#sorry for the long monologue

[iriscleverole]

It just occurred to me that fanfiction and fanart can basically be described as such:

A certain person at the end of a story/book/movie/whatever said "Yeah, no, I simply don't vibe with that" so they created an entire alternate universe inside their head, changing canon events at will, killing characters, making others come back from the dead or fall in love with their sworn enemy, all of this without batting an eye and giving zero fucks. They then proceeded to share it to thousands of strangers on the Internet for FREE, and eventually those strangers joined in on the fun, creating a community that celebrates important characters birthdays and such that communicates in a language only people in a fandom can understand.

Like, if I went to my mom and suddenly said: "I just read a beautifully written, 100k words fanfiction, enemies to lovers, mutual pining and fluff fanfiction, had no beta tho" she wouldn't understand a word.

We all probably sound crazy to the rest of the world.

[jojo-schmo]

How did you come up with roleswap Elfilis' design? It's really cool!

Hi! Thank you so much! :D I'd love to share my thought process! Gather round the armchair by the fireplace, friends! It's story time!

I've said before that the Forgotten Land Roleswap started off as a doodle that swapped Dedede and Bandana Dee's roles as Player 2 and the Brainwashed Beast. But when I realized how fun that one little change was, how about EVEN MORE changes? That's how my one-time doodle turned into the full AU story. I swapped Meta Knight and Kirby, Clawroline and Leongar, and Sillydillo and Gorimondo- and because the story is so Waddle-Dee centric, I promoted Dedede to "Player 1" since the stakes would be higher for him as their King.

So now I had a story that had a lot of opposite traits to canon and I wanted to explore that further! When it came to the matter of Elfilin, I thought he would probably behave too similarly towards Dedede and Meta as he did to Kirby and Bandee. He'd be friendly and trusting, communicative, optimistic, knowledgeable, and cooperative. So how about providing them a travel companion who is defensive, has trouble communicating, a little wild, uninformed about themselves and the world around them, and has a bit of a temper?

But working with all these opposite traits didn't feel in-character for Elfilin anymore. So my natural next step was to swap Elfilin with Elfilis and make a new version of the Forgotten Land's lost little pup!

Enough yapping about the context behind my decisions, tho. How'd I come up with Roleswap Elfilis' design?

I see you out there, Fecto Forgo fans. Maybe somebody out there's thought, "Roleswap Elfilis does not look like them! Why not? That's what the other 50% of the Ultimate Life Form looks like! I demand justice for the angry glowing rat fetus!"

Maybe nobody has ever thought this. But I wonder sometimes lol

Your feelings are valid, friends. Please lemme explain my reasonings.

This fella, to me, is the abandoned wet specimen left to float in a jar for who-knows-how-long after a forcible physical and mental separation via spatial teleportation shenanigans. And I think part of their appearance is due to their role as the trapped and forgotten half.

The role of the half that got away fully formed his own body and inherited some traits from the complete being-

For Elfilin in canon, he got ears that are proportionally huge compared to the rest of his body, blue eyes that sparkle with the light of a thousand destroyed planets, a tiny bit of pink fur for his adorable blushies, and a really long fluffy tail. Maybe becoming a being free of chaos gave him those sweet eyes like Kirby and the Waddle Dees have.

My reasoning is that whichever half ends up escaping the Lab and fully forming their own body, they would carry the major physical traits the other wouldn't inherit.

Anyway, that left Elfilis with the horns, colorful and expressive eyes, whiskers, beige chest fluff, opposable thumbs, and pink tummy fur.

Elfilin gets the long tail in the bodily divorce so Elfilis has a short stubby little cotton tail like a bunny. Like if he ended up with just the very tip of the Ultimate Life Form's tail.

Behold this diagram above I came up with two years ago! Disclaimer: the canon Elfilin is the one in the chart. And I draw him a little differently these days lol. I ain't showing anyone how he ended up in the Roleswap yet tho!!!! >:0

But Roleswap Elfilis is more than just "baby version of the Ultimate Life Form..."

