#this drawing may have a parallel with another of my sketches :3

[frankensteinposm0]

“And I don’t want the world to see me, 'cause I don't think that they'd understand” ♡

17yo Style in my AU will always be something very important to me.

[kindness-ricochets]

I’ve been seeing a lot of thoughts and hc of autistic wylan lately and you seem to also be a fan of the concept. May I ask why? Exactly? I could definitely kinda see it but wanna hear you thoughts you’re always so eloquent

Hey there anon! Sorry for the delay—I’m guessing you already found an answer to this elsewhere while I was off Tumblr for a bit, but just in case, here are my thoughts. This will be heavily personal, but… well, you can’t very well ask an autistic person about autism and expect neutrality!

Autism is different for everyone and can be difficult to pin down, so while Wylan is arguably autistic, he misses several beats that for me would have made him definitively and undeniably autistic. For example, when the bells start to ring, triggering black protocol—I work in a place with a lot of bells and am frequently caught too close to one and normally press my hands over my ears until it’s over because that sound is like shrapnel raking across my insides. All of them. Not just the ear and brain parts. Wylan doesn’t have that sort of visceral reaction, but that may just mean he doesn’t have the same sensitivities that I do, or to the same level. He also never, that I recall, eats meat—as weird as that might sound, eating meat is incredibly complicated with heightened sensitivities to taste and texture. I’m not sure how old I was when I realized it was strange to get up from the table to spit out my food because it viscerally repulsed me. So it might be that Wylan is autistic and has different experiences than I do. Those are things I would include in a story as major indicators of a character being autistic. This might also mean that his father’s way of raising him taught him to hide unusual reactions and stimming behaviors. It’s not that much of a reach to assume a man who tried to abuse the dyslexia out of his son would take the same approach to autism. (More on autism and abuse later.)

So while I’m going to lay out why I read Wylan as autistic, that’s why I think it’s valid to read him as not being autistic as well. Both are valid.

A final caveat, I am well overdue for a reread of the books, so I likely left something out or could have found better examples. Take this as a few of my reasons for a personal headcanon. Anyone who feels differently, that's fine! We can each read things our own way :)

1 - Hyperfixation: The way Wylan loves music

Most of the Crows’ backgrounds color how they see the world: Kaz’s shrewdness, Matthias’s tactical thinking and superstition, Inej’s faith and Suli wisdom, etc. That’s a sign of good character writing. But very little of Wylan’s upbringing seems to have influenced how he sees the world. It comes closest when he thinks about how his father would scorn his new friends, but we never see that scorn from Wylan.

The way a hyperfixation feels, it’s like you’ve always lived in a close parallel world, never fully been a part of the other one where it seems like everyone else lives, but suddenly there’s this bright shining piece of your soul laced through the other world. It lets you connect, it lets you exist in their realm, and you can’t help but filter everything new through that lens because it’s the brightest, most wonderful thing. (I had been between hyperfixations for a while when I started a new job; six months into that work, I read Crooked Kingdom. One of my coworkers thought I had fallen in love, it was that marked a difference.)

So, combining these: Wylan never really acts like he was part of his father’s world, and indeed is in some ways separate from the other Crows, but he parses everything through music, his hyperfixation. He sets words to music to remember them, like he does with the contract. Even his own anxiety is made sense of through music, when in his first narrated chapter, he sets it to music: what am I doing here what am I doing here…. When he’s overwhelmed, his thoughts are “a jangle of misplayed chords”. The Crows have backgrounds that influence how they react to the world, but Wylan’s hyperfixation is his means of experiencing and understanding the world.

2 - Literal thinking: Wylan responds to exact words

In this post, I went into detail on the line where Wylan suggested waking up men to kill them. Wylan is generally unsupportive of killing people—Oomen, Smeet’s clerk, his father… he advocates not-murder in each of these situations. Accepting his aversion to murder, his suggestion to wake men up and kill them seems like a genuine reaction to Jesper saying he doesn’t want to kill unconscious men. Wylan takes things literally.

This happens the most with Jesper, probably because Jesper talks to Wylan the most. Nina and Matthias don’t really register him past how he might be useful, Inej is usually quite direct, and Kaz is very deliberate when he speaks with Wylan. This really interests me because Kaz tends to vary his speech more than the others do, he adapts more to being around other people. He jokes a little with Jesper, spars with Nina, speaks more openly and more sharply with Inej, and he’s precise with Wylan. Kaz may not know what autism is, but he recognizes what’s effective with Wylan.

Another example is when Wylan is sketching the Ice Court plans and Jesper says it looks like a cake. There are plenty of valid responses here: pointing out that concentric circles look like lots of things, that it’s just a sketch, telling Jesper to stop looking over his shoulder. Instead, Wylan says that the Ice Court is sort of like a cake. That… doesn’t sound like something Wylan would normally say. He’s not addressing the whole situation, he’s addressing the specific words Jesper said.

One of the most heartbreaking examples of this (to me, anyway) is with Marya. Wylan does the same thing with his mother, when she asks if he’s there for her money and says she hasn’t got any, and his response is, “I don’t either.” We understand as readers that what Marya is communicating here is that she is so accustomed to being utterly ignored unless she is being used, and if she told Wylan that no one visited but to take advantage and she assumed he was here for the same reason, he would say it wasn’t the case. But he just responds to the immediate statement.

There are a lot of examples of this.

3 — 0% perception, 100% creativity

Wylan can identify things that don’t make sense or that he doesn’t understand, but at the beginning of the series he can’t make leaps, only ask questions. On the Ferolind, he wonders about the source of water at the Ice Court; though Kaz doesn’t say as much, he was clearly wondering, too, because he eventually figured out the underground river. There’s an interesting parallel here where, in the beginning of Crooked Kingdom, Wylan asks a question about how they’ll break into Smeet’s and Kaz tells him to use his eyes instead of running his mouth—at which point Wylan is able to figure it out. I don’t think this is because he never tried before, though, but because no one ever bothered to teach him. Kaz can be harsh but he gives harsh corrections rather than harsh rejections and Wylan learns from him.

It’s hard to understand the world for people with autism. The world is designed and run by and for people whose minds are fundamentally different from ours, whose thoughts and experiences are unlike ours. Imagine trying to learn English or Spanish or Mandarin or any other spoken language if your first language was olfactory. That’s sort of what it’s like for someone with autism to just get dropped into the world and expected to figure this out.

This can be attributed to Wylan’s upbringing, but I disagree with that because none of the others were brought up in the Barrel, either, and Wylan doesn’t understand trade or politics with any special skill. Kaz wasn’t born in the Barrel, but he managed to go from “stealing is wrong” to ��wrong isn’t my concern” real quick; Colm Fahey didn’t raise his son on gambling and firefights; the Ghafas never expected their daughter to be away from the family. Only Nina has relevant training—and even that’s precious little, she left school way too early. The others figured it out; Wylan needed a bit more help. He also seems surprised by the way his father conducts business. Wylan takes things on face value—like the time he’s surprised someone would do something, simply because it’s unlawful. This is something he expresses to a group of gangsters. He’s never been taught the way of any world and these things are not intuitive to him.

But Wylan isn’t stupid.

He doesn’t know how to understand the world, but he does understand how things go together. Given a pointy diamond, a handle, and a screw, he cut through Grisha glass. He carries flashbangs and magic napalm, he recreates military hardware—Wylan understands how to make things interact for a specific result. But to me the most telling thing isn’t just that he puts together chemical pieces, it’s that he figured out Jesper controlled bullets. He saw the pieces and put them together.

Wylan can understand when things don’t make sense, but he can’t make sense of them—yet when he understands things at their basic level, he understands them without preconception, for what they are. This is a very autistic way of thinking about things, it goes back to the literalism. He can’t make the leaps of logic other people can, but he also doesn’t make the assumptions they do—“I’ve never heard of a bullet Grisha, so that’s not a thing” vs “Well Jesper’s an almost impossibly good shot and he controls metal and bullets are metal, so why not?”

4 - Broken brain/body connection

Wylan’s great at chemistry and drawing and playing flute or piano—but he’s something of a disaster other times. This is in particular contrast to the other characters, all of whom are physically adept. Meanwhile it’s a challenge for Wylan to climb a rope ladder and he spends a full paragraph trying to figure out what to do with his hands. It’s easy to say, well, he’s used to a sedentary lifestyle, but at this point he’s not. He’s worked in the tannery for months. He’s just physically awkward.

I have less to say on this point only because it’s about something I don’t fully understand myself. I don’t really understand what it would be like to have a body that just… does things? Like normal stuff? Without tics and stims. No idea. Only that Wylan’s discomfort in and seeming lack of mastery of his own body feels very relatable to me.

5 - Abuse

One of the most familiar things about Wylan is how he has been so thoroughly abused and broken down that he’s afraid to do or say much of anything. Again, this is a place his background can be an obscuring factor. Of course Wylan didn’t think to blow up the walls when the first met the parem-juiced jurda and got trapped, he’s a spoiled rich kid! Except, he also startled when Jesper said his name later. Wylan didn’t hesitate because he was spoiled, he hesitated because he had no confidence.

He also thinks Kaz would laugh at him for playing music at his mother’s grave. Now, personally, I can’t see Kaz laughing at Wylan—being indifferent, thinking it’s pointless sentimentality, shaking his head, maybe commenting sharply that they need to go if they don’t have the time. But not laughing. Kaz is a snarky, sharp-edged jerk sometimes, but he doesn’t go out of his way to criticize, he just lets people know when they inconvenience him.

Wylan has been trained to identify attention as negative by an overbearing abusive father who literally saw him as less favorable than a demon. Now, that may have been hyperbole, but Jan criticized everything he could about Wylan—art, music, emotion—and made clear that he was worthless and competent to nothing. (Jan Van Eck can suck a rotten donkey dick but that’s neither here nor there.)

A lot of people with autism experience levels of bullying that have similar impacts. Or as the kids these days are calling it: we go to school. We go to school where we are weird. Where we look weird and move weird and talk about weird things and there’s a whole little bevy of asswipes to makes sure we know it. I got teased more for playing Pokemon and sitting alone reading than the kid who pissed himself onstage at assembly. (This was before Pokemon was cool. I’m old.) And that is not unusual for autistic kids. It’s also not unusual for this to be compounded by relatives or even parents who may be trying to help but don’t understand and can make things even harder.

So we can’t read social cues and we’re taught at a vicious age that everything that comes naturally to us is wrong. Imagine trying to interact in society with that background. There is no guide and most advice from neurotypical people isn’t actually what they mean. It breaks you down.

Wylan’s anxiety isn’t definitive of autism, but isn’t something that was incredibly familiar as someone whose neurodivergent experiences created a strong level of anxiety.

6 — High Compassion, Low Social Competence

Wylan isn’t very good at making friends. In fact, none of the Crows likes him much in the beginning, and only some of them soften toward him by the end. (Matthias and Nina come to respect his skills as a chemist but neither seems to particularly like him.) But you can see throughout the books that Wylan wants to connect with them and be one of them, he just… isn’t. He’s off-beat. He’s weird. He asks questions and mimics behaviors (trying to be cool and tough like Jesper, saying “mission” like Matthias does, imitating Kaz’s scheming face) but he doesn’t quite get how to adapt.

But he still cares about people. Not just them. Everyone. He cares about the people they leave in the ditch outside the prison wagon, he cares about Hanna Smeet, he cares about Alys. He cares about the people who’ll take a hit from Kaz’s sugar caper.

Wylan’s awkward social skills have undeniable big autism energy. I posit his compassion does as well. This is simply who Wylan is, and that means being someone who cares about everyone. I have nothing to back up that this is related to autism. I can say that it’s like me. (Not to brag.) I can’t turn off the part of my brain that says everyone matters. Individuals can opt out of that compassion, but they have it by default. There’s a certain agony in feeling a pull toward and love for just about everyone and yet an inability to develop meaningful connections with them, and that keen loneliness… it just burns.

Again, it’s not definitive of autism, but it’s very similar to an autistic experience.

I said in the beginning that I didn’t think Wylan certainly had autism and I stand by that, but he is a powerfully honest reflection of many people who do. So he can be understood to have autism, and that’s part of the reason some people have that headcanon.

[kmclaude]

Forgive me Father, I have no awful headcanons for you, only a general question on comic making. How do you do it, writing-wise/how do you decide what points go where, how do you plot it out (or do you have any resources on the writing aspect that you find useful?) Not to get too bogged down in details, but I attended a writer’s workshop and the author in residence suggested I transfer my wordy sci-fi WIP into graphic novel script, as it might work better. (I do draw, but I don’t know if I have it in me to draw a whole comic—characters in motion? Doing things? With backgrounds? How dare, why can’t everyone just stand around looking pretty)

I was interested but it quickly turned into a lot of internal screaming as I tried to figure out how to compress the hell out of it, since novels are free to do a lot more internal monologuing and such compared to a comic format (to say nothing of trying to write a script without seeing how the panels lay out—just for my own sake, I might have to do both concurrently.)

As an aside, to get a feel for graphic novels I was rereading 99RM and was reminded of how great it was—tightly plotted, intriguing, and anything to do with Ashmedai was just beautifully drawn. I need more Monsignor Tiefer and something something there are parallels between Jehan and Daniel in my head and I don’t know if they make sense but it works for me. (As an aside, I liked the emphasis on atonement being more than just the word sorry, but acknowledgment you did wrong and an attempt to remedy it—I don’t know why that spoke to me the way that it did.)

I thought Tumblr had a word count limit for asks but so far it has offered zero resistance, oh well. I don’t have much else to say but on the topic of 99RM, Adam getting under Monsignor’s skin is amazing, 10/10 (about the Pride picture earlier)

wow tumblr got rid of the markdown editor! or at least in asks which means the new editor probably has no markdown....god i hate this site! anyway...

Totally! So first, giant thank you for the compliments! Second, I have a few questions in turn for you before I dive into a sort of answer, since I can give some advice to your questions in general but it also sounds like you have a specific conundrum on your hands.

My questions to your specific situation are:

did the author give any reason for recommending a, in your words, "wordy" story be turned into a graphic novel?

is the story you're writing more, like you said, "internal monologuing"? action packed? where do the visuals come from?

do you WANT it to be a comic? furthermore, do you want it to be a comic you then must turn around and draw? or would you be interested in writing for comics as a comic writer to have your words turned into art?

With those questions in mind, let me jump into the questions you posed me!

Let me start with a confession...

I've said this before but let me say it again: Ninety-Nine Righteous Men was not originally a comic — it was a feature-length screenplay! And furthermore, it was written for a class so it got workshopped again and again to tighten the plot by a classroom of other nerds — so as kind as your compliments are, I'm giving credit where credit is due as that was not just a solo ship sailing on the sea. On top of that, it got adapted (by me) into a comic for my thesis, so my advisor also helped me make it translate or "read" well given I was director, actor, set designer, writer, editor, SFX guy, etc. all in one. And it was a huge help to have someone say "there is no way you can go blow by blow from script to comic: you need to make edits!" For instance, two scenes got compressed to simple dialogue overlaid on the splashpage of Ashmedai raping Caleb (with an insert panel of Adam and Daniel talking the next day.) What had been probably at least 5 pages became 1.

Additionally, I don't consider myself a strong plotter. That said, I found learning to write for film made the plotting process finally make some damn sense since the old plot diagram we all got taught in grammar school English never made sense as a reader and definitely made 0 sense as a writer — for me, for some reason, the breakdown of 25-50-25 (approx. 25 pages for act 1, 50 for act 2 split into 2 parts of 25 each, 25 pages for act 3) and the breaking down of the beats (the act turning points, the mid points, the low point) helped give me a structure that just "draw a mountain, rising action, climax is there, figure it out" never did. Maybe the plot diagram is visually too linear when stories have ebb and flow? I don't know. But it never clicked until screenwriting. So that's where I am coming from. YMMV.

I should also state that there's Official Ways To Write Comic Scripts to Be Drawn By An Artist (Especially If You Work For A Real Publisher As a Writer) and there's What Works For You/Your Team. I don't give a rat's ass about the former (and as an artist, I kind of hate panel by panel breakdowns like you see there) so I'm pretty much entirely writing on the latter here. I don't give a good god damn about official ways of doing anything: what works for you to get it done is what matters.

