#WHAT DO YOU THINK I DO ALL DAY it's literally just make wizard comics like this

[itissadbutitsmy-artblog]

hey. popular boy problems

this long thing goes with it. im just thinking out loud. this should come out of my drafts.

"yes! make mistakes!" wizards say but he cant seem to make any? ever?

i cant figure out whats wrong with him but lets ignore the sign in the cafe that says he only just became the most specialest boy in their lives. i think he should be the most popular boy in the entire city for his entire life and it should not be good for his soul and ive decided to talk about it via making him go ice skating with blaine's mom

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Hey, I was wondering why you think Roxy was destined to end up with Eridan? I get the shared wizard interest and the quirk foreshadowing I guess, but that still seems like a large stretch. It's kinda like saying that Equius and Dirk are going to end up together because they both like robots and horses. It's just seems like the sort of character remixing that Hussie uses a lot in Homestuck. But what do you think?

Roxy

- fucking LOVES WIZARDS

- is a hipster and literally wears a colorswapped version of eridans scarf

- is pink and bubbly

- uses riflekind

- has a perfectly opposite powerset to eridan (can create anything by stealing its void away vs. can destroy anything with pure belief) and are connected to each other through the matriorb

- has a crush on a troubled, eccentric prince so you know that's her type

- quirk cameo with momlonde

Eridan

- Is a wizard

- Is a hipster and literally wears a colorswapped version of roxy's scarf

- Uses riflekind

- Had a huge crush on Feferi, a bubbly pink girl whom he (wrongly) believed to be so nice she might not even be capable of pitch, so we know that's his type

- The equal and opposite powerset & quirk cameo

At the end of the day I can't tell you what to ship, nor am I interested in making anyone ship anything, but I'm kind of just saying, the things that make Roxy predisposed to liking Eridan are, like, the biggest parts of her character, and Eridan is very easy & would pretty much say yes to anybody, but Roxy is also definitely His Type and Eridan is a simp who thrives under any sort of positive attention & would do anything someone asked if they were giving him positive feedback. or attention at all. case in point kanaya fucking hates him but at least she talks to him and he's constantly praising the shit out of her

Jane and Jake also have their introductions IMMEDIATELY followed by talking about how they've got a thing for "cobalt" hunks and "cerulean babes" respectively, so setting up roxy with eridan also fits into a pattern of the b2 kids being set up to date a dead troll. still rereading this part of the comic, but it really jumped out to me how blatant it was for jake and jane

[brucebocchi]

Persona characters as NBA fans

my reasoning for each decision beneath the cut

Celtics/Akechi: Driven by an inhuman amount of spite and need to prove themselves when talent alone is more than enough to do the job. Just an insane amount of homophobic slurs

Nets/Labrys: She has a Brooklyn accent. Don’t overthink it.

Knicks/Ryoji: Say the name of the team out loud. You get it.

76ers/Maruki: “The Process” really was just mass brainwashing if you think about it

Raptors/Kamoshida: No hate to the Raptors organization but they really need to eat crow for letting Drake hitch his wagon to the franchise

Hawks/Ruferu: I don’t know shit about P5X but look at the birdy! Trae Young is also small and annoying,

Hornets/Eikichi: I thought the colors matched. I have never played a Persona game.

Magic/Elizabeth: She thinks the team name is literal. Are you going to tell her otherwise?

Heat/Akihiko: You just know he would be really fucking annoying about “Heat Culture”

Wizards/Yusuke: The hat has cherry blossoms on it and that was enough to shape his rooting interests. I’m enjoying giving him hilariously inept franchises.

Bulls/Erina: Nostalgia is all we have left.

Cavaliers/Haru: Haru is extremely rich and speaks exclusively in Comic Sans, just like Dan Gilbert

Pistons/Junpei: Found out about the “Bad Boy” days and was hooked, only to find out he was born a couple years after that era ended.

Pacers/Ken: Young and surprisingly potent on offense, just needs a few years to toughen up a bit

Bucks/Ohya: beer

Mavericks/Izanami: An unfairly powerful being, capable of manipulating the truth, who must be defeated swiftly. But enough about Miriam Adelson

Rockets/Lisa: She’s an enormous Sinophile so you know damn well she latched onto Yao Ming and never let go

Grizzlies/Kanji: “Uh, hell yeah! Grit n’ grind! Whoop that trick! Be a man!” (actually he just really wants to feel Grizz’s fur)

Pelicans/Chie: You cannot convince me that Chie Satonaka is not a pelican herself.

Spurs/Takemi: A color scheme favorable to goths, a history of solid fundamentals, and a total freak on the up-and-up. Victor Wembanyama is over two feet taller than her.

Nuggets/Yukiko: She just keeps picking the good ones man idk what to tell you

Timberwolves/Koromaru: dogy :) 

Thunder/Nanako: Youngest team in the NBA gets everyone’s favorite baby sister

Trail Blazers/Adachi: I like making him suffer with these

Jazz/Teddie: You’d think it’s because he’s the whitest boy imaginable but he read the “Personal Life” section of Karl Malone’s Wikipedia page and was inspired

Warriors/Sophia: If Silicon Valley gets its way, every Warriors fan will be replaced by an AI by 2035

Clippers/Metis: Perpetual younger sibling syndrome. May not actually exist

Lakers/Shido: He’s been courtside at every home game since 1985. You never noticed?

Suns/Konoe: Eternally at the mercy of the whims of an arrogant tech bro when an AI would probably do a better job

Kings/Yosuke: I like giving him moribund franchises but he’s actually picking up some W’s lately. Good for him!

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2024-09-02

Do you rember. Wen day is dark, sember.

Listening: @cyelatm released a new album Habit Prism that I've been listening to in bits and pieces. Even, rhythmic folk, good music to have on when you have people around.

In that vein, Bandcamp Friday this coming Friday! Make your lists!

Watching: Watched The Raid which I've had kicking around for a bit. Do you want to watch guys punch each other all over for like 15 minutes at a time for an hour? No? Get better taste in movies and then watch guys punch each other all over for like 15 minutes at a time for an hour.

The Raid is so obviously made for like two dollars, there's one building, every single gun and piece of armour is airsoft gear, the camera is visibly some mid-tier hardware that suffers from severe rolling shutter, and it kicks so much ass.

There's some really interesting things happening with camera movement in this movie. Really really complicated multi-axis camera moves, the same shot will take like six different dutch angles in a single move, or will lock on to different objects and follow them, it's great for martial arts but it's also used to pretty good effect in some interstitial scenes.

The culminating fight with Mad Dog is so wild, literally just three guys in an empty concrete cube fighting for a solid ten or twelve minutes and it works! Does not seem possible. They actively remove almost every prop from the room so it's just guys hitting each other but they keep doing incredible stunts.

It's funny looking at the gifsets on here because they're unreadable, everything happens so fast and requires so much context that is only delivered in the full flow of the movie. My favourite part is when he said "It's Raiding Time" and raided all over those guys.

Reading: Finally sat down and got through the Phalanx's Twilight, Legion's Triumph series on acoup.

Sections IVa-c mostly slid off my brain because it's a bunch of wars I don't know enough about to contextualize but it's mostly justification for what's explained in parts I-III which were great, and it's an interesting look at how the political and military structures of Rome interwove to improve the effectiveness of the Legion.

Also reading Skin Horse, which I started ages ago but never got very far, I think because I started a job around that time and lost track of it. Sticking webcomic tabs on my little ARM tablet is really convenient, I've jammed Out Of Placers and Laika's Comet in there as well, it's been a while since I did a big archive dive on a comic.

Skin Horse is very much of its time, not really in sensibility but just in content. The nerds are characterized by liking Harry Potter.

Making: Resolved the power delivery issues that were causing me to have mysterious failures with the LED driver. That was annoying. Anyway remember to split your power supply when you could potentially pull like 10A@5V to drive LED's.

Playing: Tactical Breach Wizards campaign is ongoing, as you get deeper into the campaign your team expands which dramatically complicates operations, your possible actions explode, and I'm not even halfway through.

Dall was my newest operator at time of writing and she's probably the hardest to use, she can deal a lot of damage but relies more so than anyone else on good positioning, it's really easy to end up way out of place and waste her moves, and she's too heavy to shunt around with Jen's storm attacks the way you can with the others.

Speaking of those, I really like how the short turns and deterministic actions mean you can get really into the weeds. The first time I used a gale grenade to shunt Zan over one extra block to line him up I assumed this would be a sometimes food but you really find yourself doing stuff like that all the time.

I'm heading back and picking through some of the challenge missions concurrently with playing partially to stretch out overall gameplay and partially because I think having fewer abilities unlocked will make those more interesting.

Tools and Equipment: You know, I think we know each other pretty well, I can put this here. The Doxy USB-C Wand is a safe and legal thrill.

