#could maybe go back through and add scripts to pages as a summer project

[kineticallyanywhere]

regarding id's for comics, please make ids for comics you post! it is far better for your comics to be accessible and you absolutely should do it. you can just write the dialogue characters are saying and any relevant expressions/gesturing, like a script format. writing "page x of x comic" isnt accessible, as it wont tell people relying on id's whats happening in the comic at all. people who rely on id's, well, rely on them--id's are primarily for people with low-vision, so they cant accurately tell what an image looks like by sight. id's are the only way theyll be able to understand what an image is! so it is very necessary and helpful to the disabled community for you to write them ^^ i wish you luck on foraying into id's!

sorry my response took so long to respond to this but I also have a follow up question about IDs, for anyone who knows

on screen readers, does it read alt-text? Like if I put the script of comic pages in the post, would it be most effective as alttext or as under a readmore?

[iamartemisday]

Pepperony Week Day Seven- AU

A/N: This will be a Nanny AU. Hope you enjoy and I hope you all had an amazing Pepperony Week!

**

Everyone hits rock bottom sometime.

For Pepper Potts, rock bottom was standing on the porch of an Upper East Side Manhattan townhouse ready to hock cheap makeup products to another bored housewife. Either that or get the door slammed in her face. Currently, she had a three to ten ratio.

"This is why you don't take a job in your cheating boyfriend's law office," she told herself again, just in case she didn't get the message the other six thousand times. "This is also why you don't date cheaters."

She knocked on the door and listened for footsteps. A tall man with blonde hair and blue eyes answered. He was dressed in what she'd come to find was a standard butler uniform. Great. One more door in the face.

"Hello," Pepper said, her well-rehearsed sales pitch ready to go. "My name is Virginia Potts, and-"

"Yes, we've been expecting you. Right this way, please." The butler stood aside, motioning for Pepper to come in.

She gripped the make-up case tighter, blinking stupidly for a moment as she processed the wide expanse of white marble interior and the well-dressed British man expectantly watching her.

"Uh… okay." There was a script for this, but she'd only skimmed it.

Entering the home was like walking into a cave. As Pepper took in the winding staircase and cathedral ceiling, she felt like going back outside just to check that the house wasn't bigger on the inside. Through one doorway was a dining room with a table built for twelve and an elegant chandelier. The living room was to the left. A boy sat on an onyx couch by the fireplace. It crackled merrily even though it was early August. The flow of central air didn't seem to be coming from a vent. At least, not one Pepper could see.

As she marveled at the sheer scope of this fairy tale dream home, the boy glanced up from his book. "Who's this?"

His tone wasn't rude, but it wasn't warm either. Pepper's first impression of the boy was aloofness, a common trait among teenagers if she remembered correctly.

"This is Virginia Potts, Harley," the butler said. "She's here to interview for the nanny position."

He glanced at Pepper to confirm. As she was now occupied with a decorative mirror on the wall which she was sure she'd seen in a movie somewhere, all she could do was nod her head. She barely heard the exchange anyway.

"I'll let Mr. Stark know you've arrived," he said, gliding down the hall as graceful as a gazelle. "If you'll wait one moment please."

There were no chairs anywhere except in the living room. The boy had returned to his book and didn't acknowledge Pepper when she stepped over the threshold onto the lushly carpeted floor. She didn't know if she should say something, or if she should even sit. If her grandma was here she'd coat this whole room in plastic covering and then never set foot in it again.

A second boy raced down the stairs, reaching the sixth step and jumping to the bottom. "Harley! I got it working. Now we can-" He stopped short of running into Pepper. In her heels, she was half a head taller than him, but he looked no younger than the boy on the couch. He also looked like he'd just broken about fifty rules. "Uh… sorry. I didn't know we had company."

"She's the new nanny Dad's going to hire to keep track of us," said the boy on the couch. "Because it's not like we're teenagers who can take care of ourselves. No, just have to get us a handler."

"Maybe he's still mad about the alpaca thing," the second boy mused.

The boy on the couch scoffed. "He was just pissed that we thought of it first. If anything it was the riverboat thing at the Summer gala last year."

As they ran through a list of unintelligible incidents which might have led them to this point, Pepper replayed the word 'nanny' in her head a few hundred times. Try as she might, it never sounded like anything else.

A door opened and a man stepped out. He wore an expensive suit, yellow-tinted sunglasses, and a thousand-watt grin made for magazine covers. "Good morning, you must be the new applicant Jarvis was telling me about."

Pepper shook his hand, trying to act as though he was a supervisor at the makeup company and not Tony Stark. The actual literal Tony Stark. Ridiculously rich genius inventor all of her friends had at the top of their celebrity crush lists. The last time she saw his face, he was on Ellen. Now he was talking to her.

