#I should color more Near panels!

[italictext]

I colored a manga panel!

Near version 2

[dceasesd]

why juni ba’s the boy wonder has my favorite jason characterization of any contemporary comic run: a needlessly in-depth analysis (pt.3)

go check out part 1 and part 2 if you'd like! this is a long one, sorry guys.

if you haven't already i'd recommend you check out pt. 1 & pt. 2 (linked above), but if you haven't checked them out i've been going over some of the main things people have been criticizing ba's characterization for: 1. the typical boiling down of jason's character to "the angry one" 2. his lack of strategy going into the fight with the demon is out-of-character 3. the neighbor's kid interaction

alright, so this last point is purely based off of one page of the entire comic: the one where the child of one of jason's neighbors is dragged inside his home when his mother see's jason coming.

first off, i love this page. it might be my favorite page in the entire issue. everything about it is great. just thought i needed to say that.

anyway, there's some people who are seeing this page and reading it as "jason protects kids! that's one of his big things! why are they scared of him?"

here's the thing, though: the kid isn't scared of jason, the mom is. the kid is literally playing dress up as the red hood-- he's not scared of jason, if anything he's trying to replicate him. little kids dress up as their heroes all the time; why is this kid any different? it doesn't really make sense for the kid to dress up of something he's scared of (not everyone is as weird bruce wayne), especially a real person that could be a real threat rather than a concept. i doubt you see many kids in gotham dressing up as the joker or something, because that's just asking for trouble.

the dress-up honestly seems like a ploy for attention to me. the kid clearly knows that red hood lives in his building (which is honestly so funny. take off the mask jason you're giving you're position away (actually this is a really good instance for analysis but i'm determined to not go on a tangent)). if the kid knows red hood lives in his building, what better way to get his attention that dressing up as him and playing pretend? if the kid was scared of him, he wouldn't want to draw that sort of attention to himself. if he had a sort of hero-worshippy thing going on like i suspect, then he would want to get jason's attention. to sum it up,

it's the mom who pulls him away when jason nears, because she either a) perceives him as a threat, b) doesn't want her kid to try and replicate him even more, or, the most likely option, both! the kid isn't scared of him, but the mother believes they should be.

once again, we come back to the whole perception vs. reality theme i talked about in part one! we've come full circle, everyone!

when looking at the neighborhood's perspective of the red hood, ba gives us a few contradictory examples. there's the kid and the mother, obviously, but there's also a slew of other citizens who interact with him at the beginning of the issue, both in fear and camaraderie.

the unhoused man and the people outside of his building clearly have a familiarity and are comfortable with him, while the shopkeeper is terrified and literally has a banned poster on his wall featuring jason (i am so curious what he did to deserve that, if he even did anything at all). from this, it appears that jason's reputation teeters between fearful and familiar-- a sentiment that also colors jason's relationship with his family.

furthermore, this concept underscores just how lonely jason is-- one of the only good relationships he had in his current life was his fucking landlord, for gods sake, and he's dead.

i think it's important to note that jason doesn't respond to the friendly greetings from the men-- he could attempt to build camaraderie, the roots are there, but he chooses not to. he could work to try and show the mother that her son is safe with him, but he chooses not to. why? jason is obviously lonely (as ba states in the panel below) and he caves pretty easily when damian asks him for help (both of them are so desperate for human interaction its tragic). so why does he distant himself from the community?

obviously it is in part due to the vigilante lifestyle, but it is also jason's perception of himself and how he believes others perceive him, especially in regards to his family (ba is literally hitting readers in the head with that theme baseball bat).

he doesn't see that the kid with the mask looks up to him, all he sees is the mother pulling him away. he sees the banned poster in the store. and, as ba narrates, "he was sure he'd been forgotten about" by his family. utrh is jason's twisted way of attempting to reach out and connect with bruce, and obviously that doesn't work-- so he chooses loneliness over rejection.

like in part one, though, damian refutes this idea by describing bruce's perspective, showing how what jason believes differs from actuality. bruce hasn't forgotten about him and doesn't hate him, as he suspected, but instead harbors guilt over the situation and desires to make it better, which jason must come to understand to be able to open the locked door and begin to move past his trauma.

so, that's what the little kid in the red hood outfit looks like to me. i actually have a lot more i'd like to say about the boy wonder, especially in regards to the whole "door to my past life" thing and what ba does with lighting and blocking in his artwork, so i may do a little post on that as well! i was gonna try and shove it into this one, but i've run out of room! i hope you guys liked my analysis, if you'd like to chat about the boy wonder or any other comics, my dms, asks, and reblogs are happily open! thanks for reading! :)) <3

pt. 1 / pt. 2

[thatguywhodoesstuff]

Something Else I Just Noticed

I was rewatching the Inside Out 2 trailer to try and pick up any little details that might have been missed when I noticed this:

This frame is the split second before Ennui is introduced in the trailer. Notice how the control panel is in Ennui’s colors despite her not being anywhere near it, not to mention no one is touching it.

This brief scene made me realize something: Ennui isn’t just messing around on her phone as a nod to the stereotypical “phoneaholic teenager” trope. Ennui’s smart phone allows her to work the control panel wirelessly, meaning she doesn’t need to get off of the couch to do her job.

I don’t know if anyone has picked up on this yet & I may be grasping at straws, but I felt like more people should be aware of this little detail.

[heartofroses112]

Our Own Choices First Draft — Fox and Bly confronting Cody

Bly and Fox shared one last, long look before Bly activated the panel. The doors slid open on near silent tracks. There, across the room, standing by the thick transparisteel window and gazing out into the ever-changing space outside of their ship, stood the Commander. Cody. His helmet was off, nowhere to be seen in the large room.

The way he held himself, arms clasped behind his back and stance strong, was so obviously Cody. Bly didn’t know how he had never seen it before. Well, he had seen it. He’d just thought it impossible. Fox had found reports, had heard it directly from the slimeball Emperor himself of Cody’s death. But here he was, standing before them, fighting alongside them and their brothers for fourteen long years without so much as a hint to his identity.

Bly and Fox made their way across the room, footsteps muffled but just loud enough as to give their movement away. Bly rubbed his arms, wishing for the warmth of his armor. Space was cold. But the plastoid was constricting. It wouldn’t allow him to drag Cody into the bone-crushing hug he had been yearning for since the dramatic asshole had whipped off his helmet and insulted Palpatine in so many colorful ways that he must have spent years coming up with them.

Bly stepped up to Cody’s left side, staring out into space along with him. Fox stopped on Cody’s right, and for several long moments, the three of them stood in silence.

Finally, Bly could not take anymore. “Why?” he said.

“There’re a dozen answers to that question. All depends on what you’re asking.”

Bly choked on a laugh. He’d forgotten how snarky Cody chose to be when it was just their batch. And Rex, but, well, he was practically a part of their batch at this point. He had been, at least. “You know exactly what I’m asking.”

“Then you know my answer.”

“Cody.” Fox cut in, sharp and straight to the point. Out of the corner of his eye, Bly watched the full-body shudder that wracked through Cody. Bly ignored the tight pang in his chest at the hidden motion. “We thought you were dead.”

“And so did I.”

Bly frowned. “We’ve been here for the past two years at least. That’s plenty of time when you could’ve told us. Hell, what about your own men from the 212th? They’ve been here since the beginning, and they’ve been mourning their commander this whole time.”

“Until I arrived on that planet and saw your faces, I was convinced you were both dead.” Cody still hadn’t looked at them. “After the Order went out… I looked for you. But Rex was killed when they turned on Tano. Wolffe was confirmed MIA almost immediately. Fox, you, you were always at the Chancellor’s side, I couldn’t risk that you would ever join me.”

His voice was flat and without any inflection. “So that left you, Bly. But a week later, all I found were reports that you ate your blaster.”

Fox sucked in a breath.

“And I thought about… I thought that maybe… I wondered if you made the only right choice left.” His whispered words should have died at their ears. Instead, they ricocheted around the cold, steel room. “Bly, you were the one I wanted to see most. Because you…” Cody sighed, eyes falling shut even as his head tilted backward. “You were the only one who could understand.”

“Understand what?” Bly thought he knew. There was really only one thing Cody could have meant by that. But how could Bly have never known before now?

Cody’s eyes opened, gaze locked on the rivets along the outer wall. “You loved your general. And I lov—” He cut himself off, tearing his eyes away to instead stare at the ground. “I love—” He tried again.

“Oh, Cody.” Bly’s heart was in his throat, breaking into pieces for the pain that was still so clearly etched across his brother’s face. There was a reason Cody wore his helmet more than the rest of them; he’d never been able to hide his true feelings when he was just so damn expressive. It’s how Wolffe had known if he had pushed Cody too far when they were still just cadets. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Rex told me to wait,” he said simply. “He thought it would be funny if you all saw me and… If you guessed. It wasn’t hard, apparently.” He loosed a breath from between his teeth. “Course, then the Order went out.”

“Cody, I’m so sorry.” Again, Cody shuddered at the sound of his name. Bly longed to drag his brother into his arms. But Cody wasn’t ready for that yet, not after so many years with no more contact than the mission required.

“It can’t be changed.”

“Doesn’t mean it hurts any less,” Fox murmured, stepping slightly closer to Cody. “And you’ve kept this inside for so long.”

“Why wouldn’t you tell us?” Bly asked, suddenly so full of rage at the self-imposed exile his brother placed himself in. “We’ve been here for years now, Cody. And it’s not just us. What about everyone from the 212th? They’ve been mourning their commander, their brother for so long and you’ve just been here the whole kriffing time?”

“I will not expect you to understand my actions.”

“Damnit, Codes, we want to talk to you, not the karking Commander! We’ve been around him enough.” Fox glowered at the side of Cody’s head. But Cody still didn’t look at either of them.

“He’s all that’s left.” Cody’s voice was devoid of emotion. He returned to looking out the viewport, the light of distant stars reflecting on his face. “Cody died the day he shot down his General and felt no remorse.”

“It was the chips,” Fox tried.

“I was still the one to follow the Order. And then my brothers were dying around me, and my batchmates were gone, and there was no one left to understand how I felt, and there was so much riding on my fucking shoulders. So, you do not get to come in here and lecture me. There is nothing else I have wanted more than to look at my brothers without a karking helmet between us, to actually be with them and not just be the karking Commander!”

