettinger claimed that Peter ‘continued’ to rely upon sheer strength, raw intelligence, dumb luck and the stupidity/lack of imagination of his foes to win the day.

Let’s put aside for the moment how Peter has whipped up gadgets or chemicals when needs be.

Let’s also ignore how his foes even upon trying new tricks have more often than not met with defeat anyway.

Let’s also entertain the idea that Peter truly does rely upon his foes stupidity and dumb luck in battle. Let’s do that even though he absolutely doesn’t, he’s very rarely just presumed he can win because a villain is dumb, but he has exploited that fact when presented with it; see 99% of Rhino fights. Hell let’s even ignore how Spider-Man uses his speed, and agility and webbing and spider sense in battle as much as his strength.

What exactly is Spider-Man supposed   to rely on besides  his sheer strength and raw intelligence?

Fettinger is calling Spidey out for relying upon his raw physical powers and his intelligence.

Like...what is an MMA or boxer supposed to rely on besides their muscle and their mind to strategize before and after a fight?

Fettinger continues to point out that exempting his Iron Spider outfit or his alien costume Peter has continued to rely on his ‘wash n’ wear red and blue pajamas’.

There are two waysto view this statement. Either Fettinger is being critical that Spider-Man has not opted to alter his costume aesthetically ever or else never opted to alter it in terms of being functional. That is to say it’s still just a piece of cheap cloth.

Both arguments are invalid criticisms.

Peter has changed his look more than once throughout the years, noticeably he wore a cloth version of his black suit, used two rubber insulated outfits to fight Electro, made an armoured costume in Web of Spider-Man #100 and used four different costumes when he adopted four new identities for himself, all of which were used for different functions.

The black costume however served no function beyond enhanced stealth and Peter retired it due to him and his wife not liking how it reminded them of Venom, a notorious publically known homicidal maniac.

The Armoured suit was only created with access to ESU’s scientific resources, was destroyed on its first mission and realistically was compromising to Spidey’s fighting skills (hence Slott’s version was redesigned). It was also impractical as it was composed of a new hardened version of Peter’s webbing meaning it was never going to last anyway.

His rubber suits were similarly impractical for continual use and severely damaged during battles with Electro. They could not be worn as casually as his standard suit, realistically would’ve impeded mobility to a certain extent and were designed for one specific foe anyway. In fact Spidey usually ran into Electro by chance or else with limited time to intervene in his crimes. Meaning he’d not have the time to locate the rubber suit anyway. Besides...he usually managed to beat Electro without it anyway. After all rubber gloves would be a fairly effective defence and his webbing was itself an insulator. That was his go to in Electro’s debut in ASM v1 #9 and brought up in New Avengers v1 #4.

True Spider-Man trashed his original rubber suit for seemingly no good reason, but since this so aggressively makes no sense I think it’d be safe to presume Peter’s rationale was that the suit itself was ineffective (it didn’t provide full insulation) and was literally held together by glue. The suit was likely unusable after the battle hence why Spidey trashed it.

The four new identities he created though are the hardest to defend. It really doesn’t make much sense for him to have retired those identities beyond the simple fact that, well...the book is called Spider-Man not Hornet/Ricochet/Dusk/Prodigy. I suppose you could go so far as to say pretending to be other people and not using his web-shooters compromised his fighting abilities as he had to consciously move and talk differently as well as use different weapons and tactics. Also maybe he heard about how well multiple alter egos went for Moon Knight. The costumes were to be fair stolen from him and used by other people meaning he’d have had to come up with entirely new identities for himself and ultimately Peter would prefer being Spider-Man having come to see it (for all it’s burdens) as part of who he is.

So contrary to Fettinger’s criticisms, Peter HAS changed his costume, but from a practical/functional point of view there really is little reason for him to permanently make any changes. Or else when he has done so extenuating factors have compromised his attempts.

Meaning all that’s left is Fettinger’s complaint that Spidey never changed the outward aesthetic. Which is not a legitimate complaint about his ‘unfulfilled’ potential. I’ve kept the same posters in my room for many, many years. It doesn’t mean I’ve failed in my potential. It just means I can’t be bothered to change them/I have grown attached to them.

Fettinger continues his train of thought by talking about how Spider-Man’s webbing and web-shooters have not significantly changed since his early days barring his adoption of organic webbing.

I will give Fettinger some leeway here. He never said the webbing/webshooters have remained totally unchanged, just that they’ve mostly remained unchanged. So stuff like Peter equipping a spider tracer trigger to his web-shooters, sedative stingers, impact webbing, an LED light to tell him when he’s low on ammo and adjusting the design and formula of the webbing over time I am lumping all under ‘mostly not changed’.

Even though objectively by 2006 the web-shooters had changed.

But again why does this demonstrate unfulfilled potential?

Spider-Man’s web-shooters are a brilliant feat of scientific engineering/chemistry and have served him well across the decades.

They didn’t need to be radically re-invented.

True, Ben Reilly found ways to improve upon them which Peter later incorporated. Does this not prove Peter was slacking off, of failing to live up to his potential?

Yes and no.

Yes because there WERE improvements he could have made.

But no because Ben had access to Seward Trainer’s scientific resources, less social responsibilities, a lot more time on his hands and was in many ways far less stressed out. As such he was better able to spend time dreaming up those improvements.

Said improvements by the way equated to wearing the web-shooters on the outside of the wrists, sedative stingers and impact webbing and he had FIVE years to dream all that up.

So you know...hardly him re-inventing the wheel.

The truth is if Peter had been in a similar position to Ben, he would’ve likely dreamed up the same improvements.

But he evidently didn’t need to since the web-shooters worked just fine. Ben himself didn’t spam the stingers or impact webbing during his career as Scarlet Spider or Spider-Man. Nor did Peter in the years after he integrated most of Ben’s adjustments into his own web-shooters.

And he did just fine most of the time.

Any further upgrading to his web-shooters, like the kind we saw in Parker Industries, would’ve required access to resources Peter simply didn’t have.

Fettinger continues that Peter’s relationship with the public he serves is tenuous at best.

Again, this is not an example of unfulfilled potential. This is the result of Spider-Man’s reputation being slandered by Jameson and the wider press getting in on the act. This was proven in ASM v2 #39 wherein Aunt May, decades after Spidey began his heroic career, attempted to find a newspaper that didn’t  have a negative bias towards her nephew and struggled to do so.

In New Avengers v1 #15 the Avengers attempt to win Jameson over due to Spider-Man’s involvement with the team only for him to turn on the team collectively.

