#also a big part of my job is to specifically show how this new form of computing can be used for good

[skrunksthatwunk]

actually i'm still thinking about the moral orel finale.

he has a cross on his wall. do you know how much i think about that bc it's a lot.

a lot of stories ((auto)biographical or fictional) centering escape from abusive/fundamentalist christianity result in the lead characters leaving behind christianity entirely. and that makes complete sense! people often grow disillusioned with the associated systems and beliefs, and when it was something used to hurt them or something so inseparable from their abuse that they can't engage with it without hurting, it makes total sense that they would disengage entirely. and sometimes they just figure out that they don't really believe in god/a christian god/etc. a healthy deconstruction process can sometimes look like becoming an atheist or converting to another religion. it's all case by case. (note: i'm sure this happens with other religions as well, i'm just most familiar with christian versions of this phenomenon).

but in orel's case, his faith was one of the few things that actually brought him comfort and joy. he loved god, y'know? genuinely. and he felt loved by god and supported by him when he had no one else. and the abuses he faced were in how the people in his life twisted religion to control others, to run away from themselves, to shield them from others, etc. and often, orel's conflicts with how they acted out christianity come as a direct result of his purer understanding of god/jesus/whatever ("aren't we supposed to be like this/do that?" met with an adult's excuse for their own behavior or the fastest way they could think of to get orel to leave them alone (i.e. orel saying i thought we weren't supposed to lie? and clay saying uhhh it doesn't count if you're lying to yourself)). the little guy played catch with god instead of his dad, like.. his faith was real, and his love was real. and i think it's a good choice to have orel maintain something that was so important to him and such a grounding, comforting force in the midst of. All That Stuff Moralton Was Up To/Put Him Through. being all about jesus was not the problem, in orel's case.

and i know i'm mostly assuming that orel ended up in a healthier, less rigid version of christianity, but i feel like that's something that was hinted at a lot through the series, that that's the direction he'd go. when he meditates during the prayer bee and accepts stephanie's different way to communicate, incorporating elements of buddhism into his faith; when he has his I AM A CHURCH breakdown (removing himself from the institution and realizing he can be like,, the center of his own faith? taking a more individualistic approach? but Truly Going Through It at the same time), his acceptance (...sometimes) of those who are different from him and condemned by the adults of moralton (stephanie (lesbian icon stephanie my beloved), christina (who's like. just a slightly different form of fundie protestant from him), dr chosenberg (the jewish doctor from otherton in holy visage)). his track record on this isn't perfect, but it gets better as orel starts maturing and picking up on what an absolute shitfest moralton is. it's all ways of questioning the things he's been taught, and it makes sense that it would lead to a bigger questioning as he puts those pieces together more. anyway i think part of his growth is weeding out all the lost commandments of his upbringing and focusing on what faith means to him, and what he thinks it should mean. how he wants to see the world and how he wants to treat people and what he thinks is okay and right, and looking to religion for guidance in that, not as like. a way to justify hurting those he's afraid or resentful of, as his role models did.

he's coming to his own conclusions rather than obediently, unquestioningly taking in what others say. but he's still listening to pick out the parts that make sense to him. (edit/note: and it's his compassion and his faith that are the primary motivations for this questioning and revisal process, both of individual cases and, eventually, the final boss that is christianity.) it makes perfect sense as the conclusion to his character arc and it fits the overall approach of the show far better. it's good is what i'm saying.

and i think it's important to show that kind of ending, because that's a pretty common and equally valid result of deconstruction. and i think it cements the show's treatment of christianity as something that's often (and maybe even easily) exploited, but not something inherently bad. something that can be very positive, even. guys he even has a dog he's not afraid of loving anymore. he's not afraid of loving anyone more than jesus and i don't think it's because he loves this dog less than bartholomew (though he was probably far more desperate for healthy affection and companionship when he was younger). i think it's because he figures god would want him to love that dog. he's choosing to believe that god would want him to love and to be happy and to be kind. he's not afraid of loving in the wrong way do you know how cool that is he's taking back control he's taking back something he loves from his abusers im so normal

[aurosoulart]

sorry if this is bad to ask (feel free to ignore if it is), but how do you get these headsets?

through my work! they’re the property of Overlay, the company I work for.

we make a software called Figmin XR, and its goal is to be a multi-use sandbox that makes AR accessible, fun, and useful for as many people as possible - kind of like an operating system for spatial computing (the kind of computing rendered in 3D space)

I use Figmin for art because I’m an artist, but other (non artist!) people have used it to create museums, help with interior design, make sports training sims, do game prototyping, do archaeology training, be an art app for kids….. just. so much!!!! I’m constantly blown away by the sheer creativity I see!!!

there’s currently no other software that does what Figmin does, so we’re partnered with a bunch of different headset manufacturers and we develop for their hardware with the goal of making headsets/AR glasses more useful for the average person.

I’m not a coder, but (part of) my job is to make cool stuff (like art, minigames, virtual toys), make tutorial videos, do livestreams, handle UI/graphic design, host demos & workshops, and to generally just share information about what this tech is capable of now - and about what it could be used for in the future.

it’s work similar to what early artists and developers were doing during the advent of PCs (personal computers), and it’s SUPER fascinating stuff. I feel lucky to be part of something like this.

[cinerins]

Jaster's yellow diamond?

We've been gathering some references and while looking at other discussions and fan-content, I've noticed pretty much any fanart and costumes of Jaster Mereel I've come across feature a yellow diamond on his chest, based on the Korda Six mission depicted in Open Seasons.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding was that these shapes were specific to that mission and that Jaster's chestplate was normally left blank – the way it was when he was introduced in the comic and how Jango wore it in the third issue.

So... I don't think it was supposed to be part of his standard armor design?

Korda Six was Jango's first mission in a command position – the job was meant to be a simple one and to make it even easier, they decided to split into three groups with a commander each, and keep those groups visually distinct.

Jango's "grunts" all wore armor similar to him, but where he had a big red circle on his chest to show he's the leader, the rest only had a faint outline on their spaulders. Also, I think it's safe to assume these were all teenagers on their first mission without a grown mentor to lead them – so the uniform style would probably make it easier for the others to keep track of on the field.

Montross led Vertigo Company in the air and sported a red rectangle instead. Can't really get a good view of the other members of his squad, but I would believe they likely had rectangles on them too, because...

Jaster's team for the mission was the Headhunter Company and here you can see them with little yellow diamonds on their shoulders, to indicate they're under his command. (Can we talk about his absolute Old Man pose here?)

As I take it, Mandalorians had a bit of a looser command structure – besides the Alor being the defacto Guy In Charge, they'd only really form up squads/companies and assign them a trusted leader as it was relevant for the situation. I take the comic with a grain of salt, so I'm not sure it was common practice to apply a new paint job or emblem for every multi-team mission, or if it was just meant as a sort of exercise for the kids...

Either way, I think the symbols were just a temporary feature and it makes more sense to me to depict Jaster without it beyond this point in time.

[darlingofdots]

Formal vs Informal Address in German Temeraire Translations: a report

So I have picked up my German copies of the Temeraire books for the first time in over a decade for reasons unrelated to this post but I immediately got distracted by the matter of formal address in German and how translators have to make a very specific and important choice when translating from English. German (like French and many other languages) has two forms of direct address in the 2nd person, an informal one for friends, family, children etc., and a formal address for strangers, teachers, colleagues, professional contacts. It is famously a Whole Thing when you switch from formal to informal with somebody: usually the person with a 'higher' position in the relationship has to explicitly offer it and it can be a big deal! A common instance might be when you've worked at a new job for a while and your colleagues tell you to use informal to indicate they consider you Part Of The Team, or your girlfriend's parents do it when you've been dating a while and they signal that you're part of the family now. In translation, this can be a really tricky choice! For instance, I have not watched Elementary in German but I would say Sherlock and Joan would absolutely start out addressing each other formally (Sherlock calls her "Watson" most of the time), but by the end of the show there is no way they would not have switched. Obviously English-language media does not have an explicit conversation about this and the closest analogue would be switching to first names when they've only ever used last names before, but you can't rely on that and translators end up having to make choices about characterisation and relationships based on like, vibes. With all that said!

In the Temeraire series, there's a lot of formal address around, such as among officers; I knew Laurence would be addressing his cadets formally because even though they are like, 9 years old, they are his officers and deserve to be treated with that respect. I only have books 1-5 in German but I'd be willing to bet that this doesn't change even Emily's been with him for nigh on ten years, and the same goes for Temeraire. Also Laurence uses formal address with both his parents, in case you were wondering.

What I was not sure about was a) how other people address dragons and how dragons address each other and b) the finer interpersonal relationships among aviators. Jane addresses Iskierka formally but Temeraire informally; the dragons of the formation are formal with each other but Temeraire, Lily, and Maximus are not, and Temeraire quite happily scolds Iskierka like a misbehaving child. I would LOVE to find a bit of, say, Laurence talking to Lily or Berkley to Temeraire!

Among the aviators, Laurence and Jane are informal with each other once they've slept together, but I just saw that Laurence is also informal with Harcourt but not with Chenery, which is interesting but I suppose makes sense if you go by the dragons' relationships too. What really fascinates me is that at the end of Victory of Eagles, Laurence and Granby are still formal, which makes sense because until five minutes ago Laurence was his superior officer, but if I were the translator for this series I'd have them switch to informal with the beginning of book six but unfortunately I do not have that on hand so I can't check.

