#I have also given minor changes to these characters in my comic so they are technically different

[impalas-arsenal]

What an actually beautiful, fulfilling show 🥹 everything about it was so perfect.

[cyandreamz]

✭ Athena Cykes ✭

(another sketch and spoilers for case 6-4 below)

Today I felt like drawing Athena because I really like her colour palette and, have grown to enjoy her character more. Plus I have wanted to do a minor re-design of her outfit for a while as there were small things I wanted to change. Main one being her jacket cuz, why tf do we have a gold button on yellow!? Maybe I'm just too obsessed with having contrasting colours in art, but given the jacket already has blue accents, why not add more? Also made her boots taller (not the biggest fan of her boots but I didn't want to change too much cuz they suit her cuz they look like moon boots imo) and gave her black bike shorts instead of the black tights cuz, the black tights just looked weird to me :/ so it was purely a personal preference thing :P

I enjoyed drawing this a lot and kinda want to do more pages like this of AA characters, but no promises! If I do more characters I'll probably start with more Wright anything agency members and branch out from there if I still feel motivated to :3

Yesterday I did the sketch above because I was in the mood to draw comics but, only did this cuz drawing comics traditionally is a lot harder than digitally (and I've yet to get my drawing tablet out of storage) so I did something simple to scratch that itch. It's of course based off that moment in case 6-4 when Simon fucken jump scares the player and shakes Athena!?

Truly iconic moment, than again Simon is so iconic for the whole case, that man is now my favourite co-counsel which I kinda feel bad about cuz all the "weird girls" are super iconic characters and I like their characters overall more than Simon (yes all of them) but, if we're talking just as a co-counsel, he's my favourite. His dialogue alone made 6-4 go from meh to good for me.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

@grimharuspex in the comments of that @zoe-oneesama post said it the best; Butterfly should’ve been Emotion and Peacock should’ve been Desire. I know that Zoe has a limit on what canon she changes for her comic which I respect/appreciate given the thought she puts into it (even when canon’s various nonsensical magic rules are especially grating like this) but how do you think things would’ve gone in-show if this was the setup from the get-go? On that note, do you think it’s a good setup for canon in the first place? Why or why not?

This is going to be a rather long lecture on lore and world building and how the peacock fails on every level, so before we get into that, let's start with the positives. I saw a few people pointed out the Desire idea - that being that the peacock's associated Force should have been Desire while the butterfly got Emotions - and I think that they're absolutely right. That one tiny change does fix the surface level issues and make the peacock make sense for its larger role in the narrative.

It would complicate the whole magical slave thing and also mean that you probably have to rework a few of the minor sentimonsters, but generally speaking, it makes way more sense for Desire to birth a fully realized human being. The sentipeople being people while also coming from a single emotion will always be total BS in my eyes.

At the same time, I blame no one for just sticking to canon's lore. Reworking the lore is a serious thing and even I only do it when I'm telling a lore-heavy story. There are plenty of stories where I just stick to canon's nonsense because the lore isn't important.

Now that we've done our positives, let's getting into the negatives! The issue of the day is this: changing the Force from Emotions to Desire doesn't solve the larger problems with the peacock. Problems that we'll now get into. Buckle up, this is gonna be a long one.

Issue 1: Power Diversity

While I would not call myself a superhero expert, I have seen a good deal of superhero and magical girl team shows in my time. Most of you probably have. If you think about the power sets that we see in those shows, then you'll notice that one thing is pretty much always true: every power is unique OR the powers are all closely related in some way. You never do both because the two concepts don't mix. It makes no sense for half of the characters to have totally unique powers while the other half have copies unless there's some sort of special thematic reason for this like siblings sharing a power.

Without that sort of explanation, it just feels weird and it also makes the characters feel redundant. You don't need two speedsters or two supermen! One is enough. Heck, Avatar the Last Airbender takes place in a world where whole civilizations have the same power and they STILL didn't duplicate powers for the core team because they understood that it's important to keep the characters unique.

Miraculous is pretty obviously supposed to be the type of show where the powers don't overlap. Every character gets a unique power that's uniquely suited to them. We even have this confirmed in universe during that confusing scene in the episode Destruction where Orikko - the rooster - tries to explain how his powers work:

Orikko: No, you're mistaken! Time travel is Fluff's power and I can't grant the power that already belongs to another Kwami!

This brings us to the problem with the peacock: it is not a unique power. It's derivative on multiple levels.

Derivation Level One: Akumas

The first and most obvious level is how similar sentimonsters are to akumas. In terms of how they're normally used in the narrative, they're pretty much the exact same power to the point that you literally can't tell which one you're dealing with until someone tells you. The narrative uses them interchangeably with some episodes using an akuma, some using a sentimonster, and some using both.

In fact, I thought that it was really weird that Gabriel didn't switch to maining sentimonsters back in season four. You had akumas breaking their bonds left and right, which is a thing that sentimonsters literally cannot do, making them the obvious fix to this new problem.

To really highlight the whole "indistinguishable power" issue, allow me to highlight some dialogue from Kuro Neko to show that this is very much an in-universe problem:

Cat Walker: You think that's Cat Noir? Ladybug: Of course it's Cat Noir! He must've been akumatized because he regrets having given up his Miraculous!

Ladybug: You'll see once we deakumatize him. (She runs towards Kuro Neko.) Cataclysm his bell, I'm sure that's where the akuma is! Cat Walker: Hang on! (follows her) Ladybug, what if that's a sentimonster? If I use my power on him, he'll lose control and become more dangerous!

Cat Walker: (cringes) What I mean is you're right to doubt, and I agree with you. Until we know for sure whether we're dealing with a sentimonster or someone who's been akumatized, we shouldn't make any brash decisions. (Kuro Neko leaps away.) Let's find out more.

This sort of confusion should be impossible unless it's the result of clever planning by the villain, but that's not what we're dealing with here. Kuro Neko was not about Gabriel tricking the heroes. He sent out a normal sentimonster having no idea that Chat Noir had just quit. And yet Ladybug had no idea that this was a sentimonster. She looked at it and saw an akuma.

Cat Walker also didn't know that it was a sentimonster. He just knew that it wasn't Chat Noir, which was probably the only reason that he thought to question Ladybug and warn her to be cautious. They only realize that it's a sentimonster once they learn that there's a child inside it.

This is canon accidentally telling us that akumas and sentimonster are just straight up indistinguishable unless you see then made or do some experiments to figure out what you're dealing with. That's not a good look if your claiming that each miraculous grants a unique power. It is, however, a great lead in to the second power that the peacock copies: the power of illusions.

Derivation Level Two: Illusions

I said above that it should take careful planning for a sentimonster to be confused with an akuma. While we never see that type of carefully planned setup, we do see sentimonsters used to successfully impersonate humans on several occasions. One example is the episode Optigami which gave us SentiNino and SentiAlec. Seemingly perfect clones of Nino and Alec who did whatever Shadow Moth told them to. We even see a scene where Shadow Moth is telling SentiAlec exactly what to say.

You know who else gives us this type of scene? Rena Furtive in Rocketear:

Ladybug: You said that if Nino could have heard what you were saying, there'd be no misunderstanding? Rena Furtive: Absolutely! Ladybug: How well do you remember what you guys said on the balcony? Rena Furtive: Every. Word. Ladybug: Do you think you could make... a sound illusion? Rena Furtive: Totally.

Is there any doubt in your mind that the peacock can do anything that the fox can do? What's even worse is that the peacock does illusions better than the fox! Fox illusion vanish in a puff of smoke if you touch them. SentiNino was real enough to wield a miraculous because he was a fully corporeal illusion that would have kept on going if he hadn't been snapped away. This brings us to derivation level three: the power of creation.

Derivation Level Three: Creation

The peacock doesn't just outshine the fox, it outshines the ladybug! Lucky charms vanish as soon as Ladybug detransforms. Sentimonsters last forever. The ladybug is only useful in battle as it requires a super villain to cast its cure (which is asinine, but let's not get into that here). The peacock can be used at any time. The ladybug doesn't give you what you want, it just gives you a puzzle to solve. The peacock can fulfill your deepest desires and even create life.

