#if i make a comic I need it to be as easy to replicate as possible

[ruensroad]

I also need an opinion on the Big Bad Love Interest. Any help is appreciated!

Choice 1: Classic gray to black

Choice 2: black roan

Choice 3: black w/white points

To see the choices for the MC design, please go here: https://ruensroad.tumblr.com/post/720810992477536256/i-dont-have-polls-but-id-love-some-opinions

[mightbemod]

Hiiiii im here with more TF2 lesbians 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

featuring my heacanon blu team! the resident team goofballs Pyro and Jamie <3 ive posted Jamie before, heres the post giving more details about her!!!

i practiced drawing scout in the official comic's style yesterday to make this and turns out its super easy and fun to draw! i wanna try to replicate the style more again sometime! i def need to study how their color theory works more tho my style is usually super saturated its a big change lol

[critterbitter]

If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your comic making process? I find it hard to make comics that look eye-pleasing to read and yours are like candy.

Ah, comics! Dig under cut to see some old wips as I attempt to explain my nightmare thought process to you.

For making a comic AESTHETIC and APPROACHABLE:

I've noticed that it's easier for people to be pulled into a comic if I set the environment first and foremost, so people have some vague context for the scene. Of COURSE that's not always necessary ( there are a lot of comics that start out without environmental story telling and it works perfectly) but I've always liked having a lil illustration before digging my rat claws into the meat of the story.

For example! “Emmet and Elesa have a clandestine meeting in the library at 4 am.”

The sketch was sort of the jumping point to where I wanted to go with the comic. I wanted to a. explain wtf is happening and b. draw a nice conclusion about what the f is happening.

You don't need to make the environment available in every panel too! I'd suggest making your first panel tell all the environment detail you need and then like... slowly removing irrelevant detail from there. And then hit folks with the background again at the end. (So basically, you don't see the library in this comic until the beginning and a bit towards the end. I have tricked you! aha!) So that's one tip i have. For Readability: Anyways, to make a comic easy to read, spacing is super important. Dialogue tends to cramp a shot by a WHOLE lot. For example! Remember the "Lamp is told she's beloved (and has a tsundere moment over it"? That used to be TWO panels. Man. Nightmare fuel. Lemme find it. (This is the rough. I Lined It, realized the pacing is off, and then withered. Please don't look at it too hard.)

So here's the thing. This READS. But the sheer amount of dialogue in the beginning is fatiguing for me and the "you are beloved, Lampent" NEEDS that oomph of both characters realizing that over the span of years, their relationship stopped being antagonistic and started being family instead. Some folks are fine with blocks of dialogue, but I have the attention span of a patrat on candy. I will not make it. SO! To match the almost moody atmosphere, I stretched the comic out. I stretched that bad boy out a LOT. And I got this out of it.

Something to keep in mind in comics is there's always going to be one or two iconic lines. Lines that make people FEEL things. Those lines deserve their own panel, their own shot, their whatever. A good story has lulls in its conversation. If you can replicate it, you're winning. Character Blocking:

So basically no, it's not all witchcraft. It's only a bit of witchcraft. Another thing that helps is differentiating characters if they're on the same panel is by solid blocks of color. I have, for the longest time when working on storyboards, blocked characters different tones in order to help differentiate them. Don't be shy! Do that if it helps your comics read! Ingo will always be darker shaded then emmet. The angry nightlight will always have some hint of purple on her (unless I forget). The first goal in a story is to convey information, hehe. Here's an example of color blocking! (This is from a VERY old botw comic I did for linktober in 2021.)

It's, ah, rather rustic compared to what I do. usually. I know! BUT the primary goal here is to convey where the characters are in relation to each other. And the fact they're color coded makes life easier for both reader and artist. Alright! That's all the tips I can think of off the top of my head. Time to get off that soap box, haha. Overall: Basically, my work process is-- draw a story telling image/ write a funny piece of dialogue. Build the comic around that. Pace it so the important lines stand out. Color code the characters for max visibility. And then four to twelve hours of lineart, but that's neither here or there.

Thanks for coming to my unregulated rambling!

[zahri-melitor]

Blade Runner, The Matrix and Robins: if you want to run a conspiracy in your story you need to put in the work

One of the central conspiracies people like to speculate about in Blade Runner is the theory of whether Deckard is a Replicant. It's a high-context theory woven into the plot and cinematography of the film. (I'm aware various people, decades on, have 'confirmed' it's true; I don't think that's particularly relevant to this).

The reason why the theory is so compelling for audiences to discuss is that the film in itself poses the question 'what is a human' and sends the main character, Rick Deckard, on a hunt for those clues and mistakes that give away the Replicants he is looking for. Things like Deckard's evasion over whether he's ever taken a Voight-Kampff test, and moments that suggest implanted and shared memories make for a fun second level mystery for viewers to think about and solve. The unicorn dream sequence, with both the dream and silver foil unicorn, provides another pointer for audiences to consider the idea. Even the Replicant Red Eye moments are subtle clues that get called out via the broader focus on eyes.

What also helps the debate and hunt for this potential symbolism is Ridley Scott's reputation as a director who heavily goes for visual cinematography hints and altering stories by changing them in Director's Cuts.

Similarly, The Matrix has a conspiracy that the real world is another level within the Matrix. This one is easy to understand how it developed. The Matrix, as a film, invests a substantial amount of its runtime teaching its audience the clues used to distinguish the Matrix from the real world. We get explicit scenes like The Girl in the Red Dress and explanations of how déjà vu works to demonstrate alterations in the Matrix. We see how characters can alter the Matrix to their own ends, leading into moments in the trilogy where Neo appears to use those skills in the real world being able to be read as 'are we still in the Matrix?'

The thing is: neither movie fully commits to these readings. They're possibilities that audiences can read in, that feel like they've been woven into the plot for people to consider. The audience is drawn to ask the question via the way the hints/clues are found in things the audience is already directed to consider. At their worst, they're artefacts of the audience taking the themes of those films and extrapolating too far.

My feeling about Robins as a comic is that Tim Seeley and Baldemar Rivas want to suggest one of these conspiracy theory stories, but did not have the skill to convincingly pull it off.

One of my difficulties the entire way through the comic was that the story did not know when it was set, and indeed repeatedly suggested via both dialogue and art that it was set in very different periods.

Robins takes place at least partially in a generated overlay from information based on Bruce's notes on the five Robins and also on various criminals. It's trying to take the log entries from Gotham Knights #1-11 and extrapolate that concept out to 'what if having this went wrong for Bruce'. (And I shouldn't really be surprised that Seeley chose to do this: Seeley is very big fan of Devin Grayson's work in the Bat books and frequently chooses to reference it)

The markers used for this simulation are firstly the level reward bonuses, and secondly the singing robin (that apparently uses the wrong call).

In that light, you could argue that problems like characters wearing the wrong costumes, from non-matching eras, and holding views that don't really accord with those characters is supposed to be a series of hints about the resolution of the title, rather than a set of weird screw ups that involve suggestions that the team didn't both checking details.

My issue is that it doesn't feel earned. If Seeley and Rivas really did want to hint and direct their audiences into reading that the presentation, comments and impressions of each of the Robins in their story were wholly based on Bruce's conception of them, then I think those discontinuities should match each other more clearly within each character.