Now for the main event: Tharkay uses formal address with Laurence when he leaves to fetch more ferals at the beginning of book 4, and I thought he switched for the infamous "Laurence, what are you doing" which would have been exactly the right moment if you'd asked me, but in fact there is one random informal when they're out rescuing Granby in London (loose quotation: "that is [Woolvey's] problem and for those who would weep for him, even if they are close to your [informal] heart")? And then he goes right back to formal all the way to "Laurence, what are you [informal] doing" and finally switches properly, at which point Laurence follows his example. At first I thought that was weird and I am not sure if it was done on purpose, but on second thought I kind of like that he tries it out first when speaking of something personal (Laurence's concern for Edith) but isn't sure of it yet and retreats back to familiar territory until he realises that he needs to shock Laurence out of his war crime depression.

It's interesting to me that Tharkay was the one to take that step. Traditionally, like I said, it would be on the person in a position of authority to offer or, like with Granby, Laurence could have just switched once Granby was confirmed in rank to indicate that he wants to be friends now that he doesn't give orders anymore. Of course it makes perfect sense that Tharkay would not care one bit about rank, and he's not really an officer anyway and he certainly does not consider Laurence to have authority over him. I love that the translator (Marianne Schmidt) recognised that moment on campaign for what I think it is: not so much a turning point in their relationship but one that cements a degree of intimacy that Laurence doesn't have with anyone else. They would not have had access to book 6, I think, when they were working on book 5, so it very much is a deliberate choice based on their interactions up to this point. I made a list recently about people that Will Laurence calls by their first name (former first lieutenants, Catherine Harcourt, 1 FWB, and Tharkay) and now I feel like I need to make another list of people German!Will Laurence uses informal address with!

[talenlee]

July 2024 Wrapup!

I don’t know if there’s any kind of rhyme to go with July. I think when I set this post up at first I had some idea about the fist being a symbol for paper rock scissors, but now I’m saying it I don’t think that’s the case. Anyway, July ends! July has drawn to its miserable close, its cold and haunted month and – oh I should go schedule a COVID booster.

But while I do that, you should check out this festival of fun writing, articles and videos that are all about the stuff I have made and done throughout the course of July, paid for with the support of my beloved Patrons, and presented here, for you, to read, for free.

First of all, every week I do a Game Pile article, which is a treatment of a game of some sort. This month we had:

Princess Wing, a TTRPG that by one metric, is better than Dungeons & Dragons 5.5.

Traffic Department 2192, a game from the 1990s that was ‘made wrong’ – a hugely overwritten novel of a book that has cool fly-shooty levels between it.

Knit Wit, a beautifully produced game about playing with the social, which is predicated on its exclusions.

and finally Fox and I played Pet or Pass with the creatures of Thunder Junction! See what critters from that Magic: The Gathering set we have opinions on!

Also, for those of you hungering for more time with Fox and me, you can check out our playthrough of Day of the Tentacle (part 1, part 2)!

Then there’s the Story Pile articles, where I take a piece of media and inspect it from a few angles.

Barry, Season 4, which wraps up a show I really liked and did a good job of it!

The Phantom of the Paradise, a movie demonstrating that the surreality of the 70s just looks like the queerness of the now.

Shy, which sucks.

Love Flops, which sucks also but in a way that’s pretty interesting to talk about.

Zom 100, which absolutely whips ass because we all deserve a little treat.

Do you want to read me talking about making games? I did a bunch of that this month! First, even a little tangential, there’s an assessment of things that Brennan Lee Mulligan does in his dungeonmastering that I can use for myself. I also did a reflection article about Lysen Co, talked about specifics in making the Loom videos and the Youtube interface problems it presented. I shared a tool I use when dealing with students and other designers to consider the choices they make in their game, in the form of 50 questions. Then I even did a treatment for a game concept I’ve wanted to make for a while now, Intergalactic Paper Rock Scissors.

There were some thoughts about ‘evil people’ this month in world building. Specifically, I got thinking about Demons and Ogres, and the ways that stories represent them as threats for people to deal with. But don’t worry, there’s also some nerdy stuff about street food and magical theories!

If you like reading about older editions of Dungeons & Dragons we had two articles in the specific genre of ‘whoops, this was a mistake’ design stories. One, I did an article about the absolutely broken ridiculousness of Psychofeedback, a power so wonky that it needs an article explaining how it’s wonky, and the 4th edition class the Blackguard, which not only fails to deliver on its promise, but makes it worse.

Sometimes a shirt design is just a matter of a joke in my mind that I go ‘hey, can I make that design look good?’ and never whether or not anyone wants it. Anyway, here’s a design based on two ideas crossing over.

July was a big month, wasn’t it? I try to not let real world events play into things on this blog – the impersonal, kinda thing. Still, July featured a major windstorm, two major international news incidents that distracted me at length, power outages and a weekend where I couldn’t get into my work email right before the start of semester. Which means that as this month winds down I’ve been kind of exhausted, but in a totally new way. Like, I don’t have to worry about this happening, I don’t imagine anyone’s going to shoot at a Presidential candidate for the first time in my lifetime again.

Wait hang on, maybe I was alive when Reagan got shot at.

A chunk of July is spent between teaching. That means there’s no income but it also means there’s no demands. July was largely spent grinding my way through some PhD writing and trying to address my backlog on the blog. That felt productive, and man, literature review writing is really fun and interesting after Methodology writing. I found a new favourite academic, and I’m going to feel really embarrassed if she ever finds my work and roasts it.

That was an impact on my videos next month; I thought I’d have a lot to say about one of the topics, but it turns out the game is very fluid and easy, and mostly it pulled me back to two sources I really like – The Art of Failure and Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Which is itself, a whole thing. It’s wild to write this month’s wrapup post and realise that I’m already a step ahead. As I write this, my scripted videos for August are made, and they’re scheduled on Youtube, ready to go. Part of what let me do that was getting the videos for July done ahead of time — which did mean moving something from July to September.

We’ll see how that goes when it drops.

It’s a little thing too but I’ve been practicing card handling all month. Whenever I’m nervous I try to shuffle a deck of cards controlling the same pair of cards to the top, every time. This has been such an extensive practice that now, one of those two cards has my fingernails worn in the top of it, which tells you that this deck of cards is in fact, a bit bad.

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

[taraljc]

It's weird sometimes to look back at around this time in 2011, and writing crackfic with Loki and Darcy bonding over being adopted and him just like showing up in her apartment unannounced and the two of them watching How To Train Your Dragon. because, you know--crack.

There's an epic fuckton of me rambling about STUFF behind the Read More, about Thor, about Loki, and about the process of writing Simple, Not Easy and the delight of seeing where the characters have ended up in canon in the 10+ years since.

When I started writing Simple, Not Easy, all I had to build on was the Thor movie and the Avengers trailer and the comics. okay and the encouragement of folks on livejournal particularly from the Darcy community and the kinkmeme folks actually.

So yeah, my Loki killed people and was scary as fuck. But he also did things like bring the statues of Alice in Wonderland in Central Park to life to fight the Avengers just for the lolz.

But what's been interesting is seeing the Darcy and Loki that I saw in my head and whose speech patterns I had mimiced and wrote insane and silly and heartbreaking and stubbornly genuine appear in these little flashes in WandaVision and Loki.

There are just these little moments where I'm like you know what, I did a half-decent job, building off of not a heck of a lot, but still somehow being true to their voices.

that doesn't happen all the time. in fact it's pretty fucking rare to see the characters 10+ years later and still recognise them.

But that's part of why Thor is my favourite MCU movie. Because all of the characters are really strongly drawn with unique voices, and excellent storytelling where you knew who these people were from the first second they showed up on screen.

Like, specifically look at Jane Foster who is like 'look at him he'll be fine. you go take him to the hospital, I'll stay here and SCIENCE'. I mean we're not even getting into the part where you do not go out into the middle of the desert in New Mexico and drop somebody off in the middle of the night and then come back for them later because coyotes and coyotes and also other things but mostly coyotes.

But the biggest thing I love about the movie is that it's about ego death. It is only when Thor loses everything that he begins to genuinely change. And it's not because of Jane, or even midgard itself. It's because when Loki tells him that their father is dead and Frigga will not end his banishment, Thor accepts responsibility for his actions and it sets in that he has lost everything and that he deserved it for breaking the hardwon peace with Laufey because he has grown up on epic tales of his father's prowess as a warrior and completely missed what Odin was actually trying to teach him about the horrors of war.

The humility that he displays, the empathy, is completely new. Because the guy who was banished to Earth was banished for a very good reason--he was a complete douche canoe. Total spoiled dick and he wasn't ready to be king. He really wasn't, and the way Loki went about trying to prove that was the worst possible way he could have and everything rapidly spiraled out of his control until it became something too big and it began controlling him instead of him controlling it.

But at the same time you have Loki also going through a form of ego death because he finds out that not only is he not who he thought he was he's not what he thought he was. He's not even a person, according to the way that the æsir view jötnar. and you know that internalised self-hatred is on its own pretty dangerous but when you weaponise it and decide to commit genocide then yes it's absolutely right for your father to be like WHAT THE FUCK because he saw everything. I don't think Loki really processed the fact that his dad saw absolutely everything he had done up to an including Thor's death at the hands of the Destroyer and it was only by accepting that he had treated his brother pretty much like shit and bore some responsibility for what was going on and then sacrificing himself for others that made Thor worthy.

And that's what the series is giving Loki the chance to discover: what it's like to act selflessly. He genuinely puts Sylvie's well-being above his own. He acknowledged the importance of the lives of all of the people in the TVA and his responsibility to them because of the results of his actions.

He's owning his shit. He's doing the work.

And as someone who spent a huge chunk of autumn 2011 writing Loki coming to a place where he was able to actually own his shit, and accept responsibility for his actions and even entertain the idea of change, it's really cool seeing that even though I took a vastly different road to get there, I was on the right track.

