#moloch von zinzer

[joyride-time]

A Softer World 599 fanedit.

[calmingpi]

This is now the second time ive drawn moloch (and the first ive drawn sanaa, i believe)

[girl-genius-comic-tourney]

Round 2

[aelloposchrysopterus]

In another motivation/way to incentivize myself to research tunnels, I am posting some of my other current mutli-chapter GG fic: The Spark's Guide to Structural Engineering

Chapter 1: In Which the Siblings Meet

I had started to become lonely. Sure, I had friends around, but Moloch had long ago wised up to my sense of humor and stopped me from having fun with anyone. And sure, I could have had fun with the visitors, but I hadn’t had, well, any in quite some time. I was left alone, in the same vein as an unattended child at a railway station is left alone. I was waiting for somebodies to come back, and those somebodies sure thought they were my parents or grandparents or older responsible relatives. But here’s the catch: I never had parents or any relations. I’ve always been looking for people to play with, not to raise me.

Admittedly, my sense of humor is a bit juvenile. I am a big fan of practical jokes. There is nothing wrong with that until, well, you do it every day for years. Even I was starting to get bored of the trip wires and locking people inside rooms. But unfortunately, my talents have never translated over into another form. Practical jokes are all I can do, and with Moloch’s decree, I was left alone and, frankly, bored.

I had had a playmate once. With her, life had never been boring: she would play with me whenever I wanted. We had the kind of games that would go down in history, the kind that I will never be able to forget. Those games had often ended with somebody yelling at us about letting the squid out, or something about my favorite toys getting loose, or something about safety hazards. But she had left too, along with those who I call my parents. I had not seen her in a long time.

I was trying to gain some little amusement from playing with my toys when I suddenly felt something shift in the air. A visitor. In my domain. I must ready myself for the games to come. I quickly made sure my eyes were focused on this mysterious visitor. It appeared to be a young lady, likely around eighteen. Old enough to not come here without a reason. She had dark red hair, much like Papa’s, and glasses, similar to those of Mom, and wore an outfit that reminded me of Dad’s. There was something special about her.

“Hello?” She called out.

A little dingbot rolled out of hiding, bearing a placard that read Please proceed to the Exam Room.

“Um,” she said. “Where is that? And what exam?”

The dingbot flipped its placard. Follow me. Your questions will be answered… if you don’t die.

“How reassuring,” she said. But she followed the dingbot anyhow, chattering away as she walked. “I don’t know if there’s anybody listening, but I might as well keep myself company.” She artfully leaped over a landmine hidden in a staircase. “I don’t know why I’m here, not really.” She ducked a swinging axe like it was second nature when she turned a corner. “My mothers just told me to come to Mechanicsburg.” She narrowly avoided a spider ready to cocoon her as it dropped from the ceiling. “And then I met that von Mekkhan guy and he dragged me here. He didn’t say much of anything about why I had to come here and alone.”

She was dodging all my playthings with ease. It was almost instinctual. Heterodyne? She kept babbling about this and that, how at the University of Paris she’d nearly gotten expelled due to her propensity for explosives-making, how she had nearly been assassinated as a baby, how her mothers had spent all of her childhood trying to stop her from singing. She was anxious, that much was clear, spurting nonsense about how this exam better not involve mechanical engineering because she’d never understood how to make things move right. Poor child. She truly was young and unprepared for either failure or success.

The doors to the Exam Room swung open and she gingerly stepped her foot forwards. She immediately slipped on the giant mound of skulls, rolling and sliding down the heap to land at the foot of a clank. In other days, with other candidates, I would have laughed. But I felt a kinship with this young woman and did not laugh.

She seemed to register the gravity of the situation quickly. “Am I going to die?” She screamed this at the clank, at the walls, at the dingbot, anything conceivably withing earshot. “Am I going to die?”

