#i feel like i can focus more on anatomy when its not a whole comic

[reds-skull]

Bored out of their minds waiting for the helo

[erazonpo3]

I'm a little late to the #webcomicday party but I still thought it'd be fun to break down my process a little bit using the latest Way Out chapter as an example!

So I have a rough outline for the whole comic but I don't go into too much detail planning each story arc until I'm about to get stuck into it. The rough outline is for jotting down ideas as they come along, acting as a skeleton for what will eventually happen, while the more detailed arc outlines are for plotting and pacing the story beats.

Planning each chapter out like this means that each one feels like its own mini-story, and more importantly, stays on track and achieves something to further the story or character progression. You'll notice that the chapter notes are still pretty barebones, which leaves me room to fine tune the smaller beats within the script.

Then, it's scripting time! I'll only have a script for the chapter I'm working on and a script for the next chapter, so as I'm currently working on Chapter 66 I have a script for chapter 66 & 67 but not 68. This is ideal for me in keeping the story flexible, allowing me to take a chapter in a bit of a different direction without feeling tied to a whole arc's worth of scripts that I'll need to rework otherwise.

Around 20 panels is the sweet spot for a chapter of Way Out; there are some with fewer and some with more, but shooting for that number makes me think about whether a scene ought to be extended or cut down in order to meet that goal. If I only plan out 18 panels then I can probably squeeze something extra in, while if I plan out 23 panels, I have a look and see if there isn't anything that can't be condensed.

The scripts themselves are pretty sparse, mostly just dialogue with basic action notes that I highlight as I finish. I'm usually pretty good with visualising things in my mind so the notes are more of a reminder to self about angles & expressions more than anything- if this were a collaborative project I'd probably put more effort into making it descriptive, but it's not.

I've never been one for thumbnailing, which is bad comic practice, I know. But once I have my script I just want to get stuck straight into drawing and don't like slowing down to jot down what is already pretty vivid in my head when I can just. draw the thing.

(a large part of why I started my first webcomic in the vertical format is because you don't need to consider variety in panelling and page flow, which is something thumbnails are very important for).

And so the sketching begins! My sketches are rarely pretty with little focus on anatomy and shape and more focus on blocking and size. I use Procreate to draw the panels and its resizing tool has a tendency to obliterate the quality, which I can sharpen in small amounts but it saves a lot of pain if I plan it all out in the ugly stage.

In some ways I often prefer the sketches to the clean lineart, but that's mostly the stylistic scratchy-ness of it that I have to do away with in favour of clean lines. I'm not always super proud of the art in the end but not every panel needs to be a masterpiece and it's all practice. I think a quantity over quality approach is kind of necessary if you want to make a comic and not lose your mind.

I sharpen up and clean any spots up as I go, but once they're all done I glue all the panels together on my desktop so that I can adjust the spacing between them, then I cut them back up again into smaller slices for posting! And that's the whole chapter process!

I also have a quick (and by quick I mean 4 minute) rough timelapse of chapter 65's coloured panel I can post, if anyone would be interested in seeing that, but it'll probably need to be its own post bc it'll crash this one.

[sandradoodles]

Hi! i just started reading your confessions comic and i am OBSESSED!! and i didnt want to spam you by rbing all of your posts so i am going to write my Thoughts here :3

First of all i just wanted to say how much youve improved over the course of making this comic!! the lineart is so much Smoother and neater, the shading is so PRETTY, i love how youve done the backgrounds, whether you actually draw them or put flowers or something else behind the characters, and the layout looks so much more proffesional and puts the focus on the right things!! ALSO your anatomy has improved sm and i love all the wild expressions!!

Also i LOVE the teal colouring with pink accents, its such a pretty combo and its kinda like your trademark now!!

And obviously the whole story is so GOOD. i love how you cranked up the Idiot Meter to 1000000 bc YEAH theyre IDIOTS!! I loved the whole Clownbug part with ladybug discovering chats in love with marinette and being ANGRY abt it, its one of my favourite flavours of love square, and pt 6 of the comic was also SO entertaining!! miscommunication my beloved <3

I also love the first panel of pt nine, its just so pretty!! and ofc the shenanigans with the design contest, it feels v realistic and you absolutely NAILED mari's character!!

And the bee miraculous akuma is GORGEOUS!! it looks v menacing but also rlly cool and i would KILL to see the full design

i also love the way you showed marinettes progress with the jacket!! the montage of them bonding and working on the jacket is so cool <3 (and the shoulder gag is rlly funny lksdjhghjkgfdkjh)

FINALLY the jacket itself is just. BEAUTIFUL. the design on the back is absolutely stunning, and i love how you incorporated the miracle box and roses (did mari draw inspiration from chat? 👀👀) and the pink inside is so cute!! and the paw mark w marinette's signature!! (also i see you have a weakness for bomber jackets and you are RIGHT they ARE the pinnacle of fashion)

and buttercup reveal my beloved!! the blush!! the awkwardness!! the wild expressions and gestures!! i LOVE IT!!

also, i love all the small details!! like how you shaded marinettes palms as hearts, its so cute! <3

Anyways im just REALLY exited to see where youre going with this comic!! <3

omg omg omg okay I woke up to this, immediately read it FIVE TIMES IN A ROW, and have spent all day trying to figure out how to reply to so many lovely compliments 😭😭😭

THANK YOU SO MUCH OBVIOUSLY it means the world that you read every part and then took the time to type this up! This comic is such a labor of love for me and I'm always trying to work in a lot of fun and cute little details/moments so when people notice and point out those things it makes my heart SWELL WITH JOY. (If you like the hearts on her palms, part ten has some hidden hearts as well heehee)

When I started this my only goals were to scratch my lovesquare itch and get comfortable drawing again after being out of the habit for years. I had, idk maybe ten followers and did not expect anyone to read it or that I would actually manage to draw more than five parts or so AND NOW HERE WE ARE lol. I am so happy that you can see an improvement in the art, not just in how the characters are drawn but stuff like backgrounds and the visual storytelling as well. I hope to get better and better with each part!

Reading your comments about the characterization makes me wanna screech with happiness because I LOVE. THESE. IDIOTS. SO MUCH it is ridiculous!! RIDICULOUS! And as much as I adore leaning into them being incredibly stupid, it is important to me to show how much tenderness lies at the heart of their interactions. They are so, so stupid because they’re so, so sweet. Confessions is very much “journey over destination” because I just want to indulge in as much insanity, humor, awkwardness, confusion, affection, devotion, and partnership I can manage to tease out of their relationship in one story.

The color palette btw was a complete and total happy accident! Sometimes a thing works because you put lots of thought and effort into it, and sometimes a thing works because you fell on it. The color palette is an example of the latter but THE JACKET is an example of the former, haha. The amount of time it took to develop not just the meaning of it but literally the physical design (gotta look like something Marinette might actually make, gotta be something that I can draw a bunch of times, gotta be something that [spoilers redacted], gotta be something that fits over Chat’s shoulders, gotta be something that actually looks good, omg.) I have a whole post about it already but still more to say because I always have more to say! this is so much rambling I’m sorry

One of the big challenges I’ve had in trying to make a comic is figuring out how to balance what to say, what to show, and what to imply. The jacket is first and foremost exactly how Marinette presents it, a means to hopefully reach Adrien and deliver the card from his classmates. The specifics behind the design are more implied. Marinette pours a week of blood sweat and tears into creating this jacket, and as far as Chat Noir sees, she is single-mindedly focused on that task. But we all know she’s ALSO carrying the responsibilities and concerns of being Ladybug. Losing the Miraculous is obviously like... the biggest thing, a terrible and invisible weight that she carries alone!

Except not, because Chat Noir is there. He’s there for Ladybug, he’s there for Marinette, he’s a constant presence in her life and his support allows her to move beyond the shame and horror of losing the Miraculous. Marinette embroiders the symbols of the stolen Miraculous centered around the ladybug and surrounded by irises (sorry they aren’t roses!), and it looks like a topical show of support for her local superheroes; Ladybug embroiders the symbols of the stolen Miraculous centered on the ladybug and surrounded by irises and it’s a promise to her city that she’s going to get them back. (That she stitches the symbol of the cat in the left-hand side of the lining so that it zips over the wearer’s heart might mean something too but that was... more subconscious.)

ANYWAYYYYYYYYYYY I hope that my long-winded rambling comes across appropriately as a sign of JUST HOW THRILLED I am to have received this beautiful thoughtful ask. Hopefully the behind the scenes talk was fun to read haha. I am so honored and I hope you continue to enjoy the story!!

[meruz]

Aforementioned long ask post please excuse me while i try to figure out tumblr's new text editor. I’ll get into the art meme questions first and then the rest at the end.

Ok first of all thank you all for sending in questions! Giving me an excuse to talk hehe. I’ll address these in number order. Here’s a link to the ask meme for reference but also I’ll restate the question for ease of reading.

1. When did you get into art?

Super cliche answer but I don’t remember a time where I WASN’T the weird art kid! I started keeping a dedicated sketchbook when I was about 12? But here’s a page from my kindergarten journal about what I want to be when I grow up.

2. What art-related sites have you ever signed up for? 

LOL this is a weird question. Not sure why so many people want to know. Anyways I definitely had a dA. more than one dA account. I used to browse oekakis when I was a kid but I think I was only signed up to some small ones that internet friends owned. What else...? Mangabullet,Tegakie, Paintberri, iscribble back when that was a thing, instagram if that COUNTs, I used to post art on livejournal and dreamwidth too. Patreon, I guess. Gumroad, inprnt, bigcartel, storenvy all for selling stuff.

In terms of resources.. I have a schoolism account that I’m sharing with friends. Used to take classes on coursera for free. I signed up to textures.com for work recently haha. I can’t remember if I ever had an account on posemaniacs. Did they have accounts...? I definitely used to visit all the time.

3. Show us your oldest piece of art you have on hand.

Alright here’s me actually logging into my old deviantart account. These are from September 2008 So I was 13 years old. I don’t have a deviantart account from before then because 13 was the required age for having an account and I didn’t want to lie about my age because I wanted people to be impressed by how young yet clearly incredible at art I was LOL.

4. What defines your artistic style?

You guys are probably more equipped to answer this than me but uh... I wanna say... Focus on colors. And... a slightly heavy hand? Like confident... not always well-considered mark making HAH...

Also I think I have a pretty healthy mix of american comics/manga influences. I feel like people who are into american comics always think my art is too manga and people who are into anime/manga always think my art is too american. And I’m taking that as a good sign.

5. Do you practice other styles/have you tried other styles in the past?

I like to think I switch it up a bunch! I mean, these are pretty different, right?

I think I’ve mentioned this before but one thing I really took away from art school is that, for an illustrator at least, art style shouldn’t be consistent. Your greatest weapon is changing the aspects of your style based on the task, the emotions and message you want to illustrate etc. So depending on the project I’m working on, the fandom I’m drawing for, whether I want something to be funny or serious or dramatic, I’ll change things about my style all the time.

One thing I don’t rly post on here is really tight polished work and that’s because I do that for my day job haha. If you’re not paying me... I’m probably not gonna color in the lines.

6. What levels of artistic education have you had?

I have a whole ass diploma LOL. Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration. from the Rhode Island School of Design. And I had a great college experience tbh. Besides the student loans. If any of you guys are thinking about art school feel free to e-mail or message me questions or concerns, I’ll be happy to help. Be as honest as I can be.

7. Show us at least one picture you drew or sketched recently that you did not put on a public site.

heres the wandavision kids. Uhh what else do I have...I feel like I’m rummaging for loose change here...

assorted valentines prep doodles

8. What is your favourite piece that you have done?

Well, obviously this is gonna change all the time and generally it’s gonna be my most recent piece LOL. So yeah, why the hell not. I’ll say it’s this one. I have a pretty short memory which I count as a blessing for an artist. I don’t dwell that long on older work and it keeps me moving forward.

10. What do you like most about your art?

I like that it’s something that only I would make! I had this thought fairly recently and I wrote it down in my sketchbook, it’s pretty cheesy and rambling but it felt revolutionary at the time:

So yeah. I like my art best when it’s the most me and for me. And I like it least when it feels like I’m just making something for social media or for other people’s expectations or whatever.

14. What do you like drawing the most?

Kids in baggy clothing are like my go-to LOL idk if that’s obvious. but also I like being challenged so lately I’ve really loved drawing multi-character compositions, environments, weird angles, etc.

oh i LOVE drawing the underside of shoes lol. And bandages. People that are kinda beat up.. I think it comes from getting a bunch of cuts all the time. I’m always patching myself up and I want to patch characters up too.

15. What do you like drawing the least?

mmm I try to find something to like in every drawing but lets see... I don’t like doing commissions of people’s dogs. Just because it’s normally like... a family friend and my mom volunteered me without my consent and I don’t even really know what they’re expecting me to draw and I don’t even get to meet the dog. Also I’m not that great at dog anatomy. Trying to learn though.

18. What is your purpose for drawing?

This could have a million answers! Uhhh to GIT GOOD??? But also to express myself... and also to make money... I mean it depends on what the drawing IS. I draw fanart mostly to connect to people in the fandom so if you ever see me drawing fanart please take it as like an open invitation to talk to me about the character haha. 

20. How would you rank your art? (poor, mediocre, good, etc.)

Good!!! I have a lot of self-confidence primarily born out of ignorance and a short attention span. If I don’t think too hard about how many other artists are mindblowingly unfathombly good... its easy to think I’m good too! LOL

In all seriousness though, I think the opinion a person has of their art is like a crazy balancing act, right? Like you have to think you suck enough to want to get better but also you have to think you’re good enough to not want to give up. I think we’re all walking that line, I know I am! But also I’m a glass half-full type of person so. Most of the time I feel good about it.

22. List at least one of your “artspirations.”

This is a good question because I’ve been trying and failing to put together one of those “influence map” memes for like a full month now. What’s giving me a hard time is I feel like none of these are actually really obvious “““influences”““ in my art? Like it’s hard to see a lot of them in the work I make...? But idk maybe you guys’ll see what I can’t.

And these are just a couple! God there’s so many more. I could talk about other artists for ages, from all different genres of art. Daumier, Rockwell like every illustrator out there, Dana Gibson, Alex Toth, Hiroshi Yoshida, a lot of the Brandywine School. Lots of current working artists too, Karl Kerschl, frikkin Masashi Kishimoto lol, Jake Wyatt, Richie Pope, Edouard Caplain, Matt Cook, Sachin Teng, - lots of big internet artists, Sophie Li, Freddy Carrasco, Milliofish, Angela Sung... like all my friends from art school too. I could just keep going but I’ll stop for now lol.

24. Do you have a shameful art past? (recolour sprite comics, tracing art, etc.)

I mean if that’s how we’re defining shameful?? sure LOL. It’s not sprite comics but I used to do pokemon sprite recolors all the time. And I used to trace manga panels and color them... Granted this was all when I was like under 12 yrs old so it’s not even embarrassing. Can you really call it shameful when a 7 year old wets the bed or whatever? Not really. In fact some of these are cool as fuck. Look

25. Draw a picture!

Man I’m so tired now but here.

I used to get a lot of compliments for drawing people smiling lol but I don’t think I’ve drawn a lot of smiling lately.. here’s proof I’ve still got it.

OK MEME DONE. onto the rest.

I read this ask first thing when i opened my computer in the morning and it made me really emotional.. I’m so glad my sketches could help you!!

I think a lot of artists on social media talk about the struggle of making art but imo not enough people talk about the joy! Like I know it’s corny but. I really meant what I said at the beginning of that sketchbook about re-contextualizing art around process and progress > product and perfection. I think its super important..! The strength of messy, unfinished, and energetic art! For the feeling of it, for the love it!

That's crazy!!! I hope you like 'em. The whole line of x-books is really good rn imo.

Hi! I totally have the answer for digital stuff on my faq lol. But in terms of drawing on paper.. it varies! I tend to use sketchbooking and any on-paper doodling I do as a way to loosen up/warm-up or experiment. But right now my go-to aresenal is:

from top > bottom

- kuretake no.55 doublesided brush pen

- tombow fudenosuke

- muji 0.38 ballpoint

- medium size poscas

- grey tombow double brush pens

- good ol bic mechanical pencil

not EXACTly sure which inking you referring to from my sketchbook but if I had to take a guess it'd probably be the kuretake no55. That's been my main inker, lately. Great for sketching with the thin end too.

