#also who is the friend the panels are referring to? this is so cool

[gen4grl]

WAIT!!! i never read the manga past gsc but wow i love how they touched on this. i feel like leons feelings outside his champion persona are only slightly touched on in the game but it’s so cool seeing both the manga and anime expand on this!!!💜

headcanon but i feel like leon was so heavily conditioned and manipulated by rose and eventually HIMSELF to be the ‘perfect champion’ and to not express any negative emotions so the first time he felt genuine fear and almost dread was hearing the pokeball he threw at eternatus start to crack. even then, not fear for his own life but fear that he was about to get hop and gloria killed.

[soubiapologist]

loveless meta is really a game of who can project the hardest onto their sicko of choice and jump through three billion hoops to get people to sympathize with them while also walking the extremely thin tightrope of not creating straight up apologia for them

[choochooboss]

Sketch dump! Vol. 5

September 2022 (Part 1/2)

The first piece on top summarised my cosplay rush for Tracon 2022! The second is an old idea for a charm.

"SURPRISE!!"

Back in 2022 I hosted an art raffle for reaching 777 followers on Twitter! The winner would get their submas themed idea realised (which was their friends throwing a surprise party for the twins!). I wanted to make a little comic and have the bosses walk in their office where depot agents, Elesa, Drayden, Skyla, Clay etc. would be waiting with decorations and treats and games.

Emmet is all smiles of course while Ingo gets so emotional he could only whisper a "super bravo".

Not really headcanons anymore but still funny ideas.

1. Emmet gets clumsy when off-rhythm! He starts walking in curves if there is nobody else around to match his rhythm with.

2. Emmet spaces out/forgets to say things aloud when someone speaks too long or when things go off-script! His thinking gets interrupted easily.

3. Ingo sometimes bumps into doors because he is too used to automatic doors!

4. When things go off-script Ingo speaks too much and rushes in straight lines"

Also my little inexpensive sketchbook & my trusty tools! Mechanical pencil and eraser pen are life when scribbling my skrimblos smaller than a postage stamp!

More Ingo~ I utilise a wide range of sources for references, including CSP's poseable 3D models, they can come really handy with perspectives and proportions!

The second piece is my very first attempt at cosplay in Tracon 2022: Blingo! I walked in with a sequin hat, leather jacket, leather pants and high heel patent leather boots.

The hardest part of cosplaying Ingo is remembering NOT to smile ahaha!

Some hairstyle tests

I drew these for a huge submas art collaboration over Twitter hosted by @/mimizukeii!! It was technically my first art collab before I started arranging them myself with Aggie/Magma.

While looking for train related songs I found this cute nursery rhyme to go with the marching:

"Over the mountains,

Over the plains,

Over the rivers,

Here come the trains.

Carrying passengers,

Carrying mail,

Bringing their precious loads In without fail"

I wanted to compare these silly twins, planning to do something more silly with them later. Also a sketch of @/fukurow's butler designs I never finished.. The capes compliment them so well, I love them!!

Prequel to this piece! Emmet is so confident in himself he thinks Pierce wants to learn from him but is invited for a duet on the stage instead!!

Emmet has really great voice actors in Pokemas! I especially love how his english VA gives him that bri'ish/posh/sophisticated vibe while also soft and melodic! I know for SURE this VA/Emmet can sing, I can show you later!

One of my favourite sketches!! I wanted to add a bunch of characters in the BG reacting to this sonic blast of emotion over a performance!

Heyyy it's the smile buddies comic!! I really hope Ingo gets to interact with Marnie in Pokemas one day!!

I feel Ingo's eyes in the mirror panel is a little off in the final comic, I meant to keep it softer like in the sketch!

It's Nimbasa trio!! Idea inspired by submas EX uniform colors. Might continue this later!

Some BG tests for this piece! Compositing is hard but absolutely worth the effort, it can make a huge difference in the appeal of your piece!!

Practise piece drawing over a photo I thought was cool! I want to get more experimental with lighting and perspective!

'How's it hanging bro?' Who hung him up there anyway??

Sketch for this arguing scene! Something REALLY BAD needs to happen for them to end up that tense! Even if I want to present them close to the canon material I still want to put them in really challenging situations to see how far I can push their emotions!

Thank you so much for coming all the way down here!! This set was pretty loaded, I hope you enjoyed scrolling through all this ahah!

Previous posts:

Sketch dump Vol. 1: April-June 2022

Sketch dump Vol. 2: July 2022

Sketch dump Vol. 3: August 2022

Sketch dump Vol. 4: July 2022 Part 2

[nights-flying-fox]

Some things I wanna talk about in new rottmnt comic!!

SPOILERS‼️

Triceraton Empire!! So it confirms there are triceratons that survived the Krang (considering we saw a skull of theirs in Technodrome). Also my friend Banjo ( @little-banjo-frog ) mentioned how it probably is a reference to 2012 bounty hunter shark-cyborg!!

Another thing is how it is confirmed its the good future. And Raph has lost one eye and his right arm!! And Mikey lost his hair... in the 20 years that passed.

In the future Draxum and Todd seem to be staying with the family!!

Leo ended up dimension hopping for months! What did he see, where did he go, how did he return home?? (Giggling because i got an au based on that hehe!! This is my favorite fact anyways let's move on)

Also April looks so cool guys...

RENET MENTION!! Mikey and Renet have been working together!! (I'm still wondering why he looks like his bad future self tho djdjsk)

Lil Leo seeing Big Leo!! Idk I think it is silly and cute :D

FRIDA REVEAL

THIS PANEL. We already had seen the pervious page. But this panel: other than their dialogue I love their expressions. Present Leo seems scared (considering what the previous time travel event was about, not a surprise), but also "i can't stay mad at you". He seems to respect/admire his older self. Meanwhile Big Leo looking at him with a smile, softly... That guy doesn't hate his young self. He seems to care for him so much (which considering the plot... yeah makes sense), but it's nice to see his old self being nice with his younger self ♡

CASEYS BONDING ToT

I FORGOT TO ADD BUT TODD HUGGING PIEBALD DURING SPLINTER'S DEATH!! Did Todd take her under his wings??

Lastly- BROTHER AND SISTER?? Is he talking about Camille- if they met Frida already, the sister would be Camille probably. But who is the brother? Kirby, Slash, or a new character? Also rip Splints :(

What do y'all think??

[cool-thymus]

idk how to tell you this but japanese people don't speak English. "obitover" isn't a thing when they aren't speaking english...? 💀

Anon is referring to this awesome comic by @dottixml to which i shamelessly contributed one tiny panel.

Hey anon! I had to consult a friend of mine @maireyart who does speak Japanese, and as it turns out, "obitover" IS possible in Japanese, isn't it great? 😁

Japanese has a lot of English loan words, including the word “over” (oobaa) which has the same meaning in expressions like ゲームオーバー (英: game over) etc. So in the Japanese version of this comic the pun could be:

オビトーバ ー!!!!!

Which is オビト + オーバー (obito + oobaa)

Obito’s name is a fav pun base in both English and Japanese fandoms 😎😋 Also, Naruto characters live in an original fictional world that is indeed heavily influenced by the Japanese folklore and culture; however, it is not real Japan. So we can fantasize and headcanon anything we want. Let's just be open-minded and supportive of each other's creative flow :3

P.S. "Fixobito-no-jutsu" from my panel could ALSO be translated into Jp as a pun! But we would need to ask @maireyart about that 👀📝

P.S.S. and who says Obito couldn't be studying English in his free time to look cool in front of his teammates? Kakashi would be jealous af, and Rin would be so impressed with Obito just dishing out puns IN ENGLISH here and there 🤭right?

[deva-arts]

Commission details!

I've decided I'm opening commissions! I only have three slots open at a time, so it's first-come, first-serve~

I offer everything from colored sketches:

To fully detailed pieces:

To backgrounds/Environments...

To comics!

I also do reference sheets!

I am open to doing other art formats, just let me know!

Will do: (Send References!)

-Oc work -Fanart -Fantasy -Humanoid/personification work -Environments -Creature design -Machines/mechs -Weapons (i.e, guns, artillery, ornate knives/swords, etc.)  -Anime styles -Extremely Intricate armor/clothing

Will not do:

-NSFW/Erotic work -Fetish art of ANY kinds -Heavy Gore (i.e. viscera, graphic depictions of wounds, etc.) -Religious pieces

Read on for pricing and details!

--PRICING--

My prices work as an add-on system so you can mix and match for your desired results :D

Linework:

Sketched lines- $20 Clean Line art- $30

Here's an example of Sketched vs Clean lines!

Coloring:

Flat color, unshaded- $20 Full shading- $50

And an example of flat vs. full shading!

Sizing-

Bust- +$10 Waist up-+$30 full body- +$45

Here's some examples of how sizing applies!

So a head-up piece with flat shading and clean lines goes for $60, but you could also order a fully shaded, full body piece with clean line-work for $125. It all depends on you!

Now for some extras!

Backgrounds:

Simple (A pattern or gradient of your liking.) Free of charge!

Furniture/Props (Your character is sitting on something! So cool.) +$10

Complex- (A scene, setting or location) $10-40

There is a discount for adding extra characters!