Cody’s chest heaved, his fists clenched tight against his thighs. Fox and Bly exchanged a look, the same expression of worry and hurt flashing between them. Cody turned and paced several steps away from them. “You have no idea,” he started, voice low and tightly controlled, “how hard it has been this past decade, to see you, my closest brothers, and not be able to lessen your grief, to not hold you close and feel safe.”

“No one is making you do this.” Bly felt as if he were pleading, begging a brother to step back, step off the ledge.

Cody sighed, eyes still squeezed shut. “I know. But… I don’t deserve… I can’t… How can I be happy, Bly, when I killed him? I love, I loved, I loved him, and he loved me too. How can I ever forgive myself when the last thought he probably ever had was of how the men he trusted with his life were now the ones taking it?”

Bly stared at his brother. He had so much pent-up… self-hatred. Disgust with himself. Loathing of his actions that had not been his own actions at all. There was a distinct prickling at the back of Bly’s eyes as he watched Cody desperately try to hold the pieces of himself together.

“Cody.” Fox took a step toward Cody.

Cody’s shoulders shook. “Stop,” he bit out.

“Cody,” Fox said again.

Cody turned his head away, eyes still shut. His scar, the scar that was oh so distinctive, the scar that marked him as Cody, the scar Bly had searched for in vain on every brother he met, caught the faint light from above. “Stop it.”

“Let yourself be you again, Cody,” Bly said, closing the distance between them. The pair of them were once more in reach of their lost brother. “Doing this… hiding yourself away in repentance, it’s only letting Palpatine win.”

Cody flinched, but still, he didn’t look at them.

Fox pushed on. “I didn’t know your General well. None of us did, there… there wasn’t time. But I know he fought for our individuality, our sense of self that so much of the Republic tried to wash away. You’ve always been Cody, our Cody. But you never seemed so much like yourself, so confident in who you were and what you fought for, than after you joined Kenobi.”

“He’s dead now,” Cody whispered with a tremble in his voice.

“So, carry on his legacy.” Bly searched his brother’s face, familiar lines that meant upset and anger and stress, tightness in his jaw that meant stubbornness and fear. “Cody, won’t you look at us?”

“The helmet’s gone, Cody,” Fox murmured. “Let us see you. Look at us, please.”

Perhaps it was the ‘please.’ Fox never said it before, not unless the world was ending, or a brother was dying. Slowly, so slowly, Cody turned his head, entire body still trembling. His eyes slid open, and then it seemed as if he couldn’t get enough, gaze flickering between Bly and Fox and never staying still for more than a moment.

“Won’t it be so much more powerful,” Fox said, “when Palpatine is brought down by Cody and Fox and Bly, not just the Commander and his nameless clones?”

“Kenobi and… and Aayla.” Bly stopped, suddenly unable to speak beyond the burning in his throat. He dragged in a breath and continued. “They loved us, Cody. They loved us for who we are. Don’t erase that. Live as Cody, and do it for him. Do it for us, for all the brothers you have rescued. Please, we… we need you. We need Cody far more than we have ever needed the Commander.”

Cody heaved a broken sob, teeth tight against the sound in an attempt to keep it inside. He looked at the wall again, hands clenched around the edges of his armor. Bly fell silent, just watching his brother. If Cody was to come back to them… it would have to be on his own terms. Cajoling and pushing had never worked to make Cody see sense. He always was too stubborn for his own good.

“The Commander is all I know anymore.”

Bly’s heart threatened to break in two. His vision grew blurry. He blinked, hard.

Fox looked similarly affected. But he swallowed. Then he raised his chin and stared Cody down. “If that’s true, if… if you don’t know how to be Cody anymore, then why did you reveal yourself to Palpatine? Why now, after so many years of hiding your face?”

Cody looked at Fox, brow furrowed. “He was threatening you,” Cody said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Fox froze in place. “He scares the shit out of you, Fox, and nothing does that. No one is allowed to do that.” Cody shrugged, eyes still dancing over Fox’s face. “I thought I’d give him a new target to hate.”

Fox still wasn’t moving. Cody sighed and looked away, fingers still digging into his armor. “I… I should go. There’s a lot to do, now that I’ve karked everything up and—”

“Cody,” Fox breathed. “Oh, Cody, Cody, Cody.” He reached out, hands shaking as he brushed the side of Cody’s plastoid-covered arms. Cody stiffened but did not move as Fox dragged him in, crushing him against his chest. Fox was still repeating Cody’s name, burying his face against Cody’s hair, hands tight around his back.

Cody gasped, eyes wide and body trembling like a leaf in a storm. He crumbled into Fox’s hold, pressing his face against Fox’s neck as they clung to each other. “Cody, Cody, my Cody,” Fox continued to whisper like a prayer.

Bly surged forward, sweeping both his brothers into his arms. Bly and Fox squeezed Cody between them, hard plastoid hampering them only slightly. Bly’s forehead rest against the back of Cody’s neck, and his skin felt hot and feverish, a sign of the long, long years without a touch of comfort and love.

Bly couldn’t hold back the tears that trickled down his cheeks, melting down Cody’s neck and into the blacks under his armor. Cody continued to tremble, hands clutching desperately at Fox even as he pressed back into Bly.

“We’re here, Cody. We’re here, we’re here,” Bly murmured. “We have you. Let go, Cody, we have you.”

And so, Cody let go, the grief and anger and hatred that had been building up for over a decade with no outlet finally pouring from him in devastating waves. Cody did not cry, of that Bly was sure. But he trembled and shook and shattered beneath their hands, dry sobs and broken apologies, apologies that Bly meant to return but just could not find the words.

Bly had failed Cody for years, had failed him the day Bly had faked his death and ran from the Empire. But he would not fail him any longer. Cody would never feel alone again, would never feel the same lack of choice and want. Bly would make sure of it. Fox would as well, and the remainder of the 212th, and the 501st, and every brother in between.

For the first time in many, many years, Bly thought of the Jedi, of his Jedi, with only solid resolve. I promise, Aayla. And General Kenobi, if you can hear me. I won’t let him down. I’ll keep him safe. And we’ll avenge you. Palpatine will suffer for all he’s done, to you and to Cody and to everyone else. But for now, Bly kept his batchmates close and held them as if nothing else in the galaxy mattered. Nothing else ever would.

pt 1 | pt 2

[gamesception]

Sception Reads Cass Cain #42

Batgirl (2000) #21 - December 2001 Writer: Kelley Puckett……….Pencils: Damion Scott Inks: Robert Campanella…..Colors: Gregory Wright

My short break turned into a 6 month hiatus, but the first issue of the new Cass Batgirl run releasing tomorrow (at time of writing this) has finally given me the push to start this project up again. While this isn't the most consequential issue to come back to, it is a good one, and it has Stephanie in it, and references og Cass's initial dynamic with Shiva, which is topical since the new book will at least start with a focus on modern Cass's relationship with her mother.

Most of the usual team here this time, only we have a different Wright on the colors than usual. Which did give me a brief moment of panic that I'd been attributing colors to the wrong person, but no, most of the previous issues specifically credit Jason Wright, but this one specifically credits Gregory.

The issue opens with Cass preparing for a training routine, and I have to point out that the evolution of Damion Scott's art style that I brought up in a reply to a post that was going around recently (link) regarding inconsistency in Cass's appearance was already well underway by issue 21 of her ongoing.

The training sequence itself is pretty extreme as Cassandra demolishes dozens of dummies and a few (potentially load bearing?) stone columns in her cave...

Before nearly taking Spoiler's head off and making herself sick with the effort of stopping her own punch and/or the realization of what almost just happened. It's a cool-then-funny sequence which also reinforces how Cassandra is capable of absolutely destroying people, but that she very much doesn't want to actually hurt anyone, traits that will of course be key to events later in the issue because Kelley Puckett is just good like that.

Anyway, Steph is here because Babs sent her to get Cass and bring her to the Clock Tower, since Cass wasn't responding to calls while engrossed in her hours-long training regimen.

*I wish I didn't have to, Mirthful Mike.

But yeah, this issue is a sort of tie in to Joker: Last Laugh, a miniseries / crossover event from 2001 that frankly I didn't much care for. Unfortunately we'll have to look at an issue from the main miniseries run next time, but for the moment Bab's summary is all that needs to be relevant for the current issue.

The more interesting thing going on in the same panel is the little exchange between Babs and Cass about whether Cass has been studying her super villain files. With Cass answering 'no' in a kind of embarrassed way, which Barbara reads as Cass being embarrassed about not doing her homework, something Babs obviously things Cass ~should~ be doing but that she's kind of given up on Cass ever caring enough ~to~ do, with Cass just not caring about the part of the job that she's not good at / the part of the job that Barbara does. It's a whole thing., and a point of tension that at this point in the comic is slowly building and then later will be forgotten about and unmentioned for a huge run of issues and then even later than that will explode out of nowhere. Again with my recurring comment about this book being fantastic on the build up of character arcs and not as great on the follow through.

BUT ANYWAY, Babs is completely misreading this situation, because Cass isn't embarrassed because she think she's been caught not doing something she should, she's visibly embarrassed (love the art from Scott here, again with managing a very expressive Cass despite being in the full face covering mask) because she thinks she's been caught doing something she shouldn't.

One of the first rules Bruce gave her was 'no costumed criminals'. She's not supposed to be fighting supervillains or metahumans or any other weirdos with special abilities or gimmicks that might invalidate her body-reading ability, which we've already established is her primary and near only defensive skill. At least, that's the in universe justification for why this book mostly avoids big scenery chewing bad guys who would otherwise distract from the intended tone and core themes.

Now, Bruce would have intended that as "don't fight them, but absolutely study them so you know what you're dealing with if you have do", but Cass is very much the sort of kid who would have heard that as 'supervillains are entirely off limits, I don't want you to fight them, or look at them, or even think about them', like the whole subject is a taboo - one she'll absolutely break, but that she'll feel guilty about breaking and try to hide from authority figures, because that's how she deals with guilt in general, lying (poorly) about it, trying to hide it. Because she doesn't think she deserves to be Batgirl, so she's completely insecure about it and sure she's going to be fired the moment anyone sees through her.

