#also the selling points

[the-hwaelweg]

I used to copyedit 120,000 word super dense PhD manuscripts for 8 hours a day, five days a week, and now I'm like "what do mean you want me to copyedit 1200 sentences of catalog copy??? I'm gonna die probably"

[egophiliac]

Final manifestations for Book 7?

I'm trying REALLY hard not to build up any solid expectations, because I wanna go in ~fresh~! they're already so far away from anything I thought would happen (not in a bad way, I'm just accepting that I'm on Miss Yana's Wild Ride at this point and we're seeing this thing through 'til the end, by gum). so it's nothing too major, but:

they've been handing new crying expressions out like candy lately, I want to see some delicious Malleus tears.

honestly I want everyone to cry buckets. their tears sustain me. the more Silver angst specifically I get the happier I am.

SILVER!!!! 👏 VANROUGE!!!! 👏

just let him have this. the poor boy's been through so much. let him have his big "I'm proud of you, son" moment with Lilia.

I'm 100% expecting Grim's arc (and probably whatever's going on with Crowley) to be its own episode, but a nice hook to leave us hanging on would be good!

a nice hook though, please, I don't think I can take another "Grim is attacking us! now wait eight months to find out what happens :)" cliffhanger...

some Meleanor? as a treat? just a little bit, a tiny quick flashback or something, please Twst I just, I just want to see her again. let her have a little ghost cameo like Dawnathan Knight got. Lilia and his kids are all having their big group hug or whatever and she can gently fade in to be all like

(turning asks off until I'm done playing, SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE Y'ALL)

[mummer]

rhaenyra outsourcing motherhood to rhaena and assigning her that passive feminine role was REALLY interesting….. rhaenyra as a character is at her most fascinating when she is forced to navigate and ultimately perpetuate the gendered structures she despises and wishes she could transcend— the seeds of her tragedy already sewn here. just great character work

[suntails]

hijo de la luna

[shroomerr]

Oh, help me God, this hellboy got me coming back for more

reblogs super appreciated !!! close-ups under the cut !

[dreadfuldevotee]

I'd like to discuss the elephant in the room. Why did we get zero Loumand sex scenes? We got hints and implications, but season 1 was pretty explicit. Do we think that that's a creative choice or something else is happening?

I'm glad I ended up ruminating on this for about a week because episode 7 & 8 really solidified my opinion on it.

I do wanna start by saying that it's very clear to me that there was supposed to be more explicit scenes between them. There has been some thoughts tossed around that censorship happened with the 9 pm timeslot (as opposed to the 10 pm timeslot of S1). I believed this hearing Assad and Jacob talk about the BDSM dynamic between Louis and Armand, but what really sold me on this was Production Designer Mara LePere-Schloop talking about the bedroom set and more specifically about their beautifully carved custom headboard. (If you're a production nerd like me or just want to know more about the design philosophy of IWTV I recommend giving the entire thing a listen!).

I think there are several reasons I think as to why they decided to leave any more explicit scenes on the cutting room floor but above them all is: you cannot separate Armand's sexuality from his abuse. I am really against pulling a "well if you read the books" card but reading just the first couple chapters of "The Vampire Armand" makes me understand so much about not only Armand as a character, but the care being taken to his adaptation. It's clear to me that alongside Rolin & Co.'s commitment to not watering him down to a one-dimensional villain they are also trying to not fall into Anne Rice's tendency to romanticize his trauma.

Sex and sexuality is not the same pillar of Louis and Armand's relationship it was in Louis and Lestat's and so I don't believe their story suffers from the lack of on-screen sex. But I also firmly believe that maybe we don't need to be slutting out the character who we literally just watched talk about how he doesn't remember his life before being sex trafficked. And even when he was "freed" he was still being repeatedly assaulted at the hands of, and under the eye Marius de Romanus. Like it is extremely important to remember that Armand's craving for dominion in his relationships is a manifestation of trauma that deserves the same level of care and depth given to every other trauma portrayed in this show.

