#this is kind of my relaunch

[felsicveins]

I have a Patreon!

Hello!! I have a Patreon where I stream via my Discord server once a week and take drawing requests! It's a really fun time and you can see stuff that I don't post on Tumblr! ❤️

[handweavers]

Will you take photos of your work that you are bringing to the market? Doubt i will be able to be there (am in the gta but am not a carhaver) but i would love to see them nevertheless!

absolutely!! once i have my pile of goods assembled i'll take some good photos ☺️

[bumpscosity]

63 cent build a bears lets goooooo

[boyfeminism]

this is kinda dumb but does anyone know how to force a program to not open into the second monitor? i already double checked that my laptop is still screen 1 and the other one is screen 2 and ive never had this problem but minecraft's launcher loooove screen 2 suddenly

[ms-demeanor]

I would like to address something that has come up several times since I relaunched my computer recommendation blog two weeks ago. Part of the reason that I started @okay-computer and that I continue to host my computer-buying-guide is that it is part of my job to buy computers every day.

I am extremely conversant with pricing trends and specification norms for computers, because literally I quoted seven different laptops with different specs at different price-points *today* and I will do more of the same on Monday.

Now, I am holding your face in my hands. I am breathing in sync with you. We are communicating. We are on the same page. Listen.

Computer manufacturers don't expect users to store things locally so it is no longer standard to get a terabyte of storage in a regular desktop or laptop. You're lucky if you can find one with a 512gb ssd that doesn't have an obnoxious markup because of it.

If you think that the norm is for computers to come with 1tb of storage as a matter of course, you are seeing things from a narrow perspective that is out of step with most of the hardware out there.

I went from a standard expectation of a 1tb hdd five years ago to expecting to get a computer with a 1tb hdd that we would pull and replace with a 1tb ssd to expecting to get a computer that came with a 256gb ssd that we would pull and replace with a 1tb ssd, to just having the 256gb ssd come standard and and only seeking out more storage if the customer specifically requested it because otherwise they don't want to pay for more storage.

Computer manufacturers consider any storage above 256gb to be a premium feature these days.

Look, here's a search for Lenovo Laptops with 16GB RAM (what I would consider the minimum in today's market) and a Win11 home license (not because I prefer that, but to exclude chromebooks and business machines). Here are the storage options that come up for those specs:

You will see that the majority of the options come with less than a terabyte of storage. You CAN get plenty of options with 1tb, but the point of Okay-Computer is to get computers with reasonable specs in an affordable price range. These days, that mostly means half a terabyte of storage (because I can't bring myself to *recommend* less than that but since most people carry stuff in their personal cloud these days, it's overkill for a lot of people)

All things being equal, 500gb more increases the price of this laptop by $150:

It brings this one up by $130:

This one costs $80 more to go from 256 to 512 and there isn't an option for 1TB.

For the last three decades storage has been getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, to the point that storage was basically a negligible cost when HDDs were still the standard. With the change to SSDs that cost increased significantly and, while it has come down, we have not reached the cheap, large storage as-a-standard on laptops stage; this is partially because storage is now SO cheap that people want to entice you into paying a few dollars a month to use huge amounts of THEIR storage instead of carrying everything you own in your laptop.

You will note that 1tb ssds cost you a lot less than the markup to pay for a 1tb ssd instead of a 500gb ssd

In fact it can be LESS EXPENSIVE to get a 1tb ssd than a 500gb ssd.

This is because computer manufacturers are, generally speaking, kind of shitty and do not care about you.

I stridently recommend getting as much storage as you can on your computer. If you can't get the storage you want up front, I recommend upgrading your storage.

But also: in the current market (December 2024), you should not expect to find desktops or laptops in the low-mid range pricing tier with more than 512gb of storage. Sometimes you'll get lucky, but you shouldn't be expecting it - if you need more storage and you need an inexpensive computer, you need to expect to upgrade that component yourself.

So, if you're looking at a computer I linked and saying "32GB of RAM and an i7 processor but only 500GB of storage? What kind of nonsense is that?" Then I would like to present you with one of the computers I had to quote today:

A three thousand dollar macbook with the most recent apple silicon (the m4 released like three weeks ago) and 48 FUCKING GIGABYTES OF RAM with a 512gb ssd.

You can't even upgrade that SSD! That's an apple that drive isn't going fucking anywhere! (don't buy apple, apple is shit)

The norms have shifted! It sucks, but you have to be aware of these kinds of things if you want to pay a decent price for a computer and know what you're getting into.

[blacktabbygames]

A small content update for Slay the Princess just went live — The Voice of the Skeptic now accompanies you on the Deconstructed side of Happily Ever After instead of Voice of the Paranoid.

I’m not sure why I originally settled on Paranoid for that branch of the story. Maybe it was because Skeptic already felt overrepresented in The Pristine Cut between his presence in the Den, and his major role in The Cage split across three routes. The Cage in particular was a very emotionally taxing chapter to work on, so maybe I was tired of writing him.

But post release, it’s felt like:

Paranoid’s in HEA was just kind of there. At least, none of the things he does in the chapter felt important for his character.

Every voice gets an opportunity to truly shine somewhere except Skeptic. In fact, to push players to the cage, we wound up taking away one of his weirdest moments to shine from the base game (pushing you to take The Prisoner’s head with you.) Localizing the game means that redoing any dialogue is very burdensome, since I’d have to have it retranslated in all 12 of our supported languages, but upon looking more closely at the script for Happily Ever After, I realized that all but one or two lines felt more like they belonged to skeptic rather than the paranoid anyways.

And that when given to the skeptic, those lines don’t feel like he’s just kind of there the way it felt like Paranoid was just kind of there. The small wins Paranoid can get in that chapter — deducing the identity of the shadow; pushing you to blow out the torches — they’re big wins for the Skeptic, and the route seemed like it would be much more rounded if he was swapped in.

And beyond that, I couldn’t get the following line from the Shifting Mound’s monologue about the Deconstructed Damsel out of my head:

“Love melted into skepticism, and you pulled back layer after layer after layer until all you were left with was the knowledge that you did not know me.”

We couldn’t just use the word skepticism to describe the route’s entry point and not include our lil’ over-analytical guy. So we took some time this month to re-record those lines with Jonny and make the changes to the game, and now that itching need to fix “just one more thing” is finally gone.

This is probably the final content update for Slay the Princess (though, never say never I suppose.) Ever since we started work on The Pristine Cut, I wanted to end my work on the game with the conclusion of Happily Ever After. I’m grateful for the opportunity for that to finally be the case.

I hope to see you all tomorrow with Scarlet Hollow’s relaunch, but even if I don’t see you there, thank you all for the life-changing support you’ve given us. I hope our game means as much to you as it means to us.

All the best, Tony

[mortalityplays]

You need more free art.

I quit my job yesterday. Well, actually I quit my job eight weeks ago, but they finally released me yesterday for good behaviour. Don't get me wrong, I love what I do - but I do it for the wrong reasons. Working for major charities, you learn very fast that 'I want to make the world a better place' is a phrase you use to ask people for money, not to give them things. I was an ass-backwards fit for that world.