And that's especially the case given the reason she's been so carefully studying the particular supervillains she has - super powered martial artists. The same reason she's been training so hard that she's destroying her cave, missing calls from Barbara, and nearly killing unexpected guests who wander into her sessions, but that's a subject the comic comes back to later.

This habit / character flaw / broken coping mechanism of lying to hide guilt (misplaced or otherwise) is just so compelling to me. The way the lies taint every relationship, distancing the character from anyone they should be able to rely on, the way the they inevitably build up as the character feels guilty about the lies themselves and makes up more lies to hide that, like a matryoshka doll, or a tower of cards waiting to fall, the way that by the time other characters start pulling on the strings thinking they know what's going on there's a usually a cascade of revelations each more shocking than the last. Alphys in Undertale is a prime example of this.

The disaster when everything falls apart is usually the best part of this dynamic, and sadly Batgirl (2000) will choose to subvert that part (again, fantastic set up, but never quite following through), but we aren't there yet.

Anyway, it's just a couple short lines of dialog across as many panels sharing space with a blunt info-dump, but it's a really good character beat speaking to both Cass's flaws - the whole lying and hiding anything she feels guilty about - and Barbara's - assuming she already knows what's going on and not digging any further or following up (which only enables Cass's lying and hiding) because the reason she assumes makes her annoyed and angry (which Cass of course picks up on, reinforcing her feelings of guilt and insecurity).

It's a complicated and unhealthy dynamic between two people that otherwise genuinely love each other, and the tension and angst that comes from that is also fantastic.

The original Cass Cain Batgirl run was full of this drama that comes from making these variously maladjusted characters care about each other and exploring the fraught relationship dynamics that result. That more than anything else is what made Batgirl (2000) great and that post-flashpoint Cass has been lacking (the parts I've read anyway, still need to get around to that Outsiders run). Even my constant complaints about the flanderization of latter day David Cain basically boil down to this, because original Cass's relationship with Cain was overflowing with this sort of tension.

Anyway, that's a ton of talk about two panels, lets see if I can rush through the rest of the issue a bit more quickly...

...

So Babs gives a reason why Cass and Steph aren't wanted in this otherwise all-hands-on-deck emergency situation, a reason that's a little bit dumb, but way less dumb than the reason we'll get next time, and Cass says she's fine with it, which takes Babs by surprise. You can see the fight she was ready to have about it, you can see how confused she is when Cass just says OK, because again Scott is just so good at these facial expressions. Babs, or at least this version of her, is susceptible to making inaccurate assumptions about people, about Cass in particular, but she's a smart enough cookie to notice when Cass acts outside of those assumptions and start questioning whether something else is going on.

So Cass goes to train in Bab's star trek holodeck (I admit that thing was a bit too sci fi for a gotham book for my tastes), and refuses to let Steph sit in, which calls back the scene earlier to reinforce it in the readers memory before what happens later.

The power goes out, and Cass comes out sheepishly, this miserable look on her face (again! So good!), because she thinks she broke the holo room, and there's no way to hide & lie her way around that, but the problem isn't Cass...

It's this guy, Shadow Thief (jokerized), a villain I know nothing about and have never seen or read outside of this comic. He's got some weird tech that, I think, drains electricity from nearby devices to make himself (but not his weapons) intangible?

Scott draws him in an extra exaggerated, cartoony, and rubbery style, which works here to emphasize his weird powers and/or jokerization, but does kind of foreshadow how all of his comic art starts to look more like that over time - which again isn't bad (as you can see in the panel here it actually looks pretty cool), but I still prefer the earlier style.

Anyway, Shadow Thief also a notable supervillain martial artist, so Cass actually has been studying his files, and knows exactly how to deal with him -

Catching the throwing stars he throws at them with her fingers (look at her smile! She's loving this!)

Throwing out some cocky banter to play on his ego

Grabbing his very tangible sword to draw him to the roof so Babs and Steph aren't caught in their fight.

All great stuff.

And yeah, Barbara has absolutely picked up that somethings going on with Cass. Eventually it will be revealed that she just already knows about the fight with Shiva, and I don't think we ever see how she found out, but this is pretty clearly where she started to suspect something and it's not too much of a stretch to jump from that initial suspicion to just knowing everything, at least not with this character.

Even without his sword, Shadow Thief has special martial arts techniques that somehow let him sort of hit things despite his Shadow Field making him intangible....

And now Cass does, too.

One of the usual principles of early Batgirl (2000) - no supervillains - serves to keep the focus tight on the more emotional themes of the book. Cass is so far out of the league of any of the typical criminals she runs up against that fights are always over in a flash, keeping action scenes short and punchy and leaving more space in the book for other things. But it is nice, every once in a while, to make an exception for a more drawn out and elaborate fight scene like this, where Cass can really show her skills.

But the real drama of this issue happens when Babs finds a way to remotely deactivate Shadow Thief's intangibility field mid battle. That 'oh, shit' face is so good.

All Cass's joy gone in an instant. She was having so much fun. She was so happy to have a real opponent she could cut loose on instead of inanimate dummies or holograms. Someone good enough to keep up with her, and with a defensive ability effective enough that she could put her full skills to use without having to worry about actually hurting them. Yeah, Shadow Thief's a villain, but they were playing with each other, trading banter. Having fun. Despite Shadow Thief's murderous intent, this was almost more of a friendly sparring match than a real fight.

But once again she gets a stark reminder of what her skills were originally meant for, what she was originally meant for. Earlier in the issue Cass was throwing up at the thought that she even could have hurt Stephanie, and now she probably killed this guy. And there won't be any hiding this - forget what might happen if Bruce finds out about the guy she murdered as a child, he 100% is going to find out about this man that she murdered, on the roof of Barbara's safe house, while wearing his symbol. Her entire life is falling apart, here.

But Stephanie is here. And helps Cass save him. Helps her save herself.

And of course Cass wants to hide what happened from Barbara. And of course Stephanie, being a good friend, keeps her secret, even if it probably would have been better to talk to Barbara about what happened and what Cass is feeling about it. Then again, if Babs knew it might have gotten back around to Bruce, and that ~wouldn't~ have been a healing conversation.

And the issue ends with a Flashback to Cass agreeing to fight Shiva, a real fight, to the death, using all of their killing skills. An bargain struck many issues back, so this is the reminder to readers that the fight is coming up soon, only a few issues away now. The final page is this panel of Cass back in her cave, with Shiva's file open, a video recording of her fighting on loop, as Cass sits with her face in shadow. She isn't going to fight to kill Shiva. She can't. So Shiva is absolutely going to kill her.

So yeah, a strong issue to come back to, catching us up on the overal serial plot of the book at the time, but also strongly grounded in original Cass's core emotional themes and the intricate dynamics of some of her core relationships, including now to Stephanie, with this being a huge early moment of vulnerability from Cass and support from Steph pushing them from like work friends who pal around some times to real friends who rely on each other.

And despite making exceptions to include a super villain and extended fight scene and callback to an ongoing serial narrative arc, this issue still mostly adheres to the core early Batgirl (2000) playbook.

It tells a complete story in a single issue; tightly focused on Cass's core character themes, motivations, and frought, layered relationships; expressed mostly through the artwork with relatively minimal reliance on dialog and even less on narration, with an overall sombre or even tragic tone punctuated with moments of levity or heartfelt human connection.

I'm writing this before having a chance to read the first issue of Cass's new ongoing, but more than anything else, more than reverting her canon to the pre-flashpoint history (which I don't even want, post-flashpoint Cass is a new character and I'm sure she has fans who care about her as much as I cared about original Cass), even more than restoring the original version of David Cain, what I hope for most from the new book is a return to this kind of storytelling.

[milla984]

And in the Beginning...

Summary: after spending a day at D.C.’s most renowned multifandom convention Spencer and Garcia stop for a coffee. Spoiler alert - our fave Resident Genius dumps their order on Reader.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x gn!reader (Reader is a sci-fi buff)

Category: fluff

TW/CW: swearing, mentions of food, some Star Wars-related talk

Word Count: 2k

Once again, a ginormous THANK YOU to @drgenius-reid for taking the time to beta-read the first draft (aka witnessing the horror)!

The following work is my entry for @imagining-in-the-margins' CM Meet Cute (or not) Challenge and is also part of the series Spencer Reid, my beloved

“Highlight of the day?! Jamie Hewlett signing my copy of The Cream of Tank Girl! In you face, Mr. 'Superman Can Fly'...!”

The woman carrying a Chinese paper umbrella rummaged through her purse to retrieve a wallet and pay at the coffee truck parked outside the convention center; stylish two-tone glasses matched the army green jumpsuit with a teddy bear patch on her right leg and the blue mandarin collar button-down shirt she was wearing, and her blond hair was tied up in a pair of small side buns.

The tall man beside her chuckled as he picked up two cups. “I don’t know if I should be more impressed or worried.”

“Why?! We made a deal and it’s perfect: he can have Sci-Fi-Gate, I’m keeping WashCon.”

“Sci-Fi-Gate has amazing Star Trek guests, though…”

A long and colorful scarf was wrapped around his neck and a deep red cravat necktie peeked out of the hem of a plaid design vest, combined with a single-breasted brown coat and a pair of grey pants. 

“I can't believe you would really choose the Captains of the Enterprise panel over my emotional stability,” she frowned, paying zero attention to the cosplayer in a trenchcoat with a pair of black wings attached to their back she was about to brush past.

When the feathers smacked her cheek she pulled back, the tips of her umbrella almost poking the tall guy dressed as Doctor Who in the eye; the sudden movement startled the cosplayer and a rapid swing of their dark wings created a commotion in the crowd of people waiting for their turn to order. In the confusion that followed, a random shoulder bumped into yours and pushed you out of the line and off the sidewalk, right in front of the Fourth Doctor - who was struggling to maintain his Fedora in place and watch where he was going at the same time.

Needless to say, he ended up failing at both.

“Oh my God, are you okay?” the blond woman asked. 

“I’m so sorry, SO SO SORRY—” the tall guy apologized simultaneously and she cut him off, rushing to your side.

“Are you alright? Are you hurt?”

The frantic exchange prompted your brain to whoosh into light speed mode to elaborate and discharge the ‘Ah, shit!!’ and ‘wait… is this iced macchiato?!?!’ inputs in favor of a more suitable reaction at the sight of the considerable amount of caffeine soaking your hoodie.