Combine that with:

 a)     The numerous times Spider-Man has been framed for crimes he was guiltless of

Or

b)     The instances where he was deliberately painted in a negative light, such as when he assaulted a seemingly innocent Norman Osborn in Spectacular Spider-Man #250

 And it was summarily not  Spider-Man’s fault that in his 15 year history his public relations had never been great. Nor was it a negative reflection upon him that he’d been unable to improve them in that time

The public have been fed a particularly strong and buzz worthy narrative for so long that it’d be difficult for him to ever rehabilitate his public reputation without working for the authorities legitimately, being pardoned for any real/perceived crimes he’s been accused of and unmasking publically. Even then it’d be no guarantee.

Not to mention (though Fettinger could be forgiven for not taking this into account from a 2006 perspective) in the world we live in today it’s sadly apparent that news stories about how bad  things are simply sell much more than stories about something positive.

Fettinger continues to say that in spite of Spider-Man’s dalliances with team membership his stubborn independence and feelings of inadequacies ensure he remains a loner and at times a fugitive with many heroes regarding him as poorly as the villains he fights.

This for me was possibly the greatest ‘what the fuck’ moment in this essay.

Stubborn independence. Okay, maybe? Although the message of his role in the then current ‘Civil War’ storyline was that surrendering his independence was a bad thing! By unmasking, surrendering some of his independence to Iron Man and working for the government Peter found himself in an inevitable position. He was trapped from doing the most good by a corrupt system. A system that was actively demanding he help do bad things by rounding up fellow heroes and removing their civil liberties. And in the process he made his friends, family, colleagues, students and general acquaintances targets!

Fettinger didn’t know this at the time, but in truth when you follow the chain of events, joining the Avengers is what led to One More Day.

If Peter hadn’t joined the Avengers and let them know his identity, Charlie Wiederman wouldn’t have gotten approval for his experiments from Iron Man.

If he hadn’t performed his experiments he’d have never become a freak.

If he hadn’t become a freak he wouldn’t have eventually burned down the Parkers’ homes.

If they hadn’t been homeless Iron Man wouldn’t have offered them Avengers HQ to stay at.

If they hadn’t been living there Tony wouldn’t have taken Peter under his wing.

If Tony hadn’t done that, if the Parkers weren’t beholden to him for the roof over their heads and if Tony didn’t know who Peter was, there’d have never been an issue about Peter unmasking publicly in support of the Super Human Registration Act.

If Peter hadn’t unmasked publicly Kingpin wouldn’t have put a hit out on his family.

If Kingpin hadn’t put the hit out Aunt May would never have been critically injured.

If Aunt May hadn’t been critically injured there’d have been no need for a deal with Mephisto to save her life.

Joining a team led to one of Spider-Man’s darkest hours and ultimately his greatest defeat.

So you know…maybe there is something to be said for ‘stubborn independence’.

Moving on…feelings of inadequacy? That’s heavily debatable. Again, see ASM #500. Peter was an ultimately happy person. He had a firm sense of pride throughout his life as much as he’d beat himself up. His inadequacies always came in the form of ‘I could/should have done more to help’.

Typically inadequacies manifest as ‘I’m just not worth it’. Even if you disagree and argue they are more like ‘I’m not good enough’ the context is still different. Whenever someone laments ‘not being good enough’, it’s almost always coming from a selfish mindset. Peter in AF #15 was frustrated about his inadequacies before going off on a power trip. But the older Peter’s frustrations were about his inability to do more for others! Superficially they might be called the same thing, but the internal psychology behind them is very different. Fettinger is attributing the former mindset to the latter iteration of the character.

It didn’t even really apply in the early years of the character. After all his problem in ASM #1 when he tried joining the Fantastic Four was about being too cocky (understandable given his age and experience as a performer) than about feeling himself to be somehow ‘not good enough’ for the team.

But then you get to the part here Fettinger claims these inadequacies and independent streak ensure Peter will at times be viewed as a fugitive. And that’s the point where I began to question near damn everything Fettinger has ever said about the character.

That’s not about Peter.

That’s the result of Jameson and super villains. If he wasn’t so independent or felt so ‘inadequate’ then I fail to see how that’d change his situation beyond other heroes disbelieving the news and vouching for him. But his various friends in the superhero community for many years never fully believed such slander anyway, especially since some of them had been victims of similar stuff themselves.

For instance, circa 1996 (let alone 2006) I find it fundamentally unbelievable that Daredevil or the Human Torch of all people would ever honestly entertain the idea that Spider-Man simply assaulted an innocent man in Spec #250 or (beginning in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #88) that he actually murdered low rent thug Joey Z (a crime Osborn framed him for).

More mind boggling though is Fettinger’s assertion that Spider-Man was (and always had been) a loner precisely due to his independence and inadequacy. This is utterly inaccurate because by 2006 Spider-Man was (to much consternation within the fandom) a member of the Avengers!

He’d been one for 1-2 years at the time of this essay’s writing and it’d been a MASSIVE deal. With hindsight we know that to some extent Spider-Man more or less held some form of Avenger’s status up until 2019, around 15 years after he first joined.

The idea of Spidey always being a loner was also aggressively contradicted by Spectacular Spider-Man #75-100. In those issues Peter and his girlfriend the Black Cat formed a crime fighting partnership. Yes they were lovers but the point is Peter was more than capable of accepting an on-going team arrangement. True their team fell apart with the end of their romance, but that had little to do with his independence or his feelings of inadequacy. Peter broke up with Felicia because she’d lied to him and didn’t value him beyond his Spider-Man identity.

That doesn’t touch on his independence at all and more importantly is an example of Peter doing something because he had too much self-respect to continue to be with someone who didn’t value him properly. Which is the opposite  of things failing because he had issues of inadequacy.

Heck Spidey at one point tried to form his own superhero team, the Outlaws.

What’s worse is that Fettinger himself wrote a detailed essay about Spidey’s history as a team player.

I’ll leave it there for now. We’ll continue covering the introduction next time.

Master Post

[leanarg]

Practice Challenge II

((Hi again! So, these are 3 fics in one post! Including my first two rps with @ladyreggiewright​ (our very first one after ages not doing this so asdfghk) and with @wylan-caldwell​ I had so much fun doing both, so thank you, guys! <3 Thanks for reading too, hope you enjoy them as much as I stuggled writing them ;P  Google Docs link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ARTjqveFJ1njDc2LL0PU4C0ShN2jlO9JC1Imt9MDTh8/edit?usp=sharing ))

A CHANGE OF LUCK

“Alright, y’all ready?” Rita said with a loud voice vibrating with nervousness. “The speeches are over. In the next block, Prince Arin will be picking the names.” That was her fifth lap around the entertainment office floor and she just couldn’t stop repeating what Vandy Post had already announced before each round of commercials. I knew she was trying to act authoritative, but seeing her in this state was always amusing.