Take Tim for a moment: he wears his original 1990s Robin costume; is the opponent of Damian's 'gauntlet' (a period in which he was wearing his all red Robin costume); has his overlay stolen for a rant about how Tim things the Obeah Man and other villains should die in a way that explicitly references Red Robin #26 (his post-Crisis Red Robin period); and gets specifically removed from the story and trapped in a way that he has to direct others to find him and try to escape himself (suggestions of both the Ünternet and more specifically Mr Oz during Tynion's Tec run). These do not match. If we're supposed to think Bruce is hung up on a specific conception of Tim, and a particularly backward-looking one (which you would assume, given he's put in his earliest Robin costume), why don't the other elements match? Why not put him in his all-red Robin costume to hint that he's Damian's gauntlet? Why not put him in one of his Red Robin costumes if you're going to keep referring to him as Red Robin, and that Bruce's worries about him relate to specific events in that period? And why, if the early Robin costume is supposed to reference Tim's own 'gauntlet', then is he the only character wearing his original costume from the storyline?

And what does not help with this is that Seeley has several obvious screw ups. The most prominent one is he conflates Rite of Passage with Batman: Identity Crisis. The Obeah Man was the villain of Rite of Passage for Bruce, where he was hunting him down to save the Drakes. Tim's personal combatant during that story was tracking down Lonnie as Moneyspider. The storyline where Tim showed the skills and personal judgement that made Bruce decide that he was ready to be Robin was in Identity Crisis, which was a story rescuing Bruce and Vicky Vale from Scarecrow. While the stories are sequels to each other, they're not a contiguous whole: they take part in different titles, with a gap in time between them. Similarly, Seeley places Felipe Garzonas' death as Jason's first case as Robin, rather than his last case.

The whole concept of the 'gauntlets' is the underlying thread holding the story together, the aspect on which Bruce's analysis of each of the Robins and whether he wants to work with them is based, leading to the computer files, leading to the entire plot.

If you mess up like that, audiences are less likely to grant that you're trying to build hints in that something is wrong by having things be noticeably mismatching, because you've also screwed up the ground on which you're trying to construct the story. You cannot fairly claim that the incongruities you put in to hint at your plot are something that should be analysed as clues when you've already primed your audience to think that you're just a hack making blatant mistakes.

And this problem extends to all of the characters, not just Tim. Tim's just the easiest for me to pick apart because I know the references made so well (and Tim Seeley clearly doesn't actually care as much about Tim as several other characters, making the oopsies more obvious).

The issue with this story isn't simple single-panel moments like "And I need to hear it from you, Tim, because Jason and Damian lie through their teeth" or Tim saying he "demanded" to be Robin where people can dunk on it by showing another panel like the Teen Titans 2003 "I lie to Batman" panel or ALPOD. It's in the fact it tries to be clever but doesn't earn audiences' trust to do that analysis. And it doesn't earn that trust because you can't pick apart what's a deliberate incongruity as a hint from what's a general mistake from the team, and if you do pick at elements that look like outright mistakes, the whole thing comes tumbling down.

Blade Runner and The Matrix train their audiences from the very start of the story to look for these incongruities and hints and showcase what problems to look for openly in the plot, leading to people to heavily analyse background details for further suggestions of these hints. They earn the buy in that leads to the elaborate fan theories.

Tim Seeley forfeited his audience's buy in to the story he apparently was trying to tell by not being exact enough about the details in a story where he wanted them to pick at those details, and not showing early enough that the audience is expected to be picking at those details. And that's just poor writing and biting off more than you can chew.

[vaathnaos]

Um hi :3 I was just curious about how you're able to draw backgrounds so nicely?

Thank you so much for noticing!!

Short answer: half the time i spend on any page is usually just doing backgrounds.

Loooong answer: Actually this is something i’ve wanted to talk about before but now you’ve given me an excuse >:] So basically the most important step in making backgrounds (and also in making any image that looks coherent) is making sure the perspective “Makes sense”, it doesn’t have to be mathematicaly perfect and geometrically exact it just has to seem correct. I usually use 2-point perspective, wich isn’t the correct method if you want to replicate real life but it’s more than enouch for a comic panel. Normally put down a horizon line first, this is where all my vanishing points will be.

In the exemple red is the horizon, blue are the perspective lines and green are the paralel lines (they would come to a vanishing point if i used 3-point perspective). They don’t need to be perfectly aligned, just good enough. Realising a convincing 3D space for your charachters to inhabit makes the world feel real an if your perspective is interesting (exagerated angles, dutch angles curved perspective lines and other fun stuff) then the background will instantly become part of the world and your chatacters part of it. After the basic geometry is laid out I can texture it! I developed a cross hatching style and i guess i’ve mostly been using that ! The hatching follows the perspective lines and it’s density shows light and shadow. In the exemple the little candle was the only light source so it casts harsh shadows.

Fun Fact: The ENTIRE premise of Shifting sands came about BECAUSE i couldn’t draw backgrounds and so i chose to have the AU Start in a featureless Desert! Deserts and Dunes are soo easy to draw, that’s why Shifting Sands didn’t start in a forest, and now the desert became an integral part of the plot!!

[redhoodinternaldialectical]

Reading Kid Devil as Trans

@swamp-spirit gave me the broad outline of a trans Eddie reading and I ran with it into oblivion :3 also hi @batbaffle tagging you cause I remember you being excited about this

I'd like to start off with a little bit of scaffolding for how this reading is going to function

Firstly I posit that the way the Blue Devil comic series treats the role of Demon/Superhero is very easy to read as analogous to a trans experience, to the point that if you choose to interpret 'Demon/Superhero' as a gender, then Eddie is straight up trans!

Secondly I posit that because many transphobes view being trans as a kind of demonic infection, Eddie's character arc in Teen Titans volume 3 has accidentally replicated a transphobic view of what being trans is like.

So, this reading is necessarily hostile to the narrative of TTv3, but I need to be clear that I'm not asserting that that narrative is transphobic! The audience choosing to join the war on demonic pacts on the side of the demonic pacts is not something it would make sense to expect the authors to anticipate! Don't go giving out hate mail for this one.

This essay is going to be utterly enormous, so without further ado, I hope you enjoy reading it under the cut!

Point One: Demon as a Gender

We're going all the way back for this one to Blue Devil #1 for this one! Now, as we go through this comic what we're going to do is mentally replace "Devil Suit" with "Drag King Makeup" and replace "Demon" with "Trans Man" or just "Trans Person".

The Blue Devil suit drag King outfit is a costume designed for Daniel Cassidy's role as an action movie villain

Yet, despite it being just a prop, it makes Dan (feel confident and) powerful

(also note that the suit broadens the shoulders and that Dan is beardless with longer hair underneath the mask)

Then a real Demon Trans Person wanders in and recognizes Dan as being a sibling! And is confused as to why Dan is fighting them.

(also note how similar Nebiros' general shape is to that of a xenomorph, the trans-ist of all alien monster things)

This is honestly pretty weird considering that usually demons powerful enough to have a name and 'cosmic' powers also have the capacity to sense whether someone is supernatural or not, and nothing about the suit being simple special effects tips Nebiros off.

It stops being weird when you swap demon from a species to a gender though. That's just Nebiros assuming that Dan happens to be pre-op/pre-HRT

Then, without any intention of doing so, the demon trans person turns Dan's demonic nature trans nature into reality. By pure recognition the act stops being an act, his egg is cracked, and Dan is forced to face what he really is now

Dan is not pleased about this. He's still thinking of himself as a human with an affliction. It's not world ending or anything, but it's still... an issue. A concern. The adults around him vow to support him through this trouble. Even when he accepts that the suit being attached is permanent, he resists becoming a superhero at every turn and insists that he's still normal.

