#it might not seem like much but this was one of the most ambitious comics I've done

[lynxgriffin]

OKAY there were a lot of asks specifically for the most recent comics, so I figured it'd be easiest to just try and respond to all in one big block rather than clog up your dash with multiple asks!

Yeah, the problem with where Kris is now is that no one's really going to discourage them from going on a revenge quest, and there's no one around to really help them process the feelings of what happened. Not a good headspace to be in!

I would say they are about 17 now, so a little older than I would have them be in canon. So yeah, they were already living with the Dreemurrs for a few years.

He would be happy to share a cup of tea and some cake with friendly humans!

Maybe he's got a lot of practice at it! And yeah, usually not a good sign when a demon prince wants your soul.

Yes, the ceremony done incorrectly could have sent a human to the wrong place in the Dark World. The mark they put on Kris's forehead to show "who the gift was intended for" was actually very important in getting Kris directly to Ralsei.

Yeah, I suppose that may be inevitable since UT and DR themselves have so many overlapping elements! And some folks do think that Kris is DR's version of Chara (although I have my own thoughts on that, personally). At least with Chara, Asriel was there to dissuade them from actually carrying through on their intentions!

I think you mean Ralsei, but yup, he's just trying to be helpful!!

Kris at the moment doesn't have reason to suspect that Asriel was a part of the cult or the plan, but is also definitely primed to act rashly. Unfortunately, they probably can't actually talk until Kris gets back to the light world.

Yes, Ralsei would have let Kris stay at his castle as long as they wanted. Might have been all right, but after awhile Kris probably would have gotten bored and angry enough to want to leave.

Yes, they do, which is why they were suspicious of Ralsei offering them a bunch of desserts at first.

Well, hopefully parenthood (or adoptive parenthood) isn't the same as soul ownership! ;P

Thank you! I admit, I'm a giant sucker for that imagery.

Aaaand now they've lost that, too. Oops!

Ralsei is just all smiles about this arrangement!

There really is nothing quite so demonic as fine print, honestly.

Well, they quickly read through the main part of it. They may have skipped over a lot of the fine print, though.

Ralsei's just like... "Ambitious, but doable!"

It's more about what Kris now is to Ralsei than the other way around!

Oh Kris didn't exactly trust Ralsei fully, but was pretty much like "well, this seems like my best option, so I'll just take what I can get and worry about the consequences later."

Ralsei is being honest when he says that he wants companionship from Kris. The problem is is what "companionship" looks like to an immortal demon prince may not always be mutually beneficial for Kris. And there's no distance restrictions now; Kris can move as far away from Ralsei as they want, and Ralsei's still the one with power over their soul.

[blueskittlesart]

hi, correct me if i'm wrong but i seem to remember you saying that you're majoring in illustration! i'm currently in the process of applying to colleges and i plan on majoring in illustration as well, so i was wondering if you had any advice for portfolios. I could really use some tips on the presentation aspect specifically, bc I'm a little lost when it comes to stuff like the arrangement/organization of pieces, how I should crop my pictures, etc. any advice you can give me is greatly appreciated!!

hi yes i can totally help you out with this! i like to think my college portfolio was pretty good bc i got accepted to every school i sent it to lol :) the main pieces of advice that i was given when building it were this:

studies and pieces that show off your technical skill are great, but limit them to around a third of your portfolio at most. art schools DO want to see that you're technically skilled and can like, draw a charcoal still life or a self-portrait, because those ARE important skills to have, but ESPECIALLY if you're applying to a school that's more known for contemporary fields like animation or illustration, it's much more likely that they want to see your creative mind at work. the single best thing you can put in your portfolio is a BODY OF WORK, and specifically a body of work that shows off your own ideas and your own take on whatever you're producing. this means 3+ pieces that are interconnected or related to the same central theme. my portfoilo, for example, consisted of 2 or 3ish traditional, technical pieces which showed that I had a certain level of technical skill, and the ENTIRE rest of it was devoted to a series of original interconnected narrative comics I'd written and drawn. Every reviewer I met with told me that this was what made my portfolio stand out to them--it showed that I was not only technically skilled, but that i had something i wanted to DO with that skill, that I had direction and drive with my art and was able to produce work that reflected that. If you're maybe (definitely) not quite as ambitious as me, something like a series of 3-5 interconnected illustrations or a short comic if you're into that might do the same thing.

as a side note, if you DO have a body of work as the central focus of your portfolio, a lot of colleges will be interested in your process as well! for example with my comic portfolio, i used one slot to demonstrate my process, because I penciled every page traditionally before digitalizing it and i had extensive character and worldbuilding sketches. I wouldn't devote more than one slot to it, but if you have a body of work where the process is important to you it could be worth throwing in!

arrangement is tricky, but the advice I generally heard was "put your best stuff first." whatever you're most excited about, whatever is going to grab someone's attention the fastest, that's what you want to have in your first slot. (I actually don't think I followed this advice on my applications LOL but it's what i was TOLD to do and i think it's solid advice.)

in terms of editing, assuming we're talking about traditional pieces being photographed, you want to make sure your pieces are 1. well-lit, (DO NOT TAKE YOUR PHOTOS WITH OVERHEAD LIGHTING. wait for an overcast day and take them outside trust me) 2. legible, (no weird shadows obscuring parts of the piece, high-quality enough that no details are lost due to digital pixelation, etc) and 3. as color-accurate to real life as you can make them. most of this is just about getting a decent-quality camera (a newer iphone should be fine) and a good location. (outside and overcast, as previously mentioned) you may want to throw your pics into photoshop and play with the balance slightly, but I wouldn't do anything too drastic, try to get the most accurate photo possible without any editing. (if your pieces are small and flat, scanning them in may work better. most public and school libraries have scanners you can use for free.)

finally, cropping. the general rule that I was taught is to crop the piece, not the photograph. if you've got a piece on paper and you're not sure you like how the actual drawing is oriented on the paper, crop the PAPER down to size, and THEN photograph it. your photos should aim to show the ENTIRE piece from edge to edge (unless it's a detail shot obv) and I even like to include a little bit of extra "breathing room" around the piece so that it's clear exactly where the dimensions of it end. here's a piece I used for my college portfolios for reference:

i lowkey do not like this piece now but that's not the point. this is what i mean by breathing room--a few extra inches of space around the actual canvas so it's clear that this isn't a closeup and you can see where the canvas actually ends. the same is true for digital pieces. if it's a full bleed illustration (something with full color all the way to the edges of the canvas) just make sure you like the composition cropped the way it is and submit the full piece as-is. if it's a floating spot or something similar without hard edges, leave a bit of white or transparent breathing room around the edge of your image.

hope this helps! if you have any more specific questions lmk :)

[orangepanic]

50 Random Character Asks: Asami Sato

You're lucky I love her.

1. Canon I outright reject

That she and Korra are soulmates. I think that was in a comic? Anyway no, after a few months of trying out a relationship in their early 20s they realize they want different things and break up more or less amicably.

2. A canon or headcanon hill I will die on

Asami is actually bad at stuff! She's not perfect at everything all the time!

3. Obscure headcanon

As fearless and caring as she is Asami is also a bit squeamish and is not great with sick people because she's a sympathy vomiter.

4. Favorite line

"Why would there be fence posts but no fence?" Girl for a genius you were so close.

5. Best personality trait

Selfless without being a doormat.

6. Worst personality trait

Gets angry when she's hurt instead of admitting how she really feels.

7. Age/height/weight headcanon

She's 18-22 in canon, 5'9", 140lbs or thereabouts mostly because she's tall and all muscle.

8. Unpopular opinion about them

She's interesting and loveable all by herself without being Korra's girlfriend. She went four seasons without dating Korra but most of the fandom is only interested in her as part of a pairing that wasn't even in the original material. If you ever look up "facts about Asami" more than half of it is about her dating Korra. It's infuriating. She's a person on her own! I hate that the franchise and the fandom have reduced her to the "and girlfriend" tag along of the main character when she has so much to give just as herself.

9. Scene that first made me love (or hate) the character

Her standing up to her dad in The Aftermath. As someone who also idolized a dad who turned out to be a misguided asshole I can tell you that shit is hard. She should get a medal and a hug.

10. Best moment on screen (or in the book)

I love everything about this.

11. Faceclaim for the role

Arden Cho

12. Crack headcanon

Asami is a slob. She might look put together but her house is a mess and she's always losing stuff amid the jumble of things in her handbag. She grew up with a cleaning service and it shows.