What Goes Where?

Like I said, 99RM was a screenplay so it follows, beat-wise, the 3-act screenplay structure (hell, it's probably more accurate to say it follows the act 1/act 2A/act 2B/act 3 structure.) So there was the story idea or concept that then got applied to those story beats associated with the structure, and from there came the Scene-by-scene Breakdown (or Expanded Scene Breakdown) which basically is an outline of beats broken down into individual scenes in short prose form so you get an overview of what happens, can see pacing, etc. In the resources at the end I put some links that give information on the whole story beat thing.

(As an aside: for all my short comics, I don't bother with all that, frankly. I usually have an image or a concept or a bit of writing — usually dialogue or monologue, sometimes a concrete scene — that I pick at and pick at in a little sketchbook, going back and forth between writing and thumbnail sketches of the page. Or I just go by the seat of my pants and bullshit my way through. Either or. Those in many ways are a bit more like poems, in my mind: they are images, they are snapshots, they are feelings that I'm capturing in a few panels. Think doing mental math rather than writing out geometric proofs, yanno?)

Personally, I tend to lean on dialogue as it comes easier for me (it's probably why I'm so drawn to screenwriting!) so for me, if I were to do another longform GN, I'd probably take my general "uhhhhhh I have an idea and some beats maybe so I guess this should happen this way?" outline and start breaking it down scene by scene (I tend to write down scenes or scene sketches in that "uhhhh?" outline anyway LOL) and then figure out basic dialogue and action beats — in short, I'd kind of do the work of writing a screenplay without necessarily going full screenplay format (though I did find the format gave me an idea of timing/pacing, as 1 page of formatted script is about equal to 1 minute of screentime, and gave me room to sketch thumbnails or make edits on the large margins!) If you're not a monologue/soliloque/dialogue/speech person and more an image and description person, you may lean more into visuals and scenes that cut to each other.

Either way this of course introduces the elephant in the panel: art! How do you choose what to draw?

The answer is, well, it depends! The freedom of comics is if you can imagine it, you can make it happen. You have the freedoms (and audio limitations) of a truly silent film with none of the physical limitations. Your words can move in real time with the images or they can be a narrative related to the scene or they could be nonsequitors entirely! The better question is how do you think? Do you need all the words and action written first before you break down the visuals? Do you need a panel by panel breakdown to be happy, or can you freewheel and translate from word and general outlines to thumbnails? What suits you? I really cannot answer this because I think when it comes to what goes where with regard to art, it's a bit of "how do you process visuals" and also a bit of "who's drawing this?" — effectively, who is the interpreter for the exact thing you are writing? Is it you or someone else? If it's you, would you benefit from a barebones script alongside thumbnailed paneling? Would you be served by a barebones script, then thumbnails, then a new script that includes panel and page breakdowns? What frees you up to do what you need to do to tell your story?

If I'm being honest, I don't necessarily worry about panels or what something will look like necessarily until I'm done writing. I may have an image that I clearly state needs to happen. I may even have a sequence of panels that I want to see and I do indeed sketch that out and make note of it in my script. But exactly how things will be laid out, paneled, situated? That could change up until I've sketched my final pencils in CSP (but I am writer and artist so admittedly I get that luxury.)

How do I compress from novel to comic?

Honest answer? You don't. Not really. You adapt from one to another. It's more a translation. Something that would take forever to write may take 1 page in a comic or may take a whole issue.

I'm going to pick on Victor Hugo. Victor Hugo spent a whole-ass book in Notre-Dame de Paris talking about a bird's eye view of Paris and other medieval architecture boring stuff, with I guess some foreshadowing with Montfaucon. Who cares. Not me. I like story. Anyway. When we translate that book to a movie any of the billion times someone's done that, we don't spend a billion years talking at length about medieval Paris. There's no great monologuing about the gibbet or whatever: you get to have some establishing shots, maybe a musical number, and then you move tf on. Because it's a movie, right? Your visuals are right there. We can see medieval Paris. We can see the cathedral. We can see the gibbet. We don't need a whole book: it's visually right there. Same with a comic: you may need many paragraphs to describe, say, a space station off of Sirius and one panel to show it.

On the flip side, you may take one line, maybe two, to say a character keyed in the special code to activate the holodeck; depending on the visual pacing, that could be a whole page of panels (are we trying to stretch time? slow it down? what are we emphasizing?) A character gives a sigh of relief — one line of text, yeah? That could be a frozen panel while a conversation continues on or that could be two (or more!) panels, similar to the direction [a beat] in screenwriting.

Sorry there's not a super easy answer there to the question of compression: it's a lot more of a tug, a push-pull, that depends on what you're conveying.

So Do I Have It In Me to Write & Draw a GN?

The only way you'll know is by doing. Scary, right? The thing is, you don't necessarily need to be an animation king or God's gift to background artists to draw a comic.

Hell, I hate backgrounds. I still remember sitting across from my friend who said "Claude you really need to draw an establishing exterior of the church at some point" and me being like "why do you hate me specifically" because drawing architecture? Again? I already drew the interior of the church altar ONCE, that should be enough, right? But I did draw an exterior of the church. Sorta. More like the top steeple. Enough to suggest what I needed to suggest to give the audience a better sense of place without me absolutely losing my gourd trying to render something out of my wheelhouse at the time.

And that's kinda the ticket, I think. Not everyone's a master draftsman. Not everyone has all the skills in every area. And regardless, from page one to page one hundred, your skills will improve. That's all part of it — and in the meantime, you should lean into your strengths and cheat where you can.

Do you need to lovingly render a background every single panel? Christ no! Does every little detail need to be drawn out? Sure if you want your hand to fall off. Cheat! Use Sketchup to build models! Use Blender to sculpt forms to paint over! Use CSP Assets for prebuilt models and brushes if you use CSP! Take photographs and manip them! Cheat! Do what you need to do to convey what you need to convey!

For instance, a tip/axiom/"rule" I've seen is one establishing shot per scene minimum and a corollary to that has been include a background once per page minimum as grounding (no we cannot all have eternal floating heads and characters in the void. Unless your comic is set in the void. In which case, you do you.) People ain't out here drawing hyper detailed backgrounds per each tiny panel. The people who DO do that are insane. Or stupid. Or both. Or have no deadline? Either way, someone's gonna have a repetitive stress injury... Save yourself the pain and the headache. Take shortcuts. Save your punches for the big K.O. moments.

Start small. Make an 8-page zine. Tell a beginning, a middle, an end in comic form. Bring a scene to life in a few pages. See what you're comfortable drawing and where you struggle. See where you can lean heavily into your comfort zones. Learn how to lean out of your comfort zone. Learn when it's worth it to do the latter.

Or start large. Technically my first finished comic (that wasn't "a dumb pencil thing I drew in elementary school" or "that 13 volume manga I outlined and only penciled, what, 7 pages of in sixth grade" or "random one page things I draw about my characters on throw up on the interwebz") was 99RM so what do I know. I'm just some guy on the internet.

(That's not self-deprecating, I literally am some guy on the internet talking about my path. A lot of this is gonna come down to you and what vibes with you.)

Resources on writing

Some of these are things that help me and some are things that I crowd-sourced from others. Some of these are going to be screenwriting based, some will be comic based.

Making Comics by Scott McCloud: I think everyone recommends this but I think it is a useful book if you're like "ahh!!! christ!! where do I start!!!???" It very much breaks down the elements of comics and the world they exist in and the principles involved, with the caveat that there are no rules! In fact, I need to re-read it.

Comic Book Design: I picked this up at B&N on a whim and in terms of just getting a bird's eye view of varied ways to tackle layout and paneling? It's such a great resource and reference! I personally recommend it as a way to really get a feel for what can be done.

the screenwriter's bible: this is a book that was used in my class. we also used another book that's escaping me but to be honest, I never read anything in school and that's why I'm so stupid. anyway, I'd say check it out if you want, especially if you start googling screenwriting stuff and it's like 20 billion pieces of advice that make 0 sense -- get the core advice from one place and then go from there.

Drawing Words & Writing Pictures: many people I know recommended this. I think I have it? It may be in storage. So frankly, I'd already read a bunch of books on comics before grabbing this that it kind of felt like a rehash. Which isn't shade on the authors — I personally was just a sort of "girl, I don't need comics 101!!!"

Invisible Ink: A Practical Guide to Building Stories that Resonate: this has been recommended so many times to me. I cannot personally speak on it but I can say I do trust those who rec'd it to me so I am passing it along

the story circle: this is pretty much the hero's journey. a useful way to think of journeys! a homie pretty much swears by it

a primer on beats: quick google search got me this that outlines storybeats

save the cat!: what the above refers to, this gives a more genre-specific breakdown. also wants to sell you on the software but you don't need that.

I hope this helps and please feel free to touch base with more info about your specific situation and hopefully I'll have more applicable answers.

[peachbear88]

Tale as Old as Time

A/N: Yes, it's basically Beauty and the Beast. I LOVE DISNEY MOVIES OKAY?

------------

You shiver on the cold stone of the jail cell, wrapping your cloak tighter around you. How did you end up in the jail cell? A series of long, unfortunate events.

------------

The door to your shabby home swings close as you prance down the cobble streets, book in hand.

"Little town,"

"It's a quiet village."

"Every day,"

"Like the one before."

"Little town,"

"Full of little people,"

"Waking up to say."

Windows are flung upon as the townspeople peer down at you.

"Bonjour!"

"Bonjour."

"Bonjour!"

"Bonjour!

"Bonjour."

A man with a long white apron proffers a tray of fresh, steaming buns towards you and you snatch one, nodding your thanks.

"There goes the baker with his tray like always,"

"The same old bread and rolls to sell."

He opens his mouth to protest but thinks better of it.

"Every morning just the same,"

"Since the morning that we came,"

"To this poor provincial town."

A man approaches you, tipping his hat.

"Good morning Y/N." You smile at his kind, pudgy face.

"Good morning Monsieur Hogan. Have you lost something?"

"Well, I believe I have. Problem is I can't remember what." He scratches his chin. "Oh well. I'm sure it'll turn up somewhere." His eyes float down to the book clutched in your hand. "Where you off to?"

"To return this book to Monsieur T'Challa. It's about 2 lovers in fair Verona." He snorts.

"Sounds boring."

You shrug and continue down the stone path towards the small town library.

"Look there she goes, that girl is strange no question."

A small band of boys watch you as you walk down the street.

"Dazed and distracted can't you tell?"

"Never part of any crowd,"

"'Cause her head's stuck on some cloud."

"No denying she's a funny girl that Y/N.”

The marketplace is bustling as usual as you slip through the many stalls. The familiar buzz of conversation fills your ears.

"Bonjour, good day, how is your family?"

"Bonjour, good day, how is your wife?"

"I need, 6 eggs."

"That's too expensive."

You sigh, spinning around.

"There must be more than this provincial life!"

You fling the door of the library open to find your second favorite person in the world, T'Challa, dusting the shelves.

"Ah, if it isn't the only bookworm in town! Where did you run off to this week?" He waves the duster at you, making you cough.

"Two cities in Northern Italy. I didn't want to come back. D'you have any new books?" You inquire, leaning over the small collection piled in the corner.

"I'm afraid not," He sighs. "But you may read any of the old ones you'd like."

You pick out your personal favorite.

"Your library makes our small corner of the world feel big." T’Challa smiles.

"Bon voyage!" He shouts as you close the door behind yourself.

"Look there she goes, that girl is so peculiar,"

"I wonder if she's feeling well." A scholar mused as you passed.

"With a dreamy far-off look,"

"And her nose stuck in a book."

"What a puzzle to the rest of us is Y/N."

You hop onto the stone wall of the well, still reading the book, nearly stepping on the hands of the laundresses cleaning on the edge of the well.

"Oh, isn't this amazing?" You twirl around on the stone wall, earning many disgruntled looks from the laundresses. "It's my favorite part because, you'll see." You hop off the stone wall, continuing down the path back to your home. "Here's where she meets Prince Charming, but she won't discover that it's him, till chapter 3."

"Now it's no wonder that her nickname is Beauty,"

"Her looks have got no parallel."

A disgruntled mother says, her fair daughters standing behind her, glaring daggers at you.

"But behind that fair facade,"

"I'm afraid she's rather odd."

"Very different from the rest of us,"

"She's nothing like the rest of us,"

"Yes, different from the rest of is Y/N!"

Peering through his golden telescope at you, Steve Rogers sighs from atop his handsome horse.

"Look at her Sam. My future wife." He hands Sam the telescope who accepts it rather reluctantly. "Belle is the most beautiful girl in the village. Makes her the best." He whispers confidentially, waggling his eyebrows. Sam cringes.

"But she's so... well-read. And you're so..." He looks Steve up and down. "Athletically-inclined." Steve waves him off, setting his horse at a healthy trot towards the town.

"Yes, ever since the war, I felt like I've been missing something. She's the only girl that has ever given me that sense of..."

"Je ne sais quoi?" Sam proffers. Steve scoffs, entering the village.

"I don't know what that means."

"Right from the moment when I met her, saw her,"

"I said she's gorgeous and I fell."

"Here is town there's only she,"

"Who is beautiful as me."

"So I'm making plans to woo and marry Y/N."

The fair girls from before swoon as Steve walks by, who only has eyes for you.

"Look there he goes,"

"Isn't he dreamy?"

"Monsieur Rogers!"

"Oh he's so cute!"

"Be still my heart,"

"I'm hardly breathing,"

"He's such a tall, dark, strong and handsome brute!"

They shriek in disgust as Steve hops off his horse, splattering them with mud. Sam hops off his horse as well.

"It's never going to happen ladies." He whispers as they whimper in distress.

"Bonjour!"

"Pardon!" Steve attempts to push through the crowds to get to you.

"Good day!"

"Mais oui!"

"You call this bacon?"

"What lovely flowers!"

"Some cheese, ten yards, one pound-"

"Please let me through!" He grabs a bouquet of flowers from a nearby stall.

"This bread."

"Those fish!"

"It's stale!"

"They smell."

"Madame's mistaken!"

"Well maybe so-"

You burst through the masses of people, twirling as you reach your home.

"There must be more than this provincial life!"

Steve slicks back his hair, approaching you at a smart pace.

"Just watch, I'm going to make Y/N my wife!"

The town resumes their unashamed staring at you.

"Look there she goes the girl is strange but special,"

"A most peculiar mademoiselle!"

"It's a pity and a sin,"

"She doesn't quite fit in."

"'Cause she really is a funny girl,"

"A beauty but a funny girl,"

"She really is a funny girl,"

"That Y/N."

The townsfolk resume their normal quarrel and haggling as you slip through the flimsy gate and through your cabbage patch. Steve follows.

"Y/N!" You turn to find Steve flashing you what he thinks is a dashing smile. You recoil in disgust, instantly speeding up your pace, hoping to get inside before he can get to you. A flood of hope grips you as your hand wraps around the door handle but a strong arm grips your other wrist and you deflate.

Sighing, you turn to face Steve.

"Yes Monsieur Rogers?" He flashes a greasy smile your way and shoves the flowers into your face.

"For your dinner table! May I join you tonight?"

At least he has the manners to ask, you think.

"Not tonight, no." He deflates slightly.

"Oh. Busy?" You wince, prying his fingers off your wrist.

"Not exactly."

"Oh. Then why not-" You cut him off.

"Listen, I really have to go. Books to read, places to explore, people to ignore." You open the door, sliding in and closing it before he can follow you. "Good bye."

---------------

You sigh with relief, taking a moment to catch your breath before continuing further into your home. A drawing pinned to the drawing board catches your eye. A charcoal sketch of you. Well, baby you to be exact. A smile graces your lips as you tear your eyes away from the sketch and to your father, Tony Stark. He hums a small tune as he tinkers with an elegant music box.

"How does a moment last forever?"

"How can a story never die?"

"It is love we must hold onto,"

"Never easy, but we try."

"Sometimes our happiness is captured,"

"Somehow our time and place stand still."

"Love lives on inside our hearts,"

"And always will."

You wrap your arms around him and he smiles.

"Hello papa."

