#they always lose their steam by then

[genericpuff]

it's legit been a hot minute since i've read an LO episode from start to finish so I decided to read the new free episode

wow i'm really not missing a dang thing am i, jfc

I've talked about it before how the dialogue in these comics really feels... non-human, but now I'm at a point where I wouldn't even be surprised if I find out the comic was being written by one of those script bots or some AI Chat GPT tool. It's just so stupidly clunky with very little context or build-up to what's being said, the characters feel like they're just talking at each other rather than with each other, if you know what I mean. It's giving Shenmue 3.

But let's have some extra fun with this and go through it panel by panel.

I'm not gonna talk about the Apollo scene, not yet at least. But I DO want to talk about the dialogue exchange between Persephone and the demigods she's chosen to be judges.

First off, we get this cut to Persephone saying "Thank you so much for coming today." But the stuff that follows really feels like these guys have no idea where they are or why. Like, the first thing the guy on the left has to say is "you're a woman", why is he making this observation now if they intentionally made the decision to join her? If he's supposedly sexist on that line alone (which is what a lot of people in the discussion circles assume) why would he even join her on the boat in the first place if he wasn't willing to listen to a woman?

Oh, okay, so they HAVE had this conversation already, great exposition, Rachel! But again, it still makes no sense why he's making this observation out of nowhere if he already knows he's going to be working with her and chose to come along with her on the boat ride. Why is he repeating what he's already said? Why not just have this conversation happen organically instead of doing the whole sitcom "cut to the middle of what's happening and explain it matter-of-factly for the audience to catch up so we don't have to actually show the entire conversation???" bit?

It's such a cliche overused tactic to try and skip informing NPC's of what the audience already knows but that only works if we, the audience, know what's going on. Such a tactic is meant to benefit the AUDIENCE, not the characters. It's a pointless waste of time for everyone involved if they're doing it the other way around where the NPC's know but the audience doesn't and the characters have to re-explain everything they already know for the audience. It's clunky exposition.

And then of course, we get Persephone acting all high and mighty with people who, again, don't even seem to know what the fuck is going on, they don't even seem to be functioning at full brain capacity with how repetitive and pointless their dialogue is (especially the "I'm a son of Zeus" guy but we'll get to him later). If Persephone's thankful for them joining her, why is she being such a bitch? This isn't a power move, she's not being a "boss babe", she's being that bitchy manager that complains about high turnover rates completely oblivious or uncaring to the fact that she's the reason people quit the job in the first place.

"It's listening to the Queen of the Underworld time", bitch you have done NOTHING to earn that title or demand for respect. NO ONE KNOWS WHO YOU ARE. Anyone who DOES know her only knows her as a consort of Hades from that one tabloid pic from ten years ago. So... yeah, literally no one knows her. Even if they saw her in that weird broadcast during the Kronos fight (which, why would they, everyone was asleep as we were told and that news chopper was from OLYMPUS), she has done nothing to organically earn the respect and admiration of the people. As far as anyone's concerned, she's just this weird pink thing rolling into town and the only reason she has power at all is because the King has a flower nymph fetish and wanted a replacement for the girl that "got away" and married his brother.

IDK if this was an attempt at a joke but I feel bad for this guy because he clearly has no idea where he is, why he's here, or why he's going to work for the Underworld when he's a son of Zeus and would maybe prefer a job in Olympus somewhere. Look at him, those aren't the eyes of a man who knows what's going on.

"RAWR, I'm edgy and in control, shut your whore mouth while I'm speaking, peasant!"

She doesn't even look intimidating here, she looks severely constipated.

This is also legit just a copy paste of the Hera/Apollo/Echo scene from S2 which just further drives home how Persephone is an emotional replacement for Hera and a physical replacement for Rhea (while also satisfying that aforementioned flower nymph fetish).