"Hi, I'm Pepper," she said, forgoing all formalities. "It's… nice to meet you, Mr. Stark."

He grinned wider. "My reputation precedes me. Awesome. Let's talk." The doorbell rang. Jarvis approached but Tony stopped him with a hand. " That will be my daughter and her escort. Give me one second Ms. Pepper."

"Ms. Potts," she said, but he didn't appear to have heard. He opened the door and a pale young girl with a bright red pixie cut and a dark purple hoodie stood sullenly at the entrance. With her was a police officer.

"She was tagging dumpsters," the officer said, arms crossed.

Tony pursed his lips. "Thought she'd graduated to bridges. Guess I was wrong."

"That's the third time this month, Mr. Stark. Any more and I will have no choice but to arrest her."

"Hey now, let's not use the 'A' word in front of impressionable children, huh?" Tony stepped aside as the girl stomped past him. "This is a phase and she'll grow out of it. Now I'm sure you have lots of grocery store robberies to stop and kittens to rescue from trees, so I'll just let you go."

"I'm serious, Mr. Stark. Keep her in line."

"I assure you, no child of mine would ever cut in line. See you later, Stan." He shut the door and locked it. Pepper thought she heard a beep like a computer booting up. "Okay, that was exciting. Let me introduce you to your potential charges-to-be. Over there is Harley-"

The boy on the couch raised a hand but didn't wave.

"-this right here is Peter-"

"Nice to meet you," he said, his smile lighting up his face in such a way, Pepper had to resist hugging him.

"-and this bundle of sunshine is Nebula. Hey Neb, say hi to Ms. Pepper."

The girl was already halfway up the stairs with no signs of stopping. She mumbled a quick, "hello Ms. Pepper," and then she was gone.

"Don't mind her. It's a teenage thing. She'll write a few goth poems and be right as rain by tomorrow." Despite his dismissive tone, his eyes lingered on the top of the steps, as if he thought maybe she'd come back down. When she didn't, he rolled his shoulders and sighed. "Okay, let's go talk in my office."

Pepper followed him down the hall past a number of doors until they reached one hanging open. Inside was a room full of metal parts with bookshelves lining every wall. A couch and coffee table added a homey feel and by the windows was Tony's desk. A man and a woman stood by it. The man was tall and lean with sharp, handsome features. The woman petite and skinny, with a face that would make most men look twice.

"Hey guys, you mind if we take a break?" Tony sat in his plushy desk chair, spinning it once for good measure and propping his feet up. "Need to do a job interview. Ms. Pepper, allow me to introduce Loki Odinson, my business partner, and Dr. Jane Foster, our favorite benefactee."

The man, Loki, nodded politely but had nothing to say. Dr. Foster, by contrast, smiled and took Pepper's hand. She was overall quite personable and Pepper didn't miss the way Loki kept looking at her.

"I can bring you more information about the project tomorrow, Tony," Dr. Foster said. "I think this might be the big one."

Loki chuckled. "Yes, with a little hard work and elbow grease you'll finally defeat those baking soda volcanoes at the science fair."

Dr. Foster blew air out her nose. "Gee, thanks. Anyway, I need to head out. Have to be at the university in an hour to discuss my lecture and you know what Manhattan traffic is like this time of day."

"Be careful you don't get stepped on," said Loki.

"Don't mind them," Tony fake whispered as they glared at each other all the way out the door. "They act like they hate each other, but it's really just unresolved sexual tension. Pretty soon they'll snap and fuck on my desk or something."

"I can hear you," Dr. Foster shouted.

"That's good. Use a condom," Tony shouted back. He took his feet down and laced his fingers together, slipping into business mode like it was a second skin. "Okie Doke. I assume you have a resume somewhere in that makeup kit."

As it happened, she did. One never knew when they'd pass an office building with a help wanted sign in the window. Pepper had learned long ago to always be prepared for anything, and she hadn't made an exception here. Opening the case she whipped out a folder full of crisp white linen pages listing all the qualities that would make her an exceptional businesswoman. She handed it to Mr. Stark, hoping it could get her a job in childcare.

"Hmmm…" he rubbed his chin as his eyes raked across the page. "Mmm. You're in grad school. Working on your thesis, I see."

"It's a process. I'm almost done, but you know… one day at a time."

"Business management." Mr. Stark dropped the page. "I guess you could say raising a family is like running a business in a way. Communication and cooperation are key. We've all got to work together and respect each other."

"Of course," she said.

"We can't be afraid to let our colleagues know when they've made a mistake or are getting ready to set off a homemade explosive in the house."

"Yes sir," Pepper nodded. "I mean… what?"