Eddie though? Well he just saw a guy get force masc-ed and it blew his tiny little mind with how friggin COOL it was!!!

(Kid sees a guy who looks like Satan's gay clubbing cousin and thinks "this is absolutely what a superhero looks like!" and he's so right for that honestly)

In fact Eddie's SO on board with this shit that he goes on to make his own Devil suit start dressing like a boy too (following pages are Blue Devil #15 onwards) like this comic doesn't even have much to do with secret identities and yet this is still so much of an accidental outting

(sorry quick tangent here: Boy Wonder as a source of anxiety when Jason Todd wound up being the only 'Boy Wonder' that Kid Devil ever got to team with prior to TTv3 is making blorbo brain go brr)

Dan is frightened by the idea of a kid jumping into the world of danger that these suits being trans presents, but he and his aunt are ultimately supportive and through the power of queer family they save the day together

And the people around Eddie, especially his parents, are worried that all this Hero and hollywood stuff is not the right lifestyle for a growing kid in a way that echoes the idea of the queer, bohemian lifestyle corrupting the poor innocent youth

But the comic repeatedly asserts that the suits are who they are now for both Eddie and Dan. Not only is returning to normal not an option, it wouldn't be a good outcome either!

Now, y'all are reading this shit on tumblr. We're all sitting around the bonfire together here at this Devil's Sacrament, so you're probably already aware of this, but I do gotta make mention of the fact that Demon is already a gender for some people. The xenogender crowd have had this shit on lock for years now, and combined with everything else, I feel confident in simply accepting Demon as a gender for the rest of this analysis!

From hereon out this essay shall take it as literal truth that Eddie's gender is Demon, his role as Kid Devil is a form of social transition, and his character arc in Teen Titans volume 3 is mainly concerned with his medical-magical transition and the fallout from that.

(sorry, one more tangent: I actually think there might be a stronger reading of Danny as intersex. The involuntary nature of the change honestly fits a lot more closely with an intersex person finding out that their body is hard wired to do something very different with their gender than they expected. There's also a scene I didn't talk about here of when Danny first goes out in public that reminds me less of being viewed as a binary trans person and more of the times when I used to walk around town with my DDDDD cup tits in a pushup bra and a beard. He becomes a fascination and a spectacle in a way that very much mirrors my experience of presenting signifiers of both genders at the same time as blatantly as possible, which is obviously not how all intersex people express their gender, but like the way intersex people make headlines, the way intersex people are viewed as 'combinations' or 'deviations' - it all feels more like Danny getting mobbed by curious onlookers than it does my day to day of being visibly trans. Idk there's potential here, but ultimately this essay is about Eddie first and foremost.)

Point Two: They Want Him to Walk Out of Hell.

It's time to meet the demonic pact that we shall be fighting for!

To make a long story (TTv3 #42) short, Eddie is given a spooky candle behind a church, and then goes to Zackary Zatanna in order to try and figure out what it is and what it does. Zack tells him it's basically a teleportation spell and asserts that if Eddie uses it, he could definitely teleport them right back, no problems. Eddie then immediately finds out that Zack lied to him and they're both stuck in LITERAL HELL until further notice.

The demon who made the candle and gave it to him is Neron, who is a quintessential example of the deal-maker-soul-taker archetype of demon and was essentially understood to be The Devil Himself in the Underworld Unleashed comics. He is unsurprisingly here to make a deal for Eddie's soul (or, well actually no, he's not here for his soul. Strictly speaking, he's only asking Eddie to become his apprentice once he hits 20, which I find to be an intriguing distinction, even though the narrative basically treats the ideas as interchangable.)

Now this deal is pretty clearly bad news (Neron's deals always go sour and becoming his apprentice is heavily implied to mean coming under his control too)... but lets step back a bit shall we? What exactly is Eddie's other option here? What is Zack suggesting they do as the voice of reason in this scenario?

He is suggesting... that they WALK OUT OF HELL.

I cannot get over the sheer mad audacity of fuckin-

just-

just WALK out of the actual literal bowels of Hell itself completely unprepared

like WHAT??? No. That is completely unreasonable.

...When you tell a certain variety of religious transphobe about how gender affirming care drastically reduces suicide rates and very clearly improves quality of life, they aren't swayed. To them, gender affirming care is inherently damaging in ways that are much more important than temporary bodily pleasure - and more important than any amount of pain a trans person could possibly go through in life. There is no possible justification to them for perverting your flesh away from God's plan/"what nature intended". To transition is to give yourself over to the Devil in their minds.

They will insist - despite the enormous amount of logic and evidence to the contrary - that if you just keep walking the straight and narrow path long enough, you will find a way to be happy while destroying/repressing your true self, and you will surface back into the daylight, and you will be normal, and human, and whole, and holy.

When you tell them that to not transition would be agony, they will demand that you walk out of Hell.

Satan, on the other hand, says He can remake you in your own glorious genderqueer image, and the only risk is that your family might betray you for it.

Eddie accepts Satan's bargain and is granted absolute, brilliant, gleaming euphoria

And his family betrays him.

Now, take strong note of the fact that both of them are burning in this Church, because this brings us to-

Point Three: He's Not Even Really a Demon... Except When It Would Hurt Him to Really be a Demon.

A major plot point is that his powers aren't actually demonic at all; Neron only activated a dormant meta-gene.

So why the fuck does he burn when entering a church, and why are multiple people capable of sucking the demonic power out of him?! To include an Exorcism fully working as intended! Like it's extremely weird and notable that as far as I can tell, Kid Crusader's exorcism legitimately would have worked.

Essentially, any time it would hurt Eddie to be a marginally enhanced human, that's what he is; any time it would hurt Eddie to be a demonic being, that's what he is.

To the narrative there is no contradiction. His refusal to remain a normal human, the contract itself, is the sin that corrupts his humanity and the nature of that sin is to never have his desires truly granted because Neron cannot preform miracles as God can - or even if he was capable of it, he won't. Because he's evil.

This is almost word for word the religious justification for the double standards around gender. So as far as transphobia is concerned, a trans person's refusal to remain a normal human, the act of transition itself, is the sin that corrupts our humanity and the nature of that sin is to never have our desires truly granted because according to them surgery and HRT cannot contradict or supersede nature, or even if it could, we would never be truly satisfied because to contradict the proper nature of things is evil. Thus the butch lesbian is never a real woman because she isn't acting right, and yet the trans woman who does all the right actions is never granted status as a real woman either.

Point Four: What's So Bad About Being A Demon Anyways?

TTv3 frames Eddie's desire to have superpowers and to be a demon as bad in a variety of ways. However, it never seems to make a good argument for why it is so morally wrong for him to want and receive superpowers. Like, sure, maybe being indebted to a demon isn't healthy, but the narrative treats it as a sin, as Eddie having committed an immoral act which requires repentance or at least absolution.

I refuse to consider the goal of becoming a superhero and saving people to be blackhearted, so the only good argument I can see for this is that Eddie willfully risked other people's safety by accepting a gamble that could put him under Neron's control.

Here's the thing though

This is the point at which I look the narrative in the eye and say "I think you're a lyin lil bitch!" and choose to take a character at their word above and against the rest of the evidence that the text itself presents to us.