13. Dumbest thing they’ve ever done

Trying to get with Mako again in Book 2. No. What were you thinking? You're so awesome, go find somebody, anybody who isn't the guy who ghost-dumped you for his "friend" six months ago! (eh HEM I even have a suggestion)

14. Most heroic moment

I was going to say standing up to her father in B1 or flying a biplane in combat conditions in B2 or kicking people in the face on top of a moving train or flying a basically untested piece of mecha onto a robot colossus, but I actually think it's this:

It's really hard to forgive someone.

15. Worst thing they’ve ever done

Nothing, Asami has never done anything wrong in her life and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise.

kissing Mako in B2

16. Deepest darkest secret they won’t even admit to themselves

Asami is scared that she won't know how to be a mother when the time comes because she didn't really have one. Her dad mostly had staff to do the childcare parts of being a father but she doesn't want that for her family. Asami does want kids, she's pretty sure, but she never quite knows what to do with them and has no idea how she'll balance that with her own interests and ambitions. She's not interested in a stay at home role and finds herself attracted to people who are also as ambitious and dedicated to their interests as she is. She looks at people like Pema or even Korra who seem like such natural moms and then at people like Lin who are all about their career and doesn't see herself in any of them. Asami is desperate for a role model of a strong career woman with a loving family who can tell her how to have it all. Izumi

17. Quotes, songs, poems, etc. that I associate with them.

18. What they’d go to see a therapist about

Having her mother murdered at home. Having her father and idol try to kill her before being sent to prison for treason for funding and then leading an effort to overthrow the government right under her nose, then being murdered after she decides to try to forgive him and have a relationship again. Always coming in second place after the thing the person she loves loves more than her, and always being relied upon to put her own needs aside for the greater good. Being treated as a hot chick by everyone who meets her but rarely engaged intellectually. Asami Sato, half ATM, half meat slab.

I think Asami needs a lot of therapy tbh.

19. Vices/bad habits

She drinks too much when she's sad.

20. Scars

One on her collarbone from when she broke it riding her motorbike at 16.

21. Drink of choice (not just alcoholic)

I think she'd be into flavored fizzy waters.

22. Best physical feature

Um, all of her? Have you seen this girl? But if you ask her she'd say her hair.

23. If they were a scented candle, what would they smell like?

Lavender and engine oil.

24. Most annoying habit

She chews on the ends of pens whether they're her pens or not.

25. 3 things they’d want to take with them if they were dropped off in the middle of nowhere

Utility knife, a bunch of snacks, duct tape. She'd be fine.

26. What they would do if stuck in an elevator with [insert character of your choice from the same fandom]

It doesn't matter who she's stuck with because she fixes the elevator.

27. Their guilty pleasure

Sneaking chocolate into the spa so she can eat it while soaking in the hot pool.

28. How they feel about [insert character of your choice from the same fandom]

Can't answer this without a victim but Asami generally likes anyone unless they've crossed her, in which case watch the fuck out.

29. Eating habits

Asami cannot cook to save her life but generally tries to keep it healthy, which means a combination of salads, instant soup, and takeout. These are all things she can make. She finds it weird to keep a cook just for herself. Once she's married she happily lets her partner or hired help do the cooking.

30. Sleeping habits

Night owl, heavy sleeper, stomach sleeper under a big pile of blankets. Her partner sometimes checks to make sure she's still breathing.

31. If the had a tumblr what would it look like?

Just pictures of hot cars and the occasional Taylor Swift quote. I think she's more of a gamer geek than a fandom geek.

32. Something guaranteed to make them smile/laugh

Asami's feet are quite ticklish. Tickle her feet and she'll laugh whether she wants to or not.

33. Something guaranteed to make them cry

Being dumped.

34. How they react when they are feeling X emotion (sad, angry, excited, scared, etc.—can specify as many as you like)

For a very social person Asami saves her strongest emotions for more private moments. She gets a big smile and will do group hugs when she's excited but in canon we almost always see her turning away or leaving the room when she's upset or scared rather than seeking comfort. The only exception I think is in book 1 where she opens up to Mako about her mom. So I think if she was in a loving relationship she might get a cuddle if she's sad.

35. Their idea of a perfect day

At the beach with a group of close friends, alternating between swimming, games, and sitting under an umbrella with her sketch pad and a pretty little fruity drink. At some point there are massages. She magically doesn't get sunburned. She ends the day tired and happy and feeling loved and relaxed.

36. Their favorite season

Summer. It's the best season for racing and cute outfits.

37. What they really think about themselves

Asami knows that she's pretty and smart and successful. There's no false modesty there. But sometimes she wonders if that will ever be enough for someone or if there's something wrong with her because she keeps being left behind all the same. It takes a lot of steady unflinching love to get her over that final insecurity.

38. Favorite holiday

All of them! Asami loves holidays and celebrations of all kinds. Especially the ones that come with cookies.

39. Favorite game

Assuming auto racing is not a game, kuai ball. She would have said pai sho but she beats most opponents so fast that the only people she really enjoys playing with are Commander Bumi and General Iroh. She and Bumi have a standing game the first Sunday of the month right up until his death.

40. Favorite book

Asami doesn't have a single favorite book and rarely re-reads, but she's very partial to the kind of edge-of-your-seat gory sci-fi thriller that usually involves a lot of people being eaten. I also peg her as a horror movie fan; the more ridiculous and bloody the better.

41. If they could have lunch with anyone in the world (living or dead, from any fictional universe or the real world), who would it be?

The easy answer is her mom. Barring that, everyone tells her she would have loved Sokka so I think she'd be curious to meet him.

42. 3 comfort items

Warm food, warm blankets, and the smell of her workshop.

43. 3 favorite foods and 3 they despise

Love: sesame sticks, pork and chive dumplings, pistachio ice cream. Despise: Gommu's street gruel, tomato carrots, anything served with the head still on it.

44. Their happiest memory

Asami still vividly remembers her first pro-bending championship game. Her team won and she screamed herself hoarse before going to get victory ice cream with her friends.

45. Their favorite celebrity

Korra

46. The person they most admire

I think she'd really admire female world leaders like Suyin or Firelord Izumi. Maybe even Kuvira up until she decided not to step down.

47. Their dream job

Stock car racer or pro-bender.

48. Scariest moment of their life

Being ejected from the hummingbird suit.

49. Favorite toy as a child

She had a doll named Yina who she took everywhere. Yina wasn't her baby but rather her pretend sister.

50. A memory they’ve blocked out

Asami was home when her mother was killed. She called the police using the number her parents had shown her but she doesn't remember it.

50 Character Asks

[spectralsleuth]

Now that we're entering into 2024, I'm asking some artists and writers that I follow:

1) What is the one piece you're most proud of from this past year?

2) What are some pieces that you would have liked more people to see? If you can include links, I'd love to go check them out!

3) What were your top three favorite pieces (art, comics, fics, etc) that someone else has made this past year?

(As always, no pressure to respond! Feel free to just ignore, or let me know if you'd rather I not send you these kinds of asks in the future.)

This is such a sweet and fun ask!! Thanks so much! I enjoyed seeing other authors answering this it’s so hype to get it myself.

1. This is hard to answer, because this year I tried to do something different with every fic I posted. When I got a concept I very pointedly didn’t shy away from it because it seemed difficult, or I thought I might be bad at it, so there’s something that makes me proud with each one. IF I HAD TO CHOOSE THOUGH I’m going to cheat and pick two.

What it Will Be I’m proud of this because it fell out of me SO EASY. I felt like the process of writing it was a testament to how hard I’ve been working at improving all year, and it came together very quickly and very well. I’m also proud because I incorporated @heckitall ‘s comic page to base it off of, and I’d never tried writing fic for a visual media like that. It was super fun!

On the OTHER end of the spectrum is Case of the Hidden City vs Lou Jitsu because it is VERY technically and narratively complicated and is by far the most ambitious thing I’ve ever written. It’s very hard, but I am VERY proud because I haven’t QUIT it. It’s not complete yet, but it is a good amount of the way there and I’m excited to finish it. Probably once I’ve recovered from surgery lol.

2. This sounds insincere maybe, but I really am happy with the engagement I get on my fic. I really do write my fic for me, and while I love to make sure as many people who want to read it can find it, at the end of the day I don’t like assigning people homework! I went through my whole works list and scratched my head and really tried to think of there was anything I wanted to plug, and I don’t think there is!

I guess I’ll post my lowest viewed, my Swanatello fic! @tangledinink ‘s AU I’m sure everyone’s familiar with lol. I knew that one would be lower when I posted it, if only because it has prior required reading (Swanatello). But I wrote it mainly because the AU was starting to reach a critical point and I REALLY wanted to write fanfiction of how I fantasized an ending might be, so I could go back and read it for comfort. I love Odette and the lore Kayson made for his AU, so I’ll plug this only because I think some people may have missed it!