You need more free art. I need more free art. Everyone has felt the shift in our media landscape over the last ten years, away from access and towards nickel-and-diming the human experience. That lack of access is making life and culture worse for all of us, across the board. Paywalled news sites leave us less informed, attacks on the Internet Archive leave us less capable of research. Algorithmic social feeds and streaming walled gardens trap us inside smaller and smaller demographic bubbles, where we are increasingly only likely to encounter ideas that have been curated for us by marketing departments. Hasty efforts to resist AI commodification have only led to more artists locking their work away and calling for even more onerous systems of copyright law. This is not good for us.

We all need more free art.

So what am I going to do about it?

This is a question I have been asking myself for years. It's easy to sit here feeilng frustrated and thinking 'boy I hope SOMEONE does SOMETHING'. It's harder to take action in a world where I still have rent to pay. But hard doesn't mean impossible. Sometimes hard just means time-consuming, frustrating and slow. And sometimes it's worth doing something time-consuming, frustrating and slow because...I want to make the world a better place.

I'm going to do this:

1. From April 1st, I am relaunching as a freelance writer and editor.

This is the one that will (hopefully) help to pay the bills. I am a very good and experienced editor. I've worked on hollywood movies, I'm a member of the Chartered Institute of Editors and Proofreaders, I have clients who have been coming to me exclusively for more than 10 years.

Alongside bigger contract jobs, I am going to refocus on offering my services to small-press creators at a reduced rate. That means you, graphic novelists. That means you, itch and amazon writers. I want to help you develop your work, the same way I help large organisations. You can learn more about what an editor even does and what kind of pricing you can expect here.

2. I'm also going to start giving shit away. Like, constantly.

Next week I'm going to launch a new free shop. If you're unfamiliar, a free shop, giveaway shop, swap shop, etc. is an anarchist tradition of setting up a storefront where anyone can take what they like for no cost. Offline, this often means second-hand clothes, tools, furniture, food etc. Online, I am going to be giving away digital art. Copyright-free, no strings attached. It will (eventually) feature everything from print-res posters to zines, poems, tattoo flash, t-shirt designs and anything else we come up with.

Yes, I said 'we' - while this is a curated collection, it will feature work from a variety of credited and anonymous artists and activists, all of whom have agreed to give their work away to the public domain. Some of it will be practical, some of it will be political, but a lot of it will be decorative or personal. This is, in part, a response to recent difficulty I had finding somewhere that would print a one-off joke poster for a friend that featured the word 'faggot'. Enough. No middlemen - no explaining ourselves. Just print our shit and enjoy it.

I'm very, very excited about this project. I'll have more to say about it closer to the launch, but you can expect it to go live on March 27th.

2.2 I forgot to mention the ACTUAL LAUNCH GIVEAWAY

To celebrate my launch, I am going to be giving away a ton of physical prints. When I went looking for my old stock to see if it was worth setting a new (paid) storefront up, I realised I had way more old work in storage than I thought. This will be announced in its own right on Monday, but this is why I've been hinting you should go follow my Patreon.

On April 1st, I will pick 8 random patrons (from across all tiers including non-paying followers!) and mail them a bundle of assorted prints and postcards. The prize pool includes A3 and A4 posters, packs of A6 postcards, and printed minicomics that I've previously sold for up to £12 each.

You don't have to be a paying subscriber to enter - this is strictly no-purchase necessary. It is purely and entirely a celebration of the concept of GIVING ART AWAY FOR FREE.

3. PORN, YOU PERVERTS

Because I still have to pay to stay alive, I am going to be subsidising all this free art with the introduction of Fuck You Fridays. Starting from March 29th, I will drop a new 18+ short story on the last Friday of every month, over on itch.io (yes I know my page is desolate right now, don't worry I'll get there).

The first edition, Go Fuck Yourself, is about, well - telling your boss where to stick it. Julia has had it with her millionaire man-child manager, and is just about ready to let him know what she really thinks. It's a short and steamy 5k words, with a gorgeous cover illustration by @taylor-titmouse, and you can pick it up for $3 starting from March 29th.

4. ANOTHER BIG SURPRISE

I'm keeping this one under wraps for now, but April 1st will also play host to one more (FREE) launch. If you've been following me for a long time, you might remember the other significance of this date (no not April Fool's day, though that is certainly thematically relevant to this entire effort). That's all I'll say right now. Watch this space.

tl;dr: I'm sick of paywalls and career ladders. I'm literally putting my money where my mouth is. More free art for everyone and I'm not kidding around!!!

[maxwellatoms]

In one of your last answers, you said “series reboots are usually pretty gross and sad”, and I was wondering if you could expand on that? Assuming “reboot” covers any kind of continuation of a currently cancelled or finished show (and maybe that’s the wrong assumption!), from the outside looking in it feels like a pretty mixed bag. On one hand, if I love XYZ Show, it’s cool that I get more stories with these characters and another chance to support XYZ Show and its creators. On the other, it definitely feels like a lot of ideas can only get funding if they’re tied to something already, meaning creatives are having to now tie whatever cool idea they have to some reboot/relaunch/retread, which can feel pretty disheartening if you don’t want to do a reboot/relaunch/retread. Is that a similar feeling from your side of the industry?

Thank you so much for all your answers and insight!

Usually reboots and spin-offs are just cash grabs. It happens a lot in animation. In fact, I would argue that the entire industry is just one big cash grab now. In the 80s, everyone complained that cartoons were just half-hour commercials for toys. And they were right. And we're right back there, but now that you can't legally push toys all day, it's just general "IP". Mugs, posters, more spinoffs, whatever.

I was offered three show running gigs over the pandemic. All reboots that I would consider unwise to pursue because they were "of a different time" and didn't (in my opinion) have anything more to say. Two of them were properties created by notorious sex pests, so there's also that. The animation industry loves to prop up its sex pests.

I turned all of them down, partially because I didn't respect the original creators but also because none of them had anything going for them except just being "more of the same".

I don't think any of those projects survived the intervening years, so in retrospect I maybe should've taken the job. I'd probably feel a bit gross, but at least I'd have floors in my house.

The entertainment industry is in a bad spot. The whole thing. I've had I don't know how many pitch meetings in the last few years, and they all start the same way:

"Hey! Before we start, we just want to let you know that we're not actively producing anything right now. We think maybe soon, but we won't be picking anything up today..."

And then later:

"The little we are doing is IP, so if you have a new take on our IP or a new IP you're connected to that you can bring in, that'd be great."

I always wanted to make original stuff. There came a time when I'd had my fill of Billy & Mandy and wanted to do something else new and original. That never manifested, and I was constantly being offered IP to produce. I turned too many of those down, maybe, before deciding that it was probably better that I run the IPs that mean something to me rather than having some hack do it.