You can print out and eat my art if you like. Just please don't mass produce or re-sell. <3

Thanks! I've come to accept that my art is always gonna be sort of gestural and painty naturally. It's getting it to tighten up enough to be legible that's hard lol...

uh yeah lol I agree actually. I think yolei is great.

I assume these asks are related? LOL

1) Yeah totally true. I love David.

2) I don’t take requests, sorry! But if you want to commission me to draw Legion i would be MORE than happy to. Just e-mail me at isellhotdogs@gmail.com.

<33333333333333333333333333

[jeanjauthor]

Thanks for replying to me. I suppose for me to putting it all to paper is a bit different; I share many of these worlds with my friend, but becoming a writer used to be my biggest dream. I gave up on it after one of my trusted professors didn't seem to respond well to my plans. I have a pile of books for research, but I can't get my motivation stronger than my crippling depression. When I think of my ideas, I wonder if it's all been done before. I want to put it to paper, but my own mind stops me. It's rough.

*gives a major spiritual wedgie to said professor...perhaps three or four or fifty-five times...*

It is indeed rough. It hurts when you express your dreams and aren't met with matching enthusiasm, encouragement, etc. Especially from someone you look up to and whose opinion you're inclined to weigh more heavily in its importance than the same words from someone else. I know that feeling, it's debilitating, discouraging, and flat-out sucks.

I don't know what to say to help you get past that debilitating depression, other than to hold fast to how good your story ideas make you feel, and repeat to yourself your encouragements from your friend. And then maybe just...focus on some of the worldbuilding, sketch that out, write it down in little notes to yourself, so the details begin to remain consistent?

And then maybe plop a character into those details, and ask yourself, how would so-and-so react to such-and-such? You can literally borrow characters from other writers' universes for this (which is how fanfic sometimes gets started). The way how The Doctor of Doctor Who fame will react to something is going to be vastly different from the Doctor of Star Trek: Voyager versus any doctor from, say, Grey's Anatomy the t.v. show. Or maybe Buffy the Vampire Slayer versus Bella from the Twilight novels. Or even Shrek from his eponymous movies versus The Incredible Hulk (comic book, t.v. show, or MCU, your choice).

...Sometimes it's easier to start telling a story in someone else's sandbox than it is in your own, or with someone else's "story toys." It's often not as intimidating. You don't have to do all the work, because you're playing with characters and/or a setting that someone else created.

There are two more things to consider, and the first is the paralyzing fear of "what if my writing turns out crappy / riddled with errors???" This is a common one among writers. (Yes, even those of us with literal dozens of books published, like myself!) And I gotta say--even if you won't believe me--SO WHAT?? (Sorry for the scary shouting, but...)

One of the upper-crust storytellers that I know, like easily top 20%, maybe top 15% of those who are amateurs and those who are pros...is absolutely horrible at spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc. But she tells an amazing story. My inner editor dislikes all those errors, but I love the twists and turns she brings to her stories. And as I've told her many times, if you have technically perfect writing, go write a technical manual. If you can tell a story, tell that story. The polishing of that story is the part where you just go find or hire a good patient editor or beta editor who is willing to work with you.

Don't worry about the quality of your writing. WRITE. The rest only comes with practice, and the only way to practice is to--you guessed it--just write.

Try little things to get the pump flowing. Write down a character description. Write down a location description. Write that character interacting with said location, like...they're in a fancy dressing room, do they sit at the vanity table and start brushing their hair, applying makeup, triming their moustache, or putting on socks and shoes?

...The other point of consideration is your comment about whether or not your particular story has been told before. This is...both moderately true, and yet very false.

Story archetypes have been told and retold for generations. So if you have a story of a kid who gets dragged off his farm to go on a dangerous adventure, gets taught how to swing an enchanted sword, ends up having to fight an enemy with a vast army, blah blah blah...did I just recite the tale of young King Arthur...or Luke Skywalker? Or Garion who becomes Belgarion in the David Eddings Belgariad series?

This is quite possibly true for pretty much 99.98% of all stories, they almost all share story archetypes.

However, no one would ever claim that the Belgariad quintilogy is the same as the Star Wars stories is the same as the Arthurian legends.

The exact story you choose to tell, the elements you choose to put into it, can and will make your story unique.

Don't believe me? Have the twins be swapped, and it's Leia Skywalker rescuing Prince Luke Organa, and suddenly there's a whole different dynamic to the original Star Wars movie. Leia will make slightly different choices (similar due to her upbringing, but different), and while she could wind up with Han...well, Han and Prince Luke could've wound up having a yaoi love interest thing going on.

If you fear your story is risking running into "way too similar to another already established tale" territory ...then mix it up. Swap roles, genders, presentations, social statuses, love interests, et cetera. You can fanfic your own writing as much as you want, especially when trying to figure out what you want to write.

And by writing short little fanfic snippets...you'll find it easier to write. They're fanfics, they're throwaway. You can always hit Delete. Or hit Save As, and save it under a file name such as "Don't Look At This number 317".

You have stories to tell. Tell them to yourself, tell them to your friend, tell them to your wordprocessing software or your spiral notebook, or your cat. Or maybe your dog. A dog might actually try to listen; not sure about a cat. it depends on the cat.

[justsomeoneunordinary]

Dark Fic Recs

@rhodee asked me for some dark fic recs and since this is one of my favorite tropes, I know quite some. I wanna make clear from the beginning that those are dark fics. Means stories with fucked up/morally dubious/voilent content. And not salty “Team Cap was mean to me, so I become evil now” kind of fics. If you’re interested in the latter, I am the wrong person to ask.

Some of them are much darker than the others, but you should read for each one carefully the tags and/or the Author’s Note, since some have special twists in the end that aren’t mentioned in the tags.

Basically: know your limits.

Dark!Tony fics (my personal preference)

Faster, Colder, Sharper by Penned (WinterIron)

Tony is kidnapped by Hydra. When the team gets him back, he has changed far more than they suspect. More than even the surface shows.

Bucky though, he notices it all.  

A de-aged Tony fic with Bucky as a caretaker... of sorts.

Radioactive by Valmasy (WinterIron, Series)

The pain is all-encompassing. It’s all he can think about. It’s all he feels. It’s all he breathes. It’s all he lives. Like a barbed net, its sharpness swallows him whole, over and over and over. Tony’s mind tries to hide, tries to save itself, but the pain finds him even then. It burns away at his resistance until all he is crumbles, until he’s nothing but ash and dust.

Attack dog by salytierra (Stony)

Steve doesn't swim in self-delusion. He knows that he is sick and that his owner is even worse. He is aware of it every time he rips some nameless guy’s throat out and feels the crunch of bones under his fingers. He is aware of it every time the rush of adrenaline at seeing life slip away from a stranger’s eyes hits him and gets him bothered and panting in ways that have nothing to do with physical exhaustion.

But it  feels so good…

His owner’s approach is less personal. His shots fall clean and take out several foes at a time, his figure elegant and so graceful he looks like a god among savages. He is power incarnated, cold and burning like a sun at the same time… and Steve tries not to focus on him when they are fighting together, least his knees go weak and his technique falters. It’s fine though. They will go home afterwards and his owner will fuck him on the hard floor, with most of their gear still on and a vicious grip in his hair.

Anatomy of a Moral Man by ShyOwl (Stony, WIP)

At a young age Tony understood he was not meant to be a hero and the world, he believes, is far better for it. With his rule now set in stone, his life is finally settling down. That is until something was found buried underneath the ice.

Tony may not be a hero but that did not stop him from falling in love with one.

In Restless Dreams by charocalwinter (WinterIron, WIP)

When he discovers what he believes to be the truth about his parents’ recent deaths, a powerful and morally ambiguous Tony Stark sets out to get his revenge on Steve Rogers. How does Bucky Barnes fit into this feud and why isn't anybody giving him a pair of socks?

“It isn’t often that Tony Stark finds himself unsure of anything, but this situation has him doubting his every thought, his every move … with Rogers comes James, and that boy is muddling Tony’s mind.” ~ interrupted excerpt from ch 4.

A Pound of Flesh by jellybeanforest (Stony)

To save Bucky, Steve volunteers to work off his debt to the Carbonell crime family. Unfortunately, he is unsuited for the role of enforcer, unable to beat and murder those in the same position as Bucky. He is brought before the mob boss, Tony Stark, who demands his pound of flesh in the wake of Steve’s failure. But upon seeing the attractive blond, Tony proposes alternative employment, one that won’t require him to harm others: Becoming his kept man.

“This isn’t an offer I make often, so you should be flattered – count yourself lucky, even – that I am extending you this rare opportunity.”

“To be raped repeatedly?”

“To have a second chance to work off your debts after you failed so spectacularly the first time. But I don’t have to. I could just use these knives I’ve brought along, carve up that pretty face of yours like a Thankgiving turkey, which would be a shame, really. Then I suppose I’d have to pay a visit to your little friend. This entire exercise has been a waste of my valuable time… perhaps I’ll take an arm for my trouble,” he muses. “So, tell me, Rogers, is Barnes right- or left-handed?”

It’s an offer Steve can’t refuse.

Take Away (everything I am) by salytierra (WinterIron)

“Everyone I kill deserves to die.”

“True. But try to explain that to Captain Justice and Faith.” He takes a gulp of the scotch right out of the bottle and flops down on Tony’s lap, straddling his hips. “He cares too much. You and I? – We do what needs to be done.”

Tony circles his waist with both arms and pulls him closer, opening his mouth when Barnes offers him the bottle and swallowing the bitter liquid dry.

“Nobody ever believed I was able to care. So why should I?”

“Coming from somebody who is expected and probably should care more but doesn’t really give a fuck? – I’ll drink to that.”

Operant Conditioning by dracusfyre (WinterIron, Series)

In which Tony is HYDRA and Bucky’s handler.

in another country (people die) by pprfaith (FrostIron)

“The world is not your playground, Stark!” Fury yells at him one time, after he maybe brings down a building or two and Tony just laughs because, seriously, yes it is. 

on the bleeding edge by esama (Pepperony, WIP, abandoned (still good tho))

Tony Stark goes back in time and becomes a super villain. 

Almost Perfect by One and Five Nines (Obani) (Stony, Comic)

A powerful enemy invades from an alternate reality, but the only thing he really seems interested in is Steve Rogers

Eventually by One and Five Nines (Obani) (Stony, Comic, WIP)

Tony is godking of the wasteland. Steve is not.

Victim!Tony fics

Deliver Us by romanoff (FrostIron)

Loki comes back for revenge. Tony Stark is his captive.

“Why,” he tries, voice failing “do you want me.” He coughs into the ash.

“A king needs an advisor. A king needs concubines. A conquering king must learn the ways of the natives or risk expulsion,” he wipes blood from the sceptre with the end of his coat “and I’m rather fond of you, I think. Even in the face of death you use your wit, you charm with your tongue. It reminds me of myself, maybe, one or two millennia ago.”

Terms & Conditions by Penned (WinterIron)

Tony Stark is desperate and trusts too easily. Bucky Barnes takes advantage of that.

A mob AU with no powers, featuring a very dark, very off-kilter Bucky.

(reverse) Kidnapping by AngeNoir (WinterIron)

Tony Stark is wallowing. He has a right to - he's just finished the funeral preparations for his parents in New York. He didn't expect them to live forever, but still...

And then he falls asleep from his bender.

And wakes up in a nightmare.

(Is it a nightmare?)

Anything (and Everything) - remix by Penned (WinterIron)

The Soldier will do anything to make Tony happy, with or without his explicit consent.

Heavily inspired by Shi_Toyu's  IronWinter Holiday Exchange fic "Anything." This is a much darker version of that story.

like flowers soaked in monochrome by deathsweetqueen (Stony)

Steve Rogers woke up to a world where everyone he loved and knew had forged on without him. But this world, it's nothing like he's used. It wants something brutal from him, something unforgiving. There are so many compromises to make. There are too many monsters behind kind smiles.

But if it means keeping Tony safe, if it means protecting him, he's willing to do whatever it takes.

He can't be soft.

After all, the weak are meat; the strong do eat.

Sins of Omission by Kiyaar (Stony, WIP (tbh I still haven’t started reading this story, but the tags and summary sound perfect!))

A Post-Civil War, Pre-Secret Invasion AU where Steve is dead, Tony's a mess, and everything sucks.

In which Tony deals poorly with Steve's death, falls off the wagon, sees ghosts, and misses a lot.

Oh, and the Skrulls are about to invade.

That’s it. Read all warnings carefully and enjoy!

[afni-fics]

Elder Scrolls DC - A Reluctant Dragonborn - Chapter 19: Dragon Rising (part 3)

Elder Scrolls DC - A Reluctant Dragonborn - Chapter 19: Dragon Rising (part 3) by C_R_Scott Chapters: 19/? Fandom: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Red Robin (Comics), DCU (Comics) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Characters: Tim Drake, Lucien Flavius Additional Tags: Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Skyrim/DCU crossover, Reluctant Dovahkiin | Dragonborn, Not Beta Read, Alternate Universe - Skyrim Fusion, Modded Skyrim, Skyrim Spoilers, Tim Drake is Dragonborn | Dovahkiin, Batfamily-centric (DCU), Tim Drake-centric

Previous Chapter | Masterlist | Next Chapter

Summary:

After the battle with the dragon at the Watchtower, Tim wakes up in the Temple of Kynareth for the start of his healing process.

-------------------------

"...Dovahkiin..."

"...Dragonborn..."

"...Motaad sizaan sil..."

"...Tremble lost soul..."

"...Thuri du hin sil ko Sovngarde..."

"...My overlord will devour your soul in Sovngarde..."

"...Draal fah dinok..."

"...Pray for death..."

***

Tim's eyes snapped open as he woke with a gasp to escape the nightmare of draconic voices whispering horrible things to him from the darkness. As his sleep blurred vision began to clear and the echos of his nightmare drifted out of reach, he became aware of several things one after the other.

First, he was no longer on the battlefield. Instead, he was in some sort of building, laying on his right side on a moderately comfortable bed. 

Next, the pain that had been wracking his body from his burns all week long were significantly dulled. There was a deep ache in certain areas, but overall things were far better than they had been earlier. 

Finally, while he was still very tired, suffering from what felt like a bone-deep exhaustion, he was also very thirsty. His gaze wandered around the small bedroom he was resting in and fell upon a nearby end-table with a ceramic pitcher and cup just out of reach.

Gingerly, Tim began to sit up, groaning softly with the effort. He almost didn't hear the soft footsteps approach the room and the quiet knock upon the doorway. He looked over to see an old Nord woman in a hooded robe standing there, a bowl and some linens in her arms. She smiled at him kindly. "You're finally awake," she said as she entered the room. "That's good. We've been concerned you might not wake up anytime soon." She immediately went to Tim's side and placed a cool hand against his forehead. Tim flinched a little, but didn't pull away completely. "Still a bit too warm, but at least your fever is headed in the right direction. Another day of rest and it should be broken completely."

"I'm sorry, but who are you, and where am I?" Tim asked.

"My name is Danica," she replied as she moved to the end table with the pitcher. "And you are in the Temple of Kynareth here in Whiterun. I'm the head priestess here." She poured out a cup of water and handed it to Timothy. "Drink slowly," she instructed before turning back to pour the rest of the water into the bowl she'd brought over.

As Tim brought the cup to his lips, he paused. He could smell something medicinal in the liquid, and the color was not quite right for just water. Still, he was extremely thirsty and he took small, careful sips until the cup was drained. As he drank, he watched as Danica placed one of the smaller linen towels into the bowl and soaked it before wringing it out and folding it into a compress. She then turned her full attention back on Tim and tried to gently encourage him to lay back down. 

The idea of laying back down and going back to sleep was tempting, and he was so tired, but still...