Outside of the extremely specific circumstances that the show gives us - aka an ongoing battle with a super villain - the ladybug is kind of useless. If you want the power of Creation, you're going to use the peacock. This brings us to our second main issue: power balancing.

Issue Two: Power Balancing

The ladybug and the black cat are supposed to be the two most powerful miraculous in existence, but it really doesn't feel like that's true. Sure, if you put them together they rewrite the universe, but that's not part of their individual base power sets. At an individual level, they don't actually feel all that powerful when compared to the butterfly and the peacock. It's more like Marinette and Adrien are smart enough to make their very limited powers work while Gabriel and Nathalie are dancing along easy street and making fools of themselves with every step.

I've mentioned before that I can forgive the butterfly's overpowered nature because this is an episodic show. They want each episode's fight to be unique and interesting and so we have to give them room to have one power set that should be an insta-win card, but isn't because plot.

I can give them that grace once. I cannot give it to them twice.

There is no reason why both the butterfly and the peacock need to feel more powerful than the supposed most powerful miraculous in existence. I've even talked to one person who is rewriting canon with the assumption that the peacock and the butterfly ARE the most powerful ones because they are! Nothing proves this better than the fact that they've both made creations that can copy the powers of the ladybug and the black cat (see: Copycat, Strikeback, Ladybug, Sandboy, Miraculer, and probably a few others that I'm forgetting).

They're also the only miraculous that don't require an active user. You can create a sentimonster or an akuma, then detransform and have a snack while your creation does whatever you need it to do. That's so incredibly broken and such a terrible move in terms of power balancing. Either have all of the powers require active users or, at the very least, have more of a mix of active and passive powers. Why do Mirage, Shelter, and Lucky Charm vanish when their caster's detransform while akumas and amoks stick around? There is no in-universe logic to explain this. It works this way because that's what the writers needed these miraculous to do. A fact that makes it impossible to get invested in the lore of this show.

When designing a complex magic system, you generally don't want "because plot" to be the only answer to why things work they way they do. You want your magic system to feel real and organic to the world. That's how fictional worlds come to life! If Miraculous' magic system was well designed, then you could take it and use it to tell a wildly different story set in the same universe, but you can't. Everything about it is designed around making canon's story work and not around making an immersive world that you can almost believe exists.

There are stories that I wouldn't hold to that standard, but they're mostly short form stories. Anything as big and complex as Miraculous needs to have a solid lore system backing it or else you lose all sense of stakes. A great example of this is the Bunnyx problem where you know that she can show up at any time and reset the timeline even if things are happening in her own past, so why do we need to worry about bad things happening? And how are the ladybug and the black cat the most powerful ones when you have nonsense like time travel and the power to create human-like creatures? Early canon lore was decently solid, but the longer the show goes, the more nonsense the lore gets and that makes me sad because I love good lore.

Some Final Thoughts

You may have noticed that I didn't really talk about the sentikid issue in this post. That's because my dislike of the peacock came long before that fun little twist. While sentiAdrien is yet another great reason to dislike the peacock, it didn't need to be a thing for the peacock to be a terrible idea. Take away the sentikids and you still have an incredibly derivative and lore-breaking power set that never should have made it into the show.

I actually completely redesigned the peacock for my own rewrite which I start plotting back when I was first watching season three, long before sentiAdrein was even on my radar. That's not something that I usually do in my fix it stuff. I usually try to stick close to canon and make more minor tweaks, but the peacock is so fundamentally world breaking that I had no choice but to do a total overhaul. This is already an incredibly long post, so I won't go into that here. I'll save it for another ask that's sitting in my inbox. I'll schedule them to post back to back.

For this post, I'll just end by pointing out that switching the peacock to Desire makes it derivative of and arguably better than the pig, too, since the pig can only tease you with what you want. The peacock actually gives it to you. In fact, I'd say that the peacock may be a better pig even without the switch!

You can also argue that the peacock is better than or at least equal to the rooster and the goat because they're also just variations of the butterfly and the ladybug's power. Like there is legitimatly potential in taking those miraculous and doing an AU where each Kwami's power is an aspect of creation because the powers are so awkwardly intertwined. Probably make the peacock the master and all others spawn from that one or something like that.

Anyway, this is why you can't design powers around characters if you want good lore and a large team! You have to start with the powers and go from there! It's why I edit Nino's character to be more of a protector since that's his supposed True Force! Also because I want him to be more narratively important but that is a rant for another day.

[leliwardens]

so a second article has hit the da fandom and i'm in the part of the "this is genuinely so disappointing i'm considering not actually preordering/playing on release". i'm sure i'll come to terms with it and still get it but this really has been such a blow to my sheer enthusiasm that is like...incredible really for me as a fan invested in this franchise for over a decade to put me (and others) so low lmao

(under a cut bc it got stupidly long, a cookie if you read all of it)

one of the big "reasons" i've seen parroted by the fandom and the justification from the devs is (paraphrasing) you're in the north and all of these major decisions are in the south, which is frankly, stupid? sure, the choices of the divine wouldn't matter too much (if the circles are disbanded or not, for example) but the divine choice itself, should matter? the throne of ferelden? orlais??? these are major characters!

whoever is the sitting ruler of ferelden, regardless of the choice, has obv, lived through a blight not 20 some odd years prior. so one could imagine they would be invested in this, you know, double blight is going on and would like to help or help for their country? given the fact one of the last of the two archdemon prisons is canonly within ferelden!! marketing has also started the blight has spread across thedas, so one would think the current world leaders would be supporting or at least looking to the group seemingly working on stopping the blight. but i guess not since it's not a choice.

even setting aside the lore and plot significance of the majority of choices, even if it truly did not matter, you can say the exact same for choices within dai itself, however the devs knew the desire to have that impact + fan service, even minor, still superseded lore and plot significance. the hof letter and mentions by their romance partner is clearly fan service (since tbh i doubt leliana or morrigan would willingly talk about their partner themselves) but it was also telling you, the player, where your mc was. another example is there is no impact who the sitting king of orzammar is, but the game still mentions in a codex the consequences of that choice, even if the anvil was kept or not in ambient dialogue.

these and many more mattered, not in a world shaping way, but to tell you, the player, yes you played in this world and here's the acknowledgement of it, thank you. i didn't need to decide the fate of the world to enjoy leliana talking about my warden or varric supporting templars because my hawke did, because it still felt like i mattered, that yes this is a world i changed, even in a small way, that i lived in it.

and they removed all of that.

like, hell it was even a good way to "check-in" in choices and characters without dedicating entire plot beats to them! the epilogue for a non-divine!romanced leliana heavily implies she and the warden are still doing their own things but meeting up when hey can. that aside the cure? the fucking cure??? did they find it? did they share it with the other wardens? was it suppressed? the other members of the inquisition were invested in stopping solas, what about them? since you are literally going to their turf, is dorian, josephine, isabela, and even bull okay? is zevran or fenris going to be ignored? fenris had a whole comic about him!

the only way i can take this is being told to no longer be invested in previous material, even material leading up to this game. even if i know that's not really the truth, it really feels that way.

i don't even like the excuse for getting newbies into the series, because, well, dai did that fine WITH returning characters and overall plots lol? there's a loss of some context and dai itself had writing flaws with this method, but it did show you could have both returning and new players work fine, and not alienate said new players despite it being the 3rd game.

speaking of dai, why bother making the choices so endgame linear if they wouldn't of even mattered? why no matter your choice of divine, another group rises up to oppose her? why have the grey wardens going quiet and possibly on the brink of civil war, exiled or no? i had assumed at the time the bottlenecking was future proofing to create less variables, and i guess i was wrong since there are no more variables lol!

i'm genuinely not sure what they truly thought would be the reaction, given they are still trying to pull returning players via the marketing? like. varric, harding, morrigan returning, the focus on the grey wardens as a group (and likely why davrin gets such a spotlight) are all indications for returning players. fuck even solas, no matter what you feel about him, is a returning npc! to resolve his plot!!!

i never truly believed we would see big huge cameos, i did expect the divine, those who live in the north, but otherwise simple codex entries or letters if anything.

but to have.......nothing? be left with nothing? burns.

i do mean this completely honestly: what is the point of investing myself, my time, my money, hell even just interest in this series anymore? without the impact of previous games (or a better lore reason, such as a longer timeskip than 5 fucking years since the last dlc) then this is your run of the mill rpg with better writing than most, but that's all it'd really have. i didn't fully play or get into the series because of the decisions carrying over, but it sure as fuck kept me and others coming back. if this is the norm going forward past da4 then well, might as well pick any other rpg series.