But now those jobs have all gone to celebrities and fallen live-action writers, who are also slowly being eaten by the system. WB was hot for Scooby stuff a few years back, so I pitched some ideas. A few of them were turned down for being "off-brand" in a variety of ways. WB has now made (I think) all of those off-brand shows (or something close) with celebrity show runners.

I was going through a whole Midlife Impostor Syndrome thing recently where I was wondering if maybe I don't just suck. Like, it's weird that for a couple of decades I'd have people calling me trying to get me to run shows, and now nobody will call me back about the possibility of a design job.

Talking to some friends and realizing that they were in a similar situation helped me feel like I wasn't alone. That was nice. Talking to some of the most talented colleagues in my industry made me made me realize that those people weren't getting jobs either. That was unnerving. Talking to complete strangers in other parts of the entertainment industry now has me thinking that the whole house of cards is coming down. That's real concerning, yo.

It's hard not to think it's purposeful, when deranged billionaires own the entirety of our media and want to shape a society where they can't be criticized. We're letting wealthy tech bros firebomb the very heart of our culture, and it's weird that no one is talking about it. Because (for now) we still have that capability.

[largeworm]

It's genuinely kind of upsetting how quickly social media's keep shooting themselves in the foot to just have something to show to higher ups and making their sites more and more user unfriendly. It reminds me of the Oreo CEO skit from College Humor/Dropout TV.

The new Discord update for mobile is genuinely disheartening by how little they seem to care about people hating the new layout. Which honestly, the DMs now being at the bottom and no longer swipping to see server members is annoying. But as someone who very easily gets god awful headaches from heavy contrast and light, the new "default" themes are... very unfriendly to people like me. Let me show you the difference in old Discord's dark mode vs the new:

Like, holy shit, it's Bad. The new one on the right is barely usable for me, it was giving me strain after only an hour or two of use. And it's not even their darkest mode, which is pure black, but it's their only other option aside from pure white in Light Mode.

If you don't want eyestrain, you'll have to pay the 10$ a month nitro not to get migraines. I have the 3$ version, and I can not change the theme with it to their other options. I was able to fix it by fighting all of my settings for an hour to get it back to the original color palette, but jfc. I shouldn't have to reset all my phone setting, open and relaunch discord, and pray that it decides the "automatic setting" is the non-eyeball burning classic dark mode.

The world and social media is just slowly getting more and more unuser friendly, especially towards people with light sensitivity (I can rant for hours about car headlight luminosity regulations). Just kinda disheartening to see Discord so adamantly against changing any of the new UI stuff, especially is they decide to no longer have the class color palette accessible in the future :/

[rachandroll]

Follow up on that bit of art from last night: I been thinking about how yelling at individual transphobes on the internet might be satisfying but it can honestly kind of become a trick we play on our brains to make us feel like it means we are sufficiently Doing Our Part. I regret not including anything like, more actionable on my post.

So, while I am still in moving apartment hell and can't pull a lot of links or anything rn, if you're in the US and cis, join me in looking up what bills are threatening trans folks in your state and go yell at your reps about it? And see what orgs in your area are doing work to help folks? I'm going to do the same after I schlep my bedframe over to the new place.

Or if you wanna do something ttrpg related, maybe go toss some money to one of the many trans game designers out there? Off the top of my head, I know the Defy the Gods first try crowdfund fell through and it's relaunching in a couple weeks, so that's worth a look? Would love it if people would pipe up with include other trans creators to support, too!

[neo-kosmos]

hi all, shelby here! sorry for the total lack of activity on this blog for the past few years. we have been working diligently behind the scenes on our discord server as we wrote the drafts of the novels

if you haven’t heard, danny broke up with me and brian. we are getting neokosmos in the divorce as it has always been my baby and brainchild and brian has done virtually all of the prose writing since 2020. danny has wanted to step away for quite some time, and we are super proud of him for following his own path in life. the two of us will always be best friends but our time as partners and creative partners has come to an end.

we will be changing the name of neokosmos because danny is no longer working on and it is just not the same project that it was back in 2015. its a lot more adult, its a novel, the story and world is so much more developed and honestly we need a fresh start. as soon as we can we will be relaunching everything with the new name and posting the first five chapters for free for everyone to read to see if you wanna join us and make it happen. both brian and i are too disabled to work normal jobs so we need to make writing and selling artwork as our main gigs or we will be kind of fucked.

thank you to everyone who has believed in us over the years and especially our loyal patrons. its been hundreds of thousands of words and concept art and prep over the last 9 years and im so stoked to finally share what we have been cooking with more people. i started this project as a 23 year old recent grad with no idea what i was doing in life, and now at 32 i finally feel confident enough that what i am making is ACTUALLY GOOD????

so yeah, stay tuned, the whole project is about to enter Phase 3. love y’all

-shelby

[persuasivetfs]

A Favor

Muhammad Al-Khatib saw himself as a pretty good guy all around. Easygoing, generous, always willing to help a friend out.

So when his childhood best-friend Rajesh asked if Muhammad could take 4 days off from work to help him with a work emergency, Muhammad didn’t hesitate. Though when Muhamaad got to his friend’s apartment he was less sure he could provide Rajesh needed.

For sprawled out unconscious and half-naked on Rajesh’s bed was The Ali Gomaa, an internationally ranked Egyptian body-builder, and Rajesh’s boss. For half a second Muhammad became worried that his best-friend had accidentally killed the man, before the massive man released a loud snort in his sleep.

“Alright so I fucked up bad, I fucked up real bad, man. Bad enough to cost me my job,” Rajesh began, pacing at the foot of his bed. Mr. Gomaa meanwhile seemed to be sleeping peacefully, a grin plastered to his face.

“I was supposed to put the order in for 300 units of the new Wolf Muscle Powder my boss is promoting at the Santa Fe Bodybuilding convention tomorrow and I only ordered 30.”

“So?” Muhammad asked, easing into a comfortable spot in a chair by the door.

“So? So, I’m fucked. My boss was insistent that this new muscle wolf powder was going to relaunch his career. How the fuck is he supposed to do that when I only ordered 30 of the fucking units to sell?” Rajesh panicked.

“Well mistakes happen. I mean is he really going to fire you over a little mistake like this,” Muhammad asked, absentmindedly twirling his friend’s baseball cap in his hand.

“Yes, yes he would, because Mr. Gomaa is a perfectionist and I’ve already fucked up twice this month on this order alone. He’s already warned me once that if I kept making these kinds of mistakes that he’d find someone to replace me. I can’t lose this job, man, I just can’t,” Rajesh reasoned. Muhammad frowned.

“If he’s that much of a pain in the ass to work for, why do you even want to be his personal assistant? Not like you need the money or the bodybuilding experience,” Muhammad answered with a shrug.

Rajesh was a popular athletic model and professional bodybuilder in his own right, having won two local championship trophies in the last year alone. It made more sense when Rajesh was just starting out after high school, when he still needed all the help he could get, but that was years ago. How long was he planning on staying attached to this man by the hip?