Two Extra Characters: 10% Discount off of total price. Three Extra Characters: 15% Discount off of Total price. Five or more: 40% Discount off of total price!

So let's say you want a piece of five ocs, friends, what say you. All of them are fully shaded, waist up with clean lines and a full, complex background.

That's $110 x 5 for the characters + $40 for the background = $590, But at forty percent off, you save nearly $240. Woah.

And that's not all...

Repeat customers also get a discount!!!

*Those who have commissioned me twice can get $15 off on one commission of their choice. Four commission orders from them will get them $20 off on one commission of their choice. Ten will get them $30 off on one commission of their choice.

*People who have ordered ten or more commissions will be considered legacy customers who will always get $35 off on their commissions <3

To consider:

The more detail, the more references needed for extra accuracy! (I would prefer you send me any specifics you'd like, rather than go to google and risk getting things wrong.)

No rushing, please! I will give your order all my time and attention! I will give you updates and estimates on how long it will take to finish.

Pay is upfront, with sketches and screenshots sent to you for progress updates.

(Sketches are not guaranteed to look like the final product, since I usually refine as I go. Please specify if you want them to look just like the sketch!)

Complex clothing or armor may take more time, but only because I want you to get what you paid for lol.

Lastly, pricing for comics and reference sheets will be different to that of a normal illustration- it depends on the number of panels, the complexity, the amount of characters, and their backgrounds... Which can't be charged the same in good faith.

Due to this, it's better if you just ask me what you would like to have done! I'll be sure to find a reasonable price, comics are cool and I want you to have one.

Let me know if you have any questions~ Feel free to PM me for inquiries too!

[wavy-arms]

"You shouldn't ship them! They see each other as siblings!!"

I've seen people say this about Rengoku and Mitsuri again and again, very often as a way to shut down others who are having fun with the Renmitsu ship. Not only is it annoying to constantly run into this from people who don't really know what they're talking about, but it's also inaccurate and way oversimplifies their cute dynamic! Let's dig deeper.

For a moment, let's also just forget about the above panel where she is very obviously all 🥰 at him and, instead, let's go straight to the source: what the Pillars all think about each other in the official guidebook. Better yet, let's look at it in the original Japanese!

Now, I am still a student of Japanese. I am by no means fluent, so if I make any mistakes, please feel free to let me know! I'm always looking to learn something new.

First, from Rengoku:

才能が凄い！技の独創性も凄い！可愛い後輩！

Sainō ga sugoi! Waza no dokusō-sei mo sugoi! Kawaii kōhai!

In the first two sentences, he's praising her big time! "Her talent is amazing! The creativity/ingenuity of her technique is also amazing!" In the last sentence, he calls her a cute kōhai. If you're familiar with the term senpai, then kōhai is the alternative. It's just a term to refer to a junior coworker or classmate. Mitsuri joins the Demon Slayer Corps. after him, and he was her mentor before he became the Flame Hashira. (However, in the Rengoku gaiden, he tells her that they are no longer master & student, but instead equal peers. Overall, he clearly thinks she's very skilled and also cute.

Next, from Mitsuri:

かっこいいお兄様！一緒に修行して楽しかった。可愛がってもらった！

Kakkoii onii-sama! Issho ni shugyō shite tanoshikatta. Kawaigatte moratta!

The first sentence, translated literally, just says "Cool big brother!" Now, one thing that makes Japanese both fun and difficult is that speakers often rely on context and omit entire parts of the sentence that an English speaker would normally use. In this case, in English, you wouldn't just say "Cool big brother!" You might say something like "He's like a cool big brother to me" or "I view him as a cool big brother figure." In this case, we don't have that. What we do have, however, is cultural context! In Japanese culture, familial terms are often used as terms of endearment or respect with people close to the speaker or even politely with strangers. So it would be normal to call an older male "big brother" even if they weren't actually your brother. (Kind of similarly, if you're at all familiar with Korean culture, girls often call their own boyfriends 오빠 (obba), which means — you guessed it — "older brother.") Here, Mitsuri refers to Rengoku as onii-sama, and that last part is important! The -sama suffix is super polite and formal, and long story short, you wouldn't normally refer to someone in your own in-group (family, circle of friends, etc.) with such a formal, respectful title. It is, however, a term you might use to refer to someone else's brother. So there's a very good chance that she's not saying "he's my cool older brother" but instead "he's a cool older brother!" And he is! He's an amazing older brother to Senjurō, and Mitsuri knows this. [UPDATE: I've spoken with a couple people who know way more about the Japanese language than me and, apparently, in this context onii-sama literally just means "guy." 🤣 She's literally just saying "He's a cool guy!"]

[UPDATE #2: I've also recently learned that kakkoii doesn't really mean "cool," but is instead a compliment specifically to men that means something more like, "good-looking, handsome, or cool in a manly way." INTERESTING. 👀]

In the next sentence, she says, "It was fun training together!" Pretty straightforward. The last sentence is very, very interesting, because at a cursory translation, Google would tell you that it just straight-up means, "I was loved!" Sounds intense, but that's not really accurate. Let's break it down. Kawaigatte moratta! Kawaigatte, if I'm not mistaken, is an inflection of the transitive verb kawaigaru, which Jisho translates as "to be affectionate to; to treat tenderly; to dote on; to show one's love (for); to cherish." Other translations usually say something like, "He really doted on me." But essentially she’s saying, "He treated me with tenderness/affection" or, "He made me feel loved/cherished." 💖

So there you go! Not that a fan ship like Renmitsu even needs this kind of validation anyway, but it might be nice to have something you can keep in your back pocket for the next time someone is being annoying about it. There's enough here to show that they really have a lot of affection for each other. They're so adorable~!

(Side note: there are other examples of Mitsuri's attraction to him in the gaiden [pictured above] and in at least one of the light novels. I might write about that, too.)

[barrenclan]

RAAINHAAZEE ISSSUEEE

the issue starting with deepdark just going to his murderous colleagues and saying “wanna act with me”… deepdark theater kid is not something i expected for patfw but makes sense.

CUPID RETURN!!! rainhaze and him having a little fun banter… aaaa. i don’t wanna get attached to cupid because what if cupid is also using him but-… silly raccoon guy. the fox also once being one of rainhaze sit buddies hurts :(((

HERE IS THE PAGE!!!! THE BEAST!!! its so fun how many defiancesonas/ocs u fit in here, it’s such a treat to be on patfwcord!!!

DEEPLINGS REAL!!! hyssop looks like such a little shit i love him.. AND DEEPDARK!!!!!!!! him calling them his friends and wishing him warm welcomes.. i’m sure i’m not the only one who didn’t expect him to present himself so.. friendly? but he’s a theater kid so it makes sense, yeah. it being referred to as a family tho… cult red flag?

THEY DISRESPECT FANG?? IN FRONT OF ME?? MY FAMILY??? SHAME!!! JAIL FOR A HUNDRED YEARS!!

BEAR WAS LONGEST CLAWS!!!! thank u patfw discord my ass could have never theorized that hard. i can’t really tell if deepdark just wanted to be dramatic and cool or if he just wanted to spar with his buddies and trashtalk longest claws.. perhaps both..

and especially with the story changing ever so slightly, at first deepdark calling himself his current name and then prowl acting proud of deepdark when in reality he wanted vengeance… history is really what the victor makes of it, isn’t it? and prowl and spike so easily going along.. deepdark really changed them too.

THE QUOTE!! ATE OF HIS FLESH!! DRANK OF HIS BLOOD!!!! HE EATA THE HEARTA!!!! IM SOOOOO EXCITED THIS IS THE TIME THIS IS THE MOMENT AAAAAAAA

yes the rainhaze trauma- love the connections between deepdark’s story and the truth and what rainhaze’s imaginations are and the truth, him imagining dustfeather happily taking a nap instead of bleeding out and him being happy instead of terrified of himself.. and i know it’s meant to be sad for him but honestly.. get her ass rainhaze

i love this page and much like deepdark eats the flesh i shall eat this art and it tastes good. keep up the great work o777

Deepdark is a dramatic king through and through.

God, man, the big cameo panel on page 2 took me so long to finish. But I liked getting to draw all the animal species.

Deepdark is very performative, and with such a violent group, he has to make sure they all feel welcome, and more importantly loyal to him. His lieutenants help enforce that.

All the theorizing about Longest-Claws was so so fun for me. And they caught on so fast! Very nice. Actually, we will in fact learn why Deepdark chose to talk about Longest-Claws and the origins of Defiance in an upcoming issue!

Getting to that quote I thought up all those months ago was a real treat. Here's the original art that accompanied it, for anyone who didn't see it:

[tiffanybluesclues]

HELLO! I'm making an obnoxiously long meta about the inconsistencies of Dick's and Bruce's relationship. I'm ALMOST finishes but I need an instance of adult-ish Dick Grayson saying that he didn't want Bruce to be his father pre-flashpoint

Also if you have instances of the writer hammering they're brothers pre-flashpoint that'd be cool as hell too, but I already got at least one instance of it (when dick goes to college)

Thank you in advance!!!! I'm still on the Kory-Bruce meta lmao I'm so annoyed he barely mentions her lmaooo

Somewhere in the decades and decades of pre-Flashpoint DC Comics, there may be an instance where Dick Grayson (as an adult or at least as a teenager) said he didn't want Bruce to be his father, but I've never seen it and I'm kind of glad I haven't because tbh based on what I *have* seen it would be Dick lying to himself.