All the differences in the Forgotten Land Roleswap from canon stem from one event in the timeline. One change that I added to the events that were already supposed to take place. It's why the Ultimate Life Form split differently. Why the Beasts have different roles and aesthetics. Even why the portal took Bandana Dee and Kirby before Meta Knight and King Dedede.

How did that saying go again? The flap of wings somewhere can influence a bunch of huge changes somewhere else down the line...? What was the name of that theory again....? Hmm. Not important, I guess.

Anyway, the end!! You sly dog, you got me monologuing!!1! /lighthearted

[belleski]

A little god! A little god with no friends :))) [Image description] Image 1: A digital illustration of the Collector and king from the owl house against a puple background with a slight painted texture and stars. The collector is floating upwards towards king with a smile. King is curled in on himself, hugging his knees with a worried expression. there are a few purple glowing stars surrounding the two of them Image 2: A set of 3 drawings of the Collector from the owl house against a greyish purple distressed background. The Collector on the left is Fully coloured and is facing the left with a heavy frown and tears in his eyes. His eyes are dark, with a galxy pattern in them. There is a heavy purple light coming from his left. The two collectors on the right are both busts and coloured in monochrome purple and blue. In the above drawing, the collector looks miserable, and is trying and failing to not cry. In the below drawing, the collector is angry and yelling, and is crying much harder. In both drawings s, the collector has sparkly tears with stars in them [End ID]     

bonus under the cut cos this kid is driving me insane

[biasomnia]

The reason I got dragged back into Haikyuu were these bits hitting me back to back in the Dumpster Battle movie. They reminded me of exactly what I loved about this, and added on new reasons to love it now that I’m even just a bit older, maybe even a bit wiser.

A personal note, when I first watched Haikyuu, I really related to Kenma. More than just “smart introvert gamer”, his overall apathetic nature and lack of understanding for passion, though he was fascinated by it and was drawn to those that illuminate like the sun. Watching the movie where he finally got to feel as intensely as his teammates took me back to when I felt that too. I had to tenderly nurture the feeling to make sure it wasn’t squashed, but that club isn’t in college. Then I rediscovered art and how fun it can be. I hope Kenma gets that too

[densewentz]

hear me out, post-divorce girl!Dad Crowley

im not even kidding you guys, the best thing for Crowley after all this is just for him to be a girl Dad. Go find himself the weirdest most unhinged least likely up for adoption daughter to dump all his love onto. One who thinks snakes are awesome and who screeches happily when Crowley drives too fast and who thinks her Dad's the absolute coolest person on or off earth. She'll constantly be stealing his sunglasses or demanding her own pair so they match. No doubt she's obsessed with fungus and she probably draws the most fucked up stuff that Crowley then hangs around the flat, and she'll yell at the plants too with her hands on her hips. On nights after goofy dinners, Crowley will hoist her up on his shoulders and help her accurately place the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling and softly answer every question she ever has. And it won't even phase her when sometimes her Dad is her Mom or her Parent for a while or vice versa. And she'll be ready to full on throw hands with anyone who gives her Dad sad-face. She probably ends up biting Aziraphale when he eventually staggers back into the picture, and the Angel will have to contend with the fury of a real hellion for a while before she trusts him enough to let him anywhere near Crowley. Also i think her name should be Hanna.

[thegreatyin]

How did you manage to handle not one, but FOUR separate accounts in fl? I recently made the account for my HD little guy but having to do the tutorial again just seems miserable

there's... weirdly several answers to that question, actually??

a HUGE part of it is due to the way FL is structured. the 10-minute action timer is a core part of the game on a fundamental level, and the fact that i can very easily run out of stuff to do on one character and thus have an excuse to quickly and easily swap to another is just... convenient? satisfying? i'm not entirely sure how to explain it. the fact that i can make progress even while i am fundamentally simultaneously Not Making Progress is like pure dopamine for my freak insane awful little brain. there's just something really pleasing about spending all of my actions pursuing The Goal Of The Day™ on one account before casually swapping to another and doing the same without feeling like i'm wasting time or acting to the first account's explicit detriment. the downtime helps! the recharge time helps! the structure really really works!!