“This job was never about the money. Ali Gomaa is a legend in professional bodybuilding. I still have so much to learn, and it's only under Mr. Gomaa that I’ve advanced so much in such a short period of time,” Rajesh said, gazing with what Mohamaad imagined as pure admiration at the perfectly sculpted body of Mr. Gomaa. He then briefly smiled at the thought of Rajesh under the man’s older and heavier body.

Muhammad was careful to keep such thoughts to himself. Rajesh was straight and the last time he cracked a joke about the two men together, his face had gone scarlet and they hadn’t talked again for a month. He’d do anything to prevent a fight like that again.

“Then what do you need me to help with? Ordering a new shipment for this Muscle Coyote Powder?” Muhammad asked, giving the cap another spin on his thumb.

“No, I already handled that. No, what I need from you is more hands on,” Rajesh explained.

He took out a silvery blue pill from his pocket.

“What am I even looking at?”

“The future of professional body-building, my friend. That and possibly the future of athletics in general,” Rajesh said with a sense of wonder bordering on pride.

“This is Splindifferin,” Rajesh introduced with the air of a professor giving a lecture, “A marvel of medical science that allows one person to enter the body of another and control it from the inside.

For after a person has taken Splindifferin their body and mind enter a mutable state, where both become fluid. This then allows another person, presumably a coach or fellow teammate to enter the host’s body where the two become one. Once inside, the second person is given complete control over the original inhabitant’s form allowing them to overcome any mental or emotional challenges that may inhibit the host’s functioning. Then after a period of several days, the intruder is ejected from the host body and the patient returns to normal functioning. Watch,” Rajesh then poked Mr. Gomaa’s knee, creating a ripple effect of moving skin that moved from the tips of his toes to the top of his head.

”That’s incredible. But do you really think I can pass as your boss for four days? I don’t know anything about him or bodybuilding,” Muhammad pointed out, scratching at his round stomach.

“That’s where the process of ‘doubling’ comes in. For the longer you remain within Ali Gomaa‘s body the more of his memories, mannerisms, and knowledge will flow into you. By the end of four days, not even his wife or adult sons would be able to tell the difference,” Rajesh explained with a grin, patting Mohammad warmly on the shoulder.

“Besides, I’ll be with you every step of the way coaching you through this. That is if you agree to help me out.” Rajesh then flashed Mohammad a look of his soft, pleading brown eyes, making him melt like butter into his chair.

“Alright, alright. If you say we can do this, then I trust you. I’ll help you out,” Mohammad agreed.

“You’re amazing! Thanks so much, man. You have no idea how much this means to me! Okay, now get undressed. We can’t do this unless you’re both nude,” Rajesh said, shifting his tone of voice from appreciative to authoritative so quick it made Mohammad’s head spin.

He got up from his seat and began to disrobe. Rajesh instead of leaving as Mohammad expected, took his place in his chair.

“You sure you want to stay here and watch?” Muhmmad asked, taking off his shirt. He remembered how squeamish his friend had been with his undressing near him after their fight.

“Bro, I need to stay here and make sure you enter Mr. Gomaa’s body the right way. So just take your dick out and let’s hurry this up,” Rajesh said, crossing his arms and leaning back into his chair.

“So why did Mr.Gomaa need a drug like Splindifferin to compete anyway? Hasn’t he been a professional body-builder for like 20 years?” Mohammad asked as he took off his shirt.

“Ever since 2017, as great as the man is, Ali Gomaa has suffered from acute stage fright. The result of mild heat stroke and anxiety that struck him while competing in the Summer Cairo heat. So to compete, he has been relying on others to literally take over for him.”

“Has Me.Gomaa ever let you enter his body before?” Mohammad asked, kicking off his jeans.

“A few times, but never for more than a day, and the whole time I was under constant watch by other members of his support team. Guess they were fearful of me trying to run off in his body or commit some felonies. This time however, we’re doing this before we arrive in Santa Fe, so we don’t have to worry about them knowing it's you in there,” Rajesh explained.

Once fully naked, Muhammad walked to the side of the bed. Mr. Gomaa was fully naked except for a dark blue jockstrap.

Now, Muhammad always knew he was on the heavier side of things and the hairer side but he’d never really been insecure about it. Plenty of gay guys loved bears. Still, next to this muscular behemoth Muhammad felt tiny and petite.

Unsteady, and with trembling knees, he got on the bed and attempted to ease himself into Mr. Gomaa. Once his ass cheeks hit the man’s waist, the bodybuilder’s eyes opened wide, nearly scaring him back off the bed, when Rajesh stood from his seat and eased him back.

“Easy man! He’s still asleep. That just happens sometimes,” Rajesh explained, his hands comforting and firm.

With another breath, Muhammad leaned back and laid himself fully into the bodybuilder’s body as Rajesh looked him over.

It was like the body of Mr.Gomaa had turned into a thick, heavy wad of gelatin, and the more Muhammad pushed in, the more the man’s flesh sucked him in further and further.

Wet muscle and skin enveloped him, flooding Muhammad’s skin with a thousand pinpricks of pins and needles. Then as his head merged with the bodybuilder’s his vision went dark and for a brief second it was hard to breathe.

Muhammad awoke with a start, sitting up in bed and gasping for air, his eyes going from one side of the room to the other.

“Easy, friend, easy. Deep breathes,” Rajesh soothed, holding onto his chest.

Muhammad looked down. His chest was Mr. Gomaa’s chest, big and powerful, radiating heat like a furnace. Shocked and not quite believing what was happening, Mohammad tried to stand up and run to the bedroom mirror but nearly fell, his heavy legs stumbling underneath him.

Rajesh went to hold him back, but Muhammad found he could push away his friend easily. He staggered to the mirror.

It was in the body of The Ali Gomaa standing there before him. Thick neck, bulging triceps, biceps so big they’d literally won awards! He flexed an arm and the reflection did the same.

Already Muhammad was a little drunk on power. He wanted to push this body to its limits.

To lift every weight and crush every goal just to prove he could. His hands were shaking but not with fright but excitement.

Rajesh came around the corner, wrapping a still muscular but not as thick arm around Muhammad’s shoulders.

“You ready to compete bro?”

[crooked-wasteland]

According to helluva fans…asking for sex then hesitating before being persuaded, is sexual assault because you showed a moment of hesitation? Wow they are morons.

Stolas a prince, was sober enough to dismiss guards then escort someone technically now in his custody, to his bedroom and lock the door until he got sex, then brag about it to his wife the next day and months after. These fans and even some criticals must have been closing their eyes during the entire hallway scene where stolas straight up tells blitz “follow me, imp” and tells him not to speak.

But in my opinion Medrano didn’t intend this scene to be as rapey as it was. To her it’s both hot and funny. I can’t help think how many pornos there are of scenes just like this, where someone traps someone else in a bedroom. And all the pornos where two guys go at it in secret while the wife is in the next room. It’s pure sleaze.

Just a warning, this one is a bit rambling, but this is why many of my drafts never end up finished because they touch on so many different things that I get stuck in my approach. I'm just throwing everything out as I write and so there are some tangents.