She caught a whiff of the air. Ashy like something burning. A trail of gray smoke floated down the hall. There was a popping sound and one of the boys cursed. Pepper crossed the hall to find Peter on his knees tinkering with a miniature rocket booster. Said rocket was currently cradled in Harley's arms.

"Why don't these figures ever add up," Peter groaned, typing furiously.

"Did you carry the one?"

"Yes, for the hundredth time. I always carry the one."

Pepper looked to Mr. Stark, mouth wide. He maintained total serenity and motioned for her to step up. At first, she wanted to scream. He was the parent, not her. It was his job to stop them.

Except it would also be the nanny's job, and she was the nanny.

'I knew I should've taken the west end,' she thought, shuffling forward on uncertain feet. Neither boy acknowledged her until the toe of her shoe bumped their device. "Hey guys, you can't set that off in the house."

"Have you checked telemetry?" Harley asked Peter as if no one else had spoken.

"Everything's running normally. If I could just get this thruster to work."

"Excuse me," Pepper, kneeling to Peter's level. "Do you really think it's a good idea to launch a rocket indoors?"

"It's not dangerous," said Harley, rolling his eyes.

"It's just supposed to fly into the kitchen out the window and land in the yard," Peter explained. "We've calculated the distance based on the positioning of the booster and triple checked our math. There's no possible way this could go wrong."

"Well as long as the fuel doesn't leak out, but that probably won't happen," Harley interjected. "I'd say we have about a ninety-seven to ninety-eight chance of success."

Peter grinned innocently, trying his best to look cute and unthreatening. To his credit, he was good at activating those motherly instincts, but he was about seven years too old for it to stick.

"Okay, how about we try this another time?" Pepper pushed the booster into the wall, well of course for its intended trajectory. "Maybe out in the park would be better."

"It was made for this house," said Harley.

"The whole point is to get it out that window," Peter argued.

"And what if you miss and break something?"

"Dad won't mind. Right, Dad?"

Harley shot his father a pleading look, and to Pepper's consternation, Mr. Stark did not immediately shoot him down and send him to his room. He had a hand on his chin and seemed to actually be considering it.

"I don't know. Maybe it'll work." He eyeballed Pepper. "You sure they can't do it?"

There was that grin again. Either he really was screwing with her or her expression was just that hilarious.

"Are you kidding me?" she snapped, forgetting for a moment that she was talking to a guy rich and powerful enough to destroy her life with a snap of his fingers. That was the other thing about hitting rock bottom: you just plain stopped giving a shit. "They could destroy this whole house! Burn everything to the ground. They are not shooting that damn rocket in here." She rounded on Harley, who took a step back in surprise. "Give me the rocket."

He held it tight to his chest. "It's mine. I spent weeks working on it."

"Then you should've gone outside. Give it to me now."

"No!"

"Harley. Now!"

The moment seemed to drag on for hours. Harley stared defiantly at Pepper and she stared back. If he thought his scrawny teenage self would cow her, he should've spent a night babysitting her sister's kids. After that, there wasn't a child in the world who could bring Virginia Potts to her knees.

After a while, he seemed to realize that. Even with Peter offering silent but steady encouragement, his stance had weakened and his grip on the rocket's base had grown slack. Slowly he unfurled his arms. The rocket was heavier than Pepper expected and appeared to be full of liquid. Whatever it was, she didn't want to know.

"Let's go, Peter," Harley grumbled.

The two boys scurried upstairs without another word. Doors slammed and that was the end of it. Pepper let out a sigh which was cut short as she remembered the children's father standing right behind her.

'You just told off a pair of kids you just met like you're their mother,' her inner voice said. 'Are you ready for a tidal wave of pissed off entitled rich parent crap? Because you're about to get it.'

Except when Pepper turned to face the music, Mr. Stark was not scowling. In fact, he wasn't angry at all.

He was smiling.

And then he clapped.

No, he was full-on applauding her.

"Perfect," he said, that world-famous grin returning with a vengeance. "Absolutely stellar! You are exactly what I need, Pep!"

Pepper held her breath, but it never came. "Y-you're not mad?"

"Mad?" Tony laughed. "How could I be mad? What do you think I need around here, a yes man who will roll over and let my kids do whatever they want? Or someone to be, y'know, responsible and mature? And tell them 'no' when they have to?"

"I…" Pepper swallowed. "Family is built on cooperation, right?"

"Exactly!" Tony put an arm around her and led her back to his office. "Now, if I haven't made it clear, you're hired. Let's go discuss moving you in and the six-figure yearly salary I'm going to pay you."

"Well, I still have a few months left on my lease," Pepper said. "I guess I could break it, but I'd really rather… I'm sorry, six-figure salary?"