[scarlet--wiccan]

Honestly it seems like a fight to even have Billy's Romani heritage mentioned in the comics, even though he seems like the type to be really eager to learn about his cultural heritage. And it'd be a bonding activity that doesn't exclude Tommy, the way that something magically inclined most likely would.

On one hand, Pietro and Wanda being drawn with darker skin is a relatively recent development that still seems to be facing some pushback. On the other, I'd expect the lack of whitewashing to naturally apply to Luna, Billy, and Tommy as well? Even in the case of retro-reincarnation; if they're written and drawn as taking entirely after Wanda's family physically, instead of the Kaplans or Shepherds- that's what Heinberg and Cheung intended, it's how Magneto identified them as Wanda's kids, and everyone else has followed that trend- then I don't understand some people's logic behind that applying to everything EXCEPT skin tone.

To my understanding, making this sort of change to a character's official design requires a degree of editorial authority. Dauterman, Orlando, et al were able to do that for Wanda and Pietro because they had more direct control over them as title characters. They're making Speed or Wiccan comics, so they don't get to do official design sheets for Billy and Tommy. I'm sure that there were many other, more complicated conversations happening behind the scene, but I think that's the basic gist.

Having said that, there's really no reason they couldn't give Billy and Tommy darker skin, or just make them look more like Wanda, in Scarlet Witch, even if it wouldn't be reflected in other books. Artists get away with making arbitrary coloring choices all the time-- usually for the worse, but sometimes for the better. So, I think that they are making this visual distinction on purpose, and there's a couple reasons why that might be happening. A lot of people do arrive at the conclusion that Billy and Tommy should look more mixed, for lack of a better term, than Wanda because of their unconventional parentage. I don't love it, especially not when it means making them super pale, but I do understand the logic.

It's also completely possible that Orlando doesn't think or hasn't realized that Billy and Tommy are Romani, or have Roma heritage. Or perhaps he is just uncertain of what the best, most appropriate course to take, because it's an odd situation. This is why, even if he's not writing stories specifically about Wanda's race and culture, he'd benefit from a consultant or sensitivity reader.

I'd care a lot less about what these characters looked like, if I felt like the nuances of their heritage were authentically represented. I care about Wanda and Pietro being brown because there isn't enough inclusive representations of brown Roma, and because there is a gap in readers' understanding that Roma are a racial minority, so seeing us as people of color is necessary. If people had better understanding, or if there was a more inclusive range of characters, it wouldn't matter. Similarly, I want Billy and Tommy to look like Wanda because for some reason "Billy and Tommy are Wanda's kids" does not translate to "Billy and Tommy are Romani" in people's minds. If that was already a given, it would matter less.

Anyways, I've pointed this out before, but it does seem as if Dauterman may have changed Billy and Tommy's skin tone on his most recent covers. Its really hard to tell because of the lighting, but compared to last years #6, I feel like the base color here is closer to Wanda and Pietro's shade range.

Again, full aware that this is a stretch, but if you use Lorna as an example of how fair skin reflects in this sort of dramatic lighting, the tones used on Billy and Tommy are consistently deeper and warmer. I'm not making any assumptions, it's just something I noticed and it's made me very curious to see what the interiors will look like for SW #7.

[pojofi96]

Finally 😈 a chance to talk about my mans

Short answer is yes obvi but like his character, my thoughts on this are a bit more complicated.

In the flashbacks we see showing his life “before”, he was shown to be an exemplary dad - but of course, this would inevitably change somewhat with being traumatized. Hanzo at his core is a flawed person and the very essence of his story lies in his humanity - most notably, his mistakes and circumstances - and how he copes with his own earned consequences + just straight up awful luck. This is inevitably going to reflect on how he tutors/raises children and MKX Blood Ties illustrates this well with his treatment of Takeda.

Throughout most of Takeda’s shown upbringing, Hanzo is shown to be in a tetchy mental state and it makes him prone to being overly harsh when scolding him for a minor mistake. You get the feeling Hanzo is purposely trying to keep him at a careful emotional distance as strictly “teacher and student”, even though it’s evident that their relationship is more through their own shared needs of familial bonds. It’s not abuse by any stretch of the imagination but the distinction between a “tutor” and a “father” is important to remember when examining their relationship. There’s a plentitude of potential reasons that Hanzo could have for acting like this given his past and what he lost, so you can’t truly blame this aspect of his character for being any fault of his own. Again, he is only a man making sense of the circumstances that were thrust upon him. But this inevitably would affect how he “raises” people.

The comic goes deeper into Hanzo’s mental state and how his hellfire works in the first place - and it’s here that we see something crucial. At it’s core, his utilization of it (i.e. how he has to relive the most traumatic event of his life every time he uses it to put himself in a bad headspace) is counterintuitive by design to his own growth and recovery. His strength, his most defining battle trait, is also what’s dragging him down. Objectively, Hanzo would have to let down his own personal guards (not use his hellfire) to keep from falling back into bad habits. But the current state of his life - strife with combat and the constant threat of sudden gorey death - doesn’t allow room for his emotional growth. On top of that he’s responsible for the well being of a kid, so he doesn’t have room to think about himself - he has to put Takeda first. But that also begs the question of if he had the chance to escape that life - would he? Does he have the capability to let down his hellfire when it’s because of his hellfire that he’s still even alive?

He’s not truly doomed but Hanzo believes to his core that he is and this is one of his biggest obstacles to his self recovery - this belief makes him lash out and self-sabotage - and it keeps him from really making any remarkable progress in getting better.

That being said, I was genuinely surprised to see the reactions for this tweet mostly being unconditionally positive on Hanzo’s side. What I’m trying to say is that Hanzo is far from perfect, he’s far from a perfect mentor and a perfect father. He’s still a good person at heart though - he does his best and Hanzo’s biggest flaw at the end of the day is the result of being human in hellish circumstances. It’s worth noting that Takeda in the end grew up to be an upstanding young man who feels very positively about his father-figure-mentor… so Hanzo did remarkably well overall, a lot better than most people could do in those same conditions. But all the replies being like “Anyone who says no deserves to be executed” feels like they’re missing something crucial about him. Him being attractive doesn’t absolve him of accountability!

In canon, he’s more accurate to the relative that we know has had a rough life that we all have complicated feelings about.

[saintsenara]

I really like Snape as a character. I made the mistake of mentioning that online. Someone asked me how I like a character is inexcusably mean to children when he is a position of authority around them and how he is petty, can be cruel and harsh teacher and his lack of patience towards Nerville and basically a list of all the mean/horrible stuff that he has said/done. What do you say when people ask you how you can reconcile liking such a character given all of cruel and hurtful things that he has said and done both towards his students and joined willingly a known blood supremacist terrorist group and said known slur towards his friend that is a member of a minority group? I find Snape to be a deeply compelling and flawed and complex character- that's why I enjoy seeking out Snape centric fics.

thank you very much for the ask, anon, and i'm sorry that people have popped off about you liking snape. it's an extremely tedious way for them to behave, since these people are fictional.

i must be honest, i don't really get asked to justify my fondness for the baddies - partially because i curate my fandom space in order to avoid it and partially because i must give the impression of not caring - but i've never found it particularly difficult to reconcile the fact that all my favourite characters are mass-murderers with the fact that i myself am not one...

the first - and frankly the most important - way that i do this is because i understand what genre conventions are.

it seems to me that this is the thing that really is the most lacking in the discourse surrounding the 'bad' characters in the harry potter series, with snape chief among them, but it’s absolutely crucial to understand:

snape is a mean teacher because harry potter is for children, and children do not want to read about sweet or competent adults.