I apologize if that gets confusing.

I'm sure the intention was some kind of sexual thriller vibe. But I think the whole scene simply lacks coherence and so people grab what they can from the episode.

I didn't have a real place to put this in my 2-parter, but Stolas is just weird, in a derogatory way. Taking him as a whole, he's a gross, weird, ultra-powerful noble whose opening line is nothing if not wantonly sexual towards someone he literally doesn't know.

On the other hand, you see the consequences of why redundant scenes are such a problem. The sequence of Stolas flirting with Blitz is a terrible, uncomfortable, and insane first draft scene that someone forgot to delete. Everything from when they enter the room to when they sit down is why a lot of people see Stolas as being enthusiastically consenting the entire time.

No one provoked that characterization out of him. He both doesn't remember Blitz's name, but also believes it would be totally normal to conclude that the kid from his childhood he only met once showed up 25 years later just to have sex. This is Stolas just being Stolas without the thought of cheating up until this point being an option to him. But the moment he lays eyes on that guy he only vaguely remembers, Stolas is revving like a college sophomore tailgating in his raised pickup after a frat party.

This is just bizarre. There is no way to justify this sort of character other than perverse and debauched. That the second he was alone with some man of a much lower status, and thus powerless and harmless, he goes from trying to endure his loveless marriage to fantasizing about some rugged, long-lost childhood friend (who, once again, he doesn't know the name of) coming to (affectionately) steal him away from it all instantly.

That's insane. That's an insane person. That's a villain in their own right. That is season 1 Ice King from Adventure Time. There is no way to really forgive this kind of character without some heavy overhauling.

Which is a problem because they already set up their Ice King redemption arc in LooLoo Land. While The Circus is a prequel, it was also the show's last chance to get the main relationship's connection right.

For some reason they didn't just rewrite season 1 after realizing they wanted to go in a different direction by Ozzie's, but that would have been more money and more time. This is also why you should have a lot of pre-planning. I also get Murder Family being a soft relaunch pilot and the contents of that episode not being canon as the team got a clearer image of what they wanted from the story.

But Season 2 really was that last chance. Being Indie and generous to their limited experience, Spindlehorse had a rare opportunity to take 3 bites of the same apple. They whiffed every one. I think it's reasonable to be unforgiving of these sort of mistakes this late in the process.

There's only so many times you can claim to be learning and make these sort of rookie mistakes before people stop accepting your third and fourth drafts after the fact. And I think Medrano has hit her limit following Mastermind when I see comments on her Instagram asking who lied to her in reference to her writing being better.

Anyway, that is the same problem here, but much closer together. The momentum of the scene with Stolas initiating conversation with Blitz that is clearly implied to be expecting sex at some point in the interaction get reset as Stolas and Blitz sit down on the chaise.

We have a clear delineation of two alternate realities where in one Stolas is just happy to reconnect with someone he, for some reason, considers an old friend, and another where expecting sex in this situation is just "normal?".

Meanwhile Blitz makes two plans that are exactly the same in order to get the book. Yet both times are shown to be "the moment" his character decides how he is going to get what he wants.

And because both of them are here in the finished product, we as an audience have no choice but to try and make these coexist in one time and space.

For anyone to keep their sanity, they have to choose one or the other. And it seems to me that the fans see the original setup as being "Just a joke", which is a whole host of problems on its own.

You should not be stopping the story completely and making your own blooper reel inside the main portion of your narrative. Any joke that stops the momentum and actively needs to be unwritten to maintain the flow needs to be deleted.

Which, for simplicity sake, when I use words like "unwritten" I specifically mean the act of writing around something that has already been canonized in order to "undo" the impact of it.

Like when Stella suddenly calls Striker to call off the assassination because her brother had to redefine her own motivation because the writers felt they had written themselves into a corner.

Or when Stolas comes out of nowhere in Full Moon monologuing about how the book deal wasn't right and that he wanted to end it, out of nowhere really. No moment of the show is spent showing us how Stolas learns from his mistake to get to that point, it very obviously is a rushed and hand-fisted way of telling an audience to stop bringing it up, instead of actually having the characters work through the conflict.

That is what I mean by un-writing. Its the literary equivalent of a new coat of paint on a condemned building infested with black mold.

Retconning would be never addressing the change or shift at all and moving forward with that change. Which can be done well by professionals through the lens of recontexualizing. Creating distance where you can and having characters face consequences for their actions and actively grow when you can't just ignore it.

Ozzie's is an example of a retcon as Stolas never once made clear that he was infatuated with Blitz at all. It almost succeeded with just recontexualizing the characters and their relationship if they had insisted that this was something new for Stolas. Instead they then went and made The Circus. Which recontexualized Ozzie's as a hard, amateur, retcon.

In the Circus, everyone is choosing a narrative between the two scenes on where to start. Does it start when they sit down or when they enter the room. From my understanding, all critics begin the scene when Stolas locks the door.

Meanwhile fans put that scene (and a lot of other ones like it) in a bubble and slap a label on as "JOKE" and then continue the story after Blitz and Stolas sit down. Meaning they see Blitz as the instigator.

Which is necessary, because the 8 month gap between season 1 and 2 was long enough for people to start questioning key plot points that definitely contradicted Medrano's direction in Ozzie's. By this point, Stolas was being eviscerated for how his offer to cuddle in the season finale was rightfully turned down and how Blitz had no reason to believe Stolas saw Blitz as more than a sexual object. Not just from their dinner in the episode, but as a retrospective. Looking back over the whole season as a singular entity made people less fond of Stolas.

Frankly, his whole change of heart on Ozzie's feels like he's trying to use Blitz emotionally like he does sexually, and Blitz's response is extremely valid.

They run into the same situation here. Can't give up the gross sexual humor because Medrano finds that hilarious. So let's awkwardly un-write around that very clear sexual predator scene by having Stolas say:

I'm not someone who believes you can lead someone on, but Stolas did way too much.

People accused of "leading on" guys don't apprehend those men, lead them through their private residence to their bedroom, lock themselves with the man inside, and explicitly state that they desire sex with a word that practically spells out a kink for consensual non-consent.

No one has ever put that much effort just to turn around and say "I was only teasing". Even if you swear you're only teasing, you are the asshole in that instance. Of course no one deserves to be sexually assaulted regardless what they do; but how can you try and defend yourself when you literally were asking for it?

It's one of those situations where black and white thinking cannot function and I know by how people respond to this part, whether or not they are mature enough to be on my page. Because no one deserves something bad happening to them, no matter how terrible they are. But this specific situation is so murky between the power dynamics (if Stolas didn't actually want it, he could kill Blitz consequences free. And we have also seen he will kill someone even if his life is not actually in jeopardy in Loo Loo Land) but also the actions the characters have taken to show enthusiastic consent.

And even still, prior to Blitz biting Stolas, he didn't actually do anything sexual. He is simply flirting and moving Stolas around the room as a literal means of control. What about any of Blitz's actions is sexual in this sequence?