It wasn’t unusual that the building was bursting with energy this late at night. The pre-press team always stayed working on putting together the bulldog broadsheets content and adding the last details, then sent the whole thing before the deadline to the press team operating on the last floor, where they were all in charge of the printing process. I would dare to say there was activity in this place 24/7. But this particular night, we were focused on The Report. The streets looked almost empty from up here, everyone was at home in front of their TV waiting for the names of the lucky girls randomly picked by a drawing of names out of different crystal boxes. 35 provinces, 35 boxes, 35 names. 

My attention had been focused on Arin’s stern expression. His life was about to be decided by fate, or as many people want to call it, destiny. I wonder what was he thinking, standing there expressionless, willing to uphold his duty. 

Is he excited? Is he nervous? Is he wishing he could run away from that room and leave all this tradition behind?

My name was inside of one of the boxes, so I should had been even more anxious and edgy than Rita herself, but, after the PET Gala fiasco, where: I hadn’t gotten the clues I was so close to getting, I hadn’t finished the job I was supposed to be doing and my one month salary had been reduced to half; I was certain that whoever was in charge of my luck was not very fond of me. 

“They are back!” Rita shouted as soon as Arin’s face reappeared. Everyone in the room fell silent. I scoffed a laugh when I noticed them unconsciously leaning slightly towards the big tv, but I ended up doing the same after adjusting my glasses. One by one the basic information of the selected were being transcribed from the screen to our devices as Arin picked out their papers. 

<< “From Allens, Idalia Moretti, from Angeles, Emily Rose White,... from Honduragua, Callia Adair…” >>

My fingers were moving fast across my cellphone’s keyboard. These were the girls we would be hearing a lot about  from now on and I needed to know everything about them.

<< “From Labrador, Lea…” >>

I froze. My head felt dizzy trying to take in what I had just heard. For the shortest of seconds, everyone’s eyes were on me. I could hear Rita’s voice instructing them to get back to work and maybe someone else was now in charge of The Globe’s blog but at that moment I couldn’t care less about that.

It’s really happening... I made it to the selection!

Finally, I could stand up. I was feeling so much energy inside me that I wanted to run. Suddenly, the lift made a sound and my dad came quickly out of it and … wait, my mom is here? She was carrying my sleepy little brother, Dean. 

I could read the shock on my parents’ faces.“I’m in!!” I said a little too loud but since Mr. Grant was there no one dared to complain. My dad let out a short laugh before extending his arms for an embrace. “Congratulations, Rosie, I knew it would happen, didn’t I tell you V?” He said to my mom. “Grants always get what they want.” 

Ugh, I wish. But I wasn’t going to argue with him right now, so I just offered him a wink.

As soon as my father let go, my mom surrounded me with her free arm. “So how does it feel to be a lady, huh? We have to celebrate this!”

“Well, do ladies feel hungry this late? Cause I wasn’t feeling it a moment ago.” “Yes, let’s leave these guys to work in peace.” my dad said suddenly remembering where we were. After clearing his throat as if that simple gesture was a switch between the dad and the boss, he talked with Rita to make sure someone had replaced me updating the blog, then he congratulated everyone for their dedication and finally wished them good night. “I just hope you are paying me the full day,” I said to my dad as we all headed outside.

“I mean, are you working right now?” He raised an eyebrow, mockingly.

I sighed “I guess Grants can’t always get what they want after all.”  And I meant it in more than one way. 

The next week ran fast. My father and I agreed that I had to keep going to the office as usual, but it wasn’t easy to balance my work and my phone ringing every 5 minutes. More than once I had to ride home in the middle of the day because someone was waiting for me at home. 

First, a man with a very peculiar face came to do some kind of interrogation, which was understandable until we got to the most uncomfortable, personal ones. I almost spit my coffee laughing until I realized he had no intention to leave until he got every answer to each one of the questions on his list. 

Like him, I received a tailor and a doctor; but it wasn’t until the press started to ask for interviews when I realized my life had made a turn of 360 degrees. 

The thing I lamented the most about this odd schedule was that I couldn’t travel to the provinces to interview some of the selected as we had planned, but I did take advantage of every opportunity I had to do deep research about them. 

Some of the names or last names could be found on old newspaper editions, there were tragedies, accomplishments, unfortunate events… I smiled to myself, while I made annotations on my journal, fascinated by all the different interesting lives that were about to gather under the same roof. And I guess somehow that included mine.

The farewell party organized by Labrador’s Mayor seemed more like a political campaign than a real party. I might have fallen asleep during his speech if I hadn’t been texting Harris for the 40th time that week.

The last time I knew something about him was the night of the announcement when he sent me a simple “Congratulations, Lady Lea.” Then as the photographer, he had to go with Rea to the half-tour over the country to cover the selected interviews. 

“How dare you not be here when you are needed,... you lucky mooncalf.”

I looked up to see the crowd from my place on the big platform set in the middle of the Amberly park. It hadn’t been a very good idea, because there were grey clouds gathering over us and the sun was partially covered by them already. 

Someone forgot to check the weather section today.

But the trees surrounding us were decorated with purple and green metallic balloons -the colors of our province- and there were several signs with good wishes so I appreciated the effort. 

Everyone was here; The Globe employees that didn’t like me at all, my family on the first row, my college best friend, Liv had made space on her busy schedule  to come to the event, even my grandmother had sent his chauffeur with presents. That was her way to show support and I honestly didn’t have any complaints.  After the Mayor’s speech, the great boss Maxwell Loyd took the microphone to speak, I rolled my eyes, not caring about the people in front of me. He didn’t waste this opportunity to promote himself and flatter me. I mean, if he really had thought all that about me I would have had a promotion and a raise already, instead I just got ridiculous instructions and a handshake. 

When they both finally finished, the rain had started to pour, plus it was almost time for me to leave for the airport. I buttoned my coat before taking my place behind the microphone to start talking, but the eyes of the lady in charge of my schedule forced me to skip until the end of the speech I had prepared the night before. Every time I was going to make it sound deep and sentimental she made a sign for me to hurry.

“I appreciate your support… I will do my best… thank you for coming.”  

Were the only complete sentences I managed to say under such pressure. There was clapping and cheering afterwards, but there was after the previous boring speeches as well, so I didn’t get too excited about that. 

“Have a good time, my Lea.” My mother said after kissing my brow. I could smell her sweet perfume that I was going to miss. “I will, mom. Take care, I’m only leaving cause I know you are going to be in charge.” I side eyed the two men of the house. Then I kissed my little brother and messed his blond hair. “Bye bye little toad.” He just babbled something and waved his little hand. 