"Hello Y/N. D'you think you could pass me the-" You roll your eyes, handing him the tool before he finishes his sentence. "-tweezers- Oh. Thank you." He pulls a broken cog from the music box. "And now, something long and thin-" You pull the hairpin from your hair and hand it to him. He glances at it and a smirk grows on his face. "No, no, not quite-" He glances at the machine again. "Actually, yes, exactly."

With a final prod, the music box comes to life once again. The two of you share a small smile before he shoves it into his leather satchel and hauls it outside. You follow him, watching as he loads it into a rickety wooden cart along with a few other items. Your horse, Elm scuffs the cobbled pathways with his hooves, eager to get a move on.

"Well, I'm off to the market dear. Anything you'd like me to get for you?" You smile, leaning against the horse as Tony swings his leg over the horse to straddle it.

"A rose." He scoffs, tipping his hat down to you.

"You ask for that every year!"

"And you bring it ever year." You retort and he smiles, giving you a quick peck on the forehead.

"Very well. A rose you shall receive. I'll see you in a few days!" With a flick of his wrists, Elm starts off at a trot and Tony waves goodbye one more time.

"Be careful," You whisper as he disappears from your sight. With a sigh, you return to the house.

-------------

You throw your dirty clothes into a barrel, adding some soap rinds into the mix before carrying it to the town well and rigging it to a horse which marches around the well. You smile proudly at your handy work. Self sufficient laundry machine.

Leaning against the wooden support beam with a sigh, you pull out your book and start reading. A small voice next to you grabs your attention.

"What are you doing?" You smile at her.

"Laundry. Come, come!" You pat the spot next to you encouragingly. Tentatively, she sits next to you and you hand her the book.

-------------

The pastor storms towards you and the little girl.

"Teaching another girl to read? Isn't one enough?" He sneers. You glare back at him, snapping your book closed indignantly.

"Nothing wrong with wanting to know more."

"We've got to do something about this." His wife mutters.

Before you can comprehend the meaning of her words, a man pulls your barrel of clothes out of the well and throws them to the ground, spilling the contents everywhere. You fall to your knees, scrambling to pick up the clothes as others laugh at you.

------------

"Wow. You are so beautiful. No wonder everyone wants to marry you. So dashing." Steve whispers seductively, flexing in front of the mirror. Sam clears his throat causing Steve to jump. "What do you want Sam?"

"A certain damsel in distress awaits you." He quirks an eyebrow, gesturing with his head to where you crouch, gathering your sopping wet garments. He turns back to the mirror, slicking his hair back.

"It's hero time. I'm not done with you yet." He winks at the mirror before rushing to you. Sam leans into the frame of the mirror.

"Me neither."

------------

From the corner of your eye, you spot Steve approaching rapidly. Gathering the last of your clothes, you scurry away.

"Ah Y/N!" You groan at your luck. "I heard you got in trouble with the pastor. S'all right. He never liked me anyways."

You groan in frustration.

"I was just teaching a child to read!" He smirks, sliding closer. You step back.

"The only children you should be concerning yourself with are..." He gestures between the two of you. You arch an eyebrow. "Your own!" You scoff, slipping through the gate and into the cabbage patch. He jumps over the flimsy gate and stomps towards you, squashing at least 4 cabbages. You watch him with barely disguised disgust.

"Look, you know what happens to girls when their fathers die? They end up like poor Agatha, forced to beg for scraps!" He points at Agatha, a rather kind but unlucky woman.

"Well, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it." You reply coldly.

"Look, let me make it simpler for your tiny female brain." He growls. You arch an eyebrow at his choice of words. "Marry me and you will never have to deal with that." You scoff.

"Marry you? I'd rather marry a rock." You slam the door in his face. He sighs, rubbing his face with a calloused hand. Dejected, he walks back to where Sam stands. You glare at him from where you stand on the balcony.

"Can you imagine, me, the wife of that boorish, brainless..."

"Madame Rogers,"

"Can't you just see it?"

"Madame Rogers,"

"His little wife."

You groan in disgust.

"No sir, not me,"

"I guarantee it,"

"I want much more than this provincial life!"

You sprint towards the green hills a good distance from the walls of the village.

"I want adventure in the great wide somewhere,"

"I want it more than I can tell."

"And for once it might be grand,"

"To have someone understand,"

"I want so much more than they've got planned..."

You sigh, running a grime covered hand through your hair before returning to your home.

---------------

You're pulling the ripe cabbages from the ground when it all comes crashing down.

A panicked whine comes from beside you. Your head shoots up to find Elm, pawing at the gate nervously.

"Elm? Where is papa?" Elm rears back, clearly skittish. "Take me to him!

---------------

You arrive at a monstrous looking castle, stone gargoyles with vicious fangs guarding the doors. You gulp, brandishing a large stick. The door handle is cool to the touch, sending shivers down your spine. You enter to find a well lit entrance hall, adorned with brilliant paintings and sculptures, although in the dark, they appear much more menacing.

With a gulp, you continue on, bringing the massive stick a little closer.

"Look Doctor Strange! A girl!" A voice whispers from the shadows.

"Yes I know it's a girl! I can see." A second, older voice snaps.

You whirl around but all you see is a flash of misty blue. Squaring your shoulders, you prepare yourself to investigate the blue wisps when a rough cough sounds out from above.

"Papa!" You race up the winding stairs into a much more sinister looking tower. Laying there on the cold stone floor is your father, his face pale and body shaking with each cough. The cold sunlight illuminates his face and he jumps up, grabbing the metal bars of his cell.

"Y/N, what are you doing here?" You shake out of stupor, smacking the iron bars in a futile attempt to free him.

"I'm here to rescue you." Fear floods his features.

"No! You must get out of here! I'm old and my days are numbered. But you, you're young and you have so much to live for. Go, get out of here before she comes back!" You scrunch your face.

"She?" Massive footsteps echo from further up the stairwell. You raise the stick in front of you. A tall shadow appears on the stone walls of the tower. You gulp, inching forward but the figure stays in the shadows.

"You should not have come," A heavily accented voice rings out and your throat dries up.

"I had to. He's my father. Please, let him go." You call back but the figure scoffs.

"Your father is a thief!"

"Liar!" You cry.

"He stole a rose."

"I asked for that rose!"

An idea forms in your head and you slowly lower the stick. "Wait. What if you let him go and I take his place?"

"No! She means forever!" Your eyes widen.

"You monster! A life sentence for a rose?"

The woman laughs humorlessly.

"I was given a life sentence when I was little. Do you think I deserved it? You may call me a monster but trust me, I've been called much worse." You sigh, the gears in your brain whirring.

"Can I at least have a moment to say goodbye to my father?" The voice grunts and the shadow recedes. "Are you so cruel you won't even allow a daughter to kiss her father goodbye?" The figure pauses but slowly comes back down and into the light. Your throat dries up at the sight.

A beautiful girl in a blood red cape with auburn hair that burned in the torchlight, you felt your ears flush bright red. With a flick of her fingers, a red mist surrounds them and the metal gate swings open.

Your eyes grow wide at the display.

Magic.

You don't have time to think about it however as a strong set of arms wrap around you.

"Y/N!"

"Papa!" The two of you embrace as you discreetly waddle around so that his back is to the cell door.

"Y/N, listen to me. You have so much to live for. I lost your mother already and I can not lose you too. Live your life! Forget about me." He whispers into your hair and you feel a tear slip down your cheek.

"I will never forget you Papa. And don't worry. I will find a way out of here." His eyes widen before you push him through the threshold of the cell and slam the door behind him. He stumbles, falling onto his back, betrayal clear in his eyes.

"Y/N!" The woman stares at you for a moment, disbelief glimmering in her eyes before it disappears.

"You fool." She spits. Your father watches you with wide, horrified eyes. The woman grabs him roughly and drags him down the stairwell, his screams echoing off the walls.

"Papa! Don't hurt him!" A sob escapes your throat as you curl into a ball, wrapping your cloak further around yourself to preserve the warmth.

------------

You sigh, shivering as a cool gust of wind hits your back.

'Forever damned to freeze in a cell. Some adventurous life this is' You think to yourself as sleep claims you.

-------------

Taglist: @username23345 @musicinourlips @gingerbreadcookieforlife @xxxtwilightaxelxxx @ima-gi--na-tion @nicole-rayleigh-hot @olsensnpm @peabrain112

[mediaevalmusereads]

The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics. By Olivia Waite. New York: Avon Impulse, 2019.

Rating: 2.5/5 stars

Genre: historical romance, wlw romance

Part of a Series? Yes, Feminine Pursuits #1

Summary: As Lucy Muchelney watches her ex-lover’s sham of a wedding, she wishes herself anywhere else. It isn’t until she finds a letter from the Countess of Moth, looking for someone to translate a groundbreaking French astronomy text, that she knows where to go. Showing up at the Countess’ London home, she hoped to find a challenge, not a woman who takes her breath away.

Catherine St Day looks forward to a quiet widowhood once her late husband’s scientific legacy is fulfilled. She expected to hand off the translation and wash her hands of the project—instead, she is intrigued by the young woman who turns up at her door, begging to be allowed to do the work, and she agrees to let Lucy stay. But as Catherine finds herself longing for Lucy, everything she believes about herself and her life is tested.

While Lucy spends her days interpreting the complicated French text, she spends her nights falling in love with the alluring Catherine. But sabotage and old wounds threaten to sever the threads that bind them. Can Lucy and Catherine find the strength to stay together or are they doomed to be star-crossed lovers?

***Full review under the cut.***

Content Warnings: sexism, allusions to homophobia

Overview: I feel like I’m in the minority of not loving this book as much as I wanted to. Based on content alone, it should have been a perfect storm for me: a historical sapphic romance, a lady scientist, debates about the value of art and women’s contributions... but while the romance genre doesn’t have nearly enough wlw stories, representation alone wasn’t enough to sustain my interest in this novel. It had the threads of a good story - something along the lines of The Countess Conspiracy or The Suffragette Scandal - but in my opinion, too much of the focus was on needless interpersonal drama, which left the plot dragging for the bulk of the story. So though the representation is great, and there are a number of feminist themes that I think are valuable, I didn’t enjoy this book enough to give it more than 2 or 3 stars.

Writing: Waite’s prose is about what you’d expect from the romance genre. It’s simple and straightforward, getting to the point without leaving the reader wondering what’s going on. My main criticism would perhaps be that Waite sometimes does a little head-hopping in the middle of a chapter without a section break. One minute, we’ll be seeing things from Lucy’s POV, and the next, we’ll get something from Catherine, then back to Lucy. It was a little jarring, but not too distracting - I could still immerse myself in the story ok.

Plot: The Lady’s Guide follows Lucy Muchelney as she translates, expands, and publishes M. Oleron’s Mechanique celeste (an astronomy text) under the patronage of Lady Catherine St. Day, Countess of Moth. After being rebuffed by the male members of the Polite Science Society, Lucy endeavors to render her own translation in hopes of educating readers who are interested in astronomy, but may not have had access to the range of texts needed to understand Oleron’s work. Catherine, for her part, funds the printing of Lucy’s work, while also discovering her own value as an embroiderer.

On the surface, this plot had all the things I love: women in science, valuing women’s art, a social commentary on patriarchy. But despite the interesting threads, I didn’t feel as if Waite used them to the greatest advantage. Aside from a few scenes, there wasn’t a lot of external pressure from the Polite Society; any drama that arose from their sexism was easily dismissed or avoided with a trip to the country, and I felt as if sexism in this book was more of a nuisance than a threat. This isn’t to say I wanted the characters to be constantly suffering or be miserable from an onslaught of male meddling, but I would like to have seen more of a sustained plotline where the Polite Society attempts to thwart Lucy’s efforts, thereby creating more suspense and giving Lucy and Catherine some external challenges to face together.

I also think the subplots could have been strengthened so that they enhanced the main conflict. The plot involving Eliza, the maid with a talent for sketching, was a good parallel to Catherine’s arc, which involved finding and rewarding women’s talents in art, but Eliza wasn’t a compelling character on her own, nor did I think Catherine reflect enough on the paradox of how she encouraged Eliza but not herself. I also think more could have been done with Lucy’s brother, Stephen, so that his meddling in Lucy’s career paralleled the Polite Society’s - just in a more subtle way, thereby showing different forms of sexism. Granted, there is a little of that, but like the Polite Society, Stephen pops up at convenient times before disappearing a page or two later.

Characters: I hate to say it, but I didn’t feel as if I could connect to the characters. Lucy, one of our heroines, is a mathematician and astronomer who inspires Catherine to see herself as an artist... and that’s mostly it. I guess she’s also bold and headstrong, but honestly, she felt more like an archetype than a fully-fledged character.

Catherine, for her part, is meek on account of being mistreated by her husband, but has brilliant skills as an embroiderer and is generous with her financial support. I did like the depth that Catherine had with regards to her insecurity over whether or not she could call herself an artist, and I liked that she respected Lucy’s feelings and didn’t allow her desires to be too selfish. But I also felt like she had no ambition or desires of her own until maybe 75% of the way through the book, and she mainly existed to support Lucy.

Side characters were hit or miss. I liked the idea of Eliza, the maid who gets to put her drawing skills to use as an engraver, but she wasn’t a fully-fleshed out character and didn’t hold my interest on her own. Stephen, Lucy’s brother, had the potential to be interesting, as he is an artist and acts as a foil to Lucy in many ways, but he flits in and out of the story as needed. Even Lucy’s ex, Pricilla, seems only to exist to make petty drama; there was no pining, no angst, and I didn’t see why Lucy had once loved her. There wasn’t even any commentary on how both Pris and Catherine were blond women who were skilled at embroidery.

Polite Society members had the potential to be good antagonists, but because their appearances were so contained, I don’t think they were used to their full potential. They provided some nice commentary, but I would have liked to see them meddle more often in Lucy’s translation process.

Romance: This is personal preference: I don’t like it when the love interests get together too early in the story. It usually means the rest of the romance is going to revolve around petty drama, and I think that’s what I got here. Lucy and Catherine become a couple some 25% of the way through the book, and for the life of me, I couldn’t see why they wanted to be together other than they were interested in women and happened to be sharing a house. Over time, their reasons for loving one another became a little more clear: Lucy loves that Catherine believes in her and lets her forge her own path, whereas Catherine loves that Lucy values her skills and lifts her up, rather than dismissing her (as Catherine’s deceased husband did). While these are certainly nice, I wanted there to be a little more to their romance. Because they got together so quickly, there was very little pining, very little growth in their affections.

I also think all the angst and relationship drama that happened after they got together was a little tedious. Lucy spends some time pining for her ex, which causes Catherine to be jealous. Catherine also sees the relationship as being incompatible at one point because Lucy likes science and she likes art, so of course that means they’re on different paths that can’t be reconciled. Most of the barriers to the relationship could have been overcome by either talking it out or getting to know one another a little better, so rather than good tension (in the form of suspense), I felt like there was pointless tension. I would have much rather seen Waite dive into the very real concerns, such as the economic inequality between them or the lack of permanence that comes with not being able to marry - I think those are real, life-altering concerns that could have tied in well with the non-romance plot, but unfortunately, those concerns seemed to be resolved a little too neatly.

TL;DR: Despite having some much-needed wlw representation and a number of feminist themes, The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics does little to cultivate a compelling plot and relies on misunderstandings to drive the romantic tension.

[soysaucevictim]

Week 3. I’m... struggling.

-

May 1

I tried to get some sleep in after the all-nighter a bit before 9AM... “got up” around 3PM. This to mean I lied down and didn’t really get any proper sleep, because mind was racing about that project.

But resting was still okay. After I got back up and updated some logs, I did today’s exercise...

First, today’s DD. 50 squats with EC. Manageable, moderately aerobic work. One of the last things I did before things went pear-shaped...

I shortly after found out I lost a family member and I saw what happened. I’m not going to describe it here, for many reasons. But I’ve been dealing with the images and emotional pain since... I probably will in some fashion, for a long time.

Last, Day 13 of BREATH. “Feel“. Yoga was emotionally uncomfortable as hell... but I brought myself to the mat accepting that I was going in feeling extremely tender in that dept. Let’s just say there were some waterworks and a very real sense of survivor’s guilt. That’s all I’m going to say there.

I tried to deal with things with chatting and discretionary venting on Twitter...

