#kind of an ideal set-up

[astrangergivingthestrangewelcome]

I'm extremely acquiring objects resistant, partially bc I've ping-ponged across the Atlantic Ocean so many times packing light is a necessity, partially bc I'm too cheap to buy myself things, but that led to some very funny consequences when I decided to date a Goodwill junkie/mild hoarder for three months.

Like I was just standing in my kitchen sipping tea from my break up mug like "Heh. at least I got this sick crime and punishment themed break up mug from that relationship

...and my physical copy of crime and punishment (he had two copies of crime and punishment)

*follows eyes to the utensils*

...and that ladle (he noticed after we made soup with a wooden spoon. He had two ladles)

...and my beside lamp (he had three???? Extra lamps he offered to me bc he was trying to ???downsize???)

...and my second pillow on my bed (this one I purchased, but only bc I was embarrassed after he spent the night and we had to share one pillow)

*opens fridge*

...and this butter he got me "as a treat" bc I was just going to buy myself the $2.00 artificial crap and he was like "no this is important to me I'm going to buy you the $4.00 butter"

[sforzesco]

AKHENATEN

uhhh let's see. I combined some sketches I did of Nefertiti and Akhenaten and ended up somewhere here for an Akhenaten design. in my heart, it's for a comic but there's so much visual research I'd have to do before I could even think about approaching a comic. oof.

anyway moving on: Akhenaten was a childhood obsession! and then I moved onto other things, as one does, but then a couple months ago I decided to check out some books and now I have a headache.

Akhenaten, Ronald T. Ridley

[bonefall]

with how little relevance characters often have outside their introduction arc, its genuinely WEIRD how relevant tree constantly is. which is an odd criticism because characters should remain relevant after being established but in warriors it feels like blatant favoritism. i dont even dislike treee and i liked him a lot in tbc but its ODD

Mr. Gas Leak has a very distinct feeling (an odor, if you will) to me. It feels like he became so relevant because people were frustrated that he wasn't doing the Very Special Job they'd invented just for him back in AVoS, so the writing team tried to "respond to criticism" by making him show up all the time.

But like... that wasn't really the heart of the criticism. It wasn't a clamor to bring back Tree specifically. It was frustration that they would set up worldbuilding elements and then forget about them when they became inconvenient.

SkyClan's return, negotiator role, the border guard between the DF and StarClan, voting to oust a leader. We've gotten at least one (sometimes multiple) additions that threaten to shake up the status quo in every modern arc-- and then they're forgotten about or not used to their full potential.

In honesty though, the more he appears, the more I actively dislike him. I thought he was cool at first, I enjoyed the idea that SkyClan was going to bring some new dynamics to the politics at the lake. But every role he's had since his introduction has been insufferable.

I HATED how he absolutely refused to do his job in Squilf's Hope because of personal bias

I can't stand how the Sisters have been willing to help the Clans after their treatment in that book, and the constant narrative derision they get in spite of that

The fact everyone just forgot Tree existed in ASC until Nightheart said something was astonishingly bad writing. If I forgot about a major worldbuilding element like that I would be genuinely embarassed, not cutely lampshading it

Even the way he ended up "helping" when the narrative remembered him was annoying. Like, "Oh right! Having this role just grinds the action to a screeching halt! Instead of the Battle Cats doing Battles, they argue offscreen about things! Wow, this was a terrible idea to begin with!"

There are waaaay worse characters in WC, and I can't bring myself to hate him the same way I hate some others like Gray Wing. But boy, he has found his way down my list of "least liked WC characters."

[frobby]

I think it would be really funny if rin was the more helpful one around his house. Like u would think rin would be the disrespectful one who always bails on housework or mass but its actually yukio who would always have an excuse not to go or forget about chores to the point that rin just does them instinctively now

[tangledinink]

new gemini update was so good as always but I can't stop thinking:

big mama: there's nothing wrong with my sons

splinter: you fucked up two perfectly good kids is what you did. look at blue. he's got an eating disorder

wwhhhattttt? nooo, don't be silly. leo doesn't have an eating disorder.

leo and donnie have eating disorders--

[deoidesign]

Hello! I just discovered your blog and I immediately became captivated by your webcomic, but I'm unsure where to read all of it. I know it's on Webtoons, but I can see it hasn't been updated for a while, and you still post about it.

Are your physical novels just prints of the webcomic? Are they a continuation? Is the story complete? Thanks in advance!

Hi there!

Glad you found me and are enjoying my comic!