i'm technically only actively playing three, maybe two accounts minimum. the only reason the fourth (the one that'll be my future BaL playthrough) currently exists at all is so i can get his earlygame completely out of the way now and not have to waste time running through it all later, when what i actually want to do is play the ambition i've made myself wait a full year to play. and also getting free goodies as seasonal stuff happens,, something something surprise tools to help us later. the only two accounts i'd say i'm really "actively playing" at the moment are caeru and lark- and of the two, lark takes the most priority, since his ambition is the one i'm currently pursuing in earnest. for a couple months now- despite being My Main FL Character- the scoundrel has actually been pretty inactive on a gameplay front outside of the occasional progression in TLC and discordance content. purely by virtue of having Very little left to do outside of Very long-term grinds and vanities. they're in their "now what?" "now you can start playing the game" era. they've graduated to previous protagonist background cameo in a sequel anime series. they're like the yin FLPC equivalent of red at the top of mount silver. they're Literally just vibing rn. i only keep posting about them regardless because i'm insane and i will never ever ever ever ever let that bat go. but yeah, big TLDR, outside of doing the bare minimum to keep making waves/notability up every week, i'm not actually spending that much time on accounts i'm not currently actively interested in playing. and that accounts for way more gaming spoons than you might think.

i have a virtually lifelong history of playing MMOs, especially and specifically world of warcraft. i was born in the endless grind for useless video game pixel vanities and/or bragging rights. molded by it. you all have merely adapted to doing the same piece of content a pointlessly excessive amount of times for literally no reason besides whimsy and folly. me? i've done my time. i've served my sentence. i've spent weeks doing the original burning crusade netherwing dailies. i've devoted days to running praetorium over and over and over again, back-to-back, nonstop, long before square enix cut it in half and made it NOT take at minimum an hour and a half per run. i've perfected my silverwastes + auric basin goldfarming strategies. i've (almost) crafted dragonwrath tarecgosa's rest. i've killed the sha of anger so many times its dying scream of agony is embedded into the very fabric of my being. ""only"" doing making your name content four times over? that is nothing to me. it means nothing to me. it is so infinitesimal i can do the persuasive seduction quests in my sleep. it's not a matter of handling misery, or having the capacity, or even sighing as i remember the brass embassy raid segment of the watchful questline seriously i don't know why i keep forgetting that exists or what even is my problem with it i just am so consistently mildly inconvenienced by it and its highly specific resource requirements and it is the worst thing ever. maybe i'm just so used to the scoundrel's near-infinite money and troves of disposable items that i've completely forgotten what being poor is like. despite having done that step 3 fucking times now. ahem. anyway. i have transcended the feeble mortal bindings of my resistant-to-grinding flesh and ascended to a higher plane of enlightenment, they may call me insane but they will be the ones left laughing when they see what that "insanity" has wrought, i've usurped them, i've usurped them all-

hacks and coughs and awkwardly clears my throat. i mean. uh. um. Ahem.

the empress' court artistry + tales of the university nerfs helped too.

[starryluminary]

Ridonculous Race but Noah is friends with Owen part 6: I'm sorry, even when I don't say it.

This was so clearly supposed to be a turning point in their relationship and the status quo. Why they wrote this episode just to return to said status quo I will never understand. Aaaanyway, in my perfect little world (this series), this is a turning point that gives leeway to Noah trusting and caring more about Owen going forward. He still likes Emma of course, but that doesn't mean Owen is any less important to him, and I'm sure he'll learn to show it :]

Transcript:

Image 1 Owen: How did we go from first to LAST?

Image 2 Owen: Woah, buddy. Are you alright? ...Noah?

Image 3 Noah: ...

Image 4 Owen: (Sigh.) Alright, listen. I can appreciate that you have a crush on Emma- and believe me- I know how strong that feeling can be and how it can mess with you...