[okaystoptellingmetomakeanaccount]

Okay. K - Diari Del Klondike has got to be one of the goofiest, dumbest, most illogical series yet with only 2 episodes. Barbieri is all like: yeah I'm going to make these stories to be consistent with Rosa and fill up the parts that he didn't write. So you expect that he's going to think about continuity. Then this episode he introduced Glomgold in the Klondike. You serious? That's not only going against Rosa, that's going against BARKS! BARKS?! You don't contradict Barks, that's sin in the Duck comics world. Scrooge doesn't know who Glomgold is until when they meet in the first ever Barks story. Rosa went around this by making sure that Scrooge never learns Glomgold his name in LaToS Chapter 6 The terror of the transvaal. Gervasio went around this by just avoiding these characters to directly interact in the past. They don't meet aside from that one Rosa appearance, so he makes sure that they don't meet. Glomgold can take over Duckburg and fake his curriculum vitae all he wants, but he doesn't interact with Scrooge. Meanwhile Barbieri is all like:

Does he just not know or does he not care? 'I will be building upon Rosa' is a pretty big claim. But that's obviously not the case here so, like, huh, what, why,, i am confusw.

Then look at the random new 'lore' he creates that only rivals the bullshit Kari Korhonen pulled in the McDuck Diaries(funnily enough also a diary. It seems Scrooge has a lot of those together with the secret one that Donald finds). Korhonen had literally every single character be ancestor or family member of present day character. It was weird, but I don't mind it too much compared to what Barbieri did.

Cause for some reason we need Blackheart Beagle to also show up in the Klondike with a new name?????? Huh?? Where did that come from? Why? That's the goofiest thing ever.

Then we need to give Scrooge this treasure that he actually holds very dear even though we have never seen it before.

Then we need to give Scrooge a dog sidekick that he just has had through his Klondike period.

Then we establish that he was actually best friends with Goldie all the time even though she drugged him, he kidnapped her, she stole from him, they beat the shit out of each other, and Rosa shows that their relationship is very rocky and terrible which is what made their love story so good. But no now they're bffs. Sure.

And I don't get the whole diary thing either? What point does it serve? It only makes everything more annoying to read because it gets broken up by HDL talking. Is it just to fill up pages? Idk

Then Scrooge's glasses why does he need those why why why why why

You get the chance to write about the Klondike, arguably one of the most exciting things in the donald duck universe and you decide to write the lamest stories ever. It's not like Barbieri can't write cool shit.

Some of his Wizards of Mickey chapters are the only wizards of mickey stories ever that are in the inducks top 10000. If you somehow manage to write good wizards of mickey stories you're a goddamn wizard (pun not intended).

So why is K so incredibly dull? I don't get it. I only have questions it's so weirddd

Why does it have references to life and times even though it directly contradicts it? You don't have to adhere to the Rosa Canon but then why do you say that you do? I don't get it.

Why is Flintheart Glomgold just chilling with Soapy Slick? This feels like a fever dream. You were somehow allowed to do this, this is crazy, so why is the result so boring? How? How can Soapy slick and Flintheart Glomgold be boring? *insert Tumblr blabbering*

There's so much goofy stuff. Scrooge as hulpsinterklaas is canon.

Only the Dutch will understand that this is a big deal.

Why would panini want a new series taking place in the past? Why did they ask Barbieri to write this? Or was it his own initiative? Even then, why would Bertani give the green light? The Klondike is a holy part of the duckverse. Or can people just do this if they want to? I can't imagine that. Rosa and Korhonen couldn't just write about Scrooge's past. They needed to have a reason (the reason usually being demand from the publisher). But if panini wanted it, then why don't they promote it? They have only placed these stories in issues where the cover could be something else.

A big new part of Scrooge's past is revealed!! That will sell well! How do we let the people know? BY MAKING THIS

THE COVER OF COURSE! (tbf they probably wanted a last chance to use it before it fell in the public domain. A last time they show everyone lmao look we can use this and you can't)

It's just such a strange series. And all the random OC's that pop up as well, but those are the least weird thing.

Anyway what I said was mostly ranting because that's funny. If you want to see people actually discussing this weird thing then you should read the papersera thread (use Google translate if you don't speak Italian it works fine)

[tyrannuspitch]

i know it's probably a lot MORE vexing to be on the other side of this equation [ie: a norse myth enthusiast when the public image of your passion has been swallowed whole by Some Hollywood Film that just makes shit up]...

but it is still incredibly vexing to me how so many people who are clearly very well-versed in and passionate about norse myth will tell you that mcu thor is terrible while displaying the most surface-level understanding of it.

like. argh. obviously it's fine to personally dislike something for being inaccurate, but "inaccuracy" is not necessarily an artistic flaw in and of itself. sometimes change is just change.

"ah," you say, "but i don't dislike it for being inaccurate, i dislike it because all the changes are simplifying and reductive." are you sure? is it really that the version you know is complex and subtle, and the version you're seeing for the first time is shallow and dumbed-down... or is it just that you're seeing this version for the first time? is it actually less complex" or is it just complex in different ways from what you're expecting?

but also, mcu thor was never going or trying to be mythologically accurate, because it's literally not an adaptation of the myths. it's an adaption of the comics.

yes, it definitely would be cool to have a blockbuster film that accurately depicted norse myth... but that film wouldn't be "marvel's thor". because marvel's thor is his own entity, and he is not interchangeable with his mythological counterpart. if you wrote about myth!thor when you were meant to be writing about marvel!thor, that would be inaccurate too, and, unlike the films we have, you would be failing your brief.

and god it's just really frustrating because like. even a lot of people who like these movies don't see what they're doing, and don't understand that the simplistic hero narrative is something they're setting up specifically to knock down... but that's going to be even harder to see when you're trying to view the movies through a myth lens, given that they're designed to be viewed either through a comic lens or no lens at all.

you need to trust these movies if you want to see what makes them good, and if you come in with the wrong set of expectations, they're not going to look very trustworthy! they're trying to critique and re-complexify the simplified narrative of (the worst version of) the comics, but if you don't know the comics, you're going to think the movies did all the simplifying themselves, and if you don't have patience or faith in the movies, you're not notice to see the self-subversion going on.

which would all be difficult enough to begin with. but then we also have the fact that these movies are near-universally seen as Bad Movies, disposable, soulless, low art, unworthy of study, etc etc. which means that simply trying to defend them is going to lower your credibility in a lot of people's eyes, and the likelihood of anyone ever actually listening to you and believing you on this topic is pretty much negligible. it is at this point that i conclude that i have most likely fallen victim to a wizard's curse and should resign myself to being trapped in the labyrinth(tm) for the rest of my days.

[spicyraeman]

This week's batch of drawings will make you coo gentlepeople! Traumatised murder Bébé Lae'zel and happy Bébé Xan will make you melt like butter in a warm croissant! You never cared for kids? Now you do!

As a french speaker, the charisma check of a froggy frog Lae'zel would probably fail tbh. But it makes me laugh to imagine her accent being 100% harsher and the words mispronounced. They really missed a comical opportunity.

"What do you mean, wizard? Why can't I say 'I want to hit the beach' in front of the hatchlings? I had my hopes to see some phoques there. WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING SHADO-ART! We need to foc-us!"

Buuuuuut in french to say "my love / 🐸 my joy 🐸" you can say "mon cœur" which means "my heart". ( Coincidence? I think not!) I can almost imagine a scene where it's softly choked in a bloody pointy ear at camp after a scary fight. Almost. So just for that I can admit it can be cute. (Want more french lessons? Scream weewoo 🚑 at 3am and I'll appear on your bed, sleep-deprived with a complotist white board ! Special discount for fanfic writers and artists)

I saw briefly the translated version of the game, it's... an experience. They translated SH literally, it really brought out the cringe I probably should've felt in English but didn't. It's wayyy to close to "Shadowcunt" too, but we have Shart here so I can't really speak up. Poor girl is taking punches in every languages 😂

Also I love how everytime I send you something stuck in my brain, you come up with the most reasonable and obvious answers. Why do I forget these characters don't live in a bubble but in a society? Ofc there are gonna be pointy ears headphones 😂🤦‍♀️ All week I imagined some designs for those, then jewelries, then piercings, then I reaaally need to stop this brain. Qquipart is right too, Karlach is def a speaker user!

I live to give you cute drawing ideas. Doing the devil's work I'm sure, adding to the everlasting pile 😈

And take all the time you need to answer, obv. I'm sending a weekly rambling letter to a friend and finding an answer randomly in my mailbox ; waiting is part of the fun.

🫀🚑

Yes! I had kids on the brain at the time! It's not something that happens often, but i couldn't resist baby Xan or Lil'zel

I find French accents incredibly endearing, not particularly attracted to them, but theres something about them i just love. An obscenely french Lae’zel would make me lose my shit, and honestly, it would fit her. I've always had the hc that lae'zels accent is waaayyy more prominent than in game and that she mispronounces words more frequently. I mean, shes probably never had to speak common to anyone before the nautiloid, how would she know how some words are pronounced?