Again, Persephone has done nothing to earn the admiration or respect of her people (unlike, y'know, Hera) and it's bullshit that she pretended to be all thankful at the beginning of this only to then treat them like shit as soon as she was able. Like, again, she seems to have just kidnapped these guys and they undoubtedly have questions and instead she's steamrolling all over them for zero reason beyond stroking her ego. If she's so bothered by the first guy being a sexist, why is she hiring him in the first place???

girl he's literally trying to escape from your bullshit, why are you treating him like a toddler or a hamster who can't control himself

it's painfully clear now these guys absolutely did not sign up for ANY of this and even if they DID sign up to be judges for Hades, they clearly were NOT aware it would include being berated and snipped at by his moody toddler of a wife, she's the ONLY one here who has zero self control or qualifications. push her in the river, please. put her in the hamster cage.

so yeah, it's not "thank you for coming with me today", it's "thank you for shutting up and being good little hostages so mommy can play pretend ruler, if you even THINK of ignoring me i'll have my daddy Mads Mikkelson- I mean, Hades chop your balls off, teehee!" seriously can SOMEONE please push her in the river, she's got like 50 pounds of hair, she has zero chance /hj

"i found a way for my husband to do even less work than he already does, like a good little billionaire!"

ms. brian griffin, no one knows what elysium is

we, the audience, haven't even seen elysium

no one knows what you're talking about and no one has anything to thank you for because so far you've spent the majority of your time in the underworld since the time skip dicking around and acting like a Karen

literally sit down and eat your oatmeal

we don't even know what 'nu-tartarus' is, who wants to bet rachel watched sci-fi the week she made this with the 'nu' spelling, jfc

what did she do to warrant the 'nu'

in fact, is tartarus even accessible right now??? what happened to Kronos locking himself up in there and refusing to let anyone in??? Did they seriously dig a hole in the ground and call it "Nu-Tartarus"? Fuck off.

Hermes, pal, you're seeing this shit, right? How can you sit there and watch her act like this??? This ain't the girl you used to make out with in the mountains.

"My husband serves in the military, you know! You'll regret not giving me that 2% discount!"

for those of you in the audience who don't know this, this is what we call panel filler. i.e. pointless repetitive panels that RS uses to fill her panel quota each week. LO always has at least 2-3 of these per episode. Go ahead, fact check it yourself, I'll wait.

Diva Plavalaguna wore it better, honey.

(also why do her ARMS look the same as her hair, they look like sausage casings 😭)

Such a weird cut though, from her making that "lol can you believe the things I put up with ????" face to her just WALKING AWAY FROM THE MEN WHO HAVE NO IDEA WHY THEY'RE EVEN HERE.

what- um, why are we cutting to this? I get that it's RS still trying to exposit instead of write organically but Hermes literally didn't ask and he should probably already be aware of what's going on if he's ON THE BOAT WITH HER. Also why are you explaining to him what a demi-god is? Again, it's Rachel trying to do the "and that's my plan" shtick not understanding that only works for OTHER CHARACTERS who aren't "in on it", NOT THE AUDIENCE. When you try to have your characters explain things JUST for the sake of the audience, it makes them all look stupid and it wastes the audience's time.

Like, never mind the fact that Hermes himself is technically a demi-god in LO as his mother is a non-god.

This would have worked better if she was explaining who these men were specifically, like the fact that they were Kings when they were alive, or why she chose them, but no, she just starts it and leaves it at "well they're related to Zeus, so they're demi-gods" with zero lead-up or context as to why she's explaining this to Hermes of all people in the first place.

WAIT OKAY. SO I WAS RIGHT, THEY LITERALLY AREN'T FUNCTIONING AT FULL AUTONOMY. THAT'S WHY THEY'RE REPEATING THINGS OR NOT SAYING THINGS THAT ARE RELEVANT OR ASKING QUESTIONS.

PERSEPHONE LITERALLY TOOK THESE SHADES WHO HAVE NO ABILITY TO CONSENT OR UNDERSTAND WHAT'S GOING ON

AND IS FORCING THEM TO WORK FOR HER HUSBAND, THE SLAVE DRIVER.

PERSEPHONE HAS BECOME A SLAVE DRIVER.

"THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR COMING WITH ME TODAY" ????

"THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR BEING GOOD LITTLE SLAVES. YOU WORK FOR ME AND MY HUSBAND NOW. WE'LL GIVE YOU BACK ENOUGH OF YOUR AUTONOMY TO MAKE YOU GOOD FOR WORKING BUT YOU WILL NEVER HAVE FREE WILL."