[this is also the reason why the dursleys are horrible, or why hogwarts is such a dangerous and poorly-run school. if the series contained the line, a troll did not get into the dungeon and so harry did his homework, then any child worth their salt would be hurling the book into a fire.]

it must be remembered that child readers - for whom the text is primarily intended - will have a different response to the tropes and themes of the series than adults returning to it with their own experiences, and that adults' responses to the books are not responses that the books were written to provoke. this doesn't mean that adults' reactions are unreasonable - nor does it mean that adults shouldn't engage with harry potter, as my 300k words on ao3 attests - it simply means that it is not a flaw of the series that snape's behaviour is not addressed in the way that adults would like it to be. it's just genre.

because children tend to see the things in the series which horrify us as adults as considerably less frightening or problematic than we do ourselves. indeed, they often see interactions which we read as abusive, or as evidence of systematic cruelty, as simply unfair, and they are looking for retribution not in terms of legal punishment or wide-ranging institutional change, but in the character who is behaving unfairly getting their comeuppance, often in a comic way.

this is because fairness-unfairness is one of the primary ways in which children understand justice. as adults, we think with more nuance - but that doesn’t mean that our response to the text is better. in fact, we have a responsibility to understand the series’ genre conventions when we approach characters in our own writing - if you want to make snape a violent abuser, you actually need to understand all the ways in which the series shows him not to be those things.

snape’s relationship with his classes is written in a way which provokes the response in children that he is unfair, but not one which provokes the response that he is frightening - indeed, the story generally treats his "cruelty" as comic, at least until half-blood prince, and he often gets an embarrassing comeuppance when he tries to be sincerely malicious. [i.e. literally everything which happens to him in prisoner of azkaban.]

he is unfair, because he doesn’t tell malfoy off for misbehaving. he is unfair, because he doesn’t give hermione a chance to answer questions. he is unfair, because he is rude to harry [who, like any good child hero worth his salt, has no respect for snape and isn’t intimidated by him]. he is unfair, because he gives horrible detentions.

but no child character in the story ever seriously believes his behaviour to go beyond this - including neville.

neville’s fear of snape is caused by snape being unfair towards him - and, since neville is a character the text likes, snape therefore frequently gets his comeuppance for this unfairness. the incident where he threatens to poison trevor is horrible to read as an adult, but as a child the outcome - snape is foiled in his plan because of neville and hermione - is understood as triumphant. snape - an adult - is constantly outfoxed by his pupils - who are not adults - and children love to see that.

[similarly, it really should be emphasised that the text treats neville’s fear of snape as ridiculous. lupin laughs in his face about it in prisoner of azkaban, and neville himself admits that it’s silly and irrational. it cannot be seriously suggested - although i've seen plenty of people try - that snape is his boggart instead of bellatrix because snape sincerely frightens him more. he fears snape more than bellatrix because his narrative purpose in the first four books is to be comic relief - he’s a bit cowardly and a bit useless, and he provides a character for the child reader to feel braver and cleverer than.]

obviously, these incidents read very differently to adults - especially if you are an adult who has, knows, or works with small children. but if somebody complains to you about your favourite characters because they're upset by children’s literature without thinking about how it’s intended to be read by its primary audience... that’s not your problem.

but even beyond genre, i feel comfortable liking "bad" characters because i understand human complexity.

online, it is increasingly becoming a dogma that our attitudes are fixed and unchangeable. i feel incredibly sorry for young people nowadays, who often have to live in a state of hypervigilance in order to make sure that they never do or say anything cruel or ignorant. this must be miserable, because flawlessness is unattainable - not only for real people but for fictional ones as well.

the fannish desire to write someone like snape off as bad and unchangeable - alongside the accompanying tendency to minimise the human flaws of characters such as james and sirius - comes from the fact that snape, like many antagonists, holds up a mirror to us as the reader. and we may not like what we see.

snape’s life demonstrates that it’s very easy to be radicalised into joining a terror group - particularly for people who have experienced things like poverty, being othered, or being bullied. it forces us to recognise that people who end up involved in evil did not come into it fully formed - they started somewhere, and they often ended up where they did because of failures in societies and their institutions which we ignore because they benefit us. after all, hogwarts does nothing to prevent voldemort recruiting death eaters among its pupils, hogwarts does nothing to dismantle the oppressive class system on which the wizarding world runs - the school is the archetypal ivory tower, and the ministry is no better.

snape’s life demonstrates that it's very easy for people who are victims in some areas of their lives to be perpetrators in others. trauma is often not sympathetic and perfect victimhood does not exist. having experienced trauma means you have experienced trauma - it can still make you act like a cunt.

and snape’s life also demonstrates that it’s very easy to - without entirely intending to - do something absolutely terrible, and this is something which we should always be compassionate towards. because it’s going to happen to all of us - and, actually, our terrible deed could easily be something as significant as snape’s report of the prophecy. if you drive, for example, it takes one momentary distraction for you to kill someone. what are you going to do if the person you kill is your childhood best friend, whom you love?

well… you’re going to try to redeem yourself. and, like snape, you will learn that redemption is messy and often strange, and that people can show growth in some areas and lack it in others.

and the redemption point is important - the idea that snape is redeemed by the end of the canon text is something which lots of fans push back against. but it’s crucial to note two things:

the first is that one’s own capacity for forgiveness and the potential of forgiveness as a concept are not the same thing. you might never have been able to forgive snape if you were lily or harry or dumbledore, but that says nothing about whether anyone else can or should. the second is that forgiveness and redemption are not inextricably linked. one can redeem oneself without being forgiven.

my view is that approaching bad characters with nuance is actively beneficial for us, and that having a "problematic fave" is a good thing when it comes to our self-growth in the real world. if we believe ourselves to be immune to the sort of radicalising forces which would lead a person to other their best friend to the extent that they call her a slur, we will be easy to radicalise. if we believe ourselves to be incapable of making a dangerous mistake, we will be more likely to miss the clues that we’re about to. if we do not believe in the possibility of redemption for all, then we are going to have a very hard time when we do something bad, since we therefore have to believe in redemption for none.

thinking critically about oneself - both in relation to the media one enjoys and in general - is a protective act. learning to identify commonalities with bad people protects you. learning to recognise that you’re not always going to be good or right protects you. learning to accept that you’ll fuck up protects you. learning to be remorseful protects you. learning to forgive protects you. learning that the limits of your personal capacity to forgive is not the same as the potential of forgiveness protects you.

unsympathetic literary characters show us how to approach unsympathetic people in real life. snape is a brilliant example of what can be caused by failing to see the whole person - voldemort is evidently the only person who offers him a life-line, where dumbledore and the "good guys" in wizarding society do not. this is a lesson to us all - if we flatten people into good-and-therefore-worthy-of-help and bad-and-therefore-not, it’s a recipe for disaster...

but this is all very pretentious and philosophical. the main reason why i have no qualms about enjoying "bad" characters is because i’m not a cop.

the summary of the last point is - basically - that readers need to learn how to sit with discomfort in media, because discomfort within a fictional context is completely safe, and therefore it provides an outlet for people to think about themes or characters which are darker in a way which cannot cause actual harm.

fiction is not real life and fictional characters cannot harm you - and this is the case even if the fiction is about something which would or did materially harm you if it happened in real life. [this is doubly the case in harry potter because the harms upon which the series focuses are themselves fictional - the series’ blood-supremacy obviously reflects real-world examples of discrimination, but it is not something which any real person has actually experienced.]

this means that a reader’s reaction to something in fiction is always on them. authors have no responsibility to anticipate every single reader’s response to their writing - encountering something that upsets you in a fictional setting is your responsibility to deal with. [even if the author’s not tagged properly.]

snape may upset a reader for various reasons, some of which may be related to experiences of real world discrimination, but his existence cannot cause actual harm to any living person, because he and the society in which he lives are not real.

fictional crimes are not real crimes, and so, if someone tries to say that you shouldn’t enjoy reading about him because they don’t like it… they are a cop and you should have no respect for them. acab applies to the thought police too.

and knowing this gives us a powerful tool… i have no qualms about being criticised for liking bad characters because i just say acab and go on with my day.

just as you can’t cause anyone else material harm in your consumption of fiction, nor can anyone else cause you material harm just by criticising your choices - obviously, if they’re attempting to doxx you, or to cause any real-world repercussions because of your fanfiction tastes, that’s another matter - which means that you have the power to choose to be unbothered by unjustified criticism. it’s not even that hard! simply refuse to be upset!

curate your fandom experience without shame. post what you like. block and move on. filter assiduously. scroll past without engaging. don’t waste your time getting into fights. don’t answer comments which are rude. don’t feed trolls. delete messages. this is just harry potter!

and also be compassionate towards the fact that people don’t express themselves perfectly. if you are primed not to immediately get upset or consider yourself to be under attack, you will be able to read comments with more clarity, to look and see if you can find commonalities, and to answer them in a way which doesn’t escalate the situation.