I think people have gotten too comfortable calling IWTV a romance when it has always been Gothic Horror. Romance and sex are pivotal to the story but I have found the demands for sex scenes this season a bit absurd and also? unfounded? Loustat share more kisses on screen but there are two sex scenes and both are very plot relevant. I truly figured we were all in agreement that the eroticism of this show is found in the various displays of power, and the dynamics it creates and not the actual clapping of ass-cheeks...which also wasn't happening in S1 either. S2 does not suffer because of the lack of sex-scenes, but the likelihood if it suffering trying to make one work is

[missescalientee]

You mentioned Branch is a lot more u in the AU he went with JD & Jade

Will this sweep Poppy off her feet perchance? 👀

To me Branch is always the one who falls first in every universe, their friendship and his crush would start in movie one and he’d be hardcore flirting and she just doesn’t notice because of everything going on

They would meet around the time OG Branch would’ve come to rescue her

At some point I'll clean these up and line them but I've been having entire arm issues so we got sketches rn

Things aren't all cupcakes and rainbows with the two of them, even with Branch not being gray he still harbors some worry and sadness which would end up being a point of conflict

Not shown to great extent here but his inability to see "the silver lining" would become a moment of conflict for them in place of singing killed my grandma

Also what Lief is doing during all of that:

He gets sent back to trolls village to help them hide from the Bergens while Poppy is away!

[johnnyshrine]

★ 114 // “Holographic Sticker”

// This item will be available for sale during THE JOHNNYDROP™, my fundraiser sale to help me move! Drops 05.01.25 on my store.

[ryuuna]

my cute lil melinoe and frinos stickers came in!!

I'll be giving these out for free at AX this Thursday at the XPPen Booth if you can guess who my favorite hades character is 😉 (or even just ask for it lmao)

[lazylittledragon]

Not trying to be rude or anything but you shouldn't use the word 'manic' or 'manic period' etc. unless you actually have manic/depressive episodes because it downplays how severe those disorders can actually be. They're just words but unlearning harmful terminology like that can help destigmatise mental illness and I would hope youi would want to do that.

yeah it's almost like i used those words specifically because i DO understand how severe they are

[venusflitrapp]

just got to penacony !!!! i’ve been obsessively drawing the guys for the past few days lol

[art-soboro]

my turn to draw cute contextless kemonomimis of despicable people

[mellohiizz]

MELLOHIIZZ!!! DRAW ANOTHER ODYSSEY DUO AND MY LIFE!!! IS YOURS!!! /REF anyways odyssey duo has me in a chokehold i love them so much oh my god

hello i am so ill about them

[dovalore]

did you know? he's the guy that sells houses

design thoughts under cut

he got hit by the kittification beam, i'm afraid it's terminal

another design! this means i get to share the song that inspired it

he's not wearing a suit because i wanted to have fun with his attire and the actual suit kinda bores me, he's got a retro futuristic suit now!

i did try and keep the colours and placements somewhat similar so it's not as different as it could be, plus the monochrome works out when the rest of him is super vibrant

speaking of, i'm not entirely sure what he looks like without his suit, probably just really green

glorp was like, the starting point, but another cat that came into play was mew because y'know, cute little space cat, best mythical pokemon in existence

his antennae glow in the dark, so do his irises. actually, a fair amount of him glows in the dark (green bits on gloves, star on chest, purple bits on his tail and boots)

eyelashes? whiskers? why not both? he's an alien after all, i added them in pretty early on in my initial sketch because i wanted his head area to have a little more visual interest and it kinda made sense since the eyes on his skin already kinda float off his head

smooth to the touch (though whether it's because you're making contact with fur or skin is up for debate because i don't know either)

not really pictured: quasar is tall as fuck because his body is so damn long

theoretical champion design thought: he'd have rocket boots! complete with boosters at the bottom to help with jumps

his design is meant to compliment peekaboo's! together, they are peesar (pronounced pizza)

that's not the reason i chose the name, it's the title of a song and i was like... sure that's spacey enough let's roll with it even though there's not much else that came from there for him

[thanatika]

yeah i agree with your point about survival mechanics and i feel the same way about the lack of combat mechanics. "why would an educated city doctor need a weapon" because shit is hitting the fan in every way impossible and pretty much everyone is walking around armed... also why am i supposed to believe the the fact that he's a man of intellect will somehow provide him with food? i don't think anyone is going to be too eager to share food during an outbreak intellectual or not...