“... I think I’m okay.”  

“First-aid manuals suggest removing all clothes or jewelry near the affected area within moments after the spillage of a hot liquid,” the tall guy said, and the woman gasped in shock. 

“Please tell me you didn’t get burned! Once I got this non-fat steamed white chocolate vani—”

“I’m fine,” you growled a bit. 

Someone behind you was snickering and, despite the relief of not having sustained serious injuries, the attention was already making you feel uncomfortable.

“Scalds are caused by sources of humid heat and certain types of fibers retain the water, which can be responsible for additional damage to the skin,” the tall guy explained again, speaking faster than anyone you had ever heard.

You tucked your shirt in your jeans and raised an eyebrow in his direction. “Let me guess: you’re a doctor.” 

“Well… uhm, yes, this is my…” he faltered, unable to tell if you were referencing his costume as a pun or not. “I am, actually.”

“Not that kind of doctor,” the woman added.

She sighed as soon as she realized you were standing there speechless, drenched in coffee, your gaze wandering back and forth between them. “I’m so sorry…”

“They should be more careful with the lids. I think I got lucky,” you muttered through gritted teeth as you pulled the zip down.

Thanks to the decision to splurge some money on yourself, earlier on, you had something to replace your soiled hoodie with. The Fourth Doctor looked away and focused his attention on the cups he was still holding in his hands; before he threw them in the nearest trashcan he inspected their content, confirming he’d fortunately spilled on you a combination of 98% half-caf iced caramel macchiato and just 2% regular hot americano.

The woman was still clasping the handle of her umbrella. “Listen, we were about to check out this itsy-bitsy lovely Indian place ‘round the corner, maybe you should come with us. You know… to try and get cleaned up a little.” 

You dug into the shopping bag at your feet, taking a sealed package out to rip the plastic film wrapped around a brown sweatshirt with a stylized front print of the panoramic view of the desert, Jabba the Hutt’s palace and twin suns on Tatooine, and put it on. 

“No offense, but my parents taught me to never follow strangers.” 

“None taken,” the tall guy replied, “they were absolutely right. According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, about 90,000 individuals are reported missing in the U.S. every year and the National Institute of Justice estimates that approximately 4,400 unidentified bodies are recovered annually.”  

For the second time in less than five minutes, you considered the possibility he could truly be from Gallifrey. You also wondered if he was aware of his perfect facial structure: everything about his demeanor indicated he wasn’t too skilled in the art of charming people using his sculpted jawline and lean figure. 

“... do you always quote statistics about murders and kidnappings like it’s a casual topic of conversation?”  

His eyes got even bigger, showing a hint of gold on the inside. “It was merely an observation—”

“Yeah, he… does that,” the woman came to his rescue, “and even if it sounds bad, trust me it’s- it's part of his job. Our job. Except, I don’t deal with the scary, disturbing, yucky stuff.”

Your question wasn’t meant to come out in such a sarcastic tone. “You’re cops?!”

“FBI. Tech Analyst and Behavioral Analysis Unit,” she explained, and the tall guy waved a silent greeting at you. 

Even though the chance of running into the Bureau personnel stationed in D.C., at some point, wasn’t unreasonable, ‘two FBI agents walk into a multifandom convention dressed as characters from sci-fi TV shows’ could have easily been the beginning of a bad joke. 

Plus, it was hard to picture the Fourth Doctor as a G-Man. “What’s your Ph.D. in, exactly?”

“I have a Ph.D. in Mathematics. And Chemistry, and Engineering. And I hold BAs in Psychology, Sociology and Philosophy.”

“Google him. Spencer Reid, B-A-U,” the woman suggested after a short pause, in response to your skeptical expression.

Judging by her tone she was daring you to, as if the situation wasn’t already giving off major The Twilight Zone vibes… and yet, instead of bidding them an unenthusiastic farewell, you pulled out your phone to type his name. 

A plethora of results popped on the screen seconds later, so you first clicked on the link titled BAU’s newest member. 

“With three doctorate degrees from Caltech already, and a staggering IQ of 187 as well as an eidetic memory there is no psychological exam or test the FBI could put in front of him he could not ace,” the piece said about newly-recruited Spencer Reid.

“When I ask why he chose Caltech over MIT and Stanford, he quickly runs down a list of Professors he had a desire to study with. He makes no mention of the weather or girls,” an older article reported.

You skipped through at least a dozen mentions of SSA Reid’s outstanding performances in the field, then a PDF document, property of the California Institute of Technology, caught your interest and you read the title aloud. 

“Identifying non-obvious relationship—” 

“Non-obvious relationship factors using cluster-weighted modeling and geographic regression,” he recited by heart, “that's my Engineering dissertation.”

He was too prepared on the subject and too adorably peculiar to be an impostor posing as a genius FBI agent for kicks, during the weekend; you picked his Fedora off the ground as a peace offering. 

“Seems like you’re a wunderkind, Doctor Reid.”

Spencer lowered his chin so he could mask the rush of blood to his cheeks and his friend giggled, gently linking arms with you. 

“Now, there’s something relevant we need to discuss, pronto… how do you feel about veg biryani?”

An hour and a half proved to be all the time you needed to form a solid conviction that Spencer Reid going on a spiel about the original blueprints of a fictional space station was the best thing since sliced bread.

“It’s part of the iconic imagery Lucas wanted to establish, there’s no health and safety. And don’t forget it was originally designed by the Geonosians.”

You snorted at the mention of the classic ‘designed by a flying alien species’ argument. “That’s not an excuse! Even if the Geonosians designed it, they knew it was meant to be used by humanoid creatures.”

After leaving the restaurant, where you had insisted on paying for your share - much to Garcia's dismay, you’d walked back to the convention center’s parking lot and now you were waiting by your car for Penelope to get hers. As you had recently discovered, she loved mugs, old Italian movies and playing the ukulele; Spencer wasn’t as outgoing and chatty, especially about his private life, but Star Wars was for sure one of his numerous areas of expertise.

“TIE fighters don’t have a proper defense system and the original prototype even lacked structural integrity to support atmospheric flight. The Empire doesn't care about casualties, it’s safe to think they never bothered to install a guardrail or other appropriate safety measures because to them the Death Star technicians are expendable.”

“Okay… solid theory,” you admitted, making him smile as he wiped his forehead to get rid of a lock of curly hair.

“Thank you. It’s nice to have a discussion with someone who knows about the Geonosians. Or the Death Star. It only happened twice but I’ve had people asking me what that was.”

When the convertible Cadillac with a plastic Hawaiian lei tied to the rear-view mirror stopped inches from you, Garcia - behind the steering wheel - proudly gestured at the extension of her eccentric personality.

“Meet Esther. Isn’t she fab?”

You wolf whistled your appreciation, gliding your fingertips over the leather upholstery and orange body paint. “Quick question: how much do you think I’d get if I sued two FBI agents for… damages, let’s say?!”

Penelope produced a fluffy pen out of the glove compartment and scribbled something on the back of a PetMAC receipt she handed it to you. 

“Sweet pea, if I were you I'd settle for a lifetime of free IT support.”

“I’ll take it,” you said, “I’m kind of tired of being bullied by my own laptop.”

She stared at you for a moment before her face lit up, like a girl on a trip to a four-story candy shop. “... have you ever been to Baltimore ComicCon?!” she asked out of the blue while Spencer plopped himself down on the passenger seat.

You shook your head. “Do you guys—”

“We should totally go together!!” Garcia proposed. Or rather, declared.

In all honesty, the prospect of attending another convention on your own was depressing and you’d given up on the one in Maryland for that specific reason; you turned to Spencer for his approval, too, and he nodded, maybe because he knew there was no way of stopping Garcia if she had her mind set on a specific goal.  

“Baltimore it is, then…?!”

Penelope shot you a smug grin. “Keep in touch. We still owe you a nice dinner and ComicCon’s not up until September, I’d hate to run a background check on your license plate to find you.”

You couldn’t help but laugh at the idea and saluted them goodbye as they drove off, Esther’s taillights shining bright red.

What a weird Saturday. Meeting a real life genius and the quirkiest FBI agent ever came with a price, and one of your favorite hoodies was most likely beyond salvaging. You needed to know if Spencer Reid was well worth it.

Garcia’s words then echoed in your ears, so you sat in your car and unlocked your phone, scrolling through the most recent Google searches: you had a lot of reading to do. 

@matthew-gray-gubler-lover, @thisiscalmanditsdoctorreid, @pretty-boys-book-club, @spookydrreid, @f-me-reid, @foxy-eva, @scorpiofangirl1109, @a-potato-wearing-plaid, @cynbx, @reidsbookclub, @nagemasstuff, @hotchsdharma, @reidmainbitch, @lizzylynch1, @will-grahams-eyes, @padawancat97

»»»— read pinned post for taglist info —«««

[a-devious-route]

Thank you so much for answering my question. The animations like the ones you have in your Ben Barnes gallery catch my eye (that would be the third avatar). The animations of Lee Dong Wook's avatars too. The first one above is beautiful. Have an excellent day <3

Hello again dear anonymous person!

Well, it's nothing fancy, but I made a short video. I recorded the steps to make this kind of animation! I hope it helps you! Unfortunately, my Photoshop is in French. But here are the steps will be available bellow the video :

1) You have to open your avatar (jpg or png) in Photoshop. > I like to use one that is already styled. I just need to add the animation.

2) Create a folder (I named it ANIM) in your layers panel. > This step is optional, but I like to do it to keep everything clean and easy to find.

3) Create your first empty layer in the folder, name it clearly. > I choose 1 because it'll be my animation's first frame.

4) Draw the elements you want in your animation with the pen tool in the color of your choice. > Here I choose the rough shapes of the flowers

5) Create a new layer in your anim folder and draw the second frame of your animation. > In this step I like to keep the old layer visible so I can see where I put my first animation layer. This is optional.

6) Repeat step 5 and create a third layer for the animation. > I like to do 3 to 5 layers, depending on the animation I decided to do, but nothing more to make them really light.

7) When all your layers are done with drawing, hide them all with the little eye in the layer panel.