(and okay yeah like at least 50% of the story is also about Darcy and Clint figuring their shit out and then start banging like a screen door in a hurricane which obviously is not the way the movies went. But again I was working off of the 2 minutes of Clint Barton that's in Thor. To be fair, there's more character development for Clint Barton in those two minutes in Thor than there was in the entirety of the Avengers. and the only thing that actually redeemed bringing in the storyline from Ultimates to bring in his family just to fridge them was the way the Hawkeye series made them into real people instead of your average superhero tragic backstory.)

anyway I know that the current generation of Loki fans almost certainly have never heard of Simple, Not Easy and they sure as hell haven't read it and why would they? It's not cool or sexy or even particularly violent. It's ridiculous and cracky and has Loki shape shifting into a baby sloth and falling asleep while hugging a bottle of Goldschläger like a teddy bear.

But I had a moment, after the drunken singing on the train, where I thought yep. That's my Loki.

This moments are precious and rare and really freaking cool when they do come along.

[mifustudy]

I Think It’s Great That You’re Failing: A Home Movies Retrospective

 

Adult animation has evolved significantly throughout the years. The changes this form of entertainment has undergone are most notably seen in the creation of Cartoon Network’s late-night programming block for mature audiences: Adult Swim. Debuting on September 2, 2001, Adult Swim kicked off an adult animation renaissance with seven new shows in tow. Out of the library-sized selection of cartoons aired during its lifetime, one Adult Swim program still stands out to me: Home Movies. The first show to ever air on the network, Home Movies is a perfect example of Adult Swim’s general mindset—indie and ambitious—despite not being made specifically for the block. With a wildly distinct visual style compared to its peers, Home Movies and its unorthodox approach to adult animation was unlike any other show airing at the time. As Adult Swim continues to redefine adult animation, Home Movies remains a timeless testament to the block's bohemian attitude and imaginative storytelling, setting it apart in the unpredictable landscape of animated entertainment. 

To further push my point of Home Movies being a unique viewing experience compared to the other shows on Adult Swim, it would be best to give further context as to what the block is. Conceptualized as the passion project driven by former head programmer of Cartoon Network, Mike Lazzo, there was always a push to make something more of the channel; CN began as a hub for Hanna-Barbera reruns without any original programming. In collaboration with network president Betty Cohen, Lazzo borrowed recycled animation cells from a forgotten Hanna-Barbera superhero cartoon to create the first adult-oriented show that predates Adult Swim. Named Space Ghost Coast to Coast, it is a cheaply made and hardly animated talk show with celebrity guests such as Björk and Bob Odenkirk. With unexpected success and a high number of older viewers, there was a demand for an adult programming block on the channel.  

The desire for a separate block came with budgeting issues, most of them stemming from the fact that organizing a collection of mature content on a channel aimed at children was a risky move. Sarah Bahr quotes former executive VP of Cartoon Network, Jim Samples, and his worries concerning the pushback from ad sales teams: “As a kids’ network, how were we going to actively market to adults?" Being given a restricted budget in combination with the limited amount of time they had to name the block and produce content for it, the team had to get creative. “It was a very small group of us doing all of that in addition to our regular jobs at Cartoon Network,” president of Adult Swim Michael Ouweleen expressed. Borrowing the same method used for Space Ghost, they assembled three shows ready to air: Sealab 2021, Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, and The Brak Show. In addition to the creation of these programs, there was a need for even more content to flesh out a stand-alone block. Aqua Teen Hunger Force was one of the last in-house shows made for Adult Swim’s first lineup, but not the last to be added. Currently full of convenient, low-budget projects, it was inevitable for the team to acquire another just as easy to produce. Enter Home Movies, created by writer and animator Loren Bouchard and musician-comedian Brendon Small. 

  Given the greenlight to produce a show with the help of longtime industry partner and Soup2Nuts CEO, Tom Snyder, Bouchard needed a muse. Quoted by Brian VanHooker, Bouchard recalls how Snyder suggested producing the show: “Find somebody local who could be the lead voice and a big part of the show so that you feel like you have an engine behind it." First meeting at a stand-up comedy gig, the two clicked right away; Small took on the role of “engine” quickly. Brainstorming ideas around the loose concept of a family dynamic, he was also the first to push a major part of the show’s overarching theme: moviemaking in the most amateurish way. “When I was a kid, I would go through the rigamarole of charging up the family camera and clearing a tape, and I’d make movies with my friends, so I was thinking maybe that’s the thing for this show,” Small explained. 

Home Movies follows the unconventional life of eight-year-old aspiring filmmaker Brendon Small—voiced by and named after co-creator Brendon Small—living with his offbeat single mother Paula Small. Brendon accomplishes his moviemaking ventures with help from friends Melissa and Jason, completing one short film per episode. Shots from each movie they make are placed sporadically throughout the runtime; the stories usually connect with the overarching theme of each episode. Additional notable characters of the show include alcoholic soccer coach turned friend and pseudo-mentor of Brendon’s, John McGuirk, and fourth-grade teacher, Mr. Lynch. Brendon uses filmmaking as an outlet for creativity and escapism. This is seen in countless storylines throughout the show.  

The show debuted on The United Paramount Network on April 26th, 1999, with an order of five episodes. This premiere was far from a strong one. While not an extremely popular channel, UPN received its worst ratings with the arrival of Home Movies. “The ratings were terrible,” Bouchard explained, loosely quoting what the head of the network told him during a phone call the night of the first broadcast. “I would be fired if I even hinted that there was a chance that we were going to pick you up for more episodes,” he added. Looking through the rest of UPN’s airing cycles, animated or not, the channel was far from a success. Out of the twenty-four shows UPN aired, Home Movies is ranked second to last based on viewership. This network was far from what the show needed to reach its full potential.  

After getting canceled once the first episode aired, the team felt trapped. Even with UPN still airing the leftover episodes, the future was bleak. “I was nervous I would have to start over or go back to bartending,” Bouchard joked. When all hope was lost, an unexpected call from Cartoon Network production writer Khaki Jones changed the game. Despite being one of the lowest-rated shows broadcast on UPN, Jones ended up loving it. She played a vital role in giving Home Movies its second life on Adult Swim, inevitably guiding the show towards taking on the task of introducing the adult-oriented programming block to the world. “When Khaki Jones called me, there was this unbelievable sense that we were right,” Bouchard observed. “The work was good; we just had no place on network television at that time." 

One of the reasons why Home Movies was dropped from UPN was due to its outlandish visual style—not just the general art style but also the animation technique used. Bouchard had worked closely with Tom Snyder and his production company in the past, which led to their influence being transferred to his independent project. Adopting Soup2Nuts’ animation method, other quirks present in Home Movies are also due to Bouchard’s past work on Comedy Central’s Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist. Both shows utilize Squigglevision—the name of the animation method alluded to prior—which is described as a “compact form of animation” on the AllExperts forum by user Tony Hansen. The defining trait of this technique is the use of five or more distinct-ish frames that repeat per shot. “Traditional animation consists of going frame to frame and perfectly connecting different cells to provide a crispness and clarity that Squigglevision doesn't provide,” Tony explained in his post. While both affordable and novel, Squigglevision was not used for long during Home Movies’ lifetime. The team continued to utilize it throughout Season One before switching to Macromedia Flash, the multimedia software. “Squigglevision was wonderful and charming, but it was definitely a Dr. Katz thing,” Small expressed.  

In addition to visual modifications, the writing was also revised. Originally following indistinct outlines during recording sessions, the team branched out to full scripts with Dr. Katz writer Bill Braudis' help. This switch occurred due to Small wanting to create a narrative within each episode rather than having the show be reduced to comedians continuously riffing off. The comedy style of Home Movies is blatantly influenced by Dr. Katz, even down to the whole “center around a comedian” part of it all. Jonathan Katz, lead voice actor and namesake of Dr. Katz himself, even appears in Home Movies as Melissa’s dad. The association of Dr. Katz with Home Movies is a topic lavish enough to warrant authoring another paper, but that is not what matters here. This paper is dedicated to Home Movies and its peculiar aura in contrast to the other adult animated comedies at the time. 

A look at an old text thread on the animation-themed forum, Toonzone, shows that a substantial number of fans agree that the changes established in the program were improvements. “I think it boils down to what kind of humor people like.” forum user Shnay posted. This sentiment rings true, becoming increasingly obvious throughout Season Two and onwards. The dialogue revisions from the later Seasons compared to the first are most noticeable in Season Two, Episode Ten: History. Shnay also uses this episode as an example in their post, pulling from the experience they had watching Home Movies evolve. “I loved season one, and the "Starboy and Captain of Outer Space" episode was my least favorite episode of the series.” Shnay added, in contrast to how a good deal of fans enjoyed that episode, in addition to how they also “loathed” Season One. “Starboy and Captain of Outer Space” is the title of the movie Brendon, Jason, and Melissa produced during Episode Ten. While a portion of this episode is just the nonsensical film in parts amidst Brendon's attempt to improve his history grade, the lines shared by the ten-minute mark unveil something that had not been stated outright in the series yet: Brendon’s relationship with his movies.  

The most daunting thing about Home Movies is not the art style. It is the dialogue. I admit the visuals are far from ordinary, but the conversations between characters are incomparable to anything else seen on Adult Swim at the time. Watching Brendon interact with his work in such a mature manner is enough to have the audience forget he is an elementary schooler. Even his immature attributes feel mature for his age. The best example of this is Brendon’s need for control, following the insecurities within himself and his art. His ego is offset by the inclusion of Jason and Melissa. The way these three characters interact with each other comes off as seriously authentic and not in an average eight-year-old way. With parents neglecting the role of guardian, their role as kids is both evident and not. Standing levelheaded in contrast to the uncertainty present in the adults, Brendon and the other kids in the series take on the role of caretaker.  