3. Three works!! JUST THREE?? AUGH.

little kid with a big death wish

By @remedyturtles ! This made me leak tears the whole way through, so huge CW’s obviously. Not only was it one of the best fics I’ve ever read, but I got the privilege of seeing how talented Rem is behind the scenes a little and saw how they write and work and I really want to emulate them going forward. One of many all timer fics for me, for sure, I’d love to read any original fiction they put out.

The Whispering Forest and Other Tales

By @sroloc--elbisivni and @kithnkin ! I love love LOVE the feudal Japan fusion, the research, and the perfect blend of Usagi Yojimbo’s universe with what the Riseverse would have been like in this era. Even the little segues into what they’re wearing and eating is endlessly fascinating to me. Every single character is written to be the best and most interesting version of that character I could imagine. Theres Leosagi, there’s a PB&J murder mystery, there’s spookiness- AND Raphael Hamato gets wifed up!! WHAT MORE COULD YOU WANT? I love people that write a fully fleshed story that could be a standalone universe, without losing ANY of the flavor or humor or narrative of the original source material.

And last is I’m Sorry, Teenage Mutant What Now

@tangledinink has such a good grasp of family and writing, and realistic portrayals of what would HONESTLY HAPPEN if you discovered literally any aspect of the ROTTMNT narrative. Not even taking into ACCOUNT the turtle nonsense, how do you unpack a family that’s been devoted to destroying a magic monster and sacrificing themselves, or a Dad that fought in a death match battle royale for over a decade, or a RIVAL CLAN OF NINJA? All the characters are written SO WELL, and Kayson does a fantastic job of never letting the characters or story fall into cliche tropes. Their characters are always super detailed, to the point where I really feel it if they’re hungry or hurt or itchy. Which is a weird thing to point out but they make sure you really FEEL the situation. Also like, turtles in highschool? Body dysphoria? My CO-CEO of Hamato Yoshi???

What a great year!! I had so much fun in fandom this year and made a lot of friends.

[spotsupstuff]

I wanna learn more about Blessing / Boreas. What’s up with all the bat flies with him? What’s his city like?

-rubs my hands together like a fly- uuuuuu boy, time to shake my blatantly favorite child Hell yeah huhuhuhuhuuu

the batflies enter the scene a good while after the Mass Ascension- they are his coping mechanism after Zephyr collapses and goes dark!

from the comic where they talk about Euros' n Sparrows' relationship, one can probably guess how close these two are. Boreas might be the big scary dog of the whole Eo family that punches things in the face rather than take any miniscule amount of shit, but when it comes to Zephyr he is very open and sweet. she's the only person who can actually influence his opinions and ideas greatly, because he loves and trusts her enough to allow her to do so. so when she collapses, he takes it the worst out of everyone. in a very quiet way. his pain if for him to keep, nobody else can know he's hurting

bear witness to Ňuňu

this lil shit was basically Boreas' therapy dog. just.. very very feckin teeny

child...

she is as smart as your typical bat, but the thing was that when she accidentally made her way into his chamber, he didn't have much will in himself to send the animal to eeby deeby so she got to flutter about. and as animals do, girlie used the empathy trap card to figure out this person who doesn't seem to be posing any danger is Sad. so she landed on his head, crawled up to look into his eyes and chirped

n that was the straw that broke the camel's back and Boreas had his first grief-inflicted breakdown ever. Ňuňu stayed during it and even after it, so emotionally-empty-feeling Boreas decided to take her in. hardly can replace Zephyr, but at least he isn't alone

Ňuňu later brought friends and Bee decided that he will look after them then. even after Ňuňu passes away, he still houses and raises them. the younglings like sleeping on his antennas so he has to watch himself to not move them too much sometimes. Euros has a folder full of photos like that

to his city- the name kush is:

originally from me looking for latin words for Rage. ended up going with Desaevio, because Bee is indeed positioned in a fitting place for the word

and the storm connection plus the last two are the main reasons why the Ancients called the city as such. after project Abet Zephyr ended in such a failure, they had to vent some stuff out. and we are going to claim that it is anger because that isn't as pitiful as shame or embarrassment

(the fact that almost every translator i put it into gives me "i'm sorry" works wonderfully, too. because what else will ultimately Boreas do, but quietly mutter to himself a mantra of apologies when he'll be lying in his chamber 30 seconds from his death, drowning in his regrets and mistakes?)

Desaevio was capable of comfortably supporting over 5 million people (no other Iterator city ever reaches that far- the max is ambitious Gen 3 cities that only ever reached around an estimate of 2.7 million) but at times housed over 6-7 million. despite lying close to the geographical location of Bergen in real life, Desaevio is very far from reaching such nice vibes (the old towns Boreas' structure overshadows come close, though). it is way closer to New York, but more dystopian. if u look up dystopian city on google images u get to see pretty closely what it looked like. combine it with Coruscant from star wars for bonus authencity with the layering

made up of skyscrapers, with endless layered bridges for means of transport (most commonly expres trains), with what little decoration of the buildings chipped away by time without anybody caring enough to restore the beauty- the grey, gloomy expanse of Desaevio is as majestic to witness as it is absolutely harrowing

with it being a layered city and one with Boreas' consciousness/structure, some wonder when does one truly leaves the borders of the city and enters the giant's actual insides. it's hard to tell, with old models of Iterators not being all that enclosed and isolated like Five Pebbles is. there is no karma gate to tell you when exactly the walls turn from homes for people to homes for wires, tubes and alien-like organic life of a colossal Hivemind

despite the whole "Iterators are above the cloud level" thing, i like to imagine that it rains in Desaevio either way. at least- some levels are just straight up Wet like after rain. but it'd be those normal rains like we have, not the annihilating ones that the old towns need to bear with down below. or maybe it's just the upper layers' waste water seeping through the ceilings

most of light of the lower levels comes from streetlights, neon signs and Boreas' own systems once deep enough

cameras and such security systems litter all the streets and every public room- and the private homes are still accessable by overseers- and All of that feeds directly into Boreas' memory cache

this omnipresence is why Boreas later suffers with the fuckin

nobody is as unhappy with Boreas' omnipresence as Boreas himself. no wonder he's always ticked off, imagine being a witness to All of New York's road rage 24/7

[princess-of-purple-prose]

want to talk some about your IDing process? do you do IDs consistently, or in chunks? also, how do you save posts you plan to describe later? i’m impressed by your work ethic so i’d love to hear how u do it so well and so much! :)

🥺🥺 Omg hi Nora!! This is so sweet!!! I don't wanna pass myself off as an expert, but I do definitely have a system that works for me, which I also talk about a little in this post!

I save posts to describe later to drafts, and my golden and most important rule is to NEVER exceed more than ten undescribed posts, because I used to regularly get up to like 60 in my first year of doing IDs and I was absolutely miserable about it </3 I literally cannot express how much this is the major reason I can be so prolific-- seeing the drafts counter up to like 8 is usually my reminder to start doing descriptions rather than continuing to scroll and fill my drafts, and it keeps me from feeling bogged down or overwhelmed! However, my cheat to this is that if I absolutely must save some extra art or whatever, I put the "overflow" in the drafts of a sideblog I use less frequently so I can clear out those as I please

I really like the "consistently vs in chunks" question, because I actually think it's both? I'm generally on mobile, so the trick has been learning how to gauge what posts I can ID as I scroll!! For example, I exclusively do text transcripts on my phone with onlineocr.net, but I've also worked out the level of complexity of art I can mentally tackle while typing on my phone. That means I'm free to save longer/more involved posts and art (like long comics or videos) to drafts until I have time to get on my computer and do a lot of IDs in one sitting!

This also means weighing the kinds of posts I'm willing to put in drafts, since as I said, I'm pretty strict about how many I save. I do a lot of comic IDs, so for those, I consider factors like whether I can use onlineocr to transcribe the text or if I'll have to type it by hand and how complex the composition is (aka, can I transcribe the panels straight to prose or is there more complicated stuff going on that I'd have to figure out how to express?). Generally, I'm more willing to save posts for whatever I'm currently hyperfixating on, since it takes less emotional energy on account of being extra fun to do and consisting of stuff I'm already putting a lot of on my blog! Sometimes I get ambitious and try to save posts for stuff I'm not as into, and they start to rot in drafts as they seem more and more taxing to do, so learning to judge that honestly can help a lot for productivity, at least for me :)

I hope this makes sense and is helpful!!! I always hesitate to label myself as some kind of authority on IDs, but I'm pretty confident about the volume that I do, so I really hope this helps you and anyone else who might need it!!!! Once again, you're so sweet, I hope you're having a great day!!! 💜💜💜

Tl;dr: to write as many IDs I do, I limit the amount of drafts I save, designate descriptions to either be done on mobile or pc, and take interest levels into account when I save posts :)

[cizzle-freezy]

If your OC story had it's own fandom etc which of your characters do you think would be the most popular and why? And who would be the least popular?