I forced myself through another all-nighter to finish that sewing project. Fought against images and waves of intense emotions to keep going. I don’t think I would’ve succeeded at sleeping through the night anyways.

-

May 2

I tried to sleep again round 8AM - it was more just physical rest till like 10AM. Too restless.

Touched base on what happened with a family member. They were... all of us were... are distraught.

I had a more successful attempt at sleeping for a couple hours after that. Honestly, painful. But it was mutually beneficial and necessary. Probably made the nap easier.

Shortly after, I endeavored to get some working out done.

First, today’s DD. 50 climber taps with EC. Ngl, it took a little psyching myself up to get down and do this. As expected, really started feeling the abs in the last 10-20 reps.

Second, Day 14 of BREATH. “Space“. This was less emotionally fraught - even though there were moments wrapping up that I had twangs of sorrow. It’s too soon to let everything I’m going to need to go... but I imagine, there will be in the future. Too raw and in pain to manage that yet. I did like the back arch balance stands and toe stand moments, the most.

Last, Day 13 of 1′HIIT. Level 3, 1′ rest. Had phone on floor because it was all planks. My climbers ran at more of a jog than a sprint - but then again energy levels wasn’t up to that. The last 2 sets in particular that were the hardest.

Made dinner, did some dishes, chatted and started on that vent art of Virgil to help process things a little. I basically pulled another all-nighter.

-

May 3

I decided to let care team know about what happened with a local crisis unit/line, before trying to get some sleep.

I woke up proper around 3PM, I think this was modestly more restful.

After some of the usual... was both somewhat relieved and distressed when one of the family member’s friends called his phone. We were able to let his circle know what happened.

I then got to some exercise again.

First, today’s DD. 1′ elbow clicks with EC. I counted 74 reps by the end of the duration. Manageable and simple.

Second, Day 15 of BREATH. “Enter“. Despite walking into this having eaten a lot of wasabi peas - I  elected to do full planks and kept back knee raised for high lunge variations upon Adriene’s invitation to. It was nice getting into a sort of flow - gathering what we were going to do next before Adriene instructed a few times.

Last, Day 14 of 1′HIIT. Level 3, 1′ rest. The squat hops were honestly the brutal part, today. Was tempted to not shoot for Level 3, but decided to anyways. Just glad I completed it, today.

Did some of the usual, made some dinner, and finished up that drawing.

I stayed up obscenely late, but not another all-nighter.

-

May 4

I woke up around 11AM.

Touched base with therapist on the phone. Made a mortuary appointment and asked family to help get me (and Dad) to that appointment later in the week.

Hit the showers, met some more family in person.

Did some of the usual before deciding to add, sort, and transfer the contents of my Anxiety Box into Virgil’s jar. I also decided to start filling the Patton jar with some things I was grateful for. I think this was helpful.

I dusted off Facebook for the first time in like years. Saw that his friends have been pouring condolences onto his page. I was pretty disconnected from his circle of friends... wound up adding many of the ones I recognized hearing about. This was a painful straddle between gratefulness and sorrow.

Had to field another call on his phone. That hurt too. I kind of wished I could unlock it.

I then got going on my workouts, pretty late...

First, today’s DD. 1′ raised leg circles with EC (supine). I counted a total of 45 reps, reversing the direction at the 30″ mark. Doable despite needing to hold head up.

Second, Day 16 of BREATH. “Discipline“. This was an extremely chill day - focusing on extending and slowing down the breaths... definitely well-timed given how tiring/harrowing today has been.

Last, Day 15 of 1′HIIT. Level 3, 1′ rest. Just arm work, I’d say these days are amongst the easiest to get through. Again, good for energy levels.

I wound up in bed around the same time as yesterday.

-

May 5

I woke up around 11AM again.

I went to Seeking Safety Group again. I wanted and needed to be there. That’s all I’m going to say on that one.

Got home, almost dozing off. But spent all day and night hanging out with a local friend.

I did some dishes and made one of the Hello Fresh Meal. Creamy pesto grillng cheese ciabattas. Me and friend really enjoyed this one.

Among many things - I think sharing DWIT and the first half of “The Poisoner’s Handbook“ were some of the highlights.

We wound up talking the night away, despite it not being the best idea.

Oh well, the bed was made at that point.

-

May 6

So one of the first things I had to deal with was a morning dental appointment. It was a nice appointment, talked about things with discretion. I’m hoping it may get a tiny bit easier to talk about for it. (Obviously NOT oversharing to anyone and everyone.)

Grabbed some Starbucks and had to get frustrated with LogistiCare, in activating my return trip home. I was honestly getting close to collapse of exhaustion by the time it got to me. (Not going to blame anyone really... it was unfortunate for how bone tired I was.)

Got home and took a short nap, before the mortuary appointment.

I kind of didn’t want to - but after that, I was roped into seeing extended family. It  was nice but also further exhausting. But I will say that a highlight was being able to share with my great uncle a series about the Spanish Flu. He likes history stuff and learned a lot of new things about that situation - also was nice tying it in with his interest in stuff like the WW. (Also glad and was struck by all the observed parallels with, uh, what’s been happening with COVID. But I’ll leave it at that.)

Medical history and the like was a welcome distraction. Especially the fact that that great uncle was an interested party to share it to.

Got home again and spent some of the night on the usual and decided that I was only up for catching up on my DDs...

First, yesterday’s DD. 40 side bridges with EC. It was questionable, given sheer level of exhaustion. But I felt like catching up on SOME of my regimen anyways..

Last, today’s DD. 40 windshield with EC. Same thoughts about previous exercise.

Updated some logs and stuff before hitting the sack. In the green zone for once, yet again. I was just so profoundly exhausted at that point.

-

May 7

I woke up around 11AM.

One the first things I wound up doing was fielding a lot of phone calls to get other appointment-related affairs handled.

Spent some time on the usual and sketching an art idea out that I’m not sure I’ll flesh out just yet. It’s kind of detail-intensive.

Then, I decided to catch up on my exercise regimen.

First, today’s DD. 2′ bicep extensions with EC. I counted 155 reps by the end of it. Biceps felt pretty tired after that one, at that pace. But very doable.

(After watching some YouTube and whatnot...)

Second, Day 17 of BREATH. “Explore“. Man, was this intense on my quads for my energy levels today. But I tried my best to get through it as best as possible. I think the chair poses were especially intense.

Third, Day 18 of BREATH. “Center“. This was alright. I liked the calf raise hold stuff and a lot more of the chill stuff today. Warriors were okay. Still have a ways to go to pull off Crow Pose, but that is a challenging one, for sure.

(After a lot of usual stuff...)

Fourth, Day 16 of 1′HIIT. Level 3, 1′ rest. Intense, but I enjoyed the fact this was mostly jumping jacks. Think the twist jacks were the weirdest part. Got fairly winded by the end.

(After making/eating some dinner and watching some videos for that to settle...)

Last, Day 17 of 1′HIIT.Level 3, 1′ rest. A bit more strength-oriented leg work - what with the leg raises and lunges. Glad I didn’t have to worry too much about doing this in a semi-full stomach (butt kicks do some jostling but generally not as much as like high knees).

I spent some time watching/listening to videos and updating some logs after this.

I got to bed pretty late in the red again... but not an all-nighter.

[redantsunderneath]

folklore

fokalore is Taylor Swift’s Darkness on the Edge of Town – the first thing you notice about this record is the point of view(s). ��The usual approach to any Swift song is to assume the subjective orientation is all her’s and then to ask, situationally, who/what/where is she singing about. Lover took this to its natural conclusion – a cultivated megalomania where her relationship to her partners and fans expand to cover the nature of America itself.  Here, however, even on a first listen, it is obvious that a number of the songs can’t be her, and on a second you start to doubt that any are.  The jump here is most analogous to the jump between Springsteen’s early career magnum opus Born to Run, which brought his epic street folk tales of his life lived in and around The City to full flower, and the southern literature infused “stories of other lives lived” of Darkness on the Edge of Town that carves out a broader American mythology from the third person and the suggestion that these are things that have resonance to his life, that none of the songs are about him but all of them together are, somehow.  The album seems tied together like something between Everything that Rises Must Converge and Visit from the Goon Squad.  

Wait, no... folklore is Taylor Swift’s Inland Empire – structure is all important in a serious TS effort, which this is.  1989’s cosine wave of relationship’s downhill slope and Kubler-Ross recovery (Fire Walk with Me’s horrific fall and redemption) and Lover’s 1st 2/3 exploration of the symbolic order ending in a crash with the last 1/3 a negotiation with the real (Mulholland Drive) give way to something rhizomal (more specifically fractal) with meaning derived from connections like a box of photos from multiple people whose stories connect in variable ways, forming a vortex of a story no individual part of which is entirely consistent with any other.  The central story, that keeps echoing around and out is of a love triangle with an infidelity that acquires a folk tale resonance and haunts everything.   This would also describe Inland Empire.

There is no dearth of online commentary on connections to her life.  She bought a mansion in Rhode Island, and last great american dynasty is about the history of the house, with its Jazz age parties and imagery, and the mad woman at the center living her party forever lifestyle. epiphany is about her grandfather’s war experiences as related to current heathcare work in the time of COVID.  Inez, James and Betty (the named characters in the central story) are the names of Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively’s daughters.  invisible string, the only definitive song from her non-hoax POV is full of allusions to her relationship with Joe Alwyn. The opening track, the 1, has been shouted from the rooftop by the Swift camp as being about “a friend” not her, which you would be hard pressed to know is you weren’t putting in the extranoematic effort.  But the core trio of songs, the most “character” based are cardigan, august, and betty, which tell the core of a story about three teenagers from each POV (the cheated on, the cheated with, and the cheater respectively), two of which have been in love for a while, who threaten to fall apart after one has a fling with a third party, and who may make it work after all. It is significantly unspecified what gender James is.

Around this swarm another group of songs that seem to apply, whether they are strictly about the same people or not.  seven seems like backstory for the triangle with some Swift specificity.  this is me trying seems like a version of an apology in the story, but with whiskey that suggests it’s happening to someone older.  illicit affairs is about the fling, but it began in expensive rooms (though it ended ended up in the mall parking lots of the core songs). mad woman serves to connect last great american dynasty to my tears ricochet (which is pointedly from the POV of the tormentor of a Swift-like figure, but she’s identifying with both) which also feels like the unnamed other woman of the main triangle’s ultimate fate. Again, no genders.

The unities are created with a few tidy motifs, threads through the work that sometimes reach back to other works.  The roaring 20s/Great Gatsby (remember This is Why We Can’t have nice things and the 4th of July parties), how “they” think the young know nothing, the hero being gone (from “the film”) so what’s the story now, parking lots, cobblestones, streetlamps, summer as a liminal frame, axes and knives, warmth for the ex that has a family now, kingdoms, cliffsides, the idea of an agitating presence being a feature-not-bug, blue referring to her boyfriend and sadness both… It’s a nice web.

What about the remaining tracks?  exile is a biblical abstraction of the broken relationship; it connects to everything (it’s the rabbit scenes from Inland Empire). mirrorball is an example of one of my favorite TS things, the song about how her “self” may not exist since she only exists as a reflective, fragmented surface (this directly contrasts to the project of the rest of the album). Epiphany is a parallel drawing of a line from the early 20th century to today, a nod to real death as a contrast to emotional death. Invisible string is the only “true” song on the album.  Peace is an attempt to put the set of ideas to bed, however uncomfortably.

But the bracketing (first and last) songs are interesting.  The album was complete, the story goes, and she wrote the two in an evening to put a parenthesis around the whole project.  On a first listen, you can’t help but ask “is this a breakup album? Are her and Joe done?”  The last song would seem to underscore this.  Seemingly written as her, she existentially wails about “your” faithless love being the only hoax she believes in. But, as is the case so often here, the identity is unclear. Is it him?  Her audience? Herself?  But the title of the song is hoax. It’s just vague enough that you can suspect it’s about the search for meaning through the process of songwriting, and that everything you’ve just heard is a lie but is still oh so true. You are prepared for this after the first song, the 1, which seems to be about her, and would act to unify the album under the umbrella of her attempt at distancing from an event at a 4thof July party (her summer parties at her RI house were legendary), but we have been repeatedly told in the press that it is in fact not about her but about a friend (Selena Gomez?).  The framing of opening with a bait and switch and ending with “hoax” calls into question the reality of everything.

Moments snap together like magnets lego.  The album is deeply retropseudonostalgic, accent on the algos. She’s sorting through other people’s stories that speak to her (that feel like a piece of her), putting on her theory of mind hat and trying to compassionately inhabit them,  and building an elaborate fantasy of heartbreak and healing that she knows people will project onto her. The gender is left fluid, and the album doesn't have lesbian overtones as much as is completely identity agnostic.  The line through mirrorball and hoax is the axis the album rotates around, producing an inversion of her obsession – instead of her subjectivity dominating to the extent that she doesn’t exist except as a conscious hologram implied by the event horizon of her public image, being cut off from the feedback loop has forced her to inhabit the perspectives of others that occupy all points in a large story in which she can see a sketch of herself from the outside.  

[fenrir-drifter]

Inktober and projects updates

Edit: I dont know how to put a cut in a post on mobile. Sorry for the wall of text.

I'm getting super behind. Sometimes I can sketch stuff out, but I dont feel like inking it. Idk. I got the time, can't go back to work still, still looking for something new and better.

Shadow, Cyan, and Gau are all ready to be inked. Terra, Locke, Edgar, Sabin, and Celes are all done. I'm debating about when to post them here. Maybe do two batches of six drawings. I won't be drawing Umaro or Gogo until the very end, and that's also a big maybe. Maybe add General Leo and Kefka to that list too. After I get Setzer, Strago, Relm, and Mog inked, I'll start working on the Chrono Trigger cast.

As far as personal projects go, I've kind of taking a break from all of them. Between Inktober, stressing about bills and when I can go back to work, finding another/new job, and painting, it's hard to find time. Especially when you lump anxiety, depression, and RL chores and surprises into all of that.

The Witch's son - I had originally planned for this to be a webcomic and I have the plot outline more or less finished. I just got hung up on environment art and character designs. That being said though, I also have to rewrite the entire outline because I changed one key character for another. But really, those changes will be minimal. The biggest issue holding me back is probably a lack of confidence of my drawing ability for comics. After the character art and reference sheets are done, I need to thumbnail the entire outline, and work on paneling. I think I can do it, I'm just too nervous. On top of that I also keep thinking about prequel and sequel ideas, but I know I need to focus on this one project. My ultimate goal right now is to just get the prologue done. If it looks good and it gets some attention, then I'll keep working on it, if not then I'll come back later when I feel better about my drawing ability and work on it some more.

The Dirigible - I haven't worked on this project in years, and I don't know what I want it to be. I had thought about setting it in the same world as the witch's son, just to cut down world-building, locations, and all that, but I'm not 100% sure yet. I don't know if I want this to be a comic, or a short story, or a novel, or something else.

Fenrir Drifter - I've been doing some world building for this for quite a bit, but I'm getting hung up on key details that may or may not be relevant, I'm not sure yet. Things like race, origin stories, and deities. I had originally planned for there to be four races: human, dwarf, elf, and a winged race (like from Breath of Fire), but then I wanted to add an ancestor race to give the world more depth. My four main races would have evolved from these races and these four races were created by four Guardian deities who were in turn created by the Divine Beings (Gods) of the world. The ancestor races we're going to be more animalistic than normal, but I was having issues with that. The elves were going to evolve from a race of deer-men that I had called Wakiti, the winged race (which I have called the Wyn race) was going to evolve from a race of birds who live on floating islands (called the Seva), and I was going to have humans evolved from a race of wolfmen, and dwarves evolved from a race of black bears.

But I'm not really sure about any of this now.

I also had a magic system in place that would mimic some ideas from Saga Frontier 2, where magic is a natural life force that's in everything and sometimes condensed in physical objects called quells. These quells could be anything from a necklace to an axe, a suit of armor, or a ring. I would have divine quells that are direct blessings from the four Guardian deities. On top of this I would have a champion of each deity who would wield a quell.