"Uh-huh," Tony spun and struck a pose against the wall. "I compensate my nannies very well for dealing with my children's antics. Let me make it clear, they're not troubled. They're all good kids at heart, but they're smart. Like, really smart. The trick is to always stay one step ahead of them. Are you up for it, Ms. Pepper? Or would you rather go back to selling makeup door to door?"

Her pink, heart-shaped makeup case stared at her from the desk inside, as if issuing a challenge. Pepper refused to look at it. Inanimate object or no, she'd never give it the satisfaction. "Yes sir, I am."

Tony pumped a fist. "Great. Let's talk contracts. Also, feel free to fall madly in love with me and have a whirlwind romance that ends with you properly joining the family."

Pepper gawked at him, a laugh bursting forth. "That is not going to happen, Mr. Stark."

He shrugged. "It might."

"It won't."

"But it might."

"But it won't."

He smirked at her but didn't respond. The next hour was all business with a few well-intentioned barbs thrown in. As Pepper signed and initialed a dozen pages, she wondered just which kind of insanity she was getting herself into.

Either way, things were finally looking up.

[rosalind-of-arden]

Sword and Pen Reread, chapter 5

Time to cry over Morgan.

Here’s our first hint that Morgan isn’t going to survive. The journal entry is “Archived to the Codex under interdict until her death.” I don’t think we’ve had ephemera from any of the main characters labeled that way before.

So Morgan’s journal was published after her death. She gets that form of immortality along with the ring. But, of course, this is a lot of very personal, emotional stuff to make public while she still exists in a way that allows her to be aware of it. Also, if Jess reads it, so many feels for him.

Morgan’s emotions in this journal are just so real for someone her age. She’s 18, she’s been through hell, and she doesn’t even know what to make of it all. It’s heartbreaking that she wants comfort so badly and questions herself for wanting it.

“What happened in the Colosseum feels like an ending.” This line felt jarring the first time I read it, since in her last POV chapter in Smoke and Iron, Morgan seemed to decide that she definitely loved Jess. But she felt that when she thought they were about to die, and that was before Brendan’s death. Morgan, extremely vulnerable after just escaping the Iron Tower and only just reunited with Jess, just saw Jess fall apart over his brother, too consumed by grief to think about her. She just saw that as intense as their feelings for each other have been, Jess has other relationships that are more established that have a huge impact on his life. That’s not either of their fault, but it’s got to hurt.

Also, consider the difference in Jess’s response to Brendan’s death and Morgan’s response to her father’s death. Not exactly the same situation, but still, close if complicated family relationship. Jess withdraws and can’t even take care of himself right after Brendan dies. Morgan keeps going after her father dies: trying to escape, checking on her friends... if she had any period of shock or withdrawal, it’s off page where we don’t see it. She may be hurt by Jess’s grief because it’s so different from her own that she can’t understand it.

Morgan recognizes that the things that have happened have changed her and Jess both. They really haven’t had the time to establish a relationship strong enough to last through those changes. Wolfe and Santi obviously have. Khalila and Dario had six months of peace together. Jess and Morgan had a lot of mutual pining and very little actual time. No wonder Morgan’s questioning things.

Morgan is a tea person. She drinks it unsweetened, apparently, since it’s bitter. Cooling, too. Morgan is the type to leave the tea in the cup and forget about it.

Morgan and Thomas both know ancient Greek.

In some ways, putting Morgan and Thomas on the same project is as bad as having Jess and Wolfe work together. Neither of them believes in getting adequate sleep when there’s work to do.

Ancient harbor defense mechanism was an Artifex-Obscurist collaboration designed by Heron.

Obscurists can bond people to automata. This seems like the sort of thing that has a lot of potential both for interesting problem solving and for absolute horror.

Medica-brewed energy potions are a thing. And Morgan’s preferred caffeine source might be tea, but she’ll grab an energy drink before she’ll consider sleeping.

Morgan and Thomas, taking a break from work to debate whether and how people can change.

“This is why I prefer my machines. Far easier to fix a broken automaton than a broken person.” My fucking heart, Thomas.

“His smile felt as warm as summer sun, and for a moment she forgot they weren’t just two students, debating.” My fucking heart, Morgan.

Seriously. Thomas: “I’m broken and can’t fix myself” *smiles* Morgan: “omg is this what it’s like to be normal students?” Children, neither of you is ok.

What does it take to make Morgan sleep? Knowing she’ll have to use lots of Obscurist power for a job.

Thomas has been assigned an office but no sleeping quarters. Odds that without outside intervention, he just ends up sleeping in his office?