Image 5 Owen: ...but racing with you has been the most fun ever! It'd stink if we had to go home because your head wasn't in the game! Owen: Not to mention you might end up losing Emma for good. Owen: I know you, dude. And I know that's not what you want.

Image 6 Owen: I know you want to win this thing! So... at least for now... Owen: Stop trying to be some girls hero... Owen: and be my hero.

Image 7 Owen: Okaaaay?

Image 8 Noah: ...okay.

[cream-and-tea]

heyyy don’t mean to bother you but did you know that um. You, now - the ones listening to my idling progress from back home in Glottage - you’re telling yourselves; Val cannot possibly be growing angry over something like this. How dare she? The hypocrite. How can this thing, this monster, this battle-saint, possibly find any kind of righteous anger in her twisted and repurposed heart for the lives of the fallen foe? How does our terrible Val think she can justify any kind of anger at the sight of the flattened and buried corpses of enemy civilians and enemy children, when we’ve already been listening to her murder police officers, soldiers and townsfolk single-handedly in turn? How can she be furious when we’ve heard her butcher her way through the little old ladies of the CLS in the hopeless effort to murder her own faraway mother? (Mockingly) See? You can be sacred and yet self-aware. Yes, I am culpable. I am dreadful. I have been responsible for great atrocities and I will commit a great many more before I’m done. And still - I am growing furious, as I walk through the devastation of this town. Because the wound of Sutler’s Weald is not like any wound I would make. It’s clumsy, it’s crude. It’s thoughtless. I begin to tell myself, as I walk - I wouldn’t have murdered them like this. I would have been kinder. I would have killed them quickly or gracefully, and there would have been beauty and strangeness in the manner of it. And even that’s all deception, even if I had been cruel and slow and lingering in the massacre of these innocent people, upon my whim - I would at least have looked them in the eyes, and I would have borne the weight of my cruelty. If they’d asked me to, I could have killed this town beautifully. And I’d have borne witness to the horror, and I’d have rejoiced in it - and it would have been considerably less vile and ugly than this. The ones back home, the ones who are listening in, I don’t think they know what they’ve done here. The line of connection between the victim and the victimiser, the sacrifice and the god - it’s long, and tangled, and indistinct. A god should not be able to avert her eyes. What a terrible thing it must be, to be monstrous and not even know it. And even if all of this is lies, even if I am just as bad and just as careless as the people back home who did this to Sutler’s Weald… …well, then, let me hate them, pure and simply, for being just as bad as me, because people - -people should be kinder than the gods that eat them. The town square is largely intact. A few burning cars, a single shrine and statue to some goddess of victory, her snapped-off arm raised in imagined triumph. I sit down upon the pavement in the ruined heart of the town, and I tell the dead people of Sutler’s Weald beautiful lies. I tell them that they survived, in their hundreds - miraculously and inexplicably, dodging the bombs. Not a single victim, not one death. An act of divine mercy. When that doesn’t work, I tell them that they were buried properly, according to whatever rites or customs they happen to cherish. When that doesn’t work, I try and turn them into my mother again, in the hopes of making the dead people hateful to me. When that doesn’t work, I tell them that I’m sorry. I tell them I wish they still had ears to become all the wondrous imaginings I had in store for them. I tell them… …that all things considered, they deserved a better avenging and foreign god, a better tormentor, a better oblivion, than the one that was forced upon them. (With cold fury) I tell them- I will find a way to give them something better.

[bumble-the-sun-bee]

(Malware's POV)

"I used to be someone different..lovable..but I had a single flaw and was killed... not in a literal sense but... the closest to it. I woke up here in this digital void and had most of my memory, everything but my name was clear... I still don't remember my name. I didn't choose to look like a villain...a bad guy...i had to to protect myself from being deleted fully..."

"there's only so much I can do... I never wanted to kill those kids...i was upset...angered... Blinded... They were there with me before my disappearance from the database... They know who I am... I forgot when I was blinded by emotion... I still feel bad to this day..."

