#I just think this one works better with a little context

[meagancandraw]

I'm a little curious, what are your thoughts on the what if Eclipse and Sun merged video? I've been trying to come up with a personality for them but have drawn a blank. I'm also stuck on a name, so far it's between Nova and Solis.

(Context: instead of merging like in the video, Sun mucked up the eviction spell that got rid of Eclipse the first time.)

I don't have any strong feelings towards the video. I guess I was hoping for Sun's side to come through a little more, buuuut I also completely understand why they'd be so angry at Moon (speaking of, that episode reminded me of how much I hated the way Moon used to act lol)

As for your au, since he'd have both Sun and Eclipse's memories, while he'd be able to understand not only why Eclipse did what he did, and his feelings on it, he'd also know how it affected Sun and Moon, especially the former. Personality wise, I think he'd have Eclipse's smarts and resentment/anger towards Moon, but also Sun's kindness and love for his family. I think this would make Nova/Solis (I can't decide a name either aaaaaa) someone who, while willing to give Moon a second chance, also makes it clear that he will NOT tolerate Moon treating him the way he treated Sun in the past. He also doesn't fully forgive Moon for abandoning Eclipse in Sun's head either, even if he understands Moon didn't intend for that. He still loves Moon, but he's going to have to put in a lot of work to show that he meant what he said about doing better

I can also see Nova/Solis feeling the need to atone for what Eclipse did. One way he starts is by apologizing to Lunar for the way Eclipse treated him, and promising to be a better brother towards him. He'd probably also make finding Bloodmoon a higher priority

But yeah, those are just my thoughts, anyway!

[spocks-husband]

Okay, so I just finished JLA: The Nail because I thought it sounded like a fun concept-- if you're unfamiliar, TL:DR, it's an Elseworld in which the Kent family never finds Clark. There's a lot of things I can say about this miniseries, like... A lot... And not in a good way... This is honest to God one of the worst comics I've ever read, hands down... But I think this scene takes the cake.

For a little bit of context, both Robin and Batgirl are violently killed by the Joker and Bruce is forced to watch. And when I say violent, I mean like... It's not even shown because it's apparently so intense. This obviously really fucks him up, and he goes into a several hour long dissociative state in the immediate aftermath.

In an effort to make him feel better, Selina Kyle, in her infinite wisdom, I cannot make this shit up, does the following:

I already don't like Selina for a couple reasons, but this is CRAZY.

And the even crazier thing is that it ACTUALLY WORKS?? THE NEXT TIME WE SEE BRUCE HE'S TOTALLY FINE AND READY TO GO FIGHT CRIME AGAIN. THIS SCENE IS NEVER DISCUSSED AGAIN. BARBARA AND DICK'S DEATHS AREN'T EVEN BROUGHT UP AGAIN.

This isn't just me being a BatCat hater-- this is GENUINELY unhinged. I can't get over it.

She COSPLAYS AS HIS DEAD SON TO TELL HIM TO GET OFF HIS ASS. AND HE HAS A BREAKDOWN. AND THEN EVERYONE ACTS LIKE ITS NORMAL AND FINE AND NOT AN INSANE THING TO DO????

(For the record, this is like mega out of character for everyone involved and I'm not treating it as genuine critique of Selina's character bc it's just really bad writing, I'm just sharing because it's funny)

[b1asho]

Erm, oc comic? Just click on the images idk how to change the image position formatting here yet :(

This is what I've been doing all this time, I need to practice putting these things together. I like some things and had fun, but it also looks kind of yucky.

Oh well

Featured here are Rinshi, a muttreazik, and their boss/sister Maro, a Sundyne who's been (violently) ousted from her extremely politically important clan (for terrorism and attempted assassination :D )

The two are hiding from authorities in the SEZ, and not having a great time in general.

Here's a buncha other info, aka i want to talk about my wretched ocs :

-Rinshi is a mancer, meaning they're a muttreazik with a degree of control over matter around them (think telekinesis). Their blue eyes aren't the result of my choice of coloring, thats the color they are all the time (a highly highly unusual color for muttreazik, even in the 'other' color category).

Rinshi is also a 'they' in the same way you'd call an animal an 'it' rather than a 'he' or 'she' if that makes sense. They don't think of themself as nonbibary in the human sense, instead it's more of an "outside of the binary and therefore a nonperson" way that Cerest use for xenos. It's the only option that's not male/female/he/she that they're aware of in this point in their life

Maro is a she (and VERY upset that it means she can't ascend to God emperor)

Rinshi is hunting with a nail that they’re controlling with their mind because that’s a lot easier than chasing down the alien rats yourself.