THIS IS LITERALLY THE PLOT OF HADESTOWN BUT IT WANTS US TO CHEER FOR HADES' POINT OF VIEW IN THE END.

Also, "Hades is going to restore some of their humanity"??? Guys, do you realize the implications of this?

If this is something he's always been able to do, that means he's always had the ability to grant the shades working for him autonomy and will, but chose not to.

Give them enough sentience and autonomy to work, but not enough to question why they're working for the system in the first place.

Great job Persephone, this is soooo much better than what Hades was doing before. You've made life so much better for the dead.

Fucking hell. I started this essay with the intent of talking about the weird clunky dialogue exchanges and as I sat on it and wrote on it longer and longer it just got so much WORSE and turned into discussing Persephone's lack of morals and how she's become the very thing she always claimed she stood against.

I say "great job Persephone" but we also have to give credit where credit is due - great job Rachel, this is soooo much better than just ending the series in the first two seasons or actually resolving the plot threads you started in Season 1. You've made your comic so much better to please the stans and spite the haters.

Christ. I'm not even done talking about everything I wanted to talk about regarding this episode but I figured I should cut it off here to at least keep it all on theme. I do wanna talk about that Apollo scene and the Hermes/Persephone conversation but I'll probably do that in separate posts.

Despite how fired up I got, I am glad about one thing - I really am not missing anything. I have lost nothing from unsubscribing from LO and uninstalling the WT app. And frankly, neither will you if you've been contemplating on promoting yourself to a non-reader. There is zero FOMO here. I get just as much if not more entertainment from just following along with the hilarious conversations in the Discord and subreddit each week, because at LEAST those are fun and don't make me feel dead inside like LO does. LO isn't entertaining, it's hardly even so-bad-that-it's-entertaining at this point, maybe it still is for you, but I'm assuring you right now for those of you "hanging on", it's not going to magically "get better", even the episodes that some people CLAIM are better really aren't because of how low the bar is nowadays. I am giving you full permission to free yourself of these shackles if you've been looking for a way out. Take this as your metaphorical key.

The LO we all fell in love with is long, long gone.

[maple-and-pie]

Pride Eeveelutions!

Edit: now as stickers!

[izzystizzys]

TW: discussion of something approximating suicidal tendencies but with the usual crack programming of this blog

“Ah, High General Windu”, says Fox, pleasantly. “So we meet again.”

High General Windu raises an unimpressed eyebrow at him, Fox thinks, though it’s getting hard to tell with all the blood rushing to his head. “If I let you go, will you try to throw yourself out of another window?”

Fox makes a vague shrugging motion - or tries to, anyways. It’s hard to tell where any of his limbs are going, hanging upside down in the air as he is. “I am willing to discuss terms.” A bridge will do just fine.

Impossibly, the High General’s eyebrows climb even further up his forehead. “A compromise, then, esteemed Commander.” And so, he righths Fox the head way up in the air, but leaves him floating just above the ground, at which point several painted shells come skidding around the corner followed by billowing robes and screeches.

“WHAT”, says Kote, calmly, “THE BANTHA-KARKED, FORCE-LOVING KRIFF, FOX.”

“You’ll short out your helmet mic”, Fox advises him, sagely. Fondly, he thinks back to decimating his own on only his second time in the newly-christened official Coruscant Guard Scream Closet. He’d just received the comm about the Zillo Beast being transported to 000, and made sure to take his bucket off thereafter to improve the quality of his closet time.

High General Windu’s face does something complicated between sympathy and constipation.

Because the Galaxy doesn’t hate Fox enough already and Cody wasn’t enough on his own, Wolffe elbows his way through their batch to plant himself in front of him, shoulders squared and shaking with repressed rage. “If you try that again, dickhead”, he begins, in a low growl that quite frankly sounds more cringe that intimidating, “I’m going to resurrect you and then kill you again.”

“Ah, Wolffe”, Plo Koon says, in his deep, shivery timbre, “Remember our conversations about effective conflict resolution and communication of needs?”

Wolffe’s eyes narrow at Fox, because all non-Guard are sweet summer children who walk around buckets off on 000 like absolute lunatics. Fox prays they never have to find out why that’s a bad idea. “I feel”, his ori’vod presses out between clenched teeth, “that if you make me watch you throw yourself out of another window, I’m going to jump after you and strangle you on the way down, you little bitch.”

