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bamfdaddio · 3 years

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X-Men Abridged: 1965

The X-Men, those wackadoodle mutants that have sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them, are a cultural juggernaut with a long, tangled history. Want to unravel this tapestry? Then read the Abridged X-Men!

X-Men 9 - 15 - by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Warner Roth

The X-Men’s third year touted one of the most anticipated crisis crossover of the millennium: it’s Avengers vs. X-Men!

fuck you Wasp! You don’t deserve the cover (X-Men 9)

The, eh, the first time around. It’s a little lackluster, but Jean uses her powers to not fall down a hole and the Wasp thinks Angel is just, like, such a babe. The entire fight happens over an entirely avoidable misunderstanding and really serves as window dressing for the actual conflict: Charles Xavier confronting his past. Besides, the kerfuffle with Avengers is easily resolved and does not end with anyone accidentally splitting the Phoenix Force among five hosts or killing Xavier, so that’s a real plus.

While the superteams face off briefly and ineffectively, Professor X dispatches with some vengeful C-list villain named Lucifer who is such a nobody that I’m still not really sure what his actual deal is (and I know Random’s backstory). Still, he is the reason that Charles is in a wheelchair, though the details remain vague. (I much prefer the version rendered in the First Class-movie where Magneto is the one who paralyses his ex-boyfriend/rival, because it has that big dramatic oomph, but hey.)

i don’t know which one is more unbelievable: Xavier’s dope superchair or the artificial dust devil that, later on, somehow hardens into a prison bubble?! SCIENCE! (X-Men 9)

Speaking of Magneto: he and Toad are abducted by some alien called the Stranger, who is apparently super-duper interested in mutation. (We all know it’s really because he has the hots for our Mags, don’t we?) Magneto disappearing causes the Brotherhood to disband, freeing up Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch to join the Avengers. They do so by mail-in ballot.

i love that sweater on ya, Pietro (Avengers 16)

Magneto’s absence clears the board for some new and exciting villains. One of these is another puzzle piece of Xavier’s past: Cain Marko, the Juggernaut… and Charles’ step brother!

whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat (X-Men 12)

Maybe I’m suffering from Stockholm’s, but the two issues introducing the Juggernaut are actually… good? (Despite the unsubtle fact that his first name is Cain.) That first issue establishes the unseen terror of this menace as it approaches the mansion and is barely hindered by the numerous defenses the X-Men have thrown up.

it’s the amazing alliterative angel! (X-Men 12)

Charles, meanwhile, tells the X-Men about his childhood: his mother and father, who both died young, his abusive step-father and his even worse step brother. Xavier was suspicious of his step-father, who might have had a hand in daddy X’s death, and Cain was always envious of Xavier, who did everything better than he did. This comes to a tragic head when a fight between Cain and Charles causes the step-father’s lab to blow up, killing him. Damn. Rough childhood, Charlie.

this player absolutely does not waste any second. get it, you li’l golddiger. (X-Men 12)

Later, during the Korean War, Charles and Cain stumble upon the temple of Cyttorak, a foul demonic deity (also mentioned in Dr. Strange). There, Cain finds this ruby that grants him his unstoppable powers.

Just as Charles is done with expositing his tragic backstory, the Juggernaut arrives at the mansion and a cool fight ensues.,The X-Men, together with the Living Torch, are finally able to stop the Juggernaut by taking off his helmet, the one thing that blocks his psychic powers.

you just had to emphasize that beast worked under your commands, eh? you old glory hog (X-Men 13)

It;s just… really good stuff. Sure, once again, the day is ultimately saved by some mental feat or trick from Xavier, which is getting tiresome. The X-Men themselves always feel like supporting characters to Xavier, rather than main characters on their own. Still, in this fight, they really do feel like a goshdarnit team.

dohohoho antiquated gender roles. (Not pictured: Xavier mindwiping Johnny Storm after he came to the X-Men’s aid.) (X-Men 13)

One more odd thing I noticed is this utter belief that science and machines can really do anything as long as you set your mind to it. It’s very much the Jetsons: sixties sci-fi.