"I can't stay too long," he murmured as he tried to maneuver his legs off the bed.. "I need to speak with the Jarl about that dragon and--"

"No you don't," a familiar voice said firmly. Tim looked at the doorway to see Lucien standing there. He had a firm, determined expression on his face. "You are under strict orders by the Jarl himself not to set one foot out of this Temple until you are cleared to leave by Sister Danica herself." He stepped fully into the room and Tim could see he had a basket in one hand. Though covered with a cloth, Tim could see part of a loaf of bread and some fruit peaking out. 

A corner of Tim's lip quirked upward despite himself. "Oh really? So we're listening to the Jarl's orders now?"

"We do when the Jarl's housecarl Irileth herself has decided to fold you under her wings as a fellow 'soldier-in-arms' and has made your recovery one of her top priorities." Lucien remarked as he set his basket down on a nearby dresser. "Apparently she has a reputation of being a strong advocate for the soldiers under her command, despite her stern demeanor, as well as a reputation of speaking her mind with the Jarl when something troubles her. This..." Lucien made a vague circular motion with his hand that seemed to indicate Tim's whole physical state. "...troubled her greatly." He shrugged. "Apparently when Irileth speaks, Jarl Balgruuf actually listens. Imagine that... A Nord actually taking the words of a Dunmer to heart. Will wonders never cease?" 

Then Lucien's expression turned more serious. "So long story short, the Jarl has instructed that you be given all the time you need to recover from your illness and injury. The Temple itself is not to be disturbed by anyone unless they are approved by Irileth or if they are in serious need of healing themselves. So please, Timothy. Will you please just sit back and rest? This is the first time you've woken and been coherent in three days."

"Three days?" Tim echoed with slight disbelief. 

Lucien nodded and took a seat at the foot of Tim's bed as Danica added a pillow so Tim could recline comfortably, but be upright enough to eat. He pulled out an apple from the basket and began to peel it with a small pocketknife. "You were deathly ill when Irileth had her men brought you to the temple after the battle with the dragon. Your burns were deeply infected and all the stress of that battle exasperated your condition." Once peeled, he cut a slice and offered it to Tim.

Reluctantly, Tim laid back down on the pillows, a soft sigh escaping him when Danica pressed her compress against his forehead. The cool cloth felt good, and the medicinal aroma from the liquid wasn't an unpleasant smell. It was rather soothing. Tim had a suspicion that the herbs had some sort of soporific effect, but he wasn't really in any position to complain against it. Still, for the moment hunger beat out the immediate need for sleep, so he took the offered apple slice and took a small bite.

While he ate, Danica took a chair next to the bed. Then, she gently took Tim's left burned arm. The young man startled at the touch, but Lucien reassured him. "It's alright. Just let her work."

Curiously, Tim watched as Danica focused on his arm, holding it with her left hand. She murmured what sounded like a soft chant under her breath and held her free right hand over the area that was scarred by the burn. A warm golden aura radiated from her hand and eventually travelled to his injury. Tim watched with awe as the lingering ache in his arm began to fade even more, and the wound itself began to look far better. Rather than an infected angry red wound, it now looked more like an aged silvery scar that was a few shades lighter than his normal skin tone. After a few minutes, Danica finished her chant and she returned Tim's arm to him. 

"That's... amazing," Tim whispered as he tentatively touched the scar. 

"How does that feel? Is there any lingering pain anywhere in the arm?" Danica asked.

Tim moved his arm experimentally, testing the range of motion he now had. When his face reflected a twinge of pain around his elbow, though he didn't complain about it, Danica used her magic to heal the area with a more precise touch. 

As Danica worked, Lucien watched with a content expression as he continued to cut fruit, bread, and cheese and feed them to Tim. Eventually the priestess was finally satisfied with the state of Tim's arm and shifted her focus to his back. This part of his body, it seemed, was still in a worst state than his arm. Even after several passes of healing magic, there was still quite a bit of pain left deep in the muscles and bone and it showed on Tim's face, though he didn't complain verbally about it.

"I think that is enough for now," Danica announced after a final pass. She gently stroked some of Tim's hair from his face, She could feel the heat of his lingering fever radiating off of him, and carefully repositioned the pillows so he could lay back down completely. "The burn and infection on your back went far deeper than what your arm endured. Because of your fever, you'll need to rest before we can proceed with more healing."

Tim, for his part, was exhausted. Though he didn't do anything except eat and sip water while he was being healed, he felt as if he'd just run a marathon. He closed his eyes as the compress was placed on his forehead again, and he relished how good it felt against his overheated skin.

Danica didn't leave immediately, though. She studied Tim for a moment. "Just wondering, young man, but were you sickly as a child?"

Tim cracked open his eyes. "Sickly?"

"When you were a child, were you prone to illness and took a long time to recover?" 

He shook his head. "Not as a child, but last year I received a... permanent injury that I've been told might make me more prone to illness." Tim wasn't about to try and explain how he'd lost his spleen and its function. He was unsure how much knowledge of human anatomy and the function of individual organs was known here. He hoped the vague explanation would be enough. 

Danica sighed. "The costs of war..." she murmured with a shake of her head. Clearly she was assuming his injury had been from the current Civil War strife plaguing Skyrim. She then went over to the nearby dresser and pulled open the top drawer. From it, she removed an amulet and tied it around Tim's neck. 

Curiously, Tim lifted it from his chest to get a closer look at it. The amulet was strung on a leather thong, appeared to be forged from iron and some other pale metal he couldn't identify, and was shaped to look like a bird in flight. In the middle of the bird was a sky blue gemstone. It was a lovely piece of jewelry, but that was not the most remarkable part of it.

"It's warm?" he mused. Tim wasn't sure, but it almost felt like the warmth was pulsing like a heartbeat.

"It's an amulet of Kynareth," Danica explained. "She is our patron Divine here at the temple. Through Kynareth's blessing, the amulet improves one's stamina when you wear it. This should help with improving the speed of your recovery while in the temple." She gathered some of the dishes and spent linens. "Now get some rest. I'll check on you in a few hours.

Once Danica was gone, Tim turned to Lucien. "So... who is Kynareth?"

"She's one of the Eight Divines," Lucien explained. "A nature goddess of the sky, air, and wind, and the patron of travelers who traverse both land and sea." He smiled a bit. "When you're feeling better, before you leave the Temple you ought to take a moment and pray for a blessing at the shrine here. It wouldn't hurt to seek Kynareth's guidance as we try to find your way home."

Tim gave Lucien a strange look, and the scholar's smile faded. "Is the worship of gods different in your homeland?"

"Well... There are different religions throughout my world. Some believe in many gods. Others believe in just one." Tim sighed. "And still others don't believe in any at all." He glanced away from Lucien. "And back home... I fall into that latter category."

Lucien's jaw dropped and his eyes went wide. "You... You don't believe in any divinity?! How does that even work?" 

Tim shook his head with a shrug. "I believe in science and in things I can see with my own eyes. I believe in real mortal people who live their lives and make their choices. I believe in the existence of powerful beings who have abilities that far outstrip those of normal human beings. There are plenty of those on my home world. But I don't believe them to be gods and I don't believe in any necessity to worship them."

"Have you always believed like this?"

The younger man's expression became clouded and distant. "No... not always..."

"What happened? What changed?"

Tim sighed. "I... really don't want to talk about it."

Lucien regarded Timothy quietly. It seemed that the scars visible on the young man's skin were not the only ones he carried. Never in his own life could Lucius even fathom the existence of a spiritual injury that could mortally wound a person's faith itself. 

It was a disquieting thought.

"Timothy... I..." Lucien started to say after a long moment of silence, but paused. He noticed that Tim had curled up onto his side and his eyes were now closed in slumber. Lucien's gaze softened as he rose and pulled the blankets over Tim's shoulder. "You may not believe in our Divines here, but I'll pray that they watch over you regardless," he whispered before blowing out the candles and leaving the room. 

There, in the dark of the room as Tim slumbered, the blue gem set in the amulet of Kynareth seemed to glow faintly. 

As he slept, the voice of the dragon that had plagued his nightmares before did not trouble him again.

  -------------------------

Note:

Unfortunately no screenshots with characters in this scene. Just couldn't seem to get a right angle for any screenshots within the Temple of Kynareth. I have included an image of the Amulet of Kynareth Tim received. In-game all the amulets of the Divines offer some sorts of buffs to your characters, and it seemed appropriate that a stamina buff might help Tim since he's sick. I also figured that since Kynareth/Kyne is going to feature heavily during the journey of the Dragonborn, despite Tim being an atheist, she might be a bit "invested" in his well-being.

Just because you don't believe in a goddess doesn't mean she doesn't believe in you.

But because she is one of the Divines and not one of the Daedra, she's not going to be able to interact with Tim directly, but I think there needs to be some obvious-ish indirect influence. I need to think about this... Hopefully I'll have a better idea by the time Tim starts making his journey to meet with the Greybeards.

#elder scrolls dc#fanfiction#tim drake#skyrim fanfiction#batfam fanfic#red robin#batfam#crossover#lucien flavius#wip#afewnovelideas

[stina-is-a-punk-rocker]

‘always and forever, lara jean’: a bungled mess of my thoughts while watching the movie

Alright, cards on the table: I never finished reading the book. I got bored a couple of pages in, so I just read up the summary on Wikipedia and called it a day.

Not gonna lie, I expected better from the movies. I loved the first movie; it was cute, it was fun, it hit all the right places. The second movie was… eh. Jordan Fisher is cute, so that’s a plus.

And then we got the third movie; the final in the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before trilogy.

And it was somehow even worse.

Maybe I’m exaggerating. Despite its shortcomings in the plot and character development-related departments (the fact that Lara Jean wrote addresses for letters she never meant to send is something that will bother me on my deathbed), the movies have their merits. They’re cutesy and charming and enjoyable, overall; movie-LJ is sweet and unashamedly a girly-girl, which is a refreshing change from the #NotLikeOtherGirls, pick-me girls and bruh girls we had in loads of other YA movies growing up. Peter’s pretty cute, too; he’s not a possessive freak like so many other love interests (The Kissing Booth, After, Anna and the French Kiss), and his and Lara Jean’s dynamic is cute, too. Not to mention- we finally have an Asian lead whose Asian-ness isn’t the whole focus of the story!

Again, maybe I’m being extra with all this. The series is, at its core, solely for entertainment purposes. Not every piece of media has to have an underlying message and you shouldn’t need to read between every goddamn line to find something worthy of enjoying. They’re certainly helpful for whiling away a couple of hours; perfect for bingeing with a pint of ice cream in hand, and all of this is in good fun.

Also, it goes without saying, but: spoilers ahead.

The film beings with Lara Jean scribbling a postcard to Peter while she’s in Korea with her family. The inclusion of that little snapshot of Asian culture made me so happy- seriously, fuck everyone who says diversity in media doesn’t matter. I’m not even Korean, and I was overjoyed at seeing a couple of scenes just from the same continent I’m on. The K-pop music in the background was a fun touch, too (although all Korean music isn’t K-pop, but that’s a rant for another day).

(Also: Blackpink has so many more suitable songs than Pretty Savage that go with the theme of the movies. Kill This Love in the second movie while Lara Jean is getting ready to go to her boyfriend’s match is bad enough- they’re supposed to be in love in that scene, goddammit.)

One thing that bothered me throughout the movies is how obviously non-Korean Lara Jean and Margot look. It’s like whoever chose the cast went for any random Asian- Lana’s Vietnamese and Janel Parrish is half-Chinese, and it’s so obvious. You seriously couldn’t find two Korean-Americans who even vaguely resembled each other so they could pass for sisters? The actresses do a stunning job and I don’t want to shit on them, but I just wish they didn’t go with the ‘all Asians look the same, what’s the difference?’ mindset.

Also, a nitpicky thing I’ve noticed in movies with characters who read a lot: no one holds their books up while they’re reading. Your arms start to cramp, which is why you keep your book in your lap while you’re reading, or you rest on your belly and hold the book in front of you. My spine and shoulders didn’t suffer years of torture as a chronic reader for you to include characters who hold their books up while reading.

A major gripe I have with Always and Forever, Lara Jean is how the characters are almost jarringly out of character- not from the books, but from the two previous movies, too. Lara Jean didn’t have much of a character to begin with, so I can’t say much about her (she dissed Oasis at one point; it’s okay for me to be mean to her), but the rest of them are either caricatures of themselves or just totally different people.

Movie Peter >>> Book Peter. He’s almost too perfect (except for the fact that he unironically loves The Fast and the Furious, which… ew), almost too much of the ideal boyfriend. Not that my perpetually single arse would know. How do boyfriends even work? I wouldn’t know the first thing to do with one; how often should you feed it? Do you need to take it on walks?

(In the notes I’ve written towards the end of the film, I’ve complained about Peter being immature and making Lara Jean feel bad about following her dream to go to NYU. He confuses me.)

Not to mention how distractingly adorable Noah Centineo is from some angles and under certain lighting conditions (other times, he reminds me of the human version of Shrek and that bothered me). King of weird Tweets and Instagram captions though he may be, he’s got a really nice smile, and his gravelly voice is both parts sexy and disturbing.

But I digress.

I’ll never forgive the directors for what they did to Kitty and Chris- two of my favorite characters, from both the books and the movies. Kitty’s annoying to the point of being borderline unlikeable- gone is the occasionally snarky comic relief we all came to love; in her place is an annoying brat whose every line comes out forced. Also, making soap is fun; fuck you, Kitty.

Chris is essentially Dixie D’Amelio’s character from that TikToker Grey’s Anatomy ripoff; the main character in One Direction fanfiction from 2012 who doesn’t want to go to the concert but her best friend gets a ticket for her so she can’t bail but Harry Styles sees her in the crowd and falls in love at first sight and 50k of mutual pining and misunderstandings late, they get together. She’s cynical and snarky and hates capitalism and consumerism and prom (because of course she does), but secretly, she’s into it (because of course she is). My guess is that she’s there to appease all the arseholes (including myself) who accused the characters of being too one-dimensional, but it seems too out of place in a movie that doesn’t have much plot to begin with.

I really, really hate how Lucas was done dirty- throughout every single movie. Of course, it’s Lara Jean’s story so not every side character has to be fully fleshed out- but you’d think three. entire. movies. would be enough to give Lucas a bigger role than the GBF and the token black guy for the diversity brownie points. Every single time Lucas shows up, it’s to push Lara Jean and Peter’s story forward. I would’ve liked to see a romance for him pushed forward instead one for Chris- especially because he says, at one point in a previous movie, that it’s hard to find other gay boys, so it would’ve been sweet to see him find love- and Chris’s character arc could’ve been focused on reconciling with Genevieve. Instead, we see the OG Reggie from Riverdale be the one to show Chris the bright side of monogamy, and Lucas gets a date to prom as an afterthought (another darkskin black dude, so no one thinks the film is racist).

Genevieve’s character in this movie gives me whiplash. Look, I’m all for girls supporting girls- healthy female relationships are something way too many YA movies lack- but she goes from bitch queen extraordinaire to friendly the moment the next scene calls for it. Her character isn’t consistent. A redemption arc should be executed cleanly and believably; you can’t have a character be a total prick one moment and then suddenly be, “Hey, if you get into NYU, let me know,” the next.

And Genevieve’s still an arsehole to Chris; at one point, in NYC, while they’re at the NYU campus grounds (I knew that Lara Jean was going to go to NYU the moment she saw all the banners; I fucking called it), Genevieve tells Chris, “University is for people who actually have a future,” and I recoiled. I’m not the nicest of people and yet that was going too far. Chris doesn’t hesitate to shoot back a, “You peaked in high school,”, but still. Y i k e s. You can’t convince me someone’s turned over a new leaf when they say something like that.

Lara Jean’s dad (forgot his name; gonna call him Dr. Covey) is as unremarkable as ever, and his new wife (forgot her name, too… Trisha? Trina? Eh, something like that) is… unsettling. I mean, I get that they’re all loved up and twitterpatted, but there’s something about all the smiling they’ve got going on that chills me to the bone.

Also, Trisha/Trina kinda looks like TikTok’s ThatVeganTeacher and it bothers me.