Throughout the peculiar show, John McGuirk serves as a notable example of this unusual relationship. McGuirk is a stunted thirty-seven-year-old man who appears to only speak to the kids he coaches—specifically Brendon, as mentioned before. While McGuirk wants to be a father figure, his attempt falls flat with offers of phony advice. Brendon usually ends up being the one advising. The eleventh episode of Season Three, “Broken Dreams,” exhibits this relationship perfectly. Summarized by Winston Cook-Wilson, “McGuirk gets a serious concussion during lifeguard training and terrorizes [Brendon] at the library while covered in blood." While McGuirk misbehaves in the library, Brendon attempts to gently parent him and study for a test simultaneously. 

Transferring over from UPN to Adult Swim, Home Movies distinguished itself from its contemporaries immediately. The first lineup made for the programming block feels incompatible with the method of storytelling Home Movies adopted. Small—the co-producer, not the character—was aware of this throughout production during its Adult Swim lifetime. “I never thought that Mike Lazzo necessarily responded to the show.” He expressed, quoted by IGN interviewer Ken P. (Ken). Being an outsourced show with monotone yet quirky performances in a sea of aspiring, in-house productions led Home Movies to its demise. “Each season that aired would never perform well on Adult Swim.” Small added. This is because the scheduled time Home Movies would air changed frequently due to the network trying to find the timeslot that would improve its performance. The show’s inevitable cancellation came and went for the team and the network, considering that it was not an expensive show to produce. Both parties accepted that Home Movies had run its course.  

Being given the chance to end their show with a final, fourth season, Small and Bouchard knew what they had to do. “Knowing it was going to end was energizing in its own way.” Bouchard clarified, “It allowed Brendon to explore some heavy themes for the finale” (VanHooker). Season Four, Episode Thirteen, "Focus Grill" follows Brendon, Jason, and Melissa re-watching their past films. Realizing they aren't as great as they thought. In the series finale, Brendon utters sheepishly: “I have no idea why we make them. All I know is this, we keep coming here after school every single day, and we just keep doing it” (Focus Grill 20:35-42). This new attitude towards their creations thwarted their drive.

After their failed attempt at building a grill that ended with an explosion, McGuirk and Paula decided to abandon their plan and pick up food instead. During the car ride, Brendon brings his camera and starts filming out the window until they hit a bump. His heart sinks as he watches the camera slip out of his hands and crash onto the rough pavement. The sound of crushed metal rings as another car drives over it shortly after. Brendon stares on in anguish and disbelief. Before he can get a word out, the vehicle erupts in chatter over what they should get for lunch. Sitting there for barely ten seconds—though it is obvious this is played off for comedic effect—with tears welling up in his eyes, he joins in on the conversation, forgetting about his camera.

This entire sequence occurs at the very last minute of the episode and in an impressively short amount of time; it all went by so fast that there was barely a moment to process the weight of what just happened. This show has had an unparalleled impact on my relationship with art, reshaping my perspective in ways that no other cartoon has. Revisiting Home Movies for the first time since I was Brendon's age at seventeen, then reading countless interviews with the cast recently, my appreciation for the show could not be any more evident. Brendon's reliance on filmmaking because of the sense of control it gave him made me feel better represented than I ever have compared to any other type of media. Despite not being produced in-house, this show has become a standout Adult Swim program for several reasons beyond that. Its unique qualities and outstanding execution cemented its place as a must-see for fans of adult animation. As decades pass, Home Movies continues to stand as a model for the late-night block’s essence of innovative production, differentiating it from its contemporaries.

[tomwambsgans]

i think a lot in general, really, about greg's culturedness (and lack thereof) and his interests, both what he's canonically known to like and what i can imagine he'd like -- and, also, what the fandom has often seemed to just decide he likes. and it's funny bc he's kinda shoehorned into the trope of the bookish type, when like... he's not, lol?

not that he couldn't be, like i do like to imagine him having been a bookworm as a kid, and getting (back) into reading through tom, but imo the wider fandom's desire to actually characterize him this way comes at best from greg being really verbose and awkward. and a little bit from the way he occasionally dresses. and like, yeah, he clearly is kinda cultured. he (probably) went to college for a period of time. he knows a lot of fun facts. particularly about animals. he's familiar with the blue danube waltz.

...and he maintains likely performative knowledge of current events prior to that being his job. he almost certainly got/gets the majority of his news through twitter. he doesn't know any philosophers or historians despite that being something ewan has clearly been talking about forever. he listens to self-help podcasts. he enjoys the in-universe equivalent to shitty marvel movies (though he's at least self aware about it and calls them mediocre). and he's got entry-level art on the wall of his office.

he's also often figured to be a musichead - and yeah, i like the idea of midwest/canadian emo greg. death cab and weezer and records from the 70s, especially as a teenager. But the only music we know for a fact that he listens to is rap. and i think the reason that this (and similar) facts are touched on so little by the fandom (including myself, ngl) is that it's a point of non-relatability for people. so much of greg is deeply relatable, as well as aesthetically aspirational. but the bits that aren't relatable, particularly for tumblr users, are really unrelatable. acknowledging some of greg's few canonical interests (especially just working with how few there even are without inventing new ones) creates an image of a whole different and kinda uncomfortable type of guy. whether it's the fact alone that it's rap (which i'm sure is not a common interest among tumblr's userbase), or the specific discomfort of the vibe that greg gives off re: enjoying it, that has to be what's going on. or a big part of it.

also i obviously don't think there's anything wrong with headcanoning particular interests and just assuming that we barely have an opportunity to see them, but i do think it's noteworthy that in general we very rarely if ever hear greg make any cultural references, especially compared to other characters. my personal take on this is that a combination of 1) a pathological need to Fit In, 2) being a stoner for possibly all his formative years, 3) genuinely not having access to a lot for a while, and 4) putting focus mainly into conventional success for the show's timeline, has helped craft a greg who just did/does not interact with media very much or very deeply. unlike others, he has not been afforded that leisure time.

it's the desperation to convince ourselves that greg is not the Normie With Nothing Going On Upstairs that he sometimes seems like, i think, that mostly motivates all this. he's simultaneously too relatable and too unrelatable for the average viewer. like, when you relate to any of the sibs you're perfectly ready to ignore the parts of their life that are related to their wealth and to focus only on the family aspects, bc that's what matters. there isn't the same kind of wall between the audience and greg, so he inevitably gets reshaped. not just getting toploaded with headcanons but having the character traits that influence his canon interests, or vice versa, ignored.

(NOT trying to conflate liking rap with being uncultured btw, just the fact that we don't know of almost anything else he likes, and it appears so little anyway and doesn't seem in line with the rest of his aesthetic and therefore feels easy to ignore. and liking marvel movies DOES in fact make you seem less cultured, so.)

thing is, i think there's a lot you can do without compromising greg's core traits and a lot of it is just up to personal taste and what any given person wants to project onto him. in any case it IS very congruent with canon that greg would develop new interests, or deepen more shallow ones, throughout the timeline of the show and especially after. he's got more time and money and opportunities now. he has a favorite champagne now. greg's journey is partially, ostensibly, one of him honing his taste.

[king-of-vertigo]

fuck it. I am sick of having so much oc lore and having it just sit in my brain. so. ((plus I'm pretty busy with art fight atm, I'll be posting attacks soonish?))

time to ramble about toni.

btw, he is on art fight if you wanna draw him >:DD

I put some of the stuff here on his pfp already, but I'm gonna go more in depth. read if you like, ramble is under the cut + a smidge of backstory/headcanons for a couple canon characters <33

I'll start off with a silly fun fact. I made him before I got the second bendy novel where there was a mention of a Mr. Russo. completely unplanned and sheer coincidence-- but it inspired a lot of his lore.

family originates from Italy, it was his grandparents who moved to New York. however, his father was the one to properly find quite well paying work. it was because of that work that Toni was born to a decently well-off family that already had ties in the entertainment industry.

Rodolfo, his dad, often helped direct productions trying to get off the ground, and though he's given up a role in the director seat in more recent times, he still helps financially back certain projects in the industry. a somewhat short-tempered, traditional, and blunt man. not fond of pleasantries unless they're strictly needed, in which case-- he can be quite charming. or at least charming enough. Rodolfo has very high expectations for his son, and found the whole cartoon thing quite childish-- until he realized how much money could be made. he doesn't consider it in the same league as actual movies, and Toni isn't saved from the snarky comments when he comes over for dinner-- but the job pays well enough.

Antonio's mother has been out of the picture for some time now, becoming very sick when Toni was very young-- he doesn't remember much about her, and his dad is quite cagey when discussing the subject. Toni's made peace with it, even if he sometimes mourns the relationship there could have been.

there was still a motherly figure in his life growing up, though. and that came in the form of his aunt, Clara. though she is incredibly kind, make no mistake, she can be fierce when needed. growing up with a brother like Rodolfo, she learned how to push back against loud personalities. Clara is sweet, but honest. she'll comfort and soothe, while also holding whoever accountable. one of Antonio's most trusted confidants, only coming second to Clara's daughter and his cousin, Isabella.

Isabella, while only being his cousin, is loved like a sister. she's a constant source of stability in his life, though as an up and coming actress she can be a bit dramatic. they're a duo, the one who loves the spotlight, and the one who would rather stay behind the scenes. they were joined at the hip as kids, and while both are now busy working adults-- they still find time for each other. Isabella does her best to get Toni out of his shell, and has provided a huge boost in confidence the last few years. she's incredibly quick witted, cheeky, social, and just generally a gem of a human to be around.