“So, Lady Grant. What do you expect from Prince Arin? Do you secretly plan to drink all the coffee from the Angele’s Palace? Rumor has it your father won’t let you marry until you turn 48 years old do you think Your Highness would wait for you that long?” “Wow, Mr. Grant you ask pretty basic questions, I have been asked the same ones all week.” He gave me a big tight hug and I ignored the wool of his coat feeling  itchy on my cheek. “I’m very proud of you Leana, and of course I’m not talking about this selection situation… I’m sorry about-” I stopped him not wanting to have our little disagreements as today’s last memory. And I also hoped I could change his mind by the time I returned home. “We can talk about that when I come back, dad.” He nodded. “I’m starting to feel bad for our dear Prince Arin.” I scoffed a laugh.

“Lady Grant, we are past the established hours already.” I heard a lady behind me. 

I turned to my friend Liv with an apologetic expression but she just smiled and waved. “I will text you… Bye! The rain started to fall harder but I had read the weather section on the paper this morning so I was properly dressed with boots and a coat over my white shirt and black pants. 

I walked towards a guard who was holding an opened umbrella to cover us with it. He opened the door of the car.  Then he offered to take my bag for me, but I had packed some of my old journals in there among my personal things. “Thank you… What’s your name?” “Finn Ray, my lady.” He answered confused. “I will keep this here with me, Finn.” I said in what I hoped was a reassuring tone before entering the car. I guessed he was new at guarding selected, because I noticed him turning to look at the woman in charge of the schedule. She nodded once at him and joined me inside the limousine. 

By the time we got to the airport I had learned that our chauffeur was called Alan Cobb, he had been working for the palace for 3 years on special occasions. He had three kids and his wife was expecting a baby girl. 

The strict lady was Miss Ramirez, she was happily single, obviously tardiness was her biggest pet peeve and she had worked there for 6 years already, but she enjoyed her job and had never thought of doing anything else, although I didn’t quite understand exactly which was her role in the royal offices of Labrador.

She left me at the boarding door after wishing me luck.

The flight to Angeles was long. I shared a plane with 3 others selected, that seemed pretty decent at first sight. 

We had a polite introduction conversation before we took off, but then everyone focused on her own thing; Jen Li, -the Yale law student from Waverly- took advantage of the 8 hours flight to sleep. Alana Hansen looked out from the window almost the whole time lost in her thoughts, and based on the green tone on Regina Wright’s face I guessed she was a risky company for the moment. 

I remembered I had read about her parents' unfortunate plane accident in an old newspaper, they used to be famous politicians and she was an apple that had fallen close to the tree. Hopefully not too close.

So, considering my options I prefer to write in my journals during the whole trip.

As soon as we arrived we were hurried to a room for makeovers. For me it felt more like a day in the salon, nothing drastic was made, just a few lights on my hair, perfect makeup and a stunning blue dress with matching elegant pump heels shoes. 

They did insisted on giving me contact lenses, since I had forgotten to pack mine, so after a long argument with the stylist, Mariel, I decided to wear the contacts and let him enjoy “his creation”. 

In the end, despite the little changes, when he showed me my reflection in the mirror, I had to recognize I was content with the  upgraded version of me.

                                       ESSENTIAL RESEARCH

The tour around the palace was quite short considering its size. I was almost sure that it was bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside, but the curiosity to see my new room, made me settle with the basic information,

I took a glance down at the little map on my hand. Eloise Hall room 28, second floor. As I headed to the stairs, the decorations and fancy details surrounding me were impossible to ignore. With every step you could find paintings by famous old artists -my mother admired- hanging on the walls, expensive vases and beautiful furniture. 

Looking around I spotted one of the selected quickly scribbling some notes in a notebook. As I got closer I noticed she was my plane mate, Regina Wright. Her green tone had disappeared or maybe covered with makeup and she looked much more secure now that we were down here on earth soil. 

I laughed a little bit inside walking by her side “Hope whatever you are writing is worth a bump on your head.”  

“I hope so too” She said absentmindedly, not looking up from her notebook. After some seconds she took a short look at me, flipped through her notebook and quickly closed it before I could react and lean discreetly to read what she was working on. 

Okay, now I’m curious.

“Excuse me, hi. Leana is it?” She gave me a polite smile. 

“Yes, feeling better... Regina..? I asked faking ignorance. 

She looked at me as she didn’t know why I was asking her that but then just answered, “Splendid. But please, call me Reggie.”

We continue walking up the stairs towards the second floor, while we shook hands, 

“I'm Leana Grant but you can call me Lea or Lee” I said touching the arc of my glasses I had put back on as soon as I left the makeover room.

She nodded. “Alright, Lea. Journalist, correct?” She made her pen click as if she was going to start writing again. I frowned, puzzled. “You too?” 

She chuckled at the question as if I should already know who she was. And the truth was, I did. 

“No,” she finally said, opening her notebook again, adding something, then she continued. “So, what brings you here?”

I was sure Reggie had many qualities but subtlety wasn’t one of them. 

I pressed my lips together, thinking about my motives, which one of them should I tell her? I’m here as an inside informant for The Globe; or, I’m here to live and learn about this whole selection phenomenon… I didn’t even know which one was the right answer.  “... just figured I couldn't miss this whole thing, you know.” 

Half- truths are always safe.  

“Are you here for politics?” I added before she could even think about my answer. 

She looked pleasantly surprised by my question, clearing her throat. “Yes, that is one of the reasons.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “You did your research.” 

I guess it was my turn to feel recognized, but unlike her I didn’t want to be so obvious, so I shrugged. “Your name rang a bell.” 

She looked at me suspiciously, lifting her chin, a slight movement I didn’t quite understand. “Is that so? That's good, I suppose. Best to be prepared.”

“Maybe you are right, I guess you actually did your research. What do you have about me?” I asked directly now, pointing at her notebook casually.

She remained serious. “Oh, just the usual. Occupation, caste, age.  Name, obviously.  There's 35 of us after all. Would be a shame to get anyone mixed up.”

“Well, now most of us are threes and the twos are pretty well known.”

“Yes well, obviously. Was to be expected. It's still an appropriate mix.”

Her statement made me remember her parents somehow, obviously she had their school but I wonder how much she agreed with them. “That’s... a word to describe it, yes.” I answered incredulous, “So where are you staying?” I asked, as I noticed I have already found my room.

We discovered we were room neighbors which I decided was very convenient for me. I liked people who have answers to my questions. 