I was also working on a world map, but I got bogged down in that too because I wasn't sure, everything looks too perfect, too clean. On top of this I had issues determining history, I don't like the idea of any race being evil, that just parallels racism in the real world imo. But I know it's not true because you could make a race of monsters and they would just be that, literal monsters. But I had issues with their creation, because every diving bring (god and guardian) is good. I didn't want to corrupt any of them either. I'll figure it out though, in due time, I'm sure.

Castlevania 1 hand drawn guide - My main goal is to just get stage 1 complete. A fully rendered map with every item and secret marked, custom art for monsters and bosses, tips for bosses, a splash art for the stage, and some other things. It's basically a glorified Players Guide/Manual. I got the idea from a guy that made guides like this for Contra, Ninja Gaiden, and is working on a Legend of Zelda guide. Really cool and inspiring stuff, imo.

I also have some ideas for altering some FF6 stuff and making it a custom story. After I read Seven Blades in Black, I felt really inspired to write again, and take my own twists on things. Along with that, I'm reading the Witcher books and replaying Witcher 3, and I want to write some fanfic with my own OC Witcher of the Griffin School.

Aside from that, watercolor landscapes still happen, but not very often. I haven't posted any of them anywhere yet though. I kind of want to build a backlog, I'm also feeling kind of both gunshy and disheartened about posting stuff anymore. Trying to power through that for Inktober.

Idk, felt good to ramble for a bit like that. I don't do it anymore and can't really do it on Twitter without feeling guilty for spamming people. Health's okay, still healing from surgery. Mostly just mental and social issues at this point. There might even be a chance that my student loan will be completely wiped out. If I could just fix my car (hit a deer), find my cat, and seek therapy, things would be too good to be true, lol.

One step at a time.

[boyslaughplus]

Devlog #34 - Status Update, Character Design, and UI

Hello! It's time for another update on the development status of Brassica. It’s also our first actual devlog purely about Brassica!

After working on separate projects for a while, we are now in the process of getting back on track working on the same game again. Because of that we're happy to announce that the rest of Brassica's Act 2 will be released in March!

It grew a bit in size from what we originally planned but that just means more game for you~

The exact date will be announced when we can more clearly estimate how long the remaining tasks will take but we're in the process of finishing everything up so it shouldn't be too long.

As for Act 3, our current plan is to release it in April. From now on development should be a lot faster but because we mainly worked on it on the side until now, that is still only a rough estimate. We'll definitely keep you updated on any developments regarding the release dates though!

Well, and that's about it for the status update. Because it's been a while since our devlogs actually described much of our development process (and we haven't shared much about our thought processes behind Brassica), we decided to bring that back with today's devlog.

PECTIN will tell you a bit about Saffron and his design while eZombo describes the development of the UI. So without further ado, here we go:

Art - PECTIN

Saffron is the curious prince the player takes control of in Brassica. Before I began concepting him Felix and I defined his character. At this point we already knew he would be one of the princes Sappho tricks into going on the journey. (And would then fall in love with another prince because YaoiJam'18). We soon agreed on naming him Saffron. So I already associated the colours of the spice "saffron" with him here. We also wanted to make him a protagonist with his own personality. Thinking of the player who role-plays him we thought it would be cool to have his character split into three separate personalities he could have: - the cunning and a bit wild prince     -  the typical goody two-shoes type of hero     - and the soft boi who's overwhelmed by the whole predicament and really needs a hug Another external influence was, my intention  to try and fuse traditional things with modern sportswear. Brassica is a fairytale but it's told in a contemporary voice. That's where the idea came from. ...Okay. So I had his name, colours I could associate with him, the three archetypes and my goal to fuse sportswear with traditional clothing. Having all of these "pointers" I began looking for reference pictures. I browsed through online stores of popular sports brands to find things that would fit the character. Due to Saffron's character ranging from cute to rather untamed (in the sense that he would climb a tree without hesitation) I thought that wearing shorts would be most suitable and comfy. But for the top and the overall outfit I wanted to let myself get inspired by traditional elements. The name "Saffron" reminded me  of the spice and then its use in Indian culture. I never designed a character with Indian influences before and thought researching into that would be interesting. I found a lot of stuff I could translate into the design. Even the leggings Saffron wears were intially inspired by my findings about Indian culture. Here's a visual breakdown of what inspired what (excuse my srawly handwriting >-<):

During the process of drawing out his design, as I always do, I thought about how each component of the outfit would "flow". There're lot's of lines and intersections in his outfit that guide the eyes along the his body:

And here is our boy again as a sprite. Not much different right? Here I put one of his hands in his shorts' pocket, because I think it would suit someone who is either unsure and does that or feels liking hiding something.

That's it about Saffron! I could go on about his colours but I'll save that for when I explain the general artstyle of Brassica! :3

UI - eZombo

Because Brassica was planned as an entry for Yaoi Jam 2018, we thought about ways to keep the scope small. One idea we came up with was to reduce the size of the screen that shows backgrounds and characters so producing the art is a bit faster than filling a full HD 16:9 canvas. One inspiration for that was Sticky Zeitgeist by Porpentine & Rook but something like the Undertale console version where the graphics at the border of the screen change based on the in-game location was also something we considered.

When it came to actually planning the screen, Undertale's influence came through again, because the main area of the screen actually has an aspect ratio of 4:3. This obviously leaves a lot of unused screen space but one thing we knew we could definitely use to fill this was the text box. Having it separate from the main screen also made sure that it didn't overlap with the characters or backgrounds so the space that was reserved for that could be used to its full potential.

With two elements already on the screen, we still had the sides to fill with content. Just using graphics as borders definitely was an option but because Brassica's story plays out a bit like a road movie, we thought having a map of the game world would definitely add to the feeling of that. And to make the UI visually more balanced again, the last bit of free space was then filled with some information on the time of day and how many days were left for the quest of the princes which basically added all the important context for what is going on in the center of the screen.

A first mock-up of the UI featuring a familiar face and St. Bernard...

Around that time, we also developed the idea of presenting the whole game screen like a paper or puppet theater. This seemed like a good way to bring all these different elements together while still supporting the colorful fantasy-ish look of the game art.

I did a quick sketch of how this could look, which turned the mock-up into this:

Aside from adding some more purely graphical elements, I adjusted the text box and the flag that showed the name of the character that is currently speaking. The map was graphical now instead of just a list (which would have given away future locations) and I was overall fairly happy with the direction the UI was going in. A few of the border elements overlapped with the main screen now but I tried to make sure it only happens in areas where we wouldn't put any focus.

After getting some feedback from PECTIN I then went on to work on the final lineart while also trying to simplify all the shapes. By then, the characters were also being concepted so instead of Luke I could put Ode into the mock-up (along with a reference for a possible background style).

As you can see, some unnecessary lines, elements, and text were removed to simplify the look of the UI and make sure that the important elements aren't overshadowed by anything else. Overall I tried to keep the lines clean without making them look overly sterile, so any round shapes are generally drawn freehand instead of using any vector shapes. Except for the compass, moon, and their enclosing arcs. Those just looked sloppy when they weren't exact. Not using fixed line widths was another way to make the lines more organic even when they were perfectly straight. The idea to use different colored flags for each character also came into play now, although Ode's color here is actually used by Hans now…

Colors were next on the agenda. First a basic pass, followed by some adjustments and line colors to make the lines fade more into the background. Having the concepts for the three princes was very helpful for this step because it was important that the UI colors fit into the overall color scheme while keeping the focus on the actual game art. That's why red is only used close to the center and for important UI elements (the current location on the map is also marked in red). The rest of the colors are rather muted and monochrome on purpose with only a little bit of gold to break it up.

Throughout the whole process my main references were old paper theaters but especially during the coloring process I deviated from these references in favor of using colors that would match with most backgrounds.

Once we were happy with the colors, I did a relatively quick shading pass, just adding shadows with a fairly abstract light source to keep most shadows parallel to the lines. I also added some subtle noise to make everything look a bit more organic.

For the most part it still looked too clean though, so PECTIN suggested overlaying the UI with some watercolor textures.

Which lead to this final mock-up and not only solved the problem but also gave the UI a more painterly look that didn't interfere as much with the general artstyle.

Well, but as always, there are still a few things that changed on the way into the engine.

The map was obviously added (which could probably fill a devlog by itself), the text on the side was changed to better reflect the current quest of the princes (although the other sign may or may not return in future acts...), I added a CTC icon and updated the quick menu (although I can't remember why "Load" was removed so maybe that will return again), but most importantly: The text box was reduced from three to two lines of text. This wasn't as much an active decision as it was caused by the fact that small line spacing in Ren'Py cuts of parts of some letters until all lines of text are displayed. There are some games that still do this but personally I don't really like how it looks while the text appears. Increasing the textbox would have caused a lot of work because I would have had to shift around more elements of the UI to keep a balanced layout so it was simply easier to remove a line of text and increase the line spacing.

This had a pretty strong effect on the writing because sentences have to be fairly short now or if that doesn't work, broken up into multiple lines. Even if it wasn't exactly planned, it still influenced the writing style of Brassica and further distinguished it from our other games (although there's more to say on that one) and in hindsight, only two lines of text also look a lot cleaner in this layout.

I could go on about the actual implementation of the UI but this has already been a pretty lengthy post so maybe I'll save it for another devlog.

But that's it for now! We'll be back in two weeks with some more development insights and our current status. We also plan to start posting these devlogs regularly again, so stay tuned for that! As always, thank you so much for reading and we hope you could find a few things of interest in this devlog.

[thestudentarchitect]

Tips for Existing Conditions Surveys

Tips for Existing Conditions Surveys

By Chelsea Weibust 04/23/2019

Each project is totally different, from the information available, scope of work, schedule, etc. It's important to know the purpose of your site visit before you head out to the site. 

Sometimes when you have a site visit you'll have access to detailed existing drawings. They may be just printed drawing sets or PDF's, or ideally they'd be CAD or Revit drawings. Other times you won't be given any information at all. In the latter case, it's a good idea to check out Google Maps and Tax Assessor information to get an idea of the size, shape, materiality, aesthetic, context, etc. of the building before your visit.

You may need to sketch the plans and elevations on site so be sure to bring a clipboard and graph paper for sketching and notes.

Another consideration is the scope of the project. If the project focus is strictly on interior work then you shouldn’t spend too much time documenting exterior conditions - just stick to the basics. The same is true to strictly exterior projects. If you're working on a deck renovation then documenting a ton of interior information will be a waste of time, unless of course it’s related to the project. [Full disclosure: some of the links below are affiliate links.]

Here are some tips and tricks I’ve picked up from doing existing conditions surveys.

General Survey Information:

Make sure to write the date, location, and project name of the site visit on each sheet in case there's any question in the future about when the existing conditions survey was taken or what project the drawings are from. Also, write what each drawing shows, i.e. first floor plan, exterior dimensions, section through living room, etc. It may also be helpful in some cases to write the names of the people at the site visit for future reference.

Color Coding:

Sometimes existing conditions surveys will have a ridiculous amount of information and it can be tough to decipher between vertical dimensions, horizontal dimensions, opening dimensions, structural elements, etc. For this reason I like to use color and thickness variations for distinctions. For example, I like to switch between a thick black pen/marker* and a multicolored pen* to make it easy to switch between colors quickly. You can color code your notes however you like but you may want to make a legend so anyone who might look at your drawings will understand them. Here’s how I color code my surveys:

Black marker/pen: exterior walls

Black pen: horizontal dimensions, general notes, interior walls, cabinets and fixtures

Green pen: vertical dimensions (heights), spot elevations

Blue pen: window and door types, overall dimensions

Red pen: center line dimensions, mechanical elements, structural elements

Dimensions:

Write dimensions perpendicular to the dimension string in areas where you have a cluster of dimensions so you can fit all of the information.

Units:

Be consistent with how you're writing dimensions and make sure if using a laser measuring* tool that it's set to the same units you've been using. Most of the time I find it's best to write in only inches. Other times I like to write in feet and inches but when I use these units I'm careful not to use ticks for feet and inches (1' - 3 1/2") because the ticks could be mistaken for numbers. Instead, I like to keep it simple and write them like: 1 - 3.5 (0 - 4.75 if no feet) so that there's no confusion with ticks or fractions being misinterpreted.

Vertical Dimensions:

It's easy to remember to take horizontal dimensions to get wall placements and openings but something that can easily be forgotten are vertical dimensions. Ceiling heights, soffits, window sill and header heights, door heights, openings, floors, etc. can easily be overlooked until you're at your desk modeling the building.

Continue reading below

Do you have all of these helpful tools for doing existing conditions surveys?

Sections, Elevations & 3D Views:

Don’t limit yourself to drawing in plan. Some information is better represented in section like roof/ceiling slopes, floor to floor heights, soffit heights, stairs, bump outs, etc. You might also find a quick 3D sketch or elevation can be helpful too.

Storyboard:

If you're short on time or are looking to get a set of dimensions that don't have to be totally accurate you can take a picture of a storyboard to get accurate enough information. To do this, hold the tape measure against whatever it is you want to dimension and take a picture of it. Try to set the camera as parallel to the tape as possible so you don't distort the image.

In the image shown you can see we wanted to quickly get the dimensions of an existing railing on a roof deck. You can see clearly the center lines of the pipes, the diameter of the pipes, and the overall height of the railing.

Topography:

Pay attention to the topography and make note of the elevation of the ground in relation to the bottom of siding material at each corner of the building, at the very least.

Material Dimensions:

Note materials and dimensions - if masonry, measure and make note of the size of the blocks used. If lap siding, shingle siding, etc. make note of the reveal and material. This will be really helpful if you need to figure out heights if you forget to measure something or just want to verify dimensions. Since reveals can vary on each course, a handy tricks is to measure the height of 10 courses and divide that number by 10 to get a more accurate gauge.

You can see from the photo that 10 courses of this siding is 27 1/8” which is roughly a 2 3/4” reveal per course.

Photos:

Often one of my biggest frustrations when reviewing site visit information is not having enough photos. Anytime I'm on a site visit, I'll leave with hundreds of photos and somehow it's still not enough! There's always some wonky condition that I didn't get a great photo of or I needed a picture just 4 inches to the right. Go out of your way to take more photos than you might think you need from different angles, perspectives, and distances. Nowadays we have awesome smartphones that are capable of high quality photos, panoramas, and even videos! Videos can be especially helpful when walking through the building with an owner or consultant (with permission) so you can take note of what was discussed so you don’t have to take as many notes! I personally prefer to use my iPhone or a small point and shoot* that’s not too heavy and can be easily tucked away when not in use. I once had a project where we had to survey hundreds of windows for a renovation project and most windows were totally different conditions. We needed multiple detail photos of each window. This would've been an almost impossible task to keep track of each individual window but luckily I had a Samsung Note phone with a pen so I was able to take a photo of each window, take a screenshot, and make a note on each photo which window it was. I'm not sure what we would've done otherwise but I was so thankful to have that phone at that moment! We also had a google docs spreadsheet open on my iPad to document information about the windows rather than writing it on paper so we wouldn't have to duplicate our work in transferring written notes to the computer. So in short, I guess I'm saying to make the most of your technology!

Locate Photos:

Mark interesting things on your plans that will make it easier for you or someone else to orient themselves while looking through the photos later. Maybe it's a painting on a wall, a red sweatshirt hanging on a pipe, a stain on the ceiling, etc. but it should be something distinct that will help place tricky conditions in photos on the plans. If you're taking detail photos, remember to step back and take context photos so you can locate them later.

The photo below shows a steel rod tied to the roof rafters which was holding up the 2nd floor of a old home. This was both fascinating and terrifying (since the house needed significant repair) but we needed to be sure to mark the locations of these rods on the plans. This picture is great to see the detail of how the tensile system works but doesn’t help at all in telling us where this rod is located. So on the floor plan I made a note on the plan with a star and a cone (<) showing the direction of the photo, saying something like “steel rod tied to roof structure, tension wheel” and this was really helpful because none of the other pictures of the rods showed the wheel or tensile system and now we knew exactly where it was and what direction we were looking.

Locating pictures on plans is really only necessary in tricky areas like basements, attics, eaves, or in monotonous buildings where a lot of spaces look exactly the alike, so try not to go overboard with this.

BONUS: Tips for You

Backpack:

I recommend carrying a small bag with you while on site visits to hold extra tools and whatever else you may have. I suggest using a small backpack* rather than something like a messenger bag since it wont get in the way.

