#i struggle with understanding comics/graphic novels in general but i want to get into them

[professional-termite]

Have you ever read the Loki: Agent of Asgard comic series? Banger. I haven't seen the newest Loki season bcuz I'm lazy, but from your posts... There are parallels. Many parallels and yet things are inversed. Like the comics end in a similar way with Loki becoming the God of Stories, but he does have his aromantic bestie with him (Verity is an icon and I love her). No real point to this, I'm just going "hmmmmmmmmm" rn

shdkfk im not big on comics but i have seen people on my dash drawing parallels. i might have to read tbh

[jesncin]

Do you have any favorite books or comics that you'd recommend?

Superhero comics or in general? I'll go in general, haha:

Our Dreams At Dusk by Yuhki Kamatani

This is the book series I'm most obnoxiously recommending people. It's influenced me ever since, Lunar Boy is a direct homage to this short series in many ways. It talks about the lived realities of being queer and Japanese in Japan- the queerphobia, the mental health struggles, the relationships (romantic and platonic) in an in depth way. It opened my eyes to what the queer narrative can be, and I'm forever grateful for it. This story is so good it actively ruins all other queer media for me, haha.

Superman Smashes the Klan by Gene Yang and Gurihiru

This is the book I most successfully recommend to people. What can I say that I haven't said many times before? A reimagining of the classic Klan of the Fiery Cross arc from the classic Superman radio show, empathetically revitalized. A story that actually acknowledges and understands Superman as a direct immigrant allegory?? Where he relates to a Chinese American family being targeted by the Klan?? I love it, and many people have picked up how I'm influenced by it! You don't need to know anything about Superman or his lore, this is a very accessible story for newbies. If you want to know why I love Superman, this is it. This story is so good it actively ruins all other Superman media for me, haha.

Salt Magic by Hope Larson and Rebecca Mock

One of my recent all time favorite graphic novels!! This story is everything I love about fairytales perfectly told in the graphic novel format. When a mysterious woman curses a family farm by turning their water supply into entirely undrinkable salt water- Vonceil must embark on an adventure to uplift the curse that hangs over her family history. Also Rebecca Mock's art is INCREDIBLE.

Homunculus by Joe Sparrow

Shortbox, the publisher for this comic, is retiring soon so order this book now! Or any books from them that you fancy (discount code here)! From the indie scene, Homunculus is a beloved short comic about a machine with growing sentience witnessing the end of the world, and what comes after. The style is lovely and the story is deceptively simple! It's heartbreaking by the end.

Berrybrook Middle School Series (Awkward, Brave, Crush, Enemies) by Svetlana Chmakova

This series is the reason I wanted to make middle grade graphic novels, and is in my humble opinion- the best in the business. Each story is self contained, with a cast of recurring characters that all go to Berrybrook middle school. It covers a wide variety of young experiences in an empathetic way that doesn't feel like you're being talked down to. It's a book series that nurtures the children it's for. I cried reading Brave, and Crush is such an important book that I'm ecstatic that kids get to read.

The Weight Of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf

If you liked my Who Is Superman: A Private Interview with Lois Lane comic and want to learn more about the historical context behind it- I recommend The Weight Of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf. It doesn't cover the same history (this book is about the 1969 race riots in Malaysia), but it's such an eerily similar incident that I felt myself reflected in it. Hanna is an incredibly vivid writer, and she handles so many topics with sensitive care. She highlights that historical events like this need to be remembered, and how fictional stories can breathe new life into an increasingly forgotten history. Also Hanna is so nice.

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (original idea by Siobhan Dowd)

One of my all time favorite novels, with hauntingly beautiful mixed media illustrations by Jim Kay. I love how this book covers grief in such a messy and fantastical way- showing how its young protagonist has larger than life feelings he's trying to contain from the looming eventual death of his mom's illness. This book is special because it was conceived originally by Siobhan Dowd as she was going through terminal cancer, in collaboration with her editor and Ness. It feels like an intimate experience, and this heavy feeling of grief carries the whole book in a memorable way.

Those are my fav books off the top of my head! Happy reading :>

[orionsangel86]

Figured I'd continue this as an ask so we don't keep debating on that poor person's post! Anyways, regarding Neil's edgelord tendencies:

What also throws me off about The Sandman Companion's rape interpretation of both Morpheus' marriage to Calliope and his relationship with Nada (it states that the women's story must be WORSE not better, than the version men tell, and pretty much the only way it could get worse is rape...) is that Neil... isn't shy about SAYING "rape" in the text. He doesn't hide what Madoc does to Calliope, nor what the book version of Desire did to Unity (which thankfully got changed to consensual in the show). So why this roundabout stuff with Morpheus? If the character being evil and abusive is supposed to be a core character trait, why relegate it to an obscure, if still canon, guide text?

My hope is that these particular edgelord interpretations are the work of the other co-author, Hy Bender. Alternately, I wonder if Neil was trying to retcon his own work at the time. I have no idea how the grimdark "Morpheus killing himself was good, actually" ending was received at the time, but I could easily see a situation where, like now, the fans look at the ending and go "yikes". Perhaps Neil was doing his best to cover and go "um well ACTUALLY you should be glad he finally offed himself, see how horrible he was!" even when it went against his original intent for those previous issues.

Like now, he might be able to look back and realize the nasty implications. But I could easily see younger-Neil as an author who just released their long-planned ending to a text scrambling for cover when it doesn't get the expected reception.

That's a TOTAL GUESS though. Like I said, I have zero idea how people felt about the ending in the 90s.

Ooof every new thing you tell me about that book makes me shudder and recoil.

Honestly I have no idea what Neil's intentions were with signing off on those interpretations, and I still struggle with understanding his intentions for the ending of the Sandman, other than the obvious being a "what NOT to do if you are feeling depressed and incapable of improving your life", which sometimes gets a bit lost amongst all the misery and angst with zero pay off throughout the Kindly Ones. Do we know what the initial reception was to the ending of the Sandman when it was first released though? Because hasn't it always been critically acclaimed highly praised and considered one of the all time best graphic novels ever published? It's Neil's Magnum Opus.

I think we have both now mentioned more than a few times that the 90s were a totally different era with a totally different mentality to today. A lot of the stuff in the Sandman comics are eyebrow raising because the different mentalities of the era are so obvious to me. The general portrayal of women in particular is pretty um... outdated and on my first read of the Calliope issue I visibly recoiled at that panel where she is raped by Madoc - because I legit had never seen something like that depicted so graphically before in that artform. But you are right to point out that if Neil wanted Morpheus to be viewed as an abuser and a rapist, then he would have just put it in the comics. Desire is a rapist, and yet people still love Desire.

The show is a much better indication of where Neil's intentions currently lie. The removal of any graphic scenes of sexual violence towards women was absolutely the right decision. Dream is a far more likeable character in the show (and I still like comic!Dream even with his somewhat cold demeanor!) I could scream all day about the absolutely brilliant changes in the Calliope episode which come across so romantic and soft that fans are legit shipping them together (which I don't think anyone can possibly do with their comic counterparts). I think the change in the Dolls House to Desire and Unity's whole situation also has huge implications for Desire's character which fascinates me. In the comic it is literally a one time thing where Desire rapes her while she sleeps and probably never considers her again outside of keeping an eye on their child as part of their scheme. The show however indicates that Desire took the time to get to know Unity, to woo her, and to enter into an apparently long term relationship with her in the Dreaming.

I 100% believe they are going to change the story in Tales in the Sand and I think that they left it out of season 1 because it's going to be a huge indication on how the show will deviate from the comics further. I hope they do away with all that stupid virginity stuff (because I'm sorry but shoving a rock up your vag to break your hymen is NOT losing your virginity and that particular part always baffles me. Dream doesn't care about virginity? Well good for him but like, she's still a virgin anyway? Otherwise you are legit stating that this poor girl lost her virginity to a slightly sharp dick shaped rock? Come on people I thought this was obvious? There are better ways to indicate to your audience that your main character doesn't have a virginity kink. Sorry for ranting about that but it really pissed me off when I first read it because it was SO STUPID).

Basically, whatever the Sandman Companion stated is gonna be forgotten about completely when the show releases its new episodes and we see show!Dream be even more the romantic hero. I think we can be confident that any modern interpretations will do away with these 90s edgelord interpretations and thats the best thing we can ultimately hope for. I won't let it tarnish my opinion of comic!Dream though, because there is more than enough evidence in the comics that contradicts some bullshit interpretation that makes no sense.

[new-sandrafilter]

How Timothée Chalamet Channeled The Blockbuster Pressure of Leading Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Dune’ Back Into His Role – Venice Q&A

DEADLINE: In a few days Dune will premiere at the Venice Film Festival. You first met Denis Villeneuve about the role in May 2018 and started shooting in the early half of 2019. It was always going to be a long journey, but the pandemic stretched it even further. How does it feel to have finally arrived at this moment?

TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET: You know, I like to think that with every film I’ve done, whether it’s Call Me by Your Name or Beautiful Boy, The King, or Little Women, the character you play is almost a piece of your flesh. And that’s always true, but simply from the perspective of how long the shoot for Dune was, and also the arc that Paul Atreides is on, as well as the huge love and almost biblical connection that so many people have for the book and the original film, it really felt… tectonic, if that’s the right word for it. Just getting to this finish line feels like: phew.

And independent of what the film is now, and what it has become, the experience of making it was I was put in such a safe environment, which you can never take for granted as a human, as an actor, but especially when you’re just starting your career, and when this is the first film of this size you’ve ever done.

To get to work with Denis on it, to get to work with someone of his caliber, let alone on a book that he considers the book of his youth and one of the things he has connected to the most… When he would have it in his hands on set, his body language would become that of a fan; of a kid who had fallen in love with the book at home in Montreal. And when all the kids around him were wearing hockey jerseys with their favorite players’ names on the back, this was a kid wearing a jersey that said ‘Spielberg’ on the back.

For it all to come together, especially with the added challenge of the pandemic, it has all combined to make this moment feel especially spicy [laughs].

DEADLINE: The entire ensemble will show up in Venice.

CHALAMET: Right. And I just can’t believe it; Jason Momoa has the number one film on Netflix right now with Sweet Girl, which I just watched. And since we shot, Zendaya has had all this success with Euphoria and Malcolm & Marie. Just to be part of this cast, period, let alone as one of the title characters, it’s really the shit you dream of.

And let me not forget, too—and I know I’ve told you this before—that The Dark Knight was the movie that made me want to act. That movie had a score by Hans Zimmer, and he has done the score for Dune. And it’s almost not what you’d think. It’s totally appropriate and excellent for the movie, but he has somehow managed to do something subversive, in my opinion. It’s a pinch-me moment all over.

DEADLINE: So, take me back to the start. Is it true you had a Google alert set up to track the latest news on this project before you were ever cast?

CHALAMET: Yeah, it’s true [laughs]. Not right away—Legendary had the rights and was developing it—but as soon as Denis got involved, I set up a Google alert and that’s when I got the book.

In total honesty, I think my understanding of Dune at that point was from a graphic novel I’d seen at Midtown Comics when I was shopping for Yu-Gi-Oh! cards when I was about 10. The year you and I first met, when I was there at Deadline Contenders with Call Me by Your Name, that would have been 2017 or early 2018, and Denis was there with Blade Runner. I remember I was trying to put myself in front of him as much as possible and set up a meeting with him. We had a night at the BAFTA where one of my good friends, Stéphane Bak—who’s also an actor—saw Denis across the room and was like, “Hey buddy, he’s right over there.��� So, we went over to talk to him. I kept trying to put myself in front of him, but I didn’t really get a sense of the possibility [of working with him].

I was about halfway through the book when I got the call that he was going to be the president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival, and I was in London prepping The King. He asked me if I could come out there, so I quickly busted through the second half of the book as best I could. So, like, the first half of my copy is properly annotated and full of my thoughts, and then the second half I just raced through. And then I had that meeting with him, and it was such a joy.