Antonio has always been a bit on the quieter side, so as his fascination with movies and cartoons matured, he became really interested in the work that happened off the big screen. specifically in sound effects. how objects were used to make noises for completely different sounding things. him trying to break into such a specific part of the entertainment industry lined up perfectly with Joey expanding his Music Department, though a couple more stars had aligned before to lay the groundwork.

he'd been a fan of Sammy and Jack's shows for at least a year by this point, even if Toni himself wasn't entirely musically or vocally inclined-- there was something so charming about the pair that he couldn't resist. and seeing as they were often hired to play at ritzier parties, Antonio could see them perform on a mildly consistent schedule if he could get himself invited by the right people. of course, his family wasn't infamous by any means, and Toni hated to throw around his last name as leverage... but in this case-- it was a guilty pleasure, and did no real harm to anyone. plus, his family was happy to see him get out more.

the way Antonio ends up getting hired on is-- still in the works. but the idea I'm probably going to go with is this: while Sammy was given full control on who was hired in his department, the people he knew were all very-- refined artists. classical folks. people who performed for the sake of the art, and not for movies and such. Jack had a better hand in it, as I imagine he tried to get a start in comedy, which didn't end up going anywhere. one way or another the name 'Antonio Russo' travels down the grapevine. Sammy is a very critical man, very hard to please. Toni probably still doesn't know what earned him a spot in the studio's employ-- but he's so thankful for it regardless.

I'll maybe make another post about his inky arc, because that's it's own can of worms-- regardless, I'll probably add little pics of his family as I make references for them.

but now-- sleep. cause I am tired. if you read all this, thank you. it means a lot :DD

[mandy4ever69420]

i would like to see the og version :D

man if yr sure. anyway i do love fanfiction i think it's fun but i am the weirdest person to be talking about fanfiction.

i find fanfiction to be a really fascinating medium TBH it can tell you a lot about people what they look for and write about. and one thing i learned watching shameless is that the general vibe of shameless is pretty much what i want out of a fanfic. like, watching it i remember specifically thinking "this is what i'd been literally looking for reading xyz" which is a little weird for shameless fanfiction, no? fanfic as a medium has its own genre conventions so most (not all) (i <3 conceptual fic) fanfictions intentionally or not make their stories slightly more like fanfiction than like the source material. normal. Funny enough, the fanfic that's most closely ever actually matched the tone of shameless to me was written for homestuck

the MAIN THING i want to say about. the way i read fanfiction. and the fact that i am a lunatic. is that like. i kind of became an expert for some reason in sniffing out people's political and social biases really fast. and i can sometimes spend more time psychoanalyzing an author than i do worrying about the story. this comes up a lot when the law ever gets involved but also just.. you can tell exactly where someone is on their "how to be gay" journey by how they write it. i think what people write as escapism can in general tell you more about what they consider normal/safe/acceptable than if they just tried to explain to you their beliefs (see: are there royals/rich people as protagonists? what is the time period being discussed?)

BUT wrt fanfiction's genre conventions id make note that most fanfiction is very much in the romcom niche. which is a super disrespected genre in film/published lit in the same way and for the same reasons fanfic gets dismissed a lot. erotica is also a very frequently dismissed and disrespected genre. not only are romances seen as frivolous, but sex as shameful or cheap. <-also relevant to the way that sex work is dismissed when ex. working in an amazon warehouse takes as much or more of a toll on someone's body.

1 thing i love to see is weird niche interests and jobs. lots of opportunities in a fully freeform zero interest groups/showrunners/advertisers genre to get someone explaining the intricacies of being a mail carrier or quality controlling machinery. it's always frustrating to me to see rock stars and secret agents when we have all the time in the world to get sunshine cleaning (2008) with it.

it's also a good format for more or less endless speculation development and character moments. which is what fanfiction was built for. in published work there has to be a ticking clock to keep the audience's (and network exec's) attention, but you can assume if someone looked something up, you already have their attention. that's not to say not going for a plot-heavy conflictful story, just that there's no need to build in a requirement end/goal. you have all the time in the world because you're not batting to get a new season. no shark jumping required. <- this is somewhere that shows like mr. robot and the bear really fuck up i think. if your end goal would finish your story, you can't make meaningful moves towards it without losing your renewal & your plot is sort of barred from going anywhere or doing anything, while also demanding that you try every time

unfortunately for a lot of fanfiction FOR ME though is that sometimes the "make things sweeter" impulse that comes with the genre (part of the genre) (not necessarily a writing flaw) tends to put me off a bit. it's a big part of what i love in shameless: when someone is in the hospital it's a bit more "waiting room filling out forms and trying not to look at other people crying" and less "patiently waiting by your bedside with roses". something about detailing the shitty terrible sides of situations that pop up a lot in romances really scratches a specific itch in my brain. this contradicts the romcom genre in some ways (though there are romcoms that do this sort of thing)

i also happen to love AUs. im literally like an AU guy. though for me one of the most important things to keep in mind is matching tone, i really dont like when things get changed in terms of what they FEEL like. into like, something that isn't weird and pathetic and fucked up. SAD!

i'm also unreasonably resentful of retcons/AUs to avoid a sad thing happening. i think stories are better when all the horrible shit absolutely happened and the ending is good anyway. it's a kinder way to look at trauma to me. the person who lived through the worst thing you can imagine can live in a happy story! i also just love to feel a little bit like i'm eating glass with fiction.

(also, specifically for shameless, i've noticed this intense impulse some people have to definitively characterize mickey as not a rape or hate crime survivor. it's an attempt to make a story "happier" that also happens to ignore how horrifying to me mickey sleeping with women in other contexts is. what happened with svetlana is in some ways a literalization of the kinds of social pressure that mickey was always under. best description i can think of is "how far away is the gun?" -- a lot of the "reasoning" for AUs as to why mickey wouldn't have been hate crimed comes across weirdly like victim blaming - i know that's not what people mean, but it's what you're saying when you say "if it weren't for ian, mickey never would've let his guard down like that" - his guard wasn't down, he made all the right choices wherever he could, and ian canonically blaming himself doesn't mean he was right about it. i also think the idea that mickey would otherwise be too smart or too tough to make the "mistake" of getting caught shows some messed up ideas about what people think of real world people who do survive hate crimes and abuse.)

fanfiction is very much the sort of thing that is for having a mental breakdown of the eating ice cream on the couch variety. obviously talking about fanfiction having romanticized tropes is like watching a mob movie and being like "whys there so many italians here" so i'm aware that's just genre.

ANYWAY TO MY OWN PERSONAL INSANE NICHE: DIALECT!

this is about fanfiction, AND gif and television captioning. people mix up mickey's working class white dialect with AAVE a LOT. working class and Black american dialects certainly interact a lot and have similarities, but they're not the same. also AAVE has a lot of complexities and nuances that speakers of other dialects definitely borrow from where something like standard american is lacking. i'm not an L1 speaker of AAVE but i do notice myself borrowing where a structure is just much, much clearer than anything else. al7ayaa hek

there are ways in which an lot of these mixups make sense. especially with gifmakers/captioners/authors who happen to be british. mickey DOES use double negatives (btw, this is a feature of many languages, including closely related german) occasionally (i think), and famously "you ain't window shopping" but i can't think of any occasion where he uses a construction like habitual "be" or a "you been a pain in the ass the whole time i known you" (made up example) he also doesn't exempt "have" from "where the hell have you been", he just reduces it to a single schwa sound.

when mickey says "doesn't mean i'm gonna wear a dress" it's absolutely true that he's not articulating the "s" and taken purely literally "don't" is closer to what you heard. culturally, however, "don't" has a different pronunciation than "doesn't" in a way unrelated to the "s". the biggest difference is in the vowel. so mickey's "doesn't" is "glottal stop-schwa-syllabic N-glottal stop" where as "don't" written in that same spot gramatically will read as "d-oʊ-glottal stop"

shameless netflix captioners do something similar with lip. he gets captioned as "aight" a lot when he doesn't articulate "lr" - technically, literally, closer to his actual utterance. but the connotations bring up a different pronunciation entirely. lip isn't white boy carl.

i think unfortunately in addition to being mistakes made by people with little understanding of or exposure to the details of AAVE these can often be based on people's assumptions about what a poor or "criminal" or "uneducated" accent sounds like, moreso than on actual observation of speech patterns. which is just like. a slightly subtler form of racism

anyway. since i'm on this topic i just want to mention that i'm fairly sure ian's speech changes in s10/11 to be more similar to mickey's. i haven't been taking very careful note of his speech patterns but i think it's cute.

[chronotsr]

Pre-G1 Modules, part 6: Reflections

This isn't a full on post or anything, it really is just random thoughts. This blog has basically 3 goals, in no particular order:

Show off some weird interesting ideas from older modules. This is why the bullet-point sections exist.

Look at all the obscure modules no one's ever heard and don't get discussed so they can enjoy more awareness. This is why it's module to module and not lists of cool things I've found.

Look at how modules grew as an art-form. Their design, layout, styling, writing, et c. This is why it's in release order.

So I'm going to ramble about all 3 in turn.

1. Coolest ideas

So somehow the coolest idea I ran into in this roundup was keep on the borderlands ~in the desert~. The mental image is just stuck in my brain and if you're one of my fantasy age players, you've probably inhaled some spoilers accidentally now. It's gonna show up eventually.

I was also really fond of the really lateral use of animated objects in Tegel Manor, particularly the battlefield painting that spits arrows as the events on-canvas play out. It's very fun and very goofy and I regret the yearly Samhain one-shot being so far away. I will find an excuse to use that random magic statue table eventually.

Third place goes to the pet sea monster of the invincible overlord. It's just really stuck in my brain

2. Coolest Module You Haven't Heard Of

Oh that's easy. Tegel Manor. 100% Tegel Manor. That was easily the most fun I had writing this column so far, even as the pagecount sprawled and sprawled. I think the haunted house is the single best starting location for a new player, it's part of why I'm so ride or die for Ghosts of Saltmarsh (and I do specifically mean the 5e iteration, they did an excellent job realizing Saltmarsh as a location. It's a crying shame people hate because they expect pirates and get, not pirates).

Happily, I don't think the move is actually to just, buy modern Tegel Manor. In fact, a spiritual successor to Tegel Manor would be just what the doctor ordered.