+ follow up for the previous ask but actually my favorite quest from the original pathologic is the day 11 bachelor quest that involves shooting down soldiers. i think it really drives the point home about how this random fuckass guy who is supposed to be battling a plague doesn't even have the time to do that anymore because the people in charge are asking completely irrelevant things of him now and he's at a position where he cannot refuse what is being asked of him. like i think it was good storytelling that even as the guy who lowkey wants to deal with the plague and solve its mystery you still have other, more pressing, less interesting and or pleasant tasks to complete

i agree! honestly, i feel this way about the combat mechanics even more than i do about the physical survival (food, health, illness, sleep) mechanics. because sure, i can see how it makes sense for daniil's position of authority to mean that his basic needs are somewhat provided for -- although i don't think it makes more sense than what we got in the original game. i've never seen anyone bring up "isn't it kind of unrealistic that the bachelor isn't given lots of food during a massive food shortage?" as a plothole that needed to be resolved. the townspeople generally don't like him much, and most of the people with power don't either, except for the kains. sure, maybe it's kind of weird that you can go see the kains while broke and on the verge of keeling over from hunger, and they won't do anything to help you, but... the kains are pretty self-centered, and they're so goddamn weird that maybe they forget that you need to eat food to live anyway. and it's half-implied that the powers that be are ultimately giving daniil this role as a convenient way to kill him, so it makes sense that they would put no pressure on the town authorities to keep him alive.

(and honestly, artemy is taken under the olgimsky's auspices as much as the kains take daniil's under theirs! which is to say, selfishly, with ulterior motives that are more important to them than the well-being of their healer, but... the olgimskys are set up as the wealthiest of the 3 families financially, as well as the ones with the most access to food, given their control over the meat industry. so if anything it's "weirder" that artemy isn't more materially provided for, though to be clear i don't think there's an actual plothole there either way.)

but anyway, you could handwave it and say that daniil's position of privilege and authority gives him more perks than he got in the original game, but the amount of fighting you have to do to get through town is... kind of an unavoidable physical reality? like you're given so many sidequests that you often wind up walking around town after dark, and that's when the bandits come out. is the idea that the bandits would be too scared to attack him because he's so important? because that doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and even pathologic 2 establishes that he's seen as a valuable target by the bandits:

and then there's the quests where combat plays a more direct role in the story itself, like getting involved in saving andrey from the firing squad, or killing guards to break artemy out of prison, or the quest where you have to kill var in attempt to stop the arsonists (which i include on the same tier as the other ones because i really like the quest journal entry he has if you complete it where he blames himself for willow's death. it's a good character moment.)

hell, even in pathologic 2 itself, one of the biggest Bachelor Moments is on day 11, when you have that big dramatic convo with him after he killed a soldier for the papers he was delivering. plus one of bad grief's idle dialogues in patho 2 is commentary on the bachelor being "quick on the draw" and that he "already shot someone". like he just straight up is not living a combat-free existence. and overall, combat isn't just a good tool from a mechanical perspective, heightening the stakes and placing pressure on the player (though it is), it's also pretty important for him on a thematic level imo, almost as important as artemy and his "rivers of blood". in patho classic, daniil has this early interaction with the inquisitor:

which, thinking about it from a doylist perspective, was probably the writers' attempt to make it sound more plausible that this random medical researcher from the big city was competent with multiple types of guns. and i appreciate them coming up with that hint of backstory to cover their bases a bit, but with those bases covered, i think the fact that daniil ultimately spends more time shooting people than he does prescribing medicines for them actually does a lot for him thematically? i mean, if his whole thing is that he's this "tempted destroyer", someone who frames his career as a combative battle with death rather than a quest to save people's lives, whose "default" solution is to raze the town with artillery because he's too limited by his rationalist worldview and military upbringing (and bitterness over being manipulated and sabotaged) to come up with a solution that saves the any remaining infected survivors on his own. plus the way that clara frames artemy and daniil as two sides of the same coin in being violent destroyers and killers, who without player intervention will immediately devolve to running around chasing each other down in what's either an insanely dedicated tom and jerry LARP or some really elaborate foreplay. imo, that whole dichotomy (which is pretty core to the game, as the idea of dichotomies are core to it in general) works so much better with the way they're both presented in classic, stalking around with gun/scalpel in hand. hell, not to mention the effect that spending 12 in-game days trying not to starve and getting killed by bandits or guards or worms or soldiers every day would have on the player, and the way it would make them feel about the town and their natural projection of those feelings onto dankovsky, who is a perfectly fitting vessel for them as the avatar actually undergoing those virtual experiences.