I'm guessing the page that inspired your quest is this court scene from "Batman: Year 3" (1989)?

– Batman #439, 09/1989.

Maybe it was a modernized explanation for why Bruce took Dick in as a ward instead of adopting him – as opposed to the version in Batman #213 (08/1969), with the court saying Bruce couldn't adopt because he was a bachelor.

Something that speaks volumes to me is that in the same story as the above court scene, in the preceding issue actually, Dick thinks to himself that Bruce was like father to him. There is no internal conflict in this statement, no thought about how he at some point didn't want this. "He was like a FATHER to me and I LOVED him." He follows that up with a sad reminder of the distance between him and post-Crisis Bruce: "...and though he could NEVER bring himself to say it, I know he loved me too."

– Batman #438, 08/1989 or 09/1989.

You're familiar with the college-send-off, so please keep it in mind when you read this scene with [regard to] Bruce and pre-Crisis Jason.

– pages from Batman #376, 10/1984.

Alfred's response makes sense, it's a good explanation. It's also a complete rewrite of history, so these two are lying to themselves – or, more likely, the writers are trying to emphasize the current day stakes and emotions at the expense of the past. With the above panels in mind, let's look again at how Bruce actually reacted when Dick left home...

– pages from Batman #217, 12/1969.

Oh suuuuure, he definitely didn't mope around feeling lonely and depressed at all – and closing up Wayne Manor and moving out was a ~totally~ chill and non-dramatic reaction to Dick leaving for college... lol, okay, Bruce. I guess 159 issues and almost 15 years can make memories faulty.

The following are two pages I saved because of their references to the history that Bruce and Dick share. I want to highlight the page on the left though, because on a single page this comic manages to pay respect to the long history between Dick and Bruce while also disrespecting Dick's role as a surrogate son in Bruce's life.

– pages from Detective Comics #533, 12/1983; The New Titans #61, 12/1989.

That final yellow panel is so rude to me lol, like how dare you say "for the first time" as if like-a-son-to-him Dick Grayson didn't happen.

Comics from the 60s and 70s were probably the peak time for the idea that Bruce and Dick were like brothers. As far as I can tell though, writers didn't really have other characters describe them as brothers. I've seen mentor & apprentice, friends, partners, guardian & ward, knight & squire, and (primarily when there are no other children in the mix) of course Dick is also described as Bruce's heir pretty often.

I feel like, compared to Batman comics, the 1980s Teen Titans comics were more willing to say Bruce and Dick had a father and son relationship. Donna even contrasts her sisterly relationship with Diana to the parent and child relationship of Bruce and Dick during "Who Is Donna Troy?"

– The New Teen Titans #38, 01/1984 (Donna); The New Titans #61, 12/1989 (Alfred); The Brave and the Bold #197 04/1983 (Golden Age/Earth Two Bruce Wayne).

At least they let Earth Two Bruce remain true to Golden Age vibes.

My headcanon is always that he is the Bruce who every Dick Grayson grew up with, regardless of era, regardless of rewrites. Here are some panels that kind of support that – a significant factor in how Dick views Bruce is that he had a "softer" version of him than the man we see now.

– Batman: Gotham Knights #26, 04/2002 (Barbara); Nightwing #134, 09/2007 (Dick in flashback); Batman #437, 08/1989 or 09/1989 (Dick again).

A repeated theme from Dick is that he is insecure about his place in Bruce's life, and in some instances Bruce even made it clear that Dick's role was as a soldier, or at best a partner, and that being part of his family was conditional.

– left: pages from Robin: Year One - Part 2, Part 3, Part 3, Part 4, 01/2001.

right: panels from Robin: Year One - Part 4, 01/2001; Batman: Gotham Knights #43 09/2003; Action Comics #613, 08/1988; same; Nightwing #134, 09/2007; Nightwing Secret Files #1, 10/1999; same.

With that underlying insecurity, and the deep love and loyalty that Dick has for Bruce, I think that by the time he came of age it's likely that Dick actively wanted Bruce to be his father.

The first 20 or so issues of Gotham Knights offered some great material about their familial relationship (leading up to the adoption storyline). In issue #14 Dick writes a letter that he still never send. I swear half the delay in my response was probably me deciding which panels to include from this because it is a gold mine for the kind of meta you're writing.

– panels from Batman: Gotham Knights #14, 04/2001.

& with that I've hit the image limit, but I'll reblog with some panels on the point about how Bruce and Dick were often described as friends (something I saw possibly just as often as ward and heir).

[depressedtheatrekiddo]

Started reading Blue Beetle (2006) so here are my thoughs while I read !! <3

(spoilers below the cut!! Includes issues from 1 to 4!!)

+ "Guys don't hit girls" "Fathers do" SHE DIDN'T HESITATE I'LL KISS THE EARTH SHE WALKS ON (I'll kiss her too if she gave me one chance) AND THEN GO KILL HER DAD

+ "I don't need a babysitter!" "No, she needs medication" Jaime is the old sibling representation I deserve frfr (my guy is fighting for his life next issue and all he thinks about is about Mili taking his room 🧍🏻)

+ KLINGON!!! BRENDA I LOVE YOU!!! They're the best best friends to ever best friend!!!

+ Gross in a sibling-ly way GROSS (crossing my fingers because if they end together Istg I'll kill someone)

+ whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthef— A YEAR A WHOLE YEAR?????

+ "He wouldn't scare Milagro" right on the oldest sibling issues, you didn't have the right to hurt me that much Sra Reyes 😭😭 (Does she conserve her own surname? Or Reyes is hers too?)

+ JAIME'S DAD EXPLAINING HIM ALL (pulling the "perfect image" you create when you grieve and all that Jason Todd core is that what I hear) THAT AND THEN "you're my son"

+ "why do you wear a cane dad?" I'm gonna receive a classic uncle Ben am I not?

+ HE !! DOESN'T !! ACTUALLY !! KNOW !! HOW !! TO !! FIGHT !! (I love him already)

+ THE OLD MAN HIT BRENDA TO DEATH REMEMBER WHAT I SAID AT THE BEGINNING?? YEAH WELL AS PACO SAID GOOD RIDDANCE BAD TRASH I'm really happy he died :D

+ BRENDA I MISSED YOU SO MUCH <33333 (I've known her thirty minutes ago)

+ "that's fot making me worry" girl I got worried thinking about the classic kiss that always comes after that phrase thanks the gods it didn't happen 🙏

+ HER AUNT IS LA DAMA??? I mean cool, let's see how it goes(?)

+ BABS!! BABS??? BABS???!!!! ORACLE 💖💞

+ ALSO this panel BAIDGWJSJ

Me knowing nothing about birds of prey except who are on it (should I get on it? Recs?):

+ I only have something to say about this panel, a very simple word. Girlfriends.

+ Thanks gods at least Brenda's aunt will kill that older guy if he keeps being a pedophile 🫶

+ What is he even saying. (I really don't understand anything he says and it's not cause English is not my first language I assure you) I hate him UGHHH

+ THEY WERE HAVING A BEAUTIFUL MOMENT MISTER STOP RIGHT NOW 😭😭 ("Jaime knows how to make people feel better" ohmy <3)

+ Bro. TLOTR reference?? 🤨

+ "What dya mean we won't damage nature" "Nature is about to damage me" I don't know Jaime, Khaji made a pretty good point (this shit is golden I love this comic I think)

+ lmaooo Brenda and Paco shitting on the pedophile

+ Have I said I love my guy? I love him <3

[longwuzhere]

Some cool Easter eggs I caught watching My Adventures with Superman that I want to show to people so they can be in on it with comic book readers

My episode 1 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My episode 2 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My episode 3 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My episode 4 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My episode 5 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My episode 6 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My episode 7 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here and here

My episode 8 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My episode 10 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman comic issue 1 post is here

My Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman comic issue 2 post is here

My Easter eggs and references for My Adventures with Superman comic issue 3 post is here

(SPOILERS if you haven't seen the show yet):

After what happened to Clark in the last episode we see that Lois, Jimmy, and the Newskid Legion are searching all over Metropolis for him and they name drop some location found in Metropolis.

As you can see from the map of Metropolis in the DC Heroes role playing manual, Park Ridge and Bakerline are one of the six boroughs of Metropolis. Park Ridge makes its first appearance in the Adventures of Superman #447 (1988) while Bakerline first appeared in Action Comics #599 (1988)

As the General is interrogating Clark we see a hologram flashback to his time with Waller in the army and Waller name drops the General's first name Sam. So we can conclude that the General is General Sam Lane (this is double confirmed in the next episode).

Sam Lane makes his first appearance in the silver age in Superman Girl Friend, Lois Lane #13 (1959). He's the typical farmer dad that Superman saves and meets. Nothing too special about it.

Now, GENERAL Sam Lane makes his first appearance in the Adventures of Superman #424 (1986)

Like her MAwS counterpart, Lois' relationship with her dad is VERY strained as you can tell by the panels here from the comic (W: Marv Wolfman, P: Jerry Ordway, I: Mike Machlan, C: Tony Ziuko, L: John Costanza). In the comics he wanted a son and Lois became that stand-in whenever he was around and that ruined their familial relationship. And much like his MAwS counterpart he deeply cares about his wife who we can assume he lost some time ago in the past. Also will we see a Lucy Lane in MAwS? Who knows.