8) Open the Timeline window. > If it's not already open, you can find it in the "Window" menu of your Photoshop) and make sure you have the "Frames" selected (if you see a timeline, you're not in the right mode, you can easily change it by selecting the 3 little squares at the bottom of the window).

9) You should have an existing frame once you are in the timeline mode. If not, click on "create frame animation".

10) Then click on the little [+] button at the bottom to add a frame near the trash. If you have 3 layers, make sure you have 3 frames

11) Select all 3, then click on the 0s and choose 0.1s (this will control the duration of the frame animation)

12) Select your first frame > then make your layer 1 visible. // Select your second frame > then hide your layer 1 and make your layer 2 visible. // Select your third frame > then hide your layer 2 and make your layer 3 visible.

13) Then you can "save for web" and play your gif to see if you like it!

Again I hope this helps! Enjoy your creation time! May you make a lot of nice things that makes you happy!

[annabelle-creart]

TF KINKTOBER 2024 Day #20: Praise kink || Monster fucking

CW: praise kink. Oral. Sticky interfacing

Ship: Wheel Magnus

Au: Aligned Continuity

Pretty short because I forgot again

"Aw, Magny, babe" Wheeljack said softly, holding the back of the neck and the buttom of Magnus back, completely drunk on Magnus' kisses on the neck "you kiss so good, you know?" Wheeljack felt when Magnus took his lips a moment out of his neck and with one servo, redirected Magnus lips to his, almost gaping at his large glossa "you also- taste so good" Wheeljack buried himself on Magnus' mouth, tasting as much as could, that included oil and energon

“you talk a lot?” Magnus separated his mouth a moment, but the rest of his body was glued to him

“I usually do, it’s part of the fun” Jackie caressed Magnus cheek, Magnus suspected a bit, and suspected more when his optics murmured desire “is as fun as looking at you being so cute” Jackie raised a leg on Magnus waist “damn, you’re so hot you make my fans work harder to keep me array”

Magnus’ cheeks took a bluish color at the comment, not even the touch got him this surprised or… what was this?

“What?” Wheeljack came again with the teasing “are you too beautiful to talk?”

“No- I mean… I”

“Sir, I never watched you this strange, and despite that you still make me want to eat you all. I bet you’re as tasty as your mouth” Jackie got Magnus even closer and kissed the corner of his lips again, inviting him on a kiss Magnus reciprocated, even deeper and longer, so long they couldn’t contain the desire to touch the other at all the spots they could, Jackie caressed Magnus back and aft while Magnus kept Jackie’s leg on position and handled gently and steady one side of the abdomen, until both heard a click

Magnus got again on Jackie’s chin and then the neck “I love when you do that” “you should do it more, Magnus, you make me all crazy”

Magnus didn’t knew fully why, but Jackie’s words also made him crazy too “tell me more” he said, falling at Jackie’s chest, trying to reach with his glossa where two plates met, making Jackie moan at the surprise and the arousal

“Tell you more? Well, you’re good finding spots like that- ah!” Jackie lost the phrase on the moan, feeling a pair of fingers on his open panel “and you’re good at surprises too” Jackie’s voice was so full of lust even he lost himself for a moment

Wait, he finally got what was happening

Magnus really liked to be told he’s good at this!

“The best part is that you never stop- Primus, you have a gifted glossa” Magnus continued to go below, finally his fingers and mouth meeting at Jackie’s spike, Magnus first took tiny licks of it, making Jackie turn his helm back at the sensation “that feels sooo good. You feel so good” Magnus started to put his entire mouth on his spike “your hot glossa is a blessing, Magnus” at the sound of his voice and at the need on the back of his processor, Magnus also massaged his own erected spike at the rhythm of his mouth, even when Jackie’s praise had more effect that it “I love how you suck me!” That confirmed it

There was a point Magnus missed, Jackie’s was so lost on the action that his processor didn’t worked anymore for even a single word, but at least Magnus could consider himself as well-served when Jackie’s transfluid filled his mouth, licking and swallowing all of it to both clean and make the overload longer

When Jackie composed himself enough to vent normally, he looked straight in the optic to Magnus, who waited near his faceplate for a word of him

“You did such a really good job” Jackie said so soft that it felt like a tickle on Magnus audial, and the compliment just made it better

[ghost-whump]

For Your Own Good

Second part to my first post!

CW: Institutionalized whump, (mental) hospital setting, vaguely creepy whumper, doctor whumper/patient whumpee, [discussed] shock therapy/ECT, restraints, implied future electricity/shock whump. (Let me know if I need to tag anything else!)

Whumpee didn’t struggle. Couldn’t struggle.

“Come on,” Whumper held on tight to the front of the straitjacket, hand wrapped around the belt, “We shouldn’t waste time, should we?” A vicious smile tugged their lips.

Whumpee remained silent, biting at the skin of their lip. Their feet dragged slowly forward, a death march into the dark, dark room. The fear that shot down their spine at every step couldn’t hold a candle to the fire that lit under their heels, pressing them forward still.

Then, kck! shhhh… whoomph. Door closed.

No more escape. Even without the jacket, even if Whumper couldn’t catch them, the air-locked door wouldn’t budge for anything. Only illuminated by the glow of the various screens and panels and buttons and keypads, the room is a void.

A single cold slab of a “bed” stands menacingly in the center. Adorned with worn leather straps that rubbed skin raw, scuff marks from banging and scratching at the surface, all topped off with a tasteful spatter of blood near the middle.

Though, large hands undid each buckle on their person, leaving the jacket to fall to the floor. Whumpee immediately wrapped their arms around their torso, trying to cover as much bare skin as possible. Not that it would help, but it made them feel better.

“Well?” Whumper, who had pulled away by now, “You know what to do.” They gesture vaguely to the table and turn around to play with the buttons and screens.

And the doctor isn’t wrong. Whumpee does know what to do. Lay down, head forward, legs together, stare up and up and up at the ceiling.

“You’re getting quite good at this, Whumpee.” Whumper’s face came into light above them, a wicked grin twisting their face into one even scarier than usual.

Whumpee closed their eyes. They couldn’t look anymore. If they didn’t look, maybe it would stop. Maybe they’d wake up in their cell (…or their home, if they dared dream that far) and would behave this time. Never have to—

“Ah!” A thick strip of leather tightened suddenly around their wrist. Whumpee yelped and their eyes flew open.

Whumper shook their head, “Tsk, Whumpee. You were doing so well,” They buckled the strap, far too fast and tight than anytime before. They tilted Whumpee’s head, doing the same to their other wrist. “You know, I was even considering letting you off easy with some solitary. Yet you had to go and look away from me. You’re usually so good at eye contact.”

“That—agh, that hurts!” Whumpee pulled at the restraints, though they knew it was futile. “P-Please, I’m sorry, I—mmpf!”

The final strap of leather struck their face, its specialised rubber gag worming between their teeth. Protests now barely audible, Whumper smiled and pulled away. “There you go, Whumpee. That’s better now.”

Phantom pains shot through their veins, preparing for what’s to come. Each sticky node placed under their shirt wracked another sob from their chest. No matter how much it happened, it never got easier. Feeling their body seize with each passing second, flashing colors and lights that didn’t really come, nightmarish terror that never stopped.

“It’s alright,” Whumper flashed their teeth, placing the final two nodes on Whumpee’s temples, “The ECT is for your own good. Don’t you feel better after it’s done?”

They tried to shake their head, No! It feels bad! Bad bad bad! It hurt! But it didn’t stop Whumper. The doctor turned around, taking their time in approaching the large lever on the wall.

Whumper’s hand gripped the lever tight, throwing one last glance to their writhing patient. Readjusting their grip, they get ready to finally pull down. “Don’t worry, Whumpee, you’ll feel much better after we’re done.”

really not sure how happy i am with this one, but i figured it be best to post it! enjoy :]

[indieyuugure]

First off, I freaking love your comics. They are the reason I wake up way too early some Saturdays and actually sleep Friday nights (not tonight obviously, but still!) it’s so much fun waiting for the next update because I know it’s all going to be AWESOME!!!!

Seriously though it was because of your art that I was able to draw Casey Jones, and have him turn out so good!!!! I wnded up loving how he looked because I totally used your comic panels as references. I was even able to submit an accordion book of Casey WIPs for my last art class of high school!! I’m not the most confident artist so my personal style is whack, sometimes it’s recognizable and sometimes it’s just shapes on a page, but I enjoy writing and painting. Traditional art kicks my backside dang hard, girl. Btw what do you use to create the comics? I think I remember a post a while back about an iPad, but I don’t know.

I honestly was so freaking panicked when I realized Donnie was flipping dying but calmed a bit since then knowing we’re nearing the end, but I’m wondering how many updates there will be left because the family should probably get back to being turtles and Donnie having that self acceptance about being a turtle. If that’s where you decide to take the story, but comfort is definitely needed for the poor guy. *hugs Donnie and offers hand for you to join bc we all know this turtle be needing some love rn with all the glorious angst that be happening*

*also wonders if you’re going to sell TMS to as a colored comic as well once it’s officially done*

Aw, thank you very much! It means a lot to read that 🥰💕 (though please try to sleep, sleep is important to your health!)

OMG THAT’S SO AWESOME! I’m so happy my comics were able to help you with an art assignment! And hey, I didn’t use to be a good artist either, just keep working at it and you’ll get better and better! They say it’s 100 hours to be proficient, 10,000 to be a master.

Yes! I use an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. The app I use is called Clip Studio Paint, it’s a bit complex, but once you get the hang of it it’s incredibly powerful and has a lot of tools. I was able to learn how to use it in a weekend so it’s too insanely complicated.

lol, don’t worry! They all become turtles in the end! (The next episode they mutate back) There are currently 2 more updates left for you guys and then it’ll be on to Indie TMNT! I very much hope to get it printed, I have some ideas of how to make it easier/cost me less, but I’ll have to see how it all goes.

Good questions! :]

[melmedarda]

@meljaymicrofics ⸻ red eye ⸻ wc: 929 ⸻ rated G

Mel hates long flights.

They are a waste of her valuable time, a time during which she finds herself ill just thinking about the distance between herself and the ground.

But, she finds herself on a plane, headed from Cecil B. Heimerdinger International airport back home. Back to Noxus, because her brother is dying. Or something like that. The phone call with Elora had been even more cryptic than the ominous text her mother had sent. All around rather concerning, the secrecy. The fear.

