#morian

[cryptidteaparty]

One again on my Morian(Moran x Moriarty) truther bullshit.

Like, listen, WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE WOULD LITERYALLY KILL PEOPLE FOR HIM???? WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE WAS LOYAL TO MORIARTY LONG AFTER HE WAS DEAD??????

[blyssade]

[orchurisarts]

just doodles :]

[an-artists-tale-of-despair]

Morian if he accidentally let his hair grow a little too long👁️

Inspired by Lee’s early cbt battle icon😭

[m0salc]

It’s still technically mermay

even though this isn’t quite what a mermaid is

she’s amazing though

[daggerfall]

Annoying pet peeve of endgame is how many people misspell Zenas' Empowering Disc (I can tolerate Zenas but I will not stand for people calling it Zena), but only partly for the typo reason.

The real reason is they don't even know who Morian Zenas is. Like hey that's my niche lore character whose only appearance for years was in lore books and, of all things, the crafting motif books from the base game that also tell an insane story about a love triangle between him and Divayth Fyr of all people competing for the attentions of a woman, until Fyr trapped Zenas in a apocrypha to get rid of the competition.

Put some RESPECT to his name! And his disc!

[igorlevchenko-blog]

ESO: Morian Zenas, prisoner of Apocrypha (WIP)

[literary-illuminati]

2025 Book Review #1 - 20th Century Men by Deniz Camp, S. Morian and Igor Kordey

There’s an issue left before the next Saga hardcover is complete. Which means that, to hold to my dizzyingly over-complicated set of reading goals for the year, I needed a different comic for January. Thankfully, one thing I never lack for is a long list of things being recommended to me. The basic pitch of this seemed interesting enough to try, and I’m happy I did. A bit unfocused and meandering for its limited run time, a bit didactic in its narration, but overall quite an interesting read.

The comic is set in a 20th century afflicted with heroism – the aging supersoldier who won WW2 for the United States is finishing his third term as President, a genius with an artificial heart and a hulking mechsuit is single-handedly holding the Soviet war effort in Afghanistan together, the culmination of a centuries-long eugenics and indoctrination program is spending his twilight years cleaning up all the British Empire’s messes and burning all the bodies before he turns off the lights – you get the idea. The war in Afghanistan – and the way it’s inching ever closer to World War 3 as the American Dream orders more and more open intervention against the Soviets – is the focus. The story is told from the perspective of American and Soviet soldiers, politicians and journalists, and the Afghan civilians and soldiers they’re ostensibly fighting for.

This is a comic that was created in the aftermath of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and oh but you can tell. The human cost of wars of liberation and ‘nation-building’ and the sheer bloodlust involved in ‘peacekeeping’ and ‘counter-terrorism’ is a recurring theme throughout, both in Afghanistan and in flashbacks and discussion of Vietnam. The story does not have anything hugely original to say here, but it says it clearly and with some artistic flair.

More broadly the book is about – well, as the title says. It’s a comic with superheroes, but it’s not a superhero comic – the various heroes are all through-a-mirror-darkly takes on one classic cape or another, but the story isn’t at all interested in interpreting them according to the logic or history of superhero stories. They’re here instead as larger-than-life stand-ins and representations of this or that historical force. Captain America is a man obsessed with reclaiming the righteous moral purity of fighting the nazis and also a rough amalgamation of Nixon and Reagan. The Hulk is a walking war crime who caused such an embarrassingly public bloodbath in Vietnam that the government locked him in a black site until deciding his services are once again needed in Vietnam. Superman is the incarnate faith and belief of the Soviet people in the force of History and the coming communist paradise.

A faith and belief that, over the course of the story, vanishes or wastes away or (according to the narrator’s favourite theory) grew so disappointed with humanity that he killed himself. Which is the thesis of the story in a nutshell, really – the modernist, universalizing ideologies and narratives of the 20th century have, by the end of the ‘80s, grown threadbare and too worn out to take seriously. All that remains is old soldiers fighting a war they can’t conceive of ever winning, brutalizing everyone they claim to be here to uplift and save. Which they do with world-shattering skill and strength – destroying all the other dreams and alternatives which might have sprouted out around them almost as an after-thought. I say you can tell it was written in the 2020s, but honestly if you told me this was some particularly cynical Gen-Xer writing in the ‘90s or 2000s I’d believe you too. It’s all very End of History (but a bad thing).

Themes aside – as a work of visual art this comic is...not gorgeous exactly, but striking. Impressionistic and almost painterly, committed to conveying huge amounts in a panel or two and happily discarding any pretense of ‘realistic’ representation of the action to achieve it. The character designs often feel like caricatures or political cartoons, and I believe this is entirely intentional and even works. It, frankly, carries most of the book on its shoulders. Not that the writing isn’t good and even clever (I quite liked the issue where the narration was all quotations from news/history/propaganda texts with wildly different slants), but with basic/replacement-rate art this would barely be worth a second look.