Changes in Morgan’s power: what she grew up with was “a steady, slow trickle from the world around her” enough for elemental manipulation and rewriting scripts. Now it’s sizzling, “dark and glorious,” and even after using a lot at the Colosseum, she still feels like she’s “bursting with it.”

More hints at hidden Obscurist communities, maybe in/around Oxford? “She’d spent most of her life in hiding.” Assuming her father was in on it - an Obscurist himself (weak power, probably?), or a parent who would rather live in hiding than give his child up? And there’s how he was recruited to the Burners. A community of hidden Obscurists is going to be both an appealing and an easy target for them, and a siege could be the thing that pushes them into joining the Burners instead of hiding. Scholar Tyler could have been part of it too, a Scholar who sympathized with the hidden Obscurists enough to risk trying to help them.

Eskander, hiding magic rings is not an appropriate way to give them to people. Are you trying to be fucking Gandalf or something?

 There is nothing ominous at all about an ancient ring stamped with the seal of the Great Library that radiates power.

Morgan has so completely adopted Wolfe as her father that she doesn’t hesitate to think of Eskander as a grandfather.

Eskander has spent the past 40 years locked in his room. Eskander is wearing “boots that had seen years of use.” Old pre-Iron Tower boots of his? Or has Eskander spent the past 40 years pacing around his room with boots on? Raided the Iron Tower’s clothing storage and grabbed himself a pair of old boots instead of new ones?

“A lean, strong elder with long, curling gray hair.” Caine throws a bone to Eskander smut writers with this bit of description, I think. Morgan: sees Eskander, notices how good he looks, immediately thinks of adopted family relationships.

So quintessence is the power that’s in everything in this world. Apeiron encompasses other realities as well.

“This particular ring was created by the Obscurist Magnus Gargi Vachaknavi over five thousand years ago.” As Maz has so brilliantly pointed out, there is no fucking way that this entire statement is true.  Ephemera later in the book says Gargi was Archivist. So... could be Gargi was Obscurist Magnus and/or Archivist, but not actually 5,000 years ago. Great Library seal on the ring points toward this interpretation: that suggests it was made after the Library was founded. Or we go with the theory we’ve discussed on Discord. The Library claims to date back 5,000 years, treating ancient institutions in Egypt, Greece, etc as part of itself, retroactively applying titles like Archivist or Obscurist to people who wouldn’t have called himself that. Gargi was neither an Obscurist Magnus nor an Archivist, but those titles were retroactively assigned to her. The symbol was added to the ring later.

Or, for something a little more horrifying. Gargi made the ring 5,000 years ago. She has been using it to either share or steal bodies, and has thus been able to be an Obscurist Magnus and an Archivist, just not in her original body. She put the Library symbol on the ring whenever she joined up with the Library.

Eskander: You made me come out of hiding, now I’m training you to replace me. Suck it up, kid, this is nobody’s fault but your own. I mean, it’s a douche move to stick her with the job like that... but I kinda sympathize.

Morgan: My power is corrupted again, so maybe we should think about safety here? Eskander: No safety. Put the ring on. For science!

I think Eskander really is trying to help here. He knows Morgan isn’t using her power safely. He knows he can’t keep fixing her when she corrupts herself. The ring is the only thing that might work. But he is truly atrocious at communicating that, and he doesn’t seem to understand that bullying her into it isn’t right. 40 years of isolation plus most of his life in the Iron Tower - that’s not going to give him a healthy understanding of communication or consent.

Morgan’s power is repaired again when she puts on the ring. And upgraded.

The ring was put away because it disagreed with what the Library was doing. So Eskander finds this ring that’s probably been locked up somewhere, maybe labeled as dangerous... and unless it comes with an instruction manual, presumably, he puts the damn thing on. How else would he learn what it is? And Gargi tells him to fuck off and find someone better to wear her? Or maybe every Obscurist Magnus inherits it, tries it on, gets rejected, stashes it until the next Obscurist Magnus comes along? But maybe Keria slipped it to Eskander instead, keeping Gregory from getting it. Maybe Eskander even wore it a bit, until Gargi got tired of him doing nothing and told him to fuck off. Maybe the ring is how Keria and Eskander even figured out how to un-corrupt power.

Ring stays on the wearer until it decides it’s ready to come off. So, yeah, really not something you should have coerced Morgan into, Eskander.

Ring is messing with Morgan’s head already. Giving her dreams telling her she can stop the Archivist but it would kill her too, planting thoughts in her head, affecting feelings.

“Annis was very fond of Eskander.” For all the Annis/Eskander shippers.

“Scholar Wolfe, looking tired and drawn.” More to add to the Wolfe Is Not Ok pile.

Wolfe has two dying kids and available medical care isn’t helping. Who does he go to? The kid who he watches heal Santi, of course. He knows what Morgan is capable of.