Given what I've noticed from friends both new and old: Out of the RP cast, it's definitely my deities that are most popular, especially Gelum. I've tried for years to also shift focus to other OCs but it doesn't seem to stick and my personal hyperfocuses on story arcs do NOT help. XD

Though in the past, Ten and Crystal used to be pretty popular among friends. I can see them being focused on too.

As for least, out of the RP cast... Absolutely no clue?? I mean, I personally find Nick/Alexander unappealing but mostly because after his initial arc I found using him boring (i know i never mentioned him before, but that's because I genuinely struggle to use him). Going off of vibes I also feel like some people might not like Cymek but he's part of a rp story that's also been neglected a bit? Maybe Ryvin because ideally I wanted to write him as a Villain Who Is Just An Irredeemable Villain And A Terrible Father. WAIT SHIT, as I type this, I remember Kori! The one Deity of mine that my friends very visibly wanna deck in the face (affectionate)!

Breathing Color specifically? I feel like it might be either Alex for the Anti-Hero Angst, or Violet because she is smol sweet bean with some trauma. I've had some people gravitate towards Derrick too.

I feel like not many would like Heather early on. She DOES start out as the generic mean girl but at least gets better, but not sure if I should count her because she's early arc and not really reoccurring. Tho I think the Early Arc Characters do have a lot of room for headcanoning so idk?? I do also think Alex could theoretically fall under this category depending on how I write him. He was originally kinda creepy but that whole thing is complicated-- Do not get me wrong, I just think it could be executed better.

I do want to give special mention to @loz-the-alternate-relic, aka the comic I help w/ @hikaririnku-blog, @juan-o-clocks, Kobi (who doesn't have tumblr), @jessebizarreart, and Skai_Blu (also no tumblr). It is a fan comic, and there's only so much that's been currently revealed, but Layla def thus far is like, the one I'd think would be pretty popular. But I cannot reveal who I think would be unpopular.... okay I admit this project might be too ambitious for our own good at times lol

I'll admit, it's kinda hard to think of who'd be least popular because I do love most OCs pretty strongly. I can think of many reasons why someone would or wouldn't like an OC??

[denimbex1986]

'The year isn’t over, and already we have two movies that have topped the $1 billion mark worldwide. One was based off one of the most popular videogames of all time and the other was based off of one of the most popular toys of all time—though neither of those guarantee success at the box office. With a couple of exceptions, the rest of the list is made up of action and superhero sequels and a Disney remake. So props to both Pixar’s Elemental and, especially, to Christopher Nolan’s historical biopic Oppenheimer for adding some originality...

6. Oppenheimer

Domestic Box office: $651 million Director: Christopher Nolan Stars: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., David Krumholtz, Benny Safdie, Josh Hartnett, Florence Pugh, Kenneth Branagh, Rami Malek Genre: Drama Rating: R Paste Review Score: 8.0

Only in theaters

For a visionary director of big-budget, big-studio, big-idea sci-fi/fantasy movies, Christopher Nolan has often seemed, if not exactly at war with himself, somehow prone to both methodically ascending his big, obvious building blocks and attempting to take wilder, more ambitious leaps. The real test of Nolan’s mettle is something like the great-man biopic – not because he’s insufficiently reverent (or dad-ish in his WWII-era interests), but because of the temptation to give himself fully to that innate squareness. Is the guy who evoked terrorism, the surveillance state, and Occupy Wall Street in service of Batman-movie plot points really up for a nuanced exploration of the legacy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb? Yes and no. Nolan’s Oppenheimer isn’t so much a great-man biopic as a great-man-but-maybe-not biopic, and at times, the writer-director seems hell-bent on channeling the instinctive, ethereal ambivalence of a Terrence Malick trip. It’s a fascinating spectacle in large part because Nolan isn’t especially Malickian at all (though at least that frame of reference might temporarily ease the overworked, underbaked Kubrick comparisons). Throughout the film, especially as it builds during its first hour, theoretical physicist Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) is beset by cutaway visions of stars, waves, and eventually all-consuming fire, fragments of zoomed-in science, blown up to eye-dazzling, seat-rattling IMAX scale. Half the movie feels like a montage and three-quarters of it feels like a thriller; the clandestine elements of the Manhattan Project and the talk of Soviet spies give the movie a feeling of buttoned-up espionage. A showcase piece, of course, is the first atomic bomb test, where bits of nervous comic relief pop up until the blast drops out Nolan’s usually-booming sound mix, leaving only the sound of breathing for a minute or two. It’s an awe-inspiring and discomfiting climax that hurtles Oppenheimer out of his preferred theoretical realm and into a void of reality. As much peripheral stargazing as the movie offers, it’s more interested in wrapping its mind around a 20th century horror that is, for many Americans, both abstract and intensely nightmarish. There is a clenched, impacted sadness to this semi-opaque figure who spearheads the creation of a bomb whose purpose is all too scrutable in the broader historical view. It might seem reductive to relate Oppenheimer’s merging of theoretical physics and practical project management to the way Nolan balances indelible images with practicality, creating an unlikely workmanlike poetry. It does explain, though, where some of that poetry comes from, and why even some of the movie’s more obvious points are able to shake up the audience, not just the premium-large-format multiplex seats. Nolan-via-Oppenheimer offers an explanation for this early in the movie, talking about his chosen field: “It’s paradoxical, and yet it works”—Jesse Hassenger...'

[nihoniums-oc-emporium]

Alternian Troubles Part 2

Introducing : Pastex ! A jade blooded troll who really was a life saviour on that one...

Part 1 : here

[myonmukyuu]

A setting where Ayumu is in love with Yu, and Setsuna cheers her on.

END

Previous | Series Masterpost 

If you enjoyed this, please consider supporting me with a Ko-fi!

***

AFTERWORD

***

I can’t believe I made it there... the last chapter...! (Excluding the epilogue.) But yes, I’m so happy to be done! 29 pages is a lot!! My back hurts and I wanna go lie down now...

To think it took almost 2 years to get to this point. How nostalgic... The first chapter only had 5 pages too. I guess I became more ambitious as time went on?

Firstly I’d like to apologise for the 4 month wait. The comic went through a lot of revision. New pages, deleted pages, changed scripts - it was a bit chaotic and had the most revision of any other chapter. I hope it turned out alright!

I love love looooovved colouring this comic by the way. Sorry about the lighting. I’m pretty sure you need sunglasses to read it with how brightly Ayumu is shining. I really loved the atmosphere in this. Especially having the sun set over the course of the comic! I guess this entire series is setting too...

For those with sharp eyes, this comic also had numerous references to previous chapters! While drawing these panels I couldn’t help but notice how my art has changed so much since then... It’s a good sign of improvement. I’ve also planted a couple of seiyuu/anime references. Even used a sun-chart to determine the light direction in the scene. 

Now, story-wise I hope these was a satisfying ending! If not, then I apologise for botching the landing. I feel like this was the only way for my story to end. It may have been 4 months since the last chapter, but it’s only been a single night for Ayumu. Poor girl has been through a lot. It’s a bit of an open ending, but I felt that it had to be that way if I wanted to respect Ayumu’s feelings.

I also get the feeling a lot of people expected me to inflict more emotional damage onto our girls. No faith! I think this chapter has been the most wholesome update since the 2nd chapter. No pain! Just happiness and relief! No strings attached. Ayumu’s heart is sore, but she seems resolute in figuring things out at her own pace. Setsuna probably would be more heartbroken if she had held the expectation that Ayumu might return her feelings. But she was a bit more preoccupied with whether Ayumu would even be her friend. So she’s pretty happy with this outcome.

It was pretty funny writing this because while Ayumu’s feelings were relatively stable, Setsuna’s seemed to bounce back and forth wildly.  The contrast was fun!

I think I can talk a lot about the characterisation and writing choices now that the story is over! But maybe there’s a time and place for that and that isn’t in this afterword. I will say that Ayumu and Setsuna are easily my favourite NijiGaku characters and even though this series is ending, I have so much more planned for them!

I almost want to apologise because I get the feeling some readers are waiting for me to draw other characters/pairs but I’m like “nope I only breathe setsupomu sorry check back later”.

I have a lot of sentimental thoughts, but I think I’ll save that for when I release the epilogue - that’s when it’s truly over. I can’t slow down yet. I have a big announcement after the epilogue is complete so please look forward to it!

It’s been really hard work getting all the way here. It’s exhausting but very fulfilling. When I was finishing this comic, I felt a rather strange feeling. Not a bad one. I felt that this comic could be a lot better. Maybe even the whole story. Drawn better, written better. Okay, it sounds bad when I put it like that, but tat feeling was - despite how much I think it can be improved, this story was something only I could make, and that’s special. To me at least.