But again, this is such a demented and bizarre setup that literally no one in real life will ever be in this exact situation, and the characters themselves are not real. So unreal people in an unreal situation that isn't even remotely plausible in reality, I'm coming down hard on the side of, Fuck off, Stolas consented and he's not really revoking consent either, and even still Blitz has no intention of having sex with him anyway. So no, Blitz is not doing anything wrong, sexually speaking.

If Blitz isn't just answering a direct question in a suggestive tone, he's repeating back Stolas' question in a suggestive tone. Mainly because you can't answer this:

With:

It isn't until Stolas is enthusiastically consenting that Blitz does have sex with him or does anything sexual towards him. No one can even guarantee that Blitz knew biting Stolas would turn him on, it was just something to distract Stolas. These are hypotheticals asking about the mindset of a person who doesn't have a mind. Any clues to motivation are limited to facts on screen. Blitz acted impulsively, it worked out for him and resulted in Stolas' enthusiastic consent.

Which, by the way, pity sex sits just over the border of dubious consent for me. Sure, it's a choice, but one by definition made under the duress of one's own emotions. No one enjoys pity sex. Everyone who has had pity sex has always written it off as a regrettable night.

And while regret is not non-consent, doing anything from pity is the cause of feeling pressured. Factors can be internal or external. External factors push it closer to non consent, internal ones keep it as dubious consent, but my understanding of how people experience pity (especially people who suffer from abandonment issues) keeps me from seeing pity as being cleanly consensual.

Pity as an emotion is an interesting one, as my own relationship with the emotion is one I have processed and worked through. With my own history of trauma, I was a lot more desperate in how I pitied other people. It was like, I felt so bad for them that I had to do something to make me not pity them anymore, because the feeling was too uncomfortable for me.

As an over 30-year-old adult and having gone through extensive work on my mental health, pity is something distant to me. It's not a motivator to me now, but it very much was when I was less mentally well. And I often see reflections of that in how people online behave. So I assume that most people who would latch onto this show would also experience Pity with an unusual intensity.

I'm very much open to hearing other's experiences in this regard.

But anyway, yes. Stolas claims to be "teasing", it holds no weight. Also, Stolas even just saying that he meant it all as some big joke is a certified "dick move". It's not funny, it's gross and weird. It just makes Stolas look more gross and more weird.

But the only reason he says this is because he said that weird crap by the door. So the fact that the scene by the door is being referenced after the tone shift removes the ability to just completely cut out chunks of the story and call it a joke. It was an attempt at minimizing Stolas' culpability after having him instigate the sexual direction the scene went in, trying to throw a hot potato so that the writers can claim that they are equally at fault.

Meanwhile, this is Blitz:

Looking like he licked the seat of a toilet bowl even as he's walking to the window to leave.

There is so much whiplash between him trying to get into it, only for Stolas to physically disgust him. And that amount of disgust somehow turning around completely is a hard one to tango with.

Emotions, at least in literature, run on Newton's Laws of Gravity. In order to change a character's emotions you need an bigger and opposite emotion.

So conceptualizing Blitz's disgust as a sphere the size of the moon, in order for that disgust to turn into pity, especially a level of pity that would make Blitz push past his disgust and have sex with the weird, gross guy out of pity, that's an emotional nuke the size of the sun.

So Blitz being Stolas' friend is more important to Blitz than his own repulsion to Stolas.

That's a lot of character development that makes the whole sequence viscerally uncomfortable, and that's just from Blitz's side. That's not even touching on Stolas and how repulsive we as an audience see him behave.

But that also relies on having your own experiences to really feel for the characters. Before ever considering having sex myself, this sort of story would have been edgy fun. I would have also been 13 and not an adult, but still. I would have found this whole setup stupid sexy fun. As an adult who has experienced sexual assault and consensual sex, as well as having a long-term partner, I feel Blitz's disgust as strongly as he does.

Him changing his mind cannot be something unimportant. Just like there was too much work done to make Stolas a fucking creep, too much was done to show how revolting Blitz found Stolas. It is perfect for Blitz's character, but not for the narrative Medrano is trying to tell.

Blitz's character consistency is too on point for Medrano to cope, and she shows by how she Un-Writes her stories that she doesn't know how to tell a story. The second her characters are faced with a problem, that problem is resolved in the laziest and least impactful way.

Did any of this make sense? Not going to take my own advice and just throw up my first draft. Hopefully someone likes it.

[living-in-the-pokemon-world]

Hiya! It's, uhh, it's been a while. A little under three years to be exact. How's everybody been?

Anyways, I've been kind of missing this blog lately, so I figured I'd take another swing at it!

I can't promise the same activity as before, where I was updating multiple times a day almost every day, but I do have some posts sitting in my Drafts as well as some unanswered Asks that I'm hoping to get out there. Hopefully I'm not too rusty!

But yeah, thank you to everybody who's stuck around (even if it's just because you forgot you were following), and I hope you all enjoy this kind of soft relaunch of LitPW!

— Laur

[elderscrollsconceptart]

Some users on PC have an issue where the Oblivion Remaster shader compilation is not completing.

The game may crash during shader compilation and if you relaunch the game, you can play, but stutters and FPS issues will be worse than if you had successfully compiled shaders. Shader compilation cannot be automatically re-ran so you need to force your PC to restart the compilation.

Here are the steps I took to "fix" this issue:

1. Roll back your Nvidia GPU drivers to 572.83

If you have an AMD GPU, I believe AMD released an updated driver for Oblivion Remastered that should mean no driver rollback is needed.

2. Delete your shader cache via the Disk cleanup windows program

3. Cut/paste this file OUT of this folder path:

steamapps\common\Oblivion Remastered\Engine\Plugins\Marketplace\nvidia\DLSS\Streamline\Binaries\ThirdParty\Win64\sl.pcl.dll

I personally dropped it into a desktop folder so I have it saved somewhere. Just make sure this file is NOT in that folder path anymore.

4. Delete Oblivion.ini from this location:

\steamapps\common\Oblivion Remastered\OblivionRemastered\Content\Dev\ObvData\Oblivion.ini

5. Open Oblivion Remastered and shader compilation should now begin.

If all went well the shader compilation should complete (may take a long time) and you should notice *some* improvements to stuttering as shader are now fully compiled.

Make sure you re select your graphics settings as they will have reverted to default. See below for my personal settings and performance notes. 👇

---

Next part is how I personally went from ~40fps outdoors to a solid 60fps average with occasional dips to 50fps at the lowest.

Caveat I have a high end PC, play on a 4k TV and don't play above 60fps. Your Milage may vary as everyone has their own hardware setup and graphical preferences.

---

1. Make sure your game is installed on SSD. Game just runs alot better on SSD and even warns you to make sure its installed on one.

2. FPS lock/VSync. If you need Vsync to play games like I do. Turn OFF the in-game VSYNC and force VSYNC ON in Nvidia control panel. IDK how AMD gpus work but id imagine you'd use AMDs version of control panel to do the same.