She was concerned about my acoustic guitar hobby and I assured her I hadn’t brought mine with me. “The music room will do.”  And she assured me her studying was going to be silent. 

The conversation continued but my curiosity was already unbearable, so I opened the door of my room to check it out. I didn’t want to be rude so I invited Reggie inside as we talked.

“What are you working on?” I stepped inside

She followed. “Political Science Major.”

I gave her a glance to let her know that was not the answer I was looking for. 

She blinked with realization. “Oh, I see I misunderstood. Well, actually I was just writing a paper on the pros and cons of capitalism and if our country should focus more on it like we did when we were still called the 'United States'” She air quoted the name.

I looked around my room considering her answer. Suddenly my eyes met with three maids standing in line in the middle of the room. When they saw us they made a courtesy and I nodded at them as a greeting, hoping we can have proper introductions later.

“Hmm the lesser of evils... but the United States not exactly an example to be followed.” I said to Reggie. 

“Exactly.” She said. I noticed her writing a mark in her notebook.  

“A-are you like grading me?” I dared to ask what I had suspected since the beginning, but I didn’t want to believe. It was shocking at first but after the third mark it became amusing.

“Who else do you have in there?” I asked curiously before running next to her to peek at her notebook.  She closed it again. When I looked at her she smiled at me awkwardly “No, of course not. Just remembered something.” Her notebook was behind her back, now out of my reach. She straightened her shoulders before adding, “Well, thank you kindly for your invitation, glad to have met you…”

I stayed there confused, Had I gotten it wrong? Or was I right and she didn’t want me to know? Anyway, I should have said nothing.  “Alright ... glad to meet you too, see you around.” I said worried that she might be uncomfortable now. 

She nodded as she headed to the door. One of the maids hurried to hold the door for her. 

I frowned concerned, I couldn’t just lose a source like her. “Wait for me tomorrow, I think we can walk to the dining room together.”

She turned to give me a frown, seemingly confused by my suggestion. “But I already know where it-” then she smiled. “I will.”

As soon as Reggie left I took out the journal from the pocket of my dress and tossed on the pretty desk by a large window where I peered at the view of the Angeles city.

                                                                                       FOR THE RECORD.

After introductions my maids brought me dinner up to my room. So while I was eating the best creamy mustard chicken I ever had, we had a little chat. 

Among other things we talked about I expressed my surprise when I didn’t see any Royals when we arrived. Liberty, Camila and confirmed the Schreaves didn’t plan to meet any selected tonight, we would have to wait until morning. Queen Anjeli and Princess Ayesha had to leave the palace to attend important matters and Wylan Caldwell in spite of not being a selected was currently living in the Palace. Back in Labrador, I managed between college, work and extra work to fill my schedule, my mother never liked me being out of the house so late at night or sometimes not being able to have a complete breakfast in the morning, I enjoyed being busy and drive my Vespa from one place to another, but it was hard for me to admit that one of the reasons I liked my life that way was that besides when I was concentrated writing notes on my iTypewriter; I was not good at being alone with my thoughts. That’s why when I was a child my mother bought me a ukulele to play when I was feeling anxious, which gave excellent results. Later when I entered college I took a short guitar course with the same purpose. 

Therefore, later that afternoon, when my maids went back to their chores, leaving me alone I decided to leave my room to check out the music room, as I promised Reggie I would do. 

It took me some minutes to find the right door downstairs but my memory had never failed me and it wasn’t going to start now. 

I opened the third door in the west hall and peeked inside. I felt relieved when I saw the big piano in the last corner and dared to walk inside. Besides the piano, there were several instruments resting on their stands spread around the room, most of them to play classical music, but luckily, an acoustic guitar was among them. I was going to pick it up to test it when I spotted shelves full of old vinyl records. 

I walked towards the vinyl record player, it had a beautiful vintage look, it’s big horn imitated the ancient gramophones used during the Victorian years, but I suspected to be a more recent model. 

I noticed someone had left a classic record on, I wonder which one of the Royals had been listening to it as I moved the tonearm onto the outer edge of the disk, the little diamond tip to touch the groove. 

I guess I still remember how to use one of this. 

I stretched my arm and pulled one of the discs from the upper shelf, the others came down with it and  << "KNEEE-KNEEE!!" >>

The blaring sound of violins vibrated around the room making me wince for the annoying sound filling my ears.

“Damn!” I covered my ears while trying to find a way to turn the bloody record player off before my head exploded. Overwhelmed by the sound I went on my knees and stretched my hand behind the furniture looking desperately for the plug, but before I could find any the music stopped. 

I stood up still touching my ears 

Have I gone deaf? 

“I take you didn’t mean to do that.” I heard someone say behind me. 

Okay, I haven’t 

I turned around to find a guy eyeing me warily, from the corner of my eye I noticed a laptop and a couple of heavy leather books that weren't on the table before. 

“I was considering turning it on but it made the decision for me,” I said without explaining. 

At that moment, a couple of guards came into the room alarmed. They scanned the room quickly before looking at us puzzled. 

Wylan followed my gaze and turned to them, slightly. “Just a mishap. We’re fine.” He acknowledged with a wave of his hand. I let out a sigh of relief as they left the room to return to their posts.

“First time using a record player?” He asked to continue teasing

I gave him a deadpan look. “Ha-ha I take that the last person who played it had some hearing problems.” Before I crouched to pick up the rest of the vinyl records still scattered on the carpeted floor, I noticed a smile tugging at his lips that didn’t last.

In a minute he was bending in front of me to help. “You picked some good ones.”

Suddenly we looked at each other for a second, I narrowed my eyes suspiciously at his for a second trying to figure any sign of sarcasm in them, and he just had the word “awkward” written all over his face. Obviously I was making him feel uncomfortable. 

I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so busy trying to read him. 

“I like classics- acoustic to be precise.” I finally said with a shrug. “Do you own any of these?”

“This John Mayer one is mine. I have some other ones too. They’re over there.” He gestured to the rack behind me, then stood up with the vinyls he helped pick up.

I raised my eyebrow and nodded approvingly. “You have some taste, I will give you that.” I looked up at him, waiting for him to offer his hand for me to help me stand, but apparently living in a castle was no guarantee of anything, so I just stood up slowly, brushing my dress. 

“Some were gifts I grew to love.” He acknowledged, holding the vinyls out for me. “I’d recommend keeping the volume down before you turn it on next time.”

I took the discs to put them back in its place on the shelves “Well, you should put a sign somewhere,” I joked, a bit annoyed by his recommendation. 

I adjusted my glasses and stayed standing there, admiring the vinyl records once more. My curious mind wondered about the Prince. “Which ones are Arin’s?”