Future Eddie from a timeline where he turns 20 and does in fact go with Neron says he's doin good and that leaning into and embracing the demonic power is nice actually and I am gonna believe him on this!

Again, this isn't really the narrative's fault, it was not originally designed for this, but combined with the rest of the analysis, this strongly reminds me of the way that trans people are taught to essentially fear our older selves. Like there's this sense that we're going to get worse and go too far and become one of those unreasonable queers who's always miserable.

It's gonna be bad! It's gonna be so so bad! You'll lose all your morals as you're inducted into the cult of gender!! Actual proof of harm? Who needs that shit! We all know that gender non-conformity might seem innocent at first, but it's a slippery slope!

So ya know what? I just don't give a shit! Oh the narrative says he's evil? M'kay well have you considered that I don't vibe with that?

I cannot even fucking count how often I've seen characters only be allowed to increase their queerness when they become villains, and become less queer when they learn a moral lesson. I cannot COUNT the number of times that a character has had to rip out everything that made them relatable to me in order to fit the mold of normality at the end of the story as some kind of """"feel good wholesome life lesson""""" ending. I cannot c o u n t the number of times I have seen queerness attached to or equated with monstrosity and for the narrative to demand that both be excised for the good of everyone.

Like idk how ubiquitous this is, but the sense that getting what I want is supposed to be evil and that anyone who would give it to me is also evil is so familiar that it instinctively makes me want to scream.

So for the purposes of this essay, when I see that Eddie gets to be MORE demonic in this timeline and keep all his friends and has a mentor who encourages him to embrace his inner demon? I am going to throw every scrap of evidence that this is the 'bad timeline' out of the fucking window willy nilly because fuck that, good for you Eddie, I hope you get even demon-y-er!!

Point Five: He Just Be Actin Real Fuckin Queer Okay?

The cigarette kisses - just- just LOOK at this!

Look at this shit!!!

A wise person once said that sometimes the sexual tension between gay men and lesbians is thick enough to cut with a knife, and baby every panel of them doing this shit is a FAT slice of that gay squared pie!!! I cannot express how jealous I am of this, like hot fuckin damn, I have zzzzerooooo physical attraction to women, but if I had Eddie's powers I would sit at the lesbian bar and kiss the butchs' cigars lit all fuckin night

Suddenly long hair. Tons of trans guys grow their hair out or paint their nails et.c. once they transition. It's a hell of a lot easier to be comfortable with your own gender non conformity in the fem direction once you no longer feel like fem presentation is a threat to your own identity.

He never wears a shirt if he thinks he can get away with going bare chested. You best believe that after I get top surgery the shirts are comin OFF and they are not coming back on unless I receive multiple threats of getting escorted off of the premises lmao It speaks to a beautiful newfound comfort in his own skin.

The Dysphoria/Closet Hoodie. He has an outfit to disguise the shape of his body so that he can avoid harassment and weird looks and it does not even work.

Big Mood my guy.

The trident to tail - packer to bottom growth/surgery connection

The trident is a mechanical, artificial phallic object that acts as a symbol of Demonic power. It is also a rocket that he rides by sticking it between his legs. Eddie also stops using it after his medical-magical transition, at which point he can use his own body for transport. I trust you can pick up what I'm putting down here.

Point Six: The Cruelty of His Arc's Conclusion

This is how Eddie's soul is saved. His demongender is violently ripped from him by an extremely misogynistic cult leader and the source of his transformation is destroyed while he's unconscious.

Being freed from the looming doom seems to have lesser or equal emotional weight to the distress at having been forcibly de-transitioned. When presented with a nearly identical scenario to the first soul bargain, he has to be bodily dragged away from signing a second contract.

When given the choice freely, Eddie clearly finds being a demon to be worth just about anything and everything.

It's also super worth noting that this parallels the way informed consent is sometimes viewed. Like, bodily autonomy seen purely as the freedom to make the wrong decision. What good is an honest Devil when the price is still the damnation of your immortal soul?

So, now he's a human again for the rest of his life. What, pray tell, is this character arc suppose to have been about?

Wellllll... He starts off as impulsive, reckless, kind, loyal, loving, bad at fighting, and willing to risk selling his soul to be a real demon. At the end of this character arc he is impulsive, reckless, kind, loyal, loving, bad at fighting, and willing to outright sell his soul without even a glimmer of hope of any other outcome in order to be a real demon again. The only change is that he's been forced back into his assigned gender of human and he has given up on ever being a Hero. He just hangs around being a friend to the heroes around him. Like the whole arc seems to boil down to Eddie learning that he was never cut out to be a Hero and he shouldn't have tried.

That's his "good ending". That's his happy ever after.

Okay, look, I know I said "don't send hate mail about this" but that was specifically about the trans thing and actually Volume 3 of Teen Titans is weirdly cruel to Eddie, and I do kinda want to fist fight someone about it??? Like, why the hell did they make nearly all of his plot roles revolve around him getting his ass kicked SO BADLY that the entire teen titans team is sabotaged by his ineptitude.

I've read a fair few issues with this guy in em now, and the ONLY fights I've seen him win are 1) When he teamed up with Jason and 2) When he teamed up with Jamie Reyes. That's it. Verses THRICE joining a fight and ruining it so badly that the villain(s) win within three panels. He goes to a Dennys to be sad in his depression hoodie and gets beat down by like twelve guys. He is constantly getting nothing but the short ends of sticks and then guys keep thwacking him with those sticks.

It's not even a punchline, or fodder for a training montage, or a vehicle for a 'you don't need to fight in order to be a hero and do good' message, like there's no purpose or enjoyment to be had, he's just a barbie doll getting whacked against the kitchen counter until its head comes off

My Worst Treated Characters list now reads as follows:

Stephanie Brown in almost everything

Eddie Bloomberg in TT v.3

Jamie Reyes in Injustice 2

Jason Todd in general

Genuinely like, who's grandma got killed by a Kid Devil figurine?!

Anyways Eddie Bloomberg did nothing wrong and deserves no criticism and to re-transition as soon as possible with an even cooler and much more powerful demon form that is actually properly demonic and lets him do everything he wants forever!

[lexcellence]

What is it about Western comics as a medium that enables them to tell specific stories--or be types of art--that other media can't replicate? It feels like it'd be so easy to translate a comic to a film, but we've also seen how outrageously difficult it really is. What, to you, makes comics so worth it all?

This is gonna be long and hella cynical, and I'm going to specifically focus on the big two (Marvel and DC) here, but I think a big part of it comes down to money, and the fact that comics are largely considered to be disposable media by the companies creating them.

See, there isn't a ton invested into the actual creation of comics. Creators are freelancers, so no need to worry about pesky things like "paying a reasonable wage," or "offering health insurance" — every few months or so you'll see people who shaped and revolutionized the medium setting up gofundme's because they never got a safety net, and they aren't taken care of by the companies they put all that work into. IP rights and royalties largely aren't a thing, and the nature of capeshit is that you're always going to find some fan who is honored to have the opportunity to write for them, even as the creators they grew up reading are torn up and spit back out. Couple that with an inherently built in marketbase of nerds, and, more often than not, not "wasting" money advertising actual comics to anyone who doesn't buy them already, and to a large extent it doesn't really matter what risks a comic takes. Warner and Disney don't really have to give a shit —a "bad" superman comic, by any definition of bad, might piss off a few nerds, but isn't gonna do a damn thing to the cultural perception of Superman™️, the Brand™️, available on everything from t-shirts to truck nutz at your local Walmart. And hell, 99 times out of 100 the nerds will keep buying the book anyway, and who cares if they don't, because the comic shops will.