3. The Growth of Module Design

I am telling on myself hard but my favorite part of watching this go on is to see the art of keying slowly evolve and standardize around the familiar model of today. We are far away from the, I know I will get crucified for this, frankly better keying of 5e. Or even the significantly improved keying of 4e. We are in crusty-ass 1970s keying, where if it was typed, it was professional. Honestly Temple of the Frog's keying is a shockingly good first attempt. The keying solution that Vampire Queen went for is, kind of novel in its own way. I kind of wish that this table-style keying had stuck around as a sort of summary page for quick reference, it's…honestly kind of convenient, especially for particularly hack and slashy campaigns.

Watching JG recover from their tailspin of excessive loot was really fascinating. I do keep in mind that weight was a big thing about loot recovery in early DND but what exactly was to stop a party from just going back in and looting the place over and over again, anyway? Sure the monsters could move around, the loot could move, but they still know the layout. I really feel like you have to simply not provide that much treasure, and I get the sense JG worked that out too.

Finally, I am just kind of happy to see the focus on creating dungeons, as in combat rectangles is already starting to be threatened as the status quo. Arneson obviously understood why this was bad, and you can see some designers working it out too. Holmes also had a very good grasp of pacing and dungeon layout that it would take others (including Gygax) a while to catch up to.

So anyway, see you at G1!

[tickldpnk8]

On Hob and William Caxton

So a stray comment on this meta thread had me adding my thoughts to the end on Hob’s mention of going into printing. But I don’t think my thoughts got seen much because they were fairly off topic. But! The history of printing is a particular pet topic of mine so I wanted to expound on this a bit. Because it’s one of the echoing storylines that Gaiman weaves through the centuries to show how interconnected that time is. And it’s also an echo we see in the larger series about literature, stories and language.

In 1489, we get this panel where Hob mentions that he’s taken up a new trade called…printing. (Not that there’ll ever be real demand for it)

But it’s not until 1589 that we learn the name of this mysterious friend: William Caxton. (Mentioned by Hob as Billy Caxton)

But who was William Caxton?

Caxton was an Englishman in the mid-1400s who started his career as a cloth maker and merchant. By the 1450s, he was living on the continent in Bruges and by 1465, he had turned to politics. With the War of the Roses underway in 1470, he had turned his attention to bringing printed books to the untapped market in England.

Printing was a new industry in the mid-1400s in Europe. (As opposed to the printing traditions of Asia.) Gutenberg had used his jewelry-making expertise to cast individual letters for printing around 1440, and developed a printing press that revolutionized books, publishing and illustration in Western Europe. Caxton likely traveled to Germany and saw a press in action around 20-30 yrs later before buying his own and setting up shop on the continent. Demand for works in English was low on the continent, so he soon moved his shop back to London.

What Caxton did was revolutionary for the time. No one was printing books in English. Even in England, scholars preferred Latin and French, considering them more beautiful and more expressive. Caxton not only brought a whole new trade/industry back to England…he also played an important part in our linguistic history. By translating works into vernacular English—specifically his London dialect—he was saying that English literature traditions were just as worthy as Latin or French for scholars and the masses. His work helped to standardize spellings at a time of great linguistic change. And his dialect that he was using became more widespread through his publishing. Plus, through his poor translation, English adopted a number of loan words.

The first book he printed once back in England? None other than Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. He later published a second edition containing woodcut illustrations. He mostly published works he thought would be profitable with the gentry and then expanded his market by publishing works of popular fiction. His translation of La Morte D’Arthur helped popularize Arthurian legend.

What did a 15th century print shop look like?

I imagine that when Caxton started out, he might have had to wear many hats. In this woodcut from 1568, two men are setting type into forms in the background while one person inks the form on press and the other pulls the print. Not pictured are separate jobs for folks to carve illustrations like the above out of wood (or use other printing making methods like intaglio, etc) and to bind the books.

Pulling a print could be manually hard work. Once the form is inked and the paper put into place behind a frisket, the whole apparatus is rolled under the platen on the right. Pulling the big level attached to the screw above the platen would apply even weight to the inked form, leaving an impression on the paper. Then, the apparatus would be rolled back out, the paper removed and the process started again. Once all the pages were printed, they would have been bound by bookbinders.

By the 1600s, the print shop could have had multiple presses with even more staff as shown in this engraving. Guilds would have been set up with proper channels for learning the craft. Plus, a whole merchant system was in place to sell all those books, pamphlets and prints.

You can see a press like this in action in this video:

How does this tie into Men of Good Fortune?

Men of Good Fortune is as much a history of England overview as it is a history of English literature/language. By spacing his references out, Gaiman is able to allude to its evolution concisely for the purposes of his story and the limited real estate of his panels.

So here are Gaiman’s key references by date:

In 1389, we see Chaucer out for a drink with a friend in the midst of writing The Canterbury Tales.

In 1489, Hob is working with Caxton to set up his publishing business. Who would then go on to print several editions of Chaucer’s works.

In 1589, Hob refers back to Caxton by name, and we meet Shakespeare.

In 1689, no literature references

In 1789, Hob refers back to Shakespeare’s King Lear having a happy ending and asks after the nature of Morpheus’ deal with him.

In 1889, no literature references

In 1989, up to your imagination!

Hob and printing

For Hob specifically, his involvement could have meant many things. He could have become a typesetter and learned his letters. He could have been pure muscle pulling prints. He could have bound the books or carved the illustrations. And he could have branched out into being a merchant by selling said books. Or…all of the above.

As I’ve been writing this over the past week, @teejaystumbles just posted a printer!hob illustration. Was super excited to see it! Anyways, I’m hoping that this context was interesting for folks and I can’t wait to see if anyone writes/draws more printer!hob, because I can’t wait to read/see it!

[quillyfied]

Things I’m noticing on this rewatch, which I’m hoping to take slow and ponder on but we will see how it goes, PART ONE (obviously major Good Omens season 2 spoilers throughout, specifically for S2E1):

- Angel Crowley’s hair is so bright and curly! The shade feels more like his new post-apocalypse ‘do, which I find curious. New hair is obviously still much darker but it’s that more unnatural shade of red that could be very bright indeed under the right lighting.

- Aziraphale trying to soften angel Crowley up for his warning by complimenting the colors of the nebula first. People pleaser already, I see.

- The opening: that bit where they separate. They’re on the wrong sides. Then they move past each other to the right sides. Then they separate backwards to the wrong sides again, and that’s when the bridge between planets behind them breaks apart. Pretty obvious visual representation of where they end the season, but I do have to wonder about the emerging “they swapped again” theory and if this back and forth motion could be pointing to that.

- Initial analysis about Maggie: cute as a button, blonde, runs a shop of antiques not particularly useful or lucrative in the modern world, formal style of writing, accommodating to the people around her (perhaps to excess), vintage aesthetic all the way around: immediate thought is that of course she’s a mirror to Aziraphale the same way Newton Pulsifer is. Let’s see where it goes.

- I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT THIS SPY EXCHANGE ON THE BENCH BEFORE SHAX SHOWS UP. Also why aren’t we talking about Shax more??? She’s a delight! The way she’s absolutely befuddled by how humans outdo her at her own job, the weird strained but sort of mentor/mentoree and also informant relationship she has with Crowley, how she is also probably one of the best dressed in Hell without the smell and blemishes and obvious animal aspect…she’s fascinating and I can’t wrap my head around her. Is she supposed to be a dragon? I could deffo see dragon.

- “What’s the point of it all?” Oh Crowley. So correct.

- His hair matches her dress. Significant that they match??

- Half rations of what???

- The correction of the peas. I weep. Has the air of all the times Neil has probably been corrected about it on tumblr and elsewhere for the bread in the book XD

- There are a lot of Statues of Liberty in Nina’s coffee shop. Why??

- Initial analysis about Nina: cool, collected, blunt, friendly but not familiar, hipster vibes, popular store and business model without being a model business owner, seems like she has it all together but has a pretty big lingering anxiety in the form of a controlling relationship: perfectly fine mirror for Crowley, like Anathema Device. Continuing to see where it goes.

- John Hamm’s befuddled face is the highlight of his performance for me, bc he has such a commanding gregarious menace for playing Gabriel and it’s weird to see it replaced for just…gregarious :P

- I know this is a horrifying moment but can we take a moment to just appreciate the comedy of Aziraphale seeing Gabriel’s whole bare bottom before realizing whose bottom it is? Gosh and the hug. So awkward. (THE JIGGLE)

- John Finnemore also excels at writing idiots. Jimbriel has John’s fingerprints all over it. The conversation is golden.

- This conversation with Michael makes much more sense now tbh but. Want to talk about it in full later, when we have all the information.

- I’ve noticed it since we got promos but: Jimbriel using the angel wing mug and Aziraphale using the blue teacups just…strikes me. Could be because he’s having tea and not cocoa. But still. Hmm. Interesting.

- Aziraphale’s immediate panic over knowing what it’s like to be close to a person. Hmm. Yes. Quite. (And a moment to enjoy Gabriel, even in some pretty extreme amnesia, knowing Aziraphale is safe and will help him. Not so much warm fuzzies over GABRIEL knowing that as it is Aziraphale getting to HEAR that from someone who should by all accounts not feel safe with him at all. Guardian instincts being validated. This won’t backfire.)

- Listen maybe it’s just because I watched the Barbie movie the night before I watched GO2 but all I’m thinking when seeing Jimbriel is that his Kenergy is off the charts. And I know that basically just means he’s at peak himbo performance but Kenergy feels more appropriate right now. More introspections there later, I think.

- Formulating a thought about the box, about how it has very prominent double red arrows and “this way up” on it…and the instructions were on the bottom. Something something Heaven/Hell Gabriel/Beelzebub symbolism?? Foreshadowing for The Final Fifteen Minutes, maybe for season 3 itself????