Set the FPS limit to 60fps (or whatever your preference) in the in-game settings. This can also be done instead in the Nvidia control panel so if you set the limit there, be sure to NOT have a limit set in-game settings.

3. DLSS of some kind is a must for most games these days. Especially if playing with Ray Tracing (as you can note below)

Set DLSS to either performance (looks worse, runs better), Quality (looks better, runs a bit worse), or DLAA (looks alot better but most performance hit out of all DLSS settins).

Use FSR if you are on an AMD GPU.

4. DLSS Frame Generation. This literally will give you like 10+ FPS. BUUUTT it gives you CRAZY input lag. Make sure if you use this you also set NVIDIA Reflex to Enabled+Boost. For me this game me the free 10+fps while eliminating the input lag almost entirely.

Note: If you use Frame Generation you will notice the menus in-game have a weird flutter/lag. Beyond this tho the issues are minimal.

If you use AMD GPUs make sure to use the FSR/FSR Frame Generation/XeSS options as these are AMDs versions of the NVIDIA options i discussed above

I know alot of ppl play on different hardware in general so to summarize the graphics settings:

Turn off VYSNC in game and force it via your GPU control panel. Use frame generation and DLSS/FSR as specified above. If your settings don't give you the performance you want, roll them back bit by bit.

ALSO: This may be relevant but as a precaution, make any major graphics settings changes *FROM THE MAIN MENU* After you make the changes, exit and restart the game. Sometimes the changes don't work if you make them while you have a save loaded + don't restart the game.

Hope this all helps at least somebody out there. Send asks or DM if you need any clarification, and remember, Milage may vary so experiment with your settings as needed.

[positivelybeastly]

One of my bigger issues with the All-New X-Men era is how in spite of the whole time travel thing being kicked off by a Beast vs Cyclops framing, the more consistent and upfront framing was Cyclops vs Wolverine. I get Wolverine is popular. I get he had an iconic rivalry with Cyclops. But the actual buildup to revolutionary Cyclops was much more focused on Hank being the one to stand against him and have opposing ideas, and I feel like that was tossed away to boost Wolverine again. After the time travel, Hank just kinda stuck around to occasionally be yelled at but he wasn’t at the forefront of that conflict anymore. His character was a vehicle to get to the new status quo of the O5 kids being in the present.

So how would you have approached this era as a more direct continuation/exploration of Scott and Hank’s falling out? You can choose to keep or discard the time travel elements if you want.

Ahh, then you and I share a very similar outlook on one of the many reasons why All-New X-Men blows chunks!

So, yeah, this is a problem endemic to X-Men comics of the late 2000s and early 2010s, where they wanted to duplicate the success and storytelling possibilities of Civil War by manufacturing a conflict between various X-Men, and then splitting them apart.

On the face of it, it's not a bad idea, there's mileage there, and if we acknowledge the fact that the X-Men are essentially a paramilitary political activist group agitating for change, well, leftists literally can't stop fighting each other long enough to mount a proper opposition to most right wing governments, so, that's just on brand, isn't it?

Unfortunately, while I don't think stuff like Schism is quite as damaging to a lot of the X-Men characters as Civil War was to, say, Mr. Fantastic or Iron Man, it really is unfortunate that the other thing they decided to lift from Civil War was that it wasn't particularly good.

Now, as you've intimated, one of the main problems with Schism and All-New X-Men is that by this point in time in the comics, Wolverine was THE X-Man. If you've read X-Men comics from the 00s and 10s, you know that the writers did still centre other characters, most notably Cyclops, Emma Frost, a few others, but because of the nature of a lot of these characters' development paths by this point, it made way more sense for Wolverine to stick with them, and vice versa, because their moral codes were slowly drifting more and more into alignment by now.

But this presents a problem, because Wolverine is the only X-Man who you can sell as being the other side.

He was the only X-Man with a solo series that ran consistently, for years on end, and was always relaunched when it ended; he had been added to the rosters of several high profile teams, including the New Avengers; and there was a notable bump in popularity to any comic that featured him, just as a matter of course.

So, if you're going to split off the X-Men and give them two leaders, he's pretty much the only candidate, because you need to sell comics. Doesn't matter what's best for the story or the most natural choice, you need to sell comics.

Despite the fact that Beast was right there.

It makes sense for Hank to break from Scott. It's consistent with his character - not just because he's still a heavily moral character by this point, but because he has a history of breaking from the team anyway, he's done it multiple times before. He is not dependent on the X-Men to give him meaning, and he's got enough bonds with other characters in the Marvel Universe that he can go and be in whatever and it isn't weird. He went on to be on the roster for S.W.O.R.D, Secret Avengers, all kinds of fun little things.

But there are two problems with making Beast the head of the opposition. 1) He is not a leader; every attempt he's made at leading a team in 616 canon has gone merely okay to downright poorly, if he doesn't just leave the team fairly soon after its inception anyway (as with X-Club). But, more, pressingly?

2) Beast does not sell comic books. He simply doesn't. What's that, you say? He's had three solo series by this point? Well, yeah.

Except, he hasn't, really. He had a three issue series in the 90s that was more about Karma, a three issues team up series with Wonder Man, also in the 90s, and then a succession of back-up stories in other comics through the late 00s that would come to be collected as Endangered Species. Marvel knows he is not a sales magnet.

So, instead, we have Schism. Wolverine makes the decision to split the team, and Hank is pulled in on some fairly tenuous grounds.

In another world, Hank's fourth series, S.W.O.R.D, with Abigail, succeeds, All-New X-Men never happens, or at least, it happens completely differently, X-Force blips out of existence, and I spend months talking about how cool S.W.O.R.D vol. 1 #43 where they all go to the tap dancing planet is.

But, alas, this is not that world.

Hank is dragged into Wolverine and the X-Men, and it's fine to pretty good. I'm fairly happy with the Hank we get there, where he's still fairly pissed off with Scott, but it doesn't consume his life and he's happy to just exist in his corner while Scott exists in his.

Then, Avengers vs. X-Men happens.

Aaaaand then All-New X-Men happens as a direct result.

There's that Beast vs. Cyclops framing you mentioned.

But, the problem is fairly evident once you really think about that final panel.

There's no actual argument here. At least, not as Bendis can conceive it. Because there's a narrative tension here, between what X-editorial wants, and what Bendis is willing to write - what most of the X-writers are willing to write, in fact.

The X-writers are, broadly speaking, unwilling to write Cyclops out of character, and they are unwilling to write him being wrong. How is that, you say? Because everything that Cyclops is saying here is just normal X-Men stuff, and this is being treated as some kind of political treatise when it isn't. It's pure fluff.

Bendis' choice of opposing points for Beast, Storm, Wolverine and co. is: we don't like Cyclops. That is where it starts and ends. They don't have a political viewpoint, apart from, I guess, just stay in their school and keep doing what they're doing . . .