Also bestie ya cant just drop an atomic bomb on me like that, thats too fuckin cute bro my heart 😭

As for reasonable and obvious answers, they're like that cuz ive got terminal worldbuilder disease, and as soon as you sent that ask, i took a whole day just researching headphones and IEMs. I really should draw up some designs for them 🤔 and yeaaa karlach is def bumping the speakers at full volume

It truly is an everlasting pile, i should probably actually start writing them down lmaooo

Trust me, im taking my time lol my brain works at a snails pace, but seeing an ask from you makes my week so ty <3

[chasedawg2]

8 Shows To Get To Know Me

Tagged by no one, seen from a few, suggested by one

1. RWBY

The only reason I use this app is to see content on the two dorks above that I love so much and thank for the several hours of total brainrot. What literally started in like volume 2 as a "I envy my gf having ships in shows we watch and they work out, I need to find a ship to enjoy" to literally wanting to scream for joy when they're in the general vicinity of one another begging for any social interaction.

If that doesn't show well who I am idk what will.

2. RWBY Ice Queendom

....except maybe basically putting RWBY twice. Showcases my obsessive tendencies (I used 2 of 8 spots on a list to talk about White Rose)? Check. Shows my petty side (I loved it mostly for having juicy White Rose content I haven't gotten much of in recent volumes)? Yup. Yeah that works. Don't let me fool you though, I loved the show for the show too. Good plot, loved the animation, all of it fine and dandy. But yeah.... I just needed a WR infusion and this show gave it to me.

3. Succession

(for those of you who have not seen Succession, this is not Succession, this is one of the top GIF results for "business meeting")

Business people doing business things saying business words for an hour every week and yet it still stresses me out in a good way. Cinema.

4. Wizards of Waverly Place

Don't let the fact that I literally fell in love with Selena Gomez because of this show fool you. I loved this show for the show..... as well. Were there shows I watched more? Yeah. Were there shows I liked more? Probably. But this list is about shows that help you learn about me, not my top 8 shows of all time (although this is a weird one to say that on because this in fact would be in my top 8 favorite shows all time probably) and this teaches you the type of thing I was into in my younger years and how I learned about my biggest celebrity crush ever. Plus the transitions are all timers.

5. Once Upon A Time

^one of my favorite TV characters based on vibes

But that's not why it's here. It's here because it was one of, if not the first, major length show I ever binged with my girlfriend so it will always hold a special place in my heart. Plus everything besides the last season was very VERY good so it started things on a good note and has been good ever since 😁😂

6. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

God I fuckin miss this show. I miss this show so bad. That's what you're learning about me from this, that I miss these two dorky lesbians so fuckin bad. I regret hopping in the bandwagon the second they became canon. I should've latched on for the ride. GOD I miss them so bad. Are they still making a movie? I wish they made funkos but we are definitely past a point of no return there. UGHHHHHH COME BACK.

7. Game of Thrones

Yes yes, I know. I know. Relax. I too think the last season completely ruined the vibes of the whole show and severely reduces interest in potential rewatches if I have nothing else to watch. HOWEVER it makes the learn about me list because this is how I discovered that I love Richard Madden as an actor. I thought it was just that I loved Robb Stark the character, because before this I was never one to be like "oh so and so is my favorite actor I love their work" besides Selena Gomez because I was shameless in my youth and Harrison Ford because I liked Han Solo in my Star Wars days. But no, I watched him for like 4 minutes in 1917 and was like hey I know him, then I saw him in Eternals and he was great in Eternals, and now I'm seeing him in Medici and I like him in that too! I need to see Bodyguard at some point. Everyone says his performance was amazing in that.

8. The Boys

I was never a big comic/superhero guy growing up. I knew about various superheroes, I knew the MCU existed, hell I was Team Iron Man without watching a single MCU movie until 2019 (and I'm still that way). But, I've gotten into it. Up to date on MCU movies, seen most of the MCU shows (haven't seen only one of them yet, but I won't say which so it doesn't start anything because I just haven't felt like starting it yet and that's the only reason), and like I liked it. The Boys (followed soon by Eternals and then Moon Knight) showed me there was ways I could LOVE superhero stuff and now I make it my mission to see Marvel content because I've become interested in it so I guess it's a good thing I started late because I've yet to get burnout but that's only because I've been consuming content for like 4 years while some (if you count the Tobey Spiderman movies as the first mainstream superhero movies although I'm sure theres others that were also mainstream, probably batman but I'm getting into DC soon I swear I just dont know as much yet but I will get into it) have been consuming it for 20+ so I get why people complain about superhero burnout but I haven't reached it yet, and amazing content like The Boys is why.

Anyways that's it you can do it now @dragongirl180 and anyone else who happens to see this it's an open invitation to also do it so go ahead and share and stuff

[castillodeleon]

An Unserious Serious Conversation Who: Leo and Seb What: The two have a talk about Sebastian's relationship. Where: The Castillo Deleon residence When: May, 2024

A/N: Mentions of @rebecca-anderson & @salvadorquiroz

Leo began packing his books into his bag along with some Pokemon cards gifted to him by Henry and some board games he had begged his father for. Even though his birthday was three months away, Leo already had a long list of games he wanted and was excited about playing with Henry and Jason when they had the chance.

"You're the only kid I know that packs books for a sleepover." Seb bit into his apple and leaned against their dining room set. "Isn't that a little heavy?"

"That's not true. You know Henry and Michael Sin. Literally, all my friends are giant nerds."

Seb almost choked on his apple and laughed. "Excuse me?"

"We figured it's best if we embrace our natural selves. Me, a possibly queer boy from San Fransico who reads at a college level, loves spreadsheets and Dungeons and Dragons. Henry, the language and arts wizard with an emotional quotient that would shame just about anyone, and Jason---he's just cute. I don't know. I've got nothing, dad."

Seb shook his head. "Speaking of, will you be asking Jason to the summer soiree? I hear Mr. Escobar will be chaperoning."

"Meh. Dad, I don't think he sees me that way and Uncle Thomas says that's okay and I can move on when I'm ready. Maybe we'll do a group thing. Henry refuses to talk tot he girl he likes and Jason is too busy trying not to go to summer school for third time in his academic career. Do you think that'll be weird?"

"Um, I don't think so. You're all still so young. Not saying I didn't try to date in middle school but there's a lot that comes with all of that."

Leo nodded and zipped up his duffle. "Trust me I know. Xavier is getting us all sundaes today and Winter is going to come with us to the comic book store in town before we grab dinner and go back to Henry's house. So, you can call me on my cell phone or text me. Don't set the house on fire while I'm gone."

"Who's the kid again?" Seb walked back into the kitchen to toss the core of the apple into a trash can. "And Winter will make sure you all stay together?"

"I'm 12, dad not 4. Besides, Winter is really mature for her age. " He smirked. "Are you going on a date with Rebecca or Salvador tonight?" Leo was curious about the information his dad had given him last month and now that they've done the appropriate research, Leo understood it better.

Seb smiled as he began the dishes. Xavier would be here any minute to pick Leo up but he wanted to answer any questions his son would have for him. "Both of them." He shut off the water for a moment and reached for his dish towel to wipe his hands. "Did you understand what I meant the other day when I said I was dating them both?"

Leo nodded. "Yeah. I mean, I understand it better now. I think. I just wonder what it's like to be in love with two people. I know you're not in love yet but when it happens, like will it happen for both of them at the same time?"

"Um, that's a good question. I'm going to say maybe not. Maybe in a perfect world it would but I feel like it's very possible for me to love them both at the same time at some point which is why I'm in the relationship to begin with. I see them both as two individual people but at the same time, it's like being with one person so all the rules o f dating still apply."

"Huh. What about when it gets more serious? Will you marry them both?"

"Perhaps. But it's too soon to tell any of that. Again, if it does get more serious, it would be a strong consideration. Is that something you'd be open to knowing more about?"

"Yes." Leo replied quickly. "I like seeing you happy. That's what matters most to me but I also want to understand it all. Do you think they like me?"

Seb reached out for his son and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "What's not to like?"

Leo shrugged. "I know, right? I'm delightful." He giggled and looked up at his dad. "Do you think people will say mean things about you all?"

"It's possible. People are unpredictable but I do know that there are nice people and there are mean people. I can't change that or their mindset but if I'm happy and Becks and Sal are happy and YOU are happy, I feel like we'll be okay."

Leo took a moment to take that all in. "You know they're like really rich, right? like Henry is rich but they're rich rich. I looked up their profiles. It wasn't hard..."

"Whoa...Lee. No hacking my boyfriend and girlfriend, okay? I know them pretty well by now. There isn't anything you've discovered that I don't know. I promise. We're open with one another like that."

"And they're okay with us having a savings fund for new brakes?" Leo asked genuinely, not wanting to sound unkind. He was just a realist.

"I mean, they don't know about the needing new brakes part but they're not opposed to dating someone middle-class. Would it make you feel better if I brought them here for a dinner date? And you can join us. You can bring Henry as your emotional support friend."

Leo nodded. "Yeah...that would be helpful. I want them to see our house and maybe they can play Scrabble with us."

"Maybe." Seb wondered when he could make that happen.

