#tbh I just wanted something easy to draw to make mini comics about and that’s how the spawn happened

[mother-ofthe-universedraws]

Meet Brick, Id, and Loot; Aka, the spawns

I based them off the three calamity gems from Amphibia. Basically, Bill created himself some pets in order to double his strength when he uses them in a magic fight, and also because he wanted a pet or three.

They’re his scrumbly babbykins and he will kill for them. (But don’t ask him to die for them. Man’s got limits)

[tracle0]

hey hey happy storyteller monday yeehaw I am vaguely stealing the same kinda artsy themes as the ask you sent me this time round, but I was thinkin about your recent sonder updates and was curious about uhhhhh what sort of approach you take when tackling something in comic form as opposed to a novel? what are the different things you need to keep in mind, what are the parts of the process that remain similar, n how does your personal approach differ between the two? c:

You’re a thief. A scoundrel. I’ll have you tied up and held over a pot of soup for this crime. 

By which I mean happy Storyteller Sunday! Thank you for the ask :D and a.... very good one tbh.

I think the simple answer is... there’s not a lot of difference? 

I get an idea, I sit on it for a few months, then I get started Actually Making it. Wip4 (nearly has a name, stay tuned :D) is very much like that, and simmering to the point of writing it, just in time for NaNo. I daydream and plot and plan and theories for a long time before the story feels firm and solid. So that’s similar; I sit on these ideas for MONTHS.

I also.... doodle a lot for any story I want to tell. For Sonder-comic, it’s easier cause I already know what a lot of the characters look like. Atlas! Atlas looks exactly the same but with lil wizard shoes now. That’s the only difference! So super easy to draw. Even like.... Andy? With his slight redesign? Still the same guy, I can draw that, no worries. Wip4 wise, it’s happened as well; I think I added in two whole scenes cause I doodled something then went ‘well what’s going on here why is this happening’ and tied it into the story lmao

So yea; lotsa doodles. Lotsa me drawing something, going ‘why are they in this place/doing this thing’ and making up reasons, then tying it into the world. Recently drew Atlas and went ‘well why DOES Atlas hate spiders’ and fell down a whole rabbit hole that fleshed out worldbuilding and backstories and their personal beef with both spiders AND with Andy, so that helped. 

Slight similarity, I plot both comics and novels a lot before starting them? At the moment, I’ve got a notebook for NaNo/wip4, and I’m just planning out each and every chapter; what happens, how people feel, bla bla bla. Very open to change, but it makes me feel better to know what to expect haha. 

Comics are plotted more with me getting a bunch of post-it notes and drawing each page out in a thumbnail. That’s what I did for the one and only comic I’ve ever made over a long time, about crows (@iceskatingcrow if you’re curious lmao). This time, I’ll probably write things out as well, but I still like making a rough plan to follow.

Different wise, I think... I mean, I’ve never really made a comic like THIS sort of thing before, so it’s going to be a lot of experimenting. Seeing how other people do stuff, seeing what I like. I’ll probably make some test mini-comics with backstories and lore and stuff in them before getting started properly, which is similar-ish to me writing short stories to get used to characters voices, except with.... colour. 

I also keep thinking of scenes and things that would happen, and imagining how I’d describe them with words, before remembering ‘wait no hang on this is pictures, dumbass’ 

Things I need to keep in mind; structure. Different angles of drawings. Backgrounds???? lmao it’s gonna be a fun journey. Sonder was my first proper novel, and now it’s gonna be my first proper comic. 

Also: not to rush!!! Be calm!!! I’m going to be living my life at the same time as making this and publishing it into the world. If I work on something all day, every day, I’ll get sick of it again. Take my time, enjoy what I do and tell a fun story. 

Yea :D basically I’m very excited to... draw. I’ve not been so excited for Sonder-related content in a long time, so this re-vamp is thrilling me. I hope I’ll keep enthusiasm long enough to finish it. 

[alenalokidottir]

I have a lot to say about Infinity War (spoilers below keep reading line)

I saw Avengers: Infinity War today. For almost three hours I watched a movie that was supposed to be the payoff for every movie I had invested in for ten years. I walked into the theater knowing that the characters I had grown to love since 2008 were going into a fight that would take everything they had to win. I also knew that not everyone would make it out alive. Even with this in mind, I sobbed through the ending of the movie, not knowing why I felt like something had been torn away from me. I left the theater with a distinct sense of hopelessness but no words to describe why it was there. It’s been a couple hours and I now have the words to explain what I’m feeling, and I’m sure other people feel this way, too.