Snacks:

Maybe I'm the only one who thinks about food constantly, but I always find it's a good idea to keep a couple snacks with me on a site visit. Sometimes things take longer than expected and you don't want to be famished, trying to rush through your survey so you can get a bite to eat. It can't hurt to throw a couple granola bars and a water in your bag, right?

Dress Appropriately:

If it's the middle of winter and you're surveying a building without heat, you're going to want to dress in lot's of warm layers. Be sure to check the weather beforehand so you know if it's supposed to rain (and will need rain gear and umbrella), if it's going to be brutally cold (and need hats, gloves, scarves, lots of layers, etc.), if it's going to be windy (and you need a windbreaker and extra clips to attach papers to your clipboard)... you get the idea

Shoes:

Two things you need to consider about footwear are safety and comfort. You should never wear open toed shoes or high heels to a site visit, there are just too many things that could go wrong. You're probably going to be walking around for hours, sometimes crawling around in icky places, and potentially walking on unstable surfaces or trekking through the mud. Opt for comfortable sneakers or boots.

Good luck on future surveys!

- Chelsea

More posts you might like:

[pantheon-god-of-war]

On a design level, how would you want to see Pantheon improved when he gets a VU? Would you want him to stay more Hoplite inspired or more full plate like some of the armor the Roman's wore? League seems to be pushing Targon all over the place in terms of armor styles so I am actually pretty interested in your opinion on what YOUR preference would be. I personally feel they'll push him towards the full plate to just match the others.

This has been sitting within my inbox for quite a while and it kept me up at night as much as the very question you asked. I can not tel you how often, how long and how hard I ponder Pantheons rework. It both excites and scares me at the same time because it has as much potential to be great and wonderful as it has to butcher his character. 

I am so fed up with him being the joke of the entire cast. Targon has such a diverse cast of characters and then people just look at him and go “ah meatbro .. he wanted to be baker.” and thats it. No one takes him seriously and no one really seems to care, hes just another muscle warrior in a sea of muscle warriors who are all better than him at what he does. But enough of that. 

I saved this ask until 2019 because I wanted my first post of the year to be something positive, something that offers ideas and my own thoughts on a champion that I have loved with all of my heart for all of his soon ten years of existence! 

To your question of Roman or Spartan. I have to say that I contemplated this multiple times. I loved the design of Imperius from Diablo. A heavy armored badass angle warrior who is a large inspiration for Pantheon. But in swaying to much to his design I feel that Pantheons visual appearance would skew to far towards the solari. Now dont get me wrong, we all know how much I love panth x leona, but that does not mean that they should match in armor design. Pantheon embodies the polar opposite of Leona (No not like Diana) but rather in mentality. The whole reason why Atreus was chosen by Pantheon was that he agreed in Atreus view on Targons problems. Find the enemies of Targon and kill them, before they can find Targon. Leona decided that she would lock herself in the golden city and defend her people with her Ra’horak. One is the offence of Targon the other is defence none of the other aspects serve Targon as they do, Taric is around saving Trees and flowers, Zoe does what she wants and Diana is running off to god knows where. Only Pantheon and Leona remain on the mountain to defend it. Both in their own ways which gives them parallels within differences. 

That whole paragraph was why I believe that they need to keep Pantheon with the hoplite armor. Keep him somewhat nimble, keep his design somewhat aggressive to contrast Leonas stalwart paladin design. Another reason why I believe that Roman design is bad for Pantheon or the Rakkor is because I see a lot of Roman traits in the Noxian empire. Drawing inspiration from a common source for different factions might make them blend a little to well. Yes I know Noxus is armored like fantasy knights would be but from the army structure to the expansionist ways of warfare I see a lot similarities to Rome. I said it before and ill say it again, I believe a xenophobic race of elite warriors was a WAY better design choice for the Rakkor than these … supposed pilgrims from all corners of the world. Its a 180 degree turn and I think its hardly a good thing certainly not for Pantheons design choices. 

Now that we settled on the Spartan/Hoplite design over the roman you might think I’m done. 

When talking about the design of his armor I think its important to figure out what sort of “Pantheon” we are going for. While I have my very set in view of him that does not mean that anyone shares it and anything I see as common sense, or logical may not make sense at all to someone else. So we need to set a few ground rules in his design choices. What is Pantheon actually? Hes the god/aspect of war. People say aspects arn’t gods but really the greek gods were defined as aspects of mortal life. So if Pantheon is truly the god of war, and nothing of his host remains (see story) and he then truly embodies war with his form then we have to ask ourselves how does he embody war? 

Does he appear as the grim and gritty reality of war? as evil, dark and more of a villain character? since we all know war is nothing but the slaughter of brothers and sisters? Or does he embody war in a way to rouse warriors to join his side? Depicting war as a Honorable crucible of combat in which true warriors are forged? Its a hard decision to make, and Targon truly lacks a villain character. But thats Targons charm as well, none of them are truly good or evil, they just have their purpose and see it through to the end. But if we were to split Targon Pantheon would fit into the villain category more than anyone. He holds the leash upon Aurelion Sol, he is war, he was described as violent and ruthless in Zoes introduction. So making him a dark armored warrior, with horns, spikes and a flaming cape to captivate and further drive home this feeling of “wars ruinous taint” would fit his character very well. I draw a lot of inspirations from DC’s version of Ares. 

The other route one could take, is Pantheon the noble aspect of warriors and war. I talked about a more golden and red design, to portray a hero type character who animates others to great deeds through his own power and strength, someone like an Achilles or Leonidas character. A warrior who leads men by example, a warrior who sees the burden that is to shoulder and willingly offers himself. In other words a hero. We can see aspects of the noble warrior in game as well, with taunts from Aatrox where Pantheon is described as “Noble and proud.” its further driven home as it was Pantheon who rallied the forces of man against the superior Darkin, to doom them for all eternity. In this iteration I could see a champion of man, clad in archaic gold armor a red cape upon his broad shoulders. 

The decision for which one to go is something out of my hands and completely in Riots. I personally tend towards a more version 1 Pantheon, but a version 2 Pantheon could perhaps be more shippable with Leona. In the end it comes down to Riot and in which direction they want to shove him. I can no make that call. BUT what I can do is waste my time and plan out various design choices that will NEVER see the light of day because I am so dissatisfied with them every time I finish them up. But just to deliver some of my ideas have two papers worth of sketches! 

Its by far not complete, but its small ideas I get every now and then that I jot down before moving on. I hope I didn’t ramble to long but if you got this far then thank you for reading it means a lot

[extraload977]

Diagrams

UML 2 use case diagrams overview the usage requirements for a system. They are useful for presentations to management and/or project stakeholders, but for actual development you will find that use cases provide significantly more value because they describe 'the meat' of the actual requirements. Figure 1 provides an example of a UML 2 use case diagram.

Use case diagrams depict:

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Use cases. A use case describes a sequence of actions that provide something of measurable value to an actor and is drawn as a horizontal ellipse.

Actors. An actor is a person, organization, or external system that plays a role in one or more interactions with your system. Actors are drawn as stick figures.

Associations. Associations between actors and use cases are indicated in use case diagrams by solid lines. An association exists whenever an actor is involved with an interaction described by a use case. Associations are modeled as lines connecting use cases and actors to one another, with an optional arrowhead on one end of the line. The arrowhead is often used to indicating the direction of the initial invocation of the relationship or to indicate the primary actor within the use case. The arrowheads are typically confused with data flow and as a result I avoid their use.

System boundary boxes (optional). You can draw a rectangle around the use cases, called the system boundary box, to indicates the scope of your system. Anything within the box represents functionality that is in scope and anything outside the box is not. System boundary boxes are rarely used, although on occasion I have used them to identify which use cases will be delivered in each major release of a system. Figure 2 shows how this could be done.

Packages (optional). Packages are UML constructs that enable you to organize model elements (such as use cases) into groups. Packages are depicted as file folders and can be used on any of the UML diagrams, including both use case diagrams and class diagrams. I use packages only when my diagrams become unwieldy, which generally implies they cannot be printed on a single page, to organize a large diagram into smaller ones. Figure 3 depicts how Figure 1 could be reorganized with packages.

In the example depicted in Figure 1 students are enrolling in courses with the potential help of registrars. Professors input the marks students earn on assignments and registrars authorize the distribution of transcripts (report cards) to students. Note how for some use cases there is more than one actor involved. Moreover, note how some associations have arrowheads - any given use case association will have a zero or one arrowhead. The association between Student and Enroll in Seminar (in the version shown in Figure 4) indicates this use case is initially invoked by a student and not by a registrar (the Registrar actor is also involved with this use case). Understanding that associations don't represent flows of information is important; they merely indicate an actor is somehow involved with a use case. Information is flowing back and forth between the actor and the use case, for example, students would need to indicate which seminars they want to enroll in and the system would need to indicate to the students whether they have been enrolled. However, use case diagrams don't model this sort of information. Information flow can be modeled using UML activity diagrams. The line between the Enroll in Seminar use case and the Registrar actor has no arrowhead, indicating it is not clear how the interaction between the system and registrars start. Perhaps a registrar may notice a student needs help and offers assistance, whereas other times, the student may request help from the registrar, important information that would be documented in the description of the use case. Actors are always involved with at least one use case and are always drawn on the outside edges of a use case diagram.

Figure 2. Using System boundary boxes to indicate releases.

Figure 3. Applying packages to simplify use case diagrams.

Creating Use Case Diagrams

I like to start by identifying as many actors as possible. You should ask how the actors interact with the system to identify an initial set of use cases. Then, on the diagram, you connect the actors with the use cases with which they are involved. If an actor supplies information, initiates the use case, or receives any information as a result of the use case, then there should be an association between them. I generally don't include arrowheads on the association lines because my experience is that people confuse them for indications of information flow, not initial invocation. As I begin to notice similarities between use cases, or between actors, I start modeling the appropriate relationships between them (see the Reuse Opportunities section).

The preceding paragraph describes my general use case modeling style, an 'actors first' approach. Others like to start by identifying one actor and the use cases that they're involved with first and then evolve the model from there. Both approaches work. The important point is that different people take different approaches so you need to be flexible when you're following AM's practice of Model With Others.

Reuse Opportunities

Figure 4 shows the three types of relationships between use cases -- extends, includes, and inheritance -- as well as inheritance between actors. I like to think of extend relationships as the equivalent of a 'hardware interrupt' because you don't know when or if the extending use case will be invoked (perhaps a better way to look at this is extending use cases are conditional). Include relationships as the equivalent of a procedure call. Inheritance is applied in the same way as you would on UML class diagrams -- to model specialization of use cases or actors in this case. The essay Reuse in Use Case Models describes these relationships in greater detail.

Remaining Agile

So how can you keep use case modeling agile? First, focus on keeping it as simple as possible. Use simple, flexible tools to model with. I'll typically create use case diagrams on a whiteboard, as you see in Figure 5 which is an example of an initial diagram that I would draw with my project stakeholders. AM tells us that Content is More Important Than Representation so it isn't a big issue that the diagram is hand drawn, it's just barely good enough and that's all that we need. It's also perfectly okay that the diagram isn't complete, there's clearly more to a university than what is depicted, because we can always modify the diagram as we need to.

In parallel to creating the sketch I would also write a very brief description of each use case, often on a whiteboard as well. The goal is to record just enough information about the use case so that we understand what it is all about. If we need more details we can always add them later either as an essential/business use case or a system use case. https://extraload977.tumblr.com/post/657340998419169280/space-falcon-reloaded.

Source

This artifact description is excerpted from Chapter 5 of The Object Primer 3rd Edition: Agile Model Driven Development with UML 2.

Hdr Express LLC is a Texas Domestic Limited-Liability Company (Llc) filed On June 23, 2020. The company's filing status is listed as In Existence and its File Number is. The Registered Agent on file for this company is Alain Sivilla Perez and is located. Welcome to HR Xpress! HR Xpress provides you with tools & information to manage your RR Donnelley work life. Hdr express 3 download. HDR Express is a Shareware software in the category Miscellaneous developed by Less Stress Instructional Services. The latest version of HDR Express is 3.1.1.12800, released on. It was initially added to our database on. HDR Express runs on the following operating systems: Windows. The download file has a size of 11.1MB. 4K 4k cinematography 4K video 32 float adobe Apple bracketing canon cinema5D cinematography digital cinema digital photography DJI drone fstoppers.com fujifilm gear hdr hdr discounts hdr expose HDR expose 2 hdr express hdr software high dynamic range iphone mirrorless camera new nik nikon panasonic petapixel photo gear photogear photography.

Translations

Diagrams Definition

Disclaimer

The notation used in these diagrams, particularly the hand drawn ones, may not conform perfectly to the current version of the UML for one or more of reasons:

Diagrams Of Dna Nucleotides And Bases

The notation may have evolved from when I originally developed the diagrams. The UML evolves over time, and I may not have kept the diagrams up to date.

I may have gotten it wrong in the first place. Although these diagrams were thoroughly reviewed for the book, and have been reviewed by thousands of people online since then, an error may have gotten past of us. We're only human.

I may have chosen to apply the notation in 'non-standard' ways. An agile modeler is more interested in created models which communicate effectively than in conforming to notation rules set by a committee.

Diagrams Examples

If you're really concerned about the nuances of 'official' UML notation then read the current version of the UML specification.

[comfortablynumbonthepuzzle]

Mike/Will Season 2, Episode 2: A Shot-By-Shot Analysis

Hi everyone! I know it’s a little late, but here’s the second installment of my Shot-by-shot analysis of Will & Mike’s friendship in season 2, to celebrate ST’s renewal for season 3! 

If you haven’t, check out my post about Will Byers’ sexual identity, which you can read here. It’s by no means a comprehensive analysis, but it’s a relevant precursor to this series. Note that it was written before I’d heard about the stranger things bible clip, which basically confirms it, which you can read here.

If you’re just now discovering this, read part one of the series here. Give it a reblog if you’re so inclined, distribution keeps the work alive :)

Please no negativity or homophobia. I welcome commentary but keep it respectful. 

And so, we begin with episode 2. This one was pretty fun to do. Let’s begin!

1. Will’s room, morning

In this scene, Joyce finds Will’s drawings, and worries he’s had another episode. Will lies when pressed, saying the sketches are meant to accompany a story he’s writing.

This scene is important for a number of reasons, though primarily because we know Will doesn’t normally lie. The basic premise of that first exchange between Joyce and Hopper in season one is that Will does not lie, cheat, or otherwise deceive, so Joyce is able to register the sinister implications of his disappearance even when others don’t. We also see in that episode that Will is unable to lie to Mike about losing in Dungeons and Dragons. That scene between Will and Mike is one of the few scenes we’re given of Will independent of his supernatural trauma and the only one that’s not a flashback, indicating that honesty, or at least integrity, is meant to be a core part of Will’s personality. (It’s worth noting that Will is also repeatedly identified as ‘good at hiding’, which I think is an interesting contrast to his being honest, as well as a metaphor for his sexual identity and possibly a subtextual hint, but that’s another post).

That Will lies to Joyce is an indicator of the extent to which he wants to avoid what we know are the consequences of disclosing his ‘episodes’. For example, he’s pulled out of school and socially ostracized. He’s alienated from his classmates and friends. He’s observed and tested on by doctors who in large part fail to recognize his humanity. He’s robbed of his privacy and allowed no real sense of autonomy or independence. He’s offered no substantial hope of recovery, as doctors are seemingly unable to diagnose or treat him meaningfully. And his episodes are framed, and treated, as a pathology, which likely affects his self-image profoundly.

And beyond the personal and social ramifications of disclosing his episodes, there’s the very real matter of the episodes themselves. Will, whether he recognizes it at this point in the series or not, is facing a very serious, very dangerous threat, and I imagine there’s a part of him that is desperate to believe his episodes are psychosomatic. (We see this play out later on when Will takes Bob’s misguided advice and tries to excise the shadow monster verbally).

And so Will lies.

This demonstrates to us the extent to which his time in the upside down has changed him and his relationships, just as it has changed Mike. I wrote in my last post that Mike’s fundamental character traits change after the events of season 1, and though we see less of this in Will, I think the same is true for him. I also wrote that Mike seems to be his best, true self only with Will. Given that Will tells Mike (and only Mike) the truth about the shadow monster in the “crazy together” scene, it would appear that Will is his best/true self with Mike.