- “You’re funny. I love you.” UH HEY JIMBRIEL. JIM CAN WE TALK ABOUT THAT. GUYS CAN WE JUST. DISCUSS THE LAYERS OF THAT. Not here, obviously, but at some point.

- The thing about writing an idiot is that they have exactly the wrong intelligence for the situation at hand. It makes them very funny. Even more so when their intelligence actually happens to be helpful.

- THE FLYYYYYYY

- Muriel!

- Oof. Sexy Bentley animations.

- “Now that I’m not reporting to Heaven” INGRAINED BEHAVIORS THAT NEED ADDRESSING, PERHAPS?

- I feel like we don’t talk about “six shots of espresso” enough. I realize it’s been like two days and there’s a lot going on but SIX. SHOTS. OF. ESPRESSO. CROWLEY. It expressly does not calm him down. Oh hey instrumental Bohemian Rhapsody!

- I paused just to fully take in the affronted look on Crowley’s face at “naked man friend” XD

- Crowley downs six shots of espresso in one go and then comes face to face with the exact being of his worst nightmare. No wonder he blows a literal lightning gasket.

- Aziraphale knows about Shax. Interesting.

- Ask him properly? Interesting turn of phrase. And Crowley leaps in immediately between them. Of course he does. Ask him properly meaning be threatening about it this time, I suppose?

- I. AM. DUSTING. ITS YELLOW. HHHHHGK.

- Crowley solution: get rid of the problem, run from it. Get away from it. Aziraphale solution: confront the problem, solve the problem, go charging into the helping of the problem. Hmm. Interesting.

- The whole “our exactlies are not the same exactly” IIIIINTERESTING.

- “I thought we carved it out for OURselves.” “SO DID I.” Y’all I cannot WAIT for the parallel gif sets. This conversation, the bandstand, the sidewalk, and The Final Fifteen Minutes. Phew. Knockout parallels.

- That was a surprisingly petulant lightning strike tbh

- Michael and Uriel sniping at each other. Somehow love it. BUT ALSO. This conversation has so many damn LAYERS now!! Heck!!!

- The floating armchair. Heck yeah.

- The distance between Muriel and the archangels, the way they talk down to her so thoroughly…heck.

- Like how the Resurrectionist matchbox has the skull and crossbones but also the Bible verse on the side. The two halves of the sign, brought together.

- MORE FLIESSSSSS

- Beelzebub’s tactic for trying to get Crowley to help find Gabriel is…interesting. I might have to make a whole separate post to analyze this scene. The matching chairs, the determined way Beelzebub’s pursuit of the hunt isn’t immediately suspicious, the flattery, but most importantly, it’s getting its own bullet point:

- The way Beelzebub shares the bit about Extreme Sanctions and how that is enough to flip Crowley’s Protect Aziraphale switch. He’s on the hook, because now there are actual stakes.

- I wonder, though, at how I didn’t immediately catch that Michael saying “anyone found HELPING him” was said. Anyone caught helping Gabriel. Why would helping an archangel be cause for Extreme Sanctions?? Surely it would be a good thing for anyone, even Aziraphale, to have kept a vulnerable Gabriel safe all this time. I’m chalking it up to first time watching excitement and sleep deprivation but huh. HUH.

- Anyway, back to Beelzebub; they immediately offer a reward to Crowley, a carrot instead of the stick. And Duke of Hell is on the table. Interesting. Weird. And their wording is anyone “involved in the affair.” Very slightly different context. Wouldn’t give away that Heaven is indeed on a manhunt (angel hunt?), but not for the exact reason you would expect.

- I wonder about the temporal implications of being erased from existence. And how this very serious and apparently mythological mode of punishment is coming back in season 3. Hmm. Hmm hmm hmm.

- Also Beelzebub’s “report to me first” I SEE YOU NOW

- Nina and Maggie’s lock-in is…hmm. The “no judgement” about drinking thing strikes me as something someone with a very religious upbringing would say to a friend who drinks. Bit clunky, lot condescending. Interesting way to get to a segue.

- Good old fashioned lover boy better have an amazing comeback next season XD

- LOVE seeing the onscreen effects for the text messages, love the way they’re like crumpled up notes, love the immediate energy that brings to this already suspicious relationship. Sigh.

- I knew “I’m back” had petty marital bickering energy from the trailer but I HAD NO IDEA HOW MUCH.

- Also brief moment of real sadness for how this is a rehash of “angel, I’m sorry, whatever I said, I didn’t mean it. Good? Yes? Get in the car.” Just smoothing over the rough patch so they can move on rather than. Yknow. Talking about it and fixing it.

- Also notice how the apology dance doesn’t actually involve saying “I’m sorry.” It’s more an admission of the other person’s intellectual or moral superiority. Which is. Funny! But also. Sad!

- Jim. Jim you were just outside earlier. Jim please.

- I notice the “little” miracle is done over the portal to heaven. Hmm. I thought at first maybe Jimbriel’s latent archangel abilities were at play but I much prefer the “together Crowley and Aziraphale are super powerful without meaning to be” interpretation, because it makes The Final Fifteen Minutes make SO much more sense.

- The miraculous plume is pink <33333

- The inherent comedy of “nobody will notice a thing!” *BLARING ALARMS* XD reminds me of “he’ll have an enormous hellhound with him! He’ll be easy to spot!” *cut to Dog* from season 1 :P

- Okay, final thoughts on this first rewatch: yeah the foreshadowing and scene-setting is impeccable. Great energy. Loving it! Picking up on so much more tiny hints and clues! Missing God’s narration but it really says a lot, actually, that She isn’t there anymore. No Agnes Nutter book for guidance, no scriptural references to necessitate God’s voice being present…different flavor.

Okay! Might do episode 2 tonight, as well, but I have Things to do first! We will see!

[adultswim2021]

Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job #37: “Brothers Cinco” | April 6, 2009 - 12:30AM | S04E09

Tim and Eric’s “Chalet 2000”. Their “Ronny Horror Picture Show”. Their “Went With the Wind” (syndicated half-hour version only). Uh, their, uh actually SCTV has a few and I don’t wanna pick one. Anyway, I got some ’rrhea and spent about 40 minutes shidding before getting around to this write-up so hopefully losing all of my precious brown fluids doesn't give me brain fog. I hope I don’t have to do any more big brown squirts. 

This is a fairly special one. This is the first (and only?) episode to be just one single story. The Anniversary episode from season one and the Tairy Greene Machine episode from season five are the next closest ones I can think of, but they still contain sketches that you could enjoy without the context of the wraparound. This more-or-less feels like a pilot for Tim and Eric Bedtime Stories. It’s also a cinematic widescreen episode, but it’s only available in 4:3, letterboxed. 

The episode is about the titular Cinco brothers, played by Tim & Eric. These are the men behind Cinco, the company what makes all the funny stuff we’ve seen throughout the series. They’ve made quite a splash in the business world. Even Tom Leykis respects them. Tom Leykis is the radio DJ in the episode. He’s sorta famous for being a shock jock. He’s more-or-less a liberal but he also likes being a rude sexist. He is my hero. Anyway: the story is pretty simple: Cinco Bro Eric (I forget their fictional first names, so I’m just gonna call them Tim & Eric) is accused of murdering his own wife. Tim has big plans to use their new Cinco E-Trial software that proclaims to offer a legally binding trial through the magic of CD-ROM. 

The trial, of course, yields a guilty verdict, because Eric IS guilty. A bunch of cops bust through the Cinco Bros’ door and arrest him on the spot. In prison, Tim confesses to Eric that he set him up to fail. He overheard him plotting with his wife. Their plan? Eric tells his wife that he’s going to kill her, and while his brother is stricken with grief Eric will steal the company from him. His wife is completely nonplussed by this and agrees that it “sounds great, babe”, evilly laughing along with her husband.

This is such an aggressively stupid joke that I love it. Like, the idea of Eric killing his wife and her just going along with it is funny, and it’s at least a little satirical. The episode is meant to be, at least in part, a satire of movies about powerful/toxic men where women are disposable. Here they are so disposable, they just allow their husbands to kill them just to be supportive of their fella. But also; the non-specificness of how Eric will steal the company. They could've written it in a way that the plan at least makes sense and retain the satire, but they don't. Tim and Eric is truly comedy jazz, as it's about the jokes they don't play.

There is a sequence in this where the Cinco Boys are out partying at various stripper/drug-doing clubs, and Eric starts getting despondent, and as he spirals he just starts babbling about how he killed his wife. He and Tim happen to have a prostitute with them, and they unceremoniously murder her and then brashly yuck it up in a diner about how much of her blood is still on them. The diner scene is wonderful, their acting is weird and sorta good. They strike an impressive balance between being believable and absolutely not believable. It’s an uncanniness that most people can’t hang with. I think this is an essential component to being a Tim and Eric liker. 

Anyway, the party scene preceding the diner scene seems like it’s a first draft for the Billion Dollar Movie sequence, which is much funnier. I guess you can’t do a dick piercing on the Cartoon Network.

Keep an eye out for some Tim & Eric cameos in avatar form. When Eric picks his virtual jury, you’ll spot some regular faces. A nice nod to the fans (me!). Also, because this is the paragraph where I just say random things about the episode that don’t have to do with the story: the house Tim and Eric are in (with the car-themed loveseat) is a regular location used by David DeCoteau, one of the most prolific schlock makers out there. He went from making X-rated movies in the 80s (BOTH kinds, hubba hubba!) to sleazy “USA Up All Night” fare to now, where he trades off making not-even-softcore movies where beautiful young men wrestle around shirtless and children’s movies where the plot is an animal can talk and it’s voiced by Eric Roberts, who sounds like he’s recording his lines on his iPhone. Some friends and I spotted this room in A Talking Cat?!? And we struggled to remember where we saw it first. It was this! 