Still, overall, there’s a noticeable uptick in the quality of storytelling: Lee is really finding his groove. Perhaps that’s the reason that in 1965, the X-Men-series goes from bi-monthly to monthly. Clarion call!

hank mccoy introduces: the most verbose way to say “duh” (X-Men 14)

In other news, Jean and Scott still pine for each. It’s absolutely boring.

Oh, Scott, the sheer agony! If only there were practically nothing keeping us apart! (X-Men 9)

oh, Jean, if only my little lieutenant were that gun... (X-Men 10)

Fuck, these two deserve each other. (I promise I’ll like them better later on.) But hey, at least Jean gets an upgrade in terms of power level!

obvi the best use of telekinesis ever (X-Men 9)

much better. attagirl (X-Men 14)

Other new mainstays are

The Savage Land, where the X-Men meet discount Tarzan, Ka-Zar, and his pet tiger.

Actual continuity! Stories that span multiple issues!

The Trask family, starting with the misguided patriarch Bolivar. .

And… the Sentinels.

The appearance of the Sentinels really ratchets up the anti-mutant hysteria. The only reason Dr. Trask built these things is because he’s deadly afraid of mutants. When he presents them on national television, they immediately kidnap him and Xavier. I love that the Sentinels take about one hot second to turn against their creators, because humans will never cease bringing ruination upon their own heads.

“humans are dumdums” - fuck you too, you brave little toaster ovens (X-Men 15)

About 60 years later, at least that hasn’t changed.

PANIC! this whole page is just a delight. please note the spelling of ‘throughout’ (X-Men 14)

Didn’t you take Art History? Just like Lee, Kirby is really stretching his legs.

life, uh... finds a way (X-Men 10)

Best new character: The Juggernaut. Cain Marko is different kind of villain: for him, this is personal. He poses a legitimate threat and he fleshes out Xavier’s backstory. Perhaps the best villain yet. (I’m sorry, Magneto, but at this point you’re little more than a highly dramatic demagogue. You don’t even have your name or tragic past yet!)

What to read: 12 and 13, the issues introducing Cain Marko. Seriously, they’re good.

Best unintentional period piece: Let me introduce you to: the sixties.

i don’t know what’s happening, but this is just groovy, baby, yeah (X-Men 14)

Ugliest Costume: The Sentinels. Jesus Christ.

maybe they just hated Bolivar because he made them look this way (X-Men 14)

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treatian · 3 years

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The Chronicles of the Dark One: Magical Loopholes

Chapter 25: Highlights and Lowlights

Things were going…well…they were going. His night and day were peppered with small moments, moments that were good and moments that were bad, but all of them kept him moving forward, one foot in front of the other. Returning from his workshop to slip into bed beside Belle in the early hours of the morning, feeling her roll back into him and mutter his name sleepily, that was a good feeling. Leaving her only an hour later to get up and go to work, that was a bad feeling. Getting into the shop and seeing the shards of glass he's smashed up yesterday before leaving and hadn't cleaned, that was a low point, but using magic to repair the cabinets so that it looked as though nothing ever happened, made it better. Managing to go to the town line and cast a spell that allowed him to bottle samples of the magic at the Town Line, that was a positive piece of progress, not knowing where to begin with those bottles was a kink in his celebrations. Going home and having lunch with Belle was the same oasis it had been each and every day, but the call he'd gotten from her right before he'd left reminding him to bring home the art supplies he'd been purposefully forgetting was frustrating.

It was his own fault. When they'd stayed in bed talking over the weekend he'd let slip the news about the bulletin board he'd seen in town, the one where people where posting pictures and drawings of loved ones. Fortunately, he'd remembered himself enough not to mention that her father had done a very poor, very wrong drawing of her, one that he was still keeping at the shop, but ever since he'd told her about it, she'd been asking him to bring her back art supplies for her. She had asked about her father that day, he'd answered that he honestly didn't know where he was. It was the truth. He didn't have a tracker on the man, at that moment he legitimately didn't know where he was, he could be at home, or the shop, he could have been out at the Evil Queen's mansion protesting for all he cared. But he didn't know. So, it hadn't been a lie.