"If they don't care that we eat out of takeout boxes and play Scrabble on Sundays and have a brake fund then they're great in my book. They already make you happy, dad." He looked over his shoulder when he heard the doorbell. "That's Xavier. Do you want to come out and say hello?"

Seb nodded and ran a hand through his cirls. "Yeah, I do. You know, your uncle Xavier is the reason I met Sal and Becks. And your aunt Cel."

"Yeah, aunt Cel was ready to kidnap you and throw you to the auction." Leo giggled again as he shouldered his bag. "That was funny."

When they headed out the door, Xavier was standing in front of a car he's never seen before and Seb let out a low whistle. "Whoa. Riding in Style!" He did the Fresh Prince handshake with him as Leo and Henry began their banter about Pokemon. "He knows now."

Xavier arched a brow and looked over his shoulder at the chatting boys. "Oh yeah? Good. That's good, Seb. You deserve all of this. And I happen to know Sal and Becks are excited about you three." He extended his hand to shake Seb's shoulder slightly and then chuckled. "I gotta get Winter before she kills me but tomorrow you can tell me about your date and we can chat some more when I drop Leo off."

Seb nodded and then knocked on the passenger window to get the boy's attention. "Be good! listen to Xavier and Winter!"

Xavier rolled his eyes playfully, before placing his sunglasses back on and getting into the driver's seat. "Should have left it at Xavier. Winter is too bossy as it is." He smirked and asked the boys to put their seatbelts on before driving off.

Seb pulled his cell phone out and text Sal and Becks asking them if they wanted to do Sunday dinner at his house and yes, they were still on for tonight.

[ashes0909]

Fic Writer 20 Questions

Tagged by @luredin - thank you so much! This was a lot of fun!

How many works do you have on AO3?

195, including everything from drabbles and ficlets to more traditional length fic.

What's your total AO3 word count?

772,878, which includes collaborations.

What fandoms do you write for?

Heh. These days, its so random. My ao3 and tumblr include:

Marvel

Yuri!!! on Ice

Game Changers Series

Supernatural

Harry Potter

Check Please

Red White & Royal Blue

BTS (sort of)

a Star Wars drabble

and a partridge in a pear tree!

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Comic Books and Kings (Steve/Tony/Bucky)

False Names, Right Nets (Bucky/Tony)

Assemble (Steve/Tony)

Stories We Never Tell (Steve/Tony)

Stop, Drop, and Roll in the Hay (Steve/Tony) - a collab with my love @festiveferret

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do! I like chatting with readers and thanking them for their time/thoughts/insights/feedback

What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

By far, it's Self-Preservation (Tony/Hydra Agents, TW: NonCon) which is still kind of hopeful but also very not.

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I'm such a sucker for happy endings. Literally all my fics have a happy ending except for one.

Do you get hate on fics?

Thankfully, I haven't. I have received hate from tumblr anons but it usually just makes me chuckle and ignore.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes. All the kinds. Every smut.

Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I LOVE crossovers. I think my absolute favorite was Steve and Tony going to Hogwarts through a portal, finding their Wizard counterparts being all lovey-dovey and then being like, "Oh."

I'm also currently posting a True Blood fusion fic which is fun because vampires and telepaths.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I don't think so, but I also don't go searching for it.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! I love translations - Held is up in Russian and Employee of the Month in Chinese

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Oh, man. I've co-written an entire Roman Empire with @festiveferret along with a handful of other fics. I also had the delight of collaborating with @sirsapling on His Best Suit and @athletiger on Forever Linked.

What's your all-time favorite ship?

Nope. :D

What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

This Red, White and Royal Blue road trip fic I have 5k of but no real motivation.

What are your writing strengths?

I like to think smut is a strength of mine, along with dialogue and overall characterizations.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I sometimes forget to describe literally anything about the setting.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Sure, why not! If I don't know the language well, I try to get an expert to help beta it.

First fandom you wrote for?

I tried to write a Harry/Draco fic over in Livejournal back in like 2004. I just found the link, and no I won't be sharing it.

Favorite fic you've ever written?

I don't knowww, they're all my babies. Holds them all close and gives them all kisses.

Tagging:

I really enjoyed doing this and hope you do to: @russilton @betheflame @wilmakins @sadieb798 and @festiveferret - but if you don't feel free to ignore! Anyone else who wants to join in, feel free!

[calowlmitygoddess]

Ill fill the writing meme because i love talking about myself lmao

1. What font do you write in? Do you actually care or is that just the default setting? Standart arial, and don't care, tought i tried the comic sans trick a few times

2. If you had to give up your keyboard and write your stories exclusively by hand, could you do it? If you already write everything by hand, a) are you a wizard and b) pen or pencil? Probably not, my handwriting is terrible, actually unreadable to anyone but myself. Ive used to write on papper back in highschool when i had to write basicly everyday, now i havent touched a pen in ages.

3. What is your writing ritual and why is it cursed? No standart ritual aside from needing music, anything else distracts me. The two songs i listened the most while writing is Respite on the Spitafields by ghost and Sacred Worlds by Blind Guardian

4. What’s a word that makes you go absolutely feral? Can't think of any rn :^

5. Do you have any writing superstitions? What are they and why are they 100% true? I dont think i have any

6. What is your darkest fear about writing? That it all will be meaningless/no one will read what i do

7. What is your deepest joy about writing? Doing Something TM the whole, creation aspect

8. If you had to write an entire story without either action or dialogue, which would you choose and how would it go? No dialogue, just write a piece of someone going trought their day, ive wrote a small exercise a while back that fit this.

9. Do you believe in ghosts? This isn’t about writing I just wanna know No. Unless i hear a Noise TM then they are very real

10. Has a piece of writing ever “haunted” you? Has your own writing haunted you? What does that mean to you? All my unfinished things haunt me daily. So much promise and so far nothing real. I had to write a thing to help let go of their ghosts

11. Do you believe in the old advice to “kill your darlings?” Are you a ruthless darling assassin? What happens to the darlings you murder? Do you have a darling graveyard? Do you grieve? Only when it fits the narrative. I dont like killing characters whitout a major reason, usually thematic, otherwise it feels cheap.

12. If a genie offered you three writing wishes, what would they be? Btw if you wish for more wishes the genie turns all your current WIPs into Lorem Ipsum, I don’t make the rules. Have the skill needed to make my Big Project reality, Have it reach some form of Good greater recognition/popularity, the last one i would keep for later.

13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you write about? What is easy? Hard topics in general, big issues, relationships in any realistic way.

Literally just characters vibing, introspection, Over the top stuff.

14. Do you lend your books to people? Are people scared to borrow books from you? Do you know exactly where all your “lost” books are and which specific friend from school you haven’t seen in twelve years still possesses them? Will you ever get them back? No one ever asked for a book to me but id have no problem doing so. Im the one people shouldnt ever lend any books because i am very careless and would likely end up dropping coffee or something accidentally on it

15. Do you write in the margins of your books? Dog-ear your pages? Read in the bath? Why or why not? Do you judge people who do these things? Can we still be friends? I dont write in margins, but i did dog eared books in the past, and i use the jacket(?) of the book to mark my pages.

16. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever used as a bookmark? fuckenn... i dont remember tbh, again i use the jacket.

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text. I have a post with a bunch of lore about the dragon species, i cant find it tought. But they are mammals that lay eggs, have no gender, their society mostly resemble that of bees, they have no currency, and the watsonian reason the main character goes by gendered terms despite not having one is because she thinks the words sound nice

18. Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end. Spicy addition: Questioner provides the passage. I dont think theres any passages that have interesting enough backstories.

19. Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going? My dream since childhood was to write a book, ive always liked to tell stories, read and such, i would dictate stories that my mom would write down before i learnt how to do so. But then i got really into drawing and started to foucus more on that, and ended up shifting the foucus from writing text to comic making since every artist with ocs does that. I also changed foucus on projects faster than light, so i would write 2 chapters and give up the next day, or change the entire story the next week and such.

I stuck with comics as my goal for like the past 6 years, and only early this year i came to the conclusion that i really hate the comic making part of making comics, and that i like writting much better. Im very rusty+ the fact im not as avid reader as i used to, and the quality is not really good, but im having fun.

20. If a witch offered you the choice between eternal happiness with your one true love and the ability to finally finish, perfect, and publish your dearest, darlingest, most precious WIP in exactly the way you've always imagined it — which would you choose? You can’t have both sorry, life’s a bitch

Wip, finish the wip, thats all i wanted since i was 10, what even is the point of this question.

21. Could you ever quit writing? Do you ever wish you could? Why or why not? I just started writting 'seriously' so i dont want to quit just yet. Also i have a massive undeserved ego, i dont think even the most discouraging,awful negative review could make me quit doing it.

22. How organized are you with your writing? Describe to me your organization method, if it exists. What tools do you use? Notebooks? Binders? Apps? The Cloud? I have one google doc, with outline+ chapters as i write them, i used to have different docs for lore/outline/chapters but its easier this wau

23. Describe the physical environment in which you write. Be as detailed as possible. Tell me what’s around you as you work. Paint me a picture.