Obscurist vision takes power to use. Morgan sees Glain’s body “mapped in flows of reds, blues, golds... and a steady expanding darkness.” Touching Glain lets Morgan feel what Glain is feeling and see the inside of her body.

The ring helps Morgan drain small amounts of power from everyone around her. It sends increasingly strong warnings as she uses too much power. Progresses to sharp stabs of pain, then catching fire.

Dad Wolfe is there to catch Morgan when she falls. Energy Vampire Morgan finds him tasty. Did this happen in/after Philadelphia too?

Morgan has seen Wolfe freaked out before. So it’s really saying something that here, he’s “terrified in a way she couldn’t remember ever seeing him.” I would really, really like to know how this compares to the Mesmer.

This tense little moment with Wolfe and Morgan before she leaves. She’s so scared of hurting him. He knows he just hurt her by asking her to save Glain. They both know how dangerous her corruption is. From Wolfe’s perspective, this is probably a lot like how he felt after Jess breathed the poison. He’s watching his kids kill themselves to accomplish their goals, and he can’t stop asking them to take the risks because there’s no other way to get things done. It’s Philadelphia all over again.

With her eyes closed, Morgan can perceive the garden, including fish in the pond. She can sense that Jess is dying.

The ring differentiates between consequences of choices and injuries inflicted by others. Choice and consent matter to Gargi, but she doesn’t consider the circumstances in which choices were made. Neither Morgan nor Jess had any good options when they made the choices that are killing them. Gargi doesn’t care about that.

Breakup time. Poor babies, they’re both so badly hurt, they don’t have anything left for each other, and they’re blaming themselves for that.

[alexdrawsagain]

To Do List

Tagged by @willhernandezdraws

Do This: List all the things you’re currently working on in as much or as little detail as you’d like, then tag some friends to see what they’re working on. This can be writing, arts, gifsets, whatever. (It’s a long read. Feel free to skip)

(PRIORITY ONE) Finding a job. Right now things are kinda uncertain, and i need a new job. But i’ve been having difficulty finding one and while commissions are nice, I find they’re too much work for the measly sum people are trying to get them for. Example: The sweet spot for most people is like $30. It takes several hours for a good commission plus revisions and dialogue with the client. A minimum wage job pays like $8 an hour. A full days work ends up more money than a picture. At the moment, i’d like to keep my work and my art separate. I’ve long said that i don’t wanna spend my time drawing what other people want. i wanna do my own thing. And i’m also pretty much unknown that people wouldn’t know that they could commission me. Job searching has me all like

(On the back burner) My stack of drawings that are supposed to be inked and colored. Among them include tryptych art piece of the sinister six and spider-man, other illustrations of superheroes. a three page space odyssey in the Jack Kirby fashion, and a few cute doodles.

(In progress) I also have to upload the art I made to submit to KindaHornyArt’s blog. Don’t worry they’re totally SFW and were fun to draw. i keep putting it off though.

(In progress) Scan in, edit, and upload a three panel joke I made for Dre.

(On the backburner) I want to get back to my pin up girls drawings which at the moment are just pencil drawings and scans. I’m working my way up to the point I have 30 girls.

(PRIORITY TWO) I’m currently working on the final pages for my first real webcomic Cowboy Bebop: After Hour Sessions. As of today I’m inking the last two pages.

(PRIORITY THREE) I have a F*CK TON of work to do on A.I.P.D. No this project is not dead. I stopped momentarily in order to work on Bebop for a little while as well as do some side projects to avoid project fatigue. Among the stuff i have to do is scan in the last pages, adjust the contrasts so black is black and white is white, do some editing/polishing them, add blacks, and that’s just post production work on the second/third issue. I’m going to start drawing the next issue because I finally have enough graffiti to use for background art. And that was only after teaching myself how to do it and ask a friend to donate some for me. I already have the script so it’s cool. Now i can draw the thing, then ink it, and scan and add the blacks.

(On the back burner)I want to try writing again. I don’t mean like a comic script. i mean like actual prose. At the rate i’m going, i may not be able to draw all of the comic projects i want to. So i’m thinking of writing them as prose so that they exist in one form or another  and maybe someday I might be able to adapt them as comics.

(On the back burner)Finally before the summer is over i want to finish the Summer OTP challenge with my favorite couple (Tsukune and Kurumu). The goal is to do all of the prompts, ink them all, but only some will be colored.

(PRIORITY FOUR) Reach out to old friends and reconnect. it’s hard because I assume they’ve all moved on without me, but i have to try.