[and always remember that a lot of the angriest and most righteous comments come from teenagers, and being a teenager is hell. be compassionate, as your fandom elders had compassion for you.]

[barcodeboyz]

My top 10 favorite South Park episodes, no one asked but here we go

10. With Apologies to Jesse Jackson

This is a controversial episode to put here because of how offensive it is, and truthfully, I didn't care too much for the A plot. But the B-plot makes up for it. Watching Cartman and a Midget fight to Get Down with the Sickness is so hilariously absurd.

9. You're Getting Old/Ass Burgers

This is the second/third episode I remember watching before I got into the show. I included them both in one spot because Ass Burgers is a continuation of You're Getting Old, but each have their own separate charm. I definitely shed a tear when Stan moved out to Fleetwood Mac's Landslide and split my sides laughing as Kyle yelled at Cartman for sticking the burgers up his ass. I also heavily relate to Stan's meltdown in class in Ass Burgers, because that's real emotion. An amazing storyline overall.

8. Make Love, Not Warcraft

I mentioned that the previous two episodes were some of my first episodes, but not THE first episode. That title goes to this episode. When I was born, my brother was 15, and as I grew up, I often watched him play World of Warcraft. So this episode is very nostalgic to me, not just because him and I watched it but because as someone who plays WOW nowadays (very inconsistently), it's so nostalgic to see how much has changed.

7. The Losing Edge

This is just a classic episode. The boys don't want to participate in baseball and try to get out of it by losing, but the other teams have the same idea. I think we all know who the real star of the episode is: Randy. I thought this was America!

6. Trapped in the Closet

Subtlety is completely ignored in this episode. As Stan is praised as the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard, his comments about Tom Cruise send him literally into the closet. I think my favorite bit in the episode is R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet verses, specifically when he pulls out a gun in Stan's room and everyone in the hallway runs away.

5. Major Boobage

This episode is... beautiful. The animation is impressive, and the story is hilarious as well. Kenny and Gerald cheesing and then getting into a fight, Cartman reliving the Holocaust with the cats, and the funny ass press conference given just solidify this episode as legendary.

4. Le Petit Tourette

This episode introduced my favorite one-off character, Thomas. But even more than that, it gave us a great story and a chance for us to see Cartman's plan blow up in his face. While it ultimately never came to fruition due to Kyle's actions, it's satisfying to know that he definitely revealed a deep secret or two in exchange for almost slandering minority groups on national TV.

3. Follow That Egg

I have vague memories of watching this episode as a kid, but I don't consider it as one of my firsts because I could only really recall them running through the crowd trying to save their grade. But it's a fantastic episode. Ms. Garrison's attempts to stop gay marriage from being legalized, to Stan's comical bitterness towards Kyle and Wendy, it all comes together and compliments each other well.

2. D-Yikes!

I didn't expect to get so personal on a South Park top 10 list, but it's the honest truth. South Park became a major comfort for me after my assault. And this was the first episode I watched that made me burst out laughing since the attack; Ms. Garrison screaming "scissor me timbers!" has got to be one of the funniest lines in the show's history. And overall, it's just a fun episode to watch.

1. Guitar Queero

This is an underrated masterpiece of an episode that more people should watch. The plot of the episode feels so fluid, and everything about it makes sense to me. The rise to stardom, falling to drugs (well, video games about drugs), losing it all and returning to give it one final shot just encompasses what South Park can really do when given the right tools. Maybe I'm biased because Season 11 is my favorite season, but something about this episode just really scratches my brain.

Anyways, that's my list! Thanks all for reading.

[fazar234]

Understanding Lanolin

(First time doing an analysis, so I hope y’all like it!)

Hey all, it’s been a minute hasn’t it?

With Issues 63 and 64 of the IDW comics for the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise having released, it’s caused quite a lot of division amongst the Sonic fanbase, in regard to one new character in particular: Lanolin the Sheep.

And hoo boy, it has not been pretty.

A while back, I sent an ask to a user by the name of @molinaskies (btw go check her out if you’re into analyses of Sonic’s character and Sonamy fanfics!) about her thoughts on Lanolin, and she replied with a post stating why she wasn’t a fan of her character.

Now, I believe that everyone has the right to like, dislike, or be neutral towards whatever or whoever they want, including Sonic characters. If you don’t like Lanolin, that’s totally fine by me and I respect your opinion.

However, due to all the ridiculous hate she has been receiving lately, I feel obligated as a Lanolin fan to state my own reasoning and analysis behind her character. As such, this post will be meant to serve as an understanding towards Lanolin and her character.

Now, before we go any further…

This is not meant to come off as forcing my opinion onto molinaskyes or anyone else! We all have the right to our own opinions, and we should all be allowed to like/dislike whatever characters we want to! This is just a post stating my opinion and reasoning behind Lanolin, nothing more, nothing less!

Alright, with that out of the way, let’s begin!

Who is Lanolin?

To put it short, she’s a sheep from the IDW comics who started out as a background character in the form of another Restoration volunteer and eventually worked her way up to the rank of a primary protagonist in Issue #57, taking on the role as leader of the Restoration’s new task force, the Diamond Cutters.

Her first ever appearance in the comics is Issue #2, where Sonic and Amy are doing a formidable job defending Riverside Village (Lanolin’s hometown), which is being hoarded by badniks, until Lanolin runs in, informing them of an incoming army from the west. She’d then help evacuate the citizens into the bunker and assist in taking down the army.

Since then, she’s made plenty of background appearances throughout the comics, helping citizens, taking care of various tasks at Restoration HQ, or just chilling (which, given her character, is pretty rare).

Lanolin’s Flaw

Fast-forward all the way to Issue #57, where Lanolin gets her chance in the spotlight, and from there, along with further issues, we get a better look at her character.

She gets startled quite easily, doesn’t approve of recklessness, and prefers to operate with a proper plan. She also has a more stoic and serious personality compared to the other characters, which I feel is a nice change of pace, and can come off as bossy to others (which I’ll dive more into later.)

She wasn’t like this in her previous appearances before 57, and I believe the reason can be attributed to the trauma the Metal Virus, as well as other minor disasters seen in the comics had on her. She doesn’t want anyone to feel scared and helpless again, which is why she formed the Diamond Cutters, and why she doesn’t seem to take well to things going wrong.

In Issue #58, she looked defeated because of the scouting of Eggperial City going wrong, and in Issue #63, she snapped at Sliver because of the training mission getting out of hand with the boulder incident (more on that in a second.)

Lanolin doesn’t know how to adapt to the unexpected, and it’s a flaw she’ll need to overcome in the future, or she may meet the same fate as a certain platypus.

Lanolin’s Perspective

Now then, onto what I’ve been wanting to talk about most: her actions and perspective in 63 and 64.

In the past three issues that have released thus far, we, the readers, have full knowledge of everything that’s been happening.

We know that Mimic has joined Clutch and disguised himself as Duo the Cat to infiltrate the Restoration and join the Diamond Cutters, so that he could get close enough to get revenge on Tangle and Whisper. We know that he sabotaged the team’s training session by kicking Silver (which Whisper managed to notice) and causing the boulders and the flood. And we know that he made Silver look bad by falling off the chair he was controlling and made it look like he had attacked him.

But Lanolin doesn’t.