2. Bike/School scene(s)

In this scene, Mike, Dustin and Lucas ride up to the school in their ghostbuster costumes, and are shortly joined by Will. Mike and Lucas begin an argument almost immediately, because both have dressed as Peter Venkman (Bill Murray’s lead character).

The Mike/Lucas relationship is really interesting. It’s worth noting they’re both competing to represent Venkman, who is essentially the leader of the group. I think it’s a fitting argument for describing their relationship, and echoes the conflicts they had in season 1.

While we see less of it in season two, Mike and Lucas clash frequently, and it makes sense. They’re two sides of the same coin: both are leaders and feel very passionately about their friends and relationships, as well as the right course of action in dealing with problems that arise. Both are powerful/fiery personalities, a bit stubborn, a bit sarcastic, and a bit self-righteous. Both are mellowed somewhat by the other boys in the group. Will is a quiet complement to the rambunctiousness of the rest of the party, while Dustin is genuinely good-natured, sweet, and functions as a kind of dopey comic relief. They even out the sometimes fiery temperaments of Lucas and Mike, both occasionally playing mediator between the two. Dustin does so in season one by orchestrating an elaborate apology between them, while Will, to an admittedly lesser extent, tries to pacify them in this scene by suggesting there can be “two Venkmans.”

I think this is relevant firstly because it (to me) makes sense that two fiery personalities might naturally lead to divisions where each passionate person is paired with someone less intense (ie: Lucas/Dustin and Mike/Will) and also because the parallels between Mike and Lucas (including their skepticism of the others’ love interests) could (MAYBE) hint at a possible love triangle with Mike, Will, Eleven, considering that Dustin and Lucas are in one with Max. (But again I'm really not too sold on the idea of a love triangle.) 

What’s interesting about this Ghostbusters-specific conflict is that it highlights how the personalities of Venkman, Stanz, and Egon (or, parts of them) complement those of Mike, Lucas, Dustin and Will. The selection of who is which Ghostbuster is absolutely a conscious decision by the Duffers, but we also learn that the boys themselves selected which character they wanted to represent. It’s interesting to imagine the boys watching this movie and identifying with certain characters, etc.

Stanz, like Dustin, is the goofy comic relief. Lucas and Mike are both Venkman, because they’re both passionate leaders and (kind of) anti-heroes. Will, like Spengler, is an incredibly smart scientist, who expresses no interest in women, even when they express interest in him. I think this part is very important. Ghostbusters is full of overt sexually charged moments: Venkman has a heterosexual romantic storyline, and there’s a prolonged scene where Stanz has a weird sexual dream involving a female ghost (honestly, what?). Spengler, on the other hand, not only does not have a female love interest, but dismisses, several times, a woman who’s clearly interested in him. Spengler’s apparent lack of interest in women is a conscious contrast to Venkman and Stanz (though more Venkman), who are preoccupied wholly with sex. It’s meant to be a part of his personality.

Will, unlike Mike, Dustin and Lucas, expresses no interest in women either. It makes complete sense to me that a) the Duffers would liken him to Spengler at least partially for this reason, and b) that in a movie that frequently depicts straight sexuality, Will would feel drawn to his character. 

Also, this may seem like reading too much into it, but the boys’ costumes are obviously conscious choices. Lucas and Dustin’s are identical, they look store bought, while Mike’s and Will’s are not. We know that Joyce made Will’s, because we saw her doing it. Not sure what this means about anything, but it’s interesting to look at, considering that costume design is a VERY VERY conscious effort. Read an article about it here.

This visual was first evident to me because Mike and Will walk next to each other, and Dustin and Lucas walk next to each other. Also worth noting that dustin and Lucas have lockers next to each other, and it seems like Mike and Will have theirs elsewhere.  

3. Trick or treating

When they come out of the house in loch Nora, Will and mike are walking together while Dustin and Lucas walk with Max.

Will is filming Mike using Bob’s camera. Mike’s clearly mad because Max has come along, even more so that she’s come along without his approval. He asks Will if he agreed to her being invited, and when Will responds that he didn’t think Mike would mind, Mike tells Will he “should’ve checked with [him] first” and that “[Max] is ruining the best night of the year.” He then walks away, leaving Will alone, visibly upset at having angered Mike.

This scene again reinforces, pretty boldly, that Mike and Will are a pair. That not only do they consult each other before doing things, they expect that the other person affirms and approves a decision before it’s made. They’re a unit.

4. Shadow Monster

When Will is again suddenly transplanted to the Upside Down, he calls for Mike, and only Mike, repeatedly. 

Now, this analysis operates under the basic assumption that everything is intentional. This scene in particular reminds me of the one between Will and Jonathan in the first episode, where Will criticizes his friends and family for babying him, and implicates Joyce, Dustin and Lucas but avoids Mike. Of course, we can assume that the exclusion of Mike was accidental, but I think it’s far more likely that the line was intended to communicate something in particular and executed very subtly. I think it’s the same here. The Duffers could’ve easily had Will call for Dustin or Lucas, but he doesn’t. He calls only for Mike, three or four times. Even if it means nothing, it was still a creative choice and that in and of itself warrants notice.

I think Will has come to rely on Mike for some sort of guidance or protection, from both supernatural and human troubles. It’s Mike that comes after Will, saying “I couldn’t find you.” Mike is probably the one who noticed Will was missing (again). He insists on taking Will home, alone, indicating perhaps that Mike doesn’t want to relinquish his caretaker role to anyone in the group. I wrote in my last post that Will and Mike have a sort of symbiosis, where Will needs Mike, and Mike needs Will to need him, and this relationship helps them cope with the traumatic events of season 1. I think this is where we see this dynamic start to play out more perceptibly, and it all culminates in the next scene.

5. “Crazy together”

Tumblr for some reason won't let me add more gifs, so I’m going to do a separate post with a full analysis. Coming soon, I promise! Sorry guys :( 

But anyway... that’s it for episode 2! I hope you liked it and as always let me know if there’s anything I missed! 

[thenearsightedmonkey]

Dearest Making Comics TWO Students,

I’m still sick and won’t be able to keep up with emailing today in real time but class is still on and in the Comics Room. Please get to the classroom on time. I’ve asked classmate Chef to time the attendance for us today.

For attendance I’d like you to draw yourself in a police line up.  Use your dip pen.  

Here is the song I’d like you to draw to: It’s about 3.5 minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16xP6hmh3Hc

Then you’ll start today’s exercise: You’ll be spending the full class time on this assignment, with the goal of working in time together as a class and having it finished by the time class ends.  This exercise is intended to build on all of the dip pen and brush work you’ve done over the last 14 days and to get you to pace your drawing to specific time limits.

It’s critical that you draw like crazy with your dip pen and brush today because your hands and the back of your mind are getting the hang of it (even if you can’t tell) and I don’t want that lost.

Materials:

Ink,  dip pen,  brush

Your comp book

The homework you did for this week.

Ruler

NP blue pencil

10 index cards

One piece of Strathmore 11 x 17 Bristol paper, oriented horizontally with a half inch border all around.  

You’ll be spending the full class time on this assignment, with the goal of having it finished by the time class ends.

The idea for this class comes from the interview you watched with Jaime Hernandez on Monday.  He talks about getting to know his characters as he is drawing/writing them.  He talks about characters making unexpected choices, saying something like its when one of his characters decides to go one way instead of another way and he thinks, oh, that’s who you are.

Your assignment is to find five or more side characters from any of the work you’ve done this semester and draw them in a police line up.  They’ve done something to get themselves there, but you don’t have to know what it is yet. They’ll tell you as you go along.

PART ONE: The Gathering   20 minutes  1:55- 2:15

For this section someone will need to keep time for the class— announcing countdown at five minute intervals so everyone knows how much time is left and you keep pace with each other.

START by spending  20 minutes using what ever work you have on hand or in your comp book to find five to ten side characters — by this I mean characters who appear in the backgrounds or who are hinted at or mentioned but not fully formed. They can be anywhere. You don’t have to be able to see them in the work you’ve done, just knowing they may be in there is enough. For example. If one of your strips has a shop in the background, they may be in that shop. Or they may have built that shop.Or they may be in the alley behind the shop getting high,  Or they may go in and rob that shop.

When you find a character, do a fast drawing of them from head to toe on an index card in NP blue and write down anything you are thinking about them.  Who are they?  This is meant to be a quick character sketch.

Don’t be picky.  Accepting any character you find is the key to this exercise.

PART TWO: The Line Up: 25 mins NP blue work,   2:20 - 2:45

For this section someone will need to keep time for the class— announcing countdown at five minute intervals so everyone knows how much time is left and you keep pace with each other. Get your frame drawn with an half inch border all around. PUT YOUR NAME AND DATE ON THE BACK, HORIZONTAL ORIENTATION LOWER RIGHT HAND CORNER.

Draw some very light NP blue parallel lines across the entire 11x17 page like background of a police line up.— you can use the width of the ruler to make it simple. You’ll fill in the numbers later It’s critical that you keep your NP blue lines really light here.  They should be visible but barely.

Using NP blue, draw one of the characters in the middle of the page, right on top of the parallel lines. they have to appear from top of head to bottom of shoes, wearing clothes that are specific to them.  Have them stand in a way that has something to do with who they are.  They will need clothes with details on them and if there is an object or signature weapon they may have with them, draw that too.  

Remember to concentrate on your line work rather than shading.  Line work in clothing details too.  Shading will come when you begin to ink.

!IMPORTANT! IMPORTANT! IMPORTANT!  If all of your characters in your line up are the same height, standing in the same way in the same clothes with the same looks on their faces you’ll know something about the way you draw characters that you may not have known before and you’ll need to change that up.  Body types vary widely.  So do arm positions, legs in various stances, head shapes, clothes, hairstyles, noses, moods and signature weapons or objects.  The line up will help you see what drawing ruts you may have fallen into without noticing and give you a chance to do something about it.

If you get stuck, remember that wherever you look in our Comics Room there are characters want to help you. Feel free to borrow a shirt or shoes or face or hairstyle from any of the characters that surround you in our class.

PART THREE: Work the Line 2:50-3:40 For this section someone will need to keep time for the class— announcing countdown at five minute intervals so everyone knows how much time is left and you keep pace with each other.

Now ink in all of your line work, including plaids and stripes and any patterns on the characters clothing. Think abut hair texture and shoe details and jewelry.  You will have exactly ten minutes for each character and you’ll need to find a way to time your line work into that rhythm. The goal is to work to the beat.  The first five minutes should get you halfway there, the second should get you all the way through.

You can’t finish early or late. You have to work hard to stay exactly on pace. This means you’ll have to begin to estimate how long it takes to cover a dress with tiny flowers on it, or to make the plaid pattern on the coat.

PART FOUR: Solid Black 3:45-4:05

For this section someone will need to keep time for the class— announcing countdown at five minute intervals so everyone knows how much time is left and you keep pace with each other.

Spend 20 minutes using your brush to fill in areas of solid black. Look at the work you did on Monday to help you remember how Jaime Hernandez does it.

Work to get an even, solid black without over soaking the paper with ink or being too spare.

PART FIVE: LINE UP!!

4:05-4:15

Go into the hallway and hang your line up in the glass case.  (You may have to take down the work that is there first, please put it on my desk.)  The line up should be in two parallel rows, starting on the right side of the first glass case and moving leftward.  If everyone is in class, there will be two rows of 11 pages each when you finish.

PLEASE TAKE A PICTURE OF YOUR COMPLETED LINE UP AND SEND IT TO ME BEFORE YOU LEAVE CLASS.  Try to align the edges of your drawing with the edges of the camera frame as best you can.

I miss you all very much and I’m going to find a way to make up this lost time together.  

I look forward to seeing you next week.

Prof SASQUATCH!

[lo-and-behold-ocelittle]

“Horror Vacui” or the fear of the blank page [for amateur artists]

[A really long post]

If you fit this description, this post is for you:

I’m a hobby artist/writer/creator with a broad interest and I don’t have enough to time to practice any of my interests beyond the amateur level. Creating is something I commit to about 10 to 15 times a year - when I need help, I don’t want to take an online course, just give it to me quick and dirty and I’ll see to the turnover.

This post contains:

mandatory motivation delineation

step-by-step drawing guide for amateur artists by an amateur artist

all reference pictures for the above

tracing - a technique shunned by my Grade 8 art teacher and the last time I attended art class

cross-hatching and contours

a tiny bit of perspective

a bit of shading

tools

tips for shaky hands

Why this post, when the internet has countless of tips to overcoming writers’/artists’/creators’ block already? 

I mean, Google churns out some 20 million search results in under 0.55 seconds! That’s like 10 search results you are might look at tops - 20 if you’re desperate enough to go to page 2 - and realize most of the tips a lot of work, not worth the trouble, things you’ve tried before, or too abstract to be applicable to the thing.

One thing most of these guides get right: getting started is the most crippling step of the creative process.

The most common advice to overcoming your block - so I have read countless times - is establishing a routine until you “instinctively” know how to achieve your goal. Are they wrong? No, definitely not. Is it good advice though? Depends; at least not for me - and if you’ve read this far, then not for you either.

What are my other options?

Planning. And being aware of all the tools at your disposal. I documented the process of this drawing as an example. This process has limited applicability to paintings.

You will need:

an idea

drawing utensils

paper (some scraps to start with)

patience

Step 1: Rough Sketching

Take scrap paper. Unless your documenting this (hi, mom) you’ll throw this away asap. Get down the rough shape. This may a while and will involve you questioning your sanity - barge through the doubt, don’t erase what you’ve made, use the best parts and try again.

Example:

I would like to draw a cat. I take a pencil and...

Lol, no. Cats are not pizza with ears.

 Let’s try that again. Maybe a reference picture will help.

Much better. Start with some crude shapes but sketch out the entire body with shapes like they do in some drawing guides - only draw what you need. In this case about two and a half ovals are enough. Now make a better copy beside that initial sketch - I hate doing them on top of the first because that gets messy real quick. Draw some helping lines from the reference image. Don’t bother too much with proportions or posture, or going big; all these sketches are about 6 by 4 cm. 

I want to draw a companion for this steampunk cat, about the same shape and posture with a head tilted one way and the torso another. She’ll need a proper headdress too - I went through three options visually and added some notes for other ideas I had in case neither of these worked out.

Step 2: Break it down

Break down the drawing into smaller bits and pieces and look up reference images if you need them. 

I broke down my sketch into:

Head/Face

Torso/Clothes

Hat

Fan

The head

I want my cat to look slightly to the left and this is what I found online:

Not quite

Almost

Perfect

The torso

I found this image, which contained most of the parts I needed. I didn’t like the hat, head, fan, and all the mice scampering about ‘er so I just took the torso - the corset is really neat. Unfortunately, her posture is not quite what I need so that will be the biggest challenge for this body part.

The hat

I considered a few options such as this 1920s flapper’s headpiece and a couple of Victorian hats before settling on this one.

The fan

I own two so no reference image necessary.

You can keep a couple of tabs (or books, if you have some at hand) open in case you change your mind while drafting.

Step 3: Fine Sketching

This is the hardest part but if you’ve made it this far, you might as well go all the way, right? Understand how your brain operates and beat it at its own mind-game: create a sunk-cost-fallacy and drive yourself forward.

There three ways to get your fine sketch onto paper:

Cool, if you can pull it off go for it, usually takes the longest if you lack the practice (like I do)

Generally a good approach, especially when scaling up

Use a ruler to measure and plot key points of your outline

Print it and hold it against a window. 

If it’s dark outside unhinge that glass cabinet door, duct tape it between two tables and put a lamp beneath. 

Pull it up on your screen and adjust your zoom. Be careful with the pressure of your pen!

Use sticky tape to prevent it from slipping

(Below) Using a reference grid (the dots) on a canvas for another project.

(Below) Tracing the head. Slight rotation of the page to achieve the desired orientation of the head.