Another huge problem with this movie even being made is that the series never had enough plot to continue onto a trilogy. Lara Jean’s letters are what the plots of the first and second movies revolve around; the third only mentions them in passing. The final love letter from Peter was a cute callback, but there’s a massive continuity issue with the first two movies and this last one- both character and plot-wise.

Maybe I’m not articulating this clearly enough, so I’ll use an example: take Harry Potter, for example. Harry’s main goal throughout the series is defeating Voldemort. And it takes all seven books for him to get there, to finally achieve this.

Lara Jean’s goal in the first movie changes midway; from keeping up the façade with Peter so she can avoid the crap with the rest of the letters getting out, to making her fake relationship real. It forms a bridge with the second movie; the letter that went out to John Ambrose, and her dithering between Peter and perfection (I’m not sorry). But what does the third movie have to do with any of this?

There were way too many music montages. You couldn’t go five minutes without a random pop song playing in the background, and it was annoying as hell. Don’t Look Back in Anger was w a s t e d on this stupid film. The artsy scenery shots were even worse- no, I don’t give a fuck about the New York skyline or a bird’s eye view of whatever vehicle Lara Jean is in. A few shots of Seoul would’ve sufficed; the rest was overkill. This movie is way too damn long already (almost 2 entire hours!!!); cut out a couple of those. No one cares.

I thought they’d pull the whole Aladdin trope with character-A-keeps-trying-to-tell-character-B-the-truth-about-a-lie-B-believes-in-about-A-but-B-keeps-interrupting, but Lara Jean (typing her name out is annoying, why couldn’t she have a single name, like both of her sisters?) comes clean earlier than I expected. Peter’s reaction about LJ not getting into Stanford is… uncharacteristically mature? No “Why did you lie to me?”, no accusations, not an ounce of betrayal. Which I did not expect from a guy who’s a little bitch for the greater part of book one (I really don’t like Book Peter, in case you couldn’t tell). I know fuck-all about book three’s Peter, so I can’t tell if he really did adopt this mature, well-adjusted persona, or the movie did it to make Peter seem like less of a dick (like they did it with the sextape-that-wasn’t-a-sextape in the first installment).

On a sidenote, how do these main characters in YA books get into really good colleges with zero to no visible effort? These arseholes fuck around for the entirety of the story and have way too much going on to actually do schoolwork, but they waltz into Ivy Leagues at the end. And apparently, I’m not the only one bothered by this.

There’s something to be said about how the movies don’t really sexualize minors (characters who are minors, to be fair. None of the MCs look anything like teenagers), though. It’s almost weird to see them not getting drunk and partying and having sex all the time. Maybe that’s why Lara Jean trying to get her hand on Peter’s dick felt so stilted and awkward (I cringed so hard when she kept trying to touch him and he kept pushing her hand away, holy shit).

And the kissing. It’s to be expected from a romance film, but there was so. Much. Kissing.

The amount of product placements (… actually, I could count only two: Apple and a pair of Beats headphones Lara Jean puts on at one point, but the movie shoved so many iPhones in my face that I’m obligated to exaggerate) would’ve made anti-capitalist Chris mad.

I’m guessing this all takes place in a parallel universe, sans the coronavirus. Still, being in quarantine this past year and being socially awkward for every other one, it was agonizing seeing everyone so close together in NYC. When Peter kissed the ball (lol) (I have the sense of humor of a straight boy in middle school, don’t judge me) when him and Lara Jean go bowling, I had a visceral reaction. And what are the odds of Peter meeting his estranged dad at the very same bowling alley?

Speaking of Peter’s daddy issues (I’ve written “Hardin but diluted” in my notes; I watched this movie at, like, 1 AM; I’m not entirely sure what was going through my head at that point)- I hated how they guilt-tripped Peter into giving his father another chance. In the wise words of Hannah Montana, everybody makes mistakes- but leaving your wife and two kids for another woman is pretty far from a little oopsie on Mr. Kavinsky’s part. I don’t blame Peter for hating him, and I’m not in a place to judge whether Mr. Kavinsky (does he get a first name?) should be forgiven or not, but I feel like they let him off too easy and made Peter seem like a misunderstood teenager with anger issues for not accepting Mr. Kavinsky’s (crappy) apology at once.

And it adds nothing to the story at all; Mr. Kavinsky peaces out after having one (01) coffee with his firstborn, and he’s never seen again. If you’re going to introduce a subplot, make it tie into the main storyline- the very least you could do is make it an important enough part of the story to have more than 10 minutes of the run time. It makes no sense as to why they’d bring up Peter’s dad in this last film, when he’s already gone through two perfectly fine. I guess it was a ‘tying everything up’ part… even though no one cared.

Lara Jean’s handwriting is surprisingly ugly for someone who’s written that many love letters. And her styling took a definite nosedive; her outfits in the first movie were so effing cute, but now they’re just… meh.

There are so many conversations and lines that the writers must’ve thought sounded good enough for someone to type out the quote in curly font and slap it on a screenshot from the movie to post on Instagram, but when it comes to the actual delivery, they just sounded… weird.

Peter says one time near the beginning of the film, “You know what I’m looking forward to the most in college? Never having to say goodnight,” because he expects him and Lara Jean to get into the same college.

But I guess the word they should’ve used was ‘good-bye’, because this just makes him sound stupid.

At one point, Lara Jean asks Kitty how much Kitty’s gonna miss her when she goes off to college, and Kitty says, “A four.” Later on, she confesses, “I’m gonna miss you a twelve, Lara Jean,” and all I could think was, “But we’re endgame, Archie!”

(In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t let people know I’ve watched Riverdale; it lessons my credibility.)

Still, there remains some good to be found: all the baked goods looked very delicious and made me crave chocolate chip cookies. Peter wearing the socks Lara Jean gifted him at the beginning of the movie was a cute gesture, and Lara Jean giving Peter her teal hatbox? The one she kept her love letters in? Was so? Cute? Help?

And hey, it’s a cliché that’s been done to death, but I’m always a sucker for that part in movies where the girl walks down the stairs in a pretty dress with her hand on the banister and the boy turns around and his mouth falls open and all he can say is, “Wow,”- and this film did not disappoint! Not to mention how cute both Lara Jean’s and Chris’s prom dresses were.

Dr. Covey and Trisha/Trina’s wedding was cute, too- I struggled to decide whether Kitty wearing a necklace that says ‘feminist’ and a tux is a bit too on-the-nose, but I’ve decided that it’s nothing to get my knickers all in a twist about (for clarification: it’s not the necklace or the crossdressing that made me debate this; I just wish they didn’t make a big deal out of it- I wish they didn’t have Kitty and Lara Jean get into an argument about her not wearing a dress, if that makes sense?).

And the final letter- the one from Peter to Lara Jean- I ate that shit up; it was so, so, so cute.

In conclusion (why is it so easy for me to crank out 3k about my thoughts on a Netflix movie and yet when it comes to English Lit. at school, I’d stare at a blank sheet of foolscap for ages?), did I enjoy the movie? Not really. There were parts of it that I liked, but it was overall too boring and I kept wishing I’d watched the new SKZ Code episode instead every few minutes.

But that doesn’t mean that it was bad. I kinda feel a little sad, actually, now that Lara Jean and Peter’s story has come to a close; To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, the first movie, is one of my favorites, and bitch though I might about them, the kinda grew on me… like an innocent plant, at first, but then like a fungus. Not a parasitic fungus, just not mutualistic, either… kind of like a commensal.

Maybe I should stop with the biology similes.

[shut-up-im-jay]

PEEPS THERE IS MORE

WHAT ARE. THE. FUCKING. REPRESENTATION. OF. PAIN. IN. ART.

Sorry I’m overly excited rn

I love this. And I’m sorry but I’ll tag peeps here too bc it’s really interesting, tell me if you want more in the future or if you want me to stop tagging me lmao

@whumpthisway @whumpster-dumpster @untilthepainstarts @ashintheairlikesnow 

Let’s dive into it.

SOO how does art represent pain and how does it allow us, spectators, to feel it and why do we represent it in art?

Art and stuff, when I use the word it’ll be about every representation of it, paint, fanfic, writing, films, series.... everything.

first of all, maybe when we experience art we aren’t just communicating with the author and the characters but also with the other readers somehow. Like there is a community behind any form of art

heroïc pain, comical pain and the experiment of pain in stories about real people --> restitution of sensation of pain, (recent phenomenon apparently)  are the three main thing we’re gonna talk about here

What is a hero and what is its link to pain?

stoïc heroes are the ‘best’, those who take pride in toughening up, very often a mannly trait, there is historically a superior power in play. They’re heroic bc they fight till the end knowing that they can’t do anything (see La chanson de Roland, the agony of Charlemagne’s nephew, it’s apparently a really good agony/whump thing)

Action is superior to affection when you’re a hero (martyrs hello, we’re talking about st Sebastian, our true gay icon, I love him)

------ Tbh this is basically the base for whump, but not the cool part. We want our whumpee to go further. The strength is cool but I don’t just want this, I mainly wanna feel the pain and no one is that hero. It’s often more the tipping point that gives me whumperflies --------

Philoctet here. Who is the guy? Heroic af, but he is an ass. So anyway he is wounded and he has an ulcer and yeah that’s why he screams and smells and his friends just let him to die on an island (lmao) bc he has invincible weapons so they just go away with it (savage)

So he is the metaphor of a patient isolated in their pain, that’s cool. Also there is a caretaker in the story. True antic whump peeps.

-----------Now comical pain(?)  (not whump related here)

Can we really laugh about pain? we’re talking about the ripping a bandage kind of comical pain in caricature. How can some kind of pain affect us while other makes us ‘laugh’ or at least be amused...

We then laugh more about the idea of humiliation, for example in comical theater, laughing at the pain as punishment for the ‘bad’ characters. Also laughing makes people superior, so when we laugh together it binds us together, and then pain can be bounding but anyway that’s not the point.

The real question is: how the fuck do we have an insensibility to pain when there is a comical situation?

let’s talk about someone who falls and it’s funny cause they slipped on a banana peel or smtg. bc there is a social convention in the funny situation. Also pain isn’t really obvious, it’s often ambiguous and we can’t really have empathy so yeah, we maybe don’t relate that much? and also small kids don’t seem to find it funny apparently bc they’re not really aware of the comical situation. 

I think that this kind of things would be more interesting to do it as a psychological/social study on why we find things funny related to culture and our background, more than our relation to pain

------------ Now, the historically modern kind of pain tale, the one more related to whump, when the goal really is to describe the pain, often trying to get the spectator to relate.

The body has a new place in art. Historically the soul was really the center of art while nowadays we are more in a somatic art, the body is the focus.

Cenesthesia is the internal perception, the general sensibility we have toward our internal feelings. And it’s a general tendency now, Hunger, K.Hamsun, Nausea, Sartres, they focus on those internal feelings. Another great book: ‘La doulou’, Alphonse Daudet (he suffered from syphilis) and he described in a diary all the pain he was feeling, and he tried to be really accurate. Again, great writing material ig. 

Léon Werth: The white house is an auto-fiction, basically the story of a guy that has an ear infection and his surgery then the fever. The whole story is about post-op sensations. Interestingly enough, the character doesn’t even have a name, the whole story is only to describe the pain, and the main character is really interested in his own pain. He uses GREAT analogies tbh, like there is an industry in his ear and everything, that’s.... that’s good shit. But like, he isn’t bad about it, he is just weirdly okay with it? he only describes things as he feels them, he has some kind of dissociation from his pain. 

This is basically one of the example of pain descriptions in modern art, when the person in pain becomes the spectator of its pain

Dolor y gloria, Pedro Almodovar --> good PTSD shit, how emotional pain becomes physical pain. Two narratives at the same time: the main character with chronic pains as an adult, but then there is the other story: how, as a child, MC was influenced by his past

on an unrelated note, the teacher just said that main character and his mum are hot lmao that’s bi energy af

Well now she’s dissecting a cinematic scene and it’s not really interesting so I’ll try to express what I took out of this. 

Seriously, it wasn’t as cool as I expected it to be, I thought she was going to focus more on how we relate to pain. That’s unfortunate, bc I’d love to have an external pov on whump. The actual psychological effect of seeing pain, and why it’s truly appealing to us. Why the fuck do we enjoy it.

It was more of a dive in the representation of pain in different arts. Some good whump references in it I guess. But nothing really psychological and it’s kinda a shame tbh.

Oh but some cool things maybe(?), some interviews of neurologists:

WHAT IS PAIN AND HOW DOES IT INTERACT WITH THE MEDICAL WORLD?

(also there are people specializing on pain out there which is fucking rad and metal lmao)

Scientific pov: Pain is an experience. Sensorial, emotional and physical. the pain isn’t really localized in a part of your brain. Sure, things are processed in the thalamus but it’s a very large zone already, there are so many ways to feel pain, and so many structures in our brain, it’s almost as complex as memory(!)

-The facial expression of pain and why it’s ambiguous? How to see the pain? There are literal descriptions of non-verbal cues, and how to detect pain (there are even photo stocks of facial pain expressions lmao to try and educate our brains). And often, the more you’re affected, the more you’re ambiguous in the way of expressing it. 

Frowning is one of the first ways of expressing pain, muscles have a kind of order in the way they react.

Our anatomy teacher now: words of pain. As doctors, it’s often unclear how to understand the levels of pain based on patient expressions. So we have precise forms to help, but we need patients to be really educated to have enough vocabulary. Unfortunately sometimes as we already stated, pain can be anesthetic in a way, and hard to describe, and trying to fix the pain in time is near impossible. We would even need to do a linguistic study on pain and stuff to make sure we can be precise (and write more whumpy things lmao)

Here, a take on pain as an alarm system. Dramatic consequences ensue when there are lesions of nerves, so it is obviously a very useful and protecting tool. But then what about neuropathic and chronical pains? They’re basically when in a house, the alarm goes off all the time for no reason. And then the definition of a protecting system is really wrong

What are the bias medical professionals have? The more a patient says he’s in pain, and the less they’re believed (it’s almost an auto protecting factor: we shut down our empathy and it conducts us to underestimates the pain, and this is terrible bc the more you’re in pain, the less you’re going to be actually taking care of!) 

The logic and chaos of pain: either persistence of a physical issue or malfunctioning of nervous systems In a western, there is a tendency to have pain representation when an arrow gets in the flesh, then when it’s extracted, but we mostly won’t even blink when the character just isn’t in pain anymore bc we have that representation of pain being linked to trauma. (whumpers, I think there is where we have something to say: we actually understand the role of pain after the trauma)

And knowing that pain is linked to something is a very relieving factor for most patients. Thus the known placebo effect: if we actually say to patients that there is a cause to their pain, they almost always have better results with pain management! 

Placebo also works the other way around peeps, if you think that smtg is going to be painful, oh boi. It’s gonna hurt like hell. Like more than it should... you get the hint

The human mind is fascinating 

[comicteaparty]

March 16th-March 22nd, 2020 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party week long chat that occurred from March 16th, 2020 to March 22nd, 2020.  The chat focused on The Phoenix by Bri de Danann.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB START!

Hello and welcome everyone to Comic Tea Party’s Book Club~! This week we’ll be focusing on The Phoenix by Bri de Danann~! (https://www.bridedanann.com/thephoenix)

You are free to read and comment about the comic all week at your own pace until March 22nd, so stop on by whenever it suits your schedule! Discussions are freeform, but we do offer discussion prompts in the pins for those who’d like to have them. Additionally, remember that while constructive criticism is allowed, our focus is to have fun and appreciate the comic!

Whether you finish the comic or can only read a few pages, everyone is welcome to join and chat with us!