“That’s fair”, says Fox, and watches High General Kenobi bury his face in his hands. Wolffe twitches in place and makes an aborted groaning noise, the hypocrite.

“Excuse me, High Marshall Commander Fox, but I fail to see what’s so dire about this situation that the Jedi High Council and your brothers cannot help you solve”, says Windu, the only sane one left on this Force-forsaken bloated corpse of a planet. Behind the gaggle of Jedi and ori’vode already gathered in front of Fox, the rest of them come veering around the corner in a commotion that’s quite frankly embarrassing. High General Yoda is mounted on Skywalker’s back like he’s a race-Eopie, which is Fox’ only consolation.

He got up this morning at 0300, bleary-eyed and with a pounding headache as always, and all was right in the world. And then Fox got called into the Jedi High Council’s chambers and was ceremoniously informed that in the wake of Chancellor Palpatine’s unfortunate demise (hah), and through the emergency state of the Senate, as well as several invented promotions foisted on Fox to make the delegation of any and all paperwork less shady, he was now next in the chain of command and-

Well, Fox is the acting Chancellor, in short.

Haha, he had said, and been meet with several seconds of silence, until it got both awkward and exceedingly painful. Wait, he’d said. You’re kriffing serious.

Kriffing serious, we are, had said High General Yoda, and thus Fox launched himself out the first best window with a maniacal cackle of, you’ll have to catch me first!

And catch him, High General Windu sure did.

“The will of the Force this is”, Yoda interrupts Fox’ train of thought. He scans him thoughtfully from beneath his wizened brow, and hems to himself. “Shake things up, this will. Determine the fate of the Galaxy, this shall. A feeling, I have, that a good Chancellor you will make. A better one, hmmm.”

“That’d be high praise, if not for the fact that a dead lemming would make for a better Chancellor than the last one”, says Fox, drawing and indignant gasp from Skywalker. He doesn’t bother with either that or the green goblin’s cackle, lost in the deep sense of resignation that settles over his shoulders like a suffocating blanket.

“Alright, then, get me Thorn on the comm. As my first act in office, I’m firing all the Jedi. No offense, but you’re kind of a disaster. Then, someone get me to the Chancellor’s office, I’m calling Dooku to let him know the war’s off. And please get me Judicial, they’ll be up all night working on my datafolders - I’m having the Senate arrested.”

“Who - is - arresting - “, Bly pants, hands on his knees from where he’s just come sprinting around the corner with his Jedi.

Underneath his bucket, Fox smiles a smile that’s all teeth. “The Senate”, he says, sweetly, wondering if he’s just imagined the shiver that’s gone through the room. “I’m suing the Senate, and taking them all into temporary custody for abuse of sentient rights.”

[alfiely-art]

Something something puppetisms

[tricoufamily]

the other characters. got lore in my head you wouldn't believe baby

[cerebralatrophy]

dialogue courtesy of bobs burgers

[attleboy]

What is the pomni drawing your most proud of?

oooo interesting question that is honestly. a bit hard to answer at the moment... i've been prioritizing having fun instead of putting full effort into everything due to like, time constraints and such soooo i wouldn't consider most of what i've posted to be "full pieces"

that aside, probably the mirror room piece? it's a bit complicated ... while i'm still very proud of it there was actually a lot more to the drawing than i posted, but it was just too hard for me to pull off in full?

i didn't plan well enough and in the end i had to take the coward's way out by cropping out the bits i was having trouble with. whoops ^-^;

i'm not too torn up about that though, it was experimental in the first place and i learned from it so all is well

alternate options would probably be either the bone comic [i might be biased due to its success, but i was pretty happy with the general flow of it and my expression work there] orrrr this sketchy animation that i'm still working on which isn't a masterpiece or anything, i just get really giddy over making pictures move

here's a sneak peek... you might be able to guess the full contents if you think back a bit

[applestorms]

following the very funny take that L just speedran his feelings for light from denial to acceptance over the course of the tennis game alone, i do think that even if L was somehow aware of the fact that his feelings verged on less-platonic he wouldn't necessarily see them as being requited. or alternatively, that if they are, light is too much of a repressed freak to ever get over his own bullshit enough to make it actually happen.