“I’m not sure. He might not own any.” I caught him glancing at his things he had left on the table before back to me. “Might be a good question to ask him yourself.”

Or you’re just evading the question. But fortunately, one of the things my job had teached me was to have thick skin so I wasn’t going to let him get away so easily. 

“You really don’t know or you don’t want to tell me?” I asked with an amusing tone.

He let out a small sigh, relenting a bit. “He likes The Killers. There’s probably a vinyl or two of those in here if you really need a good conversation starter.”

I faked a grimace “ugh! that piece of information should’ve hurt…” I said mockingly before adding. “I guess some advice for tomorrow’s interview is completely out of the table.” 

“Depends on what advice you’re looking for,” he let out, surprising me. 

I started to walk around the room still looking at him, considering my answer. “I don’t know, you are his friend... knowing a little bit about his personality would help,” I said casually, as if I didn’t already have thousands of questions listed in my head. 

But somehow he knew I did. “I’ll answer one question you have. Just one.”

“So generous …” I said more to myself than to him. My hand went unconsciously inside the pocket on my dress and my fingers touched my journal inside of it, purely out of habit. Of course, I wasn’t going to take it out so I crossed my hands in front of me as I resumed my walking around the room. 

“Okay…” In my mind I was looking for a single question that could indirectly tell me things about Arins personality … and why not about Mr. Uncomfortable himself too. 

“How do you start getting along back in college, like how did you become friends?”

Suddenly he let out a laugh, startling me. I frowned at first, but then I decided it wasn’t so bad, it picked my curiousness further.

I looked at him genuinely amused and he begined, “We were both going for runs and without knowing, I drifted a little too close. I was listening to music and not paying attention. His bodyguard sort of…” He paused to bring his fist to his neck simulating a punch. “And took me down.” I could see he was amused, for real. 

I laughed picturing the scene on my mind, considering all his previous teasing and had to admit it was a little bit entertaining to do so. “Ouch! His bodyguard does look ... fierce.” I commented remembering the man’s complexion I had seen several times on TV.

I wait for him to continue before asking, “what happened next? What did Arin say?”

His smile was more like a ghost on his face now, not physically there but somehow still present. “He apologized. After that we found out we shared a couple classes together and I offered to help him study for exams.”

“That’s an epic story… I bet it left you marked for some days.” I made a grimace, touching my neck, imagining the pain.

“Swallowing hurt, to say the least,” he said, remembering. After a minute, he combed a hand through his hair. “ Did that satisfy your question?”

“Hmm yeah, it was good, for now” I answered scoffing a laugh. The truth was I didn’t expect to enjoy his story that much, but I just couldn’t settle with only one question, but it wasn’t convenient to push more questions on him now. 

Fortunately he didn’t refuse, he just rolled his eyes at me, amused. “Alright, well I have to get back to work. At least try to not deafen the entire palace again.”

“I can’t promise anything.” I let out, finally taking the acoustic guitar from its stand, while he turned to gather his things.

“Reassuring.” He gave me a side glance and started walking out the room, he offered a two fingered salute before disappearing behind the opened door. 

After a second, while looking down at the guitar already in place on my lap, I compelled,  “Wylan... thanks!”

“You're welcome.” 

I heard him say from the hallway just before I started strumming the guitar strings, hoping its sound was enough to help me survive the first night. 

[jessica-harrison]

Skills

Cover photo: https://www.ipr.edu/blogs/audio-production/what-can-i-do-with-an-audio-production-degree/

As mentioned in the 'Industry Research' section of this blog, it isn't just the technical skills future employers will want to see. They want to see how your passion and art is fuelled also!! Sound design is more than just a series of sticking sounds together in a DAW. It's all about creating the other half of the story!

Core values & necessary skills

In my blog's branding section, I spoke about core values and those I deem to be top of my list. Core values make us who we are. It's what drives ambition and our creative thought process.

Accountability is high on my list of values/skills. Being accountable for the amount and quality of work we do is crucial. Often we dismiss our failures because we won't hold ourselves responsible. Though, at the other end of the spectrum, we more often than not, sing our praises. So holding yourself accountable as an individual or team unit, is just as crucial during the failures as it is during the success.

Whilst, teamwork is a very cliché term used with regards to employability, it remains a massive part of my core skill set. Being surrounded by team members is an excellent way to find a creative place in a project. I can then take those ideas and present for peer review. Having people to work with not only makes producing a big project easier. Still, it gives me a tremendous sense of satisfaction that like-minded creatives have come together to create something incredible.

Passion is a big part of what drives me. Music and composing is such a wonderful expression of artistry for me. Not just the music side of things, but I then took my love for music (and audio in general) regarding sound design. I began exploring the more intricate realms of audio. Each day my passions grow, but I NEVER wonder why I love what I do, not even on my worst days.

Respect is a skill I'm continually re-evaluating. I think it is undeniably essential to respect other people and their creative differences.

Continuous improvement is about always finding new and exciting ways to work. Technology changes exceptionally fast these days, and in audio production, the skillsets also have to change. Keeping up to date on industry techniques, skills, and methods will ensure I stay relevant to the expected work output. There are some general skills required to be a sound designer composer within the creative industries. However, some more specific skills are necessary if specialising in TV & film or games.

Basic skills: 

Creating, maintaining and backing of own original sound libraries.

Digital signal processing

Producing sound maps/ storyboards from scripts.

Mixing inside Digital Audio Workstations

Work along with side other members of the audio post-production team

Sector-specific skills

TV/Film and Game skills:

Compose and engineer music

improving sound quality

Spot, arrange and edit audio into video, or other mediums.

Use visual logic systems such as Max MSP.

Use of game implementation systems, i.e. Unity, Unreal, Fmod and Wwise.

Layering sounds to have a desired/or specific effect.

I have begun creating and collating my sound libraries last year. At first, I had incredibly long titles for samples and one-shots but started finding it hard to achieve all of the sounds (both RAW and edited). That was until I came across the word 'metadata'. Having a logical and easily navigable database of sounds is crucial to making my workflow more efficiently. I'm starting my journey into audio metadata with a free app called Soundly. Soundly offers a free-plan with up to 2500 local file storage and access to free cloud-based sound effects. To start, this will be ideal, but I would like to look at other plans that will include Cloud storage backup in the future. Currently I backup all of my libraries onto an 8TB desktop drive, another external HDD and my google drive. 

What is digital sound processing or DSP, you may ask? Digital sound processing is where audio converts from analogue to digital signal. A series of mathematical calculations are then applied before the signal returns to analogue before final output. As a producer/composer/sound designer, I use various plugins to manipulate the sounds inside my Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). Plugins come in many forms. VST is the most common form of an audio plugin and is Microsoft's Virtual Studio Technology. Avid uses its plugin file system called AAX (Avid Audio Extension), and Apple uses its own AU system (Audio Unit).