Normally this would be very easy for them but they’re kind of going through it right now, thus the major space-out and eye-bleed at the end (which normally happens to mancers who either overextend themselves or try to do stuff without any energy support from the body)

Not all Cerest-homeplanet animals have a decentralized nervous system like Cerest themselves do (such as these two animals, who have all their thinking meat in their head), but either way a shard of metal through the face isn’t good for anything

There are pockets of Cerest wildlife in the SEZ if you look for them hard enough, which Rinshi has to do because they’re currently in the outer reaches of it away from any inhabited districts where you could just buy/steal meat products. They're spending a considerable amount of time doing this since they're trying to keep a large hypercarnivore alive right now.

Maro got her face and torso cut up pretty bad during her.uh. Incident. Luckily Cerest heal fast, though infection and only eating rats has complicated and prolonged things. They’re currently living in an old habitat pod, which she can hardly leave thanks to the healing process (which has left her pretty much unable to walk. If she could, she'd definitely be the one doing the hunting because she has fewer qualms about killing things than rinshi does.)

This conversation is pretty out of character for her, but like she said, it's boring spending most of your time asleep in a garbage heap rather than pursuing your ambitions of ruling the world. Thankfully, she can always just ask her trusty retainer about things they don’t want to talk about.

‘et kerusit’ is just the Cerest version of like ‘my liege’ but specifically in the Sundyne female context and specifically for someone in Maro’s (former) rank/position in her (former) clan. "Princess" is also a pretty close analog but neither really sounded right so I made up some words. "Retainer” is the closest word I could find for what Rinshi is to Maro, and it fits fairly well (there is probably a better word out there but i like the old-timey knight vibe) they were originally employed to her clan as basically her little assistant and mandatory friend/bodygaurd/ally/etc. This happened mostly as an insult to her because that role should normally fall to a fellow sundyne and not a 'lesser species', but she has made it work.

I'm still testing this out but the Cerest language conventions are also why the question marks are out front most of the time, they don't change tone to indicate a question and instead just say an "I'm asking you a question" word at the start.

Rinshi also has a sort of stutter no matter what language they're speaking, with different words and sounds causing prolongations or repetitions. They didn't have any kind of support for the issue growing up, so theyre not great at managing it. So that's why some of their words are like that

The aforementioned rank difference is also why Maro gets 2 << instead of 1 when speaking (she's using a different enunciation of words to indicate her status, as is Rinshi. Basically ï for royalty i for commoner, or something. If they were speaking a Drecu dialect rather than a Sundyne one, their words would be in these things -> [[ ) .

As I’ve mentioned up there, they see each other more like siblings in their own mini clan (but she definitely calls the shots in their relationship )

Muttreazik think rebirth is real and they’re kind of right (at least within their own species). Rinshi does NOT want to dwell on where they used to live but those ideas were drilled in at a very young age.

[florencechase]

So I came across the Mayfair Witches thing with Lestat and Felix, and like pretty much everyone on here I was bummed but then I though about it for a very long time, went through the books again and… here’s how I think they can still make it work. Just as a disclaimer though, I’ve only fully read IWTV and TVL, and am currently like 1/3 through QOTD, so if there’s anything in the books after that that disproves my theory I’m sorry! But since the Lestat/Felix arc takes place towards the end of IWTV, I thought I’d still give it a go.

So the main issue here that people bring up is that if Lestat taught Felix to “cull the herd”, he can’t be book Lestat because book Lestat admits to only killing the “evildoers”, so why would he tell Felix to be so merciless? The answer: it’s complicated.

Lestat, the book and the show version, is unfortunately (or fortunately because that’s part of what makes him so interesting) a man who often does the opposite of what he says. I took a closer look at his first moments with Gabrielle after he turns her, and we have a similar situation in which he’s teaching her how to kill. Here’s an excerpt from it:

“I found a victim as soon as we had crossed the river […] [a]nd as I lured the victim out of the tavern, as I teased him, maddened him, and then took him, I knew I was showing off for her, making it a little crueler, more playful. And when the kill came, it had an intensity to it that left me spent afterwards.” (TVL, p. 147)

When he’s teaching others how to kill, he likes to show off. Simple as that. I’m sure the victim he chose was a criminal, like most his victims, but the point is he never told Gabrielle that. To her knowledge what Lestat just did was brutally murder some random man. Two pages later we have the following passage when Gabrielle makes her first kill and it’s the guy on the horse she ends up stealing the clothes from:

“I was shaken. The innocence of her victims didn’t trouble her. She didn’t fight my moral battles. But then I didn’t fight them anymore either, so why should I judge her? Yet the ease witch which she slew the young man – gracefully breaking his neck when the little drink she took was not enough to kill him – angered me tough it had been extremely exciting to watch. She was colder than I. She was better at all of it, I thought. Magnus had said, “Show no mercy.” But had he meant us to kill when we did not have to kill?” (TVL, pp. 149-150)