I’m struggling with this even now, as I’m working with Paul King [on Wonka], because he’s another guy I have huge respect and admiration for, and it’s hard to feel on a level. Not that you ever are, because as an actor you’re a cog in the machine, and you’ve got to be humble to the vision of the director. But with Denis, he was pacing around the room, throwing ideas around, in some fancy suite in Cannes, and all I could think was that a year before I was just sat on a stoop on 9th Street in the East Village or something.

DEADLINE: Was that your first time in Cannes?

CHALAMET: Yeah. Well, bizarrely, my sister would do dance camps growing up. Ballet intensive programs in a town called Mougins, which is nearby Cannes, so I spent a lot of time there growing up, but never during the festival, and not on the Riviera. To get to be there for the festival was just nuts. I went to see the Romain Gavras movie, I think, and it was just a huge joy.

I got attached [to the role in Dune] a couple of months after that, and it was nerve-wracking from the announcement, because like I said before, the fans of the book, and the fans of David Lynch version, the computer game, and everything, there’s so much love and strength of feeling. And so much of our pop culture and films and books have been derived from Dune, and all the philosophy the book. I’ve been shocked to learn how many people have a next-level connection to the book. I compare it to how our generation grew up with Harry Potter, and that one makes sense to me. But it’s cool to see with Dune also, when you actually sit down and read it… It’s not that it’s a quote-unquote “hard read��� or anything, but it’s not made to be consumed easily, I think that’s fair to say.

So, I was grateful to be working on something of this size not only with Denis Villeneuve leading it, who between Polytechnique, Incendies and Prisoners had nailed the smaller indie film across languages, and then had nailed Arrival and Blade Runner, but who, in his own words, he didn’t feel he’d made his greatest film yet. But also, to be working with this cast. I don’t know if there’s some nightmare version of a film where a young lead is not supported by the rest of his cast, where every one of them had been the leads in their own huge projects. But on this, everyone was there to support, and I think it’s because we all wanted to be foot soldiers for Denis, and I think we understood the potential, based on the script by Eric Roth, Jon Spaihts and Denis, that this could be something really special.

DEADLINE: I don’t have a connection to Dune; this movie is really my first experience of the story. What strikes me is this is clearly an enormous universe—a broad canvas being painted with various families and factions and politics and mythos—but that ultimately it comes down to very elemental, human themes, and we feel them through this character you play, Paul Atreides. Did those themes help ground the experience for you?

CHALAMET: Yes, and I would give the credit entirely to Denis. He would constantly say on set that he had some opposing drumbeat or something. In my diminished intellectual standing, I didn’t understand it, but it was like some vision for the movie based on how biblical the book is that tries to tackle so much that it doesn’t tackle anything. I think he felt the need to be close to a character in it, and Paul is that guy in the book. He’s a character that is still in formation, like a lump of clay, which makes him a great figure for the audience to mirror off.

It speaks, I think, to Denis’ premonition and his directing ability that there were times when we’d move on from a shot or move on from a scene, and I swear, literally, we’d go back because Denis wanted to get something over my shoulder, or push in on my reaction, just to make sure [it stayed on Paul].

And again, it’s something where I’m pinching myself. I had the best time on Interstellar, and that was one of my favorite films I’ve ever worked on, but it was very much something where I was aware of when I had the opportunity to do real acting. And on a movie like Dune, again, one could think it would get lost in the scale and scope. But I felt every day like my plate was full.

DEADLINE: One of those themes is fear, and Paul must overcome his to become the person he needs to be. When you are number one on the call sheet on a project of this scale, and the cast list reads like an address book of Hollywood in the 21st century, and Legendary has injected hundreds of millions of dollars into this production, and it’s all falling on your shoulders, I have to imagine fear is a theme you can readily relate to.

CHALAMET: Oh yeah, and they can bleed into each other for sure—not to diminish the other work that goes in. It’s great when your life experience can inform the role. That’s not at all to say I’m on some crusade in the universe or anything, but definitely… And I had that same good fortune with The King I think. My life is not nearly as significant or as exciting as Paul or Prince Hal, but we all share an unwitting needle in the haystack feeling. On The King that feeling was because I was so new to having a career. On Dune it’s because of, as you say, just feeling the pressure of the hugeness of the project in all those different ways. Those things can absolutely inform each other.

And then there are the moments of glee that come, too, like seeing Jason Momoa running at you at a hundred miles an hour, or just getting to shoot the shit with Josh Brolin, or getting to do a scene with Oscar Isaac. I felt so supported, whether it was Rebecca Fergusson or Charlotte Rampling. When Zendaya came, it was a total breath of fresh air, and she’s one of my favorite parts of the movie. I just got really lucky, and I can’t wait to see them all in Venice.

Denis split the book in half, and the hope is a second movie will get a greenlight. That’d expand Zendaya’s role in the story.

CHALAMET: Definitely, Chani will play a huge role in the next film. I don’t know if there’s a script yet, but just based on the book, along with Lady Jessica [Rebecca Fergusson], they have a lot to do together, let’s put it like that. And Zendaya was incredible in this movie; the moment she pulls the mask down, it felt properly showstopping and powerful. I was hiding behind the camera, counting my lucky starts, because I was there in month two of the shoot and here was a total powerhouse just coming in for the first time.

And as I said before, this was before I’d seen Euphoria and Malcolm & Marie. She’s doing such incredible work and is just trailblazing her own path, and she’s so, so cool. She also happens to be in the most-watched trailer of the moment, too, for Spider-Man: No Way Home. I cannot wait for that movie, and I was there, by the way, with everybody else, clicking through the trailer frame by frame looking for clues [laughs].

[frenchy-wino-jerkface]

I wish I lived in a world where culture and arts weren't the victims of a propaganda, meant to keep the general public away from them, and drive people to mass-produced best-sellers and blockbusters instead.

You love pop music and hiphop ? Guess what, you'll probably love classical music as well. Most music halls make prices for people under twenty-five or thirty. In France, it costs 10 euros to go to a classical concert if you're my age, while it costs at least 50 to go see a pop artist live. Classical musicians are more talented, work their asses off and are mostly underpaid. They're looking to move you with the most well-written music in History. If you don't like it the first time you go, try again, and again, like you did with books. Every concert is different, you just "not having the codes needed to understand" is a load of crap. If you'd like to sing, play, or compose, you could even join a music school. You can rent an instrument at your local instrument maker, and the conservatory is mostly free in a lot of countries.

You're a fan of graphic novels, manga, graff, comics? Good news, your museums are also largely free almost everywhere in the world, and collect the most influential pieces of each era. Art schools are waiting for you, or tiny fine arts workshops ran by your neihborhood that barely cost a dime. Love reading and writing? You've been lied to, it's not either you're talented and you don't have to force yourself, or you're not talented and should give up: go to college, get into a Writing Major. Libraries also have ridiculously low fees, go borrow or buy every damn book you want, and throw away your Kindle. Don't even look at Amazon.

Wanna know what it feels like to be an artist? Work on it. Be interested, invested. Artists are trying so hard to help specialise young artists and share their crafts, but the only artists selling their products have rigged the system and made it more profitable to be less educated, make loops and call them "prods" to sing or rap on, change art schools into design schools. Classical arts are either a hobby or not profitable, and that's just unbearable. The art world is struggling all around the globe, because we are slowly making it obsolete.

Getting cultured is an act of resistance. Don't bite into the bullshit calling it elitist or unnecessary, true classical arts fanatics are just a bunch of nerds who are looking to make you love their shit. Love art, gobble art up, work on your craft, become talented artists with all the techniques you can get your hands on. And if you don't want to do that, at least properly support artists by not taking the easy road, and going out of you comfort zone.

[qqueenofhades]

I really don’t want to start a discourse™, but I want you to know that I really appreciate how you write joe and Nicky in deo volente. So many of the fics I’ve read have placed yusef in the role of more sexually experienced and less devoted to god, while Nicky is depicted as an inexperienced and virginal priest/knight/monk and so forth and so on. Your narrative of joe out there rescuing people and being faithful, while Nicky looks back on his life of gambling and pleasures of the flesh ...(1/?)

Not to say that there’s anything wrong with either, obviously. I love guilty priest Nicky and repressed Nicky and p much every Nicky. But in the vast array of fics out there, it’s rare to see the opposite. Not that you’re working in a binary morally good/religious vs. not way. Your writing in the fic is really subtle and and your characterizations reveal a lot of depth. I just think it’s cool to see Nicky, average second son of a duke, drinking and gambling and feeling terribly guilty (2/?)

Guilty about the crusades and the fucking horror of crusade 1 without being excessively devout. Just an average dude. Not some paragon of virtue (btw, I’m on chapter 2 of the fic, so I don’t know how much your characterization changes moving forward. You have a lovely ability to combine your incredible knowledge of history, your beautiful writing, and these intimate details of the characters that make them fit— fit the canon and fit the history. (3/? Shit I’m sorry this had gotten way too long)

I enjoy the way you’ve really inserted us into the quotidian aspect of history. Aaaaaanyway— the discourse that I was afraid of: I think that a lot of fans of the movie that are generating fan content (tysfm to all of you beauties, btw 🙏🙏♥️) are westerners (which is a whole nother kettle of fish) and that carries a sort of ignorance about the Muslim world in the Middle Ages and this desire to simplify Europe as “Christian” “fighters for faith” etc. (4/? Fuuuuck. One(??) more)

And when we do that, we end up as characterizing the brown people as “not that”. The thing I love about this fandom is that people are definitely down on the crusades. I feel like all the fic I’ve read has been particularly negative about those wars, but the thing I love about your fic is that you don’t just say war is bad because people died and it was despicable and this pious white dude says so and this one brown person agrees. (5/6, I see the end in sight I swear it)

Instead you give us a larger cast of Muslims and Arabs and really flesh them out and give them opinions and different interpretations of faith, and I really appreciate that. The crusades were terrible, and we know this because these regular dudes who struggle with their different faiths and lives say so. And I just. I think that’s really great. Also, I fucking love yusef’s mom. I feel like more people would be accepting of the gift in this fashion and I think she’s lovely and (god damn it 6/7)

Aaaaaaaand. The bit where yusef returns and she’s already gone breaks my fucking heart. Also the moment where he’s like “I’m not sure about Abraham’s god, but my mothers god is worth my faith”?? Just really fucking great. So. Excellent fic. Excellent characters. Excellent not-being-accidentally-biased-towards-white-Christians. That is what I came here to say. Thank you so much for your amazing stories. I love them and I love history. Sorry about the rambling. idek how I wrote so much. (7/7)

Epilogue: tl;dr: you’re great.

Oh man! What a huge and thoughtful comment (which will in turn provoke a long-ass response from me, so…) I absolutely agree that no matter what fandom, I don’t do Discourse TM; I just sit in my bubble and stay in my lane and do my own thing and create content I enjoy. And I don’t even think this is that so much as just… general commentary on character and background? So obviously all of this should be read as my own personal experience and choices in writing DVLA, and that alone. I really appreciate you for saying that you love a wide range of fan creators/fanworks and you’re not placing one over another, you understand that fans have diverse ranges of backgrounds/experience with history and other cultures when they create content, and that’s not the same for everyone. So I just think that’s a great and respectful way to start things off.

First, as a professional historian who has written a literal PhD thesis on the crusades, I absolutely understand that many people (and regular fans) will not have the same privilege/education/perspective that I do, and that’s fine! They should not be expected to get multiple advanced degrees to enjoy a Netflix movie! But since I DO have that background, and since I’ve been working on the intellectual genealogy of the crusades (and the associated Christian/Muslim component, whether racially or religiously) since I was a master’s student, I have a lot of academic training and personal feelings that inform how I write these characters. Aside from my research on all this, my sister lives in an Islamic country and her boyfriend is a Muslim man; I’ve known a lot of Muslims and Middle Easterners; and especially with the current political climate of Islamophobia and the reckoning with racism whether in reality or fandom, I have been thinking about all this a lot, and my impact on such.

