#that kid crow cillers

[comicviolence]

crow cillers panel redraw

i like to move it move it

[hazy2k]

drew asscastle and that kid from memory in art class today

[adamfaulknerstanheight]

once in a great while i will see someone reblog my old crow cillers fanart from my high school-era, now-deleted tumblr. i've screwed up a lot in the relatively short time since, but i think i've basically done right by that version of myself. i left home and never went back. i've done all the sex and drugs and partying bullshit i fantasized about as a lonely indoor kid. i drew the webcomic and cate wurtz read it and liked it. 16 yr old me would be overjoyed

[bisexualmorpheus]

lamezone/crow cillers house md au

House - Varg Wilson - Moya Cuddy - Ynce Iche Chase - Somers Cameron - Emma Foreman - Ru'mel Thirteen - Jill Kutner - Jamie Taub - Gaige Masters - That Kid

[matrixonvhsanddvd]

everyone’s a critic

[swampgoblin]

“Don’t worry about it, nerd”

I liked this scene from the latest Crow Cillers episode enough to draw a little tribute to it. I’m pretty happy with how TK came out, but Cortney still doesn’t look quite right to me and I’m not sure why. Oh well.

[vilelemon]

idk how 2 caption this lmao but Nyello Everybody!! im pepe and i lov crow cillers w all of my heart even tho ive only known abt it for a month lol!!!!! i just drew som of my favorite kids from it bc i Love Them (also i severely overestimated jill’s height so just ignore all the mistakes n pretend she’s standin on her tip toes lmao i Tried My Best™!) anyways shoutout 2 @lamezone for creating such an amazing comic n these beautiful characters, and also 2 my pal @y2crittler for getting me into cc and Related Works!!!!! >:’3333 have a great day n feel free 2 message me if u wanna chat or anything!

[pepprs]

HEY EVERYONE GO FOLLOW MY FRIEND LAIKA!!!

their main blog is @pomania and they also have a sideblog for references and crow cillers (an Amazing comic by cate wurtz) which is @y2crittler !!!! they're really nice and cool and creative i know them irl and they're honestly one of the best people ive Ever met so please go check their stuff out and follow them and say hi!!!!! <:-33333

[some-triangles]

I haven’t written a read Crow Cillers post in a while, so, off the back of a really good episode in the middle of a wrenching but excellent season, let’s do it one more time.

WHAT IS CROW CILLERS

It’s a monthly serial webcomic which is structured like a TV show.  Each individual episode is about 30 pages long and there are 10 or so episodes per season.  It’s about some kids fighting an evil cult which is trying to tap the power of a shadow dimension, but as it goes on you realize that the cult is just... everything, all the time, the world, and the kids are just trying to grow up and be healthy and alive, but because they’re all gay or trans or disabled or fucked up in miscellaneous ways the world is trying to kill them.  The kids grow up despite this and the world is still the way it is.

This sounds depressing, and it is, but there are jokes - lots of jokes - and good art, and cartoons, and friendship, and everything that makes the world worth living in anyway.  The question of just how redemptive all of those things really are is explored, of course - particularly when it comes to the cartoons, and how feasible it ultimately is to get meaning and joy from media which is produced by the death cult that is capitalism.  But the answer is not always no.  Sometimes Lisa Simpson eats the bad guys. 

Be aware that Crow Cillers is a lot.   There’s trauma on top of trauma in here, and sometimes the whole thing descends into a despairing fever dream that can be difficult to follow, but there’s always a throughline.  And - if you think the start is OK but have some qualms, it’s worth sticking with it, because season by season it gets better and better and better.

WHERE CAN YOU GET IT

You can read the first three seasons for free here.   (It is hard to look at, yes.  That is on purpose.  You will want to read the pilot without the director’s commentary.)  The more recent seasons can be purchased individually here - or, you can get the whole thing through the author’s patreon, here.  I recommend that. 