Man of Steel, typical moniker for Superman, you're guaranteed to have that in any Superman media.

Slade actually loses his eye to match his comic book counterpart.

Later in the ep we see him with the eyepatch. Matches with his comic book counterpart as seen in this fantastic piece by Deathstroke co-creator, George Perez.

After the Superman Revenge Squad Task Force X escape thanks to Ivo absorbing more and more electrical energy he comes this giant kaiju sized monster rampaging across Metropolis with an axe to grind at Superman. The glowy bits on him remind me so much of Shin Godzilla. Oh and btw if you want to see the Justice League fight 2 very well known kaiju, preorder Justice League vs Godzilla vs Kong. Heres the trailer for it:

The first issue goes on sale in October 17th.

With the way Lois is worried about Clark here it gives off very Death of Superman vibes kinda like this page from Superman #75 (1992) by Dan Jurgens, Brett Breeding, Glenn Whitmore, and John Costanza.

Jimmy is usually labeled as Superman's best friend/pal so that's a given when a reference like that shows up

As the names scrolled up on Jimmy's IG-esque live stream we see some familiar names. The first is a reference Josie Campbell, the producer for the cartoon and the latter two are references to Superman support characters.

Pete Ross is Clark's childhood friend who first appeared in Superboy #86 (1960) by Robert Bernstein and George Papp.

In the comic Pete keeps scrutinizing Clark and he suspect that Pete might be on to his Superboy identity, but it turns out he just wanted Clark to play Superboy in the high school play. In like most Superman origins and media, Pete Ross is always Clark's best friend, but here in MAwS Jimmy takes up that role as friend of Clark but in this case its since they were in freshmen year of college.

Like Pete Ross, Lana Lang was also a childhood friend of Clark's ad also his love interest when they were teenagers.

Lana makes her first appearance in Superboy #10 (1950) by Bill Finger, John Sikela, and Ed Debrotka. In the comic Lana becomes a house guest for the Kents while her parents are away and she begins to suspect Clark and Superboy are the same person. Most Superman origins and other media usually have Lana and Clark be childhood sweethearts back in Kansas and she will occasionally show up in Clark's life again when they are adults.

After Clark punches through the Parasite body to get to Ivo we see the body just freeze there kinda like Shin Godzilla at the end of the movie. Btw go watch Shin Godzilla, Shin Ultraman, Shin Kamen Rider, fantastic trio of movies! Shin Ultraman is a better Superman movie than Man of Steel.

At the end of the ep Amanda Waller takes over Task Force X and name drops Checkmate. The organization first appeared in Action Comics #598 (1988) (cover by John Byrne) where Checkmate is a branch of Task Force X that was founded by Amanda Waller as a government intelligence agency. Like with most spy organization in the DC universe, they are shady AF. In their debut they legit kill a high ranking official from a different country in the name of "American safety".

Thank you for getting this far down in the post. Be sure to check out the other posts to see what other easter eggs and references were in the previous episodes:

My episode 1 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My episode 2 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My episode 3 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My episode 4 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My episode 5 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My episode 6 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My episode 7 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here and here

My episode 8 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My episode 10 easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman comic issue 1 post is here

My Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman comic issue 2 post is here

My Easter eggs and references for My Adventures with Superman comic issue 3 post is here

[thefatedmeeting]

i'm completely normal

Previous / Next

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION – MIDNIGHT TRUTH TIME.

At the top is the strip’s title: “normal feelings about rgu”.

RGU refers to Revolutionary Girl Utena, an anime.

This comic’s art style is simple, scribbled, doodle-like, without realistic details. It’s black and white, with few colors painted in watercolor style.

Hyamara (caricature of the author; they have short and black hair, piercings in their ears and are using a white shirt with a colored strawberry and blue pants), at the center of the panel, has their eyes wide open and mouth open wide, holding their face with their hands. To their left, a person with short, brown hair and round glasses smiles with their mouth wide open, forming a “3” shape (like a cat’s mouth) facing Hyamara, and asks: “So, did you like Revolutionary Girl Utena?”. To the right of Hyamara, the background is black, and Hyamara mumbles without stopping (the font is in Hyamara’s own handwriting, which looks very sketchy and scribbled; it is also in capslock): “the inherent violence of gender and the fake “masculine” notion that power is abuse and should be pointed at others and especially hierarchic towards kids and poc and how society as a whole is structured around that and an silence is complicit to violence and-”. The rant ends here.

In the panel below, unlike the comic’s usual art style, Hyamara, with realistic proportions, has their eyes closed and mouth open, levitating from the ground, with their arms and hands stretching out away from themselves, towards the ground. From their chest a great shine bursts forth. In the background, there’s the universe – and stars and shining lines that burst from Hyamara. Around Hyamara, there are various texts: “down the depths of the ocean I can be my true self”, “I am just an actor” in caps lock, “characters play their parts on a fantasy”, “do they know it’s all a dream?”, “it is empty motion” in caps lock, “born once again to rehearse it once more”, “it’s an act that never ends”, “and a clock that never moves”. The person from the previous panel, Hyamara’s friend, observes the scene with their back to the viewer, and says: “I guess you did lol”.

Hyamara’s pose and the background are references to a meme called “galactic/expanding brain”, where a person (with Hyamara’s pose), increasingly “expands” their brain through ideas that are getting better (according to who makes the meme). The texts around Hyamara reference the duel songs from Revolutionary Girl Utena.

Below, there is the introduction of another strip, with the title: “hobbies”.

Hyamara sits on the ground, with their back to the viewer, but turning back their head to the viewer anyway, to smile at them. Around Hyamara, there is a mess of nerdy items (a print with Marcille and Falin from the anime Dungeon Meshi; an Yshtola figurine from the game Final Fantasy XIV; a print with Utena and Anthy from the anime Revolutionary Girl Utena; a Link plush doll, from the game The Legend of Zelda; and a print with Shulk, from the game Xenoblade Chronicles). Hyamara says to the viewer: “Whenever I like something I watch, read or play, my response is one out of three levels of enjoyment…”

On the next panel, there is a text above it, in a black square, that says: “1 – ‘this is cool haha’”. Inside the panel, Hyamara sits, laying on the back of their chair with their legs crossed in the seat, looking at a monitor in front of them. They have a bowl of popcorn in one hand, and another one with the thumbs up gesture (closed fist, all fingers closed except the thumb, which rises upwards; the gesture symbolizes approval – that everything’s good). They eat the popcorn, smiling. To their left, there is a text with an arrow pointing towards Hyamara, which says: “normal person”.

On the next panel, there is more text above it: “2 – it’s so good, but so bad.” Inside the panel, Hyamara sits in front of a table with three dolls of The Legend of Zelda (Zelda, Link and Ganondorf respectively; Zelda holds a nonbinary pride flag, and holds Link’s hand, which has a lesbian pride flag; Ganondorf has a trans pride flag). Hyamara has their eyes wide open and dark circles under their eyes, one hand holding their chin and the other pointing towards the dolls. Around Hyamara, there are the texts: “It needs more of that and less than this…”, “*steals it and makes headcanons*”; “*characters are mine now*”.

On the next panel, there is the last text above it, in caps lock: “3 - *rotates it in my head so much it’s transcended lightspeed*”. Inside the panel, the focus is very close to Hyamara’s face, who has their eyes wide open and red, their hands holding their head. In their forehead, there is a brain silhouette, and inside this is an image of space and of planet Earth, which is spinning rapidly in its own axis. There is a zoom effect in the Picture, with blurred borders and lines which point towards the center of the panel – this indicates movement.

Below, the footer of the comic starts, with the logo of Midnight Truth Time, and the list of logos with Hyamara’s social media:

Twitter/X logo: @hyacspen

Instagram logo: @hyacspen

Tumblr logo: @thefatedmeeting

Patreon logo: patreon.com/hyamara

Itch.io logo: hyamara.itch.io

Gumroad logo: hyamara.gumroad.com

Between star emojis: hyamara.com

Below, it’s written: CARRIED OUT BY, and the logos of Secretaria de Cultura de Novo Hamburgo, of Lei Paulo Gustavo, and of Federal Govermnent of Brazil’s Ministério da Cultura – União.

END OF IMAGE DESCRIPTION.]

[sauntervaguelydown]

So the thing about watching the Naruto anime when you’re compromised 90% by over investment in Kakashi is that it both gives you so much MORE to dig into, and also makes everything so much more confusing

I’m not just talking about the math. I’m talking about the characterization. I’m talking about the arc. Kishimono’s manga skips over almost everything in his life between killing Rin and taking over as a teacher for the mains. I think the two panel reference to Guy haranguing him for challenges age 14 might be the only material. And that makes it way easier to combine what does exist on either side.

Bear with me here. You meet Kakashi and he’s basically a well adjusted dude as far as we ever see. He’s silly, sometimes, he fucks with people a little bit to amuse himself but always in ultimately benign ways. He reads porn in public. He goosed a student in his intro episode?? He hangs out with work friends in the lounge and talks shop. He’s risk averse in the field, his go-to jutsu swaps his body with objects and prevents him from taking any damage. Humble in a weird way. When things go off the rails on their Wave Country mission, he gets very intense, but he’s also practical and focused and emotionally controlled. We do see he’s got a lot of reserved grief, in the way he is revealed to spend a lot of time in graveyards.

Okay.

So then you go back to the Gaiden mini-arc, where he gets the sharingan eye. And you see he’s super serious, rules-focused, cold, not a team player. Harsh and a bit rude. Even arrogant.

Clear character arc happening here. Big lesson learned at high cost. Arrogant > humble; rules driven > flexible. Huge formative moment accomplished, story told.

Now he gets double whammied when he kills his own teammate less than a year later, which makes this complicated. And then the, uh, massive trauma event that is the Monster Fox attack in which he loses his last remaining father figure too. Yeesh can’t catch a break this guy.

The anime takes this event and grapples with it in a way the Manga just doesn’t. Flashbacks, nightmares, falling apart on the job. I really like this stuff. The weird thing is that in someways this is actually a pretty realistic depiction of compound PTSD, I think? The way he starts to be okay and then gets knocked down again, and doesn’t have a linear improvement arc. But what it fails to do is thread the needle.

I often find that the filler writers had surprisingly good character beats in mind, and then fumbled badly on lining them up in a way that is narratively satisfying.  in this case, they stretch out the cycle of dysfunctional grief for somewhere between 7 and 10 years. During this period he doesn’t have any fun, he doesn’t see his friends, he doesn’t seem to have a life outside of work. We’re told that he acts cold. Pushes away people who reach out. We’re told that it looks like he’s in a hurry to die. For maybe ten years?? Well. That’s long enough that you’d be building a personality from scratch once you got on the other side, but we don’t get to see any of that happening. Even during the 1 to 3 years between him leaving the black ops program that was destroying his soul and him entering canon fully formed, the only time we get to see him is when his friends are commenting that it is “like he never left ANBU at all”. there’s like a week between them saying this and him entering canon. He just shows up fully formed.

But it really starts to make you wonder: when did he start being silly again? When did he start having fun again? When did he start being able to do stupid things like play a prank on a student?  how long has he been able to hang out with his work friends in the lounge? 

did he really solve all this in such a short time? So well that when he goes on this mission with his kids, and everything goes sideways, and people that he cares about are put in danger, and he has to re-create the exact same move that killed his teammate, he’s totally cool and fine afterwards and stays on track for the whole fight? He’s just good? I mean granted, you can headcanon that he falls apart once he gets back home and there are no perspective characters to see it.  what that means is that I am basically doing work on behalf of the retcon, out of the goodness of my heart.

I think we could’ve made this work if we had just compacted it a little bit more. Maybe he’s in the black ops program for a chunk of his teenage years, gets out, and spends his twenties adjusting. No problem!

Or alternatively, if we had interspersed the periods of coldness with periods of warmth visibly on screen.  if we had actually seen him having a pretty OK time and hanging out with his friends and then getting knocked back down reverting to the coldness, I wouldn’t feel all that out of sorts with it at all. He has relapses, but maybe they’re less often as time goes by. I would just think that once he gets out of the black ops program that is slowly killing him, he swings back up to his better resting state and is able to build on it for a few years and develop some resilience.

All I’m saying is that when you don’t see any material between the two endpoints, it’s very easy to mentally adjust to whatever you think is the most likely story. Maybe the PTSD wasn’t all that bad, maybe it was very bad and then he got used to living with it. Maybe he grew and developed an adult personality the way that real people do, in a sort of clumsy nebulous process that doesn’t look very good on paper. But when you do see all the stuff, you get this conflicting impression of someone who is basically all right by the standards of the world he lives in …and someone who was extremely totally fucked up for a really long time, and then just became chill kind of overnight. 

Accord part of the problem is that, of course, this character was conceived of in his adult final form, and a bunch of plot developed around him, and you’re left with a complicated feeling that there should’ve been some impact on him due to the proximity of these events, but those events were not designed with him in mind, so he just sort of floats through them

I suspect based on the tone of the two panel reference in the manga, that Kishimono probably intended for kakashi to have largely been acting like himself the whole time he was a teenager, going out in public, and having relationships very similar ones he has an adult. He’s hanging out with his rival and they’re on their way to an event and he’s being lazy about not wanting to do challenges which is exactly what he like as an adult. 

So. Conundrum. I see exactly why the anime writers were compelled to try and embellish this, but I also cannot take their embellishments seriously without doing a lot of work in my own mind to tailor the material. 

[felassan]

its that time again! 🍵 

Thoughts/wonderings on Dragon Age: The Missing #4, under a cut due to spoilers for The Missing -

I'm probably becoming a lil unhealthily obsessed with this building. what do we think it is? the Archon's Palace is the highest building in Minrathous (tho I guess not, as it has sewers and this is floating). A Circle? it has a similar shape to the logo for the Circle of Magi. the meeting place for the Magisterium senate, lording over everyone below from high above? whatever it is it looks cool and it must be important to be featured on the map. I wanna go there (๑*ᗜ*)

I love Neve Gallus' design. it's fresh and cool, and she just looks so cute and neat okay. also full of detail - the snake pattern on the headpiece, shoulder 'scales' and scales elsewhere, collar & jacket like one of those hooded snakes, snake-'tailcapped' footwear (rather than steel toe-capped), the serpent belt and of course most of all the beautiful snake design of her prosthetic limb. 10/10 character/costume design

this page had me on my knees basically. my heart.

surely this panel is a new meme format hh? same goes for the one where Varric is saying "Then perhaps all this is linked" and Harding says "And we've led them here"

you walked into the wrong neighborhood bro

I also liked this pair of illustrations, they had a nice 'bookend' feel and reminded me a lot of Lord of the Rings.

Other thoughts:

Minrathous looks kinda cyberpunk and (despite what Harding says in the opening panels) feels quite clean in this comic

Is that the person tailing them lurking in the doorway that Harding is catching sight of here?

These holes in Varric's ear seem to be new. What happened? Injury from the leopard attack?

confused a bit by the perspective flip in this issue. In issue 1, Varric was more like 'stop', and Harding was more like 'talk to him'. it's flipped around a bit here.

Varric smiled when he thought about Neve and then lit up when he saw her. she calls him an "old friend". I wonder how they met and how long they've known each other. something to do with varric's spy network?

This panel felt a bit meta hh.

When Neve says "Your friend is quite intense" is she referring to Solas or Harding?

Then we come to the two main things we learn in this issue:

We learn that Solas has been in Minrathous causing trouble. He's been attacking Venatori locations in the city, stealing artifacts from them and freeing elven slaves in the process, which has greatly angered the Venatori. The Venatori now want revenge and a "bunch of rebellious elves" are "causing trouble throughout the city, presumably in the name of the one who freed them". I wonder if the artifacts weaken the Veil, are connected to the idol somehow, or are simply sources of great power that Solas either needs for himself/his plans or that he simply thinks should be taken away from the Venatori so that they don't cause harm using them? Tevinter Nights showed agents of Fen'Harel seeking artifacts and referenced rumors of elven artifacts that strengthen the Veil, like the ones from DA:I. freeing folks also makes sense, "I am not a monster" and it's something he has a history of doing

In this issue we also learn that Neve works with a group called the Shadow Dragons, who have been trying to help the former slaves. indeed they're trying to help anyone who is held as slaves in Minrathous. this is our first time hearing about this new group. they make it their business to help those in need and Neve makes it her business to help them. I'm a bit ¿ about their name, just due to how it sounds, but it's exciting to learn about a new group/faction. Each issue of this DA:D prequel comic has shone a spotlight on a faction - Grey Wardens, Antivan Crows, the Veil Jumpers and the Shadow Dragons. two new, two old. it's a nice balance. and it brings to mind the common fan theory/speculation about the PC of DA:D having a different faction background depending on the player's choice. at the very least it feels like a way of saying 'these four groups [or characters from them] will feature in a significant way/be 'players on the board' in DA:D".

thinking about the Shadow Dragons' name in an in-world context, like thinking about why they may have chosen their name: dragons are emblematic of Tevinter. dragon imagery is everywhere there, dragons are a symbol of power and Tevinter heraldry shows a dragon. the Tevinter Imperium is a 'dragon', or several (metaphorically) - Magisters, ruling over the classes below. the "shadow dragons" feel like "the other side" of Tevinter, the side in shadow, the underside, the 'anti-Tevinter'. I'd guess that they are the "Tevinter you forgot", i.e. the Viper's faction. (and if you look at Tevinter heraldry, there is also a snake 'in opposition' to the dragon.) before Missing #4 I wondered if “the Tevinter you forgot” "means they are a group of folks who have fallen through the cracks in Tevinter society or who are the downtrodden in Tevinter society. is it some sort of uprising or anti-Magisterium movement?" - here we learn they're trying to help people Tevinter 'forgot' like slaves and former slaves. I also commented "from the story it sounds like the dark-clad card dealer is the Viper. the magister in the story is afraid of him and tries to claim that the Viper is just a tale, implying that the Viper’s name has become known as a sort of shadowy, stealthy urban legend in Minrathous and that it has a sort of bogeyman effect on magisters." Shadow indeed. Neve later comments that the Shadow Dragons are trying to "help anyone held as slaves in Minrathous". I think it was in the Dorian short story in Tevinter Nights that there's a reference to how there's now an anti-slavery movement in Tevinter. Is that the Shadow Dragons? you can see possible echoes of "the Tevinter you forgot" in later comic dialogue "The Shadow Dragons have vowed to help us restore our dignity. To get back the lives that were stolen from us by the Venatori. To make sure we don't have to scrabble in the dirt for food and warm", imo.

I wonder if Dorian, Mae and the Lucerni know anything about the Shadow Dragons? maybe they've done some work together?

and while the Viper/Viper's faction/the Shadow Dragons themselves didn't appear in issue 4, issue 4 still highlighted them, continuing the pattern I speculated about, of the DA Day short stories (Evka/Antoine/Wardens, Teia/Viago/Crows, Strife/Irelin/Veil Jumpers and Viper's faction/Shadow Dragons), one from each of those short stories per issue.

Varric is still having a bad time. also he was born in 9:1, and so if DA:D is set in 9:52, he's now over 50. from these comics, he's feeling old and tired. I don't expect that he'll be a companion in DA:D. more like an advisor (off-field), a contact or quest-giver, or the person that recruits us.

"But why? What did he get out of it? Surely, he wanted something in return" was an interesting line. because like on one hand "I am not a monster", he has a history of freeing people who were enslaved and he's shown as valuing freedom and not enjoying needless suffering. setting people free definitely is the only decent thing. but he's also smart and does things with purpose, always playing 4-D chess, and has been outwitting Varric and Harding at every turn throughout these comic issues, always one step ahead. it seems like a 'it's both' situation. like two birds, one stone. he would free people and it's the right thing to do, and he also gains from it strategically. Varric lampshades this in the final page: and it's three stones, actually. Solas freed people, dealt with the Venatori on his tail and slowed Varric/Harding down long enough to escape all in one move.

Also, at first I wondered if the brown-haired elf was sort've projecting his own perceptions on Solas (with the "his kin" lines). but look here. the leader of these Venatori has a pouch round their neck. the others don't, it's prominently placed and it's consistent on this Venatori in every panel they're in here. and where have we seen that before? around the neck of the Venatori stalker that saved Varric from the leopard in Issue 3. I think we're supposed to conclude that the ringleader of the Venatori that attack the elves in this issue is the Venatori person that's been tailing Varric and Harding all throughout these comic issues. the Venatori ringleader seems to recognize Varric in a later panel, with the "You!". They fight and Varric starts demanding answers from the Venatori leader. but then, just as he's about to get answers, the brown-haired elf intervenes and kills them at that very moment. they won't hurt their people anymore, and conveniently also (more than one purpose to things again..), now Varric and Harding won't get any answers. and also this:

another - not two, but - three stones. when the brown-haired elf kills the Venatori ringleader, A) preventing them from further harming his people and B) preventing them from giving any answers to Varric and Harding, C) the killing blow also cuts that pouch from their neck. a very specific thing to depict. presumably in the chaos of the Venatori leader's death (you can't see the elf's hands in the very next panel) the brown-haired elf has grabbed the pouch, and part of his goal all along was to take it. I think we're supposed to conclude that the pouch contained the crucious stone and that the brown-haired elf works for Solas. so the "You're too late, I already have the crucious stone" letter from issue 3 was a Solas fakeout, the Venatori at that point in time did in fact have the stone (having beaten Solas to the vault, and as-shown by the Venatori who saved Varric from the leopard having the pouch around their neck), and the events of issue 4 were part of Solas' plan to steal it/steal it back from them (and going by Neve's earlier dialogue, it's not the first artifact he's stolen from them). so two things here: one, Solas' 'three stones' are actually-actually four (free the slaves, deal with the Venatori on his tail, delay Varric/Harding long enough to escape, and steal the crucious stone artifact from the Venatori [my head hurts]). and two, the brown-haired elf was working for Solas after all. he'll give the pouch (and the contents, the stone) to Solas, "he set us, his kin, free" wasn't projection considering that he does work for him, and him being there in the alleyway when he was, with the information that he had, was part of Solas' plan to escape and get the stone. otherwise, it's pretty convenient that one of the former slaves at the place Neve's aware of where former slaves have been eating scraps, at the time when she takes Varric/Harding there, just happened to have helpful info about the meeting that Varric/Harding needed and also happened to kill the Venatori leader and in the process cut the pouch from their neck. idk if it means all the elves here were working for Solas or just the brownhaired one or the brownhaired one & the blond one, but yea. definitely the brownhaired elf is I think.

Neve fighting was cool: staff-less magic and then as a mage using a dagger or shortsword.

party combo-kill! ice spell + finishing blow - a comic depiction of Shattering :)

Brown-haired elf missing his elven ear here.

A cool panel. Also, you can't see his other hand..

just really liked these two panels :) also, they missed their chance, they missed this chance, in this, a comic called The Missing... is that why it's called that?

[clenches fist] vowing to protect Neve and her good heart at all costs

and he stole the crucious stone artifact from the Venatori.

I am not sure that I agree with the premise of this article that BioWare retweeted, that The Missing is required reading before DA:D. I enjoyed issues 2 & 3 a lot! I was hoping for a bit more from the end of issue 4, perhaps a small Solas appearance like at the end of Dark Fortress or just a bit more insight into his plans or things in/the setup for DA:D. finishing on the Dread Wolf mural from the DA:D TGA 2020 trailer as a reminder was neat but the highlight reveal from these comics as a whole was definitely the new mural depicted in issue 3.

"He knows us too well, we need to find/use people he doesn't know" is the same conclusion that was reached at the end of Trespasser (and Harding was present for that conversation). I guess the meta irl reasons for The Missing are: A] since it'll be almost 10 years irl between games, to refresh folks about that conclusion and the fact that it will be a new PC and why it has to be 'someone he doesn't know', since most new players to the franchise at DA:D aren't going to buy years old DA:I and DLC and play til it the end of Trespasser B] fill some irl time C] do some marketing/advertizing and D] highlight these four groups/factions and introduce the two new ones (Veil Jumpers and Shadow Dragons) in advance of DA:D, and possibly highlight these specific characters (Strife, Teia, Evka etc) the same way (though I speculate those characters are more like DA:D 'contact' cameos rather than that they will be companions themselves). Certainly if I was Varric at the moment when Harding asks "So who are you thinking?" at the end here, after the events I had experienced and people & groups I had met in recent weeks, with those being fresh in my mind, I would be thinking about the Grey Wardens, the Antivan Crows, the Veil Jumpers and the Shadow Dragons, both as groups and terms of the mental list of people that I had recently met who Solas doesn't know. again it makes you think about the popular speculation that the DA:D PC will have the background of being from one of these groups. also, those 4 groups aren't ones which were referenced in Tevinter Nights as keeping an eye on Solas/as Solas having some info on them in turn (unlike some other groups like the Mortalitasi, the Executors, the Ben-Hassrath etc).

[tigertaurus22]

I was watching SCP videos, along with Pokespe stuff, and an idea came to me

SCP- 6517

Gotta Catch ‘Em All Part 2

6517 is an unassigned number as of the time of this post

Object Class: Euclid

What if the effects of SCP-5254 didn’t just apply to the Pokémon creatures? What if it was extended to the human characters featured in various Pokemon-related media as well?

SCP- 6517 refers to a series of cosplay costumes produced and sold from a particular website.

This website is called PokeTrainer Depot, which features a wide array of character costumes specifically themed to media released by the Pokemon Company and its affiliates.

Analysis of these costumes by themselves, even as separate pieces, reveals nothing inherently anomalous about them. They appear to be constructed of normal clothing materials such as cotton, denim and some plastic. Even chemical analysis revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

However, tags with the acronym AWCY? have been found inside the clothing articles, suggesting a connection to the avant garde art association Are We Cool Yet?.

Access to the website has been restricted to the public and can now only be accessed by the SCP Foundation given the necessary clearance.

Efforts are ongoing to keep the website from popping back up, as Ser_Viper seems determined to sell them all.

No pop-up or brick and mortar locations have been reported to date.

There is also no factory name on the labels found within the costumes. Just the logo of the website and washing instructions alongside the AWCY? logo.

Navigation of the site is relatively simple, with the costumes divided into sections based off of which ‘Generation’ they originated in.

For example, Generation 1 refers to the characters introduced in the 1996 releases of Pokemon Red, Pokemon Blue, and Pokemon Green as well as Pokemon Yellow in 1998. It also includes the remakes, namely Pokemon FireRed and Pokemon LeafGreen released in 2004.

SCP- 6517 was first discovered in 2022, post pandemic when a female cosplayer decided to go as one of her favorite Pokemon characters to a local convention, but didn’t have the time, talent or resources to make the costume herself.

So, she ordered it online.

After browsing several sites, ranging from Party City to Spirit Halloween, she found PokeTrainer Depot. It seemed to be of the quality she wanted and for a decent price (converted from yen to USD).

The costume was based on Rosa, the female Player Character from Pokemon Black and White 2.

She received the costume in the mail after about two weeks, and she immediately tried it on for size.

It fit her fairly well, though the wig was a bit cumbersome. She took it off after twenty minutes. She figured that was long enough to break it in.

A few weeks later, she attended the convention with a few friends, who were also going as Pokémon characters, and had a fun time.

They attended a few panels and ogled over other people’s art and crafts for sale.

After the cosplayer had worn the Rosa costume for over three hours, she started to feel an itchiness in her eyes that refused to go away.

She regretfully had to leave the convention due to the prolonged discomfort.

Once at home, the cosplayer removed her Rosa costume and slipped into something more comfortable. She took some painkillers and laid on the couch in her living room, eyes closed and waiting for the pain to stop.

Once it subsided, she felt the call of nature. As she finished up, she looked at herself in the mirror and gasped.

She noticed that her eyes had changed color to match that of the character.

She was confused and a little bit scared. She didn’t wear contacts, so how did this happen?

Freaked out, she contacted her doctor about the sudden eye color change.

She made an appointment for one week from then.

In that time, the young woman still had to go to work, but she noticed other changes as well.

Her hair grew longer and started to change color, though she was already a brunette so the color change was subtle.

Her skin tone changed as well, though again it was subtle as she was already caucasian. She felt a stinging sensation along her skin as it changed, though, preventing her from sleeping and thus arriving to work the next morning sleep deprived.

When the day of her doctor’s appointment came, she still looked like herself, save for the eyes, hair and skin tone.

She decided to wear her suddenly-longer-hair in a ponytail.

The doctor looked her over, tested her blood pressure and all the usual checkup procedures. When it came to blood and urine tests, the results were… unusual.

So unusual in fact, that her physician contacted their peers, which eventually reached the ears of the SCP Foundation.

The cosplayer lived alone in a rented apartment while working retail at a large name brand store. Her coworkers noticed the changes in her eyes and hair and complimented the cosplayer on it.

Though the pins and needles-like pain she felt in her body made her worried.

Over the course of the next two weeks, the cosplayer experienced further physical changes, including height and a visible de-aging. She looked like she was twelve again.

She also started blacking out without explanation, appearing someplace else some time later.

It was around then that the SCP Foundation went to the cosplayer’s home to investigate.

She let them in with no fuss and complied with answering their questions.

The entire conversation was recorded for future analysis.

She admitted she had to call in to work the past few days because she felt there was something seriously wrong with her.

The blackouts frightened her, and the pain and discomfort she felt in her body didn’t help. She knew it wasn’t time for her menstrual cycle yet.

It was like she was an alien in her own body.

As she was trying to explain her situation to the SCP Agent, she seemingly blacked out again, going silent and still for a moment. But she didn’t pass out.

When she looked back up, she wasn’t as shaken or anxiety-ridden as she was before.

It was as if she was experiencing a personality disorder, and another personality had taken over.

The Agent continued with their questioning, asking the new entity to identify itself.

It identifying itself as Rosa, a saddened look on her face.

She also complied to answering questions, while asking several of her own.

She admitted to being very confused as to where she was most of the time, and that she felt guilty about inconveniencing her host once she realized what was happening.

‘Inconveniencing’ was an understatement.

She knew she was no longer in Unova. She was in someplace called New York, where Pokémon existed only in fiction. As did she.

But Rosa wasn’t worried by this. Quite the contrary.

Rosa told the Agent that the last thing she remembered before waking up in the cosplayer’s apartment was darkness.

Her memories in fragments, recounting events extremely similar to that of Pokémon Black and White 2 from her perspective, with realistic details that the game and its adaptations never mentioned.

The Agent was able to help clarify the situation for the displaced Pokémon trainer, and asked her if there was any way to reverse the process.

Rosa shook her head sadly.

There wasn’t one she was aware of, as it wasn’t meant to be reversible.

Before the darkness, she remembered the end of her adventure.

While she was in the darkness, she heard a voice telling her that her story wasn’t finished yet. That she would be given a chance at a new life in another world.

Soon after that, Rosa switched out with the cosplayer, who panicked upon waking.

The Agent informed her of what Rosa had explained, as she had not been conscious for the duration.

The cosplayer directed him to the website she ordered the costume from.

The cosplayer was taken to Site 19 for containment and further questioning.

All the while, the Foundation contacted their Site in Japan, wanting to know if the Nintendo Company knew anything about the PokeTrainer Depot website.

It turned out they didn’t, and any instances of SCP- 6517 were already being kept secret from the mega million dollar company by an unknown third party.

Understandably.

If they found out there were cosplay costumes that successfully turned humans into their characters, albeit not the Pokemon themselves, it would be like SCP-5254 all over again.

After some digging into the website, analysts found an address attached to the sender of the anomalous costumes.

Members of special task force MTF Epsilon-11 ("Nine-Tailed Fox"), the same task force responsible for neutralizing SCP-5254 instances that manifest in public spaces, were dispatched to the address to investigate and secure any instances of suspected SCP-5254 and/or SCP- 6517 that may be on the premises.

The location was a house in the Kansai region, surrounded by fields and sparse trees. The house was of traditional Japanese design with a second floor and some modern amenities.

When the MTFs arrived, one operative observed that there was someone waiting for them outside, sitting on the front porch.

They appeared to be a Japanese woman with long dark hair kept in a high ponytail wearing a simple loose shirt and long skirt. She appeared to be in her late 20s.

When the MTFs approached, she showed no resistance or hostility. She even showed them inside upon being asked.

She had seen the trucks coming and knew what it meant.

They soon found a group of children and teenagers, ranging in age from 10 to 14 years, huddled in the living room.

The woman urged the children not to resist and to go with the MTFs willingly.

She asked if where they were going was safe. One agent responded that yes, they would be kept safe and secure until they could better determine what to do with all the transformed persons.

But that wasn’t up to the MTF.

The woman was identified as Keiko Nakamura, daughter of the mysterious Ser_Viper connected to SCP- 5254

She informed them that her father’s real name was Eiji Nakamura, but suspected that he would’ve changed his name to stay hidden by now.

That much information was better than nothing.

Keiko requested to come along with the SCP- 6517 instances so they may feel less afraid.

The request was approved.

Keiko was immediately brought to an interview with a SCP researcher assigned to SCP- 6517, Dr. Ruka Onata.

Keiko confessed that she knew this day would come, and had made rudimentary plans for such an occasion.

She confessed that she was the one who suggested to her father about bringing the human characters to life too.

It gave the man the idea to create the costumes sold on the PokeTrainer Depot website, working with AWCY? to produce them. He continued to create and add to the collection with every new Generation and characters created by the Pokemon Company.

She had no idea where he was doing it from, as they’d cut ties after she found out about his involvement with SCP-5254

It had been about five years prior when Keiko encountered the first instance of SCP- 6517.

She had been driving home from work in the city, and had just parked her car in the driveway when she saw someone on the porch.

It had been raining, and the rain obscured the person’s shape, though they didn’t seem to be moving.

Upon closer inspection, Keiko saw it was a girl around 9-10 years old, who had fallen asleep on her porch, seemingly waiting for her return.

Concerned, she picked the girl up and brought her inside without thinking twice. It wasn’t until after she’d laid the girl down on some tatami mats that she noticed the blonde coloration of her hair and odd clothing.

The next thing she noticed was that she was running a fever.

Keiko nursed the mysterious girl back to health, during which time she learned her name was Yellow and where she came from.

She confessed that her host’s name was Himawari, fittingly enough. It meant sunflower in Japanese.

When Keiko looked into the website herself, she was angry at Ser_Viper that he’d put her address on the site, seemingly using her as his scapegoat.

Attempts to change it were futile, and she couldn’t move away due to financial restrictions.

Without much of a choice, Keiko let Yellow stay in her house but she had to earn her keep and so the Pokemon Special character became her adopted daughter and housekeeper.

Over the next five years, characters from Generations 1 to 4 had shown up at her house, following the same logic as Yellow had only to be disappointed.

Keiko let them all stay with her… until the SCP Foundation arrived.

She found that any Pokémon character costumes after Gen 4 were not available in Japan, and the same could be said in other countries.

Gens 5 and 7 were only available in America, Gen 6 was only available in France, Gen 8 was only available in the UK and Gen 9 was only available in Spain.

Notices were given out to SCP Sites in these countries in case instances of SCP- 6517 were ever reported.

As previously mentioned, the MTF squad had recovered several children from Keiko’s home, all possessing physical and personality traits matching that of various Player and Rival characters from before Generation 5.

These include:

Kiiro (SCP- 6517-A), also known as Yellow

Age: 15

Akai (SCP- 6517-B), also known as Red

Age: 20

Midori (SCP- 6517-C), also known as Blue Oak or Green

Age: 16

Aoi (SCP- 6517-D), also known as Green, Leaf or Blue

Age: 20

Hibiki (SCP- 6517-E), also known as Ethan, Kin or Gold

Age: 17

Gin (SCP- 6517-F), also known as Silver

Age: 17

Kris (SCP- 6517-G), she is not known by other names, though she sometimes answers to Kotone or Lyra.

Age: 17

Yuuki (SCP- 6517-H), also known as Brendan or Ruby

Age: 15

Haruka Birch (SCP- 6517-I), also known as May or Sapphire

Age: 15

Wally (SCP- 6517-J), also known as Mitsuru.

Age: 15

Hikari Berlitz (SCP- 6517-K), also known as Dawn, Shirogane or Platinum

Age: 12

Kouki (SCP- 6517- L) also known as Lucas, Dia or Diamond

Age: 12

Jun (SCP- 6517-M), also known as Barry, Shinju or Pearl

Age: 12

While under initial containment in Research Site-79 in Tokushima, the victims of SCP- 6517 were kept in separate humanoid containment cells decorated to resemble relatively normal bedrooms.

They were later transferred to Site 19 in the USA for their own safety and because they had the additional housing necessary.

Luckily, the subjects were discovered to be multilingual, adapting to the many languages the Pokémon games are translated into.

Through testing, as with instances of SCP-5254, the effects of SCP- 6517 were irreversible, try as the researchers might.

Several trials were conducted to see if the subjects of SCP- 6517 could recall the memories of their hosts.

Some of these trials were successful, but it left the subjects with symptoms of a looming existential crisis.

To mitigate this, an on-site counselor was assigned to SCP- 6517 to help the subjects through this difficult time.

Other attempts to reverse the transformation with the twelve previous instances were proven ineffective, whether it be through hypnosis, wearing the Host’s old clothes or surrounding them with things that would hopefully trigger something from the Host’s memories.

The instances did divulge that while they could access some of their Host’s memories, their souls were gone.

For all intents and purposes, the original hosts were dead.

The Department of Misinformation made sure that the hosts’ deaths were made official despite having no bodies to show for it, the disappearances covered up and their families notified.

To test the effects of SCP- 6517 for themselves, Site 79 researchers ordered a cosplay of Lance, also known as Wataru in Japan, from PokeTrainer Depot.

Using Rosa’s testimony as a guideline, the researchers made the D Class keep the Lance costume on for three hours. When he began to complain of itchiness in his eyes, he was instructed to remove the costume.

The D Class was kept under surveillance for the next two weeks, during which time several notable physical changes occurred.

The D Class was originally a middle aged man with balding hair, a beard, and a portly body.

His eyes and hair changed color and shape. He also got taller, thinner with more angular features, and de-aged until he appeared to be in his late 20s.

He looked like Lance wearing the orange jumpsuit of a D Class.

They extracted samples of the D Class’ DNA every day, which allowed them to track how fast the effects of SCP- 6517 took to completely override the host’s DNA.

They also kept track of his brain waves, for when the other personality manifested.

It was after those two weeks that the D Class’ brain waves were replaced by another’s, though briefly.

Through interviews with the other personality, identifying itself as Lance, the SCP researchers learned that these instances borrowed several traits from the host in order to fill in gaps in their own personalities.

After the third week, the D-Class was gone, fully replaced by a walking and living version of a human Pokemon character.

The Cosplayer who became Rosa was given the designation of SCP- 6517-N.

After the transfer to Site 19, several other D-Class personnel were used to test the effects of SCP- 6517.

Lance was given the designation of SCP- 6517-O.

Three other characters were brought to life in this process, including N (aka Natural Harmonia Gropius), Cynthia (aka Shirona), and Hilda.

They are 20, 27 and 16 years old respectively

They were given the designations of SCP- 6517-P, Q and R.

Given that there were so many of them, the 0-5 Council allowed them to be moved to a separate location where they could be monitored but otherwise allowed to lead relatively normal lives.

The location was a campground located in Nevada.

The campground encompasses five acres of land, bordered by a concrete wall that only SCP personnel have clearance to enter and exit at any time.

The instances of SCP- 6517 have been given access to one acre of fruit trees and garden vegetables they tend to themselves.

The other four are woodlands that surround the campground.

Other food items and necessities are provided by the Nintendo Company as compensation for their involvement in the SCP-5254 fiasco that led to SCP- 6517.

The boys and girls sleep in separate cabins, as do the adults.

Personnel are assigned to act as Camp Directors, helping the instances adapt to how our world works and the animal species.

It is noted that they all own plushie versions of their individual Pokémon teams.

Addendum:

Having found the essay Eiji Nakamura had to prepare for the AWCY? Exhibition in 2014, SCP agents found exactly what they were looking for in terms of how SCP- 6517, and by extension SCP-5254 really worked.

The costumes were manufactured using a thread coated in an anomalous substance, one that once soaked through became indistinguishable from the thread itself. If used to stitch together clothing, the effects of the substance would spread to it as well.

The effect was listed as ‘transformation into the subject of the costume itself, believing themselves to be a certain character over a period of time.’

Other ways SCPs can bring Pokemon to life:

SCP-387 Living Lego

Lego Pokemon exist now

SCP- 507 Reluctant Dimension Hopper

If he somehow landed in the world of Pokemon and brought some back with him

[exoid-the-locomotive-monarch]

I think since today’s the day, I should get off my chest what I think about Homestuck and the epilogues: the former is good and the latter is like an uncooked steak covered with diahhrea.

To elaborate, Homestuck is a cake that used too much baking soda and cooked in the oven for too short, its the same size as a cake but the outside is too airy and the inside is mushy and liquid batter, disgusting.

But there’s this middle part, between the layers that’s delicious as all hell, it uses grandma’s secret recipe and the chef was running a rush order, it’s a miracle he used the perfect ratio of egg to sugar to flour and milk, you can’t deny most chefs wish they could prepare a cake this good, and when one ingredient is off and it was underbaked, many critics would absolutely drop a solid 9 to a 5/10. It’s still good in my heart.

Now leaving the metaphors, I love this comic to an autistic degree. Its art direction and narration perfectly mix the feel of a strange adventure game published by some studio pushing the boundaries but had no budget so they end up reusing assets from stock images for most of its run, and for the second half abandoned jpgs for minimalist bean shaped heroes.

It has multiple flash animations, interactive walkarounds, and plenty of callbacks and reference to its own story beats and panels, it’s really good and even the secondary characters have a lot of dimension to them! The big issue was the pacing, and by god did Act 5 Act 2 cone out the miracle it did, balancing troll to human conversation perfectly, never abandoning the kids, and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for the mess the trolls were about to make for themselves.

I even like act 6. Yeah I said it. Caliborn is funny, Calliope is eh, Roxy is the obvious character with the most going for her, Dirk has a good arc about his own struggles, but between him and the alpha kids, not so much. Jake had an arc for him to realize who he can be and his linits and how he should stand up for himself, and Jane was learning to trust her friends while being able to sleuth out manipulation or bad actors. Some of these words are in past tense because Hussie was now ping ponging to the boring 3 years where the kids are separated by dream bubbles and a long yard, almost never interacting with each other’s side of the 3 year journey (minus one DISTACTION by Rose and John hammering Bec’s head in with COOL NEW BREATH POWERS)

The pacing was a whole lot and openbound was a waste of time for 10 characters the fans could play with as dolls, but Act 6 Act 6 united both alpha and beta parties to actually do stuff.

But Hussie was also developing a (STILL UNFINISHED) adventure game(s) for his two new kidsonas that were going to give Alternia more breathing room and two new kidsonas an adventure to expand on the lore of Beta earth Roxy, Jake Harley, and a dead flighty broad.

After delaying when the comic should have ended by one and a half years, Hussie says “fuck it” and drops an awesome flash where everyone fucking dies. I was sad a little bit but remembered the comic had to end with the good guys winning so I just slogged another 500 pages watching a cool concept unfold: alter the timeline to unfuck the doomed timeline and fix the time paradox that would cause Lord English to not exist. Cool yeah?

The problem was after undoing 2000 pages of characterization Hussie needs to redo those 2000 pages and give characters worthwhile new arcs to solve, make everything both hunky dory on our way to the finish line but also start a new problem from railroading the characters into this new chance to win the game, and are clearly still coping or ignoring their other timeline’s struggles.

The best Hussie could do was 750 pages.

Build the new universe, kill the bad guys, save the troll race, finish Dave, Dirk, and Roxy’s character arc’s, we’ll finish the rest in a new timeline, the epilogues stuff. Drop in some vague shit at the last minute like “Ultimate Selves” “Aspect design and destiny” and some lip service to how these aren’t the same kids John knew, the look like them but they’re ever so different.

Then for like 6 months that was it, then the credits explained what happened to them and where they are now, and what’s unfinished.

Bonus updates we see a human cosplay space fish horns Hitler, a troll cosplay an immortal time demon hellbent on wrecking the corpse of every Universe he is aware of, and a carapacian cosplay a teleporting radiant dog demon that killed 3 parents. This was for Halloween.

Jane gets kidnapped by the goons you loved back when the comic only had 4 kids 3 adults a dog, some 4 chess friends, Jack, the midnight crew and the felt, and then she mind controls Jack and says she is going to get political.

Also the woobified side characters Wayward Vagabond and Oeregrine Me dicant are no longer “the deterrent of the original bad guy” and “silly marketable plush character who was once a veteran of the bloodiest massacre in Sburban history” they’re dead.

So what an ending huh, that was overwhelming, also unfinished. That epilogue should really tie in loose ends and end the narrative stakes of a work of fiction to a calm and satisfying pace like a traditional narrative does, boy oh boy can’t wait to expect that from the postmodern work of Homestuck hahahahahahahaha.