Basically: I love Nicky dearly, but I ADORE Joe, and as such, I’m protective of him and certainly very mindful of how I write him. Especially when the obvious default for westerners in general, fandom-related or otherwise, is to write what you are familiar with (i.e. the European Christian white character) and be either less comfortable or less confident or sometimes less thoughtful about his opposing number. I have at times tangentially stumbled across takes on Joe that turn me into the “eeeeeeeh” emoji or Dubious Chrissy Teigen, but I honestly couldn’t tell you anything else about them because I was like, “nope not for me” and went elsewhere rather than do Discourse (which is pretty much a waste of time everywhere and always makes people feel bad). This is why I’m always selective about my fan content, but especially so with this ship, because I have SO much field-specific knowledge that I just have to make what I like and which suits my personal tastes. So that is what I do.

Obviously, there’s a troublesome history with the trope of “sexually liberate brown person seduces virginal white character into a world of Fleshly Decadence,” whether from the medieval correlation of “sodomite” and “Saracen,” or the nineteenth-century Orientalist depictions of the East as a land variously childishly simplistic, societally backward, darkly mysterious and Exotic, or “decadent” (read: code for sexually unlike Western Europe, including the spectrum of queer acts). So when I was writing DVLA, I absolutely did not want to do that and it’s not to my taste, but I’m not going to whip out a red pen on someone else writing a story that broadly follows those parameters (because as I said, I stay in my lane and don’t see it anyway). Joe to me is just such an intensely complex and lovely Muslim character that that’s the only way I feel like I can honestly write him, and I absolutely love that about him. So yeah, any depiction of hypersexualizing him or making him only available for the sexual use and education of the white character(s) is just... mmm, not for me.

For example, I stressed over whether it was appropriate to move his origin from “somewhere in the Maghreb” to Cairo specifically, since Egypt, while it IS in North Africa, is not technically part of the Maghreb. I realize that Marwan Kenzari’s family is Tunisian and that’s probably why they chose it, to honor the actor’s heritage, but on the flip side… “al-Kaysani” is also a specifically Ismai’li Shia name (it’s the name of a branch of it) and the Fatimids (the ruling dynasty in Jerusalem at the time of the First Crusade) were well-known for being the only Ismai’li Shia caliphate. (This is why the Shi’ites still ancestrally dislike Saladin for overthrowing it in 1174, even if Saladin is a huge hero to the rest of the Islamic world.) Plus I really wanted to use medieval Cairo as Joe’s homeland, and it just made more sense for an Ismai’li Shia Fatimid from Cairo (i.e. the actual Muslim denomination and caliphate that controlled Jerusalem) to be defending the Holy City because it was personal for him, rather than a Sunni Zirid from Ifriqiya just kind of turning up there. Especially due to the intense fragmentation and disorganization in the Islamic world at the time of the First Crusade (which was a big part of the reason it succeeded) and since the Zirids were a breakaway group from the Fatimids and therefore not very likely to be militarily allied with them. As with my personal gripes about Nicky being a priest, I decided to make that change because I felt, as a historian, that it made more sense for the character. But I SUPER recognize it as my own choices and tweaks, and obviously I’m not about to complain at anyone for writing what’s in graphic novel/bonus content canon!

That ties, however, into the fact that Nicky has a clearly defined city/region of origin (Genoa, which has a distinct history, culture, and tradition of crusading) and Joe is just said to be from “the Maghreb” which…. is obviously huge. (I.e. anywhere in North Africa west of Egypt all the way to Morocco.) And this isn’t a fandom thing, but from the official creators/writers of the comics and the movie. And I’m over here like: okay, which country? Which city? Which denomination of Islam? You’ve given him a Shia name but then point him to an origin in Sunni Ifriqiya. If he’s from there, why has he gone thousands of miles to Jerusalem in the middle of a dangerous war to help his religious/political rivals defend their territory? Just because he’s nice? Because it was an accident? Why is his motivation or reason for being there any less defined or any less religious (inasmuch as DVLA Nicky’s motive for being on the First Crusade is religious at all, which is not very) than the white character’s? In a sense, the Christians are the ones who have to work a lot harder to justify their presence in the Middle East in the eleventh century at all: the First Crusade was a specifically military and offensive invasion launched at the direct behest of the leader of the Western Roman church (Pope Urban II.) So the idea that they’re “fighting for the faith” or defending it bravely is…

Eeeeh. (Insert Dubious Chrissy Teigen.)

But of course, nobody teaches medieval history to anyone in America (except for Bad Game of Thrones History Tee Em), and they sure as hell don’t teach about the crusades (except for the Religious Violence Bad highlight reel) so people don’t KNOW about these things, and I wish they DID know, and that’s why I’m over here trying to be an academic so I can help them LEARN it, and I get very passionate about it. So once again, I entirely don’t blame people who have acquired this distorted cultural impression of the crusades and don’t want to do a book’s worth of research to write a fic about a Netflix movie. I do hope that they take the initiative to learn more about it because they’re interested and want to know more, since by nature the pairing involves a lot of complex religious, racial, and cultural dynamics that need to be handled thoughtfully, even if you don’t know everything about it. So like, basically all I want is for the Muslim character(s) to be given the same level of respect, attention to detail, background story, family context, and religious diversity as any of the white characters, and Imma do it myself if I have to. Dammit.

(I’m really excited to hear your thoughts on the second half of the fic, especially chapter 3 and chapter 6, but definitely all of it, since I think the characters they’re established as in the early part of the fic do remain true to themselves and both grow and struggle and go through a realistic journey with their faith over their very long lives, and it’s one of my favorite themes about DVLA.)

Anyway, about Nicky. I also made the specific choice to have him be an average guy, the ordinary second son of a nobleman who doesn’t really know what he’s doing with his life and isn’t the mouthpiece of Moral Virtue in the story, since as he himself realizes pretty quick, the crusades and especially the sack/massacre of Jerusalem are actually horrific. I’ve written in various posts about my nitpicking gripes with him being a priest, so he’s not, and as I said, I’m definitely avoiding any scenario where he has to Learn About The World from Joe. That is because I want to make the point that the people on the crusades were people, and they went for a lot of different reasons, not all of which were intense personal religious belief. The crusades were an institution and operated institutionally. Even on the First Crusade, where there were a lot of ordinary people who went because of sincere religious belief, there was the usual bad behavior by soldiers and secular noblemen and people who just went because it was the thing to do. James Brundage has an article about prostitution and miscegenation and other sexual activity on the First Crusade; even at the height of this first and holy expedition, it was happening. So Nicky obviously isn’t going to be the moral exemplar because a) the crusades are horrific, he himself realizes that, and b) it’s just as historically accurate that he wouldn’t be anyway. Since the idea is that medieval crusaders were all just zealots and ergo Not Like Us is dangerous, I didn’t want to do that either. If we think they all went because they were all personally fervent Catholics and thus clearly we couldn’t do the same, then we miss a lot of our own behavior and our parallel (and troubling) decisions, and yeah.

As well, I made a deliberate choice to have Nicky’s kindness (which I LOVE about him, it’s one of my favorite things, god how refreshing to have that be one of the central tenets of a male warrior character) not to be something that was just… always there and he was Meek and Good because a priest or whatever else. Especially as I’ve gotten older and we’ve all been living through these ridiculous hellyears (2020 is the worst, but it’s all been general shit for a while), I’ve thought more and more about how kindness is an active CHOICE and it’s as transgressive as anything else you can do and a whole lot more brave than just cynicism and nihilism and despair. As you’ll see in the second half of the fic, Nicky (and Joe) have been through some truly devastating things and it might be understandable if they gave into despair, but they DON’T. They choose to continue to be good people and to try and to actively BE kind, rather than it being some passive default setting. They struggle with it and it’s raw and painful and they’re not always saints, but they always come down on the side of wanting to keep doing what they’re doing, and I… have feelings about that.

Anyway, this is already SUPER long, so I’ll call it quits for now. But thank you so much for this, because I love these characters and I love the story I created for them in DVLA, since all this is personal to me in a lot of ways, and I’m so glad you picked up on that.

[mellowmoonn]

Writing Help - Genres

As a writer, you really need to know what age group you intend to write for. Depending on the age, you may need to censor yourself or glaze over some heavier topics. Think of ATLA and how they never actually stated Jet died but instead insinuated it. Or, in YA novels when characters get close and the narrator skips over the most NSFW parts of the sex scene. 

Disclaimer: Keep in mind I’m writing from my knowledge and what I remember reading at a certain age. Some research has been done for accuracy. I also don’t enjoy adult novels, particularly because they tend to be too much for me (...there tends to be lots of NSFW). With that said, forgive me if the examples aren’t amazing.

Who Do You Want to Write For?

Understanding who you want to write for makes the process much easier. If you want to write horror books for children because there aren’t enough of them, great. You can then proceed to write down your ideas and focus on the scare factor as well as how detailed you want your descriptions to be. Less is more, especially for younger kids. A single sentence in middle-grade horror can disturb even me. And trust me, most things don’t bother me.

Once you know what to write for, you can study your demographic more. By that, I simply mean what people your age are interested in. This isn’t saying you cannot write what you want to for who you want to write it for, but looking at the demographics will get your book(s) out there. For example, children might not enjoy or understand romance but gravitate more to adventure, comedy, slice of life, or superhero stuff. 

What Do These Genres Entail?

You need to know what you’re getting yourself into when you write, so I’m going to give you a shortlist of genres and the content that is appropriate for each. Assuming most aren’t writing for children younger than 5, I won’t include those genres.

Remember to do your own research.

Children (5-8)

Due to childhood development, this genre varies quite a bit. I’ll generalize for simplicity.

Children between the ages of five and eight typically begin to independently read. Development varies, but using simpler language and including pictures aids them in taking in the content and understanding it.

From younger to older children: picture books, comics, short chapter books. It depends on their development and interests as well. 

Even in picture books, these are usually longer than for younger children. They never exceed 100 pages and often have larger fonts.

Characters are usually animals or younger children (some with their parents).

Book examples: Pete the Cat, Poppleton, The Magic Tree House, Fantastic Mr. Fox

Middle Grade (8-12)

Pictures are still relevant sometimes, but it depends on the book. Most kids this age can visualize and don’t need much unless it’s something like fantasy or horror (Coraline has an edition with pictures as well as a disturbing graphic novel).

Slang begins to be included at this age and more mature language. Depending on the book, simple swears like “crap” or “damn” may be used. Insults begin to pop up as jokes and body humor are more appropriate at this age.

Sometimes romance makes its way into these books, but kids these ages still gravitate to things that aren’t so “gross.” 

Middle-Grade books begin to exceed that 100-page mark and chapter book series with a logical plot and/or order comes about. 

Characters are typically human, but supernatural creatures are popular in novels in this age group.

Book examples: Coraline, Ramona’s World, Because of Winn Dixie, Charlotte’s Web, Goosebumps

Young Adult (12-18)

You (typically) won’t catch pictures in a YA book, rather vivid descriptions. The only time pictures are in books is when maps are included. Pictures are an author’s choice.

YA is also a very large genre with varying developmental stages. Some books gravitate more to middle grade, others new adult.

The genres of books boom in YA because so much more can be done. You will catch books that are strictly romance, others crime, and even mystery. 

Swearing is no longer avoided in YA novels. Characters will openly say fuck a thousand times and no one looks twice. 

YA books tend to have deeper conversations than books for younger audiences. Killing off main characters isn’t looked down upon. These books also tend to speak about and represent sex, but never in grave detail. Characters will never get past removing clothing. The issue of sex in YA is also a controversial topic that is pretty interesting when looked into.

The themes of YA books are ones that teenagers typically experience. This could be gender, sexuality, self-worth, etc.

YA books are usually between 200 and 500 pages. It depends on whether it is a novella, stand-alone, or series.

Characters are in middle or high school, to which the readers can relate to. The home and parents are also relevant. Lots of talk about family life and such.