I also traced the torso and the head first. Then I added some rough shapes for the arms and the fan - this was also when I realized I can use the fan to hide parts of the face I don’t want to draw. Everything ended up a little twisted and short so I dashed lines where I want these limbs to go. The fabric of the corset also needs to be pulled up on the right and pushed down on the left, hence the arrow there. The neck is way too long too. Add some more notes of things you want to change - like adding a fuck-ton of flowers to the hat.

To judge whether the proportions make sense take a look at yourself in the mirror or ask random people in the hallway to pose for you - afterwards exchange a friendly, confused smile and move on.

(Below) First fine draft after about 5 hours of intermittent work - just take breaks when you’re bored, but leave it prominently lying in your way so you don’t forget about it. I reconstructed the arms’ outlines and added some bold comments.

Once you have everything you need, clean up your first draft as much as possible by erasing help lines and drawing strong borders. Next, open something bright on your screen (or whatever your tracing equipment happens to be), tape a blank paper to your first sketch and take down all the details you want to keep. You can move the paper around to shorten or elongate distances.

Add borders if you want to frame the drawing later.

Now change all the things you don’t like. I changed the cat lady’s hat to be less round because I didn’t want her to wear a wide-brimmed bowler and added a fuck-ton of flowers and - for good measure - a feather. If you can’t draw the feather flicking back up like me, hide it behind the brim of the hat.

Think about any fur you want interacting with the fabric (hat or collar). I added one curl to flow down the left side of her collar - didn’t really work out but A for effort.

Add any major decorative elements like the fish on her corset or the patterns on her fan.

Add major textures like the lines on the brim of her straw hat. The dotted texture on her sleeve was way too fine and didn’t carry over to the next tracing. The same goes for the shading from the last draft, which didn’t carry over well and I ended up bundling all the fur together in larger bundles.

Save the puffy shoulders for last (because I had no idea what to do there and eventually opted for “brains”).

(Below) About 90 minutes on the face to compartmentalize all strands of fur into proper bundles. Note six key bushels that define her expression: on both side of her nose, her “eyebrows” and the trailing of her eyes. Look up cartoon cats for help. 2 hours on her torso and another hour on her shoulders.

Clean it up again and judge your work. If you are still unhappy with the positioning, do another tracing. Don’t forget to embolden all important features

Step 4: Inking the outline!

You’re patience is paying off! Next up is inking! Inking is fun! 

Oh shit-

Don’t ink your final draft!

Step 4a: Screw up

I never get my inking right on the first try and it’s hard to hide mistakes you made with ink. I ran my draft through the photocopier once (because I didn’t want to trace it) so my mistake here wasn’t that big a deal - I lost five minutes and this paper went into the my scrap tray. Always start inking the most difficult part so you don’t regret screwing up after being almost done.

At this point I realized I couldn’t erase the pencil lines anymore and went back to tracing paper on paper on screen. Be aware of the ink you use and how thick your paper is or you might end up leaving marks on the draft below.

(Below) The pattern on her brow is off in two places.

Step 4b: Finish inking the outline

As before focus on borders and major textures; about now you’ll notice which parts of your draft are to fine to trace well and which ones need some extra weight. Drop any lines you don’t like.

By now you probably have a couple of pages with sketches and bad inkings lying around - make sure you label them or find some other method to remove them from your line of work (like throwing them in the bin).

(Below) About 45 minutes, 5 of which were spent on the feather, 5 on the flowers, 10 on the fan, 10 on the face, and 15 on the torso including arms.

At this point you could scan and stick it into a colouring book.

Step 5: Textures!

This is the best part. Texturing a drawing is so satisfying it makes up for all the hardship up to this point.

Make a couple of copies this time to practice your texturing. Afterwards, feel free to continue the page you traced or run it through the photocopier once again.

(Below) Two versions with different types of shading.

It’s very easy to get carried away when shading; always go for a little less than you think you need. You can always add more later, but you can’t take it away. 

Fur

Use lines that flow parallel to the outlines you’ve already drawn. Make the strands flow apart at the beginning and back together at the end. Try to keep the numbers of strands that begin and end constant. This will result in a larger spacing and thus a lighter centre of your bushel.

I like shading an entire area, in this case the entire head uniformly but very lightly, then I start thinking about accents and where light could come from. Wherever fur bundles together (usually at the end of a bushel) I add some more of the same texture to make it darker. You can lift some of the shading from your reference pictures and just copy it. But don’t limit yourself to what your references provide.

To be honest, I only roughly take notice of where I place my imaginary source of light and just emphasize parts of a bushel that were darker to begin with. Usually turns out okay.

Fabric

Generally, keep your texturing parallel, perpendicular or at a fixed angle to the next leading edge. The lines don’t have to be - and most of the time shouldn’t be - straight. Allow them to trace out wrinkles in your fabric or reinforce the fabric’s rigidity by copying the leading edge at short intervals.

The same formula of repeat the leading edge applies to other parts of the clothing - just vary the line separation and how strictly you follow the leading edges.

In other places lines placed at constant angles make a good texture.

Know your tools: my pens stop drawing at an angle of about 30-45° and drawing lines at this angle will make them lighter and discontinuous. This is a good approach to lightly shading a large area like most of the corset.

Cross-hatching gives the sleeve a wrinkle and two light-spots. Two layers at roughly 70-90° gives a good hatch, only add a third layer if you need it really dark - careful: this will make any contours established with two layers disappear.

Shadows

Some places just ought to be darker though, like the spot I marked behind the ear or below the chin. This gives your drawing some depth. Just reiterate the same local texture over and over again until it’s dark enough.

Without my annoying comments, the final result will look like this:

Is it perfect? Fuck no. Is it pretty good? Aye, meets my standards.

By the way, this is what we started with:

Tips for shaky hands

Sugar, caffeine, medical condition? Hands come in all degrees of shaky but don’t let that discourage you. Here’s how I approach the most important elements in my art.

Long lines

Long lines are hard to draw, if you don’t have practice sliding your hand across the page. I can do it sometimes but not reliably. Instead I place my wrist firmly on the page and draw the part of the line that is within my mobile range. The more of my wrist rests on the page, the less I shake. Then I lift my pen and move on to the next bit - sounds trivial?

Wrong.

Whenever you start or end a line you go from rest to drawing speed or vice versa. During these moments the constant flow of ink is spread over a shorter distance, resulting in a thicker line. Appending a new segment causes a brief overlap and results in a blotch, especially when you need longer than an instant to correctly put down your pen.

Coming in at an angle prevents the ink from flowing prematurely and gives you more control of your line.

Curved lines

Place your wrist on the inside of the curve (segment) - drawing towards yourself is easier than away. Rotate the page to make it happen or rotate yourself if the page is stationary (like a large canvas). Additionally, I like to keep my fingers stiff and only rotate around my wrist.

Textures

For very fine textures I keep the tip of my pen above the page and start repeating the pattern. About two thirds of the strokes will go into thin air but the shaking will make one third hit the page - a statistical approach to texturing.

Conclusion

My longest post so far - I starting making this almost 8 hours ago. A blank page is a scary thing, so many possibilities, so many ways to screw up. The most important advice to take from this post is plan, save, trace, repeat. You don’t have to be ashamed for tracing art; just don’t parade an exact copy as your own work and always keep your references at hand.

Why does this feel like academic writing 101...

I invite anyone to contribute their own quick and dirty drawing tips for amateurs to this post. DM me, if you have any questions or would like to use this a last-minute-Christmas gift - I’ll send you a free high-res. I don’t judge, not this year nor any other.

Best, Ocelittle

[riisinaakka-draws]

Under the cut there are some thoughts on the process and ideas behind the drawing JOURNEY INTO THE DARK if you are interested :)

I thought it would be too big of a burden to mention all of this within the art post. This is also for my own archiving purposes (so I won’t forget what was involved! :D) and it’s always nice to see how things start and develop...

Long post ahead! (contains spoilers for the show)

COMMENTARY:

I continued this work bit by bit over a period of several months (I started this just when s4 started airing) and only finished it recently. A few hours then and then (whenever I felt like it or had time for this), but I can’t really say how much time it took all together. Occasionally there were weeks/months that I just forgot about it and was more focused on other things...

Most of the thoughts here are fleeting ideas during the process (how a thing X lead to thing Y) and some personal fun and not something I actually spend too much time on dwelling or planning (or researching lol). I have probably forgotten some already and some happened by accident and some I am just incabable of putting into understandable words.

None of these are any actual instructions (or limits) of “this is how it’s to be seen”. Art doesn’t have to be or even shouldn’t be explained in some cases, but I just wanted to document the process and open up the symbolism since there were a lot of (random) things involved.

It’s also fun to look back on things and how they evolved and what their connection to other things were.

You are free to have your own interpretations of course and I hope this additional post doesn’t ruin any of those :)

The initial idea and motifs:

Flint decends the steps from light to darkness and Miranda is standing behind him as an accomplice/orderer. Stepping stones get bloodier by every step and gold coins are glimmering on the path (Urca de Lima’s gold). Sword is drawn out for war and slaughter. Black water as in the opening credits + general darkness to represent the abyss. Reflection shows James when he was happy (him returning to Hamiltons) and how much he has changed compared to that (McGraw vs Flint). Sort of stage / antique/ greek tragedy(?) setting with marble columns, red curtains (like a myth, a monology or a story or something).

A white feather shining in the dark to show there’s always hope and another way out. I already explained this in another post, but here it is again:

Short answer: Silver (although some of you may not like it) Long answer: the feather is for “hope and an alternative for war” (the dove of peace..haha). Also remember the trap Flint laid in season 1? The feather and the logbook in his drawer -> leads to Silver’s capture later.

The feather is also a reference to the swan of Tuonela (in Finnish mythology the river of Tuonela separates the world of the living and the dead (compare Styx in Greek mythology I guess). Flint decents to the world of death (also represented here by the pale and dead-looking organic shapes of the opening sequence’s sculpture… thing).

Anyway, the feather is mainly about Silver: both how they end up meeting in the beginning (the trap, and then some new hope along the way and eventually some light in Flint’s miserable life) and what (who) also ends up being “the end of Captain Flint” (a tiny nod to the swan guarding the border between the living and the dead).

Visually I wanted something to shine in the darkness to remind there’s always hope and another way out. At one point it had an additional thin string leading to Thomas’ hand. You know, a connection to the memory (and to the reason of Flint’s revenge and war path and so on) but the idea didn’t work so well and felt too distracting so I left it (the string) out. And then the finale happened (!!!) and the reflection became also the future.. :D

a way out of the darkness… :)

There was also a post going around a long time ago about the empty space (the absence of Thomas) next to James and Miranda in some scenes, so I incorporated that in here, too. Unfortunately I cannot remember who did the post, so I cannot link it right now :| It was something about how some of the New World scenes were framed in a way that it looked like there was something missing (aka the third person of the trio).

Here’s the early drafts again so you don’t have to scroll back:

I didn’t like the first composition that much and continued it into another direction with similar elements and the main ideas.

The stepping stones changed to wooden planks: angrier zigzag lines (rage) and also the idea of “walk the plank” (except that you don’t know when and where the nightmare ends...)

I ditched the gold coin idea. The overal setting became more spacious and gloomier to emphasize the vastness of abyss and the smallness of people. The stage / arch became the staircase seen in Flint’s dreams.

The whole thing is sailing on a similar sculptural thing seen in the opening sequence which for some reason made me think about the floating theatre in the Moomins (when the Moomin valley is flooded in one dangerous midsummer. LMAO):

(*coughs* lots of water, a stage and some drama after a disaster...so..)

(At one point I was also thinking about Howl’s moving castle and how that too is a monstrous looking vessel travelling between worlds (well, opening doors) but how the moving castle itself is also composed of various other things... and how in the drawing Flint would be stepping out of the ride for a moment to do some dark deeds in one of these ‘worlds’ etc.)

Black Sails opening sequence - is there a term for that cool monstrosity?

Some other inspiration and references:

Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s “Lemminkäisen äiti” (Lemminkäinen’s Mother, 1897).

(notice the swan, the black water, blood-covered stones, ‘the mother’ and the red-bearded ‘son’ waiting/asking for a spark for new life after the mother has combed his broken parts out of the river and assembled them back into the shape of a man)

I must admit that I didn’t bother to think any deeper parallels with Lemminkäinen and Flint (or the Mother and Miranda) beside this (more about it later though) and mainly had my thoughts just on this painting and its visuals because it is so well known (and liked) in Finland.

Moving on.

Screencaps from season 2 (source here):

I chose the latter stairs for the reflection (although modified) only because they were in London and there is an arch above them (to mirror the window in the drawing)

Some steps futher when the needed elements are more clear:

At some point I tried things with a lot more light and coldness (below, left pic) to channel some of the the dream sequence in s3 but in the end I chose the darker atmosphere, faces in shadows and I also wanted to preserve the red colour somehow (right pic):

The reflection sketch (at some point), although most of it cannot be seen in the finished work and thus didn’t need too much details. Young lieutenant James McGraw returning to London from his voyage:

Also, (and I am so sorry about this, but it was “fitting” and I decided to keep it..) in the reflection (when flipped and put in its position) the plank (their unfortunate blood-covered war-path and future) accidentally hides Miranda’s face and decapitates her so to speak and she won’t be there anymore ;_;

Thomas, on the other hand, is in the reflection to meet James -  both in the past and again in the future - but not in ‘the present’ where Miranda is.

Miranda in Flint’s visions (s3 ep3):

When I first met you, you were so Unformed.

And then I spoke and bade you cast aside your shame, and Captain Flint was born into the world. The part of you that always existed yet never were you willing to allow into the light of day.

I was mistress to you when you needed love. I was wife to you when you needed understanding. But first and before all I was mother. I have known you like no other. So I love you like no other. I will guide you through it, but at its end is where you must leave me. At its end is where you will find the peace that eludes you, and at its end lies the answer you refuse to see.

And then in s3ep5: You can't see it yet, can you? You are not alone.

The end part of it is seen in the fandom as a reference to Silver (and his partnership) and how Flint’s mind is telling himself to see it too. And I agree on that. I don’t think James had any hopes for Thomas being alive (especially in s3). As I mentioned earlier I originally did the reflection to show him (Thomas) only as a memory. Then the finale happened and the reflection got its double meaning :)

And here again Miranda as the mother (there has been better discussions about this topic and speech in the fandom so I won’t go more into that now). In the inspiration painting that I showed earlier the mother had assembled his son back together (for rebirth / reanimation) <--- Miranda being part of the creation (birth) of ‘Captain Flint’.

Aaaaand here’s the feather again and Silver’s words (and sort of motto):

“Take it from me, there's always a way.” (season 1)

“Nothing is inevitable here. I'm showing you a way in which we can survive this.″ (season 3)

Some further fixed details and adjustments. In the end the wall almost disappeared and to me it made this feel a bit like “floating alone without a shelter on your back or a place to return once you leave its premise”... I fixed the perspective of the planks (took me surprisingly long to notice what was wrong) and got the bloody red back on the planks (and not leaking too much on the water).

I wanted the water to be quiet, pitch black and endless and the reflection to seem like a dream. I probably should’ve done everything a bit more detailed or sharper, but in the end it didn’t feel so necessary (and it would have been way too much work, haha).

The final drawing:

The planning and initial idea was done after seeing s3 and just when s4 was beginning so there weren’t any thoughts linked to s4 while making this (other than the surprise connection with Thomas). Most of this I did paint after s4 though, but only to finish what I had already started.  

One more thing. I also made “the doors of the warship” -drawing after planning the JOURNEY INTO THE DARK (although I posted the doors pic first, since it was finished earlier).

It has a similar lighting and the theme of James and Miranda facing together ‘the civilization’ although this time they are stepping towards the light again (in hopes of closure and the promise of new life... which doesn’t go well as we already know ;_;).

James and Miranda about to leave the warship and meet Lord Peter Ashe in Charles Town:

So, here we sort of have a beginning and an end for their journey in the dark (together)  - believing that there are just the two of them left from the original trio.

Aaaaaand, that’s about it. Sorry about some repetition and messiness.

As I said in the beginning of this post, you are free to have your own interpretations (and I hope this post didn’t ruin any of them). These were just the things and thoughts that went into this work (or were stumbled upon along the way...), but you don’t have to take them to your heart.

Thank you so much for checking out this post and I hope it was worthy of your time! ( ˘ ³˘)♥