She is on a private jet, courtesy of Ambessa, because apparently her mother loves her just enough to spare her the horrors of flying coach, but not enough to actually care. Mel doesn’t like to think about it. Instead, she sips a bottle of champagne she finds nestled in an ice bucket beside her seat.

Mel had looked for flights. But there’d been none leaving early enough that weren’t fully booked. It seemed Noxus in the spring was a destination. Her family—her mother really, because no one within the family ventured outside her wishes—wanted her home at the earliest of times. Even if it means its a red eye flight. Mel doesn’t much mind; she’s not paying for it.

Several glasses later, she’s feeling rather bad for the pilot. It’s tough, flying so late (early????). She rises to her feet. Slowly, because she’s buzzed enough to feel pleasant and enough not to overthink the real reason behind why she’s coming home after 12 years away. About whatever is going on with her brother.

Mel walks slowly down the aisle to the narrow cabin door and peers in. First, the bright knobs and flashing radars fascinate her. She hasn’t been this close to an instrument panel in years.

There are two pilots. One of them a woman—Mel is pleasantly surprised and impressed, girl power and all that—her head a shock of pink. The other, is a man. A very handsome man, Mel observes from his side profile alone. She wants a better look.

“I know its rather late, but I’d like to apologize for the inconvenience of travel time,” she says by way of greeting. The man startles, the woman does not; both turn to look at her. And yes, he is quite handsome. With his perfectly coiffed hair, his honey colored eyes, his rich skin. Mel masters her reaction as he glances back at the IP and the windshield before him.

“Not a problem, Ms. Medarda.” The woman says, and Mel turns to face her. Gives her a small nod and a smile.

“Right,” her colleague says, and Mel’s eyes dart to him. “It’s a part of the job description.” And his smile is one Mel knows. It is a very careful, customer service type smile. She resents it immediately.

“To be at the beck and call of the wealthy?” The question escapes her lips before she can stop it, and Mel is surprised at herself; she’s not one to speak without thought to what she says.

He inhales deeply—a sound that echoes through the cockpit, a sound of patience, of control—and turns to face her. In her peripheral, she sees the other pilot’s grip on the yoke tighten. And Mel knows, then, that she’s messed up. She’s no better than they are, in the end, at the beck and call of her mother. She about to apologize, when he opens his mouth.

“It is our job to fly, Miss. And believe me, it’s a job we love.” The dark-haired pilot’s voice is strained when he speaks again, laden with a sort of distant passion. “It’s my pleasure to fly you this morning, but I’d appreciate if you returned to your seat for the remainder of the flight. For your safety.”

Mel hears a threat in his words—she’s heard threats all her life, fully dressed and thinly veiled. She nods and returns to her seat without a word. She should have settled for coach after all.

Later, she opens her eyes to find a stone-faced Elora standing over her. The sun has risen, and its too bright outside as Elora escorts her down the stairs and onto the tarmac outside the Medarda’s private hanger where inside, a dark limousine awaits.

The pilots stand at attention near the stairs, and Mel stands before them, significantly less drunk and more sincere. Elora pauses behind her. “I’d like to apologize to you both, for my careless actions. Please allow me to make it up to you. Allow me to treat you both to dinner,” she says, looking between them.

The pink-haired pilot cocks a brow at her. Runs her tongue over a lip piercing Mel had not seen earlier. “I would, but I’ve got a FaceTime call with my girlfriend this evening. But my friend Jayce, here, would be delighted to join you!”

Jayce does not look delighted, and Mel thinks he might positively hate her. Frowning, she worries her bottom lips between her teeth as she gestures to Elora for pen and paper. She scribbles her number onto it, looking up as his eyes dart away. So she places the paper in the other pilot’s hands. “Call me, and we’ll arrange something in the city at your convivence.” Mel smiles, turning away and marching towards the chartered car.

“He’ll be in touch!” the pilot calls after her, a grin in her voice.

[sca-nerd]

I need to make some garb for my two lads joining me at War who have nothing, because this is their first event. I am making each of them one Nice Tunic as a gift to keep as their own so if they decide they want to continue to play, they aren't naked. The other three (total six) tunics will be Good Tunics because I am not investing a lot of money into an unknown, but this way I have additional loaner garb or something to give to my nephew as he is currently going through the predictable growth spurts.

"But SCA Mom!" I hear you cry, "How are you going to make SIX tunics cheaply, but not let them LOOK cheap?"

SCA on a budget, my friends.

I went to the thrift store (okay, I went to three - but I made a day of it with some friends) and found a set of 100% heavy cotton panel curtains. These bad boys are wide AND long enough to make two tunics for these guys without any hemming. I'll just need to turn out the collar with some scrap fabric I have and sew up the sides.

Now, they ARE white. And everyone knows that a white outer garment is a no-go, so I picked up a couple of bottles of Rit Dye, set the colors myself with vinegar and salt, and now have a lovely apple green and a (what should be) navy blue but turned out a nice gray-blue instead.

Two tunics. 100% natural fibers so I don't worry about them spontaneously combusting near the fire, but will also be comfortable during the day, and my total investment is $10.

I'm not going to trim these tunics out, because I don't have time to trim them out (I have more to make and not a lot of free time to make them at this point), but also because I want to show that you can make good garb inexpensively. You can make NICE garb inexpensively. You can do this. I believe in you.

[mspaesthetic]

Tidbit: Persnickety About Posters

If you want to avoid overly dark or blurry posters in your fan adventures, then follow my lead:

1) Download JPEG off of Google Images.

2) Import, scale down, and skew/shear it. Use an interpolation method such as Bilinear or Bicubic Sharper. Doing both transformations at once is better than repeatedly transforming the image (i.e. resizing it, applying the transform, and then skewing it), as it helps prevent the image and edges from becoming too blurry. This will be important later.

You can hold down Ctrl + Shift to constrain the Move tool along a single axis so it won't go out of alignment as you're skewing it. If you don't see the Transform Controls by default, enable it in the tool options bar at the top, or go to Edit>Free Transform.

3) Desaturate it. Desaturate means to turn color grayer, until it becomes black and white.

4) Adjust the brightness and contrast using the Levels adjustment tool. It's much too dark as it is! In Photoshop, it is located under Image>Adjustments>Levels..., but I recommend creating an adjustment layer from the bottom of the layers tab instead. Doing so will allow you to make edits non-destructively, meaning you can go back and change any parameters until it looks right.

You could use a Brightness/Contrast adjustment with "Use Legacy" enabled instead to achieve a similar effect, but it won't clip the shadows and highlights as easily. You would have to create an additional duplicate adjustment and turn the brightness and contrast way down on the first one to do so. It's somewhat easier to use but less efficient than Levels in this case.

5) Apply a simple sharpen to the image as it is still too blurry for our purposes. In Photoshop, it is located under Filter>Sharpen>Sharpen... Do not use any other filter, such as Unsharp Mask, unless you absolutely have to in lieu of a basic one. If you must, turn down the radius a bit and the threshold all the way to 0.

6) Make a selection around the image. Ctrl + left click on the layer's thumbnail to make a selection around it. Doing it this way makes it inherit the level of transparency any pixels have. If you can't, use the Magic Wand tool with "Anti-alias" enabled to select the transparent area outside, then invert it using Shift + Ctrl + I, or go to Select>Inverse.

Create a new layer above the image, then go to Edit>Stroke... and add a black stroke with a width of 2px located Outside. Leave everything else at the default. Doing it this way will create a stroke with anti-aliasing based on the selection you made. This should generally turn out pretty sharp if you follow my advice from Step 2. If you had used the Stroke Effect available from the Blending Options' layer styles, it will always result in a very smooth outline instead. You do not want this.

Voila, and Bob's your uncle, you're done!

The instructions above are Photoshop specific, but it should still be pretty software-agnostic. Here is the recreation PSD, and below the read-more link are additional notes, such as transferring the steps to something like GIMP.

ADDENDUM

You may be questioning why I deliberately made the stroke anti-aliased. "Isn't that an MSPArt cardinal sin??", I hear you clamoring. Well, my dear readers, let me briefly elucidate you on why your ass is wrong. Exhibit A:

The clearly semi-opaque pixels that can be found in every poster outline, which is especially pronounced here in the Little Monsters poster. I can also see that Hussie actually created a stroke on the same layer as the poster and merged it down into the white background like a dumbass. I omitted this in step 6 for the sake of convenience (and also the fact that you can't add a stroke to a smart object in Photoshop without rasterizing it first).

He had to use the magic wand tool in order to extract it from the layer for this panel, and then fill it in with the paint bucket tool. I can even tell he had the color tolerance set up very high on the magic wand to grab all those near-black and very light gray pixels, AND he had anti-alias enabled and the tolerance on the bucket tool set to be at least higher than 0 to tint similar colors. Exhibit B:

I also didn't address exactly how to desaturate something in Photoshop. Honestly it was because I was feeling pretty lazy. I would have had to rewrite step 4 to not include redundant information about adjustment layers. You can add either a Black & White adjustment layer or a Hue/Saturation one and turn the saturation all the way down to 0. The resulting tones will be slightly different from each other but I'll explain why that is in another tutorial.

Speaking of another tutorial, read this one if you believe this post is missing the step of using a posterize filter.

Now onto applying some steps to GIMP.

RE: step 2) In GIMP, there is a dedicated Unified Transform tool separate from the Move tool, unlike in Photoshop where both features are combined into one. This is how you scale and skew (AKA shear in GIMP) both at the same time, among other things such as rotating.

You'll also find that instead of any interpolation methods labeled "Bilinear" or "Bicubic", there are only ones named "Linear", "Cubic", "NoHalo", and "LoHalo". Basically, Linear and Bilinear are the same, so are Cubic and Bicubic, naturally. I guess NoHalo would be similar to Bicubic Smoother and LoHalo would be kind of similar to Bicubic Sharper as well. It's not an exact 1:1, though.

Honestly it doesn't really matter what you use to reduce the size as long as it isn't None/Nearest-Neighbor. You're going to have to sharpen it no matter what. This applies to Photoshop as well.