Book Examples: The Fault in Our Stars, The Book Thief, Divergent, The Hunger Games, The Catcher in the Rye

New Adult (18-25)

Once again, pictures are usually maps and such.

NA does everything a YA does in more detail. It’s the genre for people who like YA but want a bit more or don’t want to be held back as much. When your target audience doesn’t involve children, your creative freedom can run (nearly) wild.

Sex scenes are explicit. No one questions a sex scene in a NA, nor censors them in the way YA does. The narrator doesn’t have to glaze over this, rather describing the emotional and physical aspects of it as they would with anything else.

In comparison to YA, NA books tackle different themes. A NA book might not focus on growing up, rather the independence or struggle of having grown up. More adult things such as struggles for housing and finance might arise differently than it would to someone younger watching their parents struggle and going down along with them.

NA books tend to fall in the same page range as YA books. Again, very similar, but not the same. Think of YA as the bridge between YA and Adult. A little more, but not too much.

Characters are typically between the age range of the readers, but they don’t have to be. 

Book Examples: A Court of Thorns and Roses, Lily and the Octopus, Red White and Royal Blue, Code Name: Verity, The Good Girl

Adult (25+)

Keep in mind that I do not read adult books...

I’ve never heard of photos in adult novels. Correct me if I am wrong.

Nothing is really off-limits in adult books. Anything you could ever want to write about can fit in this genre. Period pieces, historical fiction, horror, and autobiographies are often found as adult books.

Pieces are much more complex than those meant for younger audiences such as a YA or NA. They also tackle more difficult topics such as racism and abuse in more mature ways. It’s much easier to cover something like that in a book for older audiences than younger ones because you don’t necessarily have to simplify things. Focusing on the experiences of the character as if it were of coming of age isn’t as important.

The detail in adult books also changes in comparison to books for younger audiences. Whereas violence maybe something quick and easy, an adult book will drag it with vivid details. In Cirque du Freak, a middle-grade novel, the tearing of a person’s arm was described in two sentences in a way that made the reader imagine what an arm tearing would be like. In an adult book, you best be sure you’ll be reading about anatomy and immense amounts of gore.

Adult books can be short or extremely long. It depends on the genre once you hit adult books, as attention span isn’t much of a big deal anymore.

The characters in an adult book can be any age. It’s the content at this point and not who’s reading. An adult book can follow a tween/teen, an adult, or an elderly person. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is how you handle what is happening to certain characters. For example, if your character is a minor, you shouldn’t be writing graphic sex scenes. 

Book Examples: The Help, The Girl on the Train, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Kite Runner, The Shining

Conclusions

I feel like I could write more in this post, but I won’t. It will be much too long if I say anymore. It’s really up to what you like and the way you want to execute it. As a newer reader, I find that I like YA novels but gravitate to the grittier or mature ones. I dislike sex scenes, so the intimacy in YA is just enough for me. 

For my writing, I want to write a NA that can achieve what I like and in the way I enjoy it. In my reading endeavors, these past eight months, the Feverwake duology (my ever mentioned series...) has hit what I enjoy. While it is categorized as YA, the second book leans more toward NA and I love that. The way the author writes is also similar to the way I do, which is cool.

In the end, do what you love. Keep your audience in mind and remember that you don’t have to fit yourself into one genre. James Patterson wrote books for children and adults. Have I read any of his works? No, but I have family and friends who do enjoy or have enjoyed his work. You wanna write a book for your younger sibling? Do it. You want to write a book you need or want? Do it. You want to write a book that will make adults feel like children again? Do it. 

You’re the writer and write for a reason. Keep writing a passion, not a chore.

[Gif from Ouran High School Host Club]

[wollfling]

Hello! I have an art question, if you don't mind talking about art stuff! I'm trying to get better at drawing, but having a really hard time with figuring out how to draw people. I feel like I've made progress with things like animals, objects, etc but I just can't get my drawings of people to improve! You draw people (and everything else tbh!!) so beautifully, do you mind if I ask how you learned to draw them? Or if you have any advice? Thank you for posting your art here, you're such a big inspiration and I love seeing your posts when they come across my feed! 💗

I love talking about art stuff!!! ♡ firstly, thank you aww ;×;) !! I'm so flattered, its really so sweet of you to say that!!

(( oh my god once again I've written so much I am so sorry! I put a tldr at the end, I couldn't quite go into much detail about specifics because im not quite sure what specifically you would like to improve, but I did try to cover some bases but please don't be afraid to message me with any more info or questions!!! ))

I'm a bit of the opposite where I can only draw people and struggle making progress with everything else lol, I admire you a little bit!! 🤭

People can be hard to capture, because we naturally (subconsciously?) examine them trying to determine things like emotion and im not quite sure how to put it but... health? For most people, its easy to see if someone is tired or sick at a glance. This comes into play when drawing people because we are wired to immediately analyze everything about them and pick up things that are wrong (think of uncanny valley type stuff!)

I often think about something bob Ross said, I dont have the time to hunt it down but what he said was basically along the lines of; he prefers painting scenery, because when we see a scenic painting its easier to think "this looks like somewhere ive been!" And its more believable. Meanwhile, its hard to capture the exact likeness of someone. If its a little off, we feel it looks "bad". I may have changed or added some points in there, but I think that was the general idea? 🤔 thats not to say scenic paint is easy in any way, its just about how we view it.

My point in this is, the key to drawing people is to create a believable figure. And how to achieve this depends on the style you draw them in ! I can only offer advice for stylized drawings (i struggle to draw hyper realistic people, and I also just don't enjoy it? Lol) but im assuming that since you like my art you're okay with that? ^^

In regards to how I learned to draw, well.. ive been doing it since I can remember ^^; I grew up watching anime which definitely altered my style and interests, and when i was in high-school I transitioned from an "anime adjacent " style, to a generalized "stylized" look, and now I strictly use photo reference which has helped make my style less cartoony but it still shares cartoon elements I feel? For a long time I drew without using references at all which im sure also contributed to how I draw things now. I havent had a chance to take art classes, so I've learned mostly by self study. Practicing drawing from reference, looking up tips and tricks youtube videos, watching other artists work and looking closely at their pieces to try and see how they achieve certain looks. Eventually it all adds up! How i draw people is a reflection of like 20 years of this!!

My biggest regret is not taking art "seriously" and going nearly all of those 20 not properly studying. This is my biggest piece of advice :^( unfortunately, im still learning how to do this myself, I think "studying" is a learned skill and hard to do without instruction. But if you can draw animals and objects I think you probably know a little bit on how to. So then looking a bit deeper into "improving", what about your drawings do you feel are lacking?

Circling back to my earlier paragraphs, how you want to improve depends on what sort of style you are going for and the way you want to portray or capture people. Portraits rely on technical skill i think. I'm not sure i could offer valuable advice here..

Comics, manga, and graphic novels sole intention is to tell a story through drawings. They don't give metaphors (usually!! Sometimes they do but not in the context im trying to explain) and/or tell us how characters are feeling, they show us! This is why the art styles of them often have exaggerated features, and simplified features. The eyes tend to have more detail because we read eyes for emotion, mouths are exaggerated because they are key to reading emotion (most importantly so I think! Watch: 🙂☹ the only difference is the mouth, but we can tell they feel totally different emotions.) Noses in comparison are usually more simplified as they, out of all features of the human face, are the least expressive.

If you want to improve your drawings of people so that they are more expressive and relatable, I would try to analyze how your face changes with emotion and perhaps practice with one of those emotion chart meme templates!

Illustration work is similar, but I feel the face doesn't actually matter as much. If you look at full bodied illustrations of people and zoom in on the face, you'll find that they are sometimes quite simplified! When viewing a full bodied person we generally take in the body's language first. It would take me a long time for me to explain in detail on this post (though I would love to talk about body language in illustration please let me know of you would like me to... also the body language of two figures.. but ill spare you for now ♡) I would recommend gesture drawing and timed studies. I improved drawing so much when I started doing this (I use the site quickposes a lot, set a high timer and draw!!) If drawing the face is hard for you and you can't seem to get anywhere, try focusing on the body for a little bit! Especially how bodies look when bending and twisting.. which might sound random, but I think it helps get a better understanding on how proportions can change with pose.

I wrote so much and I really didn't mean to. Its always hard to answer questions like this without much information like what your goal is and what look you want to achieve. I hope I didnt scare you away with my horrible novel of an answer but if you'd like to give more detail or ask any more questions please I welcome you to!! I love talking about art and I love love love hearing about other peoples art ;^; ♡

Tldr; when trying to improve drawing people it may not be as simple as working on technical skill, its important to keep in mind purpose, emotion, body language, and art style

[readersguidetotheuniverse]

TOP 10 PRIDE EDITION

June is LGBT pride month internationally, a very needed celebration to remind everyone that LGBTIQ+ people exist, their feelings are identity are valids and they deserve the same rights and recognition as anyone else. Today is the day chosen in many countries to celebrate the Pride and, also, today marks the 50th anniversary of the very first Pride parade in New York City, after the Stonewall riots in 1969. A very special day in an already very special month. So we thought, what better way to honor this beautiful celebration than to share some of the best LGBT young adult novels of recent years?

I don’t consider myself LGBT, but I do love reading LGBT stories. I personally believe it’s important to read stories of/by people from different backgrounds and going through different struggles than our own. It’s important to educate ourselves, especially considering how f*cked up the world is and how slowly we advance in terms of human rights. Reading these stories may help you understand the way other people see the world and how the world sees them. And we could do with a little more empathy and kindness these days, to be honest.

So far, I have mostly read stories with gay/bisexual male characters, so I will focus on that for this post, but I will continue educating myself reading stories with trans characters, lesbian characters, non-binary characters, etc…

Here’s my TOP 10 gay YA novels:

#10: Autoboyography, by Christina Lauren

Christina Lauren are great just in general so a book of theirs is always a great choice. About this one, I just loved it. Very well written, one of those books you just want to keep reading and when you get to the end you wish you would’ve gone a bit slower so it wouldn’t be over so soon. I love that the main character is bisexual, cause these books mostly include gay men but very rarely bisexual men and they deserve representation too!

#9: Captive Prince, by C.S. Pacat

This series is not for everyone, let me warn you now. It does touch some very delicate, controversial issues (rape, slavery, abuse…) but I promise you, it is way better than it sounds and I’m sure it’s better than you imagine. It’s dark and intense and passionate but tender at times, especially around the third book. You’ll have to wait for romance but it’ll be worth your while. If you give it a chance, keeping an open mind, it may surprise you.

#8: Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan

Today it’s very easy to find amazing LGBT YA books but a few years back it was way harder, simply because there was no market or opportunities for them. This one I consider a classic among these great new LGBT novels for teens or young adults. A good story that really gives visibility and history of LGBT people the importance that they deserve. I also recommend checking out other David Levithan books, he’s got many great novels!

#7: Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, by Becky Albertalli

You probably heard about this one already, considering how well its movie did: Love, Simon. So well that they’ve done a TV show inspired by it, too! This is absolutely one of the must reads on coming out and finding your place in the world. Simon and Blue are cute as can be and the rest of the characters are also great, some even got their own book! You’ll love all of them and will root for Simon and Blue from minute 1. The movie is also really good and funny!

#6: Heartstopper, by Alice Oseman

This comic series (or graphic novels, however you wanna call it) is the cutest I’ve ever seen, I swear to god. It will warm your heart and will have you smiling through the whole thing and you’ll just wish for more. The characters are so relatable, their story is just adorable and the drawings are so lovely. Even if you are not into graphic novels, this one is almost a must. There are three volumes out, volumes 3 and 4 are expected for 2021 and 2022, and I’m already desperate for them.

#5: Red, White & Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston

This is the most recent one of the bunch. A really good, fresh, modern story that defies classic values and the status quo and just makes you happy. This book has been so well received, has won many awards, and I’m so happy about it, because it’s rare to see LGBT books being recognized as romance novels and not in their own separated category. And it’s time to recognize that romance is romance no matter who you are and appreciate good stories. She’s got a new book coming next year and I just can’t wait to have it.