In the inn i stay during the week and my actual room in my house are essentially the same place, Is my room, its messy and damp but its confy enough. My table is turned to the small window and during the morning the sun hist right in my face. The table is equally messy, with cups and glasses over it, pappers stained with coffee and tea cover its surface. My one company, a small succulent that rests near the window, and a carved small owl that i need to constantly clean because its constantly molding due to the dampness.

24. How much prep work do you put into your stories? What does that look like for you? Do you enjoy this part or do you just want to get on with it? Idk what kind of prep work you would do. I just sit and write mate.

25. What is a weird, hyper-specific detail you know about one of your characters that is completely irrelevant to the story? Godamn i cant think of any rn. Most of my Extremely well developed characters are from my BIg Story, but it literally doesnt exist anywhere outside my head yet, so idk what is and isnt relevant to it. For my current wip is a little harder since the characters are like less than a year old. idk...Orick looks like a cat person, i think he would like to own a cat.

26. How do you get into your character’s head? How do you get out? Do you ever regret going in there in the first place? I go "what would a person in this situation with this background do" and try my best to guess.

27. Who is the most stressful character you’ve ever written? Why? Any character thats like a stategist or planner, because its hard to make them look smart without making it look like bullshit or predicting the future

28. Who is the most delightful character you’ve ever written? Why? Meira. Her narration came very easy to me, guilt ridden but still professional and calm, also Big Gay.

29. Where do you draw your inspiration? What do you do when the inspiration well runs dry? I was never a very original kid, im a vampire that sucks the soul out of other things to fuel my own. My current Wip main characters are based out of HK characters they resemble nothing of. Im always on the prowl for new media to steal from be inspired by

30. Talk to me about the role dreams play in your writing life. Have you ever used material from your dreams in your writing? Have you ever written in a dream? Did you remember it when you woke up?

Sort of. I've dreamed with plots before, and i usually do my best to remember, but while at the moment i wake up feeling like that was the best idea in the world, after a while when i think about it again, its just sort of nonsense

31. Write a short love letter to your readers.

Literally Thank you to anyone who ever gave me the time of day. Im still a little haunted by those i dissapointed by never fininishing stuff but the fact that yall liked enough to make me feel guilty for giving up is also good in a way <3

32. What is a line from a poem/novel/fanfic etc that you return to from time and time again? How did you find it? What does it mean to you?

'sometimes a dream is enough' - the last line from one of my favourite books. In context it drives me insane, it makes me rabid. But out of context its just neat

33. Do you practice any other art besides writing? Does that art ever tie into your writing, or is it entirely separate? Im a Drawer! also tried sculpting in the past. And YES, my current dream is to have an illustrated novel.

34. Thoughts on the Oxford comma, Go: No idea what an oxford comma is and at this point im too afraid to ask

35. What’s your favorite writing rule to smash into smithereens? POV character being the protagonist, i just found it such a neat concept. Also the protagonist needing to be a Good Moral Character.

36. They say to Write What You Know. Setting aside for a moment the fact that this is terrible advice...what do you Know? Dinossaurs, i wanna write a story about dinossaurs one day...

37. If you were to be remembered only by the words you’ve put on the page, what would future historians think of you? Gay. Also very into dragons

38. What is something about your writing process YOU think is Really Weird? If you are comfortable, please share. If you’re not comfortable, what do you think cats say about us? I dont have any Weird habits i think? I can only imagine some kind of complain about how their current food sucks.

39. What keeps you writing when you feel like giving up? Not to be dark in the funny meme but giving up would literally remove one of the things that give my life some form of meaning

40. Please share a poem with me, I need it.

idk how to write poems sorry

[shithead-123]

Kotlc collecting head cannons Pt. 3

And finally, last but not least,

Fitz: You thought I forgot abt him. You thought I was a Fitz hater and didn't include him. WRONG. I saved him for last bc he is the ULTIMATE collector. buckle up bc this is gonna be long. He has everything. Gnome collections, rock collections, medicine/herbal collections, knife collections, plants collections, stick collections(him and Biana fight over sticks it's so funny), sticker collections, book collections, jewelry collections (this includes traditional Indian jewelry bc The Vacker's brown idc), clothing collections, shell collections, collections of things that remind him of ppl, ribbons, beads, wires, Doorknobs, carpets, chairs???, star charts, bottle caps, socks, vinyl records, lightbulbs, glitter, stationary, random human junk, Dirt even. Rocks again, literally thousands of rocks. Fitz = rock.  He's such a hoarder. Bro even collects cats. You cannot convince me he has an army of pigeons that he has from his time in the human world. Speaking of human cities. he has a trinket from every area he visited, canonically. He has those ugly tourist baseball caps. The "I love New York" t-shirts. used coffee cups from like Starbucks. flattened soda cans. He looks at those soda cans in wonder. It'll forever be a mystery of what these things are. He'll never put two and two together that unflattened soda cans, and flattened soda cans are the same thing. He's mystified. But because he collects so much random shit, he has a lot of cool things too. Like dinosaur fossils(he's a dinosaur boy) that are really rare. Ancient pots and scrolls and other historical things. And he knows the history behind everything bc he's a nerd. Dude could become a billionaire just from the things he owns. He has three Toyotas(that he hot wired???? somehow???). A private jet. A yacht. And iPhone 13. a laptop that he doesn't know how to use. A lottttt of human movies/TV shows which he doesn't know he has. But he does. POKEMON CARDS. He plays the Pokemon games on Nintendo. He and Dex do pokemon battles. Fitz always loses. YU-GI-OH CARDS. Omg bro would be the only one who knows how to Play Yu-Gi-Oh. he's a master at it Dex loses to him in Yu-Gi-Oh sadly. Board games, card games. Comic books. He likes DC more than marvel bc I like DC more than marvel. Idk who his favorite  superhero would be. I could do a post on everyone's favorite. baseball cards. Press on nails. CDs. Action figures. fake lashes. candy. Harry Potter wizard wands (he thought they were sticks). Antique Chess boards. Sooooo many cooking supplies. None of the Vackers can cook because they're clowns, so when Della see's her son doing some stress baking, she encourages him to expand into cooking and now he cooks dinner for the entire gang sometimes. He has all the versions of the air-fryers. he uses none of them. Knives that are sharper than Ro's daggers somehow. He owns human property too. Illegally. bc he's a minor and also a citizen of zero human countries. so he has forged documents too. He has 6 pounds of crystal meth. He has no idea what it is, but he has it, he thinks it's plant fertilizer. Don't ask how. For all his Vacker properness, Fitz goes feral in the forbidden cities. He collects pride flags too, for Biana and someday himself, when he stops being in denial. of course all this stuff and he still doesn't have a single human penny to his name. Sophie's feeling homesick so Fitz shows her his hoard. She goes crazy. Everyone makes a day of looking through Fitz's stuff. What crazy is that all of this is under his bed. it's all in there. It's magic. You're wrong if you think Fitz is a normal guy. he's not.

[talenlee]

Game Pile: Scourge, the Magic Set

Magic: The Gathering has some really interesting things recently coming into my space. In the past literal full year at this point, Wizards of the Coast have released products that do nothing but personally irritate me, and the horizon shows no abatement on that score. I hate Urza, I hate Mishra, I hate the Phyrexians and the only reason I don’t flat-out hate Dominaria is Kelly Digges’ work on worldbuilding that space being absolutely breathtaking to consider as a form of craft. These are spaces for which I have literally no actual emotional attachment, stories that I want over and gone as soon as possible so that Wizards can maybe pursue the dream of twenty years ago presented by Mirrodin of maybe not just continuing to write the same story in the same generic fantasy plane over and over, badly. But then they went and hired the Pinkertons.

I didn’t want to talk about this article this way. I wanted to reflect on the twenty years I’ve been playing this game and the twenty years I’ve been designing custom cards for it. I wanted to reflect on the importance of a game that maybe, part of me wonders, could have been my life, and which could have connected me even closer to some people who I think of as incredible and amazing and beautiful, but talking about that, and reflecting on that, feels deeply irresponsible because wizards went and hired the Pinkertons.

I know that I started playing Magic: The Gathering in 2003. I know the day even. I know because the day beforehand, I called the comic store and asked them about what would be involved to get into Magic: The Gathering. They told me that hey, come in tomorrow, buy a precon from the brand new set, Scourge. I literally started playing this game on the release date for Scourge and that means that I know definitively, that I’ve been playing this game for twenty years, sandwiched between the very last set printed on the ‘old’ card face and this year, where Wizards have printed ten nostalgia sets in a row, one of which resulted in them hiring the Pinkertons.