Below is a small list of plugins that I utilise during my time working on projects in the studio:

Fabfilter Pro-Q 3

Waves H delay

iZotope RX8 - Music Rebalance

Facebook 360 Spatial Workstation AAX plugin (Pro Tools)

I use Logic Pro X as my music production/composition DAW of choice. I believe this offers a great deal of flexibility to music composers alike. 

In contrast, I use Pro Tools as my post-production tool. Here, I produce final mixes of songs before proceeding onto the mastering process, which I also use Pro Tools. Pro Tools is also my DAW of choice for sound design work, purely because of its sheer power in dealing with raw audio.

During a mix-down phase of a musical composition, you should hear each instrument with clarity. Musical instruments all operate at different frequencies within the frequency spectrum. By respecting the base frequencies at which a particular instrument's audio outputs, I can make the final asset as audibly clear as possible, for maximum viewing pleasure. 

When working on sound design projects, I will often improve the sound of my source audio captured when out in the field inside iZotope RX8. Here I will remove clicks, hissing, background hum, de-verb, and even isolate parts of dialogue to ensure that audio is optimal for project usage.

I do love writing music and producing sound effects! I like to create work for TV & film, animations, interactive media, audiobooks and more. I import video assets into my DAW (Logic Pro X or Pro Tools depending on projects final output). 

This way, I have a visual in front of me from which to work. You can then lock the audio event in position with the video using SMTPE time code. This way, it keeps my music and sound effects in the exact place they need to be, without fear of being moved or adjusted in any way. Just don't forget to lock the positions!!

Max MSP is a powerful visual logic system for generating sound design and producing electronic music. I am new to this software and am learning new and exciting ways to integrate MAX MSP into my DAW workflow. I decided to explore the unique and intricate methods of composing music and designing sound for various media forms.

Examples of work

The best way to showcase both technical and artistic skill is quite obviously through social media platforms. Instagram has become a staple platform where businesses and creatives promote themselves and their craft. There are other platforms such as YouTube, SoundCloud, Twitter, Facebook (and don't forget LinkedIn!) to name but a few. With all of these beautiful places to promote me and work, I must consider the type of content I post to maintain maximum engagement with audiences and potential employers.

After many years of making and producing music at home, my interest in exploring the world of all thing's audio continued to grow. I purchased myself a simple, cheap portable recorder, some dirt-cheap microphones, and just went out and explored the world around me. At first, I made some novice mistakes in just aimlessly pointing and pressing the record button. Still, I soon learned that I merely heard things playback after recording. I never stopped to listen before I hit that big red button!

Slowly I got better (still, a long way to go), but most importantly I absolutely loved the process, and still am! I took great inspiration from reading the sound Effects Bible by Ric Viers (https://www.ricviers.com/sound-effects-bible) and Field Recording from Research To Wrap by Paul Virostek (https://www.creativefieldrecording.com/downloads/field-recording-from-research-to-wrap/). Both explain in great detail about how to get set up, get a recording and start collating my sound libraries.

With that said here's one of my first sound design projects. By this time, I had upgraded my audio recorder and had a few new microphone additions. Jez Riley French's D-Series Hydrophone, C – Series Contact mic, and his electromagnetic coil mic. Again, it was a learning curve starting with these new bits of kit, but I am genuinely pleased with how much this project turned out.

Without further ado, I present to you a lovely piece of animation by Polynoid, titled Mem. I create a gorgeous stereo cacophony of delicate sounds with Sci-Fi and electronic elements that lend itself well to the animation's energy.

ENJOY (with headphones is best!))

[worldofavania]

Avania 2020 Update

It’s only been about 6 months since my last status update, but it feels like a decade... In any case, I’ve been busier than ever with the comic, and am happy to report another chapter has been completed, which brings the total number of comic pages (not counting credits pages or covers) to One Hundred!

This exciting milestone is right smack in the middle of Issue No.5 (due to Issue No.1 having 30 pages instead of 20 like the rest) but I’m still thrilled to have made it this far!  I am a little ahead of schedule with starting chapter 11--the second half of Issue No.5, which is good, because there’s going to be a lot of layout work and then drawing for a sizable portion of it.

To briefly recap, Avania launched about 18 months ago on July 8th, 2018, after about 5 years of dedicated work (and close to 10 for general development of the characters and setting). As of January 2020, the comic has since reached the following numbers:

Total Comic Posts on @avaniacomic​ (Covers and Interior Pages): 82

Pages Published: 71 

Issues Completed: 4 and 1/2

Pages Completed: 100

Pages Written: 310

Total Planned for Season 1: 17 Issues, 360 Pages

As I’ve mentioned from the start, the weekly publishing schedule is faster than I can currently produce pages, so when the comic reaches the end of its first story arc (about ¼ into the overall season arc) I am planning on switching to an on-off pattern of finishing a chapter, and then posting pages every week until it is done. I believe this will be the best compromise between trying to maintain a weekly schedule and ensuring both story and art quality continue to improve.

Of course, my ultimate goal is to work on Avania full-time, and thus be able to post weekly… Or more!

Upon starting the webcomic, I have had less time to focus on the other editions, but rest assured I am still planning on releasing full issues both digitally and in print. However, due to my process of making small fixes and tweaks right up until I post the page to the web, and also the growing number of pages, I have found preparing files for print to be more time consuming than ever... As such I think my plan will likely be to finish off Issue No.5 and with it the first arc of the story, so that things can settle and I will be able to get everything shipshape for printing all in one pass and not worry about it any more while I start working on Issue No.6 and beyond.

Do let me know if you are interested in purchasing physical copies, or full-resolution digital copies on Comixology though! I hope to have my printing adjustments completely worked out soon so larger batch printing can commence. In the meantime, you can check out the Avania PX online store for poster-sized prints, stickers, and buttons (with new stuff coming soon too)!

Your support is very much appreciated, and I am always happy to hear your questions, comments, and suggestions too. If you have questions regarding the comic’s setting or characters, just send an ask to Avania Mail and get your answer in the form of a comic.

All in all, I think 2020 is going to be an exciting year, and I look forward to bringing you more of Avania and other art! Once again, I would like to give a big thank you to fans, readers, and everyone who enjoys my work!

Be sure to follow @avaniacomic​ and/or visit https://worldofavania.com to see the latest update every Sunday night at 7:00pm EST.

[projectussle]

Let’s Make Some Hitboxes!