Which is normal X-Men stuff. There is very little that Cyclops and his team do in the course of Bendis' Uncanny storyline that any X-Man wouldn't do, because Bendis is unwilling to commit to Cyclops doing anything actually morally wrong.

And because he also just doesn't give a fuck about the things that Cyclops has done that are, factually, morally wrong.

Such as the use of biological weapons.

The creation of a black ops kill team known as X-Force.

And all of these things, while morally wrong, are, arguably? The correct choice, the choice that was required of him to get mutantkind through. But that doesn't absolve him of guilt, of culpability. These are actions for which he cannot blame the Phoenix Force's influences, and they are actions which are conveniently ignored, so that Scott can be the saintly revolutionary.

Now, that's an awful lot of context, but it's important to set up the conflict as I think it could have gone down.

The version I've thought about previously, the version I've written the outline I'm going to share with you now, goes broadly along the same lines as All-New X-Men up until issue #5, but, with some key differences.

For starters, you take out the stuff with Hank talking about what he's about to do, you basically start right where Ororo, Bobby, Hank and Kitty are talking at the jet, and Bobby has the idea.

Hank is visibly ill, but it's not explicit what's happening - then suddenly the O5 are on the lawn, Hank is having his heart attack . . .

And in my version of the story?

He dies.

And suddenly young Hank has to deal with the trauma of watching his eventual death, so that it isn't just a Jean Grey goes psycho story, suddenly it makes sense that the teenagers are freaking out, because what the fuck.

And Hank didn't make it clear what he was doing, you cut all the bullshit about a mutant genocide, he just kept telling them that they NEEDED to come with him, so suddenly there's a core question of, okay, why DID he think this was a good idea? And it's not like adult Hank DOES anything of value in ANXM, so making it a philosophical debate, a talk about grief, a discussion about Hank's legacy with the X-Men and his leaving them during Utopia, about the way he drifted away from Bobby . . . suddenly, this is an actual character piece.

Suddenly there is a point. Hell, you can even make it a good character piece for Scott and Emma by making it that the Phoenix's presence was what triggered Hank's failed mutation, and suddenly there's a cost to what they did, there's a cost to the mutant race coming back.

Suddenly what they did with X-Force, driving Hank away, and their gamble on the Phoenix comes back to bite them, because this is another mutant body thrown on the pile. Collateral damage.

Now it's not just a ton of faceless Skrulls.

Now it's not just Nightcrawler.

Now it's Hank, too.

Hell, teen Hank and teen Jean hooking up even makes a degree of sense now because they BOTH know they die and they're simultaneously desperate to avoid it and also to make the most of what time they do have because suddenly they became aware of ACTUAL mortality at the age of 15-17.

I'm also going to quote the inimitable @brw with whom I've talked about this concept before:

"A little more mystery, a little more complexity. I quite like the idea of this Hank almost being martyr'd? Like how Magneto and Scott was, some young mutant kids who are understandably traumatised canonize yet another flawed figure into a saint-like position. It adds another layer of grief onto many of the X-Men, particularly Bobby I imagine who gets more and more frustrated seeing the friend he grew away from being misinterpreted like that, but then has to ask himself, did he know Hank well enough in the past few years to make that claim? Did he actually make an effort to know his friend? It just adds to the different layers of the idea of Hank's legacy, what it actually was, and how the figure of him is getting pulled in all different directions to justify their own means. I wouldn't put it past that era of Scott to potentially use Hank's memory to further his own goals, too, as an opportunity to further radicalise and collect more mutant youth, which would add hopeful an actually interesting layer of the conflict between Scott/Emma/Magneto and the school. Additionally, something about young Hank especially being required to deal with all this sudden grief aimed now at him. Yes, he's not the one who died, but I imagine when the inevitable funeral happens and he ends up meeting the Avengers and Fantastic Four, a lot of those complicated, ugly feelings of mourning end up directed at him, and he doesn't even know who half of these people are."

Honestly, it just opens up so many more doors, and, like, especially knowing what happens with Hank's story after that, killing him here to maybe be resurrected in Krakoa is such a rich story to be examined, so much more interesting than pretty much anything that you have in its place.

This way, you have to actually engage with his moral position on X-Force, his hypocrisy in joining the Secret Avengers, the Ghost Box laser strike, THRENODY; suddenly, we have to engage with the stuff that isn't war crimes or obnoxious corporate pandering decisions, we have to engage in actual CHARACTER analysis.

Side note: I absolutely hated this handwave that made Hank look like the most awful hypocrite about X-Force almost as much as I did him joining the Secret Avengers, but it's canon, so, in my version of events, we engage with this double-standard and it brings texture to the point.

Because here's the thing - if someone has a moral stance, and then they go back on it, yes, that makes them a hypocrite, but it doesn't suddenly make the moral stance that they stuck to originally wrong. If Hank is, textually speaking, against Scott's X-Force, but okay with Logan's, guess what, he's a hypocrite (I hated this decision, I hated it so much, it was literally JUST done to maintain the rotation of books at the time), but that doesn't mean he was wrong to oppose the black ops kill squad in the first place!

But yeah, let's dig in! It'd be especially interesting because you have to imagine that Hank was an icon and a role model for a lot of physical mutants, people like Beak and Broo, and especially if you do this story now, before Nightcrawler comes back, you have to examine what that means, that both of the most obviously mutated X-Men are gone.

What does that say about Xavierism? What does it say about Scott that he didn't just use Xavier's name for his school to 'honour' him, but now maybe he's saying that he's doing things that Hank would've wanted, and NOW suddenly Bobby Drake has a fucking story role because he DOES NOT AGREE WITH THAT, and he's the ONE person left alive who can say that to Scott's face.

And oh my god, can you imagine the funeral? Can you imagine what it'd be like for Simon? Can you imagine what it'd be like for Hank's parents? For them to have to bury their son, and for that son to be existing, right there, probably having to hide in the Mansion, just watching them memorialise a man he doesn't recognise and doesn't understand.

The pressure of that. St. Jean, St. Hank. Suddenly it makes sense. You almost don't ever have to answer the question why Hank did it, because it almost doesn't matter, what matters is what other people's answers are.

Again, quoting brw:

"How would you deal with people your age mourning the older you, the you who was a teacher who they loved and looked up to? People you know as villains like Wanda and Pietro apparently having grown into close friends? People who you've never met in your life being almost inconsolable over the death of a stranger who happens to be you? It would also enhance young Hank going off to study magic, rather than being yet another "Because Old me sucks and I don't want to be like him" situation, it's instead "Because I can't even do this work without reminding people and myself of what they lost and I need to make something my own.""

Suddenly, this is a character piece. Suddenly, this is a storyline with a point. Suddenly, this is actually a proper continuation of the conflict we had on Utopia, AND you can still have your Logan vs. Scott confrontations because Hank isn't alive to fight that battle. Easy, donezo. Bish bash bosh, fixed your problem.

Probably not the answer you expected, for me to just say, nah, kill the fucker, but I really do think it's a much more interesting and sensical way to handle the conflict.