WHY SHOULD YOU PAY FOR IT

Because good art is important, and the artist needs to eat.

[chelzone]

took a nap and had exciting dreamz, time to see if following that with woter an spicy mac n cheese can give me the strength to knock out a second drawing for da day

rlly wanna draw the last two remaining kids from Crow Cillers season 8, i THINK i got a good simple idea based off of somethin from da season's bonus art section thingy

[flanneldragonmainblog]

4lung seems to work closely with cate wurtz, or lamezone. You’ve probably seen cate’s comic crow cillers and a bunch of simpsons art by her. Her nsfw furaffinity account is lmndrp, which I would really recommend NOT checking out because it’s full of fetish art of kids and diapers. I have tried messaging 4lung about this, trying to figure out why she is buddies with this sicko, but have received no response. My goal here isn’t to stir up drama but this seems like something you’d want to know.

I JUST REMEMBERED THIS ASK FROM MONTHS AGO AND I WANNA SAY IM SO SORRY FOR IGNORING IT

[gltzgghln]

what are some of the animals from crow cillers even supposed to be like ik emma and that kid are dogs and doris is a toucan but what about the corvidaes?? are they even corvids??? i have a feeling cortney is a reptile of some sort and brother marcus is an axolotl. also elaine is a cat for sure

[karhs]

hey it’s time for another crow cillers post i wager! I missed posting about the last couple eps because i wasn’t in a position to read the episodes as they came out. im gonna start off with Ida’s Hands because it’s the most recent ep (and also very good), I might go back for the other ones later idk. rather than just warning for spoilers, im gonna go ahead n flat out say that this post will make literally no sense unless you’ve read the episode. so go do that!

alright so! in the interest of coherency I’m going to cover the non-Ida parts of the episode first

I’m really invested in Paisley! I can’t help but think of her as a successor to Emma, in a way? there’s the obvious note of her intense interest (admiration?) in Emma, but also the way she understands her world in terms of video games similarly to Emma’s use of television concepts, and she’s entered the Weird Dimension Voids in an act of defiance in much the same way Emma recently did. I’m proud of her for getting through the ol’ ‘nobody cares about you’ hell-zone seemingly pretty unscathed! It was also really heartwarming to see that Heaven actually does care about her, and even admire her some. They’re good kids.

Speaking of acts of defiance, I dig that Emma’s insistence on moving forward was so powerful that it even hit Joslyn somehow. Plus the throwback to Matrix Revcrowlutions (my favorite episode) is always appreciated.

Marcus being given more-or-less free reign of the school is definitely very very concerning, especially since he’s seemingly gotten over any of the redeeming qualities he used to have. If I ever go back for the episodes I missed I’ll talk about that more, probably.

It’s been a while since Howdy Crittler’s said stuff! It’s easy to forget that that’s a thing that happens. It’s also easy to forget that the series began with Pistachio... I hope we see more of her in the coming episodes.

I hope Vein gets eaten by that horse.

okay now for the real subject of the episode, Ida! and consequently Joslyn

One thing I find interesting is the mention of Ida as being a “tough nut to crack.” She certainly is! We barely knew anything until we got an episode specifically about her! But, more importantly, this is brought up in the context of her as a celebrity. What for, I wonder? Yeah, she’s an influential plastic horse mogul, but I can’t imagine that kind of thing would put someone in the public eye...

That aside, Beloved being confirmed as an ascended Ida is a really big deal! This is something folks had speculated at (particularly Astrid @webinarfantastic, who’s clever and observational as hell) but to have it confirmed gives some context to the both of them.