like i said in my own tags, this perhaps is another anime/manga difference to me. to elaborate...

in both cases, i think it starts off mostly the same: L's interest is Piqued when he realizes KIRA might actually be a human person, with the high of that feeling hitting its peak during lind l tailor as his theories are confirmed -> L's feelings about KIRA develop/are further complicated as he starts investigating light specifically. personally, i think he starts getting Interested™ while stalking him through the cameras in their house & seeing how he acts under the mask, realizes his feelings are Developing in a way he didn't expect the more he watches, and is fully in the Annoyance/Denial stage when he's autism staring at him throughout the testing sequence (could still vary) -> he works through/accepts it by the end of the tennis game, like a kind of background process monologue, maybe capping off specifically when light beats him.

following this, it seems natural to me that there would be a period where L furthers his investigation on light as KIRA while simultaneously also kinda trying to figure out how DTF he is. he's already pretty certain about the former point so a lot of this is just checking his work, watching very carefully to see if he can push light into losing his cool again and giving himself away, which has the additional side effect of pushing his newly developed crush to the front of his brain on a regular basis through sheer necessity.

this all comes to a head w/ misa's arrest. again, at some point throughout this time frame i think L starts putting enough pieces of the Light Yagami puzzle together to start figuring out that he's either 1. not interested entirely, or 2. never gonna fucking admit anything truthful about who he actually is, ever, even to himself. perhaps the next planned step of L's approach would be to push light into telling the truth or revealing something genuine about himself period, even outside of the KIRA investigation itself, but this gets fucked up by light's little memory loss/alternation plan.

yotsuba is interesting because it obviously gets to L quite a bit, showing aspects of his character that we don't really see outright before that point. it is well known that L is a filthy little liar, and that he specifically uses his lies as a way of testing light, but i think yotsuba is when he kinda. gives up on that. in a way, light is being fully truthful during yotsuba, it's just that what he believes to be truth has been manipulated beyond what's usually humanly possible. so L gets what he wants but it's a twisted version of it, and still misses the key component that drew him towards light in the first place (KIRA).

he's grumpy, basically. his toys aren't working the way he wanted them to, so he's throwing them at the wall and demanding that they fix themselves again. as i said before, L is simultaneously incredibly alienated from (the rest of/his own) humanity and directs his entire focus on it- he's the world's greatest detective, not out of empathy or sympathy for human suffering, but because people are the most interesting/complex puzzle he's ever come across and the scale of mass murder makes his dick harder than anything else.

in a way, you could see him locking light away in this shitty little constantly watched cell/literally holding him on a handcuff leash at all times as L's attempt to recreate the feelings that started popping up while he was watching light in his house the first time, seeing the seeds of a serial murderer in his little perfect teenager pet. the most notable shift throughout all of this though is the fact that L starts telling the truth- to bring this classic panel back,

he's not bothering with the "ooo sounds like something KIRA would say," shtick now. honestly the only other time someone really gets this blunt about telling light he's KIRA to his face is near:

(think this might be my favorite near panel ever lmfao. finally found it in ch.80 =3=)

point is, L is both pissed and genuinely kind of depressed throughout most of yotsuba, or at the very least has been annoyed into spitefully shucking off all his duties cuz he doesn't wanna play the game anymore. childish, and a sore loser- just like he said.

ANYWAYS. the differences between the anime and the manga, right.

the main way this diverges is that i think L is definitely aware of his feelings in the anime. all of the evidence for this comes down to episode 25- the rain scene, the foot washing, "Have you ever told the truth once in your life?" and so on and so forth. part of this may actually follow the divergences of light's characterization between the anime and manga, but L is almost certainly talking about something that light isn't willing to admit during these scenes and it's motivating a lot of his hardest lines.

again, it's the two cases: either he's morose about the fact that his feelings are unrequited and kicking back as a final fuck you for getting pulled around for so long, or (and personally, i kinda think this is more likely) he is aware of the fact that light does like him back in that way and Supremely salty about the fact that he won't ever act on it. "It will be lonely, won't it," etc. etc. "You're gonna fucking miss me, bitch. You don't have to do this but you're going to tear us apart anyway, and I don't forgive you, never will." light is putting the game above them, and L is fucking mad about it lol.

sidenote: it's interesting that the tennis game itself kind of parallels/foreshadows L losing in this way. as i've said before, in the tags on some fucking post i don't even remember now, light knows throughout the tennis game that winning might add to his KIRA percentage (though it is admittedly still quite vague), but he chooses to go for it anyway. just can't stop himself from winning, even if it goes against him and everything he actually wants... some classic light yagami shit right there.

in the manga this is a lot less clear, specifically because we are lacking these scenes in particular. L's death just happens so goddamn quick in the manga, it rushes up and catches him by surprise basically the second he lets his guard down and stops watching light, so we don't get this same drawn out saltiness as he metaphorically bleeds out. this is not to say it isn't present entirely- much of the above analysis still applies to the manga just as much as the anime, but it is perhaps a lot more subtle to follow by the end.

honestly, that all being said, i think manga L is also a lot more likely to simply never figure his shit out when it comes to light. it's a particularly interesting part of canon to me that both of these interpretations actually seem to work equally well when it comes to L, that he is either fully aware for most of the series about his feelings or entirely unaware and never bothers to reflect or consider it. says something about his character i guess, that he still manages to hide or cloud so many of his internal thoughts that shit like this can be pretty ambiguous and still feel kind of core to his character.

anyways, thanks again to @ai-the-broccoli and that original post for kicking this particular essay off, as well as everyone else who responded for getting my brain rolling this time around :)

[marmastry]

do you have any tips for an artist that wants to draw comics?

I honestly still dont see myself as a comic artist, anon, but what i do know is that the hardest part is starting one.

When you're new to it, you gotta learn how to make it easier for yourself because if you're aim is to make a fully colored 20+ pages comic, you will burn yourself out before you finish a single page.

Dont put too much expectations on yourself. Let it be your aim to finish it rather than perfect it. Once you finish it, don't dwell too much into it. Don't let engagements be the measure of its value. The best part of finishing something is looking back on them and learning what you can do better next time.

When you're new, you're also building your stamina in the process and when you understand how much you can do in a certain time, you will learn how to pace yourself better. For ex. In my earlier comics, like my abandoned zelda AU, i didn't really put much thought in the specs and dimension of my comics. I didnt even draw it well lol. I limit working on every entry under 2 to 4 days and that includes the writing. I spent less time on it and it shows! Compare that to my splatoon comics, they're more organized and put together in comparison. This is because I saw what I can do before, I learned what I can do better and it made me put more time into them. I don't really wanna rush myself as much as possible because i dont really earn from this rn lol but most of my entries lately takes 1 month to draw with drafts Ive written 3 months earlier. I work very slow but more robust than before because of all the stamina I accumulated with other finished work :)

I hope this helps at least haha

[ariensart]

DAY SEVEN: IN ANOTHER LIFE

or the world in which laurance succumbs

[gunnslaughter]

I'm suffering you guys

[refinedstorage]

feeneesh

[ellraiser]

i can't beelieve that people actually say "woke mind virus" like out loud for real unironically? it's like hearing someone say skibidi ohio rizz in the wild

[danandfuckingjonlmao]

Between dnp who is the lazy gay and who is the activity gay?

you’re so real for this because i was waiting for them to tell us their opinions but they left us to contemplate on our own.

my consensus is when they’re at home dan is lazy gay and when they’re on holiday dan is activity gay.

dan is very “i don’t wanna go outside” while also being very into living in the moment and doing everything they can while they can, so it likely depends on the situation.

it’s an important dynamic to develop with a partner (or just anyone you’re in a Pair with)—you encourage each other to do things and also learn how to express when you don’t want to do things.

thanks for the ask friend :)

[tamagotchikgs]

no matter how many times i play fallout nv i am never able to find the sexbot for the brothel i have spent so much time going back n forth n all around i could never get close theres always a Wall... n then, yesterday i just happened 2 watch a permadeath stream of someone n they couldnt find it either,,,,, SO ITS NOT JUST ME THEN,, IM ,,, NOT ABSOLUTELY OUT OF MY GOURD,,,

[faemarin]

New beginnings 🌧️