Movies, on the other hand, are a pretty significant investment! You've got actors, hundreds of people in cast and crew, and *actual marketing.* They've gotta make that money back and then some, while appealing to an audience of people who might own a Batman wallet, but couldn't tell you the difference between Joe Chill and Victor Fries. It's harder to take risks with movies, because suddenly you might actually taint the image of a seventy year old brand, and that terrifies all of the investors. You throw too much Comic Book Bullshit™️ at general audiences who haven't already devoted their personalities to caring about who Batman is fucking that week (Hal Jordan), and it gets messy. This isn't even some "general audiences wouldn't understand*" gatekeepy shit, either - if you pick up literally any random comic issue and you don't like it, worst case scenario you've spent like four bucks and fifteen minutes of your life, and you've got anything from dozens to thousands of other issues to try.

*that being said, I still maintain that Batman & Robin is better than any Batman comic that came out that year, and everyone who says otherwise is a fucking coward.

And so, comics end up in a weird, probably ultimately untenable position of being able to take more risks, and being made largely by people who love comics, and grew up speaking their bullshit language. They're self-obsessed and masturbatory, sure, but the thing about saying that derogatorily is that it ignores the fact that masturbation is fun? The worst comics I've read, and I've read a lot of bad comics, are still almost always labors of love, be that for better or for worse. As exhausted as I get sometimes, it's hard for me to write that off entirely.

And, ultimately, I'm just way too invested in who's fucking Batman (Superman).

[comicaurora]

So far, has there been any sort of art technique or process you've tried that made you go "that was surprisingly easier/harder than I expected"?

Oh man, yea. So many things. Doing this comic has been a learning experience and a half because of all the textures and effects I have to do, most of which I figure out on the fly because I've either never done them before or I've never done them that many times before.

The first "surprisingly easy" effect I'd never succeeded at before was the scales on the Storm Drake in the interlude after chapter 6:

It's a Droplet particle brush used on two layers, one set to Multiply and the other to Screen. It produces a very easy texturing effect that works on everything from scales to sand to rock, making the surface look like it's catching the light in complicated ways. I used it again in Dainix's desert flashback in chapter 19 to make the sand look like it was catching the light.

I actually used a similar method to draw the background in the arena fight in chapter 12 - using a rounder particle brush, but the same combo of Multiply and Screen to produce a chaotic pattern that gave the illusion of a massive background crowd without making me hand-draw ten thousand tiny people.

This one was an effect that didn't surprise me and that I sadly had very little cause to replicate, but I LOVED the multicolored highlighting effect in Erin's chapter 6 flashback in the heart of the Storm. It ended up being very simple to do and it just looked SO pretty.

Changing the highlighting colors to just the cool-tones for this page just made me like it more.

When we hit Falst's intro arc and I had to draw about a million forested backgrounds, I decided to refine the process I'd used in the first few chapters, because I wasn't happy with those results:

Starting in chapter 8 I tried a lineless style for forested backgrounds, and it worked out better than I'd hoped. Not only did it produce a feeling of depth and shadow, I didn't even need to plug in my drawing tablet to do it - I could literally do these backgrounds with my trackpad and mouse, which was a huge timesave. Combined with a little experimental sunbeam stuff and these forest backgrounds ended up both shockingly simple to make and VERY nice to look at.

I used a similar technique for the soulcrystal in The Collector's lair - stacked Multiply and Add layers with nested rough shading patterns similar to the ones I used for foliage, but with more overlap to produce the effect of chaotically scattering light.

This was another no-drawing-tablet one, and I liked this texture so much that I willingly redrew it for the stinger in chapter 18 rather than copying the texture from the earlier chapter.

In terms of effects that took longer than I anticipated, Dainix's fully-realized Crucible form has been giving me trouble for literally as long as I've conceived of the comic. Drawing fire is already hard enough, but giving that fire a semi-solid, tangible form that was clearly readable as a humanoid figure was a HUGE pain in the ass. The head and arms were easy to design, but what to do with the bottom half was always a struggle, and beyond that I wasn't always sure how opaque to make him - real fire is a semi-translucent light source in constant motion with no clearly delineated edges, and if you draw it in a way that deviates from that too much it can make it feel less like fire. It took a while before I was happy with the color balance on him to make him suitably glowy without losing the internal detailing that made his expression readable.

Similarly time-consuming, working out how to do Vash's "nova mode" took some trial and error. I wanted to make it clearly visually distinct from Paladin light magic and regular fire magic, so I focused on trying to replicate the texture of the surface of a star, with sunspots and flares rather than licks of fire or sharp-edged lightsaber vibes. I'm happy with how it ended up, but if I recall correctly it took upwards of two days just getting all those glowy effects sorted out.

Then drawing the actual starfire blast was an even bigger pain, because again I didn't want it so glowy that it was completely unreadable. To be honest I'm still not sure if it worked.

This is a very recent one, but it took me a while to figure out an effect I was happy for to communicate "this place is really, really dark." I didn't settle on a blanket dusty purple desaturation layer until quite late, to sort of replicate what night vision supposedly looks like for animals that can see decently well in the dark. Lights and darks are preserved, but color isn't so much, and this way I wasn't way-overshadowing everything and making it impossible for US to see. And conveniently the actual effect is quite simple to do - it's just a universally gray layer at 50% opacity set to the "Saturation" combine mode, stacked with a universally dusty purple layer at 70% set to the "Color" combine mode. Very easy to add quickly and copy/paste across different pages.

There's probably more, but yea. Almost all of the "that was surprisingly difficult" effects either get easier with time or I figure out ways to simplify them and make them work in fewer layers. This is the really fun thing about a longform project like this - I keep finding new ways to challenge myself I'd never even thought of before.

[maxwell-grant]

🔥 Fantastic Four

I think the whole "oh they were adventurers in the 50s but then they fell through a time warp and now they're in modern times" idea that's been floated around forever for an MCU pitch doesn't actually do much for them and only kills them further by solidfying the idea that the F4 is a "retro" team. Take it from someone who thinks about fictional (and real) dinosaurs 24/7, "retro" is very very very frequently a poison. It's a cage, it's an Achilles heel label, it's a prison that traps perfectly fine characters into bullshit cycles of repetition and boredom and obscurity, you don't want the Fantastic Four to be the retro guys more so than they already kind of are. I get why this is a popular idea, because it at least addresses a problem that doesn't really have an answer: How do you sell people on the Fantastic Four without pointing them to comics that they will never read? How do you make people care about them again?

I want good Fantastic Four adaptations, obviously, I don't think it's impossible to make good ones, but Marvel has changed so much over the past decades and changed specifically in ways that make it very hard for the Fantastic Four to be anywhere near as relevant or popular as they used to be. The MCU's done such a titanic overhaul of Marvel's entire public image that now, what matters isn't even nominally decided by what mattered at the foundation of Marvel. What matters is the foundation of the MCU, and it couldn't be further from the Fantastic Four. I don't think you're ever really replicating what made the Fantastic Four such a monster hit in comics during their heyday in another medium and it's pointless to even try. I don't think the things that make them so great and lovable and critically important and groundbreaking are as easy to reproduce or adapt as they are with someone like Spider-Man.