#4: They Both Die at the End, by Adam Silvera

This is not your typical LGBT story. Well, I don’t think this is typical in any sense, and that’s the appeal of it. In case the title is not enough for you, I can assure you this story is very original and well written. This is not a love story per se, this is a story about life, and love’s a part of it. The characters are so cute and realistic. You’ll wish page after page that the title got it wrong. If you like it, I also recommend checking out other Adam Silvera books like History Is All You Left Me and More Happy Than Not. They’re unconventional and great, too!

#3: Carry On, by Rainbow Rowell

This is basically Harry Potter if Harry Potter was gay. Kind of bordering gay Harry Potter fanfiction. And it’s magnificent. The magic and fantasy of the Harry Potter world with the inclusion that modern world craves and lovable characters you won’t get enough of. A bit of enemies to lovers as well, which I just love. If you like fantasy, this is definitely for you. I promise you, you’ll love it. It has a sequel I’m dying to read and there are more on the way!

#2: HIM, by Elle Kennedy and Sarina Bowen

This is possibly the most mature book on this list and one of my absolute favorite books ever. For starters, I love their writing style. Also they give us both characters’ point of view so we get a full picture of the story, which is great. We can see two young adults figuring themselves out, what they feel, who they are, in a sports world where LGBT people are not usually welcome. And it’s just fantastic. The sequels are also really good.

#1: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

This, right here, is one of the best books I have ever read. Period. Nothing I can say will suffice. The story is so human, the characters are so real and go through so much and you feel every little bit of it. So relatable, adorable, painful sometimes, but mostly just pure emotion. The only thing I missed in this book is more pages, I just want more and more. I just couldn’t stop reading so it was over too soon! But no worries, there’s a sequel in the making!

Happy Pride! Whoever you are and whoever you love, happy reading!

[moonloredraws]

Any tips for comic layouts? I have some concepts I want to make into comics, but I really struggle with comics since I have never done them, except for in a joke format, which couldn't be farther from the themes of my current projects

Hmm. Comic layouts can be really difficult to get right. I’m not going to be able to cram that much specific stuff in because I have MANY thoughts, and could spend 3 hours talking about this without any specific direction, and I’m actually in the process of making a video series about making comics which might help later.

My best advice is to read lots of comics, and pick apart what makes the page work. The more comics and graphic novels you consume, the better your understand will be of why they work. You also just need to experiment and learn for yourself, because you can have as much theory crammed into your head as you want, but you still learn best by doing.

Most of my work is influenced by manga, instead of western comics, so I’m going to focus on comic layouts based off manga-styled comics.

Manga is a bit strange, unlike most western comics, manga really takes its time to breathe, and set a scene, so you will often have bigger panels that show a moment in time much more often in these comics than western ones. You also generally tend to have less going on in manga pages, with fewer panels. Obviously, this changes from comic to comic and page to page, but generally manga inspired stuff is less dialogue heavy and “shows” more. The pacing is much slower, and it focuses a lot on the emotions and small changes and details.

You should also be aware of “establishing shots”, which are panels that show where that particular scene in a comic is taking place. I personally tend to keep action in their own panels, and I don’t have much spillover, but that could really work out in certain comics (Monstress is a great comic that does things out of panels to show action). I’m also kind of bad at having diagonal panels even if I think they’re cool.

Here are a few Twitter links that also talk about panels specifically.

https://twitter.com/insertdisc5/status/1274682068853809152

https://twitter.com/insertdisc5/status/1274682071991058432

https://twitter.com/insertdisc5/status/1174092202684964864

I also recommend reading Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics” because that’s a FANTASTIC resource that makes you think about why comics are how they are, and why they work, and just... comic stuff in general. 

But my main advice is: Read lots of comics, think about why you like how a page looks, and make comics. Make Make Make!! 

Yeah, the first few dozen pages won’t look like masterpieces, but most of my old comics don’t look great and I’m STILL far off from having great comic pages right now. I’m still learning, and I’m doing this as my job. 

[polishtamales]

It Started with the Hawkeye Initiative & Ended with Safespace & Snowflake: GAME OVER

This is how the comic book industry dies. Or is it a dawn of self-publishing?

If it wasn’t for years of horrific ad sales, it was definitely insulting the vast majority of it’s consumer base. Or more specifically for Marvel’s case, CATERING AN ENTIRE MARKET THAT DOESN’T BUY COMICS IN THE FIRST PLACE. Regardless of intentions, YOU CANNOT MAINTAIN A BUSINESS OF CONSTANTLY FLIPPING OFF YOUR FANS AND EXPECT THEM TO PAY YOU FOR YOUR VIRTUE SIGNALING.

There’s a difference between being progressive with fiction and being a radical activist for the sake of retweets and likes, followed by a selfie for more self-esteem boosts. In a society where there’s no turning back from capitalism, money is your God, whether it’s right or wrong. You could suddenly be hit with a car and you better damn respect that the more money you have, the more likely everything will be fine afterwards. It pays the bills, it puts food on the table, and you better understand, it’s not going to change, outside of an act of God or Aliens simply invading our planet and enslaving humanity. Your pick.

It’s no secret that working in comics sucks, regardless of country. The pay is bad, the deadlines are killer and it has always been the least practical way of storytelling for a mass market, especially in America. Case in point, you don’t really need a colorist, a letterer or anything else, outside of a distributor (RIP DIAMOND). Anyone with a graphic design degree knows, you can easily be a one-man publisher without the need of an entire crew of mouths to feed. Not saying it wouldn’t be helpful, but given the future economy, it will be the norm.

See, the old buzz word of digital publishing really is a big deal, especially when it comes to the incoming job market change. No longer can you simply “specialize” in just one area of expertise, but you will be expected to fill in multiple roles to be successful. Even if time is against you in certain projects, it is entirely possible to save more money by just doing everything yourself. Here are the major hurdles and solutions to creating a new comic in the new landscape of comics next year:

1. STORY - This is where EVERYONE gets it wrong. Do not follow the trend of  IDW publishing by planning out an ENTIRE world building graphic novel that will span DECADES.

Stick to what exactly you’re good at telling. Tell a short story. Polish every line of dialog. Make it shorter. Polish every line of dialog, make it shorter.

Third and most important advice is leave politics out of your story, unless it is about politics. Most older women buy trashy romance novels to escape their shitty sex life. Most middle-aged men by comics for the tits and ass and possibly the articles? Again, all ways of escape reality, yet you have Marvel comics for years that kept interjecting real world politics and views in their titles. Trust me when I say this, less than 10% of the United States is on Twitter. That means most people could give two fucks and a shit about Trump, Biden or Bearnie, BELIEVE OR NOT. So when most of America retreats after a long day of work and not TWITTER, they are spending money on things to make their lives tolerable. Being told Orange Man Bad is not one of those things, nor is bringing up Obama, again and again. Don’t make market assessments based on social media, leave politics out of your comic. Additionally, learn about basic story telling and especially learn from other mediums outside of comics. Films and actual books will teach you a lot about pacing. You can learn basic writing skills by taking a community college course or higher. The goal and mindset should be to be humbled and not a place to be bitter when you get criticism.

2. ART - KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. If you’re catering towards a WOKE AS FUCK CROWD OF TRUMP HATING LIBERALS, make sure you book will actually sell and not retweeted... Simply collecting a check and going unemployed for months on end is not an actual goal in life, much less beg your followers for coffee money. Example, see the animation industry.

Art is your mode of presentation, the book cover (not literally), the point of sale. If you want to cater towards a crowd of people of color, who happen to be gay, trans, and dealing with PTSD, etc, then make fucking sure your art matches with the story. You cannot have “tumblr” artists doing action intensive comics, where they spend more time creating people of color of diverse identity politics, than learning to draw a simple choreographed action sequence. You can’t have an action comic with ONLY 2 small panels of action to sell your comic. Again, no shame or secret to point out that the VAST majority of comic sales are made off of issue #1s and tits and ass. Disposable income of middle-aged men cannot be underestimated, regardless of what cherry pick data you want to argue with. The older you get, the less progressive and liberal most Americans become as well. That’s called “reality” of real politics. So my advice, if you’re into action comics, learn to draw action, learn about the demography that buys those titles and don’t interject your politics in it, especially if you want to put food on the table. I’m not telling anyone to suddenly put Trump as the “good guy” president, but I am telling you that you shouldn’t include real world politics in your comic. You’re not offending either side of the political spectrum, IE, you’re not insulting your customers.

If you want to make a rom-com comic like Archie, sure those years of learning tutorials off of tumblr might pay off, but again, know your audience. Archie continues to sell steadily with a profit from the boomer generation, white women (vast majority), Christians, etc. Don’t expect your rom-com comic of a gender-less trans-protagonist that may or may not want to be dependent relationship with another person of color. You see where I’m getting with that? You’re welcomed to write and draw a book like that, but don’t expect anyone to buy it. Getting your book retweeted by your favorite SJW, doesn’t mean sales, it just spells virtue signaling for them.

My advice in the art category is DIVERSIFY your portfolio. Don’t just learn off tumblr. That boat has sailed and failed, as seen with every sale of tumblr picked artists at Marvel. Go out there (when the virus gets under controlled) and learn to draw from life. Don’t worry about gender, people of color, none of that stuff. Draw stuff that you actually care about and not for political points with your peers. If you wanna draw short men struggling to open a can of coke, then draw. If you wanna draw hot women, draw hot women. You wanna draw a cute tennis player with short shorts and looks like Swedish male model, then pack some sun screen. You’re not looking to be judged, you’re not looking for internet points of how woke you are. You are simply expanding on things that interest you and how it will indirectly help you grow.

Think Mr. Miyagi, but do it 80,000 times. You’ll master drawing short men struggling to open cans of soda!

When creating the art, DO NOT THINK ABOUT COLORING. It is way more profitable to create BW comics than color. Not only do you save money printing, but the amount of time you free up helps you to micromanage yourself better.

3. DIGITAL PUBLISHING - You don’t need anyone else if you have a computer and some basic digital programs. Once you understand how to write a short story, present marketable characters, then you’re set. The only enemy is time.

Learn Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop for art. Learn Adobe Indesign for lettering, page layouts, etc. A few talks with a local printer and you can independently self-publish any book.

So to sum things up, learn to self-publish, respect your readers and the politics/baggage that industry houses and understand that things revolve around money. If you want to be a stereotypical far-left wing tumblr artist that wants to create a superhero of a trans-black girl/binary that may or may not want to be involved in a relationship with another binary/trans person, which could be their sister/brother/internet gas, then by all means make that comic. It won’t be profitable nor will it sell compared to other titles, but I guess you can’t claim victim-hood without a self-afflicting handicap and an arrow to the kneecap.

After all, Marvel’s done it for years without profitability and look where the industry is headed towards... This was all pre-Covid-19 mind you. The virus, if anything, is just the nail on the coffin after Diamond distributors quit. The comic industry might be dead, but books as a medium will never die.

[awkwardplantwrites]

tips on how to write when you just can’t

(personal advice. might work for you, might not)

you have an idea for your story but can’t get it out. or you know what’s going to happen but it’s boring and you’re starting to hate your work. the words are not appearing on the page no matter how hard you stare at it.

writing is writing, but telling a story doesn’t have to be solely writing words onto a page. it might come to that eventually if you’re set on your story being a novel, but it doesn’t have to start that way. I don’t think people realise just how abstract and crazy first drafts can be. 

here’s some ways you can tell a story without writing:

record your voice and narrate verbally. there’ll be a lot of um’s and pauses where you don’t know what to say and it won’t be nearly as prosey as it is in writing. for me, I definitely prefer writing to speaking because I can edit what I write and think about what I write. but by verbally narrating you can get thoughts out quicker. you’re allowed to say one thing, then include a verbal note where you wonder aloud “that part might be better later on” and just continue. then, you transcribe it. and voila you have words!

it definitely doesn’t have to be a direct transcription. if anything, you can and should rewrite the parts you want to change. with this it’s like getting two drafts for the effort of one. this can also help to give your characters more distinctive voices as you’ll speak as they would (to make it easier to tell who’s talking when you record lol)

record your voice as you give a presentation about your story/chapter. this one’s good for developing stuff, and by developing it you generate new ideas. you analyse your characters, the metaphors, foreshadowings, reasons for actions, and double meanings. you go crazy over your story and fall in love with it again. similar to those comic sans presentation images you see on writeblr, but more in depth. 

to use Romeo and Juliet as an example: “Who is responsible for Mercutio’s death? What is the role of destiny in the play? Why is Juliet the most tragic character in the play?” have a look at essay ideas and use them for your story. and when you talk as if you’re in front of an audience, you include the stuff you think they’ll want to know, which translates into what the readers want to know when you transcribe the juicy parts into your writing!

another verbal format can be a DND campaign with you as every character and the DM (feel free to use a die!) it might not work so well for romance novels but do what you want! have fun getting a crit 1 on smooching, baby!!

record the audio/video as you play with toys or objects that represent your characters I feel like this one is good if you lose track of who’s in the scene, because you can physically see who’s there. even if you aren’t writing a kid’s book, you’ll be brought back to the days when you played pretend, and stories and fictional worlds were fun and not stressful to fill with societies and environments. novels have this odd reputation for being grandoise and writers automatically assume your book’s got to be the BEST thing the world has seen. it’s not that deep bro. anybody of any age and background can tell a captivating story. 

you can draw instead of writing. or you can write AND draw, where you sketch something you don’t know or can’t be bothered to describe. and if this goes well for you, you might want to consider making a comic or graphic novel instead. or do it on your phone using goddamn emoji’s. who gives a fuck.

on a different note, if you’re someone who mainly struggles with ideas, you need to look at your story like an alien. question and doubt the mundane, what’s considered normal. this will probably include research.

to use an example, in my most recent chapter I had a character who was riding a horse into town. sounds simple right? let’s quesion that: how was he riding the horse? you might think, oh well, it’s just a horse, you ride on it’s back. but there are names for the way you ride. (everything has names and labels, idk why.) and it turns out he was riding bareback, as the horse was wild and had no saddle. and so what I did was look up bareback riding, paraphrased the definition into my story to explain to the reader what my mc was doing. “Bareback riding is a form of horseback riding without a saddle. It requires skill, balance, and coordination, as the rider does not have any equipment to compensate for errors of balance or skill.” 

hey look at that! those are words you can include in your story! it’s a form of description! another question: does my character have the skill required? no. and immediately that creates a story. how will this inexperienced rider ride this horse? readers love characters who can’t do what they’re trying to do but who do it anyway. 

question the weather. temperature. the location. mythical creatures. superpowers. science. furniture. rethink everything you think you know. brainstorm or play word association games. 

to use a more general/random example: your character is hungry. questions: what food? where will they go to get food? why that place? how will they get to the place and what could stop them? will they go with someone? will they not get food despite their hunger, and what’s the reason for that? 

everyone will answer those questions differently: and that’s why every story is unique no matter how simple and cliche the premise is.

there’s also the advice to “write badly” and I don’t think people often understand what that means. it doesn’t always mean telling a shitty story, though you absolutely can if you want to. it means you have full permission to abandon grammar, spelling, punctuation, and coherency. include cliches and ignore every piece of writing advice you’ve ever heard! you can tell the story instead of showing bc at this point you just need words. example, a very butchered version of the passage “it was a dark and stormy night”: 

It was dark outside somewhere idk. In a house (bedroom maybe?) some lady, wraped in a blanket (or quilt?) sat on her bedd and wotched trees moving in the wind and behind the tres clouds moved fast all spooky like. 

a useful tool which squeezes words out is laying down the 5 questions: who, what, when, how, where. mike ran at noon quickly in the gym. and just repeating that structure over and over, omitting certain questions when necessary. 

it’s going to suck and you’ll hate it: but you weren’t happy with/able to do a more polished version, so does it matter? the words are there. it counts.

use generators for names and descriptions, you don’t have to come up with everything but you make it look like you did. 

steal your favourite lines from ALL your favourite idols and remix them. no-one will care if they can’t tell who you took it from.

if all else fails: get a ghostwriter

[comicteaparty]

November 20th-November 26th, 2019 Reader Favorites Archive

The archive for the Reader Favorites chat that occurred from November 20th, 2019 to November 26th, 2019.  The chat focused on the following question:

What main character do you relate to the most?  How relatable does a main character have to be for you to like them?

Capitania do Azar

You know, relatable is simultaneously a very strong and very week word to describe how I see main characters. Sometimes, the MCs I like the most are those I can't relate to in any way, when their actions are so out there and wild that I cannot for the life of me seeing myself doing (regardless of weather I understand their motivations or not). I tend to find secondary characters much more easier to relate to, since they're not so much under the spotlight and get to have personalities that are often less directly connected to the plot, and creators get to have more freedom. That said, on the top of my head, one of my favorite protagonists is Trigger, from Ghost Junk Sickness, https://www.ghostjunksickness.com/, who I cannot, for the life of me, relate to, but whose horrible decisions I find absolutely amusing.

Now, for side characters who I can definitely relate to, I'm gonna go with Aaron from XIIComic, https://xiicomic.com/magic-and-muses/, because that one was love at first sight, eheh(edited)

FeatherNotes

I agree with @Capitania do Azar-- For me, main characters are the ones who would be written with the themes, and the backstory that make them unique enough for a singular experience so i would often find it most difficult to 'fully relate' to them. That said, characters don't have to be very much relatable at all for me to like them , and that most MCs with flaws that are beyond me are who i mainly like bc of their potential complexity! Secondary characters are my go to's, and i relate to them much more quickly! With that said, i def have vibes with Sanna and Dizzy from Startrip http://www.startripcomic.com/cast

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

I rarely find main characters "relatable", but if they are well-written enough I can like and root for them no matter if I think they are relatable to me personally enough. @Capitania do Azar and @FeatherNotes made really good point as to why this is the case. Anyways a character I still really relate to is Rafael from Superpose (https://superposecomic.com/). Painful gender feelings, people being dismissive of ones gender, the overall feeling of being stuck and not knowing what the future will bring really speaks to me, so reading Superpose I got especially invested. Another character would be Nikita from O Sarilho (http://sarilho.net/en/) and he's very interesting to me because there is a lot about him that feels deeply relatable and familiar but then so many things that are absolutely alienating. I think that makes him an especially alluring character to me.

Cronaj

I agree with the everyone else. I don't really need to relate to a main character to like them. In fact, I just realized on my search through the webcomics I read/enjoy that I don't relate to pretty much ANY of the characters. This might have to do partly with the fact that I read a lot of fantasy, sci-fi, and historical comics, so the issues the characters face are very different than the ones I personally face. That being said, there is one comic where I relate to one of the main characters so much, I actually cried. This is the character Taesoo from the webtoon The Lady and Her Butler. (https://www.lezhin.com/en/comic/ladyandbutler) He is a struggling artist with low self-confidence and the after-effects of a bad relationship with someone who didn't appreciate him. His scars from this situation have remained with him and made it difficult for him to love again. I know this sounds like something straight from a drama, but this legitimately happened to me. (On a side note, I relate to my own characters, but that's because I subconsciously created characters a lot like myself.)

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Like others have said above me, I don’t really need to relate to a main character to like them. If they’re well written and receive good development, I’ll probably like them on some level. I do tend to gravitate more towards roguish and morally ambiguous characters, and my favourite is usually an outrageous villain. As for my own characters, I put a bit of myself in all of them, but probably none more so than Anor from Children of Shadow. I hadn’t meant to mirror so much of myself in him, but my characters tend to act and grow independently of me. He struggles with depression, PTSD, feelings of isolation, and has a similar queer experience / identity as me. He isn’t me, however, and differs in a lot of ways, too. But I can identify with him probably more than any other character I’ve written.(edited)

Batichi

I feel kinda narcissistic saying so, but the character I do relate to is my own protagonist, mainly because the point of the character was to have one that was more like me I guess. Low energy, unable to feel like they progress, never knowing if points of trauma are growing or hindering being a full person. I never intended a 'full insert' but a lot of their personal journey I feel gets pulled out of my own head since it's where I can pull from. I don't know if that counts or not xD I don't need a character to be relatable for me to be interested in them, but I do need to understand them. 'Defined' feels like too broad of an answer, but when I can be interested in both heart of gold protagonists and drug dealing warlords that's the best I can come up with.

spacerocketbunny

I may not need a character to be relatable to like them but it definitely does make me soft when I can. I think a character I can relate to would be Satinder from Shaderunners http://shaderunners.com/ I think she's a lot more outgoing than me and generally just more jovial and sweet but I relate to her struggle with her relationship with Ivo the most. Pining for someone who doesn't want to settle and just wants to move on bigger and better feels pretty real to me! Other than that I'd say Vic from Inhibit http://www.inhibitcomic.com/ while again I don't relate to his personality or much of his situation, I feel for his struggles SO MUCH. Stuck in that awkward, can't do anything right and just exists in the mediocrity of his situation just gets me all the time.

eli [a winged tale]

I think I relate with main characters who are competent in their own way but FLAWED, and are shown in the story to be facing a struggle. They may not have to make the right decisions or be the most clever, but their reasons are justified (via history, development, relationships). So ultimately it really comes down to the creator’s execution. I’ve been thinking about this question for a while and I think the best example is liking Kushana more than Nausicaa in Miyazaki’s graphic novel (you’ve watched the film, now go read the epic graphic novel!). She is presented as an antihero and a foil to Nausicaa and we see her struggle against how she was raised to the ideal way of dealing with the world presented as a possibility. Edith is also one where you see her being put together on the surface, but hiding deep insecurities inside. Yet she continues to grow, face her fears and maybe make the mistake of being on the wrong ship I jest, but working hard to solve her problems. I find static, good influence characters to be a little bit harder to relate to but if the story is good, I can invest in it.

GGY

Most of my characters stem from small pieces of my personality and experiences. Some of those personalties are exaggerated a bit to drive the plot and explain a few things going on with the characters. I don't have to relate to a character to like them but it is always interesting to see that side of a character that the other characters don't get to see as often or its not apparent. Not that the character is leading a double life or anything but that there are reasons why characters act the way they do and those reasons are either presented in a back story or from that character's perspective of the world. Anyways if I had to bottle it down to one character I think I relate a lot to would be one of my main characters Bridget Killigan of Over 8 Miles mainly because she runs by her own logic of how things go wether or not they are wrong. However this is only because of the result of circumstance, which I can relate to all too well XD(edited)

DanitheCarutor

I don't pay attention to relatability when reading a comic? Like I have no idea what characters I can relation to outside of my own since mine were sorta made to vent my experiences and issues. It's like gender and sexuality, as important as those details can be, I don't actually notice those things unless they're blatantly pointed out. Given that, not a whole lot of people can relate to me personally (I'm a weird person with weird opinions and views), so relatability in characters isn't totally possible and isn't important. Sometimes they can relate in life experiences, or a mood, but that's about it. Character(s) who are fleshed out, growing, and/or who are interesting is what matters most. So I guess I'm kinda parroting what other people have already said.

AntiBunny

Relatable? That's a bit of a tough one. I can care about a character without relating to them. In fact to answer last week's question, having characters I can care about is probably the most important thing to hook me into a webcomic. But relating to a character is different than caring about them. I would at one time say Riff and Torg from Sluggy Freelance, a couple of irresponsible guys getting into hijinks, but I've changed as a person over the years.

I suppose the most relatable character, might be Rhea from Slightly Damned. I say that because she's the one who has to be the responsible one now. She's the oldest of the 3 main characters, but still basically a kid herself. She has to protect and guide these two oddball teenagers, even though she's not even sure of her own place in the world.