...I could really do with some time off though.

Anyways, I’ve typed enough! I hope you enjoyed my story.

Let’s keep working till we blast past the finish line.

***

DELETED SCENE

***

The following pages were deleted. These were originally meant to be between pg 1 and 2, but I ended up removing them. These are very rough and haven’t been edited at all, but here they are anyways if anyone was curious:

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Is It Really THAT Bad?

This… This is where it all began.

Sean Connery wanted to finally make a great film again after constantly passing on big franchise opportunities. Alan Moore was actually somewhat enthusiastic about seeing an adaptation of his comic. The dominoes were in place and set to fall on a major success as one of the most ambitious crossovers ever written made its way to scree

But unfortunately, there were far too many problems. Connery refused to play an addict and so they changed Quatermain into a straight hero and the team leader. Tom Sawyer was added in because the studio thought people wouldn’t care about the movie if there wasn’t an American in it. Connery butted heads with the director on set. A legal issue involving an unproduced script led Alan Moore to become bitter when things were settled out of court, as he didn’t get to defend himself. It seemed like absolutely nothing could go right with this film, and then it was released.

The movie was savaged by critics, bombed domestically, and devastated several careers. Connery was left miserable in regards to filmmaking thanks to this, and so retired from acting save for some voice work. The director Stephen Norrington had such a bad experience that he vowed to never make another film. Peta Wilson and Stuart Townsend both had their careers torched by this, and Shane West ended up having to stick to TV roles after this. Most tragic of all, however, is how Alan Moore came to utterly despise this film, leading to him demand his name be left off of all future adaptations of his work and beginning a long trend of him hating literally every Hollywood movie based on his creations, regardless of quality.

This film is an utter nuclear disaster of cinema based on how it ruined so many careers and crushed the hopes of its creators, so clearly the critics must be right on the money and this league of gentlemen is not so extraordinary… right? With 19 years and several other Alan Moore adaptations behind us, I’ve decided to look back and see if this notorious film is really that bad after all. Alan Moore definitely thinks so.

The Good

I think what really carries this movie is the performances. Nearly every actor is giving it their all here, though there are some standouts. Jason Flemyng as both Jekyll and Hyde, Naseeruddin Shah as Nemo, and and Tony Curran as this film’s take on the Invisible Man are the standouts here. The latter in particular is very interesting; due to Universal having the film rights for the Invisible Man, they had to make up a new version… which is for the best, since in the comics the Invisible Man on the team is a rapist, a traitor, and an utter bastard. Rodney Skinner, the version here, is much more of a playful rogue and a rascal, and it’s easy to see why he became a fan favorite. It’s definitely one of the few points of improvement over the comic.

Speaking of which, the decision to turn Mina into a vampire might seem corny to some, but I think it rules. Mina in the comics was very much the badass normal and the leader of the team, but that was about it  for her aside from her gross romance arc with Quatermain. Here, she gets to be a badass, and has quite a few cool fight scenes under her belt by the film’s end. It’s a bit of creative liberty with not only the source material but the comic as well, but it’s not like Moore didn’t take creative liberties for the sake of the story he was telling (for better and for worse).

My favorite addition by far is Stuart Townsend’s Dorian Gray. Even as a kid, who knew nothing about Dorian Gray and was very much not aware of his own sexuality, I thought Dorian was hot. He also is functionally immortal and unstoppable, which is awesome as well, making him something of a very sexy Wolverine. Parts of his motivation are very stupid (more on that later), but I think he’s a pretty fun token evil teammate. He’s definitely preferable to the Invisible Man of the comics, that’s for sure.

Aside from that, there’s a lot of fun action scenes, especially towards the end of the movie where they just go whole hog with everything. We have a Hyde versus Diet Hyde fight, we have Mina fighting Dorian, we just have a lot of crazy stuff. It’s just a lot of dumb fun.

The Bad

Much like the comics it’s adapted from, this movie does suffer from some problems that could definitely hinder how enjoyable one might find it.

Probably the bigger ones are the fact characters spend less time showing and more time telling, as they stand about in their fancy costumes and announce obvious things. It doesn’t help either that aside from that, the plot is a lot more convoluted than ever before and riddled with confusing twists and plot holes. For instance, the big reveal that the Fantom is actually M, who is actually Professor Moriarty… what, exactly, does this add to the story? Nothing is the answer. Nothing is added by Moriarty being the bad guy except, well, he was the bad guy in the comics! Gotta keep him in!

It’s even weirder when it comes to Dorian. His whole deal is that Moriarty has stolen his portrait, and if Dorian ever looks at his portrait he will die. So it would make far more sense for him to not want to help Moriarty since the guy is doing him a solid by keeping that damn portrait far away, right? Nope, he’s trying to get it back because… who knows.

I think the bigger issue here is that Quatermain supplants Mina as the main hero. In the comics, Quatermain starts out as a useless, washed up opium addict who slowly undergoes character development to become the badass he should be (and then he is unceremoniously killed by lightning shot out of Harry Potter’s penis). In the movie, he’s badass from the word go, and we all know it’s because it’s Sean Connery playing him. There’s no way you’re going to pay the bill for Connery to be in your film and then not have him be front and center. But this isnot even Connery at his best, as it’s pretty clear that he’s kind of phoning things in (though not nearly as badly as he did with Diamonds Are Forever). Worst of all, though,is that this comes at the expense of Mina becoming marginalized, and this is after you give her sick vampire powers! Mina has been made exponentially cooler and you still sideline her for Sean Connery and his bland white American foster son! What the hell!

And yes, Sawyer is bland and boring. They don’t really do much interesting with the fact he’s Tom Sawyer. In fact, outside a deleted scene, it’s not even mentioned and you’d have to really guess who he’s supposed to be. This, I think, is the reason this doesn’t quite work as a film quite as well as a comic, by the way; film rights and literary rights are two entirely different things. The entire conceit of the franchise is that you’re watching Alan Moore flex his literary knowledge and see how many references can be crammed into a single comic panel, something that just can’t work in a fast-paced action movie. Sure, there’s some references here and there, but it’s not nearly as dense as the comics. You’re not getting cameos from Thomas the Tank Engine or Pollyanna here, that’s for sure, and it’s a shame because that’s the fun of League.

Oh, and to top it all off, the CGI is kinda ass. I swear this is not a screencap from a Resident Evil game, this is just how this dude looks in the movie.

Is It Really THAT Bad?

Honestly? Nah.

Now let me be clear, this isn’t a good movie. It has a hell of a lot of flaws, flaws that keep it from reaching its full potential and keep it from being as good as the comic it’s adapting. But I always recall how I saw someone say they saw this film as part of a loose trilogy with Van Helsing and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the thematic tie of the films being action-packed CGI spectacles of the early 2000s, and I feel a bit more lenient. This is definitely the weakest of the three films, but I don’t know, I still think there’s merit in it even if it never quite reaches the highs of its comic counterpart.

I’d say this is sort of the Venom of its time, a fun, stupid action movie with tons of actors giving it their all for an almost non-existent plot. I’d say it’s just about where it belongs on IMDB, though I’d round it up to a 6. It’s the perfect thing to just put on if you want some mindless fun or just a bit of background noise while you do something else, and there’s plenty of place in the world for films like that. It’s definitely not so bad that I feel like it should have tanked a half dozen careers and I definitely don’t think it’s so bad that it should have soured Moore’s opinion on Hollywood (and Sean Connery, if his unflattering depictions of Connery’s Bond in later volumes are anything to go by).

The worst thing that can be said about it is that it does very little with the great concept of the comic it’s adapting… But hey, no matter how bad this is, it’s still infinitely better than whatever the hell was going on in Centuries!

[obsidianstrawberrymilk]

The interesting thing about Allison Hargreeves

Y’know, despite how I often see Allison characterized in kidfics, as a favorite daddy’s girl, from what we see in the show, that’s not actually accurate.

Now, I haven’t read the comics, so I’m just going off the show here, but the scenes we do see of Allison’s childhood are: she snaps at Reginald for always being too busy to tell them goodnight, she snaps at him at Ben’s funeral when he blames them for his death, she sneaks out with Luther to the attic. In all instances, she’s rebelling, and in the first two, it’s blatant, and she’s met with derision. I’m willing to excuse the last because Luther did it as well, but actually- let’s talk about that.

We all know how loyal Luther was as a kid to his dad. As the “hero/golden child”, Reginald had a control over him that never really slipped, and it meant that, in comparison to say, Klaus, he was way less likely to rebel. Yet here we see him doing something obviously against the rules just for pleasure. Ofc a part of it is just that they’re repressed teenagers who needed SOME outlet, but do you think Luther was the one who thought of that? Nope.