In terms of plot and pacing the comic – well, mainly it acts like it has many, many more than six issues to make its point. Extended subplots that take up most of an issue end up going nowhere, characters get screen-time and development entirely out of proportion with how important to the plot they are, and when you really look at it the unifying story hanging it all together is surprisingly thin. Which isn’t a crippling issue in this case, really – it’s very much a theme-first sort of story, and each issue is mostly its own contained thing with its own narrative beats – but reading it as a single work you can definitely feel it. It also does feel like something of a bait and switch, as the first couple issues are by far the most plot-focused and afterwards it gets only more contemplative, impressionistic, and political.

In terms of politics – the last issue is in its entirety essentially a lecture and morality tale. One that feels a bit like having its cake and eating it too – it’s slightly rich to complain about Afghanistan’s role in the western imagination as a brutal, remote ‘graveyard of empires’ rather than somewhere people actually live when you’ve spent the first five issues of the comic leaning into precisely the same tropes. But still, I am a fairly easy sell for works on such daring and careful arguments as ‘invading Afghanistan was a bad idea’ (even if the story gives itself the easiest possible time making it).

Overall, I’m glad I read it. Worth a look if you like comics but wish Watchmen had come out last year.

[jorrated]

[neewlowo]

You wouldn't mind if I just took Monarch and ran would you /silly

You can't take my blorbos! I need to traumatize them irreversibly first

[strijdi]

7-3-24

The Midnight Society

There are two OCs here, in my first ArtFight piece of the year! The Lapis is Midnight Lapis Lazuli, MementoMorian's OC! You can find him here on Tumblr @memento-morian! The Sapphire is Midnight Sapphire, RATxKLNG's OC! You can find it here on Tumblr @ratxklng! I randomly bookmarked them and then noticed the name coincidence, so I had to put them in the same piece! Perchance they're both a part of some Midnight Diamond's court? I think my favorite part to work on was the Lapis's water wings! Thank you for giving me permission to post them here on Tumblr!

References: x | x

⏰I wanna say maybe 5+ hours? Started yesterday and finished today.

[blyssade]

[blackdragon-selfships]

Oh yeah, no one can tell where you’re looking alright…it’s totally at her boobs.

Based on this comic I found which is also based on a meme

[mannytoodope]

Louis Tully: Stay fit, keep sharp, and make good decisions. Oh; it's you. Okay, but I didn't know you had your license.

[dreamperson-poll]

The Tatter Beast

dreamed by @memento-morian

The Tatter Beast was basically a creepy pasta my kid brain made to scare me, but he looks like a furry tbqh and I liked him so much that when I woke up I kept him as an OC that kinda just exists in my head. His long claws and empty glowing eyes captivate me. He's my scary friend now.

One of my typical "everyone I care about dies horribly in front of me in painful gorey ways and try as I might I can't escape nor can I die so it's just unending suffering" nightmares. Had a lot of those. Anyway he could teleport and he had claws the size of an adults torso that were basically like razor wire and could cut through anything like butter. Including people. It was very scary to 13 year old me. After all my friends and family were killed by him he chased me down the classic never ending hall way and I could only move in slow motion. As soon as he finally caught up with me I woke up. He's shown up a couple times since then in minor roles but I wasn't scared of him at all once I woke up from that and instead decided he was blorbo from my head. I gave him a daughter once. I'm pretty sure I straight up named her soup. I don't know why.

[daggerfall]

I'm still thinking about the story in the base game crafting books in ESO and have some Thoughts

(to catch anyone up, the crafting books tell the story about a disasterous love triangle between an imperial ethnographer for the last Potentate, Morian Zenas, and Divayth Fyr)

Our chances of ever seeing Dr. Lupus ever again are extremely small give the fact we have already done Apocrypha as a DLC, got Morian Zenas as a character with a quest, and had no acknowledgement of the love triangle. Other than another lore book by Zenas (post-Known Thing) that says Fyr is untrustworthy. In all 3 appearances of Fyr in game, we've never once been able to bring this story up, so I feel like we won't be able to without Dr. Lupus entering the story. She could have ended up in another daedric realm while looking for Zenas, if she got really lost

Also she was originally from Skingrad and I never saw a single mention of her in Gold Road, so they've really lost all possible easter egg opportunities. Maybe an Apocrypha event with her as the questgiver?

Alternatively, it would be extremely funny if the crafting books story was entirely made up by some weirdo hack author (COUGH COUGH ARABELLE DAVAUX) who wanted to insert herself into the story of how Zenas went missing at the hands of a somewhat infamous celebrity of Tamriel. Name dropping two well-known people would be a great way to sell a story, plus throwing in a romance? Brilliant. And we don't know when the books were published beyond that the events happened over 100 years ago.

(Davaux writes RPF people, of course she would write a self insert who gets the attention of two older, powerful wizard men at once)

I really hope we get another character Q&A with Fyr someday where we can grill him about Dr. Lupus and Zenas. I want to see him squirm or entirely deny it.