I think the MCU film is just gonna be another bomb and I think unless some mega successful game comes along on par with Batman Arkham or Insomniac Spider-Man, I don't think the Fantastic Four are ever really going to be again a thing people outside of comics really care about. I actually really hope I'm wrong here and that the movie works out okay, if only because failing on the world stage of the MCU is way too harsh a fate especially coming off two prior bombs, I don't want the F4 to have that kind of stigma attached to them even though the MCU is already a sinking ship. The Marvel Universe is much worse off without the Fantastic Four than the Fantastic Four are worse off without the Marvel Universe. I've read enough F4 the past months that I'm convinced they really are the best superhero team, and they are really not an impossible nut to crack outside of the circumstances the MCU set them up for. I really don't need the F4 to make Avengers money, I just need them to keep being in good comics. If they get to be in good other stuff like cartoons or movies, that's a bonus.

[baraturts]

You’re back! and i didn’t realize until today!! glad you’re doing much better now :)) you’re still my favorite turtle artist after all these years

i’ve been wondering tho, is your comic “magnet” gonna make a return? its cool if not!! But i AM curious teehee

Aww, thank you! As said in a previous ask; I still need a little bit more prepping-time before continuing Magnet. I've lost some skill - particularly in inking - after being inactive and hardly drawing at all for so long... But working on it!

Actually just spent what little free time I had today on practicing! Had to re-buy Clip Studio after getting a new PC and my licensing key refusing to work. Probably could have gotten some help with that, but I don't have the patience for that sh*t... and I'm dumb. Buuut, I also managed to replicate the G-pen pretty dang well in SAI yesterday, sooo... perhaps I just payed a bunch of money for the ability to make easy speech-bubbles, we'll see. As mentioned, I'm dumb!

[ofj-art]

Developing fangan designs are so much fun. Having a sort of gimmick with their talent is a great prompt to jump off of. It’s sort of low stakes designing.

When I design for Rift it is still fun, but it’s with the expectation that because Rift is a comic I’m gonna need to break these designs down to their essentials and plan them out in a way that’s easy to understand for replication. There’s also gotta be sooome level of groundedness in their presentations. Distinct styles, but practical to a degree to suit their world. Although I am trying to incorporate more whimsical exaggeration. Loosen up a bit for maximum expression. But I’m still drawing them over and over again, but in many different poses and angles for my comic.

Fangan characters are much less serious of stakes. They have motivations and a level of depth as any character, but there’s a level of campiness that makes it more simple. They have full permission to be a bit goofy because of the tone of the story they exist in. Their presentation is direct and on the nose (unless subverting your expectations which is still fun!)

Idk, it’s just a fun time. I’ll be posting some of my designs sooner or later. As much as I love Rift I need a break from it sometimes so I can come back to it with fresh eyes and renewed vigor. Working on my fangans is an excellent distraction and great practice for a variety of character designs. Styles, body language, and body type. And it doesn’t need to be too serious.

[stacys-museum]

My rant about AI art and comics.

Hadn't really expected to ever write a post about this, but here I am. Also, I'm not a native english speaker, so there might be grammar mistakes.

This is just my opinion. If you don't want to read it, skip this post.

The topic of AI "art" was brought by conversation with my teacher, who's a big fan of comics (and I don't mean superhero comics, he's more fond of detective stories). He mentioned a comic which was made using an AI, which he thought of as insulting. And I agree with him.

For an artist, whose style was inspired by various comics I've read, this is an insult. Making a comic is not as simple as writing "make a page of comic with this and this and this" or writing a short script and sending it to AI with "create a comic out of this". Making a comic is a process of both creating the story and the visuals - either by one person or a team - where you're making sure that art enhances your story just as much as dialogue, where each scene conveys emotions you want it to convey.

My teacher and I agreed, that, just like with other mediums of art, you can recognize the artist even if they decide to switch styles. There is a way with which they use draw their lines that makes it recognizable.

Think of manga for a moment, where each mangaka has their distinct way of drawing things - you will know it's even if it's a different series or if they paint something (like cover) instead of drawing it. True, mangakas might have assistants who are good at replicating that style. And if two mangakas draw the same character (good example is BNHA's spinoff series Vigilantes) there are either big or subtle differences. This is even more visible in western superhero comics, with many artists working on the same series; sometimes the style changes every few issues.

It's not just drawings or comics. If you're a big fan of one guitarist, you'll also be able to recognize them even if they play something completely different than what they normally play.

An artist's style reflects their mastery and experience. It's rarely perfect, it doesn't need to be. First artist will use pencil and lean on hatching as shadows, second will prefer painting with broad strokes, third will work digitally and render semi-realistically. I don't follow many artists online, being mostly into traditional art, but let me ask: It's easy to recognize a piece by SamDoesArts, isn't it?

Now, AI doesn't have a single style they follow, nor does it have experience. It's taught by being fed art made by us, humans, and emulates it.

Kinda similar to mangaka's assistant, but an assistant knows what a specific thing should look like. AI makes mistakes no human would - it's all in details, where some things blend together instead of being separate, the deph in those pieces is plain wrong. Even a small kid knows that when the cat is behind tree, they draw cat behind tree, not cat blending into tree - they might draw cat a little too close, or a little too big, or it's legs are too long, or their cat is made of crude shapes - but you can see a CAT BEHIND A TREE. Tree and cat are separate entities. That's one argument - AI blending things together.

Another is that, where humans usually keep to one style or make multiple styles harmonious with each other, AI mashes those together. The bigger pieces produced/spat out by AI might have this issue. One side may be in style based on Jujutsu Kaisen, the other on Berserk - what's the difference, it's all anime, isn't it? It doesn't notice a difference, anime was requested, anime it will give.

There's also people who want something drawn in "anime style" and make the same argument - that anime is a singular style. At this point, I'm tired of explaining to people in real life that anime is animated, manga is drawn; and that comics differ depending on their place of origin. That's for different rant.

Hell, this post isn't even covering that, to train their AI, corporations commited copyright infringement.

Anyway, now for reason why I even started ranting. EMOTIONS. AI can't convey emotions properly.

For this post, I found an AI comic (if you want to read it, look it up - I don't want to link or promote it) and I looked through Twitter's (not calling it X) ai art community. It was to make a small experiment. I called it "How many times I spot the same lack of emotion?" and felt some vindictive pleasure to see my hypothesis proven.

Do you know how hard it is not to convey emotions in art? I have one specific character that is supposed to stay stone-faced, but I either fail or on drawing it seems that this character looks bored. I tried to draw specific things that didn't convey much emotion - did I succeed? I don't know. Even quick sketches convey emotion - from expression to the pose. That emotion may be boredom, but it's still there. And we all look for those emotions.

In my expreriment I looked over pieces featuring people and mentally checked off my list of possible drawn emotions. There was little variety, mostly the same "expressionlessness" that can sometimes be mixed up with boredom. The characters just stare straight at viewer (me in this one) or stare ahead if it's in profile. With those souless eyes - because I couldn't see any emotion in this faraway look, the face didn't scrunch up at all like a person's would.

The comic was even worse. I had to ignore my mind recoiling at inconsistent design of characters and enviroment, as well as horrible layout of scenes and speech balloons (which I could make into another argument) (mind you, the style itself would've looked rather appealing had it not been for those things). I focused on main character's emotions. There. Were. None.