It sounds like a lot and it pretty much is. I have the problem of being ambitious coupled with me being a hard worker (it’s in my nature). The key is to spread it out over time and take periodic breaks.I already have a schedule planned to keep me on track and to get things done. Monday through Thursday is working on comics. Friday and Saturday is for fanart, pin-ups, and what have you. Sunday and alternating Saturdays are my rest day from all things art related.

Now let’s get something done.

I tag @rebelcolumbia @therandomninjakitty @taestfulsins and anyone else who wants to share.

[nettvnow-blog]

Hazel Jeffs | Away From It All

A recent English graduate with a passion for web series, Hazel Jeffs is excited to have brought to life her modern take of Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy in her web series, Away From It All (AFitA). Learn more about the series below!

netTVnow: Can you share with readers a quick synopsis of the series how you’ve turned it into a modern web series?

Hazel Jeffs: In Far From the Madding Crowd, Bathsheba Everdene is an orphaned milkmaid who inherits her uncle’s large farm and fortune. The novel focuses on Gabriel Oak (Bathsheba’s unfortunate shepherd who once proposed to her before her change of fortune) and his enduring love for her as she attempts to run the farm as a single woman and navigates the attentions of the local gentlemen, with tragic consequences. 

Our modernized version sees Ellie Bathsheba Everdene (Deborah Couch) as a 21 year-old waitress who turns away from her sad home life, and the attentions of vet student Gabriel (Edward Gist), for a new start as the colourful landlady of a village pub. Her companion of the novel, Liddy (Anna Lloyd), is now an amateur vlogger who records the interesting newcomer’s attempts to win over the village and encourages her romantic life, unaware that the pub’s new waiter knows Bathsheba of old. The story is primarily seen through the private videos and multimedia content stored on Bathsheba and Gabriel’s phones as well as Liddy’s in-world vlogs.

netTVnow: Your series prides itself on having broken the mold of traditional literary web series, what were the key differentiators?

HJ: Back in it’s earliest conception, Away from it All was going to be a fairly low-key literary New Media project where the story would just be told through social media accounts and the texts, notes, images and maybe a couple of videos on the two protagonists’ phones with a big focus on the way characters presented themselves to different people and audiences as opposed to who they were in their private lives, we ended up diverging from that a lot in development, especially with the addition of Liddy’s vlogs, which brought us back into more established LIW territory, but I think you can still see the roots of it in how we still use the phones and transmedia as a whole. Other literary series such as Rex, The Misselthwaite Archives and Serena Berg have used “out of world” videos, but I think our framing for them is unique and it negates a lot of the “why would you post this/why hasn’t every character seen this” angst that a lot of other series have to negotiate. 

It’s not necessarily a unique thing but, as someone for whom watching and discussing every Literary Web series I could get my hands on has been a large and joyful part of my life for the last four years leading a writing team of LIW fans and creators, I think we were very conscious of the tropes used again and again in other series. A lot of these (“The Tour Video”, “cut before the kiss”, “Ooops I left that camera on and recorded an entire conversation”) we fondly embraced but others we had fun playing with or subverting too. 

I also think, especially on the lower production side of things, a lot of other literary web series tend more towards the comedy side of dramedy, and we definitely go the other way and also try to connect the story to an exterior physical landscape in a way that not a lot of vlog-style shows since The Autobiography of Jane Eyre have done.

netTVnow: What was the creative process like for you? Do you think the process is easier or harder knowing that there is a literary piece to refer to?

HJ: Oh I love going through the creative process so much. This was an especially weird one though. AFitA started off as a theoretical concept for me to base my final year university dissertation (Mostly about new media audience interaction) around and I had to write a few example scenes and transmedia pieces as part of that, but then I found myself spending that entire university year writing completely unnecessary 20-page character docs and stressing over every part of the potential plot and setting up tumblrs for the protagonists, all the while remaining absolutely certain and telling everyone who would listen that I’d never actually make or write it. 

I handed in that project, relaxed for literally 2 days before realizing that: 1. I cared too much about the story to not make it, even if I had no idea how. And 2. Because of a job I had lined up, if I was going to make it it HAD to be finished shooting by the end of that summer. So then I got a writing team together and we went through group development of the characters, plot etc over 3 weeks, then wrote and edited all 50 episodes in a month while I also sorted out cast, crew and locations and then we filmed the whole thing in less than 3 weeks. So it was a year of me turning it over in my head and then less than 3 very intense months of a whole gang of us doing everything for it.

In terms of source text, I definitely find it a lot easier to have that jumping off point, it’s tricky sometimes when you get stuck on being faithful to certain aspects of the book or thinking how potential audiences will react to how you’ve adapted things, but equally writing from scratch can be really intimidating so I find the former problems a lot more manageable. I’ve always been utterly fascinated with adaptations anyway and, especially in development meetings with the team, the process of creating AFitA also felt like a really self-aware process of literary criticism and as a recent English Graduate I am deeply into that, especially when it’s a complicated book like Far From the Madding Crowd where there’s so much to say. 

netTVnow: What was your favorite part about seeing the series come to life?