The clank unfolded itself to reveal its true seven-ton glory with its sharp teeth. It raised its head, then dramatically lowered it to face the candidate. “That depends on if you pass or if you fail.” It grinned uncannily. I was, for the first time, perturbed by it. I had seen this a million times before. I knew the story behind each and every skull on that heap. I had some control over it. Yet this time, I worried for the young woman. I must be going soft. “Give me your arm.”

“What?” She frantically tried to scurry backwards up the skull pile. She was unsuccessful, sliding down each time she got a foot up.

The clank menaced its way towards her. She froze as it took her arm in its jaw and bit her, and then she let out one of the most pitiful wails of anguish that I had ever heard. I could feel the clank processing the data. Within seconds, I knew what it had tasted. One-third Wulfenbach. One-third Sturmvoraus. One-third Heterodyne. The new mistress is here.

“Welcome home, sister,” I said.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH,” she screamed, and then fainted.

Read on AO3 | Next chapter (AO3)

[big-ass-magnet]

And the winner, with literally fifty percent of the vote all to herself,

Agatha!

After everything she's been through, let that girl drop an f-bomb!

Second place is

Boris!

He is so very tired, ladies and gentlemen!

Special mention goes to Moloch von Zinzer, whose omission was an oversight on my part. That man deserves to be allowed to say Fuck!

[elf-kid2]

Girl Genius AU.

So, after Agatha is mugged and loses her locket, events happen slightly differently, and she is successfully sent home before the Baron sees her.

The wasp-engine is discovered, Wulfenbach takes over the town, and Adam and Lilith successfully spirit themselves and Agatha away under cover of night.

(Moloch Von Zinzer is around somewhere, and vengeful on behalf of his brother who was killed by a sparky Trilobite Locket, but that's not terribly important right now.)

So! About a week and some explanations later, Agatha, Adam, and Lilith Clay are traveling through the Wastelands when a dashing you g Madboy falls out of the sky in his amazing falling machine!

Agatha, breaking through, likes the chance to poke at the machine! Adam and Lilith are suspicious about the Wulfenbach sigils all over "Gil Hoffstetter's" flying machine, and are reluctant to let him leave.

Then some Jaegers show up, with orders to bring him home! And things go from there!

[number-two-tournament]

The bracket finally arrives!

Sorry for the wait everyone. Preliminary round will be going up 12:00 pm PST on Sunday, and then the tournament will begin at the same time on Tuesday!

Full list of participants under the cut, for those who can't read the image.

Preliminaries:

Chakotay, Kira Nerys, Spock, and Will Riker competing in the Star Trek preliminary

Bandana Waddle Dee, Escargoon, and Taranza competing in the Kirby preliminary

Starscream and Soundwave competing in the Transformers preliminary

Round 1 Side A:

Luke Triton from Professor Layton versus Right Hand Man from The Henry Stickman Collection

Agent Stone from the Sonic Movies versus Mele from Juken Sentai Gekiranger

Number Two from The Mysterious Benedict Society versus the winner of the Star Trek preliminary

Vinegar Doppio from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure versus Horatio from Hamlet

Riza Hawkeye from Fullmetal Alchemist versus Sasha Waybright from Amphibia

Luigi from Mario versus Moloch Von Zinzer from Girl Genius

Pearl from Steven Universe versus Gwen Cooper from Torchwood

Zoe Washburne from Firefly versus Pirate with a Scarf from Pirates! Band of Misfits

Round 1 Side B:

Graystripe from Warrior Cats versus Kim Kitsuragi from Disco Elysium

The winner of the Kirby preliminary versus Smee from Peter and the Starcatcher

Daniel Jacobi from Wolf 359 versus Maria from Mad Father

Kronk from The Emperor's New Groove versus Dominic Badguy from Muppets Most Wanted

Commander Peepers from Wander Over Yonder versus Shego from Kim Possible

Izzy Hands from Our Flag Means Death versus Diamonds Droog from Homestuck

The winner of the transformers preliminary versus Rose from Humans-B-Gone

Roronoa Zoro from One Piece versus Sancho Panza from Don Quixote

[iamthedukeofurl]