Just like other AI generated graphics, she stared at the viewer in 90% of the scenes. The same smight curl of lips, the same fake fucking smile that doesn't reach eyes as she spoke of horrors (it's supposed to be post-apocalyptic setting). Not ONCE have I seen any variety to her expression. No quirk of lips, no crincling in corner of the eye, nothing.

I finished looking through the comic even more disappointed than I had already been.

On quick glance for someone who knows jack shit about visual storytelling, it would look good. For me it's just shit. I don't know a lot about history of comics, hell, I know little about comics outside of those I've read; but I know enough about drawing emotions that I think only the most ignorant people would praise that abomination.

Those are my closing statements.

Comics are medium of art between pictures and books. They can be interesting, beautiful, humorous and remarkable - both visually and as stories.

To anyone, who reads comics, have fun reading them. To anyone who wants to read them, go find something you'd like. To anyone, who doesn't read comics, you don't have to, but don't hate on them.

To anyone, who draws comics, you are incredible. To anyone, who wants to draw comics, I encourage you to try. To anyone, who thinks they lack the skills to draw comics but wants to, I recommend you start learning and craft stories - you can use anything as characters. Stickmen, animals, robots, vehicles, rocks, kitchen utensils, etc.

Just please, don't generate comics using AI.

Thank you for reading.

[julianobungus]

I recently came up with the idea of a crossover of Invincible and The Boys.

The Global Defense Agency receives a secret message about the activities of the Vought. They raided and appropriated everything. John is an attempt to replicate Omni-man's abilities, and Cecil decides that only Nolan can keep the baby in check and not die.

Nolan is surprised and even angry that someone dared to reproduce his specie, but he tells everyone that he is angry because it is cruel to do this to a baby.

Debbie is surprised, at the moment she is pregnant with Mark and two children will not be easy to support, but Nolan assures her that he will do everything possible to ensure that their family has a great future. So Mark and John grow up like brothers and John has a happy childhood.

After I came up with this idea, I suddenly remembered Superman. My Adventures with Superman can also be part of a crossover, although it is not finished yet and therefore we do not know all the details. I would prefer to take other series about the Justice League.

Imagine this heroic trio, Mark, John and Clark Grayson. And they will have three teams. Clark's is the Justice League, John's is the Seven (And he would publicly announce that his team doesn't need a big name to be heroes), Mark's is a Teen Team. But I think it would be fun if Mark's team were called the Teen Titans.

Guardians of the Globe are based on the Justice League, so we have two different sets of Atlanteans and Martians. But I think we can just make it so that they are different races. Human-like Atlanteans, fish-like Atlanteans, green Martians and less green Martians.

So, in short, all the characters of the Boys and DC comics, but in the Invincible world and almost all of them teenagers. And Nolan will be completely redeemed even before Mark becomes a hero, because he will be positively influenced by his children.

What do you think?

Whoahoho, what the hell - you actually cooked, pal. I love this idea! So many good ideas here, in fact. A younger, morally-correct Homelander/John being raised by the Graysons would be interesting to see! Same with a more readily-redeemed Omni-man.

This is basically like, the good timeline for all these series. Good job, bro.

[leavingautumn13]

What equipment and programs do you use to make your art? Your about says you're self taught, what helped you learn? And does anything specific give you inspiration for your current style or what you'd like to achieve in the future? I really like your art❤️

ahh!! hey, thank you so much!! <3 that's so kind of you to say!!

easy questions first: for digital art i use a wacom intuos tablet and paint tool sai, which is the only setup i've ever used. i've been trying to get into clip studio paint but something about it just doesn't stick with me. i think i need more practice.

for comic panels and lettering i use adobe indesign, and export as png to before putting them in sai.

everything else under the cut so this post isn't miles long

i've been drawing ever since i was a kid, but until middle school i mostly just drew animals or little notebook paper comics about animals. i grew up on a farm so there were lots around, and drawing from life is something i think really helped. like, there's a difference between knowing what a cat looks like and being able to pick one up and see how its bones and muscles fit together, being able to watch it change how it moves around depending on what it's doing, whether it's catching a mouse or playing with another cat or curled up asleep, and being able to break down that anatomy and movement into simple shapes. i'm a pretty visually oriented person so knowing how a thing functions or fits together as simple shapes helps me visualize it in my head and imagine how it would look in different poses or from different angles.

around middle school i moved onto drawing people, again from life while sitting in a cafe or at a park. actually being able to get what's in my head down onto paper in a way that satisfies me is something that i think just took practice. only recently (like, late last/this year) have i been consistently satisfied with the way i draw things.

sorry if that sounds weird or clinical--this is the first time i've been asked to explain how i learned to draw and this is the best way i can think to say it.

honestly, finding my own style has been looking at what i like about other artists' styles and trying to figure out how they achieved that. i did a lot of redraws of other peoples' art as a kid. for me, trying to replicate something makes me really think about why i like the way it looks. i try to lean towards a semi-realistic style--i don't like drawing super realistic all the time, i love cartoons and think they have a lot of character--but i also don't want to lose the underlying anatomy or structure because it helps my brain make sense of stuff. so i try to find the middle of the road, where things are simplified but still structured, if that makes sense.

brief tangent... that's why i draw pokémon the way i do. they're not on model, they're how i imagine they would look if they were real animals, based on the sort of animals they're... uh, based on. so like for this piece, because camerupt is a cow/camel hybrid, i looked at a bunch of pictures of cows laying on their sides, what their hooves and skulls looked like from certain angles, etc. and then i could draw what i wanted.

as for improvements, i need to get better at backgrounds and realistic coloring/lighting. color theory is one of those things that i understand... well, in theory, but when it comes to practice and paying attention to it when i color, i need work. and because i've mostly drawn animals and people my whole life--organic stuff--i find buildings and backgrounds difficult, so i tend to avoid them. and i need to not do that.

[gynandromorph]

Hi more Jessie questions,

Thanks a lot for the 'powers are what you can write' post, that's let me wrap my head around the power a lot more. It's not so much about something being impossible to do, it's about it being impossible to write. That being said, Jessie can create life or at least a feasible simulacrum of life. What happens if Jessie goes 'this is a 100% identical copy of me who would think and act the same way I would in any given situation'? Is there an upper limit to that? Because it's easy to write 'And then the 8000 or 9000 Jessies rolled up into a ball and went to fuck your mother' but since this is a comic, authorship has both a written and visual component. I think even the best artists have a balking limit of how many figures they want to draw interacting in space together (I am not an artist, so if I am wrong please say). Alternatively, would Jessie even allow a copy of herself time to know it is alive (cus I can tell you if I could make a copy of myself with no consequences I'd kill it just for kicks)?

And,

This is less a Jessie question and more a question about the Ants, that being how does the Ant cult work? The Ants have a connection to God that is closer than any religion in history ever did. Do they take advantage of this? Like do the Ants go directly to God to ask about problems, or is that seen as rude? Do the Ants take personal moral stances on what Jessie does, or do they assume that what Jessie does is good? One of the main reasons that I started worshipping the Gods is because they are capricious petty assholes who care more about saving face than doing the right thing. That humanness spoke to me. Would people in-universe worship Jessie for her extremely flawed use of the power of divinity? Would this worship be separate from the Ant cult, or would the Ant cult accept others as part of its fold?