From her perspective, Duo is just a new recruit who wants to make a difference and is expected to make a few mistakes. She sees him as someone she used to be. It’s why she took Duo’s side in Issue 63, when Silver accused Duo of ditching him while he was struggling to restrain the Giant Chopper from consuming him whole, because to her, Duo had only been to overwhelmed by the situation to do anything, and from her view, Silver was the one responsible for the accident, someone she had expected better control from, given his experience.

Now before you all go “OH WHAT DOES LANOLIN KNOW?! SHE’S JUST A NEWBIE AND SILVER’S THE EXPERT ON PSYCHOKINESIS! HE SAVED THE WORLD MULTIPLE TIMES!” Yes, we know he’s more talented than everyone gives him credit for. But Lanolin doesn’t. She doesn’t share the same history with him that everyone else does. If she did, she’d know that Silver would never lose control that easily unless something (or in this case, someone) sabotaged him, thus leading her to also suspect Duo.

And the same applies to 64. Lanolin asked Silver and Whisper for proof, they only responded by trying to assault who to her, was just an innocent individual who felt helpless and scared, something she never wanted anyone to feel. From her perspective, a powerful psychic and an experienced mercenary were accusing a new recruit of being some shapeshifting murderer, without even bothering so much as to offer a tad smidge of evidence that Duo was indeed a shapeshifting murderer.

And before you go: “WELL THAT DOESN’T EXCUSE HER ATTACKING WHISPER AND HER ATTITUDE!” Whisper literally made the first move by grabbing Lanolin’s arm! She was simply trying to defend herself and be rational, stating that they needed to talk about her problem as a team! As for her remark calling herself a soldier, this is one of her flaws, her bossiness, coming into play here! She’s not a perfect person, none of them are! She’s a flawed character, who’s experienced in certain aspects of leadership, but is still new to being a hero.

Silver accusing people at random isn’t anything new; we’ve seen it before in Sonic 06 and the Traitor Arc in the Archie Comics (which I personally haven’t read myself), and the reason why Whisper was too quick to act was because this is Mimic, the guy that killed the closest thing she had to a family! You really think she was just going to stand there and let him do it again? Yes, she should have acted reasonably but she let her emotions get the better of her. And it’s because of that that Duo was able to remove any suspicion.

And before you ask “WELL WHY DID LANOLIN VOTE TO KICK SILVER OUT BUT NOT WHISPER?! SHE ACCUSED DUO TOO!”, I beckon you all to look at this scene here.

Duo tricked everyone into thinking that Silver was the one who attacked him, not Whisper. Had Whisper been with Silver, it’s likely she would’ve been kicked out as well.

A villain’s plan to manipulate can only work if someone’s fallen for the bait, and Lanolin is indeed one of those people. I imagine once he gets caught, Lanolin’s gonna learn from this and she and Silver will make up and all will be good.

Lanolin and Tangle

One more thing that people’s miscomprehension has annoyed me about: the dynamic between Lanolin and Tangle.

In @molinaskies' post on Lanolin, she stated that Lanolin has an objective problem with Tangle and would go as far as to replace her. And I’m going to try to not sound too harsh here, but NO? SHE DOES NOT??

In Issue #58, Tangle was the one to comfort Lanolin when she felt defeated during the Eggperial City mission, and in Issue #59, Lanolin nearly sacrificed herself to save Tangle from the dimensional traps! And that whole gag with the pong-pong ball and Lanolin swatting it away in Issue #62 was literally just that: a gag! Lanolin definitely gets irritated by Tangle, but she doesn’t outright hate her! Would someone who wants to replace a teammate nearly get themselves killed to save said teammate?!

Conclusion

Wow, that was longer than I imagined.

I’m sorry if I ever came off as harsh during my analysis, but it just irks me that most of the fanbase won’t bother trying to see scenes from different perspectives, and it feels like they don’t tolerate flawed characters at all.

In the end, though, you’re all free to like or dislike Lanolin if you want. Everyone has the right to their own opinion. But at the very least, you should learn to properly comprehend perspectives and realize that none of these characters are perfect.

I hope my analysis brought you all some insight, and I’ll catch you all later.

[basementdwellerinthestars]

Welcome To The Starscape!

-Or whatever dramatic name you want to call it.

You can call me Nova! They/them, he/him pronouns if you will. I am an Adult content creator who's going to likely primarily be using this tumblr for my Main Project, with a few showings from minor things, now that certain things have finished. Which is,,, honestly the most melodramatic way I could have phrased that,,,

Moving on, you might be wondering 'what is this Main Project'? Well, let me introduce you to:

A Hero's Lament

(recently renamed to Heroes Are We and will be going by that title from now on)

Heroes are We started as a fanfic on December 30th, 2021, making it a few months shy of three months old at the time of writing thing (which, wow) and has settled at just around 280k words at time of completion.

This fanfic was my baby, and still is! It's developed to the point that it and its characters are almost entirely removed from their fandom counterparts (dsmp, if anyone was wondering).

In response, I have decided to pull a Twilight->50Shades move and turn HL into HAW, an original comic heavily inspired by the original. Many aspects will be kept, many will be changed, but it will still be, at its core, the fic we all know and love. It will, however, be a comic instead.

What Has Been Kept:

Backstories

There will be little to no tweaks here. I have fully fleshed out many characters' backstories, and am working on the rest of them off and on. A big change here will be that 90% of characters don't get their backstories told. I hope to remedy this. Will this add even more angst?

Yes, yes it will. But it will also add more fluff and more family moments, romantic moments, and character moments. I am not afraid to make this thing longer.

Powersets

Similarly to the last point, I will be changing basically nothing about the characters' powers, I'll just be using them more. For example, Tubbo (now known as Theo) does, in fact, have powers that aren't just Goat Boy (well, girl). Do I ever bring this up in the original fic? Not really, I barely even allude to it. This is going to change. Trust.

Major Plot Points

If I changed these, I would have been lying about keeping the core of the story. All arcs will remain as they are. The events will happen, just at a different pace. For example, The Pit Dwellers Arc. That one is going to have more build-up so it doesn't come out of nowhere. I'm essentially treating the fic like a Draft One. There will, again, likely be more arcs to fit in with the extra content.

Character Relationships

The Spider's Web family will still be a family, MD will still get a girlfriend, The MC will still have his love interest. I hope to flesh out these relationships more beyond the first one in this fic. I also really want to add more about the Hero Family here too.

Story Location

We will still be in the poorest district, still in a Hero focused society, these are core aspects of the fic. However, I am renaming like all of these things.

The numbered districts were a blatant Hunger Games reference, I have now given all those districts actual names. You know, like actual city districts have. The main city has a name too.

What Will Be Changed:

An overhaul of the writing

I'm much better now and So. Many. Characters were underutilized in the original fic.

Like seriously, every character that wasn't the MC was essentially left to rot. I am going to change that. Every character will have a role and every character will get the spotlight at some point.

I have so many personal criticisms about this fic I swear. Our vigilantes barely do any vigilante-ing, the mc's Other Backstory barely gets acknowledged, the characters beyond the mc barely do anything.

I get that it was writing in the MC's head, from his perspective, and the major focus of the story was on the process of recovering from trauma but jesus fucking christ. I can still do that while giving other characters attention. Well, now I can, because I have better writing skill.

Get ready to become a first draft Mr. Original Fanfic.

The Romance subplot

Fear not, it will be kept! I am lowkey in love with it but it sadly only exists in my head due to the previous point. It was not given enough (barely any) time to shine. According to some comments, that was okay because the writing made up for it but I know I can do better.

The Character Designs

Not that there were a lot of them in the main fic but the aspects that were didn't tend to be... very realistic for me to draw. The mc's four arms, for example, are going to be traded for a set of six (or eight) spider limbs. It's easier for me to draw. I definitely tried to keep the original arms but... guys they're just too clunky...

But also some characters got added design elements. Like Tubbo! (now known as Theo) Theo had horns in the original fic, now they're a full-on saytr. This has caused me a several tangents theorizing about saytr-inclusive mobility devices and also the theoretical microaggressions a pair of visibly hybrid-with-nonhuman-limbs poor teens would face in this world. Yeah, we're going that far.