I guess as you get older, people start looking to you as a protector, and as a guide, even though you still very much feel like a child wearing an adult suit. So Rhea is someone I can relate to in that regard. She's from http://sdamned.com/

Akreampuff

Sometimes I find I relate to elements of a character - Like when they comment or express an opinion on something - But having a character resonate with me isn't something that really happens often. I can't remember the last time it did. For me to like a character though, they just have to not be a shitty person. Flaws are fine - Flaws are great - But if they are just a horrible person or a flat bleh character then I lose interest very quickly.

kayotics

Karkat Vantas

RebelVampire

One character I relate to immensely off the top of my head is Shy from Radio Silence http://www.radiosilencecomic.com/ There have been a lot of moments in that comic, especially related to social anxiety, where I have cringed super hard along with Shy because I knew exactly what it was like to feel what he was feeling. It actually makes the comic difficult for me on occasion just cause it brings flashbacks. In terms of the second part, that's a difficult question. I feel like it's super easy to relate to at least small portions of every main character, since people are complex and have a million different sides to them. So, for me at least, I can always find at least a little something I can relate to. But overall, that usually doesn't determine if I like them or not. I'm more concerned about whether I'm invested in their goals and want to see them succeed or suffer for their pursuit of those goals. To me that's what makes a character likeable. So in the end, it's not a question of how much, since I'll always relate in some way. It's just also not important.

[moreenchiladasplease]

tagged by the lovely @kizunah ! thank you! i love tag games!

1. who’s one of your favorite characters and why?

currently, since i’m reading the raven cycle, it’s gansey. honestly i love all the characters bcuz maggie is so fucking good at writing them. even the villians. and the gray man! fuck don’t even get me started on morally gray characters. going into the books i thought i would like ronan or adam the best just bcuz you raved about them a lot and usually those are the character i tend to love and i still very much love them but gansey man. he took me by surprise. 

he just has so much of my aesthetics. like he has a fucking mint plant bcuz he likes mint and somehow always unlimited mint leaves in his pockets for whenever feels like minty freshness. he was wire frame glasses. he lives in an old factory. he adds to his miniature model town when he can’t sleep. he has journals. and likes the fucking beatles!! he drives a broken down piece of garbage that’s probably held together by duck tape and he knows it and loves it. he is an old soul! he is an Intellectual™. but also Clueless™. he is such a fucking dad friend. always going “lynch” “parrish” jane”. and he’s so wholesome and such a good and caring friend and it kills him inside when he can’t help his friends and oh god oh god please help me i love him

2. last book you read – what did you think of it?

I finished the hate u give by angie thomas a couple of days ago and I absolutely loved it. it focuses on police brutality and racism also touches on various different topics like drug abuse, gangs, abuse, different views on interracial couples, etc. It was an incredibly powerful and impactful book. It was kind of hard for me to read bcuz generally, I read books to get away from the world we live in and this was very much the reality of the world we live in. the injustice of it. and angie writes it in a way that it is unapologetically honest. but it is so so important. I wrote a full review here on my book blog but it’s a spoiler-y so beware.

also I’m so excited to see amandla stenberg play starr. I’m gonna have to wait a few months to watch it (bcuz there are no frickin theatres here) but still... I know it’s gonna be great.

3. do you consider yourself a good decision maker?

these three words do not belong together   i really can’t say... maybe 72% of the time i am? yup that seems pretty accurate

4. preferred studying method?

pfffffftttt method? what method? i tend to study at my desk to avoid falling asleep. and i listen to lofi hip hop or jazz. and i usually study in 3 hour intervals bcuz i have trouble focusing for longer periods of time and have to take breaks. is that what you meant?

5. favorite word from your native language?

I don’t necessarily have a favorite word... but when I learned my Spanish alphabet I would like to say the letter ‘y’ over and over again because it was fun to pronounce. It’s pronounced  ~ i griega ~ which is really fun to say. I just really love Spanish and rollng my ‘r’s. 

6. do you have a problematic character you’d die for?

let me take a deep breath first will herondale (tid)! ronan lynch (trc)! the gray man (trc)! loki laufeyson (marvel). tony stark (marvel)! matt murdock (marvel)! jessica jones (marvel). magneto (marvel)! jason todd/red hood (dc)! sherlock holmes (sherlock). charlotte holmes!  todoroki shouto (bnha)! bakuboy (bnha)! itachi uchiha (naruto)! hohenhiem (fmab). greed (fmab)! i could go on forever but imma stop here

7. is there something you felt like you’d never be good at, but are somewhat decent at doing now?

I feel like my social skills have improved a shit ton. I used to not be able to speak to people without stuttering a lot or while holding eye contact for longer than 5 seconds. I used to not be able to order food for myself. And now I can interact with people better and I pick up on social cues better. And I smile at people I don’t know when I’m happy bcuz I feel like it and I like to spread positivity. things like this may seem small to other people but it’s not small for me. I think I’ve come a long way and I’m incredibly proud of myself for all of it.  

8. what’s your general temperament like?

i’m either mellow and chill or wild and weird. there is no in-between.

9. something you want to get better at?

my mentality. in general really. but something i’ve been struggling with a lot recently is not being able to not do anything. i love having lazy days i do. they allow me to relax and take a break from things that have been stressing me out. but the next day when I get back into it and start to get things done... I put myself down about taking a day off. about wasting time when i could’ve gotten so much done. this mentality is such a toxic one and I hate that I have it. I hate that I always have to be productive to consider myself useful. I hate that I can’t relax and enjoy myself anymore without my brain going into overdrive to tell me how much of a fucking waste of oxygen I am. I was very near to tears a couple of days ago because I took a few hours off of schoolwork bcuz I had a migraine and the whole time my brain wouldn’t shut up you’re wasting time you could be done with so many assignments by now you could be doing useful things right now you don’t know how to do jack shit why the fuck are you even in school if you’re not going to study why is mom spending valuable money on your education when you can’t fucking stick to your fucking schedule fuck

i hate that i have that mentality. and i would just like it to kindly fuck off.

10. something popular everyone else likes but you don’t?

fuck... ummmmmmm... i think it’d be easier for me to tell you something i like that is underrated or unknown... 

oh! um ferris beuller? that john hughes movie with matthew broderick. i mean, i like the movie, i just don’t love it like everyone seems to. it’s a nice light movie about teenagers skipping school and having fun. but i don’t like ferris bcuz he comes off as a sort of douche. escpecially towards his friend cameron, who very clearly has mental health issues that ferris tends to brush off quite a lot. so i don’t really understand why people rave about it so much.

11. before consuming books/movies, do you read reviews, or do you like going in blind?

I, for the most part, go in blind. I have a tendency to put things on my list, to eventually watch/read, because I hear good things about them or I myself just would like to consume the content, but a never get to it immediately. I get to it months later, sometimes a year or two later, when I’ve more often than not forgotten all about anything I’ve heard about it. but even then, I don’t generally read reviews because I don’t really care what other people think of it. The only people’s opinions I care about are my friends and family because I like to discuss the content I consume with people close to me. Especially if I feel strongly about said content. so, no, i don’t seek out reviews. it’s usually that i happen upon reviews and them i’m like ‘good to know i guess?’ i don’t rely on critics cuz critics sometimes don’t know what Good Content is

tagging @mllebabushkat @sengad-apollo @hannahdearr and also @kizunah if you wanna do it again and also @demfeeeels if you can dig out of your grave for a bit  : ) and here are my questions for you:

what is an unknown/underrated piece of media that you love?

what are five things you love about yourself?

do you read comics/graphic novels? any favorites?

what’s top 5 on your playlist right now?

what is something/someone that never fails to make you laugh?

recommend me some of your favorite tv shows/movies/books/music.

an unpopular opinion you have?

favorite disney soundtrack?

favorite word from your native language? (i’m stealing one of mariam’s question bcuz i love)

what makes your heart go mushy?

top 5 tropes you live for?

[progmanx]

So? Part 2?

Well, now that it’s been released digitally, I can actually answer this question. Thank you for your patience. So, uh, spoilers, if you haven’t read Turf Wars Part 2 yet. I guess.

Short version: It’s just as bad as Part 1 (if not worse), but for slightly different reasons. For mine and @lokgifsandmusings‘s thoughts on Part 1, you can read our several articles about the first installment, as well as our good friend Bo’s take on Part 2 who makes some excellent points on why nothing works. I’m going to do my best not to reiterate the things he’s discussed, as I think his work does a better job of laying out that argument than I could. So go read that first, if you want.

Slightly Longer Version (That’s Shorter Than The Short Version?): Mike (there’s no way Bryan is actually consulting on anything aside from the art; Asami is his baby) clearly neglected to rewatch his own series/re-read his own series bible, and the scope of this negligence goes so far beyond nitpicking it’s baffling. The narrative threads and characterization of our two heroes are jumbled and essentially nonsensical.

Extremely Long Version: Sigh. I would like to preface this by asserting that my opinion of Turf Wars is in no way related to the work I did with RRaU, or Spin the Rails as a whole. Sure, I thought a lot about the world and this relationship, but frankly no conclusion I came to couldn’t also be reached by anyone else who puts in the time. Just because Mike continued the narrative differently doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like it automatically. The fact of the matter is, I really wanted to like this. It just so happens that the method Mike chose is…like, kind of the worst possible amalgamation of bad narrative decisions he could make short of turning full edgelord.

This got extremely long, hence the moniker, so it’s under the cut.

Anyway, my problems and critiques of Turf Wars are that of the product itself, how it chooses to continue the story of the animated series proper.

Now that that’s out of the way: I kind of hate almost everything about it. Yeah, I’m probably gonna lose followers for that. I want queer rep, and I want it badly, but if we can’t even criticize what we get without getting thrown out onto the street, how will it get any better? It’s not all or nothing.

Not even Turf Wars is all or nothing. I still stand by what @lokgifsandmusings and I said in our pieces regarding Part 1: It’s an overall good thing that it exists, and it’s not hurting anyone. However, that does not mean I think it itself is actually anything close to good, narratively speaking.

If I really had to boil down all of my problems with this…since Bo’s argument regarding how these books are overly stuffed with narratives that have no connection to one another aside from the fact that Asami gets kidnapped (we’re gonna dissect that one) and that none of it actually serves any purpose other than treading water for…something is so comprehensive and great. Seriously, read it!

Fact of the matter is, there’s no reason for any of these narratives to exist. It doesn’t push anyone’s character forward, with the exception of Zhu Li, Toguka (who even cares?), possibly Keum, and I guess by default Raiko by making him more of a jerk. None of those characters are the principal cast, meaning that this whole damn thing is, as far as I can see, really weird, overwritten filler.

Filler for what? I have no earthly idea, but if the only thing that changes out of this graphic novel series is that Zhu Li becomes President, then…you could have done that off-screen. Like how Raiko won. Neither Bryan nor Mike know how to write politics (or business, but that’s another conversation) so why not? Saves a lot of time.

Okay, so, there’s one other change that could happen in this “filler arc”. And it’s something that everything so far seems to be pointing to as a resolution. For anything to make sense, Asami has to basically say to Korra, “I’m a liability and will only keep getting in the way, so we either have to keep our relationship a secret or break up.” Probably to get rejected by Korra, or the world, or something. Which is just…terrible and ridiculous, as I’ll outline more in this post/rant/essay/dissertation. It has nothing to do with them being a same-sex couple, which is somehow both not as bad (because that shouldn’t matter) and worse (because of Kya’s infodump in Part 1).

Anyway, on to the biggest issues above all: our two “protagonists”. Well, more like the title character and also that lady she’s banging. Because it’s really hard to see how Korra and Asami are actually relevant to any of the narrative threads in this story aside from the ones they are forcibly pulled into so they can react to things. And this isn’t even accounting for how Mike is somehow able to write literally everyone else just fine except for Korra and Asami! It’s so freaking weird!

Korra, even more than she was in Part 1, has been almost comically back dialed to her Book 1 characterization. At best, it’s Book 2, but that is a stretch. Everything she does it to try and bust some heads, and even goes out of her way to physically assault Raiko’s campaign advisor. This isn’t even accounting the flagrant abuse of the Avatar State in Part 1, or the many other microaggressions that keep popping up.