It's only on webtoons, and the story is not complete yet! We're 2/3 of the way through right now. It's currently on hiatus, and it's scheduled to come back in about 2 months!

I'll explain why it's been so long if you're curious, but also for my followers who might also be wondering about it under the cut. Sorry, it's pretty much just me complaining haha

I took a month off I took 2 months to get the books printed I took a month to prepare my next comic and I took 2 months to write the rest of the series (I knew the character arcs I wanted, but not the time periods or mysteries!!!) I've been working on actual episodes since then

I had to take some time off because of some pretty extreme burnout due to the sheer amount of work it was to draw over 800 pages and write 6 complete stories in a year and a half... I was getting sick almost weekly due to the overwork, it was really really bad honestly. I was having to work 60+ hours every week just to keep up...

The nature of the comic itself is also difficult... Each of the arcs is a complete, self contained story which can be read (ideally) without context, and my arcs need to be about 10-13 episodes each... And since I have an exact number of episodes to work with, it's even harder.

It takes a ton of planning and a ton of refinement, and working week to week with no breaks I was forced to put out second or even first drafts, so I just wasn't happy with the work I was doing... And to do that for the rest of the series? I wouldn't be proud of the work I did.

Plus... To be entirely honest, webtoon has treated me quite badly IN MY OPINION... They deprioritized me before I launched (I had to beg for more promotion, I'm not exaggerating), they outright denied me the opportunity to even ask for a raise, I don't make any money on fast pass and they pay me less than my partner makes working at trader joes. My first editor left me completely hanging, my second editor (who I loved) was fired... And they told me I wouldn't get a third season before my first season even finished. So it was just repeatedly completely demoralizing.

I'm sorry it has taken so long, it'll have been 10 months by the time I come back. But I realized... I won't get promotion either way. I won't get more episodes either way. I won't get more money either way. So to finish everything, to make it feel good, to make it something I'm proud of, I chose to take longer to make it better.

I am fully aware I will lose a significant amount of my readership for this and it might genuinely affect my career moving forward. But it's what I had to do! So I'm sticking to my guns on it, and I'm confident long term it'll be worth it. It never could have been this good if I didn't take this much time.

[lucalicatteart]

A new sculpture! Finally... I feel like I never sculpt anymore since I'm always sick or have some 500 other things going on or projects to finish, but I'm trying to schedule time to do it more often this year hopefully..! Just a generic fantasy creature as usual, but did try making the eyes a little more sparkly this time.. hrmm..

[b4kuch1n]

it october................ perhaps. wizard

[sweatersexual]

Maybe the Horneater ability to see spren isn't actually hereditary. Rock describes it as a gift only given to a select few, and these Sighted seem to overlap with those who guard Cultivation's well of power. What if Unkalaki of a certain social standing are allowed to cross Cultivation's perpendicularity in order to give birth in Shadesmar? Maybe that's how they ensure that the guardians are able to see all beings that go in or out of the pool. Yes, you have to be born to it, but you have more control over it than you would get with selective breeding.

So if Shallan is pregnant and she gives birth in Shadesmar, maybe her child will be able to see all spren

[bookishjules]

i cant stop thinking what the aftermath would have been if trump had been killed.. just knowing what happened when he simply lost the election

[awkwardsilences]

"very demure, very cutesy, very mindful".... can we please just stop with this shit? PLEAAASE

[whenthegoldrays]

💡

[salt-baby]

I think the take-away from my near death experience is that I am simply unkillable

[volfoss]

Genuinely how Hoshie is written in Atom: The Beginning is so infinitely frustrating. She's a character that really barely appears in the original series and had no backstory other than her role as Umatarō's wife and Tobio/Atom's mother, and I was so excited to learn she was in ATB. Or was until I actually read it. In ATB, she's very largely only there to appear a few times as his love interest and has really no reasoning FOR feeling that way nor any character traits outside of that. I'm still before the time skip chapter wise (and have some hope she will get more development after that time skip), but to ME to take a character that is that underdeveloped and you have an opportunity to really add a lot in there and don't? It sucks. It focuses so much more on the other characters that really do not have as much importance in the long run of the series (mostly original characters) and a lot of how the women are handled in ATB can be really rough a lot of the time (Ran as the exception, she's great, but it feels a lot of them are just there to be sexy set pieces. The way that they hyper sexualized Pink's traditional Vietnamese outfit is one of the worse examples of this (as you could write off the "sexy robot girls from Lab 1" thing as criticism of it, but in that case there really isn't much excuse to bring in) and while I'm glad it's not as prominent w Hoshie (because they quite literally draw her as a child and then have her show up later having gone through puberty, so thankfully they didn't get bad with it), it is still so bad. Like why do we have this character that is instrumental to the source material (as he said he based ATB as a sequel to Chronicles of Atom, where she is very important for that one volume and for Atom as a character after he is sold to the circus) and very not developed and all that is done w her is on par with how Naruto tried to develop romantic relationships (girl is in one sided love with the male protagonist and barely appears). You could have done so much, and so much that could have really helped develop the relationship in the future and helped flesh her out as her own characters with her own interests. She had a personality in the original and here, it is just being blushy and fawning over the protagonist and it is genuinely kind of insufferable.