RE: step 3) Go to Colors>Hue-Saturation... and repeat turning the saturation down to 0, or go to Colors>Desaturate>Desaturate... and select the Lightness (HSL) method.

RE: step 4) Go to Colors>Levels... or Colors>Brightness-Contrast... The Brightness-Contrast adjustment tool already functions almost exactly like in Photoshop with "Use Legacy" enabled.

RE: step 5) In GIMP 2.10, the developers squirreled away the basic Sharpen filter, making it inaccessible from the Filters menu. To use it, hit the forward-slash (/) key or go to Help>Search and Run a Command... to bring up the Search Actions window and type in "sharpen". Select the option that just reads "Sharpen..." and has a description of "Make image sharper (less powerful than Unsharp Mask)". I find that using a sharpness value of around 40 to be similar to Photoshop's sharpen filter.

RE: step 6) Instead of holding down Ctrl, you hold down Alt and click on the layer thumbnail to make a selection around it. Make a layer underneath the image this time since there isn't an option to place the stroke outside the selection rather than the middle. Go to Edit>Stroke Selection... and create a stroke using these settings:

I recommend keeping anti-aliasing disabled however, as GIMP produces lines that are a little too smooth for my taste.

With "Antialiasing" enabled

Without

If you're using a program that doesn't have a stroke feature available, you could draw a straight 1px thick line across the top of your poster, duplicate it, and move it down 1px. Merge them together, duplicate it again, and move it all the way down to the bottom of the poster. Then repeat the exact same process for the sides. I used to do this before I even knew of the stroke feature, haha.

Another reason I had to do it this way was because my dumb ass did the thing I said not to in step 2, scaling down the image with the scale tool, and then shearing it separately with the shear tool. This caused the edges to become too blurry to be used for a stroke automatically. Oh well, live and learn.

[detailtilted]

Language prowess? (CHICON 2008 J2 Panel - Enhanced Edition Sneak Peek)

This is a small sneak peek of my next enhanced video. There are several funny moments throughout the panel, but I picked this one because I loved the way Jared made Jensen genuinely burst out laughing into the mic near the end.

All in all, the enhanced video should look a lot better than what's available for this panel on YouTube today. In my final edit, I used almost half the footage AgtSpooky sent me. I don't think that video is on YouTube, and it has a higher quality than the ones I did find on YouTube, especially after I upscaled it. The only reason I didn't use the whole video is because audience heads frequently block the view, so I switched to other videos as needed to maintain the best view available. You'll see some of that happening in this sample. The sample starts with AgtSpooky’s footage but switches a couple times to another source, which I've also upscaled and color corrected.

I plan to publish the full video on YouTube this Friday at around 3pm U.S. Eastern. I'll post on Tumblr the following Tuesday evening. I'm still trying to work out the best times to post, and I seem to get more YouTube traffic on Fridays, but I've learned not to post on Tumblr around the weekends so that's the only reason I'm waiting. I just want to give these videos the best chance of being seen because I'm putting a great many hours into them.

If you're interested in the video and you don't want to wait until next Tuesday, then I have two things to say to you… 1) I love you with all my heart and 2) you could check for it on my YouTube channel on Friday, or follow my channel to get notified when it's published.

Meanwhile, you could also watch Jared’s solo CHICON 2008 panel if you haven’t seen it yet. It took place immediately before the J2 panel, so my new video has direct references to it. The J2 panel will still make sense if you haven't seen it, except maybe at the very beginning, but you’ll have more context if you’ve watched Jared’s first.

[kanerallels]

My story for @sw-olives-and-grapes, which I finished JUST in time last night! It's a little messy and I'm not totally satisfied with the ending, but I hope you guys like it nonetheless!

Read on AO3!

(note for those who don't follow the link: Hera and Kanan's outfits are inspired by pictures I've seen of the Chinese hanfu! Also there are no real content warnings here)

“COME ON GUYS WE’RE GONNA BE LATE!”

“Since when is Ezra the one who wants to be on time?” Caleb Dume muttered, tugging at the collar of his tunic for the thousandth time. His formal Jedi robes might have been right for the occasion, but that didn’t stop them from being more uncomfortable than his usual attire.

Hera’s voice was muffled by the closed door of her room, where she was changing. “Probably since Sabine’s the one doing the fireworks after the ceremony. And he’s grown up more than we give him credit for, dear.”

“Don’t remind me,” Caleb said, sighing and letting the back of his head thump against the wall he was leaning against. “Seems like just yesterday he was falling off of roofs and causing international incidents with Mandalorians. Now he’s well on his way to becoming a Knight.”

As painful as it was to see his Padawan growing up, he was also proud. Ezra had become much wiser and more powerful since Caleb had first met him, and he was growing into a fine Jedi.

“You’ve done a good job of teaching him,” Hera pointed out, her tone knowing— as it always was. It sharpened into something a little more amused as she added, “And as I recall, you had a little something to do with that particular international incident.”

“Well, what was I supposed to do?” Caleb grumbled as Hera’s bedroom door hissed open. “Just leave you and Sabine to— wow.”

Hera lifted an eyebrow at him as she stepped out of the room. “You’re staring, Caleb.”

“I’m not,” Caleb said, staring. “You just… you look really nice.”

Nice didn’t quite sum it up. She was wearing a dress— a simple dark blue undertunic, with a full, fluttering skirt over it. It shaded from blue to a pale silver towards the hem, as did the light blue edged robe she wore over it. The upper half of the tunic had a blue panel, embroidered with silver and darker blue. Similar embroidery marked the hem of the robe.

The colors shimmered against her skin, and the flowing fabric made her look elegant and beautiful and Caleb felt his heart skip a beat at the sight of her, like it so often did. 

Judging by the half amused, half embarrassed smile Hera was giving him, he was still staring. Clearing his throat, Caleb said, “I, uh, I assumed you’d be wearing your dress uniform.”

“I was going to,” Hera said wryly. “But somehow, there was a mishap in the laundry, and Ezra turned it an unflattering shade of pink. And then it happened to be out when Sabine was working on getting the fireworks ready, and she set it partially on fire.”

Caleb snorted. “Wow. You’d almost think they were planning something like this.” Knowing Sabine and Ezra’s propensity for mischief, he wasn’t exactly surprised. Especially when he noted how similar the color of his blue and gray robes were to Hera’s dress.

Rolling her eyes, Hera said, “Oh, yeah. That would be such a shock, knowing these two.”

“HERA, CALEB, ZEB’S HERE AND HE’S IMPATIENT TOO,” Ezra yelled from down at the entry bay. “CAN WE JUST GO ALREADY?”

Exchanging an amused look with Hera, Caleb said, “We should probably get going.” Offering her his arm, he asked, “Are you ready?”

Looping her arm through his, Hera replied, “Always, dear.”

Together, they headed down to the entry bay. Ezra was waiting, wearing his own set of formal robes and bouncing up and down on his heels with impatience. Zeb was with him, looking bored and slightly fancier than usual in his Lasat Honor Guard uniform. Chopper was, for once, waiting near them without making trouble, although Kanan had a feeling that wouldn’t last long.

“Finally,” Ezra said, spotting them. “Let’s go! You look really nice, Hera. Uh, sorry about your uniform.”

“Don’t worry about it, Ezra,” Hera assured him. “And you’re right, we should get going. We don’t want to miss Caleb’s ceremony, after all.”

Letting out a groan as they headed down the ramp, Caleb said, “Don’t remind me.”

“What, you’re not looking forward to getting up in front of all those people?” Zeb asked, his grin just a little too wicked. “Getting that award and whatnot?”

“You’re enjoying this too much,” Caleb told him. “And it’s not an award, it’s just a ceremony honoring some of the people who fought in the last battles of the war here on Coruscant—”

“Like you,” Ezra said cheerfully. “And Rex— he’s gonna be there, right?”

“I think so— Ahsoka said she wanted someone there to distract her from being bored out of her mind,” Hera said, and Caleb snorted.

“Skywalker’s gonna be there. None of us are going to be bored.”

Together, they made their way to the speeder parked at the edge of the landing platform. As Zeb, Ezra, and Chopper slid into the back seat, Caleb took the front passenger seat, and Hera arranged her skirts neatly around her as she sat in the driver’s seat. Bringing the speeder to life, she moved them forward and into the flow of Coruscanti traffic.

Despite the general nature of traffic on Coruscant, especially in the evening, it wasn’t long before they arrived. Their goal, a small meeting hall in the upper levels, was lit up for the occasion, and surrounded by speeders— most of them piloted by droids dropping off their occupants.

As Hera brought their speeder to a stop nearby, switching it off, Caleb vaulted out and headed around to her side. Offering her a hand, he said, “Can I give you a hand?”

Accepting it, Hera let him help her out of the speeder, remarking, “Such a gentleman.”

“Well, I was raised right,” Caleb said, and behind them, Ezra groaned.

“If you guys are just going to flirt all night, I’m leaving.”

“Come on, Ezra,” came a familiar voice, and Caleb turned to see Ahsoka Tano heading towards them, grinning. She wore a sleeveless black dress with a high collar and a long skirt, her sabers hanging from a belt on either hip. “If you say that, you’ll be gone before they serve the food. Let alone the fireworks.”

“Fair enough,” Ezra said, heaving a long, dramatic sigh. “Guess I’ll just suffer.”

Rolling his eyes, Caleb turned to Ahsoka. “Good to see you— have you seen any of the others, yet?”

“Rex is inside,” she replied. “I came out here to look for you, and the Skywalker-Amidala brood.”

“I have a feeling we’ll hear him coming,” Hera said wryly. “Ezra, Zeb, Chopper, we should probably find our seats. I’ll be with you in just a minute.”

Ezra didn’t protest— another sign of how much he’d grown over the years, Caleb mused— just nodded and headed towards the hall, Zeb and Chopper on his heels.

Turning to him, Hera studied him for a moment. “Are you nervous?” she asked, moving forward to smooth down the front of his robes and straighten the sleeves.

Caleb let her. He’d be lying if he said he minded.”Not really,” he said. “Mostly it seems like a big deal over nothing. I didn’t even do that much, and it was years ago.”

“You and I both know it was more than nothing,” Hera pointed out. “There are people here today— Jedi especially, who wouldn’t be here without you.” Checking him over one last time, she added, “If it helps, I’m sure this is far from the only thing you’ll be remembered for.”