Personally, I’m getting very emotional over the fact that the one thing Ida carried over through her ascension was Joslyn. Literally the only concrete thing she kept was contact information for her, and I have to assume that was in some way deliberate? Like obviously this is heavy speculation but I’d assume that making it through that and keeping a cellphone with a number and a name logged would have to be the result of some really intense concentration on Ida’s part. She also retained more vague traces of Joslyn, like her domain being the amusment part where they had their last ‘date’ (props again to Astrid for catching this one)

I wonder what kind of life Joslyn and Ida would have if Ida hadn’t been afraid? If she had never felt like she had to suppress that part of herself? Like, so much of where Joslyn is at is because of their ‘breakup’, and I feel like if things had gone differently Ida wouldn’t have gone as far into Ynce Iche as she did. (if she even still got the opportunity to go in at all) I also can’t help but wonder if they’ll recognize each other now. Beloved obviously has some kind of standards for Joslyn, even if she doesn’t remember what exactly a Joslyn is, so I can’t help but feel like she’ll know the real one when she sees her, but I feel like Beloved may turn out to be almost totally unrecognizable compared to the living Ida. She certainly has none of her original shyness, at least, and with no memories and a different personality there’s not a lot Joslyn could latch on to.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped me from imagining that Joslyn could recognize her, maybe for some small gesture or another, an offer of cotton candy and a ride on a ferris wheel or something... and then Joslyn would cry, and then I would cry.

I also imagined Beloved using Emma’s arm as leverage to plant a big puppety kiss on Joslyn’s nose, which is certainly not going to happen but just. imagine.

...anyways uh this post, as expected, lost all coherency when I got to Ida and Joslyn. I would offer to do more analysis when I’m less emotional, but to be honest I probably never will be. I love Joslyn a lot and consequently I’m having an awful lot of feelings

[bisexualmorpheus]

1, 3, 6, 32 !!

1. what are 3 things you’d say shaped you into who you are?

one; DISCO ELYSIUM. definitely. easily. changed my life.

two; CAR SEAT HEADREST and the surrounding indie fur community. thru cshr I found that circle of niche furry webcomic artists and my art was changed forecer. reading crow cillers made me finally realise I wanted to pursue making comics.

three; okay probably cringe as hell but undertale because that's what got me into making art properly as a kid. making aus and Undertale fanart on my dad's work iPad is where I started OH

honourable mentions -- little big planet, neon genesis evangelion, serial experiments lain

3. 3 films you could watch for the rest of your life and not get bored of?

end of evangelion, my own private idaho, venom: let there be carnage

6. what’s the best and worst part of being online/a creator?

I'll start with the worst because I love to be negative. and that's the hypervisibility of it all. anything you say can and will be used against you. the best is being able to communicate w and collaborate w such a wide range of people and find people based on interests, find people you truly get alng with and who accept you rather than hoping you stumble across them (which is next to impossible in a small town!)

32. how many tabs do you have open right now?

I closed all my tabs before I went to bed. I can't deal with the clutter!!!

also bonus because I misread and I like my answer ;

36. are you an open book or do you have walls up?

call me the city of Derry with the walls I got up🗣️🗣️

[matrixonvhsanddvd]

Bro we are just standing

[infobeanie]

CROW CILLERS RECAP: ELAINE

This month’s review is going to be a recap instead of a review, because so much is going on at this point that it’s important to establish what we know has happened before we can try to figure out what is happening. The focus of the recap here is the ostensible focus of the most recent episode: the character of Elaine, who might secretly be the main character of Crow Cillers. More than any other character, it is Elaine’s actions and decisions that have shaped the course of the show, mostly in ways she is completely unconscious of. Let us try and trace the evolution of the girl who’s changed her hairstyle so many times she doesn’t know what she looks like.

We don’t know much about Elaine’s pre-Marcus past. Everything is presented through a haze of memory and Ynce-Iche distortion. Chronologically, the first concrete scene we have with her, I believe, is her first encounter with Marcus, shortly before the events of season 1. It’s as if his analytical mind snapped her into reality. What we see, even at this initial stage, is a woman who has had enough of the Crow, of people like Marcus, of the useless trappings of life. Having remained aloof from these trappings, her life before this point is known only through half-acknowledged objects: a chocolate bar, a department store, a swimming pool. They exist as alien artifacts now, unable to be sorted properly into a coherent reality. As far as Marcus is concerned, she has no one but him at this point.