ultimately i think they are mainly going this direction out of a desire to do something more creative and original, which is fine... it just seems a bit silly to me that they keep saying "well obviously that doesn't really work for the bachelor's scenario", when, well... even as recently as patho 2 in 2019, they seemed to think it fit his narrative pretty well! i'm also guessing that a lack of combat won't be that bandits are just no longer roaming the streets at night. it sounds more like pathologic 3 is set to be more of a nonlinear experience, where you'll probably fast travel from place to place instead of having to walk across town so much? so you'll be avoiding bandits just in the sense that the gameplay will be avoiding them. i guess i'm hoping that at the very least, there's still the implication of the crunch of not getting enough sleep or food and the threat of being stabbed to death while trying to get through town occurring to dankovsky in the background, even if those mechanics are deemphasized in favor of more macro-level town resource management, time control, and sherlock holmes fruit ninja or whatever the hell they were on about back in 2022 lmao.

[liedownquisition]

Jason Todd's timeline and "Age"

So, there's a lot of discussion of Jason Todd's age esp as relative to other sidekick vigilantes, particularly Tim and Mia. I believe the exact words are usually something about a "grown ass man beating up/trying to kill teenagers."

DISCLAIMER: This particular post is specifically regarding the "grown ass man vs teenagers" statement, I have posts regarding the "tried to kill them" portion and other stuff like "seriously Jason Todd is like being shot by a marshmallow gun compared to what goes on directly before and after him in these incidents, also you don't bitch about the right stuff, also a lot of you prop up characters who are Objectively Worse, and no that's not hate on your fave it's just me calling out hypocrisy". It just takes time to find digital copies of the panels I'm using. NOTE I AM NOT JUSTIFYING HIS ACTIONS. I'm just saying y'all blow it out of proportion for petty character hate. Like, shit, they're superheroes. Jason's soooo fuckin' tame. He's not even framed as a big deal to the teens it's only the adults that think it's that much of a problem.

Courtesy readmore post cut:

Now, to start off, we all know Jason died at 15 & a few months off from 16 (if you want me to dig up panels, sure, but I figured at this point that wasn't in question). Tim at this point is somewhere between 12-13, and we have this panel in Lonely Place of Dying which takes place a few months later:

So that's a ballpark of 2-3 years between Jason and Tim.

But Tim's age is really fucky and they keep de-aging him tbh. We can extrapolate that his confrontation with Jason was between the ages of 16-17 bcs it's after the arc where he has his incredibly shitty 16th birthday in Robin Vol2 #116 and before Red Robin where he's stated to be 17. This would put Jason between 18-19 at the time. (If you really want me to find panel sources for Tim's birthday and his age in RR then, sure, but I don't think they're necessary. I used it more as a guidepost for Jason's age, since we have a clear idea of what the age gap is.)

At least, on paper.

Mia for her part I've had a hard time finding like, on panel mentions of her age and if anyone can direct me to it being explicitly stated I'd love that. I'm rereading old comics but it's a LOT of comics to hunt down & dig through. To my understanding she was fifteen when Ollie first met her, and there's at Minimum of about a year and a half between that to her meeting Red Hood, more likely at least two? because there's at least few months between that and her joining the Titans, the Doctor Light stuff, then One Year Later, and then returned to Star some 3 months after Ollie came back to run for mayor? And then Jason not too long after. So, two years feels safe. Puts her at 17-ish, Jason at 19-20

Once again, I specify: on paper.

People would happily point out at this point that the upward stretch of a 4 year age gap is a "huge gap in maturity." And yeah, under normal circumstances, I'd agree.

But, and this is going to get contradictory bcs I found Two different timelines (BOTH written by Winick, lmao), and depending on how you read it it could be up to three different possibilities. Let's Start with Batman Annual #25: Daedalus & Icarus.