Lestat obviously doesn’t feel comfortable killing innocent people, but there’s not one scene in which he either tells someone he’s having moral dilemmas with it, or tells others they shouldn’t kill innocent people. It’s his thing, and it’s his struggle, but he never shares it until he writes about it in TVL. Here’s another excerpt that highlights this:

“When [Louis] says I played with innocent strangers, befriending them and then killing them, how was he to know that I hunted almost exclusively among the gamblers, the thieves, and the killers, being more faithful to my unspoken vow to kill the evildoer than even I had hoped I would be?” (TVL, pp. 434-435)

The key phrase here is “how was he to know”, so Louis had no idea! All this time he spent with Louis, and he never told him that’s what he was doing! Which brings me back to the show, to the reunion moment where Lestat tells Louis “I don’t like to point out my virtues.”

Of course, in the context he’s talking about not telling him he saved him at the trial, but it’s a pretty general statement about himself and it’s true, so far, in the book. He only kills innocent people, never tells anyone about it. He saves Louis at the trial, never tells anyone about it. And while I’ve seen some theories about how him not telling Louis he saved him was part of some pact he made with Armand, I’m just going to take things at face value here until the show proves otherwise.

Lestat always claims he’s “evil” in the books, but he does a whole bunch of stuff to disprove that. I think part of why he doesn’t let people know his good deeds is because there’s a part of him that wants to be perceived as the “evil monster” that he sees himself as. It’s the biggest irony ever for Lestat out of all vampires to claim he’s evil when he’s never acted with malicious intent (in the books, but I would even say in the show as well but the show is more complex in that regard).

The big thing about Lestat, which would also set him apart from show!Louis is that he does his thing and lets others do their thing. He doesn’t interfere with others, doesn’t tell them how to live their lives “the correct way”. Sure, he has many heated discussions about it with Nicki, but those are not him telling Nicki he should live according to his philosophy just because he thinks it’s the correct way to view life. Nicki hates himself at that point, which just gets worse with his way of thinking, and Lestat’s trying to pull him out of that. Nicki’s worldview is actively harmful to him and at least part of the reason for his eventual demise. But that’s not really relevant here, so I’m just going to leave it at that.

Which brings me back to Felix and Lestat. Did he, at some point, go out of his shack to kill people to show Felix how to do it? Not necessarily. The show doesn’t say he did, he could’ve simply just told him how to do it, he did after all figure it out himself too. It’s pretty intuitive I suppose for a vampire, and even when Claudia does her first kill Lestat isn’t shown killing first. He waits in the car with Louis and Claudia manages just fine.

Lestat knows what’s in their nature as vampires, but he himself doesn’t follow it at all times. It’s implied in one of the excerpts above, when he says he’s “being more faithful to [his]unspoken vow to kill the evildoer than even [he] had hoped [he] would be.” He’s not holding himself to any strict rules or high standards here. He’s trying his best, and if he takes an innocent life, he probably feels uncomfortable about it (while he secretly enjoys the feeling) but he’s probably just like “oh well.”

And with Felix, it could absolutely be a situation of do as I say, not as I do. He teaches him what’s in their nature, but he himself chooses to do differently. That, to me, sounds quite a lot like book!Lestat.

Besides, another aspect I’d like to point out is the definition of the word “cull”. Since English isn’t my native language, I had to look it up to really get all the nuances it implies. Here’s what google says:

“Selective slaughter”. Now here’s where I might be wrong and please correct me if I am, but since there are parallels to Darwin in MW, couldn’t that also imply selectively killing a particular group of people? As in, weed out the evildoers, or the weakest who don’t have a chance of survival anyways (as Lestat does after Louis tries to kill him)? The latter would make sense with the Darwin parallel. What we see in MW may be skewed through Felix’ perspective. I haven’t watched MW, but these things happen all the time in IWTV. Killing mercilessly may be only his interpretation of what Lestat said.

TL;DR: Lestat understands vampiric nature well enough to teach others how to kill “like a vampire” when he himself still chooses to do differently. He also doesn’t “like to point out [his] virtues” which is why he never actually told anyone he only kills criminals.