My personal theory is that a lot of webcomic artists, while talented artists and writers, are not necessarily good COMIC writers, which is a very different skill, and that attempting to tell a written prose-style story through the medium of comics takes FOREVER. Let me use some examples: This is the opening of Matt Fraction's famous run on Hawkeye:

This single page does a LOT of work. It shows an action sequence of Hawkeye falling, it uses naturalistic dialogue to introduce a core theme of the series: Hawkeye's inferiority complex being "The arrows guy" on the Avengers. It thematically grounds this series in comparison to other superhero comics, the first thing our hero does is fall off a building and break a bunch of his bones, then end up in an ordinary hospital instead of some sci-fi bacta tank thing. The Art isn't just "Holding" the dialogue, it's doing the weight of the storytelling. This is also 1 of 20 pages of this issue. This is 5% of a complete, if small, story. The actual plot points of this issue are pretty simple and small, you could probably sum up "What happens" in a few sentences if you wanted to, but it feels like a lot more happens because the dialogue and art are working together to craft a story in a way beyond just advancing the plot. Hawkeye #1 is very much a Comic story written to be told in comic form, and it shows. A big thing this page does is that the action (Clint falling) and Clint's monologue about his insecurities don't compete with one another for space. That's the sort of thing you can do in a comic. This is also being done by an industry professional team, with different people doing art, colors, letters, writing, editing, and more all as a full-time job to produce a 20 page comic in a month. I think a lot of webcomic artists don't think of themselves as writing a comic story. They think of themselves a writing a novel, or even a series of novels, and using a comic as their medium, not fully grasping just how little novel-style plot can be advanced in a single page of comic. Look at this page of Girl Genius:

This page is basically a script with some pictures. The plot advancement and dialogue is the key. It's a full page of comic, but...not actually that much happens. The two characters say these words to each other. If you are charting out the plot of Girl Genius Volume 2, this is PART of the bullet point that reads something like this "Agatha wakes up in a strange place with Moloch Von Zinzer, the soldier who stole her locket in volume 1. He explains that they are prisoners of Baron Wulfenbach, who believes Von Zinzer to be a spark and that Agatha is his lover/assistant. The two of them agree to maintain the charade until they can figure out a way to escape". That takes about five or six pages, two weeks of full-page comics in a thrice-weekly update schedule. some other details are established as well, but from a "plot points getting checked off "standpoint, that's what happens in those pages. And, while a lot can be said about Girl Genius's pacing, the Foglios are pretty good at writing long-form comic stories. They know the medium of comics quite well, their main issue is that they are trying to use comics to tell a story that contains a number of discrete plot points best suited to a series of novels. I think a lot of webcomics have a grand story in mind, but it's written as a series of exciting and interesting plot points, and they severely underestimate how slowly comics cover complex plot points, even if you just have two characters stand there talking to one another, you've still got to draw a whole comic's worth of art for that. If you're a webcomic doing regular releases, then "Two characters have a slightly long conversation" can eat up months worth of updates during which nothing really happens except that conversation. Each plot point on your story outline can take, at minimum, three pages to fully cover. And if you're an artist really excited to tell your story, spending that much time and effort to get to the "Good stuff" because "The characters sit down to a meal and talk about their plans" takes fifteen pages to do, it's easy to get bored of the story you are in the middle of telling and have the urge to jump off to tell whatever excites you at the moment.

You post a lot about webcomics that are destined to not be finished due to the creator spending too much time on Arc 1 and whatnot, and I hadn't fully gathered how that manifested until i realized that a comic i had been following was on chapter fifty and the event the comic was titled after hadn't happened yet. I know it gets worse in other examples, but...wow.

I once read a comic that had been running for six years, and in that span had not managed to advance beyond the prologue to the chapter-zero prequel to the planned first act.

At the point where I dropped it, it was doing an extended flashback inside an intermission to the prologue to the prequel to act one.