“As long as you remember me, that’s all that really mattered,” Caleb told her, which drew a smile across her face. Stepping a little closer, she pressed a kiss against his cheek, and Caleb had to resist the urge to turn it into a proper kiss, to pull her closer still.

Drawing back, Hera smiled at him in the way that said she knew exactly what he was thinking. And I’m supposed to be the Jedi around here. “I’ll be watching in the crowd. Good luck, love.”

And with that, she turned and headed inside, taking most of Caleb’s concentration with her. It was more than a few seconds before he registered Ahsoka calling his name. Glancing at her, startled, he saw her grinning at him. “Way to be subtle, Dume. You’d put Skyguy to shame.”

“Okay, that’s just mean,” Caleb told her as a speeder zipped out of the traffic towards them, coming to a sharp stop that nearly slammed into the side of the landing platform. Caleb was not remotely surprised to recognize Anakin Skywalker in the driver’s seat. He was steering with one hand, smiling easily as he hopped out and moved to assist his wife, Senator Amidala. The senator wore a dress of satiny, dark purple fabric, simply and elegantly cut. The bishop sleeves were a sheer, paler purple, beaded in sparkling patterns. Her hair was twisted up in a mass of braids around her head, strands of gems shimmering in the braids. This provided a sharp contrast to Skywalker himself, who wore simple dark brown and black robes and had his hair cut short.

Two of their children, Luke and Leia, were with them. Leia was dressed in simple but elegant white with her hair pulled back in braids twisted with silver, and Luke wore black, like his father. The blonde boy caught sight of Ahsoka and Caleb and waved as he followed his mother and sister inside. Anakin headed in as well, but not before stopping to chat with a group of men clad in blue and white armor.

“It’ll be good to see Anakin again,” Ahsoka remarked. “He gets so busy with his… mechanic shop that isn’t a front for any kind of vigilante activity.”

“I always forget how subtle your lineage is,” Caleb quipped, lifting an eyebrow at the Togruta Jedi, who rolled her eyes at him.

“You’re not much better yourself. How are you feeling about the ceremony?”

Caleb took a minute before shrugging. “Fine. It seems a little unnecessary to invite me— I mean, I barely did anything. Everyone handling the Chancellor were Jedi Knights at the very least. All I did was talk to one clone trooper at the exact right time.”

“You saved his life, and the lives of others,” Ahsoka pointed out quietly. “Don’t underestimate that.”

“Hm. And then there’s you, who—”

“Showed up fifteen minutes late with Spacebucks?”

“I was going to say who took out a former Sith lord, crashed her ship, and showed up here in time to help me,” Caleb said wryly. “But sure, that too.”

Ahsoka laughed. “Come on, let’s get in there before we get wrangled by some poor event organizer. The sooner it’s done, the sooner we eat.”

“Now you’re speaking my language.”

They headed into the hall, following Skywalker and a few others who were chatting quietly. The antechamber they entered into still held a few people, but Caleb could see most of them had moved into the main body of the hall. It was filling up quickly, and he felt his first twinge of nervousness.

“You’re feeling nervous now, aren’t you?” Ahsoka asked, sounding amused. “I’ve seen you wrangle bloodthirsty mobs— all you have to do now is stand there.”

“I know, I know,” Caleb grumbled. “Unlike you, however, I’ve never done one of these things before. Since, you know, I didn’t actually do all that much.”

“We can have this debate later. Come on, we’re supposed to be backstage.”

Heaving a long sigh, Caleb followed her down a side hall and into a back room, where there were a handful of others. Among them were Skywalker, Masters Tapal, Junda, Fisto, and Windu. The latter of which looked up at their entry, and gave Caleb one of his non-smiles. “Caleb.”

“Master Windu,” Caleb said, smiling at him and giving a respectful bow. “Good to see you.”

Ahsoka gave a brief nod, muttering under her breath, “I still can’t believe you two get along so well.”

“He’s my grand-master, Ahsoka. Besides, the only reason you don’t really get along is because your lineage is full of lunatics.”

“Okay that is not why AT ALL—”

The sound of applause from onstage cut Ahsoka off, and Master Junda said, “That’s our cue. Skywalker, Windu, take the lead?”

The duo exchanged a slightly amused look, and headed out onto the stage together. Caleb, resisting the urge to run a hand through his hair, followed the rest of the Jedi, Ahsoka right behind him.

The stage held only a podium, where Senator Bail Organa stood. Caleb knew the man— not well, but he liked him. Senator Organa gave them an encouraging nod and smile as they lined up behind him on the stage, along with a small crowd of clones. Caleb recognized Rex and Commander Fox, and gave them a quick nod as Senator Organa started speaking.

“Welcome, everyone,” he said, his voice amplified by the microphone. The murmuring crowds quieted down anyway, turning their attention to him. Caleb started looking for Hera as the senator continued.

“I’m glad to see you all here. Today we celebrate the twenty year anniversary of the end of the Clone War. While there were still battles fought with the Separatist remnants after this point, this was the day, twenty years ago, that the Jedi engaged and defeated the Sith Lord who had taken over our Senate, and, with the help of some of our noblest members of the Grand Army of the Republic, retook the Senate building from the troopers under his control.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Caleb saw Fox shift fractionally, and he held back a wince of sympathy. The commander had been one of the ones Palpatine had been controlling, along with most of his men. He’d nearly been responsible for a lot of lives lost.

“When the Jedi’s valor is mentioned, I find that, far too often, we gloss over the role of the GAR,” Senator Organa continued. “Both those who arrived on site with their generals and those who, once freed from the Chancellor’s control, joined our side. Without the help of men like Commander Fox, our Republic would not be where it is today.”

Caleb couldn’t hold back a grin as he heard raucous cheers coming from the audience, where several armored troopers were pounding their feet against the ground in approval. Senator Organa smiled as well, and waited for silence until he continued.

“The revelation of the Chancellor’s deception and his intention to tear down the Republic, replacing it with his dictatorial Empire, was a shock to everyone. Our trust was shaken, but we kept moving. Life as we knew it was suspended, an interim chancellor was put in place. We turned to the Jedi for help, and they came through as they often do, as did the warriors of the GAR, to whom we owe so much.”

The senator paused, looking somber. “There is much that could be said about this time. About how we finally righted some great wrongs against certain citizens of our Republic, or how we managed to bring the Separatists back. About how we managed to bring a time of peace. That last part is what I would like to focus on tonight, though. 

“Our time of peace was only brought about by working together, by setting aside differences for the greater good. And that, my friends, is something I would like all of you to remember.” Leaning forward, Senator Organa said, “Our greatest times will come when we work together. Not when we are divided by strife or arguments.”

He paused, letting the words sink in, then smiled. “But we didn’t gather here tonight so I could lecture you. We’re here to celebrate— to celebrate those who sacrificed their lives for us and those who are still here. And to celebrate the victory we achieved together. Because together, we’re better.”

As Senator Organa spoke the last words, Caleb finally found Hera in the crowd. She caught his gaze and smiled, and it was like she was the only thing in the galaxy that existed. Together, we’re better, he thought. I’ve never heard something more true in my life. A smile crossed his face.

He barely heard the applause as the senator ended his speech and the crowd rose to their feet. All that mattered was the moment when they moved off the stage, and Hera was with him, catching hold of his hand and giving it a quick squeeze.

Later would come dinner and reuniting with old friends, speeches from other veterans and Jedi and the most incredible fireworks in the galaxy. But all that really mattered were the people at his side now.

[sylviegunpla]

Plamo: Mega Man X3: Hawk Ride Armor (kitbash of Chimera Armor & accessories from Vile's Ride Armor / full paint job)

I Finally Finished It! Well, i finished it sometime around April 1st, 2024, based on the timestamps of my (older, mostly obsolete now) photos. I've definitely not been keeping up with this blog as much as i should.

These are the main angle views of it. There's some "errors" on this thing, but they're not gratuitous. The most annoying part for me is a spec of white on the left-thigh piece (his left not audience-left). Unfortunately due to the way i haphazardly mixed paints, i cannot recreate the exact shade of blue and thus can't properly touch it up. There's actually a few places you can see where i near-matched the shade of blue for some touchups, but im not sure how visible they are in the image. Also, the bolt holes on his-right upper arm are MEGA duplicated on the back. Those were custom panel lines and holes i made by gouging with an exacto knife and then filling in with gundam panel line marker.

I also did some extra special detailing on the leg greebles (which i plan to NOT recreate in my future ride armors): I glued thin plastic into the greebles so it could naturally create panel lines, then i used "Wave System Option: H-Eyes Red" to put jewels into the greebles (using double sided tape).

I will recreate the jewels in future builds, but not the panel line details

Here's some more (uglier) shots:

So there's still something i want to do with this build: I want to attach it to some kind of action/display base, so it looks like it's mid air, and find OR MAKE some sort of clear blue ring-shaped jet-blast effect part to put under the "hover pack", so it looks like it's hovering mid-air like it does in the game. I'm not gonna try to recreate the missiles though lmao. BTW, the Hawk Armor parts don't come with the base Chimera Armor So this was nearly all done using Mr Hobby Aqueous paints and an airbrush, with touchups by hand. Also some Gundam EX Marker Silver for some details, Mr. Super Clear Gloss so get a good surface for panel lining, then flat coated everything except for the red missile tips in the canons (those got a nice juicy gloss coat). I did a lot of masking using tamiya masking tape, which is a technique i'm also doing for the Kangaroo armor. BTW, the Kangaroo armor is also approaching a state of Completion. I'm still working on greebles and the arms (which were also the parts i put off til last on the Hawk armor lmao). But hopefully i'll post it in a more timely manner when that happens! I'm really happy to have finished this. When i first saw Bandai put out "official" kits for 3 of the 4 ride armors of this game, i absolutely knew i wanted to repaint the kit and make it look like the actual key art. I actually based the color choices on the sprite art, but otherwise mostly used the key art for reference with details and such. Well, Bandai did most of that work. I just followed it properly. However... i also have plans to do something absolutely ridiculous to try to recreate the Frog Armor... in time. I don't have full plans for it yet, but i have the ride armors and a dream. Anyway here's a preview of the Kangaroo Armor, a WIP shot: