#and the book is still a year away!

[angelofthepage]

Okay, so lately I've been seeing a lot of mixed feelings (namely on Twitter) about the announcement of Bendy: Dreams Come to Life getting a graphic novel iteration. There is a LOT to talk about when it comes to this thing, and maybe I'll discuss it more another time, but today I wanna talk about the thing I've been hearing the most: strong feelings about having canonical designs for the human versions of some of our favorite characters.

In Dreams Come to Life, we have physical appearances from the following BATIM characters (that I can remember off the top of my head, I may be missing some):

Joey Drew

Sammy Lawrence

Norman Polk

Thomas Connor

Allison Pendle

Bertrum Piedmont

Wally Franks (this one I'm unsure on, it's been a hot minute)

This means that for the first time, we're gonna know what all of them look like as humans in the minds of the game developers, since, let's be real, if they're doing this thoughtfully, there is likely a lot of communication with the artist they got for this book. Making sure these characters fit their vision is a very probable priority.

In this fandom, we have had the freedom to design whatever the heck we want for the human versions of these characters. And that has been so much fun. You've had all sorts of takes, from characters mirroring their voice actors to completely original things that you never would have expected. Some things would pop up consistently in fan designs, and others would be an occasional pleasant surprise. We've seen a lot of things tweaked over the years, sometimes because we latch onto designs we like from artists we've met in the fandom and incorporate them into our own. Sometimes it's because we get new information in the canon, like Sammy confirmed to be blonde in The Illusion of Living (EDIT: I was extremely wrong on this, he is not confirmed blonde in this book, but he does have long and floppy hair that Joey thought should be slicked back more, and also Jack had some wild fashion), Allison is platinum blonde in DCTL, Wally having a hat as of his YouTube audiolog, Shawn and Tom wearing belts as of Boris and the Dark Survival, Tom being a wall of a man, Bertrum being a bear of a guy, etc. But even before Wally was confirmed to have a hat, a lot of us gave him a hat anyway, because the idea of him with a hat is fun! Bertrum being large, Tom being really tough! Heck, I saw a number of blonde Susies and Allisons before we got that bit on Allison, because it's fun to contrast their looks with that of Alice. That's the spirit of all of this, we make these designs because it's fun! You have characters all across the board in terms of race, sexuality, gender identity, age, body types, etc, because it's fun to imagine the possibilities for all of them with this cast that we love (and sometimes connect with them on a personal level), regardless of what's "canon" or not.

One of the things I'm hearing a lot is that some people don't want canon designs, and it sounds like it stems from a fear that they can't make their own designs anymore. And for those people, I'd like to ask, when has that ever stopped us? I mean that as a genuine question, I'm not here to mock anyone. Like, my first big fandom experience was over with Sonic as a teenager, and I never dreamed of deviating from the canon because I just, did not have any experience with that at the time. Bendy was really good for showing me that there's a LOT of ways the fandom experience can go, especially on this front. When Bendy and the Dark Revival came out, and we got two really major reveals for character designs: Memory Joey and Henry Stein. Henry, a character fans have been designing for YEARS, a character shrouded in mystery, finally got a confirmed design, and you know what happened? We started drawing this new design, but we didn't stop drawing our fan designs just because we got this new one. BATDR Henry has kind of been adopted into the fandom the same way we do designs for AUs, he's just another AU guy that happens to be canon to the sequel game. Heck, I love seeing art where fandom takes on Henry are interacting with BATDR Henry, it's really sweet honestly.

And that's exactly the attitude I have towards this graphic novel. It does not matter how these characters are designed, we are still valid and allowed to make whatever the heck we want. And if people really try to gatekeep it and scream that you're only allowed to draw the canon, I think that says more about them than it does anything else. Go draw what makes you happy (so long as it's not hurting anyone, obviously there is some nuance here but that is a whole other can of worms)! The only thing that this actually changes (or at least, what I'm guessing will change) is what's gonna fly when it comes to stuff like the fan art contests and challenges/what the devs might choose to retweet in terms of fan art. But that's only one part of the fan art scene. Otherwise, go fandom your way! No one is stopping you, draw what makes YOU happy. I am still going to draw a pointy blonde disaster of a music director however I please, even after we see Sammy in canon. Because darn it I like my Sammy, he is my strawberry blonde (depending on the world, sometimes it's more ashy) buffoon, and one new version of a book doesn't change my love for that.

That said, I am really curious how the teams behind this series imagine these characters. I feel the same way about it that I do my fellow fan artists. To me this really is just another AU, the DCTL AU. I think I'm less curious about the game characters and more about the characters native to this book, and that's got more to do with, well, I don't see a lot of people designing them! There's some, but they're not flooding my timeline like the game characters do. Like, I've designed the DCTL art department before for a Sims game, but I haven't gone much farther than that. I wanna know what Abby looks like, give me her fashion! I wanna see Buddy, Dot, and Jacob! I'm still keeping my Jacob design regardless, I love playing with him, but gosh do I wanna know what Jacob looks like in canon. Same with Dot. I have a lot of hopes for both of them, and I'm trying to lower my expectations so as not to be disappointed if it doesn't turn out that way. Like Dot has potential to be our first plus sized Bendy character given how she's described (also the first to wear glasses), of COURSE I want to see that! She's my writer girl that's super sus and incredibly interesting to me personally, I love her! And then I have more information to consider when I go to design my dolls (because believe you me, dolls based on the books have been on my list for a LONG time). I'm curious how much input Adrienne Kress will have here as the author, like I would love to know what's going on in her mind with these characters!

Whatever happens next, the most important thing to remember is that you're free to create whatever you like. Go make things that make you happy. That's all the devs are doing in the end, and if it's good enough for them, it's more than good enough for us. Bendy is made the way it is (hopefully) because that's what they wanted to make. Like why make an indie project that makes you miserable, you know? I don't know what to think of this new graphic novel, but whatever happens, I'm gonna take it with a grain of salt and keep doing what I always do: make my own fun out of what we're given. That's what fandom is, a place to enjoy a piece of media. And everyone enjoys this sort of thing differently. Find what works for you.

[ficandkaboodle]

Take the fanon interpretation of Primo as a parentified but well-meaning older brother trying his best; and the canon of Primo being fucking off the rails and messing with dark magic for shits and giggles; and you'll have Primo putting an eight-year-old Terzo in the middle of a pentagram while insisting this is exactly how you cure someone of their chronic hayfever. Now stop moving, if that blood smears then year-round allergies will be the least of our problems --

[izzystizzys]

TW: discussion of something approximating suicidal tendencies but with the usual crack programming of this blog

“Ah, High General Windu”, says Fox, pleasantly. “So we meet again.”

High General Windu raises an unimpressed eyebrow at him, Fox thinks, though it’s getting hard to tell with all the blood rushing to his head. “If I let you go, will you try to throw yourself out of another window?”

Fox makes a vague shrugging motion - or tries to, anyways. It’s hard to tell where any of his limbs are going, hanging upside down in the air as he is. “I am willing to discuss terms.” A bridge will do just fine.

Impossibly, the High General’s eyebrows climb even further up his forehead. “A compromise, then, esteemed Commander.” And so, he righths Fox the head way up in the air, but leaves him floating just above the ground, at which point several painted shells come skidding around the corner followed by billowing robes and screeches.

“WHAT”, says Kote, calmly, “THE BANTHA-KARKED, FORCE-LOVING KRIFF, FOX.”

“You’ll short out your helmet mic”, Fox advises him, sagely. Fondly, he thinks back to decimating his own on only his second time in the newly-christened official Coruscant Guard Scream Closet. He’d just received the comm about the Zillo Beast being transported to 000, and made sure to take his bucket off thereafter to improve the quality of his closet time.

High General Windu’s face does something complicated between sympathy and constipation.

Because the Galaxy doesn’t hate Fox enough already and Cody wasn’t enough on his own, Wolffe elbows his way through their batch to plant himself in front of him, shoulders squared and shaking with repressed rage. “If you try that again, dickhead”, he begins, in a low growl that quite frankly sounds more cringe that intimidating, “I’m going to resurrect you and then kill you again.”

“Ah, Wolffe”, Plo Koon says, in his deep, shivery timbre, “Remember our conversations about effective conflict resolution and communication of needs?”

Wolffe’s eyes narrow at Fox, because all non-Guard are sweet summer children who walk around buckets off on 000 like absolute lunatics. Fox prays they never have to find out why that’s a bad idea. “I feel”, his ori’vod presses out between clenched teeth, “that if you make me watch you throw yourself out of another window, I’m going to jump after you and strangle you on the way down, you little bitch.”

“That’s fair”, says Fox, and watches High General Kenobi bury his face in his hands. Wolffe twitches in place and makes an aborted groaning noise, the hypocrite.

“Excuse me, High Marshall Commander Fox, but I fail to see what’s so dire about this situation that the Jedi High Council and your brothers cannot help you solve”, says Windu, the only sane one left on this Force-forsaken bloated corpse of a planet. Behind the gaggle of Jedi and ori’vode already gathered in front of Fox, the rest of them come veering around the corner in a commotion that’s quite frankly embarrassing. High General Yoda is mounted on Skywalker’s back like he’s a race-Eopie, which is Fox’ only consolation.

He got up this morning at 0300, bleary-eyed and with a pounding headache as always, and all was right in the world. And then Fox got called into the Jedi High Council’s chambers and was ceremoniously informed that in the wake of Chancellor Palpatine’s unfortunate demise (hah), and through the emergency state of the Senate, as well as several invented promotions foisted on Fox to make the delegation of any and all paperwork less shady, he was now next in the chain of command and-

Well, Fox is the acting Chancellor, in short.

Haha, he had said, and been meet with several seconds of silence, until it got both awkward and exceedingly painful. Wait, he’d said. You’re kriffing serious.

Kriffing serious, we are, had said High General Yoda, and thus Fox launched himself out the first best window with a maniacal cackle of, you’ll have to catch me first!

And catch him, High General Windu sure did.

“The will of the Force this is”, Yoda interrupts Fox’ train of thought. He scans him thoughtfully from beneath his wizened brow, and hems to himself. “Shake things up, this will. Determine the fate of the Galaxy, this shall. A feeling, I have, that a good Chancellor you will make. A better one, hmmm.”

“That’d be high praise, if not for the fact that a dead lemming would make for a better Chancellor than the last one”, says Fox, drawing and indignant gasp from Skywalker. He doesn’t bother with either that or the green goblin’s cackle, lost in the deep sense of resignation that settles over his shoulders like a suffocating blanket.

“Alright, then, get me Thorn on the comm. As my first act in office, I’m firing all the Jedi. No offense, but you’re kind of a disaster. Then, someone get me to the Chancellor’s office, I’m calling Dooku to let him know the war’s off. And please get me Judicial, they’ll be up all night working on my datafolders - I’m having the Senate arrested.”

“Who - is - arresting - “, Bly pants, hands on his knees from where he’s just come sprinting around the corner with his Jedi.

Underneath his bucket, Fox smiles a smile that’s all teeth. “The Senate”, he says, sweetly, wondering if he’s just imagined the shiver that’s gone through the room. “I’m suing the Senate, and taking them all into temporary custody for abuse of sentient rights.”

[kana7o]

at council meetings

[hockeylovee12]

Hughes family is so cute

[mllenugget]

Hey remember when Baghera adopted Dapper like 8 months ago or did I make that up ? ────────────────────────────────────────── Support all the admins that spoke out (& do your daily click) ──────────────────────────────────────────

[danaclese]

The klyntar should be chill, only venom and carnage are supposed to be mean.

Venom was originally only supposed to be violent and malicious because of the trauma of being forcibly abandoned by its first host peter in its infancy and then bonded to someone with untreated depression who hated peter obsessively.

Carnage was bonded to a severely imbalanced, psychopathic serial killer, at birth. a klyntar imprints its personality from its earliest hosts. It is incapable of creativity it merely enhances the host.

There has since been a lot of retcon to make them more evil but i miss them being just like any other species, mostly just people. Remember when the species wasnt a synthetic living abyss necrosword created by the dark godthing "Knull The King In Black" in the void between the 6th an 7th dimension?

It was just a bunch of slimy little dudes who wanted a friend and in turn the friend's natural traits and impulses would be enhanced?

Gwen stacy has one you know.

I miss the possibility of cool klyntar who just eat chocolate and do heroic shit and arent killing anybody or doing any monster shit because KLYNTAR ARENT PREDATORS the HUMAN HOST IS.

their powers are well suited to nonlethal protection, they can do all the green lantern stuff with smaller range.

A young klyntar has one original input to the relationship "yes. lets do more"

[ruvviks]

All That's Left follows two journalists and their friends in post-apocalyptic United States as they travel from the fallen east coast megalopolis Opportunity back to Los Angeles, crossing through a harsh wasteland overrun with zombies— only to find out that there is a lot more life left than what the protected cities want them to believe. On their journey they meet dozens of people living their lives as peaceful as possible away from military forces, corporations, and corrupt governments; and they learn that the same mutated ghouls that took down Opportunity are spreading rapidly through the country, destroying everything in their path. Will this finally be the end of the world as we know it?

taglist (opt in/out)

@shellibisshe, @florbelles, @ncytiri, @hibernationsuit, @stars-of-the-heart;

@vvanessaives, @katsigian, @radioactiveshitstorm, @estevnys, @adelaidedrubman;

@celticwoman, @rindemption, @carlosoliveiraa, @noirapocalypto, @dickytwister;

@killerspinal, @euryalex, @ri-a-rose, @velocitic, @thedeadthree

[souenkun]

Did yorishima getting his arm possessed by a youkai came with a bonus of eternal youth or something 😭

[catocappuccino]

It's been a year since I redrew that one Snorkmimi render...

So yeah I did it again ofc I would, why oh why wouldn't I? Tee hee silly meee

Attaching the 2023 redraw and og cause- uh- I donno, because yes, why not!!!

[incomingalbatross]

I just don't believe in a societal collapse dramatic enough to make humans reset the calendar to count from it.

[north-wilkesboro-moonshine-cave]

congratulations to Mme. Pascale Leclerc, who has surely just experienced both the funniest and most unhinged weekend a mother could ever have. Dear fucking christ, I hope your middlest son brought you a bottle of champagne for yourself, ma'am.

[puhpandas]

hi mutuals im just curious.

[didnt-hear-cold-as-you-live]

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[fatehbaz]

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[alagaisia]

Hey if you’re still enjoying and engaging with Harry Potter in any capacity you can unfollow me 😊 please and thank you

Like. I get it. I was super into it as a kid too. I did not have the social context to pick up on the antisemitism or transphobia or sexism or fatphobia or bioessentialism or racism or anything else. I also picked up on surface-level language of Fighting Back Against Evil and ascribed my own values onto what that meant and thought we were all on the same page. I remember when the original kids who grew up with the books started becoming adult fans and picking up on the (blatant!) antisemitism and everybody was still mostly willing to give JKR the benefit of the doubt on it. (“She was writing kids books!” They said. “She didn’t know she was penning a global phenomenon! She picked a common literary trend in European fairy tales (antisemitic caricature) and didn’t examine it closely. It’s a mistake anyone could make,” we said. “She would probably do things differently now. After all, she word-of-god confirmed the vaguest hints she dropped that Dumbledore might be gay,” we said.) There was actually a span of several years where biases inherent in the actual real content of the Harry Potter series were coming to light and even the people pointing them out still seemed mostly to think it was an unfortunate accident.

That time has passed. Years ago! We are long past the first months of “maybe she doesn’t realize this seemingly-feminist tweet she liked was made by a noted TERF” and then “how could she not realize that these many veiled TERF-y things she’s retweeted have implications for the many queer fans of her work” and finally “oh wow okay JKR just dropped an entire transphobic manifesto on twitter. I guess the transphobia was the point.”

Yeah, there were a few months after that where people were still processing and still working through how they felt about Harry Potter and all of its flaws with the context of the now open transphobia of the creator. I was there for that. Remember how I was one of the kids who built it up into something noble and worthwhile based on my own beliefs about what messages it was probably trying to convey? Turns out it wasn’t trying to say any of those things, and when you take the time to examine all of the terrible shit that made its way into the text whether JKR intended it to be there or not, the whole series falls apart. It’s weird to discover that there’s a room in your house that’s rotten to the core, but eventually you figure out you can’t live like that, still going in there and holding your nose and pretending it’s still the same room you thought it was when the termites were only inside of the walls and hadn’t yet started chewing their way through the furniture. Because what’s going to happen is that they are going to infest the rest of your house. If you decide you can ignore transphobia and antisemitism and everything else just because you liked the color of the wallpaper, the rest of your principles are going to crumble too. You get rid of that fucking room. You put those books on a high shelf in the back of your closet behind other outgrown clothes and interests and you move the fuck on.

JKR uses the money made from her transphobic antisemitic children’s books to actively funding hate groups and to lobby for legislation that will and has actually affected the actual lives of trans people in an entire country. We are past the point of grieving something you were wrong about in childhood. Kids are wrong about a lot of stuff. You grow up and you learn new information and you change your behaviors based on it. You have to choose. It is transphobic to pretend there is not transphobia where there is. It is transphobic to support the work of someone who is using those funds to take rights from trans people with every fucking dollar. It is hateful to continue to engage positively with a story that at its very core is rooted in hate and bigotry and prejudice. You can choose to do all of those things but you cannot claim ignorance of them and you cannot choose those things and still pretend that choosing them upholds the values we convinced ourselves that Harry Potter stood for over a decade ago as uninformed children. You cannot choose to do those things and pretend to still support your trans and queer and Jewish neighbors. I do not want you in my neighborhood. Leave.