And,

I'm sorry if these asks are too long, but your work seriously gets into a craw of my brain that nothing has ever crawed into before. I read through all of Fresh Meat in a depressive haze the other night and loved it. My mind's response to self-harm thoughts is now Lupe's speech about how cutting is addictive. I'm reading through Dropout right now and fucking loving it. I know Catharsis isn't done yet but I want to say what's out right now has really helped me. The way you write the interaction between Felix's mind and meatspace has made me realize enough about my mind that I'm trying to get in contact with a Nuropysch to get some testing done. It helped me realize that talking in your head with the people there is dissociating, and that's what I've been doing for a lot of my life. I hope Catharsis will be completed, but even if it isn't, I want you to know that I'm very grateful for the stuff you've put out there so far. All the stuff you make is fucking great. Straight up. Jessie is the vector for the craw as well, and the Jessie questions are so long cus I have a lot of thoughts in my head about her and your work and everything! Please keep creating. You create fantastic art.

Yes, the story explores imagination and its limits. We often think of our imaginations as unlimited, but that is an illusion produced by our own ignorance. A lot to unpack here.

Jessie can easily create copies of herself. They would come more intuitively than writing other characters, if they were pure replications of herself, because they require no extra thought. She would never make a copy of herself without drastic contingencies to make it subservient to her and prevent the copy from being able to overpower her or override the restrictions placed upon her powers — essentially, this would be a different character who looks like her more than a clone, at that point.

The thing about art is that it does not need to be literally true — only believable. No need to draw 9,000 Jessies, as 1,000 would likely not even fit onto one page. The illusion of 9,000 Jessies is all that is necessary.

A fun little fact is that Jessie doesn't know that is in a comic; she just doesn't think much of it. For all she knows, the visuals around her are imaginings in the head of someone reading a written book, or even in her own head. She only thinks of herself as in a written novel, even though she is open to the idea that the story is part of a larger medium, such as a movie or comic

For the cult: only the leader is an ant; the cult itself is an open religion and mixed-species. I'm thinking of calling them the Original Character Society or the Book Club at the moment... Something alluding to the fictional story element.

That said, no one would bring their personal problems directly to Jessie unless they had something even worse than a death wish. Jessie is a patently unhinged God, and, despite the cult's best effort to understand her and make their exchanges with her predictable, clearly unable to be predicted.

Unlike an invisible, unreactive God, Jessie is conscious, and can change her actions based on observation and prediction, like any person. She can intuit how she is expected to react and actively choose a different behavior intentionally — and she often does.

She has given them kid gloves to be handled with through Twiddler's reappropriation, and to encroach on her personal time and space on one's own terms instead, likely in the hopes of getting better results, is a cascade of transgressions begging for judgment.

The cult does interact with her directly, but largely first when it is small, and looking for her permission to exist, in a time when she is feeling strain on her relationships; or when she personally decides to engage with them. Its primary function as it grows larger is grooming members who want things from her to interact in successful ways by studying her behavior, keeping track of her moods, documenting which prayers she answers, forming scripts (later congealed into liturgy) to indirectly pray to her, and nurturing a positive image of her.

Due to the cult's primary function being successfully obtaining benefits from Jessie, liking her as a god is not necessary. I think there are many selfish members who think the world would be better off without her, but want things, and will gladly grovel for them if it's likely to work. Like any religion, there are a variety of opinions about Jessie, with some being positive, apathetic, horny, sycophantic, hateful, etc. The official position of the sect itself is not necessarily that everything Jessie does or says is good, but it is always true — this is specifically said as what she does is always "right." It's assumed by default what she does is good, but Jessie herself can say things she's done are bad, and that would be TRUE, canonically. I personally imagine that most opinions of her are not positive in the cult — either neutral or negative.

There are very likely some odd worshipers outside of the cult, but I would consider them casual worshipers, mostly invoking Jessie as a symbol or idol more than as an actual god who can respond to them.

Glad my work could help. Keep in mind that all people can have dialogues in their head — it's why "parts work" and inner family systems therapy works for people with or without dissociative parts. Like most mental illnesses, DID and other major dissociative disorders are simply normal brain functions which have veered to some extreme that has become dysfunctional or detrimental. I do hope that your testing is elucidating, but doctors in such a field are extremely prone to error, so don't give up on your gut instincts if they persist.

[the-hurdy-gurdy-man]

Something I really wish I was told earlier about the making art process is: Do not lower your expectations. Do not have realistic aspirations. If your sights are 100% perfection, gun right for that.

Having a mental picture of what "perfect" is can be essential to making your craft, because it gives you the ability to recognize what is different between what you currently have and where you need to be. The trick is humbling yourself to give yourself constructive and tangible feedback. "I suck" is not tangible feedback. "This character's proportions look wrong, what if I redraw the leg" is tangible feedback. You're looking for something that you can actually do and accomplish.

If you want to paint like Michelangelo, looking at what Michelangelo does and you don't, and then replicating that is what's going to get you there! If you want to make art that makes people cry, look at media that makes you cry and try to see what they're doing and how they do it.

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A couple of pitfalls:

"There's so much I need to fix and it's overwhelming!"

Again, don't have realistic expectations, but do have realistic short term goals. If you're learning music and want to be able to play faster scales, creating a routine where you play scales with a metronome for 5 minutes every day could be accomplishable for you.

The brain is fucking horrible at long-term ideas, so keep those aspirations in the back of your head, and pick things that you know 100% that you can do. Make them stupid easy. You don't have to be perfect instantly. You'll get there if you're deliberate and just a little crazy about it.

Observing people you respect is also really helpful! If you want to write, read a bunch of fiction and figure out what you like, if you want to make movies, watch a bunch of movies. Eventually, you'll find something that you can improve on, and then you can isolate that one thing.

Looking at media adjacent to what you want to do can also be helpful. For example, if you want to draw comics, reading a novel can give you insight about the narrative process.

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"I don't know where to start" or "I don't know why I suck, I just suck"

A couple routes for this one. Simplest solution is to get someone more qualified than you to give feedback. Think private lessons for music, or a professional sculptor looking at your work. It can be a one-off or a friend, of course, but get someone you think is better than you! You don't have to agree with their opinion, either. Just because someone is good at something doesn't mean they can explain how to do it. They might be able to guide you in the right direction, though.

Another route is to just learn as much about your craft as possible. If you're an illustrator, leaning about anatomy and color theory will probably reveal to you areas to improve on. If you're a writer, learning about character arcs, commonly used tropes, and different kinds of narrative devices will do the same. The more you learn, the more tools you'll have to express whatever you want. I can't count the amount of times I've gone: "You can DO that!?"

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"I'm just so exhausted" or "I don't want to do this anymore"

Then don't! If you're like me and you got a degree in the arts, you can do other fields, such as non-profit work. There's also arts administration, marketing, and plenty of other fields that you can adapt your skillset for. You can always continue to do your art as a hobby instead of Naruto-"I must be the Hokage"-ing it.

This isn't a satisfying answer for you? You want to make art anyways? lmfao. fucking nerd. (that was facetious)

If everything that you enjoy doing seems unappealing to you, I highly suggest getting mental health treatment. I struggled with depression for YEARS thinking that it was just "a part of the process" and "everyone goes through this," which is just blatantly not true. Regarding burnout, if you're doing art 10+ hours a day (like i was doing for a while), taking a break is also a tangible goal that you can do, and improving your mental health IS a productive use of your time (even if it's not from burnout).

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tl;dr Your art sucks? No problem. Let's figure out why.

Good luck out there homies 🫂 kick some ass.