Sometimes it’s strange to me to see the way that Wizards engages the nostalgia of long term fans of Magic: The Gathering. I am one of those long term fans. I have been engaged with Magic: The Gathering for all of those twenty years. It got me writing. It made me connections between people who were important to me at the time, and at least one person who – and I know this sounds like nothing, but – when Twitter collapsed, was one of those people I contacted to send my Discord information to. Magic The Gathering is part of my Masters thesis, it’s part of my PhD, I’ve pushed to put its idea space in inclusion in general media studies. It’s such an important part of my life, and yet by and large if you ask me about what sets are about and the characters they’re about, I dislike most of it. The whole of the history of Magic from the moment I got started on to now is a neverending series of complaints, like how earlier this year they hired the Pinkertons.

When I started with Magic: The Gathering, part of the problem was the story. I could tell there was something, and I wanted to learn about it, and I read a bunch of the novels and the lore that was available at the time. This is, in hindisght, a terrible idea, because Magic’s story wasn’t very good at this point in time. The Odyssey and Onslaught storylines were an attempt to make a fresh start from the story of previous editions, the Invasion storyline and its prior narrative. That story focused on the narrative of Gerard and Volrath, following on the story of Urza, a genocidal eugenecist. These characters, broadly speaking, all sucked, and were dead when I arrived, and ‘our side’ of them, the one we were meant to regard as a tragic hero was a literal actual eugenecist and committed genocides, so I kinda didn’t… care about them? They’re bad. They’re assholes. Tell you what, Urza wouldn’t find anything wrong with hiring the Pinkertons.

The story we got in OTJ-OLS was full of problems and ideas I disliked, too, and uh, it just wasn’t really well written. These novels sucked, too. The big culmination of them was hey, you know these two women who are fighting each other (because the boys that own them want them to)? Well, instead they made another woman, and her card sucks. And then she got weird in the head and died and the whole story kind of farted out, like they’re hoping the story about them hiring the Pinkertons would.

This means that I started Magic when the story sucked, and all the story before that point sucked, and then the story promised it was launching off into brand new spaces that didn’t have to relate to those old story pieces and the Cabal and Kamahl and Jeska and Phage and Akroma and Ixidor and Gerard and Urza. We got Mirrodin, which was set on a world made by Karn, Urza’s silver golem, where we learned that Planeswalker sparks can be used to raise the dead and also the Mirran keep slaves and we’re meant to think of them as heroic and good people that aisde. Mirrodin also was an unprecedently unpleasant time for the tournament environment, with the bannings of Tinker in Extended and the subsequent bans of the Affinity deck pieces in Standard. It was known at the time as slaying the Dragon, showing that they had done something serious to try and solve the enormous problem presented to them, like they’d gotten rid of it by hiring the Pinkertons.

Scourge is notable for its impact on Magic long-term, though not how it seems to think it should. Its theme was biggest creatures ever, and didn’t have the biggest creatures in Magic’s history, and had this whole subtheme of mana value (‘converted mana cost’ we called it back then), but none of the cards using it were good. It did involve printing the Storm Mechanic, which history has shown is probably the most dangerous, overpowered mechanic in Magic’s history, a mistake overshadowed by hiring the Pinkertons.

Magic the Gathering is a truly unparalleled game, with non-stop expansions over the course of the past thirty years and non-stop mechanical and functional innovation. It is a game that could not exist without an empire to sustain it, and part of that empire is the huge community of fan media and fan work that Wizards couldn’t reasonably stop and you know they want to. If Wizards of the Coast disappeared tomorrow there would still be a new Magic set every month and some of them would even be good, and talking about that sort of energetic creativity is beautiful and I’d love to do that but wizards went and hired the Pinkertons.

During this time I went from investing in standard decks and extended decks to try and play tournament Magic, to focusing on the lower-tier competitive scene of FNM, to then the landscape of Magic Online until I wound up where I am, a player who loves this game and makes custom cards for it (a card a day for four years), but who has played the game itself maybe five times in the past year. I play vanilla creatures and sorceries with my niblings in mono-coloured goofball decks. I like Magic Online that lets me play the game for pennies and not buy actual product because Wizards of the Coast keep putting out product I don’t like, and sometimes defend that product breaking street date by hiring the Pinkertons.

In 2022, we saw Kamigawa, Neon Dynasty (which I loved!), then Streets of New Capenna, and then eight more set releases that I have actively disliked because of their focus on the history of Magic and the need for it to drive at the history of Magic: The Gathering, the tragedy of losing Mirrodin (a shit plane that sucks whose population can all burn for all I care) and Dominaria (a shit plane that sucks whose population can all burn for all I care) in March of the Machines and Aftermath (which was the set that resulted in Wizards hiring the Pinkertons).

I have played this game for 20 years and during that time, it feels the overwhelming memory of it is that maybe the next set of cards will be about a story that doesn’t actively focus on things I hate. And I mean hate in the low key unimportant things of a card game having a story I dislike, not like how I hate knowing that they hired the Pinkertons.

Look, I don’t begrudge any content creator their current situation of being stuck in a way next to an empire that is doing something that is 100% justifiable from their position and their priorities. Wizards of the Coast had no legal redress to do what they wanted to do to control their product, and a lot of people’s jobs and work product relied on that and that sucks for them, especially since the pool had been pissed in and there was no real way to un-piss in it. But even if you accept the idea that Wizards did need to do retrieval and extraction in some way, whatever system they used to do it is being done as a matter of communicating with a public and branding that experience as being how Wizards does things, and in this case, wizards hired the fucking Pinkertons.

This game’s great.

I’ve never felt nostalgic for it despite it being literally half my life.

Shame about all the capitalism surrounding it.

Don’t hire the Pinkertons.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#GamePile #Games #Magic:TheGathering

[curmoritor]

@beloven, @vengier, @lightsmartyr, & @daemonry; sent all the questions! So time to answer them all.

What made you pick up this character?

Good question! I truly don't remember when or why I picked up Owen exactly. I just know that one day I did and ever since then I've never been the same. I originally got into this series and wrote Shylock, then Snow, and then Owen! I don't remember why I picked up Owen. I just know he is my little bonbon now.

2. How did you get into this franchise/fandom? That would be because of @beloven and an old friend of mine! They were into it and my group of friends go into it briefly before falling out of it because we still had other interests at the time, but after we fell out of those interests, we fell back into mahoyaku. Sapph was into it far more then I was at first, but I slowly inched my way into it and now I'm trapped.

3. What’s the best thing about the show/series/books/comics/etc.? God, I wouldn't even know what to pick because there are so many good things about it. I love so many things about Mahoyaku because it has amazing writing in almost every possible way. Though, I think my favorite generalized thing to think of is just how detailed the magic system inside of mahoyaku is! It's so unique and wonderful.

4. What’s the worst thing about the show/series/books/comics/etc.? Honest to god, I don't know. I like to many things about it to even think of something I don't like. Maybe just how slow it updates because getting one main story chapter a month is kiiiiiiiilling me

5. What’s the best thing about the fandom? There are a lot of things! Though I would say the fact that the fandom is SUPER orginized!! Having a whole resource doc, public discord and lots of discussions on the lore and characters!

6. What’s the worst thing about the fandom? the fandoms hyperfixation on specifically ships that I really do not like. It's just a personal thing though!

7. What’s the best thing about the canon you are writing? The fact that all wizards are yandere coded. I love this so much. Funky obsessive wizards.

8. What’s the worst thing about the canon you are writing? Personally, and it's deeply petty and not that big of a deal, the fact that Owen being so weird and different from other wizard not being really examined enough!! like!! what do you mean he can't die!! why are NO OTHER WIZARDS trying to get this ability? why can he talk to animals? this is something ONLY HE CAN DO!! and no one cares?? What about the fact he gains his magic from hate and chaos rather then love and happiness!! why is this something just glossed over!!! i want to know more!!!!!!!!!!

9. Have you tweaked the character from canon? If so, what did you tweak? Only a little bit. I made him 5'8 instead of 5'10. I also made him trans because transgenderification beam goes brrr.

10. Would you say that your portrayal is canon divergent or not?  absolutely, I think all portrayals are inherently canon divergent because we aren't the original writers so we're bound to get things wrong! but if you are trying to stick to canon good for you! I am slightly canon divergent only in making Owen far nicer then he is canonically because otherwise he'd be near impossible to interact with.

11. Are there some things you dislike about how the show/series/etc. portray the character you have picked up? If so, what? Nope! I love how the game portrays him and think he is absolutely perfect and has never done anything wrong (incredibly biased)

12. What would you say is the most unique trait about your character? The fact that he simply can't die. In canon he is literally the only person who can do that, beside that, it's the fact he can speak to and understand animals. This is also a trait exclusively restricted to him.

13. Are there any other characters from the franchise you’d like to play? Hell yea, I write several other mahoyaku characters! They are all on my multimuse though.

14. Are there some characters from the franchise you can’t stand?  Not really, I pretty much like all of them at this point! I used to not like Shino or Nero much but the new main story updates really changed my opinions on both of them so I love everyone.