Links

To finish off this lil introductory post, here are some links to relative posts made before this was.

Dream/Archangel's Design

Tommy/Jamie's Design

Tubbo/Theo's Design

The Original HL Fic

The Youtube Where I Might Post Content

The Ko-Fi Where You Can Donate Money And Commission Stuff

[kingbaguette]

[ Master post! ]

<Master post under the cut!>

*subject to change.

[ Info on the artist: ]

• Hello, I’ve been on Tumblr for two years now, and I have been attempting to gain support for my art, my works consist mostly of my passion projects.

•I will be making a comic soon!

- The comic is about Lmk, Redson. (My monkey kid fanfic I’ve uploaded on Ao3. I have stopped posting on Wattpad.)

• The artist is a Brit, so he may spell stuff diff or use slang that doesn’t make sense elsewhere. If you don’t know wtf they’re saying, please just ask!

•The artist is a minor, so please be respectful.

[ Fandoms: ]

•I have no mouth, and I must scream.

• Lego Monkie Kid.

- Comic and fic in process.

— Ao3: ‘The child born of flames’ [REWRITE].’

• Epic: The musical.

• AvA & AvM - Alan Becker

• The Amazing Digital Circus.

• Tmnt

-Rottmnt, Tmnt2k12 & etc.

— Fic name, Ao3: ‘A fallen star’. - Raphael, Rottmnt centric.

• Transformers.

-Tfp, Tfa, Tf1, G1.

• Hazbin hotel & Helluva Boss.

•Gravity Falls.

• Obey me: One master to rule them all.

[ Artist’s boundaries: ]

•My art is my own, and not public use. Nobody has permission to present it as their own, repost on other sites and/or copy it. But you can take inspiration if you want, as long as I am credited in post.

•I accept requests for art.

- I will draw fanart of any fandoms we share interest in, multiple characters, scenes, sketches, rendered drawings, etc. And oc’s are okay as long as I am given a photo or a description before hand. I will draw fluff, angst and I am okay with minor gore. (Scenes that are a little spicy, maybe, but only suggestive.) I’m more than happy to draw any poc, lgbtq+, and any religion. Maybe some animals, depends on my abilities. Mystic creatures are also welcome.

- I will not draw smut, organs or extremely severe gore. I won’t draw from a fandom I’m not familiar with, a ship I’m not comfortable with or anything illegal relationship wise. (I.E; pedophilia.) I will not draw any kind of hate art either.

•When I open commissions these boundaries will stay the same unless I have updated them.

Thank you for taking the time to read! (｡’▽’｡)♡

[roseworth]

im a little sick rn so im sorry if this doesnt make sense or sounds like the ramblings of a crazy person. but every once in a while i see people say that teen titans 2003 completely butchered rose's character and while i think thats true i feel like its also important to mention that. tt03 completely defined rose's character. dgmw she had plenty of good appearances beforehand (titans 99 rose my forever beloved) but teen titans IS her character

like she had showed up in deathstroke comics and mostly either didnt have much of a personality or was experiencing a lot of emotions given that she was having the worst week of her life so its hard to pinpoint an actual personality from that, then in titans she was a fun character but was entirely a side character that didnt have a lot to do. she was on two titans teams before tt03 but never went on a mission (unless u count that one ww issue she was in). not to mention her entire relationship with slade was "hes just kinda the guy that impregnated my mom then indirectly got her killed" so she didnt like him but she also didnt care all that much

but tt03. usually when geoff johns butchers a character he doesnt really give a reason for why their personality is different, but with rose there is a very clear explanation. in #0.5 despite its problems (mischaracterizing lili in the one (1) panel she appeared in and giving rose the. sigh. foster parents.) she was pretty much the same she had been in deathstroke comics, where she was a mostly average person with mild violent tendencies. then wade (same guy that killed her mom) came and murdered her foster parents in front of her, she was very obviously angry and was having a VERY emotionally charged moment. she was angry at the titans because they were the closest people nearby in that moment, then she wasnt angry at slade because he was the one handing her a gun to let her take her revenge. so we very clearly see what made her feel like slade was her only resort, then in issue #12 they say that slade is using the super soldier serum on her to keep her there. so everything is laid out pretty clearly. then ofc when she joins the team in #34 its pretty obvious that her personality is gonna be different bc shes just gotten out of being forced to work with slade against her will, then put on the teen titans where she feels like no one but eddie actually wants her there, but she cant leave because she thinks slade will find her again. shes angry and hurting and her life has been fundamentally changed

basically idk. tt03 shaped most of her personality, her relationship with slade, and her general outlook on life and actually gave a reason for why so much was changed. and before that she had been a pretty minor character, so teen titans gave her a chance to actually. be a character with motives. so while she is a different character in tt03 (though i'd also argue that she has a fairly similar personality in the deathstroke comics she'd been in) i dont think its entirely true to say that it was BAD for her character

[blackkatmagic]

Hey, blackkat!

I've been reading your star wars fanfictions for a while now and I'm seriously intrigued by all of them. My favorite is running with lightning feet and I'm currently reading efface the footprints in the sands--poor Master Kolar...

Anyway, I really wonder how you approach writing. You seem to be able to write very consistently and keep track of many stories all at once, which are things I admire very much about you. Would you be able to give some advice on that?

Also, I very much love your characterization of more 'minor' (less appearance in canon) characters and how you breathe life into them with your dialogue. Really make me wonder how you make that out--what do you consider, or do the characterization/dialogue just pop up, fleshing themselves out?

Yeah, I really hope you don't mind me asking these. Again, love your writing very much. Would continue to read your stories always~~ Thank you for sharing them (and putting all your effort into writing them!)

Hi! I definitely don't mind, and I've answered similar questions before in my writing advice tag, if you want to scroll through some other answers that might be worded better.

For how I approach writing...the inconvenient answer is that it's mostly practice. I've been giving myself a goal of 500 words every day for the last....10-ish years, probably? Just consistently sitting down and doing a thing, writing without worrying about quality and only quantity, with lots of WIPs always going at the same time, really helps in figuring out how to juggle them. I usually keep a file of vague notes, one doc for each WIP with a bunch of keywords and ideas I want to hit eventually, and plot twists I'm aiming for, though I don't ever really outline things, and that helps a lot with keeping track, too.

As far as characterization of minor characters goes, that's the part I enjoy most about writing, and it's one of the easier parts for me, so I'm not sure I'm the best at putting it into words. But basically, you have to get to the very core of how you see the character - what their baseline personality is, what motivates them, what their goals are. It's something that can change between fics (which I think is one of the joys of minor characters; you don't have to stick to one defined interpretation), but it is something you have to nail down, imo. It also takes some filling in the gaps with headcanon and some leaps in logic.

Take Agen for example: canon gives us the information that he lost his padawan on Geonosis, incorporated Tan's lightsaber crystal into his own, and is an incredible swordsman but too blunt and aggressive to be diplomatic, while still being very loyal to the Council/Order. He gets called "the Council's attack dog" in the comics. Also, in the wider universe, we know that Zabraks have a reputation for being aggressive/warlike, and at one point Qui-Gon calls Maul it, even though he has to know what Zabraks are.

Those are all the canon facts. If you go back and fill in the gaps: Agen is someone who's grieving deeply, and he's incredibly devoted. He uses Tan's lightsaber crystal against Palpatine, which means he's sentimental, and he's not willing to speak against the Order in public, so he's at least that tactful. At the same time, he has no patience for people who get in his way, and he's willing to use force to cut through them. He believes in other Jedi until they irrevocably prove themselves traitors, and then he's stern and willing to remove them by whatever means. At the same time, he's very aware of his reputation, and he knows what people say about him/other Zabraks, but he's stubborn enough (at peace with himself enough) that he's not going to change.

From that sort of character summary, you can figure out the way Agen talks pretty easily. He's blunt, and he doesn't always think about the impact of his words, but he can be compassionate and thoughtful, particularly given his own grief. He's willing to defend anyone, and he doesn't make a fuss but always tends towards action - that means short sentences, usually directly to the point with no niceties. He's polite, because that's usually the fastest way to achieve something, but he's not overly deferential. He has a sense of humor, but most people miss it because he's so blunt.