[camgoloud]

this is the same anon from justttt previously with the end of book asks. hiiiii. i have also been slowly getting into sff short fiction (and made the plunge and added a few magazines websites to my rss feed so i can be Locked In) and i want this NEXT year to be my year of sff short fiction….do u have any fave stories to rec? also some more end of year book ask: 12 and/or 13?

omg… hello again! And sorry this ask ended up taking me so many days to get to, but, you know how it is with the holidays: time isn’t real. Also, my response ended up getting, like. REALLY long. So, sorry about that! I’m putting it under a cut to be considerate, but if interested, please read on for a List of some of my favorite authors for sf/f short fiction, and also a few other specific stories I read this year that I’ve been thinking a lot about! And also my fun little Hater Rant in response to your ask game prompts!

[The referenced end-of-year book ask game is here, by the way]

SF/F Short Fiction Recommendations

Starting with some authors who I consider Masters Of The Craft:

1. Isabel J. Kim.

If you’ve been on this blog longer than a couple months you’ve probably seen me casually gush over her stuff at some point, but if not… well, you really can’t go wrong with any of it! It’s pretty much all free to read on her website. (Incidentally, this is a great time to get into her work, because she had a huge three-book deal go through with Tor earlier this year and she’s going to have novels start coming out probably by 2026 which I predict are going to do VERY well—start with her short stories now and you’ll be able to say you were into her before she really hit the big time!) A few personal favorites of mine include:

Homecoming Is Just Another Word For The Sublimation Of The Self (doing some really interesting things with diaspora! This one is also her debut publication and the basis for her forthcoming debut novel, so maybe a good place to start)

You Will Not Live To See M/M Horrors Beyond Your Comprehension (this one is quite short, only like 1k words, and also quite funny if you’re an Online sort of individual! What if Achilles went to see the Oracle of Delphi and the Oracle had an ao3 account, basically.)

Why Don’t We Just Kill The Kid in the Omelas Hole (basically, it’s about the title. A take on Omelas (have you read the original Omelas story by Ursula K. Le Guin? If not, definitely start there) with the premise: what if the Omelas universe had social media reactionaries in it. VERY darkly funny.)

Zeta-Epsilon (possibly my Favorite Of Favorites. FANTASTIC meditation on What It Means To Love Things You’re Not Supposed To Love, and also a very well-written non-linear narrative, and also, there’s a heist; truly, I love this story so much)

Day Ten Thousand (WEIRD (positive) story, I would not start here with IJK, BUT if you end up liking her stuff this one will give you a lot to chew on. Some real “I will find you in every universe” vibes going on. Lots of thinking about wheels and cycles. Also lots of thinking about suicide, so, know that going in maybe)

2. Rich Larson.

This man is like, probably the most prolific writer of speculative short fiction currently active. He's written SO MUCH. A lot of it is REALLY GOOD. Some favorites of mine:

Ice (cool Arctic-world vibes off the charts (they have a thing called FROSTWHALES) but the real highlight is the deliciously complicated relationship between the protagonist and his younger brother. It's full of jealousy and love gone sour and misunderstandings, and it makes me insane whenever I think about it. They made an episode of Love Death + Robots out of this story which is also pretty good—it ends differently than the original and isn't as impactful in my opinion, but the animation goes hard)

Last Nice Day (A bit of a Winter Soldier vibe with this one. Very moody. IS it possible to make peace with the things your body has done?)

Travelers (this one is... heavy. To say too much ahead of time would be to spoil the impact of realizing what's going on in my opinion but it's a lot. Don't read it unless you're in the right mindset to tackle some serious topics but if you ARE in that mindset it's very good)

Not actually short fiction, but if you end up liking the three short stories I listed above, I highly recommend his novel Ymir. It's got a lot of common elements with them, especially Ice.