Still, after that conversation when she'd begun to ask for "art supplies", he'd known what she wanted them for. That was why he'd "forgotten" them. This time, when she'd finally appeared to master the telephone and asked for them herself before he left for lunch, there was no avoiding it. He told himself that it could have been worse. She could have chosen to ask him about his past and either forced him to lie or danced around not answering her at all.

But that night, when he saw what she'd actually drawn, he realized that simply drawing a picture of her father wasn't the worst thing that could come of it.

After she'd cooked dinner, he'd begun dishes and other clean-up tasks while she sat at the kitchen table and worked on her drawings. That was the first time he noticed that she was working on not one but two drawings. Two…one for her father and another for…he hadn't gotten a clear sight of it yet. Certainly not her mother, they both knew that she was dead, but perhaps there was another distant family member that she'd been close with. He practically swallowed his own tongue when he thought of the boy she'd once brought back to the Dark Castle. Samuel, that had been his name. He'd never quite found out about who they had been with each other, but he'd wanted to take Belle away with him and cared for her a great deal. He'd let him go and never seen him again at least not that he could remember. For the first time, he found himself wondering if that was a mistake, if he should have killed him or if he needed to look for him just to make sure-

He was being ridiculous, jealous. She was here with him, she shared his bed, his life, he didn't need to worry over silly things like that when he had a Curse to break.

"What do you think?"

His heart raced as he rung out the rag he'd been using on the counter tops then looked over his shoulder at the drawing she was holding up. A picture of her father, not the mysterious second individual, but not exactly a man that inspired great admiration in him either. Regina's story of the old man locking Belle up so that she killed herself might not have been true, but that didn't mean he wasn't responsible for a great number of other grievances. Bile rose in the back of his throat as he stared at the picture that was a little too accurate for comfort.

"I think it's surprisingly detailed," he managed to choke out before finishing his work at the sink. It was the only good thing he could think to say. He knew she loved to read, knew she loved to clean, but until she'd held that drawing up for him, he hadn't a clue that she was also an artist a far better one than her father. "I didn't know you could draw," he commented, changing the subject as he came to sit beside her. He hoped he might get a glimpse of the mysterious second portrait she'd been working on.

"I was a Princess," she shrugged. "It would have been improper not to learn how to draw. Besides…I didn't know you could clean."

He smiled at her jest, at the way she raised her eyebrows and managed to insult him while making him want to kiss her at the same time.

"There was a time long ago before you were born that I didn't have a caretake to rely upon. And good help is always hard to find, no matter what realm you're in.

She laughed as she shook her head and returned to her work. They'd done this sort of joking in the castle, when they were relaxed with each other, to see it return to her instead of anxiety and wonder at the world around her…that was a highlight of the day. Finally catching a glimpse at the other picture she was drawing, was not a highlight. He picked the finished drawing up and examined it closer in disbelief. Dark hair, chiseled chin, cold eyes, haughty expression; he recognized that face. Not her father or a family member or even Samuel. Her former fiancé…Gaston. He'd been prepared, in a way, for her pronouncement that she wanted to find her father. But he couldn't have been prepared for her saying she wanted to find him, not after the way she'd described him in the castle. "I never truly cared for Gaston." She'd said that. So why was she so preoccupied with finding him now?

"I still don't understand why you need to find him."

"Well…" she sighed casually before taking the drawing from him. The expression on her face as she looked it over was comforting in a way. It wasn't care or concern he saw there. Curiosity, perhaps, maybe even a bit of sadness. But it didn't help him to understand. "As vain as he was, I did know him. I didn't love him enough to want to be married to him, but he was part of my life for a long time and…I just want to know he's all right, Rumple. For me, not for him. I don't suppose you've seen either of them around town, have you?"