Taking a character and dissecting them like that is something I have a lot of fun doing, which, well. I'm a therapist irl, so that probably helps. But I think it's very much just about breaking a character down into component parts and applying them to whatever you're writing - if you understand why someone reacts a certain way, it's a thousand times easier to figure out how they're going to react in a new situation. And after that, getting them to sound right, getting your dialogue to fit - it's all about practice.

[radroller]

HANK PYM COSTUME RATINGS

At long last, here are my thoughts on the many looks and identities of Marvel’s own Hank Pym!!! Being a fan of this guy is a real rollercoaster, but his costumes are always so great and interesting, ive wanted to talk about them for ages!!! As some of his looks kinda blend together Ive tried to stick with the bare essentials (barring ones i especially like) but you can generally assume that i rate most of the suits of a given identity the same unless i specifically state otherwise. So here we go!!!!!

Ant-Man 10/10

What can i say? You can’t make an ant themed character much cooler than this. The irresistible 60s scifi charm of his big chrome helmet, the red, black, and blue color scheme with patterns that say “i am a super scientist” but gloves that say “im attemptint to look visually interesting.” Naturally Hank forgets he’s wearing some of the coolest headgear in comics. Ant-Man has had some good looks and updates but the charm of this one is pretty undeniable.

Giant Man 8/10

I think we can all agree that Giant Man kinda sucks, but damn if he didnt look cool! I guess he kept the antennae to keep some Ant-Man functionality, but you rarely see him using it. That’s fine though, it gives him a cool and distinct silhouette. It’s strange, if this were a new look for him as Ant Man, id call it a more considerable downgrade, yet Hank becoming Giant Man is a downgrade in just about every sense of the word. And even so, i LOVE Giant Man! It’s a conundrum!

Giant Man Redux: 6/10

I think they were trying to recapture the scifi tech charm of Ant-Man with this one, and it does kinda work! I think my main issue with this one is that it doesnt stick around long enough to really win me over. There are far more minor and insignificant variations of Hank’s suits that stick around way longer than this one. And id say this suit’s pretty damn significant, he left the Avengers for the the first time wearing this shit! I wish they’d played around with it some more.

Goliath: 8/10

Goliath is extremely solid. I have to wonder if Marvel was conscious of Giant Man being a loser that they felt the need to rebrand him like this, there’s little significant changeover from his previous identity other than color scheme and name besides him being stuck at 10 ft tall for a bit. I LOVE the addition of the goggles btw, one of my earliest exposures to that design trope i love so much.

The weird thing with Goliath is that they make him look more and more like Giant Man while refusing to change his name. Like again i know the guy got his ass best plenty of times but when you add antennae and red to his costume….that’s just Giant Man! But whatever the case, i give Goliath and all of his iterations a solid thumbs up.

Yellowjacket: 10/10

The PINNACLE as far as im concerned. What if you took Ant-Man and refined his charming but clunky scifi elements into something sleek, aerodynamic, and downright badass, while still having bright colors? You get Yellowjacket! I can’t stress how much i loved this suit as a kid. Do you know how rare it is to have a primarily yellow superhero who looks cool? It’s mostly just Wolverine, and he didn’t even exist at this point! I also like how it sorta resembles Wasp’s original outfit, though you probably wouldn’t get a chance to compare given Jan’s ever shifting wardrobe. It’s really a shame how maligned the Yellowjacket identity is because id love to see this design again, but its lasting association with the worst shit ever done with Hank pretty much made sure that’ll never happen.

West Coast Avengers: -/10

It’s funny that what is arguably the height of Hank’s superhero career comes from when he’s vehemently not a superhero anymore. Thus, in terms of costumes…well this isnt a costume! But for what it is, it’s great. A nice practical super science getup. But i have trouble rating it on the same scale as the rest. Just know that I love it!

90s Hank: 5/10

I was ready to rip this thing a new one, but tbh it isnt bad. The only thing that keeps it from being truly good is the stupid pouches, but i cant outright call it bad when it’s basically a worse version of Atlas from Thunderbolts’ costume without them. It’s passable.

Giant Man???: 10/10

Yeah, I know. Confusing, isnt it? Well listen, regardless of names and costumes and what have you, this is by far my favorite variation on the original Goliath look. The red goggles just do it for me! I love primary color schemes and i prefer a touch of red to a touch of yellow, yknow?

Goliath??????: 8/10

So NOW he can be Goliath. That makes perfect sense. Yeesh. This suit is cool though i like it. It’s based on a Goliath suit Jan designed for Hank, but by then he’d had become Yellowjacket, so Hawkeye became Goliath for a while instead. It’s a nice callback, and while I don’t actually care for that Goliath look, there’s no way a redesign by George Perez at the height of his career and abilities is gonna be anything less than great.

Wasp: 7/10

Was Mighty Avengers good? I read a couple of issues and remembered enjoying it, but that was when i hated every other Avengers book do idk if that means it was actually good, yknow? Anyway while losing Jan as the Wasp and gaining Hank is about as big a net loss as i can think of, this is NOT a bad look. There are only a few gripes i feel: I get what they were going for with the design on his chest but it makes him look like he’s The Stickbug and not The Wasp. Secondly, i think the goggles are kinda lame compared to some of his other eye/headwear he’s sported throughout the years. That’s about it! Not bad for the worst Wasp in the main continuity!

[connyscomics]

Rain by Jocelyn C. DiDomenick 😺

Trans rep: 10/10

General enjoyment: 9/10

Age rating: 10+

Okay so I finally finished this one and... OHMYGODIMINLOVE. Rain is a webcomic with over 40 chapters (7 print volumes I think) and is seriously one of the best comics I've ever read. I could go on an on about all of the things I love about this one, but for yall's sanity as well as my own, I'm just going to talk about a couple things. Oh and a quick plot description: The comic follows a trans girl named rain as she attends a religious high school and meets other queer people. A lot of stuff happens in the many chapters of this comic, and it variously touches on pretty much everything that one might encounter as a young queer person, both positive and negative.

Okay, so the first highlight for me is the main character herself. I really like her character and as a young trans person navigating being transfem in high school I really connected with a lot of her story. In particular I appreciated the representation of a character who is mostly cis-passing BUT has to go to great lengths to make this happen (at least from the not-so-supportive people in her life). I feel like with trans rep you either get like people who have an uncharacteristically easy time passing or you have people who are portrayed as like a grotesque caricature of trans people (not to say that non-passing trans women are gross or that passing is needs the goal for everyone, but the visual of the like hyper-masculine figure with messy makeup and a dress isn't usually benign). Anyways, Rain is a great main character.

Another character I want to talk about is Ky/Kylie, they are genderfluid and in my opinion done really well. I honestly related to their character a lot because even though I'm technically not genderfluid, I have very fluid desires as far as presenting. I Ky/Kylie starts out not really understanding their own identity and just being like "idk I'm a girl but sometimes I dress up like a guy" and then as the story progresses becomes more confident in their identity as a genderfluid person. The story also considers the struggles of dating for genderfluid people, with a love interest liking them more for one gender identity than another but eventually growing to understand that he can't pick and choose which gender identity he wants Ky/Kylie to have at any moment.

I should probably wrap this up before I start going into every character I love. In general, what makes this story so great is that there is a character for pretty much anyone to connect with (yes, even cishet allies), and all of the characters are done pretty well. I do have a couple minor considerations though. First, the author changed a lot as a person while writing this (I mean she started writing in 2010 and finished literally this year) so the beginning of the comic is definitely a bit outdated with some of its narratives. Though, I think it ends up working out because it generally reads as the characters learning and developing as people, which is something that comics don't always show because of a fear of saying things that are now seen as insensitive. The only other thing is that there are kind a disproportionate number of queer people in Rains community, which at times feels a bit unrealistic given that shes literally at a catholic school, but honestly I can't complain that much cause all of the characters are so much fun!!! Sorry for the extra long review yall, I just had so much to say about this one! 😺