Wait, I’m wrong. The first scenes we see of her are with Jill.

Elaine’s obsession with Jill makes her unique among the heroes of the show, none of whom have so intensely latched onto any objective or object, especially one who is also a subject. (It does not make her unique among the villains of the show.) We’re never given much insight into the nature of her obsession, what initially attracted her to Jill and what caused it to take root so deeply, but it’s implied that this compulsive drive is somehow linked to her connection with Ynce Iche, and that it’s partially responsible for her throwing herself at Marcus’s project with a self-destructive intensity.

Season 1 Elaine is not a pretty sight. She is stretched thin, driven to desperation by some deep, implacable inner dissatisfaction with the world. The people around her are as alien & impenetrable to her as the landscapes she inhabits, the objects that have denied her pleasure: Jill, always standoffish and withholding, never the her that Elaine liked; Marcus, cold and clinical, hiding his perverted male gaze behind an unshakeable mask of composure. The slide kids of life keep passing through just to cause her pain, and they pass by entirely unaffected by anything she does. But Elaine does manage to affect Marcus, at her own expense, by giving him a glimpse of her own annihilation. Rejecting the boundaries of the real world, she destroys her discrete self, and plummets headfirst into the psychic echo chamber of Ynce Iche.

A mirror becomes a razor when it’s broken. The first shard to emerge from Elaine’s ego-schism is Elaine Jr., a defense mechanism come to life, designed to protect Elaine from the outer world whether she wants it or not. She manifests Elaine’s villainous side - the Jill-obsessed, misanthropic people-eater - in a form both more fully-developed and more fantastical than Elaine was able to achieve in the real world. She makes little distinction between what she’s already eaten and what is fresh food, between half-digested memories and still-living bodies. It is not so much that she is always hungry so much that she only consumes. 

Separated from her eating apparatus, it is Elaine Sr. who is always hungry. The new world around her leaves her empty, because it’s made up of her insides. Passive and pacified, she begins to see more clearly the cruel streak in Elaine Jr. as it operates independently of her, and begins to resist the imperatives Elaine Jr. sets to keep reality from filtering in.

Meanwhile, the unseen forces of attraction that drove Elaine into Ynce Iche are still at work, as the Crow Cillers find themselves pulled into the dream-world, and Marcus continues his attempts to gain entry. The same forces work on Elaine in the opposite direction: unable to attain complete inertia, she develops an increasingly defined sense of dissatisfaction with this new world. With Elaine Jr. off doing her own thing, the dissatisfaction is differently flavored from that of season 1 - instead of cutting like a razor-blade, it expands like water to fit the confines of whatever is containing Elaine now. Defanged, she yearns once more to penetrate reality. 

But something is missing - even here, in this land contoured to her consciousness, she’s unable to manifest her desires into something concrete, to make sense of the motions she’s going through. As Partydog predicted in the crossover episode, the script calls for real blood, and there is no real blood left in Elaine, it seems. But she has the knife - that’s real enough. And when she has finally had enough of Ynce Iche, she does the unthinkable, and does something. It’s hard to judge the ethics of Elaine killing Dustin; it’s a necessary sacrifice, the initial act of agency that frees Elaine from her purgatory of potentialities, of options but no drive.

In Season 3, Elaine seems to have reached an equilibrium ideal to her character. Her crueler nature is ensconced in its imaginary kingdom, now feeding off of the energy of That Kid and indulging in vindictive fantasies towards Jill, while her more peaceful self finds a more peaceful home with the Crow Cillers Cociety. Yet this place of recovery only fills her with new self-doubt. She can’t feel at ease with these people, living as she is under a false appearance, a false name. The CCC lead lives of double identities, pretending to be Crows in their work hours; with her unmasked face a mask of its own, she’s left with little assurance as to who she actually is, or what side she’s on. 

But she’s not ready to move off on her own again, for obvious reasons. As the courtroom drama involving Jill suggests, Elaine Jr. has always been the advisor, a voice in the ear of the queen, making no decisions but seemingly influencing everything with her madness. Elaine was the former queen, and while she’s ditched out on that particular voice, how can she trust the voices in her own head now? She needs the support group of the CCC to guide her somewhere better.

Unfortunately, she’s forced to abandon them at a key moment, when she again commits the one act that seems to come naturally to her, this time in defense of Mary. While killing to protect others instead of oneself might reflect significant character development, all Elaine registers in the moment is the shame and terror of being exposed, of having her true face reflected in the knife. 

The escape that follows is thorough; we don’t see Elaine again for almost 10 episodes. Meanwhile, Elaine Jr. finds a blood sacrifice of her own, and enters the real world for the first time as Elaine Jr. X. EJX, intriguingly, behaves in much the same way Dustelaine did in the prior season: reserved, guarded, restricting their bloodthirsty tendencies to the Ynce forest. But she’s still out of control, especially when it comes to Jill, and a confrontation seems unavoidable.

Finally, 4 episodes into season 4, we catch our first glimpse of Elaine (just “Elaine” now), trying to make peace with the funhouse mirror version of her body that she ended up in. Season 4, coincidentally, also looks like a funhouse mirror version of season 1. We have the group of misfit kids forming a friend-and-otherworldly-activities group called, through no agency of their own, the “Crow Killers”. We have Jill back at home with the Ru’crew. We have the Special Musical Act whose relation to the main plot is currently unclear. And at the center of it all we have Elaine, working a shitty job which sometimes involves murder. After all this time, it’s back to the Order, except no one is wearing a mask this time. This is perhaps the key difference - the strict symbolic language that governed and restricted the show in its early episodes, the literal order of the Crow, has finally broken down, and everything is up for grabs. A new symbolic language has to be formed from the images that were always there; the difficulty lies in translating it.

This shift exposes the sea change the series has undergone, which seems obvious when we walk through it like this. One of the basic goals of Crow Cillers has always been to penetrate the impermeable barrier of objects, to show the true context of an empty room. Now the lifeless objects that were given character space in the opening credits of season 1 really have come to life, and that’s its own kind of horror. The rooms of season 4 have broken through the false layer of objectivity and become one with the ideas they contain. This abundance of life is wonderful and threatening. It must be contained, countered, without being destroyed; it must be conveyed properly. It is no wonder that Beloved’s most evil trait thus far is not her schemes or her motives, which are still completely opaque, but her bad writing. (And appropriate she should find a foil in Emma, whose creative drive is at an ebb this season.)

I’ve gotten off-topic, and the topic is Elaine. Fresh Fries, the first magical manifestation Elaine has encountered that exists outside of her own fractured identity, serves as the latest catalyst to action for our girl. Perhaps unsurprisingly, her first non-murderous altruistic act is not only glossed over by omission, but murky in intent. Why did she take the horse home? To rescue it, or to own it? She’s terrified when she discovers its sentience; would she have saved it if she had known it was a subject and not an object? It’s easy to forget she’s wearing the body of the last guy who walked into her home uninvited. Like so much with Elaine, elision colors her actions with ambiguity. After three and a half seasons, do we know who she is?

No, we don’t, and that might be her saving grace. If she can keep something as good as a friendship with Brecken a secret, then it stands to reason that what continues to lurk unseen inside her might be more benevolent than anyone had suspected, least of all herself. Her reaching out to him at the end of the episode suggests that it’s this uncharted territory within herself she’s starting to explore now: the land of human connections, of shared meals, of recontextualizing those dreamscapes of capitalist debris into something slightly less intimidating. The blade she’s been holding onto since season 2, perhaps longer, has been sheathed. You can go anywhere from true neutral.