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 1

1. What did you like about the beginning of the comic?

2. What has been your favorite moment in the comic (so far)?

3. Who is your favorite character?

4. Which characters do like seeing interact the most?

5. What is something you like about the art? If you have a favorite illustration, please share it!

6. What is a theme you like that the comic explores?

7. What do you like about the comic’s story or overall related content?

8. Overall, what do you think the comic’s strengths are?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

I'm really loving Cassidy so far - her confidence is infectious! One thing I'm interested in learning more about - the worldbuilding exposition we're given during the intermission. Like, it paints the Alliance in a REALLY positive light... which makes sense, because contextually this is an Alliance-produced ad/propaganda piece. So, I'm curious to find out what the actual story of Marketplace is.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Just started reading from the beginning..."You need a blue cat in every scifi creation" is making me feel very called-out right now, heh.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Aaaand the cat-guy runs up stairs on all four feet, that's a good touch

I wish a lot of these pages were bigger, or at least had the action spread out a bit more! Like, on this page https://www.bridedanann.com/pg-13-chapter-1 the "And...associate" is a very funny beat, but there's not enough space to put the speech bubbles one-after-the-other, so they read out-of-order and you lose the rhythm of the joke

That overhead shot of the city streets, too -- it's great, cool evocative setting, neat glowy future architecture, solid anatomy and a good feeling of motion with the figure -- so I wish the whole thing had more room to breathe.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I will second that criticism about the bubble order

Also on the topic of criticism, I don't know if the author already knows this or not, but the formatting is a bit messed up on mobile and you have to scroll a lot to reach the page(edited)

BriDanann

Thanks for the layout critique! It's something I've noticed and have tried to fix in my writing and bubble placement in subsequent chapters! I am still learning but I'm glad you like the setting and action! Also, for the mobile viewing on the site I am aware that it is messed up. Squarespace is honestly trash at setting up for mobile viewing, I've tried to finagle it but it won't stack neatly... this is why I put it on tapas and Webtoon, they are set up for mobile and it makes it much easier. Sorry for that inconvenience! I am looking into getting a better site for the home of my comic

RebelVampire

Something I like about the beginning of the comic was it just kind of defied my expectations. Like from the cover I was expecting something a bit more light-hearted, maybe even philosophical. And then nope, it's a space adventure. Yet at the same time I still get some of those beautiful more whimsical shots in the art, and it's an interesting combination. As for favorite scene, definitely https://www.bridedanann.com/pg-15-chapter-1 A very light comedic moment that takes the normal graceful leap of faith and turns it into what it would actually be like in real life for most people. Gotta love that subversion. Favorite character right now is Arerio. As the newcomer to the crew, I just connect with Arerio the most right now, plus I'm invested in Arerio's sort of bodyguard defense roll for the crew. Means Arerio is gonna get them spicy action scenes. So far, I've enjoyed seeing Cassidy and Arerio interact the most. I like that Cassidy is both frank with Arerio while also pushing Arerio to do crazy things like jump off random buildings. I kind of feel too that, again, as the newcomer, their lack of established relationship makes what will develop for it have higher stakes, vs. the people Cassidy has clearly known for a long time.

What I liked about the art most is the spacescapes. Beautiful color choices and blending, such as https://www.bridedanann.com/pg-1-chp-2 And like, if you're gonna have a space adventure, having great spacescapes like this is fantastic! Insofar, I like that the comic seems to be exploring authority and trust and what people do when they no longer trust the people in charge. While I don't have a favorite moment yet, I do feel this is a very important topic these days to talk about, as more and more young people are growing up unsure if they can trust authority figures. As for the story content, I've really enjoyed the world-building. Like that Intermission part was really right up my alley, and I enjoyed how expansive the world is yet balanced to not bring up the world at every turn in the main story. It makes for a good setting for space adventures. For the comic's strengths, I'm gonna say a combo of the world-building, the creativity in the world-building, and the effort put into the spacescapes. All together, these just make the space part of the space adventures seem more interesting, which surprisingly not every story nails in that regard.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

How much control does Squarespace give you over your CSS? If you can edit that, it would be really easy to do things like make the little spaceship-graphics disappear completely in mobile view, so readers don't have to scroll past them. (A host with a Wordpress installation would give you total control over the CSS. Switching would take some effort, the benefits might or might not be worth it for you, but it's probably worth looking into it and seeing what you think.)

Back to the comic itself -- just got through chapter 1, and, aha, this is an Oppressing AIs Who Want To Be Free kind of Space Empire? Plus, this narration about a planet being "discovered" and happily "added" to the Alliance -- even though it already had native residents, and the Alliance apparently decided to rename it without their input -- is...chirpily ominous.

Chapter 2 cover: oooh, is that a plant-person I see?

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 2

9. Given the comic describes itself partially as a “found family” story, how do you think events in the comic will bond the characters into a family? What obstacles will the characters go through that challenges their relationships, and what is the overall message about family?

10. Why is The Phoenix’s AI being hunted by the Alliance? Further, why are Cassidy and crew seemingly risking themselves to protect the AI from the Alliance? Which side is right in this situation?

11. Why and/or how do you think Cassidy wound up on the Alliance’s bad side? What about Arerio – why doesn’t Arerio trust the Alliance either? Overall, do you think we as the audience should trust the Alliance?

12. What aspect of the world-building so far do you think will become relevant to the events of the story – especially in regards to Cassidy’s crew’s activities? How will the addition of Arerio change how the group operates from what has been revealed so far about their activities?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Well, the Alliance is definitely evil, and Cassidy said AI Rights. Remains to be seen whether it's a general "the AI wants to have free will and not be controlled by authoritarian programming" issue, or something specific like "the AI refused to carry out a specific mission." I thought it was the ship's AI, given that it's not described as an android/robot/etc -- but now we've seen it enter the scene in a humanoid body, so I wonder if the issue is "it experienced mechanical dysphoria while ship-shaped, and the oppressive space empire wouldn't allow it to switch to a new body."

RebelVampire

From initial impressions, I get the feeling all the main cast are outcasts in some ways, at least as far as the Alliance goes. And I think that along is will what bond the characters, since regardless of events, it can always come back to "at least were outcasts together." As for obstacles though, I kind of feel like there's bound to be personality conflicts and while they might all agree the Alliance sucks, at the end I feel each choice Cassidy makes is gonna divide the crew in some way. As for overall message, though, I think it's that family can be anyone and you're not just stuck with the family or even birthplace you were given. Go to where the people who care about you is. As for why the AI is being hunted, not entire sure, but I'm sure a lot of it is just its an AI. People tend to be extremely fearful of the idea of AI or AI that isn't under control. I mean, there's a reason this is a common theme in sci-fi. So for all intents and purposes, I think a large part is just AI = danger to the Alliance. As for why Cassidy and crew are risking their lives, it's probably just they see the AI as a person, not some hardened criminal threat. As for whose side is right, probably neither in my personal opinion. XD They're two extremes that fail to consider the other point of view.

I get the feeling that Cassidy was probably a bit too free-spirited and rebellious for the Alliance's liking, so they outcasted her and snowballed the whole thing. In regards to Arerio, I feel like he witnessed something horrible and just noped outta the situation. I don't think we should trust the Alliance as an organization. Maybe individual people in it, but the whole organization is surely corrupt. I've talked a bit about the world-building I think, but I want to mention again I actually enjoy the Intermission the most. Really gave some context to the story. I kind of feel Arerio is gonna cause Cassidy to take more risks. Cause there is less of a need to be careful if you've got muscle. And while this may increase good deeds, it will inevitably put them in more dangerous as they become more infamous.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

The Intermission was hosted by an AI with some kind of official role, so it's definitely specific to AI that don't "follow the rules" in some way. Details to be revealed, I'm sure. And if one extreme is "I am definitely a person" while the other extreme is "You are definitely not a person", that's not a situation where you should try to consider each other's views and find a truth somewhere in the middle! You gotta stand up for the person, insist that they deserve the same human rights (...sapient rights?) as everyone else.

RebelVampire

I don't really view this as an argument of definitely a person vs. not a person for this story personally. I mean I'm sure that's in there. But I think this is more about "AIs are safe" vs. "AIs are dangerous"

Calliope Ψ ^,^

AIs will absolutely be deserving of rights. Their danger notwithstanding, it would be unethical to withhold inalienable rights from a sentient being simply based on their being digital instead of electrochemical.

RebelVampire

Just in case anyone thinks otherwise, I 100% think AIs are deserving of the same rights as people. However, I do think talking about safety is still important and to blanket say AIs are auto safe or auto dangerous are two extremes, neither of which is entirely correct. But obviously I'm basing this off my interpretation of the comic. It could shift to the people vs. not people debate, which would be a different matter to me.

Calliope Ψ ^,^

Humans are just as dangerous as AIs, that much is true, especially given how much we appropriate low-level proto-AIs to do our bidding. Though, I definitely understand where you're coming from ^^

RebelVampire

Yeah. Like i mean humans are the exact same, which is why we take precautions and have laws and enforcement to stop dangerous people. AIs should be treated in a similar respected but cautionary fashion. Just enforcement for AIs will obviously have to be different cause you can't exactly throw an AI in jail and hope for the same results.

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 3

13. What are you most looking forward to seeing in regards to the comic?

14. Any final words of encouragement for the comic?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

mathtans

Found a little time today. So quickly running through the prompts:

1. Liked the setup of meeting someone who doesn't know the plot to act as our window into things... with the twist that Cassidy and crew are actually known by reputation at least.

2. The cloaked ship angle was a good one, I didn't think of that (I was envisioning that moment in Back to the Future II when Marty steps off the roof) and wow leap of faith by Arerio.

I think that kinda shows how the Alliance is bad news. Arerio was practically willing to die instead of be captured (though presumably he figured there was an ace up a sleeve somewhere).

3. Honestly, I like Sequoia. Cassidy's a bit reckless for my tastes, Arerio didn't really ping for whatever reason, and the others we're still learning about... and here's a character who seemingly drinks water by holding hair in a cup. I gather s/he's a type of tree. Seems to hang back and observe. Liking that. Of course, I'm weird.

4. The Cassidy/Tiko felt a little annoying at first but the interaction on the bridge later helped me to realize this is just a thing they do, and I like that they can be so casual with each other. (When it's not some life and death thing!)

5. Each character's distinctly different, though maybe that's more about the background than the art. I also liked the trip up the stairs and the fall off the tower. The visuals conveyed the scale/scope to me.

6. I'm bad with themes. I suppose the idea of coming together (when faced with a problematic Alliance)?

7. The AI thing has set up a good mystery. And maybe I'm watching too much "Picard" lately, but there's different places they can go with that that others have pointed out too... seems to have been a bit of a topic so far.

(I'm fading, I'll hit a bit more tomorrow.)

(Oh, I like the little comments at the bottom of the panels. So maybe that's a strength too.)

RebelVampire

What I'm most looking forward to seeing in the comic right now is just this first mission so we can get a feel as to what the characters are involved in. That will really set a lot of the tone for the rest of the story, so it'll definitely be a positive step forward. Overall, though, I really enjoy the effort put into the comic so far, and it'll be nice to see where it is in a few months~!

mathtans

Just to hit the highlights of the last questions, continuing from last night... there's probably the idea that family is the people who stick by you more than the people you're related to. In fact it might be interesting to see who some of their parents are (assuming they're alive) and whether they approve versus got into similar trouble.

The AI is being hunted because it's mostly armless. Eh heh... I'm wondering if maybe it's obsolete and refused upgrades or something? But maybe Cassidy and team are able to prevent any viral takeovers, the Alliance simply isn't listening? (That got a bit random but I don't think it's been pitched already.) And "right" is probably somewhere in the middle.

Alliance, as others have said, is probably shady (not the least of which because of the art portrayal?). But I guess there's some reason they're still in charge. ("Firefly" comes to mind, not because I was ever one who watched it, but because I think they were in a similar situation? I could be way off base.)

I liked the thought (I think it was Rebel) of the crew getting riskier now that Arerio is there. Though they seem a bit free spirited anyway, so it might be more a case of not raising their guard as much as they have before.

Anyway, I'd be looking forward to a bit more of the secondary characters (like Sequoia) as the twist of their mission (isn't there always a twist?) becomes apparent. Best with it!

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB END!

Thank you everyone so much for reading and chatting about The Phoenix this week! Please also give a special thank you to Bri de Danann for volunteering the comic and creating it! If you liked The Phoenix, make sure to continue to support it via some of the links below!

Read and Comment: https://www.bridedanann.com/thephoenix

Bri’s Redbubble Shop: https://www.redbubble.com/people/bridanann/shop?asc=u

Bri’s Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/bridedanann

Bri’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/BriDanann

[world-of-ryan]

Pasted interview here:

New Amsterdam’s season one ended with an epic cliffhanger, with Ryan Eggold, Freema Agyeman and Janet Montgomery’s characters all involved in a tragic crash that showrunners have promised will see main characters die.  

Based on the true story of Eric Manheimer’s time at Bellevue Hospital, the series follows Dr Max Goodwin as he becomes the medical director of New Amsterdam and aims to reform the way the system works by tearing up the rule book. The show isn’t afraid to focus on telling real stories and struggles, and – much like This Is Us – isn’t afraid to make its audience cry. But how do the cast keep things relaxed on set when the subject matter gets heavy, who is the biggest joker on set – and how do Ryan and Freema build the wonderful chemistry between Max and Helen? Metro.co.uk sat down with Ryan, Freema and Janet to find out that and more. 

New Amsterdam cast still don’t know who died at the end of season one:

‘I still don’t know [who has died],’ says Janet. ‘It still could be me.’ However, maybe the cliffhanger is actually a ruse to allow the show to pivot to a whole new genre. ‘My theory is there is different definitions of the word die,’ says Freema. ‘Tyler and I were in San Diego Comic-COn and everyone was asking why a medical show is at a sci-fi convention and I said “just you wait for season two”.’ 

Season one’s cliffhanger did leave the cast with concerns though: 

‘They said “oh someone is going to die” and I said “don’t be cute, do I need to look for a new job?”,’ reveals Janet. ‘The show had developed this reputation for being something that made you feel, certainly people were getting emotional but it was cathartic and it became positive,’ adds Freema. ‘But then that last one I don’t think left people feeling very hopeful. It felt like a change in direction for the show and being so successful in the run-up to that, it was a shock. “Oh, how will everyone feel about that?” ‘But you can’t keep everything the same, you need to mix it up, life is full of unpredictability and I think it’s stronger for it.’

New Amsterdam’s cast is as important as the script:

Ellen Pompeo recently revealed that she found the first few years on Grey’s Anatomy’s set ‘toxic’ which is something the New Amsterdam cast acknowledge was one of their biggest fears. Signing on for a show without meeting your cast mates can leave you, says Ryan, ‘screwed’ if you don’t like the cast. ‘[The cast is] everything, it’s as important as the material itself,’ he adds. ‘I wanted to do the show but they had not cast Ryan and they didn’t know who would be Max, number one on the call sheet,’ reveals Janet. ‘I was nervous. Hopefully, they’re good actors but more than that, they set the tone for the whole show and if they’re not a nice person then it can make the whole experience really toxic.’ Luckily Janet and Ryan vaguely knew each other as they had mutual friends and spent time in what Ryan calls a ‘strange little scene’ in LA when they were ‘babies’, while Freema and Anupam ‘had the Sense8 connection’.

Tyler Labine is the joker on set – but Ryan is also a ‘naughty boy’: 

Tyler’s name is called out by Ryan, Freema and Janet all at once, but then Ryan continues: ‘But also Anupam and Jocko and also Freema.’ Freema disagrees though, and reveals she calls Ryan ‘a naughty boy’ on set. ‘He’s always making mischief and you turn around and he’s in the corner laughing and it’s adorable! But the crew as well, you can wander off and find someone and have a talk about their weekend, and it’s nice, it’s so relaxed.’

New Amsterdam becomes a disaster when all six are on set at the same time: 

‘When the six of us are in a scene it’s a disaster, we can’t stop joking because we have so few opportunities for all six of us to be in the same scene,’ says Ryan. But the cast all meet up socially outside of filming hours – when they can find a date that works for everyone. ‘We’ll have a group chat and it will be like “okay let’s do dinner this Wednesday” but then someone is working late and it’s really hard to get all of us together at the same time,’ reveals Janet. The cast rotate who will cook dinner and it turns out Janet’s traditional English roast dinner is a winner among the cast. ‘Her nut roast is the best thing, I am obsessed,’ says Ryan’.