HJ: In every series I’ve been a part of so far, the initial development meetings/written discussion have been my favourite part of the whole thing, there’s always so much energy and so many off-the-wall ideas and in-jokes bouncing around as well as getting to be a huge geek about books and character arcs, it’s a huge amount of fun.

In terms of specifically bringing it to life, the few days where we were shooting almost all the big group scenes and had a crew of four whole people for once were so busy but had a lot of life in them. Those were the days we all hung out the most after each day’s wrap too so that was lovely. The day we went out to film most of the outside episodes (including the first one) was amazing too, Woodbury Common is always beautiful but it really pulled out all the stops for us with that sunset and we could not get over it.

netTVnow: What were some of the particularly hard things you had to deal with as showrunner?

HJ: I think it’s a truth fairly universally acknowledged that pre-production is the worst and I did a lot of that on my own. Learning about the equipment needed and how to find cast and crew for the first time and then instantly having to do that and do all the scheduling on top of writing all of my episodes and helping to edit every episode script made for an interesting few weeks.

The scariest moment was probably when our initial choice for Gabriel dropped out and we still hadn’t re-cast someone on our third day of shooting when we needed him on the fifth! Luckily our cast and crew were amazing with putting the word out for that, we eventually found Ed because he went to school with both of our cinematographers. 

netTVnow: Can you talk about the transmedia aspect of the series and how that played a role?

HJ: The series plays out in real time and all of our characters have Twitters and some have Tumblrs, Instagrams, Pinterests etc. We also have a website that updates a few times a week showing the some of the contents of Bathsheba and Gabriel’s smartphones that week, including text messages, private notes, google searches and playlists. You can also find all of this together with the videos on our Storify account.

The novel flips between quite a few different points of view and all of the main characters have secrets and interior lives that they wouldn’t share on public social media, but I still wanted to find a way to show them. 

I think a lot of our audience just follows the videos on YouTube and maybe a couple of Twitter accounts and I think you can definitely access the main story fairly smoothly that way, with a couple of exceptions that we heavily highlight in the videos, but all the rest of the transmedia just adds more depth and nuance. 

netTVnow: Is this your first work in the web series community?

HJ: Not quite, I was a development assistant and wrote 2.5 episodes and some multimedia pieces for The Misselthwaite Archives. I’d been involved with the very early development of Pencil Ink’s upcoming series The Cloisterham Case Files before we began proper work on AFitA too. I’m still working on that with them, as well as being a writer on a new series called Maggie Hale’s Corner and another developing series created by one of the AFitA writers. 

netTVnow: What are some of your favorite web series?

HJ: My all-time favourite web series is The Autobiography of Jane Eyre, with The Candlewaster’s Nothing Much to Do and Lovely Little Losers as close runners up along with Betwixt Production’s The Writing Majors. I just love vlog-style literary series that feel like the characters are inviting you into their warm, messy lives as a friend and equal.

Outside the literary sphere, I really like Wavejacked, The Vault and Couple-ish.

netTVnow: What do you love most about the web series community and what advice would you give those looking to get more involved in the industry?

HJ: I know a lot more about the literary web series community than the wider web series community and I think those are very different places. The Literary web series community is quite possibly a relatively temporary space but it’s a crossroads of a lot of my favourite things in the world: pretty much everyone who’s excited about classic lit, new media and giving voice to young, frequently queer, women is a potential friend in my book, so that entire community just feels like home for me.

The wider web series community is a lot more varied, has more solid links to filmmaking as a general and I think tends to take itself a little more seriously. In both places there’s so much innovation going on in transmedia, format and audience interaction, so many chances to tell narratives that would get silenced anywhere else and so many creators are just fascinating and will talk to you on completely equal grounds, we’re on the cutting edge of storytelling here and I love it. 

To get involved I would just say talk to people mostly, the community’s super active on Twitter and interested in opinions coming from everywhere. And just make things with whatever time and resources you have, it doesn’t have to be a lot, and see what happens. 

netTVnow: Awesome! Lastly, do you have any upcoming Projects to share or anything else you'd like to add?

HJ: Nothing immediate for me but I’m part of the team for Maggie Hale’s Corner and The Cloisterham Case Files, so look out for them some time in the future!

Lastly, I'd like to give a quick shout out to the amazing things other people in the AFitA family are doing, one of our lovely writers, Anya Steiner has her new web series The Merry Maidens coming soon and the infamously productive Jules Piggot is soon releasing her fourth series, The Emma Agenda.

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