Anyway, I love this episode and think it’s great, even though Tim is doing a SICKENING anti-semitic character with a big prosthetic nose. HBO I implore you, pull this episode NOW. Jews are under attack now more than ever.  

MAIL BAG 

In reference to shake like me: WHEN DO THE SIMPSONS COME ON???

They're on right now. They're probably on the freakin' M*A*S*H Channel

touching tribute to the obviously racist episode shake like me

I swear to god, I meant to expound on the idea that in 2009 television writers (in mostly/all-white writers rooms) thought racism was officially solved because America got directed by Obama (who I guess died earlier today) for a couple seasons and went on rehashing actual racist jokes thinking they could now be passed off as absurdism. I'm not saying this as a defense, I just remember being a white dude and basically believing that same thing. It's the same reasons jokes about limousines were also suddenly okay.

Watching all these shitty Season 4 episodes really makes me appreciate stuff like Gravy Robbers again.

I genuinely think season four is at least as good as season two OKAY?? FUCK to you, pal

I usually put the EPHEMERA CORNER above the mail bag, but sometimes it accidentally causes stuff to get deleted, so I am putting it here:

EPHEMERA CORNER

POSSIBLE EPILEPSY WARNING?? MAYBE???

[oxyspeculativetv-fa23]

Performing Gender: Doctor Who and The Star Beast

The topic I would like to discuss today is gender representation in Doctor Who. For this discussion, I will be specifically analyzing one of the most recent episodes that came out entitled The Star Beast. In order to analyze the Doctor Who episode, I will be using Judith Butler's article “Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion.” My three main discussion points will be Rose noble, Donna Noble's trans daughter. Um, the discussion surrounding pronouns and alien races as a metaphor for gender presentation. At this time, I would like to acknowledge that I could have used discussed alien races as a metaphor for race in general. However, given that most of this episode is centralized around discussions of gender identity and sort of being trans gender pronouns, um. Just gender in general. I felt it was better to talk about it as a gender presentation and what people will accept as a gender presentation versus what is not acceptable as a presentation. 

I want to begin by discussing Donna Noble's daughter, Rose. Rose is transgender, and I think the show does a very good job of integrating that into the plot and making it applicable. For example, rather than having her just be played by a trans actress and having it be like a side mention, it is an actual part of the plot and acknowledges real life moments that happen for trans people. The scene between Donna and her mother discussing um. Rose is, in my opinion, one of the best moments of the entire 60th anniversary and honestly, one of my favorite moments in television. It is a genuine acknowledgment of the trans experience and how you will have family that are genuinely accepting of you, but also is confused. It is not painted, though, in a bad light. It is painted in the light of oh. They care and they are trying, but it's not necessarily immediate. I think this is a very good scene. I think it sets the episode off in a very good light because it sets us up to discuss gender in a way where it's acknowledging that, um, gender presentation and how we sort of perform it is still something that is relatively new r for older generations. And it sets up why the big plot twist surrounding the aliens works out, because we are still very set in our ways, even though we are becoming more and more liberal. 

The second point I have is about the discussion of pronouns. This is a very sort of pivotal scene. It's been shown all over TikTok. And it is where Rose makes the point that the meep, um, might not use he/him pronouns because the doctor assumes that the meep does. To note, the meep is a little funky alien. that crash lands on Earth, and then Rose finds it hiding in her trash cans. I feel that the discussion between the doctor and the meep about pronouns. Brilliantly illustrates Judith Butler's point about how gender, performance, and specifically drag is “one which both appropriates and subverts racist, misogynist and homophobic norms of oppression.”[1] I believe that it sort of subverts it, because it makes it sort of a normalized thing. When Rose points out that the doctor assumed pronouns, the doctor immediately asks. And when the meep says, “I use the definite article, I am always the meep,” The doctor does not see that as strange. He's just like, oh yeah, I do that too sometimes. However, it also at the same time appropriates it because it creates this sort of camaraderie feeling that is then pushed aside in when we get to the later half of the episode, which is sort of the discussion about alien races and gender presentation. 

The last main point I want to discuss is gender presentation with alien races. And this is more sort of going into the idea of various races as different acceptable forms of presentation. As I said, this would also be a very good topic to cover under race. However, I felt that I wanted to stick with gender theory for the sake of this video and this assignment. So if we look at the photos of the meep and then of the Ross Warriors, who are the sort of bug-like creatures. One is very clearly more palatable for human beings. I mean, I know personally when I watch the episode, one of the first things I said was, oh, I wonder when they're going to make a meep plushie because it's, um, the meep is cute. It's fuzzy. It's just very much the kind of thing that human beings latch on to and are like, oh, what a baby. Whereas the Wrath warriors are scary. They look like bugs, something that we inherently fear.  Judith Butler directly discusses how gender and gender performance is not separate from sexuality and race. She makes a point when talking about symbolic gender, that “the symbolic is also and at once a racializing set of norms, and that norms of realness by which the subject is produced or racially informed conceptions of sex.”[2] In this sense, we can see the connections between gender presentation and the alien races. We take the symbolic thing of the meep looking small and cute and friendly, and in return decide that must mean the meep is good, that the meep is not the one at fault here. Instead, it must be that these evil warriors are the villains, when in reality it's completely opposite. The warriors are just trying to enact justice. They're trying to arrest a genocidal maniac. But because we see them as more threatening throughout the first half of the episode, without question, everyone immediately goes to the side of the meep. It is only once the doctor has actually exposed the meep for who it is that the meep reveals itself and everyone begins to hate it. To conclude, the episode is incredibly interesting when you start looking at it through the analysis of gender, and especially once you go beyond the discussion of a trans character and just the pronouns thing, which some people have found cringey. I personally think it is very realistic. You can then start actually looking at the connections that can be drawn between gender and race and how we inherently will assume certain things based on appearance. It's discussed in the Butler article about how some people are able to pass and others aren't. Just in the same way that the meep is able to pass as a friendly creature just because it looks like it should be, whereas the Wrath Warriors, even though they're doing their job and they are trying to defend us, are assumed to be evil because they look scary.

References

Butler, Judith. 1999. “Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion.” Feminist Film Theory.

[1] (Butler 1999, 341)

[2] (Butler 1999, 342-343)

@theuncannyprofessoro

[clickerflight]

do you have anything like a character info or picrews for your adventurers story? since there seems to be a bunch of lore outside of what you’ve posted so far :)

i already thought the whump week story was interesting so i’m definitely going to have a look at what you’re writing about them this time !

— honey <3

Of course!

This story is one I started developing when I was 14 and it has grown with me. The whole worldbuilding and everything is so complicated it takes literal hours to explain it.

So, the general idea is that in the entire universe there are thousands of galaxies and plenty of them have some inhabited planets here and there. People can travel to other planets, but most of them don’t get involved in space travel. Most people instead use the complicated art of portology (this is mentioned in the story and I could sit an explain portology by itself for an hour)

Anyways. In the beginning there were five base races. One of these were the Telari, the first dragons. They were meant to be the protectors of the universe (protecting planets, helping end wars, guarding ambassadors, stopping apocalypses etc) and they did a good job until about 1000 years ago when they vanished. Most people believe some malevolent force set a trap to capture them, leaving the universe vulnerable.

So people stepped forward and created an organization called the Kahtir (this generally translates to memorium) and now they perform the jobs that the dragons left behind.

This whole story/thought project/daydream fodder thing is named The Adventurers because this story focuses on a team called that. Explaining how they all met is another hour of exposition but they became Teliar, agents of the Kahtir. They’re specifically a resource team which means they’re sent into most of the really fun jobs. The big magical catastrophes and whatnot.

Got distracted giving context. This story was built this way so that I could make my own worlds, but also include worlds from books and movies and such (this also has an in universe explanation but I won’t get into it now) so in the story of you see references to things like Star Wars and whatnot, that’s why.

And on to the actual character lore!

Laurance is actually based off a character in a show I watched as a kid but he’s changed so much that you can’t really tell anymore lol. He was born on a medieval planet and trained to be a guard. He got caught up in a cult on a pocket dimension and got killed and brought back to life as a demon and kept as a slave when he would swear to the ‘god’ the cult worshiped. He ended up escaping with a part dragon (scaleon) named Anisha who later became his wife. So here’s some are of him.

And yes, I drew them.

And a drawing I did last night for my Halloween wallpaper of his demon form

And then the other main character in this short story I’m writing is Matsu. He’s also based on an anime character I watched as a kid, but he’s changed so much that all that really remains the same is the color of his hair.

I have a yearly tradition of drawing him with a boba drink.

Matsu is a half mer so his other form really only shows up when his gills are immersed. This drawing was done by my friend.

Here’s a drawing I did of Laurance and Matsu I did a while back.

The other two members of the Adventurers show up in the short story towards the end so I’ll throw a couple of images here. I don’t have much are of Kira because she has been going through a redesign and it has been a mess.

Anisha

She is a part dragon known as a scaleon but she is actually stunted, 2-4 feet shorter than normal scaleons and her face is way more human looking than a scaleons is meant to be.

And we have kira. She is fully human but has slight abilities with shapeshifting. Only enough to change her hair and eye color occasionally. She’s from a high tech society and her parents while traveling through space to a new planet when she was still in the womb were in a radiation accident. Not enough to cause too many problems, but enough that any unborn children on that ship were later born missing limbs. She’s missing one arm but that’s not a big deal. She’s a techno wizard (a literal wizard that mixes magic and technology) so her prosthetics are nearly perfect

So, that’s the lot of them. (Not including all the kids they keep adopting over the years)

There is so much lore. I could talk about this all for days if anyone showed interest.

Thank you so much for asking!!! I’m very proud of this story and it’s complicated worldbuilding so I love getting the chance to talk about it, especially done I don’t usually get to because of how complicated the lore all is and how long it takes to provide adequate context for it.