Max and Helen’s chemistry is built by Ryan and Freema simply through trust: ‘This is one of the only professions in the world where you are expected to trust your coworker so quickly, and so freely and so implicitly,’ says Freema. She calls the set of New Amsterdam ‘a permissive environment where you can be honest and say “a) I don’t know how to play this scene, can we play or talk about it” or “b) I have an idea and do you mind if I voice it?” so that trust has been there from day one’. Ryan has another theory though, joking: ‘We have a good snog in the closet before every scene.’

Ryan would be ‘disappointed’ if Max and Helen had an affair:

Ryan previously admitted that he wouldn’t want to see Max cheat on his wife Georgia, a supporting character in the show. However many fans ship Max and Helen, and when asked how he would feel about the possibility of the pair hooking up, he admits he would be disappointed but trusts the writers enough to believe they would never take him there. ‘Maybe that would happen but I don’t see the writers writing something overly simplistic whatever it is,’ he says. ‘If it was very predictable and he has an affair with someone I would undoubtedly be disappointed, but I don’t see them writing that, and nor do I think that is reflective of their relationship. ‘I don’t think Helen is the kind of women who would either.’ ‘But it’s interesting the fans are connecting with that, they can see the complications,’ adds Freema. ‘So many of us are in relationships and yet you have friendships outside of them that aren’t black and white and that’s part of life,’ suggests Ryan.

New Amsterdam is ‘reflective of society right now’: ‘Art is something that is so reflective of society right now and it felt nice to be part of something furthering those discussions, people are talking about things that are pertinent,’ says Freema. ‘And the diversity. This is good important work.’ ‘For me I was excited it was based on a true story and a true person,’ reveals Ryan. ‘David wrote an incredible script that I responded to, and it was a hopeful note – yes, the system is larger than the individual and its broken but that you can affect change – which I think is easy to forget that, so it’s an inspiring story.’ As for Janet, she loved the script but knew that when she met the show runners she ‘would be happy to go to work with them every day’.

New Amsterdam’s cast love seeing the fan excitement: ‘I love reading the comments from people,’ says Freema. ‘”So excited for Friday, can’t wait, three more days”, and it’s like Christmas – not saying we’re like Christmas – but it’s that thing where you just go “I’ve got a date I am looking forward!”‘ 

New Amsterdam season one is available on Amazon Prime now.

[rajinedgeofdarkness]

Update 4/20/19

Unfortunately the remainder of graduate school has left me with no free time let alone any energy to do anything with my graphic novel or any other art related endevours in general.  Forced to focus strictly on my thesis and defense preparation right now.  I’m defending my Masters in just. little under a month.  After which I’m making myself take a recovery month to not do anything unless absolutely necessary.  Than my time will be taken up again by trying to land a career somewhere, moving out, wedding planning, adjusting to a new place and next chapter stuff...... yada yada yada,....etc.  Going to be a hectic remainder of the year surely. The best thing I can do in the meantime is continue writing out my ideas and compile my storyboards so I can have a very strong story foundation and approach for when I sit down and begin page illustration.  I also realize I have a long way to go still with understanding and capturing fundamentals of coloring, comic building, and human anatomy and just finalizing designs for characters and settings (many of which I still have not begun).   Overall my graphic novel despite all the brainstorming and idea progress still is far from where it can be captured officially on paper for public viewing.  I feel I bit off more than I could chew with my original schedule of starting page illustration in June 2019.  Graduate school is taking longer than expected and I have to put that first as well as my science based career goals before I can move forward on my freelancing and REOD goals.  Keep in mind, in no way am I giving up on this project..........at least not yet.  I’ve put too much thought and excited energy into it since high school (12+ years ago).  I want to see it begin and end the way I’ve imagined.  Unless life stuff gets in the way “big time” than I’m going to do what i can to work on it as often as possible.   I’m a person of many interests and goals (some of which I never finish let alone start) so I don’t want this to become one of those projects I start, but never complete.  I also realize i want to do as much as possible in life be it related to envuronmental research, geeky fixes, crafting, trying things I’ve wanted to try for like forever (eg. archery, fencing,.....).  I’m really looking forward to graduating and officially starting my life, but it will come with so much that will take away from this project, but not entirely.  Giving myself a couple of decades for it for a reason, because I know my daily life will be full of a lot of different things and in no way do I expect to spend hours a day on this unless there is literally nothing else going on and I’m super motivated.  

TL;DR Life is too busy and other things require my attention right now.  Not sure when it will slow down enough to make considerable progress on all the necessary updates I want to push.  With this in mind, my project needs to be put on the back burner at least at the current level its at now (eg. beginning page illustration officially in June).  Hoping by the end of the year I’ll be a whole new person filled with newer experiences and skills and following establishing myself in my first home with my soon to be hubby, I can focus again on this.  In the meantime I still want to make time for the story writing, background character and setting designing, and finishing my informal art classes.  

[carolinesiede]

My 2018 Writing Roundup

2018 was one of those years where I felt like I was frantically treading water all year, only to look up and realize I’d actually managed to swim myself to shore. The previous two years somehow felt simultaneously tumultuous and like a plateau. At first, I thought 2018 was more of the same, but looking back it was way more of a transitional year than I realized. I’m ending the year on a higher note than I started it, which is a really nice feeling. I’m in an apartment I love, feeling a bit more stable, and I even developed the ability to do a full pushup for the first time in my life, which is by far my single greatest achievement of the year!

This was my fifth year as a full-time freelance writer, and I experienced a pretty big shift in the types of articles I wrote this year—fewer short news posts and way more long-form pieces that more truly reflect my voice and opinions. I actually didn’t realize it until creating this roundup, but good god did I do a lot of writing this year. No wonder I had some pretty severe moments of burnout. I’m incredibly proud of the volume of writing I did, although I’m also frustrated that I worked this much yet still frequently struggled to make ends meet. Thankfully, after a rocky year money-wise, I found a little more stability towards the end of the year. Here’s hoping I can carry that forward into 2019!

One of my big goals for 2018 was to immerse myself more in the world of film criticism, and boy howdy did I manage to manifest that one! I quadrupled the number of films I watched this year and filled in some big cinematic blindspots. I also began writing film reviews in a regular capacity, first at Consequence of Sound and later for The A.V. Club and Alcohollywood as well. While I’ll always enjoy writing about TV (and loved covering the shows I did this year!), TV criticism is something I kind of inadvertently fell into at the start of my career. Film has always been my first love, and I’m glad I found the courage and drive to shift into this new area of writing. It’s been lovely to start immersing myself in the world of Chicago film critics too.

But by far my biggest achievement of the year (beyond being able to do a pushup, of course!) is launching my column When Romance Met Comedy for The A.V. Club. I poured my whole heart and soul into the column, both in terms of each individual entry and in terms of shaping its overall voice and making sure to cover a diverse set of films within the rom-com genre. It’s been a lot of work (way more work than is actually cost effective for me, to be honest), but I’m incredibly proud of how the column turned out in its first year. It’s also been really lovely to get so much positive feedback, both from the commentary community as well as from my A.V. Club bosses. I started my writing career with a blog about rom-coms and I find it hilarious that it took me four years to think of actually pitching that as an idea elsewhere. I’m so glad I did, and I’m having a blast planning out my slate of films to cover in 2019. (If you want to stump for your favorite, drop me a line on Twitter!)

With that, I’ll leave you with wishes for a Happy New Year and a roundup of all the major writing I did in 2018. If you enjoyed my work this year, it would mean a lot if you would support me on either Kofi or PayPal. Or just share some of your favorite pieces with your friends!

OP-EDS

My my, what the hell is up with the Mamma Mia! timeline?

A timey-wimey guide to the modern era of Doctor Who

Star Wars: Episode IX can fill Leia’s absence by embracing its forgotten queen

From femme fatale to complex superhero: The evolution of the MCU’s Black Widow

All the songs from The Greatest Showman, ranked

WHEN ROMANCE MET COMEDY

Like the best romantic comedies, Bridget Jones’s Diary is about more than just falling in love

Bringing Up Baby and the screwball comedies that delivered romance via pratfalls

After When Harry Met Sally, almost every rom-com tried to have what Nora Ephron was having

The Big Sick lovingly updated the rom-com formula with a coma and a great 9/11 joke

Something Borrowed and the phenomenon of rom-coms that hate women

In a sea of unintentionally creepy rom-coms, the original Overboard goes, well, overboard

My Best Friend’s Wedding rewrote the rom-com happy ending

Will Smith’s lone rom-com muddled its message about pickup artists and romance

Breakfast At Tiffany’s is so much more than a fashionable proto-Sex And The City

25 years ago, Sleepless In Seattle found the romantic hiding in the cynic

Before palling around with Ant-Man and the Wasp, Peyton Reed was Down With Love

You can dance, you can jive, you can love Mamma Mia! without feeling embarrassed

Maid In Manhattan let Jennifer Lopez’s rom-com talents sparkle

Pair Crazy Rich Asians with this Hong Kong rom-com classic

Jane Austen provided the romantic comedy some Sense And Sensibility

How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days set the stage for the rom-com’s downfall

Romantic comedies (briefly) came out of the closet with In & Out

Pretty In Pink is a far superior riff on the Sixteen Candles formula

How Stella Got Her Groove Back is a sexy vacation romp that explores the line between fantasy and reality

The Devil Wears Prada pulls off the perfect romantic comedy look, even though it really isn't one

Enchanted, or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the Disney princess

Why are Hallmark Christmas movies so addictive?

Without hope or agenda: A defense of Love Actually

SEASON-LONG TV COVERAGE

Doctor Who S11

Daredevil S3

This Is Us S2 and S3

Jessica Jones S2

Supergirl S3 and S4

FILM REVIEWS

Crazy Rich Asians has so much rom-com razzle dazzle it practically sings

Ben Mendelsohn battles suburban ennui in Nicole Holofcener’s The Land Of Steady Habits

Michael Shannon is refreshingly ordinary in What They Had, a family drama with focus issues

Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne build an Instant Family in a comedy more touching than funny

After a clumsy opening statement, RBG biopic On The Basis Of Sex effectively argues its case

Jennifer Lopez’s overstuffed Second Act offers three movies for the price of one

The Girl in the Spider’s Web: Lisbeth Slander gets an action hero makeover

Widows: An Enthralling Heist Thriller with Some Less Interesting Gangster Drama Touches

If Beale Street Could Talk: Love is a Battle, Love is a War

6 Balloons tackles the everyday agonies of the opiate crisis

I Feel Pretty takes on identity crises while having one of its own

RBG examines the complex, inspiring woman behind all the memes

Book Club does a disservice to its gifted cast of legacy stars

Set It Up is a fine, breezy rom-com for the start of summer

Ant-Man and the Wasp takes a modest quantum leap for the series

Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind looks into the late comedian’s heart

The Spy Who Dumped Me is a fun but fairly disposable summer flick

Like Father uses the Netflix format to play around with comic conventions

Madeline’s Madeline blurs the lines of fantasy and reality

Life Itself is so bizarre it has to be seen to be believed

Private Life takes a personal, observant look at late-life reproduction

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is a CGI mess with an earnest heart

The Grinch goes CGI and gets a fluffy, sincere modern update

TV REVIEWS/OP-EDS

Grey’s Anatomy’s lengthy existence isn’t a joke, it’s a strength

This Is Us is obsessed with killing its dad

Three years later, Supergirl is still telling the best female-centered superhero stories

Even without a resurrection, John Legend rises in NBC’s electrifying Jesus Christ Superstar Live

Sara Bareilles and Josh Groban lend an infectious energy to the wonderfully earnest 72nd Annual Tony Awards

Iron Fist season 2 feels like an entirely different show—which is mostly a good thing

13 Reasons Why puts itself on trial but can’t give up its worst impulses in season 2

Sex dreams and explosive rectal surgeries—it must be the Grey’s Anatomy season 15 premiere

Pre-Air Review: Dietland offers an ambitious, unapologetic taste of something new

Season Two Review: The messages of The Handmaid’s Tale season two resonate now more than ever

Season One Review: AMC’s Dietland aimed wide and mostly hit its marks in a chaotic first season

PODCAST GUEST APPEARANCES

Cinematic Universe: Men In Black

Cinematic Universe: Independence Day

Filmography: Wes Anderson comedies

Debating Doctor Who: Favorite guest stars part 1 and part 2

TV Party: Let’s Solve Westworld Season Two

TV Party: Appreciating The West Wing’s “Two Cathedrals”

Plus some other episodes of TV Party including this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one.

MINDMEET INTERVIEWS

Bernard Avle: Human Beings Are Stories

The CyberCode Twins: A Blockchain Beacon of Hope

Jason Berlin and Tour de Crypto: A Pioneering Journey to Raise Awareness for Charity and Bitcoin

And here are similar year-end wrap-ups I did in 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013.

[sirsapling]

Give me bottom!steve fics my lord. Please. If you have any.

I’m gonna assume you’re asking for fic recs and if you are YOU ARE IN THE RIGHT PLACE BECAUSE BOTTOM!STEVE IS MY EXACT JAM.

This post is gonna be long because I have a lot of fics to rec so to avoid clogging anyones time line its all under the cut. If you thought I might only have a few recs for this you are deadass wrong, this is exactly the thing I will go all out on.

Some of these may contain switching but for the most part they will be entirely Bottom!steve. Because I’m picky.

All the works are sorted by word count. *’d works are some of my particular return-to-favourites, though i’ll say I have read and adore every single work on this list. Theres also a whole mishmash of tropes from A/B/O to crossdressing so remember to check the tags.

Untitled - by @iwritestony (772 words, Ambiguous Universe)

Tony fucks Steve in front of the other Avengers

Again and Again - by Mabonwitch (808 words, MCU)

Tony rims Steve until Steve cries.

Satiety - by Sinope (956 words, MCU)

From a kinkmeme prompt: Tony builds a fucking machine designed specifically for Steve. It fucks him for hours, through multiple orgasms until he’s sore to the point of crying and begs for it to stop. Once Steve can’t come anymore, Tony unties him and plays with his sore hole. Then he fucks him. Afterwards, he licks his cum out of Steve.

Contains exactly what it says on the box.

Take - by anonymous (1k words, Ambiguous Universe)

For the cap kink prompt: Tony has been having a lot of fantasies of topping Steve, but is kind of a jerk about it. He thinks the man would never accept another man near his ass and makes a lot of jokes at Steve’s expense. Finally, after a long song and dance, the truth comes out. Steve is a virgin, has never been with anyone, and is more than happy to let Tony top in bed. Gentle sex ensues 

Playing nice - by Sharkie335 (1k words, MCU)

Tony’s been trying to be a gentleman. Apparently Steve’s tired of it.

Die Easy - by schmevil (1k words, Comic’s Ambiguous Universe)

Steve gives it up. Also, there’s a blindfold. Shameless PWP.

Merit Badges - by myadamantiumheart (1k words, Ambiguous Universe)

Tony Stark never thought he’d have a thing for boy scouts- but then he met Steve Rogers. (Steve-is-a-boy-scout-troop-leader-AU)

Beg - by captain_americano (1k words, MCU)

Tony picks up a tasty little piece, and can’t really help but go all-out.

 Last Night I Dreamt I Was In The Labyrinth - by valtyr (1k words, Ults)

“For my next trick: Ultimate fic with Steve bottoming. YOU WAIT.” - valtyr, 7th April 2009. I deliver.

Mutually Beneficial - by @cptxrogers​ (2k words, Ults)*

An ode to how much Ults Steve likes getting fucked.

Minor Inconvenience - by Tony (2k words, Ambiguous A/B/O)*

written for a SteveTonyFest prompter who wanted Omega!Steve in heat

Talk Filthy to Me - by starsandstark (2k words, MCU)

A fic in which Steve loves for Tony to say all the filthy, degrading things he’s going to do to him in bed. PWP, extremely explicit and graphic Stony sex with bottom!Steve and a sweet ending.

The Libertines - by Anonymous (2k words, MCU AU)

The Darker side of the earth’s mightiest heroes.

No Other Explanation - by attice (2k words, MCU)

Tony Stark is always onstage. He plays different parts. Even in his mind, Steve knows—because there is no other explanation for the differences in his kisses.