15. What are your thoughts on the canon ships for the character, if any? While there is no technical canon romance, there are two sets of characters I would say are 100% in love. That being Shylock and Murr and Cain and Owen. I personally don't have strong opinions on Shymurr at all, but Caiowen is my favorite ship ever. I am insane about them and I think that there is just so much about them that makes me want to scream. Wizards in love are insane and very normal. Owen loves Cain in a unusual way but he does love him. Owen sees himself as a monster that is meant to be killed by the knights that he loves so very much, so he attacks and provokes Cain all the time to try and get him to attack and kill him, yet he also wants Cain to save him and make him feel loved, as shown with how little owen acts. Owen is just simply not capable of showing such feelings because of... a lot of reasons. From him being Northern to him being deeply traumatized.

16. What is your personal ship bias for your canon character? CaiOwen.

17. Are there any ships you can’t stand, why? ShinoHeath. I just personally don't vibe much.

18. How long have you been writing the character? about a year and a half? maybe longer.

19. Should people get into the franchise your writing from, yes or no? Absolutely. Please I fucking BEG you to get into mahoyaku. It's so good, you don't know what you are missing out on.

20. If you could sum up your character with one sentence, what would it be? Traumatized Disney princess that is also a wizard.

21. Which song do you feel describes your character the most and why? Pass because I'm bad at music.

[davidmariottecomics]

I'm 100 Hours in and I Still Don't Know if I Like Baldur's Gate

Hello there and welcome back! 

As the title suggests, I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3 a lot recently. I picked it up slightly before starting my new job when I had a lot of free time and have continued to put in a few hours on some weeknights and weekends. I've been playing for around 100 hours, or right around 4 full days of my human life, and I still don't entirely know if I like this game. This week, I wanna talk a bit about why I both continue to have complicated feelings about this game and why I continue to play it, some games that I have grouped together as similar play experiences and why I have different reactions to them, and more generally, why all of this makes for making comics based off of games such a challenge that feels so rewarding if you manage to do it right. 

Baldin' the Gate First and foremost, let's talk about Baldur's Gate 3. It came out last year and has since won a number of notable game awards, received nearly universal good reviews from critics, received lots of praise from players, and has all the good indicators that it's a good game. I also have no idea what sort of presence it has in the public consciousness because while it's sold millions of copies and I see lots of fan art and my friends talking about playing and whatever, I also know that I particularly inhabit spaces for people who like games like this and in part because of it being new and in part because of it being an adaptation of a sort, I don't think it has entered the overall cultural osmosis in the same way as Mario or Sonic or Halo or Call of Duty or Overwatch or whatever.

How it plays is it's essentially single-player (or multiplayer if you have friends you want to connect with), Dungeons & Dragons. Literally D&D, it's a licensed game set in the official Wizards of the Coast D&D world. Like, they talk about Drizzt a couple times. Minsc, a character who was featured in some of the D&D comics I worked on, is playable later in the game. There're all your core mechanics digitized, including many of the things you do being determined by a "die roll." You can journey with a party of 4 companions--a number of whom are major pre-built characters and you can build your own guy and choose their specs in traditional D&D fashion and solve puzzles and charm your way around town and fight enemies and pickpocket people and all the D&D stuff you'd like to do. Kinda. We'll get to that in a moment. 

The last bit of table setting with this is you're on an epic journey with a couple possible end goals. Within limits, because there have to be limits to your options, you can self-determine how the game goes in a lot of ways. Technically, you don't have to play with any of the pre-build, story-involved companions. You can be evil. You can be good. You can choose to usually kill or choose to try to just knock people out. You can do what I do, misunderstand a prompt that was going to unlock a character to your party, and accidentally have them get killed in the fight because they weren't one of your guys (whoops). Again, one of the things that is really rightfully praised in this game is that you can experience it for so long and whatever way makes sense to you. 

But that's also the rub, at least for me, and why I'm still struggling to decide whether or not I really like BG3. I personally often feel the two competing forces at the core of the game: To be D&D like, it needs to give you options for how to play it and tries really hard to cast a wide net to do so, but simultaneously, for you to actually progress the story, you do need to play by the rules of the programming and stay relatively "on rails".

For example, one of the items you can acquire in game is rope. And, while at some point it might've had more reason to be in the game, in the final product, you can't actually do anything with it other than sell it, I guess. But I didn't realize that, so I spent a good amount of time in my early game acquiring rope, sure I'd need it at some point. Finally, say 8-10 hours in or so, I forget what exactly it was, but there was some issue where I figured rope was the way to go! Like, it'd let me climb up and down from somewhere without being hurt or I'd be able to use it as a lasso for a far off lever or something. But, I couldn't use it for anything and had to look it up and discover, nope, you just can't use rope apparently. And while I figured it out otherwise, it became very apparent in that moment the limitations of the game for the ways in which I would usually engage with this type of gameplay and storytelling in a different medium.

When you apply that to the actual story decisions though, it can be really frustrating. There're a number of places where I've gotten into a conversation and none of the options even come close to how I'd otherwise approach the situtation. Again, I get why they have to be limited in that way, it's a programmed game and not my friend who can roll with my unique character decisions, but there are times when it just feels so limiting. Keeping it vague, but SPOILERS for this game: There's a companion in the game who I think is really compelling. And to my understanding, there are like 4 ways their story can resolve and none of them is particularly good, which feels bad because I want this person to have a happy ending. For as much as I can recognize the why, it doesn't change my emotional reaction to that being the case. 

So, I like a lot of the storytelling. I like a lot of the decisions available to me. I largely find the actual play mechanics fun, even if there're things I'd like to tackle a different way. I like just how big the game is and I find it appealing that by the nature of the game and the branching decision paths, you can find different ways to play it. But I don't know that once I finish this playthrough, I will come back.

Persona 5tar Rail

I like video games. Cool. Great. I am not personally someone who tends to put 100+ hours into a game--certainly not a single playthrough. I tend to like shorter games and games where I can dip in and out. If a game's working for me, I'll put a good chunk of time in. But--and recognizing that there are probably some games that've lost time in not syncing properly or the account being on multiple computers over a number of years or whatever--I just went through my Steam library and of those 270 games, BG3 is the only one I've put in over 2 days on. Most of the games that I've played, I haven't cracked 20 hours on. Most of the games, generally, I haven't cracked 20 minutes on. Getting me to invest so much time on a game is really rare. 

But two games that instant came to mind when I was thinking about BG3 and it's replayability and how that affects my experience playing it are games I've also put a stupid amount of time into: Persona 5 and Honkai Star Rail. While P5 and HSR are closer to each other than BG3, they do all have a fair amount of overlap. They're all modern roleplaying games where you've got a party of four characters that you take through fantastical worlds and solve puzzles with and battle with and have interesting stories. As I think I've talked about before on this blog, Persona 5 might--despite some flaws--be my favorite video game. If I'm pretty hesitant to put 20 hours into a game, it must speak strongly to how much I like P5 that I've put in almost 200 hours across two playthroughs (one of P5 and one of P5 Royal). 

One of the things that really works for me with Persona 5 is that I know each playthrough will be different, but not radically so. While there's a decent amount of flexibility in decision making in Persona 5, most of it is about choosing how you spend your time. There are certain things you want to do to progress the game to it's "true ending", but in terms of building your stats and your relationships and determining what to do when and how, it's wide open specificially because the actual ticking clock mechanic has such clear goal posts that you know you are on rails toward an endgame and can dig into how you want to play it in the meantime. It's a weird sensation, but because the limitations are clearer for what you can do and when, it removes a lot of the burden of "is this choice going to propel me forward in the way that I want with the game" and becomes "this choice matters only in so much as it reflects what I wanted to do and will ultimately fall into place for how I played the game this time." To me, that's more freeing, I guess. More compelling. Because I know how I like to play the game, and because that's how the game kinda wants you to play it, it feels like we're working in unison and each time I revisit is to see what I had missed before and how I can track different experiences to the same conclusion. 

Honkai Star Rail, meanwhile, is this middleground between the two. Similar to P5, to play the story of the game, everyone's going to have a pretty similar experience. The differences come in what characters are available to you and because it's a live-service game (that is to say, a game that is constantly updating), what limited time events you choose to partake in. It doesn't have the same social webbing structure as BG3 or P5--there isn't the same ability to chose to be good or bad or to ignore certain relationships in the same way. And I think that is a big part of why I haven't kept up and I find games like this so hard to come back to. I was an early adopter and I played a lot and I got caught up and now there've been a number of updates since my last real play session, and I feel like because there's now so much more that I could do, I'm overwhelmed with the options of trying to catch up, while also knowing that even if I do, I'll only hit the end of the current update, and not the end of the game. HSR has no replayability from the beginning, really, because you want to continue what you've started because the game's continuing in your absence. 

Okay, so Comics!

The parallel I can draw to comics is so while they're all pretty different, the similarities of BG3, P5, and HSR have created a grouping in my mind. I am taken on all three with the worlds that're created, I enjoy fan art of them, I get the same sort of satisfaction from how they control because that style of gaming is something that I like. But 100+ hours into each, I have a very different emotional response that changes how I want to interact with it going forward. I just want to finish BG3 and if this is my one playthrough, that's probably fine. I spent less than $1/hour of game. I know at some point in the probably not-too-distant future I'll revisit P5 (maybe I'll use it for some Japanese practice...). And I'll continue to check in with HSR because I feel like I've put a lot into it and I want to like it as much as I did at the start, but I really don't know that I can recapture the magic until it's done. And if that doesn't sound like the comics reading experience, I don't know what does! 