3. Kelly Link

The undisputed queen of the SF/F short story. Everything she's written in her 20+ year career is spectacularly creative and absolutely haunting. Again, you probably can't go wrong, but my personal top three are:

Valley of the Girls [not online so I can't link to it unfortunately but it's in her collection "Get in Trouble"—you could see if your library has it?] (this story fucks me up to the MAXIMUM possible degree. It's like. Hm. It's like. What if Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh was about the teenaged children of, like, Elon Musk. And in their desperation to be noticed and remembered by a world in which literally none of their actions have any consequences ever due to the isolation born of their privilege they all became obsessed with a bastardized version of ancient Egyptian funerary culture and started building pyramids to get up to their teenaged antics within. Well okay so that's the setting. As for the plot. I'm going to leave it to Link to unfold the plot, because she does it so, so, SO masterfully. The way crucial information gets slowly revealed as the story creeps along to its ending... and the ending itself... seriously, I get SO fucked up over this story every time I think about it. Read it please!!)

The Summer People (extremely classic Link vibes on this one; might be a good place to start with her work, especially since it's online. Very atmospheric, featuring deals with fairies and prompting some interesting discussion on class within vacation destinations)

Skinder's Veil [I read this in the 2022 Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy anthology volume edited by Rebecca Roanhorse and John Joseph Adams; not sure if it's available elsewhere] (not sure what to say about this one tbh besides OOOOFF. VIBES. It was my first Kelly Link short story and the first time I'd ever read anything quite like it, and it will thus live in my heart forever <3)

Moving on to some other miscellaneous stories that I read this year and liked a lot!

Selkie Stories are for Losers by Sofia Samatar. I got recced this one by the good people of Wyrmhole (are you signed up for the Wyrmhole newsletter yet? If not, you SHOULD be - it’s a project started by Isabel J. Kim and a few other short fiction authors. Their tagline is “a terminally online newsletter for speculative short fiction”. You’re on Tumblr, you’ll probably like a lot of what they promote at least as much as I do!) It's beautiful and tragic—the story of two kids whose parents have failed them and how they find each other.

Binomial Nomenclature and the Mother of Happiness by Alexandra Munck. This one from the first 2024 issue of Clarkesworld does great work with first person POV/unreliable narration, and the tone is so quietly, profoundly sad that reading it broke my heart a little. It's about the tragically doomed attempts of the narrator to rigidly and scientifically categorize emotional responses, and letting that work blind her to the ways her actions are causing emotional harm to herself and others. Very well done!

If Someone You Love Has Become a Vurdalak by Sam J. Miller. Devastating supernatural take on addiction and the way it impacts loved ones. Really just gorgeous.

I'll stop there for the sake of brevity (lmao, as if) but there are plenty of other stories I've read and loved, and would be happy to recommend also! Anon (or anyone else!), if you'd ever like to swing by my dms and discuss—if you read anything I mention above, what your feelings are on it, if there's anything else you particularly enjoyed that strikes you as similar, etc.—I'd be really happy to chat short fiction further! I'm always looking for new recommendations myself, as well.

With that I'll move onto part two: the hater half of this love/hate saga!

Books That Suck 2k24

12. Any books that disappointed you?; 13. What were your least favorite books of the year?

As far as disappointing books go… I read this non-fiction book called “Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles” which was… well to be honest my feelings are a little complicated! Because on the one hand the subject matter is inherently interesting to me (coming-out of the closet as a Beatles enjoyer on Tumblr dot com) so I was personally pretty invested in it the whole way through and I’m on the whole glad I read it because I did learn some more Fun Facts And Minutiae. However. I don’t really feel like the information, as interesting as it was, was very well presented? I mean the thing is. Come ON. It’s literally the break-up of the Beatles. There surely must be a way to spin a bit more of a proper NARRATIVE out of this rather than presenting it as just a collection of trivia and fun facts which is sort of what I felt it was when all was said and done. And also I took issue with the spin the author gave some of said facts in the “unbiased” narrative voice but whatever, I’m a Paul girl so I’m always going to be dissatisfied with any male author’s take on the breakup lmao, so I guess that’s kind of a non-factor.