Greetings, Tusslers! First off, I know it’s not Friday, and I have no excuse but that I lost track of time. I can make up for it, though, because today’s update is a really good one! One of the most important things in making a character is getting the hitboxes right. It’s where you define what your attacks actually do, so I want to make sure they’re super easy to view, edit, and change. With that said, I present to you, the new and improved “CreateHitbox” subaction editor!

Now, I know what you’re thinking, but this isn’t me refactoring a perfectly usable thing into a better form as I figure out more about Unity and C#. The plan was always to allow for custom editor windows for subactions, and the one’s you’ve been seeing have been the default editor window (that I expect about half of the subactions will use in the end). The system has been in place for a while, but I haven’t had any custom editors to use with it until now! Here, you can see a one-screen representation of all of the hitbox data you can create a hitbox with. Let’s break it down bit by bit here.

Up on the top row, you see two text areas, one for the hitbox name, and one for the lock group. “Name” is pretty self-explanatory, it’s what this hitbox is called, and how you’ll reference it in other Subactions, such as activating and modifying it later. Lock Group is a little more involved. I believe I’ve explained it before, but for the sake of keeping it all in one place, only one hitbox per lock group can actually damage the target. When two or more hitboxes hit the target at once, it will choose the first hitbox (in order of the “CreateHitbox” subactions) to actually receive the hit from. This means you can use multiple hitboxes in the same lock group to essentially combine to create a single oddly shaped hitbox, or to define sweet and sourspots that you don’t want to both affect the target at once. You are free to leave this one blank, and if you do, it will be treated as if it were in a lock group of its own and always work (even if you have multiple hitboxes with blank lock groups). In most cases, especially if your attack has only one hitbox, you will probably be fine leaving this blank.

On the left side, there is a box labeled “position”. It’s fairly straightforward as well, just know that the X and Y boxes are the center of the hitbox, and are positioned relative to the center of the sprite on the fighter. So you can see here, a box centered at 0,0 is positioned right smack in the middle of Hitboxie’s sprite. Any changes you make here are reflected immediately in the hitbox up above in the viewer, so you can adjust your positioning precisely and see your results to make sure you’re getting what you’re expecting! And, thanks to the resizable viewer boxes, you can eyeball the general location of your hitbox before making a few final touches manually in the numbers.

Moving on to the right side, there’s two columns of data. One for the base values, and one for the “charge deltas”. We’ll get to charging later, so let’s go down the list of values first. At the top of the column is the launch angle. This is in degrees, with zero being straight forward, 90 being straight up, 180 being straight backwards, and 270 being straight down. You can also use negatives and values greater than 360 to loop around, so -90 is the same as 270, 390 is the same as 30, and so on. Also note that “forward” and “backward” are based on the direction the owner of the hitbox is facing, not the target. So, if you are facing to the left, an angle of 30 will launch the foe to the left and slightly upward.

Damage, Base Knockback, and Knockback Growth are all part of the launch power formula. The formula is a bit mathy, and this blog post is already getting quite long, so I’ll probably have a post about the formula itself in the future, but if you’re interested, it’s based on the Brawl formula (which is mostly the same as the Melee, 4, and Ultimate formula except when it comes to how air resistance factors in to slowing the fighters down. Again, a future blog post for those mechanics, but to answer the question, it’s mostly just because I know more about Brawl’s physics from my modding days and if I can do the research I’ll have an option to toggle Ultimate-style “balloon knockback”). The long story short: Damage is how much percent damage the move does to the opponent. Base knockback is the amount of flat knockback the move does regardless of damage, while knockback growth is the factor that determines how much the knockback increases based on the target’s damage.

Now, onto the charge deltas. In most hitboxes, these will be zero, but for things like smash attacks and other chargable moves, you can input an amount that each “stage” of charging increases the values by. There is a subaction called “ChargeHitbox” that lets you, in one subaction, modify those values by that amount, and specify a maximum charge level. If that level has not been reached, it will rewind the action a set number of frames to play the animation, and when it reaches that charge action again, at which point, it will loop until fully charged or the frame is manually advanced (usually by checking if the button was released). These values are a flat addition every time ChargeHitbox is called, and if you multiply them by the maximum charge level and add back in the starting value, you’ll get the final values for damage, base knockback, and knockback growth of a fully charged hitbox.

And finally, the bottom left section is what I refer to as the “advanced options”. In a majority of cases, you won’t need to touch these. Still, it’s good to know that you have these options, so here’s what they do: The shield damage multiplier is a multiplier applied to the damage on block to change how much shield damage the attack does. You can use this if you want an attack to be particularly effective against shields (Consider Marth’s charged neutral special) or even to have a powerful attack that’s safe on shield! Similarly, shieldstun multplier is the same, but applied to the amount of time your target is locked in shieldstun. This can be handy for a move that might be a bit unfair if too safe on block, or to make a move that can set up for future shield pressure by making the opponent locked down longer. At this point, it should be easy to figure out what hitstun multiplier means, but it is another multiplier to how long your opponent is kept in hitstun when struck. An example of a high hitstun multiplier would be something like Zero-Suit Samus’s neutral special, or Lucas’s down smash. Also try setting this to zero for a move that doesn’t interrupt your opponent at all, like a Fox laser!

The last one requires a bit of history. What the heck is a “Sakurai Threshold?” If you’ve ever looked at a data dump of Smash Bros hitboxes, you might have seen a lot of angles that have an angle of 361. This is a placeholder value for what is known to the community as a “Sakurai Angle”. It is a special angle that changes based on the amount of knockback dealt. If the knockback is low, it will move the foe horizontally, keeping them on the ground for follow ups, but if it’s high enough, they’ll get sent flying at a specific angle depending on the game. It is an interesting mechanic meant to keep grounded fighting rewarding, while still allowing those moves to potentially kill at very high percents. The drawback of this mechanic, however, is that the damage threshold to switch angles is fixed, and the aerial angle is always the same. This can lead to some angles feeling very common, and lead to a lot of moves feeling the same. In TUSSLE, however, both of these values are editable. The threshold you set here is an amount of knockback that needs to be exceeded before the angle you’ve specified is used. If the knockback is less than the threshold, they’ll be moved forward along the ground. This only applies to grounded opponents, aerial opponents will always be moved to the hitbox’s knockback angle. This parameter is going to take some experimentation to find good values for, but if properly used can make for some very interesting dynamic hitboxes! If you don’t want to bother, keeping it at zero means that your knockback angle will always be used!

And that’s all the current parameters a hitbox can be created with. If any new parameters get added, I’ll definitely write about it. Again, apologies for the late blog post, but I hope I’ve made up for it with a big information-packed post! Until next time, Tusslers!