#i will draw her of course but i am a shitty artist i need quality stuff

[nthflower]

Lack of K.K fanart on this site is so disappointing someone should solve this problem.

[antiloreolympus]

10 Anti LO Asks

1. ok but thats also i think i dont get? because without the series or character names, what of any of the promo images or banner or anything else give away it's supposed to be a greek mythology story? they just look like people with weird anatomy who are colored like highlighters. at the very least some iconography should be on them, but there's not? like even percy jackson stuff makes sure to give him a trident and have water flowing around him.

2. rachel made three times where persephone could have made the choice to be with hades willingly and didnt do it each time. first time she was drugged and put into his car, where he phsyically handles her unconscious body and puts her in his bed (ew). second is her working for him, which was hera forcing it. third was her going to the underworld not because she wanted to, but because she was hiding from the law/apollo and he found her. where exactly is her agency in all of this?

3. LO seems like the fast food of webtoons. because there's no room to speculate or theorize, you just read an episode and move on, the bright colors distract that it's a rushed and lazy product over something with high quality and effort, the characters are flat and boring, and the plot has no substance. it's meant to be consumed in a rapid binge, because if not you realize what low-effort and what little you're actually getting from it when you slow down and actually think about it.

4. i mean rachel does have some logic to her fancasting, the problem is it seems the only people of color are either demonized for being hypersexual (aphrodite, eros until he's with psyche) or are literally r//pists who are out to harm her white-fa casted persephone (apollo), so yeah, there is logic there, it's just pointing to rachel being (hopefully unintentionally) racist

5. It pisses me so much that I work over time  (using references and looking at paintings and reading history for ideas for interesting character motifs) so that any of the ancient greek characters I draw look cool and authentically greek, and yet fucking Rachel Smythe, who can't even be bothered to do more than 5 seconds of research to learn that not all ancient greek outfits were shitty, minimalist off white and eggshell, gets to be revered as an artistic revolutionary. It pisses me off so. Fucking. Much. Not just for me, but for everyone else like me who absolutely ADORES greek mythology and wants to draw accurate portrayals of these characters! To whoever is reading this, stop. Stop rn and go read Sleep and His Brother Death (a comic on webtoons), go play Hades (the video game), go read The Song of Achilles (a book by Madeline Miller). Those are beautiful pieces of fiction about Greek mythology that deserve your attention more then Rachel and her shitty pink highlighter self inserts.

And a sidenote, I know that this is kinda like a modern AU for the gods. I am aware. Does not change that fact that anytime any character is drawn in ancient greek fashion it's always the SAME. SHITTY. CHITON. Maybe with a.cape or a scarf, but for the most part? It's just the same stupid, off white chiton.

6. oh, i thought you guys were joking persephone is now stuck with red eyes. is that seriously what look we're stuck with now? does rachel know it looks really ugly?

7. i feel like the lineart less style actually hurts LO in a way. way too often you can look at a panel and it becomes really murky where something starts and ends, and it looks even worse on a phone screen, because on an even smaller screen the images look even more compressed, making it even harder to tell stuff apart. this wouldnt be as bad if the comic took back up its more high contrast look from the begging, but now it's all one flat shade and im not sure why.

8. im really confused over the marketing of LO, tbh. like the ads are all hxp focused, but the series name implies its not about them, but focusing on the 12 olympians, but then the synopsis is general mythology and at the very end randomly mentions its about persephone? but then you read it and nots sure whether its a teen romance, a comedy, a serious drama, and can't stay straight with its messaging and timeline? and persephone is not there for a chunk of time. like whats actually going on?? 😭

9. Chapter 173 is like 50% filler. It gives more questions that answers, and not just from the reporters. Like the reporter stuff was mostly filler, and the Persphone and Hades stuff was like yeah we know dont need to drag this on.

My questions are WHAT ARE THE RED EYES? Is it when she’s mad? Horny? Sad? Happy? I feel like the red eyes just show up whenever RS wants to draw them

Flying? I feel like Persphone has always been flying like it wasn’t a bug moment at all. She flew home when Minthe and Hades kissed. But apperently Demeter didn’t know? I guess I don’t remember her flying in the mortal realm but her flying didn’t seem like a big moment, none of the other characters seemed surprised by it.

��Answer mine first!” When i got to that line I reread some of it just to find where the question was. That line normally matters when you’ve already asked the question not if you haven’t gotten there yet. Like of course Demeter is gonna be worried and ask a million questions.

I know the pomegranate pin is gonna be important but I felt the focus on it was a little too much, like an excuse not to cover more this chapter. Because honestly it felt like 5 minutes of the plot was covered in this chapter. 

10. So uh, whats up with Hades weird ass comments... Like "Persephone you look beautiful and if someone says otherwise they can go play on the highway" ???