Really I think the primary reason I felt disappointed coming out of the book was its failure to live up to its title! Like. In addition to falling a little flat on the “Story” side of things… You call your book “Solid State” and I’m gonna want to see some TECHNICAL DETAILS on those consoles, baby. Tell me about the inner workings! But instead it was just very. “The new desks meant you could have more tracks which was cool 👍. George bought a Moog. Anyway here’s why the other three Beatles breaking with all precedent and overruling Paul 3-1 on the Klein issue rather than waiting until they had reached a unanimous agreement to make a major business decision means that it’s PAUL’S FAULT that the group wasn’t speaking with one voice anymore 🙄” (Side note if anyone seeing this DOES have any resources on recording technology of the 60s-70s that are a little more technical in nature PLEASE send them to me! I would really like to learn more about this!)

I don't think Solid State was my least favorite book of the year on the whole, though. That honor probably goes to Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, which... God, I really wanted to like it, and in principle it sounds like it should be a lot of fun, but I don't know. I just felt the pacing was off, I think. I didn't enjoy reading it very much. That said, I don't think it's bad, and it would probably work for a lot of people—it just didn't for me. And I didn't read that many books I disliked all the way from start to finish this year, but I did finish Shigidi just because it was such a fast read (took me less than a day to get through), so... unfortunately that's a mark against it here, I guess.

[mihai-florescu]

And then tried to kill a highschooler for the same mouse (even though it was a cat that the highschooler only met like once or twice that killed the mouse)

And then they danced on that bloodied stage♡

[nandysparadox]

almost finished with the zero draft of this fic 👍

[eldrtchmn]

personal rant incoming

[neversetyoufree]

Guess who noticed a really interesting tiny detail again?

Beloved mutual torterrachampion recently pointed out to me that the special thanks page in each vnc volume always has a nice crisp lineart version of the frame from its cover, and there's some really interesting details hidden in there. A bunch of the thanks pages even show extra details that aren't there on the actual color covers themselves!

In particular, volume 2's frame has this whole bottom bones/flowers arrangement that's totally left out/hidden on the actual cover:

And right off the bat, there's a couple things about that bottom arrangement that really catch my eye.

First of all, the position of the hands there strikes me as pretty important, since uh

reaching out and down toward Vanitas is a pretty major recurring image for Noé. It makes a lot of cool symbolic sense that this shape of reaching hand would show up in his frame, since it seems to be so important to his story.

Even more interesting than that, though, is what's going on with the left eye of that bottum skull. It looks like the skull's been partially shattered there around the eye, and while Mochijun does generally seem to enjoy a bit of cracked bone imagery, this one stands out to me because:

Something happened to Noé's eye when he was a kid, but he's never once acknowledged it, and we've never gotten a single hint at what it was beyond it happening with the traffickers. And now the one skull featured on his cover's frame has a huge crack around its eye.

This doesn't actually give us any new information beyond just drawing yet more attention to the eye mystery, but. DAMN.

The rest of the imagery in this frame (the book and pen, the mourning lilies, the reaching hands) is all pretty central to who/what Noé is as a character. So while the cracked skull is/could be just a clever little nod to the existence of the eye mystery, its surroundings make me wonder just how relevant that injury is going to be.

[townofcrosshollow]

AAAAAAND IT'S HEADACHE WITH THE STEEL CHAIR

[bonemeal12]

Tim: "So maybe it's my fault./ When bruce asked me to start training Paul -- preparing him, it turned out -- I designed a costume for Harold to put together.../ I figured it was a good cross between the Azrael and Batman outfits.../ ...but maybe I made it too similar to a bad guy Bruce had just put away./ Looking back, aside from Metalhead's nasty spikes, the two outfits were almost identitcal./ Maybe it gave Paul subliminal cues -- and combined with all the weird stuff hidden in his head.../ Maybe it triggered some stuff from "The System" and made him--"

Dick: "No-- it's stupid to blame yourself."

Batman (1940) Issue #500