So: we see two instances where Allison contradicts or criticizes her father and is met with derision in their childhood, and a scene where she convinces her most loyal brother to disobey their father, and they are both punished. Allison doesn’t rumor her way out of any of them - including, as far as we know, punishment.

The only actual evidence we have that she’s a daddy’s girl is because Diego says so, and well, it’s Diego - how else are you supposed to be broody and dramatic and misunderstood unless the rest of your family just Could Not Understand your rebellion? Plus, we know that him and Allison have a complicated dynamic - he doesn’t seem to outright dislike her as he does Luther or Vanya at the start of the series, but they’re both clearly used to insulting each other back and forth and there was probably some degree of antagonism in their childhood - they’re too similar for their to not have been. So I don’t know how much stock we put in that.

Outside from that, most of the evidence we have seems to point to Allison as being a pretty rebellious kid. She actively criticizes their childhood, seems to be close to Klaus, a ‘disappointment’ child, and as we see in S2, is actively against injustice. Sure, this could be a recent development, but I doubt it was a totally new thing. Unlike Luther, she’s not loyal to Reginald - she’s ambitious and smart and ruthless, and she doesn’t get herself into a situation that’s so bad she can’t get out of like Five, so Reginald still has to worry about her, because she hasn’t stopped herself from being a threat like Klaus effectively has.

So, I actually think she was one of the most rebellious of the Umbrellas as a kid. Evidence seems to point to show!Vanya being less rebellious than her comic book counterpart in childhood, so probably more than her. The reason we might not see it as much is because Allison was smart - when she needed to so something, she didn’t get caught. And I can bet the second she turned 18 and was legally emancipated, she was on a plane to Hollywood.

But where does this leave her relationship with her father? Well, truthfully, I don’t know. We know at least some information about all the sibling’s relationships with Reginald - Luther was the golden child and Diego the scapegoat, Vanya was the neglected lost child and Klaus was the locked-up comedian. We see him exhibit some care for all of them but Klaus and Diego - he seems to at least respect Five somewhat in S2, expresses concern for Luther in the barbershop with Klaus (I’d also like to note the way Klaus flinches and visibly calms himself when Reginald grabs his face here - it seems like an indication Reginald actually did directly physically abuse his kids sometimes), and gives Vanya Grace’s violin (I think it’s Grace’s?). He gives Ben a statue but idk how much of that is care and how much is just him gaslighting his kids. The ones he seemed to outright dislike where Klaus and Diego.

As for Five, Ben, and Allison, we know very little about their relationship with Reginald. As I said before, I think Five did respect him, even before he time travelled - though his regrets about that definitely played a role in how he saw his father, the way he talked in the running away scene does kind of confirm this for me. He seems to be acting in a bit of a ‘look at me’ way - he’s overly dramatic, stabbing a knife into the chair, makes sure he’s in an environment where he will be the center of his father’s attention, and breaks multiple rules, which we know Reginald dislikes. He’s warring for his father’s attention by disobeying him.

This makes me think of the other ways Five acts - ex: “I don’t think I’m better than you, Number One, I know I am.” What’s interesting about this is not only how childish it is, but the way he reverts back to their childhood numbers, almost. I think that Reginald must have nurtured a weird superiority complex in Five - that while he may have been a lower number he was still smarter, stronger, faster than his siblings, and he had to be better than the. This was how he kept control over someone so obviously rebellious and curious - he made him reliant on his respect as well as approval, made he himself constantly push and exhaust himself. I’m sure he meant to be more controlling - I doubt he expected Five to attempt time travelling even after he said not to, for example, but still.

So how does this relate to Allison? Well, I think Allison’s relationship with Reginald was actually similar to this. Allison, like Five, is intelligent, resourceful, ambitious, curious, and has a power hard for Reginald to control. He can’t break her with disappointment, can’t lock her up, can’t keep her loyal - so how does he control her? He makes her think she’s better. She’s Number Three, sure, but while her brother’s worry about their silly rivalry, she’s the smart one. She’s better than them - she has to be better than them, has to be better than just loyalty, because unlike for Luther, more is expected from her.

Both Five and Allison actively try and get Reginald’s attention by disobeying him, and they both seem more tied to their abilities than any of the others, even Klaus, do. I can imagine that, for both of them, Reginald could not just brainwash them into loyalty and call it a day - so instead, he deprived them of just enough attention so they’d feel the need to get it, put them on a pedestal so they would feel the need to earn respect, be better than loyalty. For Five, it backfired, but for Allison, it kept from just controlling her father to do whatever she wanted, as we see in the scene when they’re younger with Luther.

So Diego isn’t totally wrong about her being a ‘daddy’s girl’ either, but he’s not right - the favoritism I don’t doubt Five and Allison both got shown was almost Reginald telling them to earn his approval, to impress him- and he made them think they were the only ones good enough to do so. It’s how he kept arguably his two most dangerous members under control, even if it backfired for one.

The more I watch the show, the more interaction I want between Allison and Five. They’re both so similar, and honestly, after writing this, I could see them having a bit of a childhood rivalry - not as blatant as Luther and Diego, they were ‘above’ that after all, but maybe something more subtle. At least until Five ran away.

[mmediocreman]

Hi!! I really love how your jjk illustrations gives so much emotions and your zine is extremely amazing I'm always blown away!!! Can you share your process on the zine? Like did you conceptualize/thumbnails all the artworks first or did you just made each illustrations as you go until you have enough for the zine? How long did it take you to do the whole book? I just love how they are so coherent like telling stories on each illus! THANK U SO MUCH FOR UR AMAZING ART!! <333

thank you so much! this was my most ambitious project to date, it makes me really really happy to hear that the people who got the zine enjoys it too!

the title came from yoko kanno's song for wolf's rain "Heaven's not enough" and that became the theme. my personal interpretation is that, even if geto got the equivalent of heaven for him, that might not have stopped him from making the same mistake as he did. i feel like theres a part of him that is actually more rotten than he would've liked to admit but he's covering that up with narrative of justice and self righteousness. I explored this theme into two main scenarios, for the comic, from gojo's perspective but this in itself is a paradox because the thought of gojo wanting to reach out to his best friend before all went to shit couldnt have happened without it having went bad in the first place. the second one is the set of illustrations with the theme "in another life" where if they were to be reincarnated, i feel like geto might still be haunted by his former self. the last set of illustration has this text

"in a world without cursed spirit, will you finally be able to laugh from the bottom of your heart? or will everything repeat once more, unable to break free from the curse. in a world without cursed spirit, will you finally be able to laugh from the bottom of your heart? or will everything repeat once more, cursed by life itself"

i have had several people pointed out that the mood my drawings carry are like a washed away bittersweet memory. and that might be what im trying to capture in the rest of the illustrations, moments that when you look back just seem so surreal and simple but also felt like it mightve been taken for granted. iirc it took me two weeks to finish the comics, i worked on the illusts even before i thought of making a zine, in between the comics and even when pre order was up. up until the last minute of printing i was still switching out the contents. theres some that i ended up posting on twitter early when i decided to take it out of the book too oh also! i put in flowers in the packaging to reference the bouquet of flowers gojo has in the 2nd op. tho its never been made clear for whom or what the bouquet was for but the signifiance of blue roses (its blue roses in the op but i had to pick a smaller flower to be mailed so i picked hydrangea) is "something that will never happen" and i think that fits in really well with the theme heaven is not enough. to me, what geto says he wanted might never happen, but maybe what his heart really wants were more simpler than that

i personally think skill wise my drawing is nothing fancy and i like to focus more on telling a story. to hear that my intention reached its vieweres is the highest compliment i can ever get. thank you again so much for getting my zine!

[shibaraki]

Relationship headcanons

Character: Iwaizumi Hajime Genre: SFW, Fluff A/N: can't believe I had to rewrite alla this because I forgot to save it and my laptop crashed lmaooookillmeplease. GN reader with our best boyfriend Hajime, wow this ended up being very soft and romantic lol

No matter how much experience Hajime gains, he will always feel out of his depth when it comes to relationships. He has never been good at expressing his own feelings and often speaks bluntly or in a manner that could be perceived as indifferent. Because of that a lot of people see him as intimidating, or even as an asshole. Meeting you, though, is when Iwaizumi truly felt he had been thrown into the deep end.

You took his rough demeanour in your stride. Truthfully, Hajime is the most nurturing and reliable man you've ever met. He's not as closed off as everyone seems to think he is, he is simply out of practice. Iwaizumi has spent all of his time helping everyone else, offering an ear and a solution where he can, but he never had the chance to ask for support himself. So he makes a conscious effort to communicate his insecurities and frustrations with you whenever he can.