Taking what you want - Telaryn (2k words, MCU)

Cap struggles to reconcile his complicated attraction to Tony Stark with the simpler sexual morality of his youth. First time fic.

Your Kind of Love - by Blue_jack (2k words, MCU)

The first time they have sex, Tony isn’t really hoping for much.

Paint Job  - by @cptxrogers​​ (3k words, MCU)*

“You want me to what?” Steve looked incredulous.“I want you to detail my car,” Tony said with a smirk.

Loosening the Reins - by @ashes0909​ (3k words, MCU A/B/O)*

Everything was hazing all over now. All Steve knew was that Tony smelled so good, like mate and alpha, and his neck ached for his mark and they’d talked about this, about becoming each other’s this way, but nothing could prepare him for the need that coursed through him.

Sir, Yes Sir - by someidiothasice (3k words, MCU)

Exasperated as he was, Steve couldn’t hold back a breathless laugh even as he rolled his hips into Tony’s hand. He just wasn’t sure what he was doing wrong.Steve had spent the better part of the night bending over in front of Tony, taking every opportunity to pick things up off the floor in the hopes of Tony getting an eyeful of his ass and ending up with ideas. But it seemed the only ideas in Tony’s mind had to do with getting himself a piece of what was down the front of Steve’s pants.

Breathe - by Robin_tCJ (3k words, MCU)

Bingo square prompt is ‘breathplay’.Right now, Tony’s most favourite thing about Steve is his ass.Specifically, the way it’s currently peeking out of the bottom of a pair of white, lacy panties.The thing most people don’t know about Steve is how … adventurous he can be.

Gold “Member” - by Amuly (3k words, 616)

Tony realizes one night that the golden under-armor he pulls out of his skin with Extremis can be pulled out to cover only very specific parts of his anatomy. Namely, his penis.

He decides he really needs to share this with Steve.

How to Top a Supersoldier - by @festiveferret​ (4k words, MCU)*

Steve was causing the problem in the first place. Steve who had turned bright red and bitten his lip when he’d found out that Tony had been “cursed” with temporary super strength. Steve who had been vibrating in the seat next to Tony throughout this entire meeting.

Steve who was currently 100% rock hard, Tony had no doubt, and hiding it masterfully by clutching the shield over his lap.

What Are Friends For? - by woad (4k words, 616)

A combination of the serum and an alien virus leaves Steve in an embarrassing predicament. Luckily, Tony is there to help. AKA, the one where Tony compares Steve to a salmon.

One Last Time - by @festiveferret​ (4k words, MCU)

Tony is getting married tomorrow, but tonight…

Come on Closer - by Epiphanyx7 (4k words, MCU)

[[… porn.]]

Or, the one where Steve wants to talk to Tony about something important

Distractions - by blathering_kat, Etharei, fiarra (4k words, Ambiguous Universe)

Steve should really think before he plays with Tony’s toys..

Fever, Breathe Your Love on Me - by blue_jack (4k words, MCU AU A/B/O)* 

Steve hates his bi-annual checkup.

“Mr. Rogers?” Nurse Grace calls, and he inhales sharply before standing up to follow her into the back.

He answers the standard “how are you doing today?” and “is there anything you want to mention to the doctor?” questions, and he tries not to fidget, but it’s hard to keep still.

He’s just getting so wet.

just a taste - by Mabonwitch (5k, MCU)

Steve’s not sure what he is, but he knows what he wants.

Heat (series) - by gracerene (5k words, MCU)*

Steve and Tony share a bed and end up getting more than they’d bargained for.

Bright As You Can - by @sineala​ (6k words, Ults and Noir)*

When Steve shows up at Tony’s penthouse for one of their usual no-strings-attached dalliances, he’s sure as hell not expecting to find a second Tony waiting for him. And they’re both interested in keeping him company.

Some Kind of Madness - by Blue_Jack (6k words, MCU)

“Mmm, Steve, I love your tits.”

Open for Christmas - by @festiveferret​ (9k words, MCU AU)

It was Christmas fucking Eve, in the middle of fucking nowhere, and his car was completely fucking dead.

Fuck.

Just for the Conversation - by @msermesth​ (9k words, Ults and 616)*

Tony’s fine. He’s back on the Avengers, Steve seems to have forgiven him, and he’s building Resilient to change the world.

Then why is he so jealous of Steve’s new boyfriend?

(Or: that awkward moment when you realize you are in love with your old best friend while having a three-way with him and his boyfriend, who just happens to be your counterpart from another universe.)

Unfurl Your Gown - by theladyingrey42 (8k words, MCU)*

“I feel ridiculous.” Steve scowls at his drink and pretends he’s not shifting just to feel the skirt against his thighs.

Come on and Get Your Kicks - by Dira Sudis (dsudis) (8k words, MCU)

“At the end of the day, you just want to be my pretty little girl, is that it?”

Steve surged up to wrap his arms around Tony, kissing him with the kind of filthy fervor that Steve usually reserved for you could have died or I haven’t had an orgasm in 36 hours.

So, all right then. Hypothesis confirmed.

Never is a Promise - by Manic_intent (9k words, MCU A/B/O)*

Steve had to admit that he had some reservations about how the New Century handled the social balance between alphas and omegas.

Prima Nocta - by @sabrecmc​ (10k words, MCU AU)

This was a Thank You Fic request for Anon, who wanted to incorporate Tony’s reference in AoU to prima nocta and bottom!Steve. 

A Proportional Response - by @msermesth​ (11k words, Ults)

Steve doesn’t have a reason for cock-blocking Tony.

No reason, whatsoever.

Saddle up, buttercup - by fakesheep-luna (octavaluna) (12k words, MCU AU, WIP)*

“Are you really a mechanic or have I accidentally walked into a porno?”

As far as first meetings go, theirs is pretty damn awesome. Steve is a kinky slut, Tony may be more than a little bit of a sadist and a good fuck is a perfectly fine form of payment for emergency car repairs.

And that should be the end of it, but then again, Steve turned himself into a human guinea pig once just for the sake of getting the fuck away from his hometown. The memory of Tony’s hands on his ass is more than enough to make him ignore all the offhanded mentions of the man’s criminal record and focus on new and creative ways to wreck that old pile of junk that is supposed to be his car.

The sex is worth it. The sex is worth everything.

I won’t leave you falling - by @blossomsinthemist​ (14k words, 616)*

Tony doms for Steve, which involves some specially enhanced red rope, cock rings, two vibrators, and a lot of orgasm control. It works out. Bottom Steve, trembling and desperate to come, loving dom Tony, plenty of aftercare.

I’m going to detour for a slight second here to say just read all of blossom’s works because if I rec them all we’ll be here all day. They are stunning, by far some of the best porn I’ve ever read. I’d also recommend reading her bottom/sub tony works, because even I, a notoriously picky bottom steve only reader, loved them. Especially 20 Crazy-Romantic Creative Ways To Say ‘I Love You’ a stand out favourite fic of mine. If she ever ends up writing bottom dom steve it’ll probably kill me.

Hands All Over (The Happy Ending Remix) - by @festiveferret​​ (16k words, MCU AU) 

Tony is a mobile massage therapist, and Captain America needs to relax. What could go wrong?

Rock Splits, Records Fall Down - by Valtyr (18k words, ults)

AU at the end of Ultimates 2. Time passes. The Ultimates try to work out where they’re going and what they’re doing, with a moderate level of success

Crash Love - by @s-hylor (21k words, Ults)* 

It’s just sex. Just sex between two consenting adults who don’t have feelings for each other beyond the camaraderie that comes from being on the same team.

It’s just sex. Until it isn’t. It’s not love. Until it is.

It’s because I Need to, Not because I Want to - by Anon1Adult (24k words, 616, WIP)*

“So I’m learning forty-five minutes is about my max.” Tony said casually.

Steve smirked, “Is this you asking to hold my hand?”

“No this is me admitting I have a medical condition.” Tony replied reclined on the couch, kicking his now bare feet up on the coffee table. “Now get over here so I can hold your hand.”- - -Or the one where the Avengers are going to leave street crime to Spider-Man because rolling around in the mud apparently makes you dirty.

The Emperor’s Fury - by Valtyr (39k words, Ults AU) ** one of my two all time favourite Fics

Steve is an ex-gladiator. Tony wears a toga. Together, they litigate civil cases. Also a surprising amount of boating.

How We Met - by @festiveferret​​ (41k words, MCU AU)*

Life was pretty simple for Tony - work on his graduate thesis, hang out with his robotics projects in his unusual apartment, and fuck people for money. At least, it was simple until he met Steve Rogers.

Gift With Purchase Remix - by @sabrecmc​ (43k words, MCU AU)

Gift With Purchase Remix wherein Steve actually is a hooker. But for a Really Sympathetic Reason.

Poster Child (series) - by @sabrecmc​ (45k words, MCU)

Tony likes the new poster of Captain America. A LOT.

To Liars and Saving the World - by Magicasen (45k words, Ults)

When Tony’s life is in danger, Steve does the only thing he can do to save his teammate: he makes an honest man out of him. Steve and Tony’s sham marriage is only supposed to be a blip in their history that no one has to know about. But when they’re outed to the press, and with ghosts from his past coming to haunt him, Steve must come to terms with the idea that his own feelings for Tony might not be a lie.

This Is Not A Drill (series) - by @sabrecmc​ (51k words, MCU A/B/O)*

“Can I—can I see him? I mean meet him. Uh…welcome him to the team?” Tony clarified, probably not very well, he knew.

“Well…there’s a bit of an issue with that,” Fury said, and Tony figured this was where Fury got to whatever it was that had really forced his hand and made him call Tony in, knowing how much the man detested having to do so. “You see, well. He was suspended in the ice for nearly seventy years,” Fury began. Tony nodded along, because he could do math.

“I’m sure he has a lot of adjusting to do—“ Tony started.

“Seventy years,” Fury repeated, cutting Tony off and leaning back in his chair and making it rock slightly. “Of no suppressants.”

“Oh,” Tony managed to choke out past the lump that had suddenly formed in his throat. “Oh.”

Sweet Skin and Delicate Fabric (series) - by within_a_rustic_cafe (53k words, MCU, still adding works)

Steve and Tony embracing Steve’s love for lingerie!

Tiny Spy Assassin Steve (series) - by @copperbadge​ (89k words, MCU AU)*

An AU in which Steve Rogers was born into the modern day and never received the Serum, but managed to make it into SHIELD as a handpicked protege of senior field agent Abraham Erskine. Along with Phil Coulson, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff, Peggy Carter, and eventually Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes, Steve still tries to make a difference. Particularly in the life of Tony Stark, who picked up what he thought was an art student in a bar, and ended up dating one of SHIELD’s top agents…

Held (series) - by @ashes0909 and @festiveferret (95k words, MCU, still adding works)*

After the ice one thing remained the same: Captain America gave the orders. In the middle of battle his world narrowed to a calm and controllable moment. When they fought the super-villain of the week, he knew what to do. He knew how to get his men in and out, how to minimize the damage. On the battlefield he gave the orders.

People always assumed that would transfer to the bedroom, as well.

Never Too Late for Love - by @sineala​ (98k words, Ults)*

Steve has always believed that a soulbond is a blessing – a rare and beautiful miracle, joining the thoughts and feelings of two people forever, from the first time they touch. Steve knows he’s not going to be one of the lucky ones. He knows Gail isn’t his soulmate. But he loves her, even if they’re not soulmates, and he’s going to do right by her. After the war’s over, he’s going to marry her, and they’re going to settle down. They’ll buy a house. They’ll have children. He’ll see his family again. Maybe Bucky will live next door. It’s going to be a good life. He doesn’t need a soulbond. He’ll be fine without one.

Then Steve wakes up sixty years in the future to find that his wonderful life has moved on without him. His family is long dead. His fiancée married his best friend. And the only purpose he has left is leading the Ultimates, a misbegotten team of superheroes with flaws too numerous to count. Steve hates everything about the future – but most of all he detests Tony, flashy and flirtatious, who embodies everything Steve hates about a world he never wanted to live in.

And, oh, yeah, Steve has a soulmate after all: Tony fucking Stark.

The Prize - by @sabrecmc​ (108k words, MCU AU, WIP)*

Steve ends up as a concubine in the royal harem.

I also left a pair of prompts on the CAP-IM kink meme that got some glorious bottom Steve fills:

For (Ults) Aliens make them do it/ Fuck or Die (Dub-con/Non-con):

Untitled - by anonymous (5k words, ults)*

For Size Queen Steve: 

Larger Than Life - by @festiveferret (3k words, MCU )*

Steve wants that in him. Right now.

Size Me Up - by enkiduu (1k words, MCU)*

The thing is, nobody ever mentions how good Tony is for others. They always talk about greed and pride and how the billionaire always gets the world he wants (does he?), but nobody ever talks about how Tony always does his best to please the world (doesn’t he?).

Un(underneath, unveiled, undone) - by @salablemystic (8k words, MCU)*

The internet … knows things. Private things. Things that it has no business knowing. Things like … the (very impressive) size of one Anthony Edward Stark’s cock. Steve … can’t unlearn that knowledge.And, oh, he wants… .

I also have a few bottom Steve work’s I co wrote worth putting here:

Exposed - by @festiveferret and Myself (5k words, Ults)

Art is Long and Life is Short (series) - by @festiveferret​ and Myself (122k words, MCU AU, WIP)

There are SO many more gorgeous Bottom Steve works out there that I have no doubt missed, I would have put every single bottom steve story i’ve ever read on here if i could but sadly Im limited to my bookmarks and prior knowledge. As I stated above I have read every single one of these works, they are all amazing. Also if anyone has a bottom steve work not on here, please put it in the replies I’d love to read more.

[mst3kproject]

1105: The Beast of Hollow Mountain

I have a personal fucking grudge against this movie.  When I was… I dunno, maybe six or seven, I went to an event at the city zoo that featured a talk by paleontologist Robert Bakker (I still have the Ornithomimus he drew for me) and a screening of an absolutely, non-ironically fantastic movie about cowboys and dinosaurs in Mexico.  Since I was a child, I never bothered to remember the title of this film and so years later when I fondly remembered it, of course I couldn’t find it to watch it again. Until one day, flipping through banged-up VHS tapes at a flea market I happened across The Beast of Hollow Mountain… cowboys and dinosaurs in Mexico?  This had to be it!

I was wrong.  I was so, so wrong.  This movie has been on my Episodes that Never Were radar since the inception of this blog, and I was delighted that Season Eleven actually used it at the same time as being slightly annoyed that they used it first.  No matter.  It richly deserves everything Jonah and the bots threw at it.

There are these two guys, Jimmy and Felipe, who own a ranch. Jimmy keeps flirting with a woman named Sarita.  She’s supposed to be marrying this other guy called Enrique, who doesn’t like Jimmy and tries to undermine his ranching business so he’ll be forced to return to Texas, but of course Sarita secretly likes the smiling white guy better than the grumpy Latino. There’s also a comic relief drunk, Pancho, who might be funny if it weren’t for the fact that he’s a grieving widower raising a very young child, which kind of undercuts the joke.  We watch these people go about their lives for at least seventeen hours in which nothing much happens, and then suddenly holy shit motherfucking dinosaur out of nowhere.

The weird masked people in that one scene are chinelos dancers, which is interesting in that it gives us an exact location for this story: the little Mexican state of Morelos. This area is rather far south of the US-Mexico border and known more for its sugar cane than its cattle ranching, but it does appear to have mountains, so we’re on firmer geographical ground here than in Beginning of the End.  The masks and robes the dancers wear were originally designed to make fun of Europeans, so it’s kind of fitting that the whole display reduces Jonah, Kinga, and Max to terrified weeping.

If you only look at the first three quarters of the movie, The Beast of Hollow Mountain is an unremarkable, laid-back little western about an upstart rancher competing with the local cattle baron in both economics and love.  There are probably a lot of movies that have this as their only plot, and they do just fine for people who like westerns, I guess.  In this particular movie, however, it’s all just killing time. When I reviewed Avalanche a few weeks back I complained that all the effort getting us to invest in the characters is ultimately pointless because none of those stories will be resolved.  Beast of Hollow Mountain is slightly better, in that it does resolve the problems it has set up for the characters, but it does so via tyrannosaurus [r]ex machina.