Because Persephone looking good during a murder trial is clearly the most important thing here.

Also, Perse's response to the reporter who asked her about her friendship with Hades. I mean, on one hand Persephone is right, her "friendship" (or whatever it is they have going on) is nobodies business but her own - but at the same time, its kinda also the underworld denizens right to know in the sense that their future leadership could be affected so they might want to know whats going on if their getting a new co-ruler / Queen that they will be subjects of. They probably will want to know who Persephone is, should she and Hades get married because it's very likely that when (cause lets be real its a 'when' not 'if' they get married) they do get married that Persephone will inherit half the title.

So, eh?

[barksbog]

frequently sent anons and stuff

gonna answer some thing people keep asking me or keep getting wrong or i just really feel are important to know

(i have a faq but we all know what tumblr mobile be like)

how did you become a plush making gremlin?

always loved plushies and weird creatures

learned how to make plushies on The Internets

took some commissions for custom ones (did not enjoy that too much)

started to sell my own designs

here we go

^most professional image that exists of my face.

whole lot more under the cut

1. business/onlineshop related 

Do you take commissions? I don´t really open for regular comissions.

i sometimes accept “sponsorships” of stuff that fits with my other work. especially if it´s just a recoloring of an existing pattern (like a different species of slug or toad for example).

will you sell more of this plushie?

if it´s still in the online shop but listed as out of stock the answer is most likely yes. it takes me a while tho because i really do make each one myself. this is a one gremlin operation.

i really wanted to get one of your microraptors, spinosaurs (or any other dinosaur plushie)? will they come back?

sorry they really won´t. neither will i restock any of the dinosaur charms, pins and stickers once they sold out. for a good amount of reasons i have decided to leave paleoart behind. as cool as dinosaurs are. i like my mental health more.

i feel like everyone who witnessed the level of drama coming from certain members of the paleo community understands completely what i mean and while i know you can create paleoart and just reduce interaction to a minimum i like to be active on social media and discord servers relevant to what i do.

do you ship to ...

yes. yes i ship worldwide.

does that plushie really cost 30,000€?

no my likely american friend. it´s 30.00€ we just use commas here and so does my shop when set to €. i can´t set it to $ because i need to pay my. everything. in € and honestly don´t want to constantly gamble on the current exchange course being steady so i actually get my money. paypal will let you pay in your currency tho and just send me €.

i tried to contact you and you didn´t respond?

-if you contacted me like “hey” or “hey i have a question” i´m unlikely to have the energy to respond. please always contact artists with what you want to know

-i have answered that question a lot before or it can easily be answered by looking at my onlineshops faq

-you sent me an anon about a order. i can´t help you there

-if you have order related question it´s best to email me through the contact form of my onlineshop. if you just email my business mail it often ends in spam and i don´t see if for a few weeks.

2. sewing/plush making related

Where do you get that fabric? how does that happen to have toads on it?

i get it custom printed by spoonflower (they have a factory in the US and in Germany). i design it in photoshop and just upload it and they print it for me. they can be a bit slow. or just send you a meter of middle earth for no reason. or print a meter half black for no reason but overall their quality is great and so is their customer support when they do mess up.

a few tips i have are:

- the minky piling runs from the top down.

- you can design meters even when it says and displays yards in the preview, just check if it´s set to meters when in the basket before checkout.

- never set anything to center and order more than one meter, it will be printed once in the middle and leave you with a bunch of white useless minky.

- if you don´t want to wrangle 4 meters of fabric apart just keep adding One meter of the design at the time and you will get precut meters.

where did you learn to sew? how do i learn to sew?

I had a very basic crafts class in school with a shitty teacher that told me that “i´m sloppy and Can Not Sew” but really everything useful i ever learned i learned from The Internets so just go and look for some free patterns and tutorials and you are good to go. after trying a few patterns you will get a feeling for how plushies work and can combine what you learned. it´s really just like when you learn to draw and break things down into shapes.

if you have some questions or things you can´t figure out or just want to talk about crafts i run a really nice server with palaeoplushies

https://discord.gg/Cqwq4r3

what´s it like to run a business with 21?

stressful. i´m not always sure what i´m doing. but i´m doing it. and i believe in you, you can do it too. there is a 10kg bag of stuffing and a 25kg box of beans in my room. i have a whole huge sorting box full of eyes.

you are doing this fulltime? that´s really cool

yes i do this fulltime However. i really wish i could have a sidejob but i can´t because i have a funky brain and migraines so i really can´t find or keept almost any job.

^me doing my job.professionally. my job being. turning the fricking frogs gay.

3. personal.

so you are australian, how are the kangaroos?

No. Stop. I´m austrian. i don´t even know if you are joking or for real. just don´t.

so you are german? you speak german right?

again. i´m austrian. yes we speak german here but a different dialect so i likely don´t sound like the germans you have heard in movies. in fact the majority of germans will not even understand me.

can you stop complaining about the weather?

yes i complain about heat because. i´m heat sensitive. also because i´m actually an Alpine Gremlin and shouldn´t be subjected to temperatures over 30°C. our house doesn´t have AC. i work in here all day at 28°C room temp and with high humidty.

yes i complain about the cold too. because our house is old and badly insulated and i have to carry in firewood in laundrybaskets to feed to an old woodburner and it sucks. our house frequently falls down to 16°C.

so there is a spelling mistake?

yes i make a lot of spelling mistakes. or just switch out whole words. or forget whole words. unless it´s something important like a salespost please just don´t point that out constantly. like mentioned before i have a funky brain and it just be like that. also like mentioned before. i´m austrian. english is actually my second language so. be nice.

way too long list of spire fun facts:

i´m nonbinary and use they/them pronouns. i´m also very gay.

if you see me refer to “my wife” that´s the moon. i´m legally married to her. i really like dramatically standing on my balcony and looking at her.

if you see me yell about “the lesbians” that´s my mourning geckos.

i have 13 furbies. and you have no right to insult them. they are baby.

i also have a lot of skulls and other dead things

I´m autistic and come with some extra dyslexia, depression and anxiety.

i also come with intense migraines that can make me useless for a solid week

i live in a village surounded by woods with less than 200 people

i did spent a lot of time in vienna for 6 years tho and lived there for three of that 6

i actually have a diploma in graphic design. that i don´t really need for anything but winning argument about aesthetic choices or making jokes

yes. i am kinda short. (162cm/5.3ft)

i have two cats. they are littermates tho. so i get some people have a hard time telling it´s not just the same cat. i swear they are two different cats tho and actually really easy for me to tell apart.

milk belongs in tetrapacks. not jugs. fight me

tapirs are nasty creatures

krampus comes on the 5th or 6th of december. stop calling him the christmas devil you fools. my source? growing up with the krampus tradition.

you know what happens on the 24th tho? me. that´s my birthday. and that is in fact austrian christmas day. all christmas happens that day. if you wish me merry christmas before happy birthday i will never forgive you.

i really loved balto as a child. the dingo pictures version tho. i was enraged when i saw the ofiicial balto because i thought they stole it from dingo pictures. i watched a lot of dingo pictures and that´s why i´m Like This

^my lovely wife

if you see me rambling in the tags. generally i´m. okay. you don´t have to worry but if you relate or just feel like talking to me? you can dm me and i have actually made friends like that before so.

if i don´t respond to your dms or asks it´s not because i don´t like you i just have very low social energy most days 

and finally.

if you think me and @palaeoplushies are the same person we have a legal right to your soul and your favorite child for our Collection

we prefer none human children tho

(i´m sorry for tagging you. and making you scroll through like “wtf is spire taggin me in now again” but it would have felt weirder not to let you know about the future souls i´m sending your way)

[moleofmetal]

Metal Mole at the Movies: Lords of Chaos film review

So today's post is a little different, I’ve decided to branch out and be a movie critic to give my opinion on this year’s controversial film Lords of Chaos. A film that is in Metal so I’m sure I am forgiven for my deviance with this. Album reviews are coming back.

Anyone who has more than a passing interest in black metal at all knows about this book (written by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind) and the ghastly tales within its pages. If not read the book, have at least read through the “Early Norwegian black metal scene” Wikipedia page. And that's all you really need to know as this film. It tells the extreme tale of the creation of True Norwegian Black Metal and the most infamous band Mayhem and the exploits of its main players, Dead, Euronomous and Varg Vikernes (plus a few other faces of the scene). As well as showing the resulting mayhem of murders, suicide, and church burnings.

Bringing it all to life on the screen through the director, best known as music video producer: Jonas Åkerlund (Briefly a black metaller himself as a rehearsal guitarist for Bathory), this gruesome tale is for all to see in its glory.

Now: it’s impossible to review this film without also touching on my own feelings of the events and crimes depicted, as well on Black metal itself so I will get this out of the way first. I love Black metal! Its tales shown here are almost semi-mythical in the lore and aesthetics of the genre. It is one of the darkest forms of art and It has been described by some as evil personified in music so of course evil shit happened. They didn’t have to happen but this controversy is what fuelled the fire and helped launch its intrigue and boost is notoriety. No one will ever know what Black metal would be like if the events didn’t happen. But this world is the world for better or worst.

If metal draws in the “outsiders” of society, then black metal definitely draws in the “outsiders” of the "outsiders" and the more deranged / mentally unstable of us. This seems to be clear now and in its early days with Dead clearly suffering from Cotard’s delusion (the delusional belief that they are already dead, do not exist, or are putrefying). Although this doesn’t excuse the extreme motivations and actions, it does help to explain some of it. The crimes I find most heinous in all of this not the murder of Euronomous by Varg Vikernes [Spoiler haha], or indeed the church burnings (which did result in the death of a firefighter) but Faust’s (Emperor drummer) murder of Magne Andreassen (a gay man who was stabbed 37 in the Olympic park in 1992) this is a sickening murder that was completely senseless to me. But: as Faust put it he was “looking to take out some aggression out”, it just happened to be Magne that came into his range on that fateful night. It shows more about his mental stability of the man, although he has distanced himself from it being motivated by nothing more than angst and aggression.

This is probably showing me for the leftish shithead I am or as a false Black Metal fan but I believe when It comes to this, no murder or hatred can be truly justified (Fuck Nazi’s and all that), but a key part in this is the fact that even great people sometimes do shitty things, as human nature is deeply flawed.

How much you can truly separate the art from the artist or how much believe in “death of the author” is obviously a difficult conundrum for anyone (I’ll leave this to the reader), but the way I see it is the worst the crime/personality can be offset by the value and quality of the art they make. This makes to soften the blow for some people.

Anyway back to the actual film. It is quite a realistic movie overall, as it plays it mostly straight as it can. It's a dark and shocking film and will be pretty unpleasant to non-metal or Horror fans, who won't find anyone relatable or not psychopathic in this. 

 At times it feels extremely visceral and violent, with a lot of blood and gore, (Dead’s suicide is particularly raw and painful to view.) while adding only minor jumps. Euronymous, Varg and others have been reduced to some degree to mere characters in this though, as the clunky and at times cringy dialog about the music are very hard to play straight. So what they have done to compensate is to up some of the comedy value. This was done mostly by pointing out their stupidity in their actions. Varg Vikernes takes mostly the brunt of this (as with his compliance Blackthorn) who get the funniest moments. 

Euronymous played by Rory Culkin (yes Kevin McCallister’s little brother) does play his part very well.  Euronymous seems very ambitious for himself and band while being very self-centered and attention seeking through the actions of others. Although his doe-eyed look at times is distracting at times, his acting is as good as it can be and does not shy away from what must have been a mental toll the events must have taken on him, with his persistent paranoia. 

Emory Cohen as Varg Vikernes, on the other hand, comes across as very dorky and awkwardly as if the film is covertly taking the piss out of him. He is depicted as an extremist with some twisted motivations that seem all his own doing. Only needing the slightest prompt to carry out the burnings. He's is acted extremely well and makes for a strong villain. Jack Kilmer (Batmans son) as Dead is played about the best of them as a weird and introverted personality, while also giving him what looks like extreme depressive episodes, he doesn't say much but all the lore of him and deeds are kept true on screen.

Sky Ferreira’s role as the fictional photographer girlfriend of Euronymous: Ann-Marit feels mostly only there to give Euronymous a chance to talk more and explain some more of his stresses and feeling. She is acted well though, I feel like she might only be there to stop there being too many dudes in this flick. In a story that is dominated by dudes, there isn’t much room for her. Thankful they didn’t demote their motivations down to “fighting over a girl”

This movie has the tagline/disclaimer “based on true and lies” is perfect for what is shown since no-one will truly know what went down but you can some of the exaggerations particularly in the amount of sex they have. You can also the attention they put in too, with several points showing and replicating actual and well know photos within the scenes of the film as well as make a great copy of an early Mayhem gig with Dead on vocals. Bloody and graphic! Truly played though is the soundtrack: which is all extreme metal, loud and in your face. With all you kvlt favorites (Celtic Frost, Sarcofago, Sodom, Bathory, Tormentor) here all with correct decade and style. Awesome! 

Although this film is mostly hated at the moment, I can see this film becoming a cult/kvlt classic with metalheads in time. It’s a good watch. The comedy elements and what is shown makes for a fairly decent romp of a film that seems to do something that the black metal scene could do with! It has fun and doesn’t take itself too seriously. [7/10]

[themyskira]

Wonder Woman Annual #2

Previously in FUCKITY FUCK FUCK I FORGOT THERE WAS AN ANNUAL AS WELL: Diana prepared to face down her most terrifying foes yet: the Dark Gods.

Who or what are the Dark Gods? Dunno.

What do they want? No clue.

What is this awesome and terrible power that they wield? So far, mostly just the ability to shoot lasers out of their eyes and incite people to deliver badly-written villainous monologues.

Why are we supposed to be so pants-pissingly afraid of them? Because James Robinson told us so.

Last issue ended with the Dark Gods manifesting over Washington DC, at which point it was revealed that they are… giant floating statues, I guess? But, like, scary floating statues. With lasers. So scary.

And then moments later, a couple of Star Sapphires arrived to whisk Diana away so she could appear in this shitty annual.

Diana is teleported to the Star Sapphires’ home planet of Zamaron, which is heavily battle-damaged.

The two Sapphires who brought her here are called Miss Bloss and Miri Riam, who are apparently pre-established minor Green Lantern characters — something I had to figure out on my own, because Robinson just assumes we all known them, and that Diana does too (I’m reasonably sure they’ve never met). The one time his overexplaining might have actually been useful, and he couldn’t be arsed taking a panel or two to make introductions.

Diana yells at them that she’s too busy to help with whatever their deal is, and launches into a recap of last issue. But, you know, that was all of two weeks ago, so by all means, spend a page getting us up to speed.

She’s also still throwing around ‘crazy’ and ‘insane’ like they’re going out of style. 

“…and although I’m not certain — the woman who told me was insane at the time--“

How about ‘possessed’, ‘out of control’, ‘somewhat incoherent’ or ‘compromised’? Any of these would be more accurate in this context, as well as not equating mental illness with dangerous and violent behaviour.

But anyway, essentially Diana says ‘my world is being attacked by the Dark Gods and it’s my fault’, and Miss Bloss is like, ‘well, if that was your fault, then our thing must be your fault, too’, and points up at the giant floating Dark God statue thing that Diana has somehow failed to notice until this exact moment.

Oh, goody.

Diana starts questioning them about what happened.  Honestly, that’s really all she does these days.  If she’s not delivering plot recaps herself, she’s setting up allies for flashback-exposition or allowing villains to monologue at her. Oh, sure, occasionally she fights somebody, but mostly she’s just a vessel for tedious exposition.

Miss Bloss describes the Dark God’s attack:

“Even to recall it now, it feels like a dream or vision from another world. Almost like we were looking at ourselves from outside of it all.”

The first time I read this, I took it to be a figure of speech. I interpreted it as an expression of Miss Bloss’s deep level of shock at the devastation she’d experienced, that it still felt unreal, as though it had happened to somebody else.

I was giving Robinson too much credit: he meant it literally.

As we’ll learn in a few pages’ time, one of the Dark Gods has some kind of power over people’s perceptions, enabling him to induce in others a sense of unreality and dreamlike detachment. We’ll learn that the Dark Gods have deliberately used this ability in order to confuse enemies and limit their ability to respond to or even comprehend attacks.

Frazer Irving — who illustrates the flashback, along with a couple of other scenes in this issue — plays into this well.  His stylised art and colour work lends a somewhat eerie dreamlike quality to his pages, creating a sense of altered reality.

Unfortunately, Robinson can’t write dreamlike.

So what in theory should be an eerie, confusing, unreal flashback instead just turns into Miss Bloss telling us that her memories of the attack are eerie and unreal and hazy… aaaaand then proceeding to describe the attack, the enemy, his name, the concept he embodies, his powers and the precise reason why he was able to kill so many Star Sapphires, all in exacting detail. 

The Dark God who attacked the Sapphires is called Karnell and he calls himself the god of love, but the love he embodies is dark and gritty and edgy and corrupted. He can sense any ‘impurities’ or ‘flaws’ in a person’s love and rub it in their faces. When he does this to Star Sapphires, something something their rings freak out and they spontaneously combust.

Diana asks, ‘yeah okay, but you didn’t know that this was my fault when you dragged me here, so what gives?’, and Bloss and Miri are like, ‘welp, our leaders are all dead, Carol Ferris is busy in another comic, we all frankly suck, and you were a Star Sapphire once in that Blackest Night crossover event.’

At which point I went, ‘wait huh what??? but that was before the New 52 reboot!’, before remembering that Geoff Johns’ entire preboot GL run survived the reboot for no other reason than because Geoff Johns gets whatever he wants.

Diana agrees to lead the Sapphires against Krakoom (I’m sorry, I’m not going to bother to learn his name, he’s not worth that kind of time), and the Sapphires respond by giving her the Nazi salute due to an unfortunate artistic miscalculation.

Diana: And if I am going to stand among you — fight alongside you — let me look the part. Sapphires: As you wish it, so do we, Wonder Woman… be a Star Sapphire once more.

And with that, they give Diana a makeover.

It’s not a bad costume, especially when you compare it to her Blackest Night design. That one tried to ape Carol Ferris’ hideous then-costume, which featured hip cut-outs and a plummeting neckline that ended around the crotch area, by giving Diana a bathing suit with hip-holes and a bared midriff. This design retains many familiar Star Sapphire costume elements — the stiff pointed white collar, the combination tiara/mask, the starburst symbol, the long gloves and high boots — without going into creepy male-gazey territory.

buuuuut it also looks like Diana is wearing a pink apron over her usual costume, and that is something I cannot get past. It also varies wildly across the issue, depending on which of the four credited artists is drawing it.

By the way, I say ‘makeover’ because despite violet blaze on her right ring finger, it took me several times flicking back and forth before I was certain that Diana had been deputised into the Corps as opposed to just being given a new costume in order to “look the part”, as she put it. I know this sounds like it should have been self-evident, but Robinson gives absolutely no indication of any deeper change in her. Not even lip service to the fact that Diana is connected, through the power ring, to the emotional spectrum and the violet energies of love.

Contrast this with Diana in Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #3:

“Extraordinary. All of them, in their way, have tried to explain it to me before. Hal, John, Kyle… even Guy, may Ares watch and aid him. But it defies all attempts. There is no way to describe it. What it is to wear a power ring, and feel emotion made manifest. To wear fear on anger or will or hope on one’s hand… To wear love. Too beautiful for words…”

There’s a lot about Wondy’s Blackest Night tie-in that’s flawed and frustrating and flat-out bad, but this page gets it right. If you’re going to make Diana a Star Sapphire — going to give one of the most loving hearts of the DCU the power to channel her love into tangible power — then you need to acknowledge the weight of that.

In this comic, it’s as insubstantial as a costume change.

Flying up to confront Kratakoa, Diana wonders if she could really have summoned the Dark Gods. Supergirl said she brought them into this plane with a careless wish, and… oh, come to think of it, she did inadvertently make a wish during the recent Dark Nights: Metal crossover, while coincidentally handling some magical wishing metal. But nah, that couldn’t possibly have done it!

She reaches the big floaty statue and a bloke with spiky wings emerges from it. It’s Klangalang, and he’s got his monologue cued up and ready to go!

He opens with a fairly standard ‘ahaha, I’ve been expecting you, hero!’, and the implications fly straight over Diana’s head.

Kibble: You came, Amazon! Sooner than I expected, too! Good… I’m going to love this! Diana: You’re some kind of seer, too? You expected me?

Let’s review: The villains Diana supposedly summoned, the villains who have been trying to kill or neutralise Diana before she can interfere in their plans, have attacked the Star Sapphires in advance of their invasion of Earth. Despite not knowing about Diana’s connection to their attacker, the Sapphires reached out to her for help, teleporting her away at almost the exact moment that the villains launched their opening assault. Now the one villain who hasn’t joined the invading force is cackling that he’s been expecting Diana.

Even a half-competent hero should be able to join the dots and realise they’ve been deliberately lured away. Not so Robinson’s Diana, who gazes at him wide-eyed and demands, ‘omg, u expected me? are u psychic or sumthin???’

After a couple more rounds of obscenely dense questions from Diana (along with another out-of-character ’crazy’ slur), Klunk ends up having to straight-up spell it out for her. He also explains how she summoned the Dark Gods.

Krunch: You wished for the gods’ return. Well, here we are. Here I am! Diana: Like a dream, but yes, of course. But I meant the Greek pantheon, not— Krump: Gods! That’s all you said.

Small nitpick: Diana would not think of her gods the “Greek pantheon”. She’d be more likely to call them “the Patrons”, “my gods”, “the gods of my people”, “the gods of Themyscira”, “the gods of Olympus”, “the Olympians” — she knew them as all of these things long before she knew Greece, or any world outside her island home, existed. The only reason she might refer to them as “Greek” is for the benefit of people in Man’s World, as a point of reference.

More importantly, are you friggin kidding me, the friggin layers of incompetence here from our supposed hero

accidentally makes a wish while wielding a weapon of magical wishing metal

manages to make the vaguest wish possible, opening a loophole for THE WORST GODS to infiltrate reality

immediately forgets she ever wished it

why would she even wish for that?! her gods haven’t gone anywhere!

To be somewhat fair, the reason she doesn’t really remember it is that “the God With No Name” (YES REALLY) made it all feel like a dream so that she wouldn’t realise she’d made an irresponsible wish and needed to immediately rally everybody together to resist the Dark Gods.

Except… that in itself doesn’t make any sense.

There are two possibilities here: the Horse With No Name could have clouded Diana’s memory of making the wish after the Dark Gods were pulled into this reality — in which case, why? How would she even land on the conclusion that she’d accidentally summoned some evil gods that she’d never heard of, when her intent was to call on her own gods and she’d had no indication that it had even worked?

Alternatively, he clouded her mind in the moment of the wish, to render her thoughts vague and imprecise and open the door for the Dark Gods’ invasion. Which doesn’t work either, because it turns out that the Dark Gods are pretty pissed off at being pulled out of their awesome reality.

King Koopa: War was declared the moment you dragged us from our home… our beautiful world — which you regard as the ‘Dark Multiverse’ — we see as a paradise… where we were more than even gods to our worshippers… we were everything!”

So basically their plan is to turn Earth into a desolate hellscape just like their home.

Diana, who has already been told that Kraig is a god of corrupted love, conveniently forgets this fact just so that Robinson can tell it to us again.

Diana: You call yourself a god of love. What kind of love wants to be feared? Love is unconditional. KHAAAAAN: Spoken like the addled naive romantic I expected. Love always comes with conditions. Sometimes, I confess, I question… am I god of that love, of those conditions behind it? But then I realise… I don’t care.

Cool story. Glad we can agree on one thing, at least.

He monologues for a couple of pages about how he’s going to open her eyes to the truth of how horrible and selfish and corrupt love is, then draws Diana into his mind so that he can monologue some more.

We learn that the world of the Dark Gods was forged by a group of divinities called Titans, “much like the reality of your own Greek pantheon” (incorrect, you’re thinking of the Protogenoi; the Titans were the second generation of gods). But because these Titans were hardcore, they did it by smashing five other realities together. And into this terrifyingly dark edgy metalscape came… +~teh D4rK g0dz~+

Robinson then undermines the super-extra-double-dark feel he’s going for with another embarrassing name and an accidental rhyme.

“We Dark Gods followed, as gods do. King Best and then the rest.”

KING. BEST.

But wait, we haven’t even gotten to Kalamazoo’s dark edgy totally original backstory!

In fact, this is so dark and edgy and original that I’ll throw in a quick content warning here for descriptions of domestic violence and shittiness towards sex workers.

“You’ll meet a boy — his mother broken by a wanton father who forced her to cheapen herself further with wraiths and under-beings. The mother died — beaten to death. When he saw her blood still dripping from the fists of his father, the boy ran, fearing the same fate. The boy loved his mother, but hated his father and the world. Both emotions — love and hate — burned so brightly that even from within the darkness of our world, their glow caught the eye of mighty King Best.”

Domestic violence! Sexism! Slut shaming! Fridging! It’s like a game of grimdark bingo!

After three goddamn pages of this, Diana suddenly twigs what we all figured out eleven pages ago, ‘oh now waaaaaait a minute, you didn’t lure me here so that your buddies could invade Earth while I’m distracted, did you?’

Klinger responds by almost murdering Diana, and is only stopped by the intervention of the Star Sapphires.  They all retreat, and Diana proposes a new plan: all the Sapphires will channel their energy into her, something something, true love wins the day.

So Diana flies up to Kimberley, sword held aloft and blazing with violet energy, and announces, ‘boy did you make a mistake when you told me that you used to be a sad boy child! now I have only love in my heart for you!’

Karma Khameleon is like, ‘oh no, love! my one true weakness!’, and I’m like, “d… didn’t we just have this story?”

Then Diana straight-up stabs him with her love sword, and Korgo fades away with an ‘I’ll beat you next time, Captain Planet! Next tiiiiiime…’

Diana farewells the Star Sapphires, and Robinson shoehorns in this bit of virtue signalling:

Miri: Please… Diana, think of us as your sisters, too, for all time. Diana: Or “brother,” I notice. Miss Bloss: Love is love, no matter who bears the heart.

This is a welcome and needed change to the Star Sapphires. The fact that they have been portrayed up until this point as an all-women corps (with the exception of a few briefly deputised blokes) is bound up in ugly gendered ideas, exemplified by Geoff Johns’ comment in 2009 that “anyone can join, but most men are not worthy”.

But there’s something gratingly self-congratulatory in the execution of this course correction.  Robinson’s doing the absolute bare minimum here — including one or two male background characters in a handful of panels — and flagging it as progress with a phrase associated with the LGBTI community.  We haven’t even seen a single named male Sapphire, let alone one with a speaking part; I think it’s a little premature to be looking for kudos. And either Miri or Miss Bloss could very easily have been replaced in this story by a new male character.

The Sapphires teleport Diana back to Earth, where she finds DC a smoking ruin. And as the air clears, she sees—

—wait for it—

—this is truly shocking and terrifying—

THE DARK GODS MADE A MEGAZORD

THEY MADE A FUCKING MEGAZORD WITH THEIR DUMBASS FLYING STATUES

A GODDAMN MEGAZORD WHO WHAT HOW WHY.

Diana’s face does this:

[edenorisshitposting]

How do you get inspired? I'm asking you because you seem like an inspired artist

Inspiration is an illusion

Real answer, at no point in my day do I feel inspired, and yet here i am making art. The more you progress with your art the more you realise that feeling really inspired to create something specific is very rare, and it doesn’t necessarily lead to better artwork. In short the trick is to create without feeling “inspired”, but it’s not a very good answer so I’m going to elaborate ahead. This is super long, but I feel like you deserve a serious answer.

1. Step one: get a sketchbook

You’re going to want a place to generate ideas in. Get a sketchbook, it doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive (and for what I’m about to suggest I think it’s actually better to get a cheaper one), ditch the loose sheets flying around your room, keep them for finished illustrations (but we’re not there yet). Aside from keeping all your drawings organized together (thus preventing you from losing your drawings), a sketchbook is fun to flip through.

I’ve had these two for this purpose and was very pleased with both (yeah, they’ve got scribbles all over them. don’t worry about it) the good thing about them is that they’re relatively cheap, but the paper is still of a decent quality.  They have lots of pages,so you’re not as afraid to “waste” them.

2. Step two: Scribble in it, a TON

Keep doodling and scribbling all over it, keep throwing ideas at the paper to see what sticks, even if it’s a shitty idea. Don’t be afraid of “wasting paper”, that’s why you bought a cheaper sketchbook. It doesn’t need to look pretty, a sketchbook is for learning and brainstorming. Looking and my art blog (and most artists’ honestly) you see mostly finished illustrations, so it’s easy to think that I just come up with an idea and then finish it. But in reality what I upload is a fraction of what I draw. My sketchbook is FULL of sketches that nothing came out of. Fill an entire page with doodles of hamsters, or landscapes, or even instagram models. It doesn’t matter, keep drawing.

Here are some examples of pages I did not upload.

3. Step three: don’t worry about it

About six months ago I was looking to get into art school, and of course to pass the exams I needed to present a portfolio. At the time I’ve been drawing in sketchbooks nearly exclusively for over two years, so I had very few illustrations to show. So I had about a month to build a stronger portfolio, and naturally I decided to make more, and more “inspired” ones. Let me tell you I have never produced more artworks I hated than I did then. Not even a single one was included in my portfolio. And of course after I had already presented and the pressure to create good artwork was off I finally was able to create more things I liked (I did get in to art school, so no need to worry). Point of the story is that you’re a better artist when you don’t put yourself under the pressure of constantly being good, so don’t worry about it (specially if you’re not a professional).

4. Step four: keep throwing shit at the wall and eventually something will stick

Ideas are like an avalanche. They can just stand there for ages if you’re not doing anything with them until they eventually melt and disappear. But it also means that it takes just a small push to bring all of them down. What you initially thought was a bad idea might lead you to a different better idea, and that one might lead you to another idea, and it would lead you to two more. Keep the momentum going until sometime in the future when you find and idea you’d like to turn to a finished painting. I am not the best example (because I don’t draw as much as I should), but even then there are times when I can seat for days and not draw a single thing, and then all of a sudden one sketch leads me to burn through 5 pages of my sketchbook in an hour. It took me 7 sketchbook pages from initial concept to final design when I was coming up with Major Tom, all done on the same day. And I drew even more characters that day that I haven’t uploaded.

5. Not exactly a step five: don’t neglect your technique

That’s a piece of advice I wish teenage me hadn’t ignored. Your technical skills are the tools you use to create. The better you skill are the more ideas you can execute. that means drawing the boring shit, like hands, perspective, still life etc. I started out like a lot of artists, drawing mainly anime, avoiding drawing hands, or any perspective to speak of. My art today suffers because of it. I’m 22 and still struggle with drawing proper hands, my perspective is off at best. Learn from my mistakes, it’s ok to draw the fun stuff, but also draw the important boring stuff.(Disclaimer: this is a lesson I haven’t quite finished learning myself)

6. Step six: don’t limit yourself to one style

Beware the trap of “that’s my style”, beside limiting you in skill, committing to a style when you’re still young will limit you in what you can draw. Again, when I was younger I drew nearly exclusively anime. That meant I was very limited in what I could draw, and worse - I was getting sick of it. By the time I graduated highschool I couldn’t stand the idea of making another single anime drawing. i was going through a small art crisis, since all of a sudden I didn’t have a set style anymore. At that time I tried a bunch of different styles from realism, to american cartoon, and for a short time even french catoon. Today I draw in a fairly realistic style, leaning towards more or less cartoon depending on the specific subject. The best style is having no style. Your art will always have your touch to it, it’s something you can’t escape. Make the style work for you, not the other way. When in doubt look to Picasso. This guy exchanged styles like socks and he’s one of the greatest artists of our time, and even though his artworks are sometimes completely different from each other they are all still undoubtedly Picasso.

This answer ended up being super long because most artists online would reply to this question with something along the lines of “look for things that inspire you!” which I think is a cop out answer and it completely misses the point (sorry basically every youtube artist), it’s an important question that deserves better. You’re asking for advice to get inspired because things don’t inspire you, thats the whole problem. I also think this isn’t a very good advice in general, I feel really inspired maybe four times a year, and yet I created more than four artworks. Don’t sit around looking for inspiration because it won’t come. Draw without “inspiration”, you don’t need her anyway.