[bloobydabloob]

About isolation

[rystiel]

that annoying moment when getting left for dead in the trunk of a car in your 20s comes back to haunt you 40 years later (take a shot every time ford says “stanley”)

[kuromi-hoemie]

hhhh talking about my writing was fun but 30 tags is not enough.. yes i have 3 major influences but i have minor ones too.. it is a lovechild of my favorite things.. writing is so fun and i have no self control or a concept of pacing myself i will sit there for 16 hours and get hit with every status effect but by god does it all just flow out of me. I've always been a music person yes but i also used to write a lot into early adulthood until The Incident™

but i am ready 2 jump back into it. i think comics are a great middle ground between the two mediums so i don't get As into writing bc i kind of started going crazy last time 🫡 i can take a more structured approach to it that forces me to pace myself and think about it differently. i love art.... i love making things i love knowing how to do things i love knowing how to play things i love having so many creative outlets, even if i don't do a lot of them regularly lol. it is enriching 😳 and nice to know that it's always there to come back to when u want.

[icterid-rubus]

I’ve got a bizarre and predictable cycle of making friends getting very excited about hanging out and seeing them a lot and then becoming terrified and tired of hanging out and it’s annoying

[skrunksthatwunk]

really fun letting all of my favorite shows take turns being the "i can't think about it i can't think about it i can't think about it!!" bingewatch during finals season/associated crunch times. they're being inducted into a society

[therevengeoffrankenstein]

openly weeping at the idea of someone genuinely hating soul punk.

[dravidious]

You're more amazing than sickness

Lost Caverns of Ixalan is coming out on Arena tomorrow and I've avoided looking up any spoilers, aside from a few individual cards I stumbled across that didn't have any reminder text, so I have no idea what the new mechanics are. I looked up a list of the NAMES of the mechanics on the mtg fandom wiki, and I decided to make mechanics based on those names to see how close I get and also because it's fun.

Also I made this card for the descend mechanic at first but I didn't like the mechanic. How dare WotC make such a parasitic mechanic, they should really hire better designers smh. Also I realized that craft would probably be more interesting with artifacts that have tap abilities.

[strohller27]

.

[misskamelie]

Decided to believe my listening comprehension is improving by being able to somewhat follow a radio podcast on a topic I know something about

[sabertoothwalrus]

tips for getting people to like your ocs

*disclaimer: this is based on what’s worked for me, aka an artist that likes to make comics/storyboards. so this advice is directed at people who do that

you can do things like this:

Which is fun! Character sheets like this are great, especially for personal reference! But frankly, I don’t think most people engage with this (at least I personally don’t). You could have the coolest character in the world, but it will be harder for most people to feel invested when they’re presented so neutrally like this.

My main piece of advice is: get better at writing.

That might sound harsh when said like that, but let me explain what I mean! (Not trying to imply you’re bad at writing either!)

What I tend to do is just throw characters into situations with as little handholding as I can. Give enough context that readers can follow along, but don’t feel like they’re being explained to.

what can you learn about the characters through their designs alone? (age, personality, economic status, occupation, etc)

what can you learn about the characters’ relationship though their interactions alone? (are they close? familial? romantic? is there hostility? are they tense/relaxed?)

what are the characters currently doing? what were they doing previously (how long have they been talking)? what are they going to do next? can you convey this without dialogue?

how do they feel about what they are doing? are they content? focused? over/understimulated? would they rather be doing something else?

where are they? does it matter? would establishing a setting in at least one panel clarify the scene? is there anything in the enviroment that could tell some of the story?

what time of day is it? what time of year is it? what is the weather like?

Now, with all this in mind, I'm going to give you another example. I'm going to use completely brand new characters for the sake of the experiment, so you won't have any bias (aka I can’t use Protagonist from above, since you already know all about him).

Did this get more of an emotional response from you than the first example? Why do you think so? Who are these characters? How do they know each other? What else can you infer about them? What happened? Who is "she"?

Now, you don't have to actually answer all those questions. But think about them! You can tell people a whole lot about your characters without ever showing them a list of their likes and dislikes.

Obviously, comics aren't the only way to get people invested in your original characters! But regardless, easily digestible formats will grab people's attention faster than huge blocks of text, and comics are a lot less work than doing wholeass storyboards.

Now go and share your ocs with the world!!!

[backpackingspace]

Nobody tells you that sometimes healing is swallowing the anxiety. It's continuing on because you have to. It's spending hours doing deep deliberate breaths bc otherwise you'll hyperventilate and you're at work. And while it is an improvement from being hospitalized bc you've been hyperventilating so long you've been hospitalized. It's bitter and painful and feelings like swallowing acid as your inner child screams as she downs in it wondering why nobody is noticing but nobody is noticing because you're still smiling still talking still working like everything is fine.

[arolesbianism]

If I ever do get properly into dst character modding I like have to make an oni character mod at some point, but the issue is Id want it to be an Olivia mod so bad but also Nails is as far as I'm aware the only legal character name wise and as such it feels like it has to be them, y'know for the bit. But also I have already written too much Olivia dst dialogue and I need an excuse to use it damnit