While he does communicate with you, he is still a 'actions speak louder than words' kind of man. Even though he isn't all over you in public, he's always finding excuses to touch you. Tucks your hair behind your ear and pauses to stare at you lovingly before taking his hand back, but always making sure to graze your cheek as he steps away. Intertwines your fingers while he's driving and does not let go, will have your hand under his on the gear stick and run his thumb over your knuckles. Soft kisses against your temple or into your hair as a greeting and a goodbye, or simply an 'I love you'. Firmly has his arm around you in crowded spaces and guides you through the throngs of people making sure no one touches you. Stands in front of you if there aren't enough seats on the train, blocking you from anyone's view or wandering hands, has you use his bicep for support as the train jolts into motion.

Not a fan of big dramatic romantic acts, but he will still romance you in sweet little ways. Buys you a vase and regularly replaces the flowers, sets his alarm 10 minutes early so he can spend time peppering you with kisses in the morning, offers to give you a massage or dry and brush your hair (with pure intentions!) and tries to make it home early at least once a week to cook or clean for you

He thinks the whole world of you. So he gets very frustrated when you talk down to yourself, or dismiss your own achievements. A fantastic hype man because he's so straight forward and sincere with you, and he doesn't sugar coat anything. He truly believes everything he's saying and will support you in everything you do. He's the type of boyfriend that gently nudges you out of your comfort zone so you can grow and try things you might never have tried otherwise. Hajime is a very ambitious and determined person, just having him believe in you and stand beside you makes you feel like you could become a better person.

This big, built, tan handsome man is so bashful when it comes to you. Doesn't shy away when you initiate affection but the expression on his face can only be described as coy. Loves having you on his arm, and he stands straighter with his chest out whenever someone looks at him with envy because he's so proud that you chose to be with him, that you love him.

He quietly admits that when you use pet names with him it makes him feel all gooey inside, plus he has plenty he uses for you. He doesn't care if his friends laugh at him or think it's cheesy - you're his favourite peach after all. Also calls you babe, gorgeous and sweetheart. The ones he likes the most for himself are Haji, baby, hot stuff and handsome.

As the relationship progresses, you get to see a side to him that only family and very close friends get to see. The truth is, Hajime is actually a huge nerd. He loves comics and films about monsters and heroes, his favourite movies originating in the MonsterVerse. He also carries a child like curiosity for the natural world and dinosaurs - he would always have a documentary playing in the background whilst he studied in America. While you sit together watching something he will often glance over to you to gauge your reaction. He also has a loud belly laugh that you completely fell in love with the first time you heard it, he rarely ever laughs with anyone like that.

Arguments are very rare with Hajime, you two are the type to speak honestly if something hurt you or upset you rather than let it fester. He has a very strict rule of not going to bed angry. If he ever does snap or raise his voice at you, he'll realise it immediately and apologise. "I'm sorry I snapped at you gorgeous, I should've done a better job of controlling myself. I promise it won't happen again". After all you are both human and fights will happen, but he makes it his mission that fighting only ever end up strengthening your relationship.

Another one that prefers facetiming and phone calls to texting. He is a little bit of an old man about it, complaining that he wants to hear your voice or see your pretty face. He gets enough texts from his friends, just wants to speak freely to you. Does like voice notes from you in the morning, though. They always put him in a good mood which usually sets his day on a better path. His texting-self is pretty reflective of his in person self, he comes across as blunt since he only uses proper grammar and full sentences. Rarely sends you selfies, "if you want to see me then pick up facetime!", you've got to sneak them yourself by screenshotting and taking them when he isn't looking.

His favourite dates with you are either quiet and thoughtprovoking, or they involve outdoor activities. The quieter dates will include museums or wildlife parks, especially if they have exhibitions the public can interact with. As for the outdoor activities, he doesn't ever pick things that would push you too hard. He's taken you zip lining, rock climbing, hiking, kayaking, you guys even did a mud race together once. It's never about being good at it or about winning, he just has so much fun when he's with you. You had been put off about the mud race initially but tried it and it ended up being hilarious, Hajime had gotten stuck and you had fallen trying to pull him out. You were a mess of dirt and limbs, just laughing breathlessly as some of the event organisers ran to check on you both.

Mostly buys you things you ask for or openly express interest in, but not too often since he prefers to spend money taking you out. He does sometimes try to buy you gifts himself, such as a piece of clothing he thinks might look good on you, but those times can be hit or misses. He's so endearing and unsure about the gift that you cannot help but keep it and wear it because he likes it on you even if you don't. As for him, he's always surprised when you present him with a gift. You like to spoil him too after all. His favourite gift from you was a national geographic rock tumbler, he stuck in a bunch of big rocks he and Oikawa collected from the beach as children and was so excited when they came out in different colours and patterns.

Hajime told you he loves you for the first time as he was leaving for work one morning. You had woken up early and organised his work bag for him, along with his protein shake. At the front door he kisses you once, twice, thrice, feeling grateful that you're in his life. He kisses you a final time, promising to see you later. As he leaves he calls out that he loves you and the door shuts behind him. He doesn't realise he said it until he was halfway to the gym.

If you were to ask Iwaizumi when exactly he fell in love with you he wouldn't be able to sum that moment up into one single realization. Even now he feels like he loves you more every day, and that he might've loved you the moment you first spoke to him. He sees love as a glass that slowly fills and gradually overflows, the liquid still pouring into it now floods out and begins to fill the room instead. His love for you has no lid, the container simply changes.

[brawltogethernow]

@mirrorfalls​ submitted: Came across this while searching for James Bond’s scrambled-eggs recipe (long story). Your thoughts?

~~

But did you find James Bond’s scrambled eggs recipe?

In this article, Scocca laments his inability to find accessible, lighthearted superhero comics suitable to read with his young son, while also demonstrating a mysterious aversion to looking at DC and Marvel’s lines of comics for children, which is where the accessible, lighthearted superhero comics suitable for reading with young children are. He wants his elementary schooler to be able to safely have the run of all superhero media so he doesn’t have to touch the yucky baby books.

This is not an industry-wide crisis. This is just one dude who got paid to write an article where he accidentally exposed one of his personal hangups.

The child headed toward the trade paperbacks of Marvel and D.C. superhero titles on the side wall […] a few steps in front of me. […] Is he with you? a clerk asked me. I said he was. You know, the clerk said, we have a kids’ section. The clerk gestured backward, at a few shelves near the entrance. I said, Thanks, we know and tried throwing in a little shrug, as the kid kept going.

You can’t just turn a seven-year-old child loose in a comic-book store to look at the superhero comic books. […] My seven-year-old really wanted to see that last Avengers movie […] that is, he wished it were a movie he could see, but he understood that it was, instead, a movie designed to scare and sadden him—a movie actively hostile to people like him.

They have a children’s section. Because comics are a medium suitable for stories for everybody, and they are sold in comic book shops, which have sections, like bookstores. You can use this organization to find books that you know in advance are suitable for children. What goes in that category is determined by industry professionals. This area will be bigger the bigger the shop is. These comics are not lower quality that titles from the main lines. They are actually slightly better-written on average.

Your local comic book shop has considerately wrapped Empowered in a plastic bag, so your child will not be drawn in by a colorful superhero and accidentally read a graphic scene. If you think your kid might find a memoir about internment camps upsetting, it is your job to notice them picking up They Called Us Enemy and read the blurb on the back before you let them have it. This comic adults are meant to read is in a comic book shop because that is where comics are sold. Not every public place is supposed to be Disneyland.

Movies have ratings systems. If you do not want your child to watch a PG-13 movie, you will find that most superhero cartoons are for children. They are about the same characters. Some are quite good! I really enjoyed Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Your child may like Avengers Assemble. At least I think that’s right. I’m always mixing those titles around.

This is a deeply weird bias for Scocca to casually demonstrate, because he identifies in the article that real childishness is striving for empty maturity.

He compares an old comic,

[…]a 1966 Spider-Man comic in which Spider-Man meets, fights, and defeats the Rhino; participates in a running argument between John Jameson and J. Jonah Jameson about his heroism; buys a motorcycle; breaks up with his first girlfriend, Betty Brant; flirts with Gwen Stacy; and reluctantly agrees to let Aunt May take him to meet her friend Mrs. Watson’s niece, Mary Jane.

and a new comic,

[…]a 21st century comic book in which Thor, brooding in a Katrina-destroyed New Orleans, beats up Iron Man. He also yells at Iron Man a lot about some incomprehensibly convoluted set of grievances, including involuntary cloning, that he believes Iron Man perpetrated against him while he was dead(?), and then summons some other Norse god from the beyond somehow for reasons having something to do with real estate. I think. Where the 1966 comic is zippy and fun and complete, the whole contemporary one is muddled and lugubrious and seems to constitute a tiny piece of a seemingly endless plot arc—simultaneously apocalyptic and inert.

and concludes that the edgier comic is actually less mature. This is true. (This is not news about mediocre comics.)