The movie does make some attempt to hint at the existence of the dinosaur, but it’s pathetically ineffective.  There are superstitions that the mountain is haunted, and cattle are disappearing – but we see that Enrique is encouraging the rumors and possibly stealing the cows as he tries to force Jimmy to leave town.  Occam’s razor tells us that a jealous rival is a much more likely explanation than a dinosaur.  Actual evidence of the monster, such as footprints, cow bones in places cows could not possibly go, or never-believed eyewitness accounts from the local drunks, is completely lacking.

It’s pretty obvious that the reason the dinosaur never appears until the last few minutes of the film is because animation is expensive and that’s all they could afford.  That’s fine, but a lack of budget shouldn’t have gotten in the way of the foreshadowing!  You can make a respectable dinosaur footprint with a shovel and an eye for artistic detail.  Have a couple of prop guys drape a fake cow skeleton over a tree branch, and presto, instant mystery!  And if you need unlikely eyewitness accounts, you’ve already got a town drunk who could be laughed at for it, in the form of Pancho!   You could even do that stupid joke, as seen in god only knows how many other movies, where seeing the dinosaur makes him throw a bottle away and swear to never touch another drop!

It seems so obvious that a movie called The Beast of Hollow Mountain would want to include some clues to the nature of the titular beast before we actually see it, I can’t imagine why they didn’t.  Maybe they figured they were building suspense?  If so, all they actually accomplish is, as Jonah and the bots repeatedly note, making us doubt that there will be any beast in this movie at all.  By the time we get to its appearance, it seems completely wrong that there would suddenly be a dinosaur in what has so far been a story with no fantastical elements.

The other problem with only pulling the dinosaur out at the end of the movie is that, as I mentioned above, it’s a deus ex machina, an easy solution to the characters’ problems that doesn’t feel like part of the same world.  After we’ve watched the rivalry between Jimmy and Enrique for an hour, the satisfying way to end this story would be to have them resolve their differences, perhaps out of mutual love of Sarita and a desire to make her happy. You could even include the dinosaur in this, by having Enrique forgive Jimmy out of gratitude for saving his life. Instead, the dinosaur kills Enrique, leaving Jimmy free to do whatever he likes without having to address his own problems!  It’s as lazy as having him wake up at the end and discover that Enrique was only a bad dream.

When you refuse to foreshadow, you also leave the audience wondering why there is apparently one dinosaur wandering around in Mexico somewhere.  You can’t just pull one dinosaur out of the movie’s ass and not have some kind of explanation!  Eegah! had one caveman in the deserts outside Palm Springs but offered the backstory that he was the last of a clan whose lives had been greatly lengthened by the sulfur springs.  Other movies give us dinosaurs that come out of lost valleys or the centre of the earth or something.  Is that what ‘Hollow Mountain’ is supposed to be?  A portal to a lost land?  If so, I think that deserved at least a few seconds of screen time!

Outside of its lazy storytelling, I guess The Beast of Hollow Mountain really isn’t badly-made. The costumes, including those on the extras, are gorgeous, and between those and the chinelos dancers I suspect the film-makers just went to a town in Morelos and said, “who wants to be in a movie?”  The characters are all pretty one-note but the actors do their best. Mario Navarro as Panchito isn’t nearly as annoying as he was in The Black Scorpion, and Patricia Medina as Sarita does manage to seem like she’s struggling between her commitment to Enrique and her crush on Jimmy.  The worst performance in the movie is probably given by Jimmy himself, played by Guy Madison.  He does ‘smiling mellow cowpoke’ in every single scene, including those that really would have benefitted from some gravitas.

The dinosaur itself is… eh, it’s not that bad.  I feel like I’ve probably waited longer for worse dinosaurs (Lost Continent comes to mind).  I do like stop motion in general and I respect the effort that goes into creating it.  The problem in The Beast of Hollow Mountain isn’t so much the animation itself as what they chose to animate – why the emphasis on the dinosaur’s flailing tongue?  They also failed entirely to make it look as if the dinosaur is occupying the same space as the humans.  Either the puppet or the actors is always horribly out of focus, which might be an attempt to suggest depth.  If so, it doesn’t work.

Then for the closeups, they have dinosaur puppet arms and feet. These are simply terrible.  They don’t match the stop-motion creature in anatomy, movement, or implied size.

It’s pretty obvious what went wrong with this movie.  Somebody came up with a really cool idea for a popcorn flick – cowboys and dinosaurs, you guys!  Everybody else loved it, but as they tried to bring it to fruition, they realized it was also a really expensive idea, and tried to lower the cost by increasing the cowboy-to-dinosaur ratio.  By the time they got to something they could afford, there were only five minutes of dinosaur left.  As I observed in my review of Future War, sometimes movie-makers really need to just step back and say, “no, guys, this is just not gonna work.”

In this case, the ‘somebody’ with the great idea was stop motion pioneer Willis O’Brien, who wrote a script he called The Valley of Mists.  I’ve never read it but I know for a fact that The Beast of Hollow Mountain didn’t come anywhere near doing it justice – because thirteen years later, O’Brien’s protégé Ray Harryhausen did the animation for the remake, The Valley of Gwangi. You guessed it, that's the fucking awesome cowboys-and-dinosaurs movie I remembered from my youth!  If you were disappointed by The Beast of Hollow Mountain, I highly recommend giving The Valley of Gwangi a look.  It’s got action, adventure, romance, special effects so groundbreaking that the Jurassic Park franchise has actually paid homage to them more than once, and is the guaranteed cure for all your Beast-of-Hollow-Mountain-related blues!

[starglasszodiac]

SGZ Anniversary - Cassie and the Comic

The big one, the origin story!!!! And honestly one of my favourite memories to look back on. :’D I’ll be talking about both the idea itself and the evolution of Cassie’s character in what is a BEHEMOTH of a text post, so here we go!

While July 19th, 2015 is the official origin day of SGZ, it started a bit prior to that. I have this story already somewhat explained on the blog’s FAQ page, but I might as well reiterate it here:

SGZ started as an idea in the summer of 2015 after my buddy Laura showed me two webcomics: Paranatural by Zack Morrison, and Vibe by Dan Ciurczak (two comics I highly recommend, please go read them!). I loved how vibrant and beautiful their artwork was despite how different their stories were, and how wonderful the writing and humour was. My two biggest creative passions have always been visual art and writing, but ironically this was what really flicked the switch in my head to actually try comics, the literal combination of the two. Why I didn’t start sooner will forever be a mystery to me, but I suppose a lack of exposure to comics as a kid had something to do with it. Better late than never, right?

The specific launch day of July 19th is an homage to not only the creation of the idea but of the main protagonist, Cassie. After thinking “hey, I could do this!” I started wondering what I should make a comic about. While working at my retail job (on the slowest day in existence), I began to make a list of things that I liked or wanted to write a story about, and stars / astrology was one of them. I had always loved that aspect of mythology, and my affection for stars is a mystery to no one.

I worked at what was effectively a Blockbuster clone in my hometown (RIP Cherry Hill Video) and we had scrap pieces of paper that we made from old movie facings, so the first ever notes and doodles for this series exist on these scraps. I’ve still got quite a few of them, but they got a bit scattered when I moved for college. I’m hoping the rest are at my house somewhere.

I got the idea of a girl with a star in her eye, and called it the Starglass. And, well, the idea went from there! I started researching all of the zodiac signs and symbols, and drew the first (digital) drawing of Cassie when I got back home that day. Which, looked like this:

Seeing this again is not only weird and oddly nostalgic but it’s a testament to where my artistic sensibilities were prior to going to animation school. The idea for SGZ happened mere months before I was thrown into that 3-year fray of insanity so the evolution is pretty odd in places, especially how my knowledge of shape language, anatomy, etc. evolved and how my style adapted to that. I had almost NEVER drawn humans prior to going to college, so a lot of the art for this series deals with my inability to do so at the start. ^^’ The awkward phase, if you will. And as such, it is the first story idea I had that primarily focused on humans.

Looking back on it, Cassie’s character in terms of personality was pretty different than what it is now, but from a visual standpoint there’s (surprisingly) a lot that stayed. The basic idea of her hair stayed, right down to the double ponytail and orange clasps. Her freckles, eye colour and general face shape too, even if that ended up modified after solidifying her character later.

Her main colour was always red, in fact after making the headshot I remember having NO IDEA what to do for the rest of her body, so it just ended up being RED. Then I added the blue for the contrast, but I still wasn’t happy with it at the time (a perhaps subconscious origin for her blue pants though, lol). I also find amusement in the fact that my current concept for her mother Nora has her wearing blue flats much like these.

Based on the notes I have and what I remember, Cassie was older at this point (like 15 or 16 probably) and seemed to be a lot more sarcastic (this is a norm for a lot of my characters, trust me). xD Some of the first character interactions I ever wrote largely involved Cassie being sassy to one of the signs, back when a few of them were being over dramatic (looking at you SCORPIO). I cackled reading those interactions again now that my characters have changed so much. They’re not well written at all but they still let me look back to that time with fondness. :’D

What is also interesting is the progression of her name, or the fact that she didn’t have one right at the start. My earliest notes have simply Starglass or SG whenever I wrote dialogue. I started trying to think of a name, and contrary to popular belief, settling on Cassie actually had nothing to do with Cassiopeia. Though I do really enjoy the irony of that. xD It started with Cass, which could be short for either Cassandra or Cassidy, and I ended up going with Cassidy. I then changed it to Cassie, as I find the -ie suffix makes it a lot cuter. I am biased though, my name ends with it too, aha. There is a note that spells it as Cassi and for the life of me I cannot determine if that was a typo or not, but when I write fast I miss letters sometimes. The nickname of “Star” was one the table for a while too, and now that Star VS exists it’s even funnier. I specifically recall my mother telling me that she was going to suggest Star on the Facebook post I had made for the art at the time, but thought maybe it was too obvious. She was right, though this idea lives on in the nicknames that the signs end up giving Cassie later on, my favourite being “Little Star”.

While development for the story and characters started right away, it got a much welcomed jumpstart at the beginning of my second year at animation school. We were given a character design project that would span the entire year, and would require a story concept to complete all of the assignments. We were told this fact in first year to give us time to prepare over the summer, and I had just pulled an all-nighter to finish an assignment that day, but upon hearing this news I was not tired at all. Character design was already my favourite class, but this put it over the top. That beautiful feeling of inspiration that hits you is the BEST and in that moment nothing else mattered. Not even my fatigue, which I promptly dealt with the next day.

I used this as an opportunity to spend time developing the designs and story progression of all the characters, while getting marks for it at the same time! This is largely the reason I was able to launch the comic a few months after completing that year of school, as it ended up giving me full-sized references, colour schemes, and a much better idea of the story as a whole. Based on when my school years took place, I can actually track the progression of the characters pretty well through the artistic skill upgrade I was getting too.

The progression is pretty wild honestly, especially between 2015 and 2016:

(oh god these are so old help me) 

(these aren’t all of them either but I did my best jdhkfhsjkfhskjf)

From 2016 onwards I had the basic idea of her, so her colours stayed more or less the same once I actually added them. Cassie’s hair was one of the things that required a lot more iterations. I had her general idea down for a while, but when it came to making the character pack of her for my character design class, I remember having to sit down and actually figure out how her hair would work, structurally and otherwise, for that High Quality Refinement™ that was required of the project. Her older drawings had the part in her hair be in the middle, and that posed the problem of covering her eyes too much. If she was a more reserved character in any way this could have worked, but nah. I knew from the beginning she was going to be an outwardly eccentric child, one I wish I could have been when I was growing up.

Now for anyone that knows me as both a huge nerd and an artist, when it comes to fantasy stuff I LOVE armour. Absolutely love it. You see it everywhere in the things I make both inside and outside of SGZ, and I adore making themed costumes based on that (see my Feather Knights series for the most extreme example of this ever, ahahaha). So, it stands to reason that I would do the same for Cassie at some point, and I did! 

There was a particular focus on a helmet for a while too, whole plot points in fact! This helmet was, story wise, a long-standing plot point that proved difficult to change once the focus shifted. The initial idea was that the helmet belonged to Cassie’s science teacher (who is still a minor character in this as of now) and he gave it to her knowing its significance to the Starglass, thus establishing a sort of connection between Cassie’s normal life on Earth and the supernatural shenanigans that happen on the Astral Plane. The night she brings it home, she discovers that this little friend laid dormant inside:

This is Flicker. A character I’ve actually never revealed to anyone prior to now but hey, why not? The idea of Cassie having a spirit companion certainly didn’t come out of left field for me, but I wasn’t entirely sure how this character would appear, or what dynamic they would have with Cassie. I didn’t have pets bigger than a hamster growing up, so the idea of Cassie having a potential dog or cat companion would be new territory based on my own experiences. 

Flicker, as they are right now, acts as a sort of sensor for spirits that are roaming loose on Earth, and alerts Cassie to them... even if she’s not always up for a spirit hunt. They do have a backstory associated with how they appear and what their purpose is in the overall context of the world, but that isn’t revealed until much later in the story. For now Flicker is a cute little friend that cannot say much, but is devoted to protecting things, especially the Starglass. Luckily they still made the cut when it came to the helmet idea, and you should be meeting them officially pretty soon in the comic! :D

While the initial problem was getting any sort of cohesive look to the helmet or any other armour in terms of concept, I found as the story developed along with Cassie’s design, both her hair and her star sweater ended up being her two most “iconic” qualities aside from her eye, and using armour would have covered that up. 

On top of that, Cassie didn’t really end up being the type of character that would use armour, as one might expect from a character that has to fight and defend things a lot. She’s one to do things a little differently, and both her and the signs discover that, well, different works! It wasn’t a matter of her physical strength for the majority of the problems she faces, but rather strength of heart, and that’s a very personal note for me to touch on with this character. As such, nothing about an armour concept ever came out of the sketch phase:

It still makes for really interesting ideas though, so I’m sure I can work these into something else I’m working on. :’D Knowing myself, I’ll find a way. (The wings are VERY Cardcaptors though lol)

What did stay, however, were her swords:

She had at least one sword at the very beginning of this concept, but it eventually evolved into two. I find it interesting that sun, moon and star symbols were always present, regardless of what iteration these swords went through. Their official names are the Sun Star and Moon Star Swords respectively. Aside from the few doodles here and there for the zodiac weapons, this was the first appearance of any kind of fantasy weapon in SGZ. I can confirm that Cassie and the signs were going to have weapons from the get-go though, this IS something I made after all. xD

I think I also need to mention the main influences for this series, as the love for those things is very evident in my work, from the visuals to the storytelling and everything in between. Aside from my general interest in fantasy topics such as mythology and astrology, here’s a list including (but not limited to) the series that inspired the making of SGZ:

Kirby, Steven Universe, Harry Potter, Avatar: The Last Airbender & The Legend of Korra, Cardcaptor Sakura / Cardcaptors, Kim Possible, Danny Phantom, and pretty much any other show I’ve watched about surviving school while going on crazy adventures. That stuff may be cliche now but I’ll be damned if I don’t love it still.

I grew up with some of these and the rest are new, but they’re all near and dear to my heart for many reasons. I’m happy that I can put that love into something I’ve made, and share that story with the world. 

I know I’ve got a lot more ranting about this story to do in general and the comic is still going, but I want to say some special thanks to some of SGZ’s biggest supporters: 

Laura, Eleanor, and my classmates and teachers at Seneca College. This comic wouldn’t exist without you. <3

I’ll be honest, working on this series got me through some of the toughest years of my life so far, and this was one of the first times where something I made actually came to fruition in some way, and had a genuine development period that I can look back on. I’ve grown a lot as both a person and an artist since then, and doing this look back in time really solidified that for me. I have a cast of characters that I love, and now I get to tell their story. So if you’ve stayed till the end in this gigantic post, thank you. I don’t know where this story will lead me, but with any luck it’ll be somewhere in the stars. Thanks for reading, friends. <3