Honesty or nothing. Just because he wasn't bound by magic, just because he hadn't made a deal with her when she thought they had didn't mean that he wanted to lie to her. Yes, he had seen her father around town, not since the Curse had broken, but he could probably get a hold of him fairly easily. And as for Gaston…he'd never told her that he'd killed him already and he couldn't see himself doing it now. He couldn't be honest with her, so he chose to continue staring at the picture and give her no information at all and allow her to interpret the silence as she wanted to.

Suddenly she shifted beside him, put her pencil down and overturned the picture of Gaston so his face was out of sight. She took his hands in her own and looked up at him. "Love comes in different forms, Rumple. I love you differently than I love my father. Just like you don't love me the same way you loved your son."

"I know," he answered, feeling his hands tighten over her own.

Jealous. She thought he was jealous of Gaston or else scared that she was going to leave him for her father. She was only correct on one of those counts. He was scared she was going to leave him, in fact he was almost certain it was going to happen one day. One morning she'd wake up and notice the monster she went to bed with, and she'd want to leave him behind. He could accept that. He'd promised to keep her safe all the days of her life whether she was with him or not. If she went back to her father…that might be harder than he wanted it to be. Maurice had caged her, kept her closeted, used her as a bargaining chip more than once in a war against ogres…if she had to leave, he didn't want her going back there. The idea that these drawings, if ever hung on the bulletin board as intended, might reunite father and daughter, that they might grow closer, that they might figure out Gaston had died at his hands…it made him shiver. Was he staring at the catalyst to the end of what they had? Was their time together already coming to a close?

"Come on," her voice penetrated the silence, forced his eyes up away from where they'd drifted to the picture of her father. She was up and out of her seat and pulling on his hands to rise with her, taking him away from the table, away from the memories and the faces. "Let's sit out back."

"Sit out back." In all his years in Storybrooke he'd never sat out back on the patio. He'd never seen the purpose of it, certainly not in his good pants and since he owned nothing but good pants there was simply no reason. The sun was setting, it would be dark soon, it might be growing warmer during the day, but it was still chilly at night, and he couldn't fathom why she'd want to sit outside in a dress that barely covered her shoulders. But he followed. Because something about even the simplest of requests from her rendered him useless to fight back. She sat down on the steps, and he followed suit so that she could thread her hand over his arm and lean her head against his shoulder.

"Why, exactly, are we sitting here while it's freezing?" he asked, playing the role of Scrooge just so he could get his mind off her father. It wasn't a bad question, to be honest. She would catch cold if they spent too much longer here.

"We are enjoying each other's company like we always do, we're just doing it outside this time. Since you prefer me to stay in the house while you're out, this is the only time I have."

That was a fair and valid point. He figured he had to wait at least another five minutes before he could make the argument that it was too cold and insist she go back inside. In the meantime…he turned his head and kissed the top of her head. She sighed into him, and it was then that the wind blew a scent that was distinctly her own in his direction. Her own scent…he hadn't realized how he'd missed it. Since they'd been living together their scents had begun to twine together in a way that complimented each other's beautifully. He hadn't smelled her uniquely for days now. It was a welcome scent, but also a lovely realization. She'd begun to smell like him, and he'd begun to smell like her. He didn't ever want to lose that. If her father came back into her life and took her from him-

"I love you, Rumple," she insisted as if she'd read his mind. "Whether or not I find my father and Gaston won't change that fact."

"I know," he answered honestly. It wouldn't be finding her father that would change that fact, it would be listening to her father, to the rest of the world, learning what happened to Gaston. He hadn't ever thought that he'd have to answer for killing that man when he'd done it, he hadn't ever assumed she'd care enough to want answers for him. Why it was coming back to haunt him, of all his sins, all these years later was something he couldn't understand. "But you told me you didn't care for him. You said-"

"I don't care for him and never will. I just need to be sure he's all right in this world. It's like…this strange feeling I have that he's not."