It also has nothing to do with either comic being child-friendly, the article’s nominal thesis, except in the sense that ASM #41 (yes, I eyeballed that from that summary, yes I am just showing off now) is better written, making it more everyone-friendly. It also has practically more space dedicated to word balloons than art and is about a college student juggling girl problems and a part-time job with a tyrannical boss. But the immature one, as Scocca points out, is dour.

These are both teenagery issues, separated only by quality. It’s true that lots of new comics published by the big 2 are bad in the specific way Scocca describes here, taking themselves too seriously and hauled down by associated stories instead of buoyed by them. Some are not! Some titles from these companies’ main continuities are zippy, contained, and child friendly. Give your child The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl! Or if you like vintage comics so much better, why don’t you…buy some?

The books on the kid’s rack are good and fun and totally suitable for parents to read with their children without wanting to scoop their eyeballs out. Scocca cites the Batman ‘66 comics as the brightly colored, tightly written all ages solution to his problem about sharing superhero stories with his son. My local comic shop stores this title in the kid’s section. I am glad that Scocca’s does not, as he seems to have a peculiar aversion to looking for comics to read with his son there.

Scocca cites Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as a superhero movie he could watch with his kids. (I was surprised when this line made it sound like he has several. I don’t want to assume the other one isn’t in this article because they’re a girl, but I very much am assuming that.) Great! Go to the kid’s section and look for Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man. It’s a fun, zippy title directly inspired by ITSV where Miles, Gwen, and Peter superhero together. It’s much more tightly written than most of the various Spider-Verse comics, which are ambitiously messy ubercrossovers. You may not want to give those to children because they include murder and so on, but also you just have the choice between the two as an adult reader deciding how much continuity you want to deal with. Adventures is one of the only titles I would buy on sight before corona. The kid comic rack is a reliable place to take a break from How Comics Get Sometimes regardless of how old you are.

This article makes me feel quarrelsome. Maybe it’s that it doesn’t seem like exploration of a single idea so much as a loosely grouped bundle of things to kvetch about. Maybe it’s that the experience of getting into superheroes that Scocca describes experiencing, projects his seven-year-old son will experience, and from which he extrapolates a metaphorical microcosm of the history of the genre is completely alien to me.

Comic books [and] comic-book movies—are […] trapped in their imagined audience’s own awful passage from childhood to adolescence. A seven-year-old has a clean […] appreciation of superheroes. They like hero comics because the comics have heroes: bold, strong, vividly colored good guys to fight off the bad guys and make the world safe.

But seven-year-olds stop being seven. […] They become 13-year-olds, defensively trying to learn how to develop tastes about tastes.

The 13-year-old wants many things from comics, but the overarching one is that they want to prove that they’re not some seven-year-old baby anymore. They want gloomy heroes, miserable heroes, heroes who would make a seven-year-old feel bad. (Also boobs. They want boobs.)

Not because of the boobs line, although that does illicit an eyeroll that this gloomy thinkpiece is fretting over preserving the superhero experience of little boys who resemble the little boy the writer was while casually dismissing everyone else. I was one of those unlikable little seven-year-olds with a college reading level and the impression that maintaining it was the crux of my worth. I only read Books - distinguished media you could club someone with. I have a formative memory of pausing, enraptured, in front of a poster for Spider-Man 3, preparing to say that it looked pretty cool, and being beaten to the punch by my mother making a disparaging comment about how the movie was trash. It wasn’t out yet, but it was a superhero movie. That meant it was for loud, brainless children.

That was the total of my childhood experience with superheroes, excluding being the unwilling audience to incessant renditions of “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells” that left me wondering why in god’s name Batman’s sidekick was named Robin. I certainly never visited a comic book shop. I got into TvTropes, which got me into webcomics, which got me following David Willis, who got me into Ask Chris at ComicsAlliance, which led to me rewarding myself for studying like a demon for the AP tests with three volumes of Waid’s Daredevil, pitched as a return to the character being colorful and swashbuckling. I was seven…teen.

This is of the same thread as Scocca’s point that immaturity is running from childish things. It leaves me baffled that he doesn’t follow that maturity is embracing them.

I will disclose here that while I think it was dumb I had to overcome my upbringing’s deeply embedded shame associated with enjoying arbitrarily defined lowbrow media and children being childish, I think it’s fine that I was allowed largely unchecked access to technically age-inappropriate content. In my limited experience, content small children are too young for is also content they’re too young to understand, so it kind of just bounces off of them, and what actually ends up terrorizing them is unpredictable collages of impressions that strike out at them from content deemed perfectly child-friendly. I would not forbid a seven-year-old I was in charge of from seeing an MCU movie unless I had a reason to believe that specific child would not take it well. These are emotionally low-stakes bubblegum films. It will probably be easier to socialize with other kids if they have seen them.

But then, when I picture being in charge of a hypothetical child, I usually imagine this being the case because they are related to me, and the pupal stage in my family strongly resembles Wednesday Addams. ALL children love death and violence, though, right?? This isn’t a joke point. I know it looks like a joke point.

The MCU thing seems especially weird in light of the article’s particular focus on Spider-Man, which is the kiddie line of the MCU, even if they refused to waver from their usual formula enough to get a lower rating. Though I am more inclined to describe it as “preying on the young” than “child-friendly”.

(MCU movies are increasingly dubious propaganda, but I would not judge them in front of a child who wanted to watch them for that reason, just in case this led to them partaking of them without me the second they were old enough to and then they grew up to run a blog about them while our relationship suffered because they didn’t feel like it was safe to talk to me about their interests…Mom.)

I tried to overcome the philosophy of letting anyone read anything while compiling this handful of mostly-newish superhero recs for the road that anyone can read. (Handily, I have been in spitting distance of being hired as a comic shop clerk enough to have thought about it before):

For actual children:

Marvel Adventures Spider-Man (the new one is reminiscent of ITSV, the old one is more like 616) any DC/Archie crossover, Archie’s Superteens The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (for bookish children who think they’re too good for comics and adults afraid of the kid’s section) Teen Titans Go (even if you hate the show) Superman Smashes the Klan

For teens:

Ms. Marvel Young Avengers (volume 2) Unbelievable Gwenpool Batman: Gotham Adventures Teen Titans Go (the tie-in comic based off the old show was also called this)

Here are a bunch of relevant C. S. Lewis quotes.

[roguestorm]

I'm both intrigued and worried about where the X-Men can go if Krakoa falls. Krakoa feels like the inevitable conclusion to everything that's happened to them. This was pretty much their last ditch effort. This is the last resort AFTER the last resort.

This is one of Hickman's trademarks, and I actually don't think it's necessarily a bad characteristic of his, but he'll set up something that seems so big that nothing could come after it. His Avengers, of course, culminated in the end of the entire multiverse. It was the biggest, most ambitious Avengers story and Avengers team, and it felt like going right back into Thor and Captain America fighting Kang after that was so disappointing and anticlimactic. And, of course, that's exactly what Marvel did.

Which is why I know exactly where the X-Men are going to go when Krakoa falls: Westchester County, New York. Maybe this is cynical of me, but the status quo is king, and when they run out of steam, Marvel will reboot the line, rebuild the school (again), and send everybody home to the Xavier Mansion. In another ten to fifteen years they'll probably give the "sovereign mutant nation" thing another go.

Will that be narratively satisfying? No. But I do genuinely believe that Marvel is so afraid of change, of altering something in a lasting way, that they will throw the narrative out the window to preserve the status quo. Every time.

We might see some kind of intermediate period, when the X-Men are scattered after the fall of Krakoa (and the possible consequences for its leaders - who knows) and then get a brief rebuilding period where everyone is trying to keep their head down. This, I think, will be the interesting time - how do you cope with it when what should have been forever gets erased? How do you handle being back in a world you thought you wouldn't be part of again? What about all the young mutants who were educated on Krakoa and now are two years behind their peers in reading comprehension but ten years ahead in "knowing how to stop alien supervillains"? I do think that's a fertile and rich ground for some gritty stories about the necessity of hope, etc.

But then something will happen and Wolverine or Scott or Charles or Kitty or Storm will give some grand speech about how despite the downfall of their dreams the world still needs X-Men, and cue reboot.

And I'm sure that there will be good ideas and good comics and good X-Men stories after that. I'm sure some of the characters will have interesting narrative arcs, and I think that wherever we do end up, there will be a new way of interpreting the narrative of Krakoa. I do believe there's a future for the X-line, it's just a future that looks very much like the past.