Book 4 Korra would not do this. That was like—it’s her whole fucking series arc. She doesn’t look for fights! She tries to resolve them before they get bad, and especially with Asami she backs down and tries to diffuse and explain the situation. Like, you know, that time when Asami snapped at her in 4x07 in contrast to how Mako snapped at her also in 4x07?

But it goes deeper than tossing out years of character growth because “lol conflict”. I felt that the interactions between Korra and Asami here read embarrassingly straight. What I mean by that is, it’s how I imagine a straight dude would believe “special” relationships (ie queer, who aren’t) should be written. It’s something that a lot of non-queer writers struggle with, since there’s this false belief that treating those “different” from you as unique or better props them up, when in reality it artificially props them up in a way that is inherently insincere. Mike wants to show us he understands how important this relationship is, and how it’s important to him, but the words he’s choosing have the opposite effect.

It reminds me of the “Magical Negro” trope that originated in Hollywood as an absurd, and then eventually harmful, overcompensation for making sure people knew that they weren’t racist by making every minority character in a given film the perfect wisdom to set the hero on their journey. It’s same basic principle, as Mike is trying to make sure as loudly as possible that we know he’s super supportive of all of this…but the outcome is just plain weird and dangerous, even though his intentions are absolutely good.

Remember that bit in Part 1 where Asami says that the Spirit World is special and unique, like their relationship? Welp. It’s not. It was exceptionally well-written and true-to-life in its queerness but I guess not anymore, huh?

They’re more caricatures of their former selves than they are actual characters in these moments. The purest irony here is that these scenes, the “relationship scenes”, are actually pandering. Like, while the show wasn’t and yet anti-korrasami people kept yelling that it was (it wasn’t; that’s not how animation production works) boom, here we go. Actual pandering. (And yes, this is an entirely subjective opinion, but isn’t that kinda what this ask was for?)

Thirsty Asami, Overprotective Korra; these characterizations not only don’t make sense, but they’re exactly what the fandom has been asking for despite neither of them really fitting at all with previous characterizations. These things are supposed to build off one another, and yet they just go in random directions. Okay, fine, in fairness, Thirsty Asami only doesn’t make sense in the context we see it here, rather than a general sense. She can be horny, but that was the weirdest segue to that sort of tone, and it felt shoehorned in as fanservice. Need proof? Look no further:

I mean, seriously? The final lines of the TV show? That’s…every single fanfic writer has at least considered doing that because of the free sentimentality points due to the emotions attached to that final scene, but good lord that is some blatant not-helpful fanservice that, to me, feels automatically pandering right there.

Because that’s what their relationship reads as in these comics. Fanservice. It’s meaningless fluff that seems as though it’s actively refusing to progress either character in personal and communal growth. It serves no other purpose than to reinforce the idea that Asami is a liability (and that Korra’s feelings are the so super strong for her you guys that she’s overprotective lmao). Which is so beyond absurd a notion to have, according to the show itself, because Korra has been present for almost every doofus Asami has decked:

This is also depicted in the end of Part 1, where Korra chooses to save Asami (who is either drunk or high as balls considering her hilariously inept and counter-canon combat performance) from a rock instead of Tokuga. Which just ties into what happens to Asami at the end of Part 2. Yes, the kidnapping. I already talked about the kidnapping, and lo and behold, I was right. Tokuga kidnaps Asami to get to Korra (how original!), and is weirdly okay with them being in a relationship. Remember that homophobia in this universe that may still exist in the Fire Nation because nobody bothered to clarify that? Welp, apparently it didn’t mean squat because Korra just flat out tells a security guard that she’s dating Asami when they were all like “hey let’s keep this to ourselves for the time being”. Even the supervillains don’t care that queer people exist, I guess?

Which of course leads to this scene:

Okay, no. No, there are…so, so many ways to get out of this scenario. First, that’s not a real knife. It’s a fire made in the shape of a blade. It does have mass, but whatever level of “sharpness” it has can’t really retain shape because it’s FIRE. It’s not ice. Asami could presumably just run through it, suffering some nasty burns, and jump to safety because there are plenty of people there who could catch her. Second, that dude is an old man. Asami has taken down multiple terrorists simultaneously. She could just kick him in the balls with her heel. It’s super easy. Third, Asami has been trained in “self-defense” since her mother was murdered (we’ll circle back to this) by firebenders, the implication being that it was the Agni Kai Triad.

So, Hiroshi, being a hardcore genocidal anti-bender crazy person with a daughter insists that she start learning to defend herself at the age of like 5…what do you think those lessons are? I’ve covered this in my Jings and Other Things post, but frankly it doesn’t take a whole lot of thought to realize that “oh he’d make sure she was trained to fight against benders.” That actually circles back to point two, since hey, remember how firebending works?

Remember when Uncle Iroh was all “firebending comes from the breath, not the muscles”? Which lead to Zhao getting his butt kicked by Zuko? All Asami has to do is knock the wind out of this old geezer and jump. Or break his concentration, because, again, not a real knife. This is something she would absolutely know.

Elbow his stomach, kick him in the balls, bite his knuckles, break his nose with the back of her head, kick out his legs, throw herself backwards—the list goes on. Something so fundamental to the universe, to the point that it was sort of Zuko’s whole thing, rebelling against Sozin’s perverted firebending teachings (DANCING DRAGON FORM) through the previous series, being ignored and seemingly retconned because…Mike forgot? And didn’t do any research on his own work to make sure it remained consistent? Uh, okay.

You don’t need to be an action director to think of any of these, especially if you’ve seen the TV show in question. Also, just as an aside to Korra not being able to locate Asami…she, uh, has spirit GPS? Remember that? Through the vines? Found Wu, and Jinora. Just kind supports my theory that Mike forgot to watch his own show. Since that was like, important to Korra’s healing arc.

Anyway, for Asami’s character as a whole…good lord. I don’t…she’s, again, either drunk or high as balls. I mean how else do you explain her being super chill and okay with working with Zhu Li in the first place? Didn’t her husband steal her company? Something that Zhu Li had to have been complicit in considering she was in prison with him? None of this makes any sense! Asami’s convictions on what is just and what is not are kind of her core (remember the Equalists?), so for them to just be thrown out because plot is a little strange and disconcerting.

I’m not saying she wouldn’t work with Zhu Li for the good of the city; she did the same with Varrick and that rings true to me because it’s not like she spent three years rebuilding the fucking thing. Of course she’d be protective of it! It’s also her home. But all of that pales in comparison to the single most glaring thing that is addressed briefly, in passing, in Part 1, but isn’t even mentioned in Part 2:

I just—Korra got a phenomenal healing arc. Asami is the second half of this couple that they are banking these book sales on, and she’s not given room to grieve? To acknowledge that her father was not only murdered, but sacrificed himself to save her life and how complicated and conflicting those feelings have to be considering he tried to murder her back in Book 1? Yeah, that is a meaty subject matter that can absolutely be tackled by a comic. You just sort of have to actually do it and not sweep it under the rug. But that’s what they do, despite the fact that he’s been dead for, oh, I dunno, like less than a month? Nobody can recover that quickly. No one. Not even the Avatar, and we literally saw that in action.

I get that Kuvira isn’t physically in this, and that the corpse of the massive mecha-giant that could not have possibly been moved via conventional means (it was covered in vines that not even Korra can safely remove, remember?) is randomly missing after Korra and Asami get back from their vacation but I really feel like Raiko’s surrender directly leading to Hiroshi’s death is something that could easily be dug into. Even if it’s not totally rational, because it doesn’t have to be because grief and emotions are not rational.

I mean, I doubt I need to get into the fact that Asami is once again sidelined in a plot that should be about her (the reconstruction effort was literally her thing between Books 3 and 4), since that one is just—it’s there. That’s what it is. Zhu Li gets it because she’s around, I guess? And because Raiko is a terrible President who needed to get ousted anyway (why is he not letting people get their food???), but why wouldn’t whatever theoretical legislature just impeach him while Korra and Asami were on vacation? What purpose does this narrative actually serve since we already don’t like Raiko and would want anyone in that position that isn’t him? Preferably someone who lost in the first round of elections—I’ll stop there. It just unfolds with the slightest tug.

SPEAKING OF DEAD PARENTS (perfect segue) remember when I reminded you that Asami’s mother was murdered by firebenders? After a break-in? When she was five? Wow that must have been pretty traumatizing for her considering it literally radicalized her father into becoming a genocidal maniac. Which, you know, makes it extremely strange that this isn’t brought up or addressed when Jargala and her crew do like, the same thing to Asami.

Wow that’s scary, isn’t it? Possibly PTSD flashback level scary, if Mike had remembered that important aspect of Asami’s history. Yet this is not brought up, and it doesn’t seem to inform Asami’s character at all despite the fact that it should probably be the second thing that comes out of her mouth when she discusses the encounter with Korra.

But wait, it happens again with Tokuga, who just ransacks her place, which just makes it worse. It’d be bad enough not to have Asami explicate this connection the first time around, because she could be bottling her emotions (she does that), and we find out about this later, but to do it twice in the same graphic novel? In quick succession? Yeah, Mike just plum forgot.

I don’t think I need to explain further why being lazy with a canon that you yourself poured your blood, sweat and tears into is not a great look. But that’s what the story Mike wrote is saying.

So, yeah, those are most of my issues with Turf Wars Part 2. Thanks for reading through to the end!

Other random thoughts on how none of this makes sense:

Why does Republic City have Kuvira’s military armaments in a warehouse? Even if the war is somehow over, which it can’t be because that’s not how anything works, it’s still Earth Empire property.

Why do any of those mecha-suits even work after Varrick’s EMP?

Why is Ba Sing Se offering relief efforts when that’s the capital of the country that just invaded the United Republic— seriously they’re still at war you guys you can’t just capture the enemy commander and win

How does Tokuga’s half-spirit form allow him to control spirits? Wouldn’t that make them hate him more?

Why do the triads agree to work under him when all he’s got is a tentacle arm? They could just set him on fire and be done with it

What is the point of Keum, like, at all? Why does he even exist? He got kidnapped at the end of Part 1, but we have no emotional stake in his existence

Why are Mako and Bolin relearning how to value one another’s different skill sets? This is like the fifth time or something

[wedidthatcomic]

We DID That? - A comic about our life with Dissociative Identity Disorder

We DID That? is a free-form style comic about our life with DID, C-PTSD, anxiety, and various other physical and mental disorders, all put into a graphical novel-like form that’s easy to understand. This is an edutainment comic seeking to help educate people about the struggles we face with these disorders.

Disclaimer: For our readers with DID/OSDD/NOSDD (and the general public), remember that all systems will be different in every aspect, as none will be alike. Context matters and it is different for everyone. No matter how different you are from what seems to be the norm, you are all valid and we love you. :)

Disclaimer part 2: We are not professionals! We educate, not diagnose. If you notice that you’re saying/thinking “people with [x disorder] either need to stop being relatable or I need to go see a doctor,” you probably should go to a qualified doctor or therapist.

Disclaimer part 3: We do not own any of the introjects’ sources, nor do we claim them. That’s how they choose to identify themselves. :) You are free to draw fanart of them as you wish, @ us if you want us to see them!

Our bonus panels in this comic can contain fun and/or informational facts in text format. Many of them will be from our experience, but some can contain general information/knowledge.

This comic isn’t completely for the faint of heart, as not all of the panels will be light-spirited and may get rather dark. After all, some of these panels can cover serious topics we vent/talk about. Here’s the list:

If you are sensitive to the following topics/subjects, we do not advise subscribing to/reading We DID That? as the comic may feature serious discussion about the following:

Trauma (including childhood trauma.)

Abuse

Chronic pain/other chronic conditions

Internal conflict

Emotional/Mental instability (depression, anxiety, paranoia, hallucinations, etc. )

Identity crisis

Severe amnesia

Dereality/depersonalization

Read the comic in chronological order here.