BG3 is a series that I'm invested in, and keep picking up, even though there's part of me that just wants to bail because it isn't bad, but it isn't quite what I want it to be. P5 is... I dunno. Young Justice. Crisis on Infinite Earths. Secret Wars II. The sort of dumb thing that I want to revisit over and over and over again, because each time I do, between me and the game/book, I find something different and new in a familiar comfort. And HSR is a book that I dug and missed an issue and it isn't easy to track down, so now I have to decide whether I dedicate that time to going back or if I wait for the trade and maybe to deal with a bit of redundancy or if I just let it go because I liked it, but maybe not enough. 

All of which is part of why I think it can be so difficult to translate video games into comics. I'm spending all this time deliberating over how to experience the story--what decisions I want to make and what decisions I have the ability to make, ultimately do I as an individual think I can revisit and make different decisions or am I just going to play basically the same because that's how I interact with the medium--which is something that comics storytelling doesn't really afford you. Not to say there aren't comics where you do have more input, but for the most part, you experience the story as presented to you because that's how the team wanted it.

I asked the question a lot working on Sonic, why would you want to read Sonic, when you can play a Sonic game? And if the characters are compelling and you feel like you're adding to the world and you truly want to engage in the sort of storytelling that only comics can to, that makes it a unique medium from something like games, you can probably find something. But you have to overcome that gap for a player who might be interested, because while both comics and games have plotted content, the difference of how the reader/player is engaged makes a world of difference. 

I hope that all makes sense. And if not... hey, I'll revisit this sometime! See ya next week! 

New Releases this week (2/7/24): Godzilla Valentine's Day Special (Editor - IDW)

New Releases next week (2/14/24):  None

Announcements: Happy Black History Month! This week, I want to spotlight N.K. Jemisin! I finally started The City We Became this week and I'm already really liking it. She also wrote the first story in Out There Screaming, the horror anthology from last year that I've talked about here before and that I really loved. She wrote Far Sector, a DC Green Lantern book that's quickly becoming one of my big recommendations for"a standalone Big 2 superhero book that shows you why superhero comics are actually pretty fun! She is becoming a favorite writer of mine and is one of the modern names in science fiction, fantasy, and horror that I think you should know! 

Usually, this is where I plug my Patreon! And I still will because you can *usually* read this blog there, get cool bonus stuff including some free comics and, at higher levels, stuff like podcasts, sneak peeks at things I'm working on, and more! BUT, Patreon's also not working right for me at the moment. I'm troubleshooting it now, but there's a slight delay in things going up, sorry! 

You can also check out my webstore where I'm sold out of Transformers vs. the Terminator (wow!) and have a very limited stock on everything else, my Kofi (I updated the Anti-AI Zine--Pay what you want for a brief, printable explainer on why AI sucks!), and Becca's site (still pending a new update, sorry)!

Bluesky is now publicly open! You no longer need an invite to join. You can find my account here. You can find a bunch of other cool people through my follow list! And there's a really good skeet going around with a bunch of helpful block lists for not dealing with dummies on the site! 

I mentioned last week that we're finally firming up plans for our wedding after a lot of back and forth and exploration on what makes the most sense. We've landed on some stuff we're happy with and will be sharing our registry soon (maybe later today???), if you'd like to contribute! 

What I enjoyed this week: Nancy (Comic), Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Links (Video Game), Baldur's Gate III (Video Game), Blank Check (Podcast), Solve This Murder (Podcast), The City We Became (Book), The Sopranos (TV show), The Afterparty (TV show), Rent (Movie), getting some wedding planning done, Becca and I did an early Valentine's Day yesterday and I'm glad we had the chance to do that for ourselves. 

Pic of the Week: Here's a very cute picture of Becca from our date yesterday at SUR, the restaurant from Vanderpump Rules.

[kreiitsuuuu]

💮 KNY CHARACTERS WITH A GN!READER THAT DRAWS [PART 1]

➡ [PART 2]

ft. Tanjiro, Inosuke, Zenitsu, Genya, Kanao

☆ warnings: slight swearing

Tanjiro Kamado

Tanjiro, at first, thought it was so amazing that even you, a swordsman that hunts demons for a living, can have a peaceful hobby to do in your free time.

But this one time.. oh boy.

He absolutely loses his marbles when he saw you drawing him on your sketchbook.

You haven't even spoke a word yet, but he's already a bashful and stuttering mess! Tanjiro never had someone illustrate him, until you magically showed up in his life.

" T-THAT'S ME! WOAH! You draw so well, Y/n! "

He'd try.. keyword: try to draw you back somehow but his skills are limited. You don't mind though, it's the thought that matters and you absolutely love him for even trying in the first place!

Will watch you draw quietly, dropping compliments here and there while he enjoys the silence you two provide eachother. And will probably sneak in pecks of kisses on your cheek because he really does appreciate your work.

Tanjiro honestly loves and cherishes everything you do for him. And, if you let him keep the little drawing you made of him — oh you bet he's keeping it safe, and will frame it if he gets the chance!

Inosuke Hashira

WHAT??????

Man is literally losing his absolute shit, how did you do that? Fucking wizard bitch

Will try to challenge you and say he's the better artist. But will fail eventually.

Doesn't admit defeat but he definitely does finds your hobby very interesting!

LISTEN,,, OKAY?

If you tried to draw him, his ego would fucking skyrocket into the sky, and he'd jump all around the place — very happy about it!

I mean why wouldn't you draw him?! He's so pretty! Pretty boy <3

He would have like comical stars all around him, watching you make figures with only strokes of a pencil. His head resting on your shoulder as you took hold of your sketchbook.

" Does it look good, Inosuke? "

" Hell yeah it does! "

Oh, you don't need to give the drawing to him. He already took it beforehand hand! Will he give it back? Nope! But he will keep it safe, and that's a promise!

Zenitsu Agatsuma

AGAIN LISTEN,,

This boy had already fell for you because of your complex swordsmanship skills, now he has you being a complete artist now?!

Would compliment you every moment he can, and ask you little questions like when did you start drawing or is it fun to draw :]

But one day, as you sat on his bed at the Butterfly Estate — and just started sketching him out, he'd cry.

HAPPY TEARS! Very happy actually!

You???? His absolute sunshine in the rain???? The light in his life??????? Draw someone like him????? Please just accept his marriage proposal at this point.

Will sit beside you, being all interested and amazed by every pencil stroke you make.

He would have this dork ass smile across his face as you compliment on how he looks so handsome.

" Y/n-san.. C-Can I keep that? "

" Oh? Why of course, Zenitsu! This was made for you afterall! "

Immediately cries again after you'd just comforted him and his sobs earlier. Embraces you into a tight, warm hug while hot tears evidently falls on his face <3

He just loves you so much!

OH and you bet this boy got some surprises up on his sleeve and drew you too! (Heavily using your art as references) But it made you cherish his work even more!

Genya Shinazugawa

He didn't even know how you became his awesome significant other

Would love any hobby you'd have to be honest, he loves you either way :]

Wil be shy to ask you about it though </3

Thinks it's really cool! Appreciates every illustration that you make

He secretly loves the small and quick doodles you make, thinks they're real goofy looking and captures your personality well!

ABSOLUTELY MELTS WHEN YOU DECIDE TO DRAW HIM <33

Genya would have this little spark of confidence that ignited inside of him to ask you if he could keep it.

Of course you said yes!

HAS THE MOST GENTLE SMILE ON HIS FACE SJFSJJFFHJSJFNE

" ..Thank you for drawing me.. I promise to— to keep it safe..! "

You embrace him in your arms as you pecked his forehead and he just melts again, face red like a tomato.

He did, and had attempted to return the favor by doodling you back — though he kept it to himself because he was too bashful to show you it </3

Kanao Tsuyuri

Kanao has appreciated you since the start, and still will!

Is very amazed by how gentle you are with the pencil strokes yet is complex and dangerous in the battlefield. How your hand hovers delicately upon the piece of paper, and yet how rough and reckless you grasp your weapon and slash it with great strength.

She definitely asks if she could try, and you let her draw too!

Butterflies and flowers are all she could manage to draw for now, but it doesn't stop you from loving her and her work deeply.

Will make a “ ⊙.☉ ” face when she noticed you sketching her.

Would definitely ask if she needed to stay still, but you reassure her that it's alright to just act natural :]

Loves your work so much!

Hesitatingly asks if she could keep the piece. Wouldn't mind if you don't let her keep it!

NONSENSE! of course you'd let her keep it!

Will be very happy about it and gives you a gentle smile and a cheek kiss while your hands and hers intertwine together :]

" Thank you so much, Y/n. "

💮 MASTERLIST [#1] | MASTERLIST [#2]