After the Keep Reading line there will be my rant. If you’ve seen the movie, feel free to read it. If you haven’t and you’re okay with reading spoilers, feel free to read it. If you haven’t and you don’t want to be spoiled, read this after you’ve seen it. Feel free to reblog this post or leave a comment with your thoughts. I want to know what other people think.

This isn’t a review of Avengers: Infinity War. It’s just a venting session that I may delete later if I end up not liking how it turned out. Before I start I want to make it clear that I loved every moment of this movie. The Russo brothers have made a fantastic film. I didn’t write this to bash Marvel or the Russo brothers or anyone else involved in the the production of the movie. I just needed to get my feelings about this movie out somehow, and writing is the only way I can do that. I’m writing this late at night and I may wake up in the morning to read this and realize half of it is completely unintelligible, so please bear with me. You can agree or disagree with everything I say here. This is all post-Infinity War feels talking and it’s purely my opinion. 

From what I can tell, this movie draws from The Infinity Gauntlet story from 1991, only taking the title of Avengers: Infinity War from the sequel series published in 1992 (I’m a fan but not an expert in comics so feel free to correct me if I get anything in this paragraph wrong). Much like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, many of the comics in print at the time tied into this story. To make a very long story short, the basis of the story was that the Marvel Universe was overpopulated and Thanos was going to use the Infinity Gems to fix the problem. This movie goes off that same premise. The biggest difference between the comic and the movie is that the moment Thanos snaps his fingers and half the people in the universe disappear basically kickstarts the comic story. For the movie, this is the ending. This isn’t my issue with the movie, though. 

This is the 19th film (correct me if I’m wrong) to be made in this cinematic universe. We’ve invested 10 years watching the three phases of the story of the Avengers unfold, and more than half of these characters are now gone. For months, even years, we all joked about the huge amount of death that would occur in this movie. We even had fun predicting who would die. We all knew this was going to happen, and some of us even guessed that the loss would be this big, but I’m left with one question: was it worth it?

I seriously need help answering this question. I look back at all these movies and all these characters and I think, was it all worth it? Does anything that’s happened even matter? If everyone is going to just die in the end, then what was the point? We knew this was going to happen. We just never thought about what it would mean. 

Before anyone comes at me with “They’ll just use the Time Stone to fix everything like in Doctor Strange!” wait a second and really think about this. The concept of stakes and tension, the things that keep a story going and make everything worth it, disappears when time travel is introduced. Why should the audience worry if the characters can just go back in time and fix everything? Infinity War doesn’t even matter if this is what ends up happening. If that’s the route the writers take, the why not go back and prevent the civil war? Why not go back and keep Tony from creating Ultron? Better yet, why not go back in time and keep Starlord from fucking up the plan and stopping the group from getting the Gauntlet off of Thanos? The events that have happened over the course of these films have been a chain reaction. Every single thing could be fixed by going back in time. If everything can just be fixed with time travel, then why did any of it have to happen in the first place? 

Fixing character deaths with the Time Stone seems like the obvious solution, and that may very well be what ends up happening. We don’t know. I have my doubts, though. That would be an easy way out, and these movies rarely take the easy way out. Loki’s two resurrections, Tony destroying his suits, Odin’s death (basically the entirety of Thor: Ragnarok tbh), Doctor Strange’s victory against Dormammu, and some events during the time skip between Civil War and Infinity War (explained in a comic mini-series) are the only examples I can think of off the top of my head. That’s 5 examples from 19 movies (if you can think of more, add them in the comments). Fixing the Infinity War deaths with time travel would be another, and although the rational voice in my head is saying that’s what’s going to happen, I have a sinking feeling that the writers aren’t going to do that, at least not to the extent that the audience wants.

Does what I’m saying make sense so far? I hope it does. Now on to my issue with this movie: the deaths. 