Timestamp before Jason's resurrection, which is pretty well known at this point:

Next, him waking up from a coma afterwards, when he escapes the hospital:

Now the above could be interpreted as either 1 year after he died if we're assuming that it's using the same "start" point to count as the resurrection (unlikely), or one year after he came back (more likely).

Next, the timestamp right before a guy recognizes him and sells him out:

And, finally, the timestamp before being put in the Pit:

That is, count it up, between 3-3 1/2 years where Jason was dead, in a coma, or otherwise not particularly... cognizant of the world around him. His ass is NOT developing emotionally, socially, or mentally like this, which pretty handily bridges the gaps there. Taken at face value, Jason's maturity level is going to be, unironically, younger than Tim's in the wake of these setbacks.

Now, if we go to Lost Days issue 1, it doesn't specify how long he was dead, nor how long he was in a coma, so we'll just carry those two over, what we DO have is this from just after Talia brought him home:

This puts him as being on the streets for five months, so we're at just shy of two years so far. And then we have this:

Which is right before Talia puts him in the Pit.

So, in summary: 6 months dead, 1 year coma, 5 months on the street, and something like 1-1 1/2 years with the League which...

Actually puts us on almost the exact same timeframe either way. 3 to 3 1/2 years. It just changes whether Jason was on the streets or with the League for longer.

And is utterly incomprehensible because comic timelines are a freaking nightmare.

If we're being generous, then that would put Jason at a minimum of 19, maybe toeing the line of 20 for UTRH, again, on paper, because like hell are you convincing me he did less than a year's worth of training abroad throughout Lost Days. Yeah maybe they trained him in fighting while he was catatonic, muscle memory and all that. But the other teachers that we KNOW of? The bombs, guns, probably something to get him up to date on handling all that tech we see him using, Egon, potentially arguably All-Caste if you want to draw from n52...

but you'd have to knock at least a year and a half off of his internal/personal development from death & coma, at minimum. Maybe you could argue he was somewhat developing while in his "the lights are on, but nobody's home" phase, you can't say it's at the same level as a normal person might when going about their day to day life, and it's difficult to measure. But he's not hitting the kind of milestones that he should be for his age. I wouldn't put him at anything less than two years behind. So if we use our upper estimates on Jason, and lower estimates on both the developmental setbacks and Tim/Mia's ages that gives us:

Jason toeing 20, mentally 18, fighting Tim at 16. 2 year gap, kind of stretching the physical age gap if we assume Tim had just barely turned 13 when he showed up to be Robin. - OR LESS

Jason maybe 21, mentally 19, fighting Mia at 17, two year age gap again. Honestly, still not that big of a difference - OR LESS

And, to be frank, that's not even counting the mental development issues that come from the intense physical trauma from dying - and I swear to fuck don't give me the "He's not the only one who died he's not special" speech.

HOW MANY OF THE OTHERS YOU'RE USING AS A GOTCHA LOST, *GESTURING AGGRESSIVELY ABOVE*, LITERALLY MULTIPLE YEARS OF THEIR LIFE.

Not counting adults, of course. Barry lost years, Hal lost years, Ollie I think also lost a couple years? but A) they came back still adults, bodies pretty much the same. B) While Jason's body didn't go through a magic growth spurt in canon, it did still grow esp while with the League.

I'll eventually get around to Titan's Tower & GA#72 (tbh, there are other people who've already done Titan's Tower and it'd probably be better than what I do, so I'm more going to focus on the latter, but there IS a specific part of the former that drives me nuts that I don't see brought up a lot), and maybe if we're feeling spicy all my issues with UTRH starting with how Winick is just as guilty of retroactively writing Jason as being inherently a bad penny since his Robin days as any of the other "modern" writers. Like, bud, Severe enough Head Trauma is legitimately enough to change someone's personality, not to mention trauma. It wouldn't hurt your narrative for that eerie difference, the Shade of What Once Was if you're really going for RH being Like that.

Final addition: I swear to god if you use my post to start up some kind of petty-ass ship war or flame other characters I will immediately turn off reblogs and replies I am Not Dealing With That Shit, please and thank you.

Anyways, @glitter-stained, your interest made me decide to actually put the work in now to pull it up rather than passively gather stuff to dump whenever discourse pushes me over the edge so, here ya are. Looks like you did have it closer on the mark than I did.