The funny part is that it had managed three hundred pages in those six years, which is a very good pace for any independent webcomic whose author isn't literally killing themselves through overwork.

Like, I need to emphasise that the problem – a problem I bump into over and over and over again – is not webcomic authors being "too slow" to update. It's webcomics being hilariously over-plotted for the frequency of updates their authors are demonstrably able to produce.

I'm not sure where this massive disconnect between webcomic story outlines and webcomic update schedules is coming from, but it's definitely something that's gotten much worse in the last decade or so, and I strongly suspect Homestuck has a lot to answer for.

[calmingpi]

Filed under guys I've never drawn before

[girl-genius-comic-tourney]

Round 1

[aelloposchrysopterus]

The time has come for the shameless self-promotion that is posting a link to my (first) Girl Genius fanfic:

It features Der Kestle, a Heterodyne OC, and a lot of trilobites.

[lizasweetling]

the Lie: "Train falls in love with robot woman after witnessing her violent pragmatism"

there is a sentient train! two, if you count the one that used to be a monk- but neither of them has met a robot woman at all, less one with violent pragmatism. (on screen, anyway)

This lie was inspired by the Train marriage from the fictional train bracket a while back, speculating that Beast and the Muse Orotine might have an interesting dynamic.

Receipts:

Aaronev killed so many young girl sparks that it caused the perception that girls are rarely sparks, and that when they happen they "usually just -disappear"

Moloch Von Zinzer has insisted he is not a minion on several occations, and that he intends to leave at soonest opportunity, but seemingly continued to help out in Mechanicsburg as chief minion at least until the Castle was fully powered again.

Zoing (risen lobster construct) uses a mecha made for him in Gil's youth to literally pick up Bangladesh Dupree, Prirate queen.

Lucrezia drugged and somehow sent Klaus to Skifander to get him out of the way while she got married (and went crazy bonkers evil) but something happened "and then it all went wrong! - and no one ever came to rescue me! Not my wretched husband, not Daddy, not you- and I waited so long! Where were you all? I hate you! I Hate You!"

Colette built a giant robot of herself that gives the impression she ascended and became an eternal god queen, alongside other technical wonders, to awe diplomatic visitors

A background character attends Terebithia "Grandma"'s masquerade ball as Sans Undertale, or possibly is Sans Undertale and just looks like that, image for proof.

1 2 3 4

[phoenixyfriend]

Married Life Meme, Agatha/Gil/Tarvek?

Married Life Meme

Send Me A Ship And I’ll Say Who:

leaves their dirty clothes on the floor: Instinct says Gil.

forgets to run the dish washer: All three of them. It is the bane of Moloch's life for about five minutes, and then the nearest explosion is the newest bane. Complex man, that von Zinzer.

pumps gas for the car: Usually Agatha. Gil's in the driver's seat and Tarvek is insistent that he doesn't have the right gloves. To pump gas. Because Tarvek.

drives when they’re going somewhere: Gil, mostly. They trade off, but mostly Gil.

rearranges the furniture: Der Kestle Mostly Tarvek, I think. His nitpicky fashion sense probably applies to interior design as well.

falls asleep with the TV on: First Agatha, then Tarvek, then Gil. Nobody stays awake.

gets to use the bathroom first: Tarvek wakes up early so he can grab access and get started, despite having a longer morning routine.

decides the temperature for the ac/heater: Usually Agatha, sometimes Tarvek. Rarely Gil.

sets up holiday decorations: They let Van handle that, usually, but Tarvek likes to micromanage.

leaves the lights on: Listen, a Spark in fugue forgets a lot of things. Turning off the lights is just one of them.

uses the bathroom with the door open: Honestly? All three of them. It's easier to shout over opinions if there isn't a door in the way.

fixes the plumbing (or calls the plumber): Agatha is going to fix the plumbing herself, thank you. It's her murder castle!

[novamation12]

Mmmmoloch

[ataliaf]

microorganisms, the lot of them.