[vigilskeep]

Hi, I'm sorry if this has already been asked, but I'm fascinated with your character Minerva and was wondering why she didn't betray Jowan to Irving?

ah good question thank u for it!!

minerva is a pragmatist about the circle. she's very aware that a certain number of mages die or are made tranquil and she's in the mindset, at that point in her life, where she's been taught to accept this as a necessary evil. which actually ends up meaning she knows more than anyone that if this is true irving will go ahead with it. she has a very realistic idea of who irving is and what he does. but it's been easier to conceptualise all those losses as um a statistic than it is to face the immediate threat to the person closest to her. especially when her way of dealing with it all has been to say that mages who die or are made tranquil didn't try hard enough, didn't study hard enough, didn't fight hard enough on their harrowings. she rationalises it that way because it means if she just tries hard enough and is polite and gifted and perfect as she always is then nothing's going to happen to her. but she knows how hard jowan tries. so it isn't right. it isn't fair!

the other thing is that in my canon, my amell, halliserre amell, was made tranquil a few months before dao starts. minerva had a bit of a fiery relationship with them (i'd like to summarise it as fierce academic rivals with benefits, jhghsfdgsk) and their tranquillity was a huge and sudden recent shock. that definitely affects minerva's decision-making here. though she tries to rationalise by blaming halliserre themself in that case (halliserre chose to submit to tranquillity rather than undergo the harrowing), she knows deep down there's more to it than that. it's a complicated and painful topic to come up again so soon, it makes her just that bit angrier with the templars and irving, and it makes the danger feel very real

but all of that is kind of blurring the main issue which is that jowan is like minerva's brother and she loves him. the above factors are kind of what allows her to actually do something about that, but the motivation is simply that she cares about jowan, he's her closest friend and the only person more important to her than irving, and she very much thinks it's her job to protect him. she's more skilled than he is, more socially capable than he is; it is and always has been her role to protect him from the templars, even if it that only meant helping him with his studies or calling in favours with senior enchanters. being able to do all that is what has made her feel comfortable with how much she's betrayed herself to be the ideal circle student in the first place. it proves keeping your head down to get influence works, that it's not just selfish, that in the long run it means mages are better off. so if she can't even protect him, then what's the point of it all? it's probably worth noting, too, that minerva's fatal flaw is arrogance: if she's always been able to look after jowan before, what's one more time?

i actually have this really fun um super rough dialogue snippet somewhere in my word doc from when she was little, um, talking to karl thekla actually. and she's being disapproving of anders while hes like benafflecksmoking.jpeg because that's the whole dynamic lmao. she's like, why would you spend time with someone like that, he's an escape artist, the templars hate him, he's not going to make it! (this last said in a kid's deadly serious tone where she expects it to be heard as a totally damning accusation.) and karl is like [in the voice of a very tired young academic] minerva what would you say if i told you, i don't know, your friend jowan wasnt going to make it. and she totally freaks out. shes like thats a lie, dont ever say that, hes trying with the spells, hes going to get it! she's only a kid she's nearly in tears over this immediately even though karl's the furthest thing from a threat and he barely meant anything by it. it's always been the one thing that makes her lose her head. she cares so much about keeping up this perfect image except this one thing, right, she's got this perceived weaker nobody mage trailing after her. she's supposed to be able to keep this one person safe and that will make it all worthwhile. and what she has to learn is that even for all her sacrifices and good behaviour, the circle simply does not care. there's nothing it won't take

[wockys]

i've been spending a lot of time on linkedin lately (cringe) and it's kind of amazing how useless it is at letting you actively introduce two people to each other so they can have a private conversation. i don't think this is a feature on any social media platform i've used anyway but it's really irritating when the main reason for anyone to use linkedin is to see if they know someone who knows someone who works at a company they're applying at -__-