Fifteen named characters died on screen: Loki, Heimdall, Gamora, Vision, Wanda Maximoff, T’Challa, Peter Parker, Doctor Strange, Bucky Barnes, Sam Wilson, Drax, Peter Quill, Mantis, Groot, Nick Fury, and Maria Hill. Eight named characters survived on screen: Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Natasha Romanoff, Bruce Banner, James Rhodes, Rocket, Nebula, Okoye, and M’Baku. Pepper Potts, Shuri, Wong, Ned, and Clint Barton were also either seen or mentioned in the movie, but we’re left to guess what happened to them. My bet is that Valkyrie (Yeah. Marvel didn’t make me forget about her like they tried to make me forget about Sif.) died with the rest of the Asgardians and Clint is still alive, but I can only hope for the best for everyone else. I don’t even want to think about the characters in the tie-in shows. These deaths don’t just have rippling consequences for the future of the MCU, but they also present a problem when looking back at the previous 18 films. 

There are four deaths that occurred in this movie that I think were necessary: Loki, Heimdall, Gamora, and Vision. We all knew Thanos wasn’t going to let Loki live anyway, and I feel that ending his arc with him accepting who he is and standing with Thor, even if it meant sacrificing himself, was a bittersweet end for him. Heimdall was a servant of Asgard, and Asgard is literally dead, so he had nothing to offer the plot anymore and it made sense for him to die. Gamora’s death contributed to the plot in an important way, by getting Thanos the Soul Stone and giving him more depth as a character. Vision’s death (although a result of deus ex Time Stone, which we know how I feel about) meant Thanos would get the Mind Stone, completing the set of Infinity Stones on the Gauntlet and bringing us to the point of no return in the story. 

Every other character that died went with the snap of Thanos’s fingers. While this was a satisfying payoff from the foreshadowing earlier in the movie, I didn’t expect the amount of death that would follow. Wanda, T’Challa, Peter Parker, Doctor Strange, Bucky, Sam, Drax, Peter Quill, Mantis, and Groot all disintegrated away. I had a particularly hard time watching Peter Parker cling to Tony as his life drained from him, desperately saying that he didn’t want to go. Nick Fury and Maria Hill couldn’t even escape death in the post credit scene (No, the Captain Marvel Easter Egg didn’t make me feel hopeful like it was supposed to). These deaths were beautifully executed in a way that brought many of the people in the theater to tears, including me. I’m fully aware that it’s the Infinity War, and in wars there are always unnecessary casualties, but from a storytelling perspective, I think we lost too many. Ten characters were killed off, cheapening the experience of every film they appeared in and rendering those stories pointless. The four deaths I mentioned before were necessary to the story. In my opinion, these ten deaths were not. I’m also fully aware that this is a superhero movie and characters never stay dead for long, especially since we know some of these dead characters are supposed to appear in future Marvel films, but I’m still nervous about how the writers are going to get themselves out of this mess. I’m a big fan of the “when in doubt, kill someone” suggestion in writing, but 10 characters at once when they still have a role to play is too much. 

Okay I’ve talked too much and I feel like I’ve made no sense. Basically what I’m trying to say is that most of the deaths in this movie were unnecessary, and it makes me feel like the movies that happened before this happened for no reason at all, especially when the only possible solutions are everyone stays dead or everyone comes back or only characters whose actors still have contracts come back, most likely because of the time travel back door that’s always opened. I know that the original story ended with Adam Warlock, who was teased in the Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 post credit scene, getting the Gauntlet, and maybe that’s how they’ll end up defeating Thanos in the next Avengers movie. I don’t know. I’m still not exactly sure how to feel or how to respond to this. I’ve been looking forward to this movie for such a long time, and while I feel that I got everything I expected to get in this movie, I still can’t help but feel disappointed. 

As I’ve been writing this, something occurred to me. The theme of this movie is that war comes with a cost, and in the end wars are pointless. It’s even brought up in the movie. Thanos has a vision of young Gamora asking him if he did it. When he says yes, she asks him, “At what cost?” Maybe the unnecessary deaths are to prove that point. I don’t know. I could be giving the writers too much credit.

Okay. I’m running out of words to help me get across my worries and I’m half asleep at this point, so I think I’m gonna end this here and add on if I think of anything else. Feel free to add your comments. I really want to know how other people are feeling after seeing this movie. Thanks for putting up with me this long and thanks for reading my rant.