Fuck.

"And your father-"

"Whether or not he approves of this isn't something I care about."

Whether he approved wasn't something that he cared about either. Whether or not he took this light from him, the light that he saw in Belle and snuffed it out again when it was just starting to burn bright…that was what he cared about. That was what he couldn't allow.

He felt her turn to look at him, his neck burned as she stared at him but he refused to yield. The answer was simple. Those drawings could not make it to the bulletin board. He couldn't allow it. For her sake, not just his own, he couldn't let her father get to her yet, not when she'd only come this far. She wasn't ready to be on her own in this world with neither of them. Of course, that begged the question, would he ever be able to admit when she was ready to live without him? Would he be able to let her go?

Suddenly the fingers he'd been tapping nervously together were frozen by the presence of her own fingers lacing with his. Her head fit perfectly against his shoulder, his mouth fit perfectly against the crook of her neck, and their hands matched beautifully…how was he supposed to let her go when the time came?

"I left them once for a reason, Rumple," she whispered. "Many reasons actually, but one of them was that they didn't understand me. They didn't see me and I doubt they ever will. Not like you do, no one sees me like you do. You were the better option once and you're not just the better option now, you're the only option, the best option."

He turned to meet her gaze and felt guilt twist in his belly the second he saw that she believed that. He was the best option for her now, but he knew it was only because this was what she knew. The second she left, the second she had other options and saw other ways of independence-

"I have no intention of returning to the life they planned for me," she assured him. "I just need to know they're all right, that their life here is good…like mine is wither you."

He forced a smile to his face. He believed that in part. She'd never let her father auction her off to the highest bidder again, she'd certainly never marry Gaston or be Queen and bear royal children, not so long as they stayed in Storybrooke and Gaston remained dead. But as for the rest…

"I believe you," he smiled just so that he could watch her smile and drag him down to kiss her. He squeezed her hand and kissed the top of her head before letting his smile safely falter as he stared into his own backyard. He believed her when she said that. But he also believed that just because someone believed something, that didn't make it true. Information could change opinions and beliefs-they could change people too. She was smart, her opinion could be changed with more information. He imagined her opinion would change with more information.

So, for now he was content to hold her close while he still could and watch the sun set in the distance until he moved a hand over her bare skin and felt the chill himself. "You're cold. Come on, let's go back inside."

"Rumple," she muttered as he moved to pick up his cane and get himself on his feet again. "Will you take those drawings into town for me tomorrow morning? Put them on that bulletin board?"

He sighed as he stared out at the lawn. Honesty or nothing. He couldn't let those drawings back it to the board. He wasn't ready for this to end. So he settled on a truth that was easily misinterpreted.

"I'll take care of it," he answered honestly. He'd take care of it by burning the pictures to ash so they never saw the light of day again.

#Rumbelle #Rumple #Rumpelstiltskin #Dark One #Mr. Gold #Belle #Gaston #Maurice #Moe French #ouat #ouat fanfiction #fanfic

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anangelicday-mrwolf · 4 years

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Wolfsbane : Noblesse Fanfic (post-ending)

(previous chapter)

Chapter 16 – Sudden Shift

“Here.”

Though Lunark gingerly offered her hand, Frankenstein maintained his speechless stance, merely staring at her hand.

“What is it? Did you need more?”

“No... I felt that you’ve gotten better at this lately.”

Frankenstein’s eyes were noting the plastic bags she dispensed from her robe, packed with pink petals.

Her first trial at botanical excavation did not turn out beautiful. The bag she submitted to Frankenstein contained balls of dirt and soil dangling from roots of the wolfsbane plants, which later turned out to be partially mangled, thanks to Frankenstein’s inspection.

But this time she brought what looked like samples ready to be used at a lab. Frankenstein could not fathom what happened to her in the meantime.

“Did you ask your medical staff for a tutoring session on sampling?”

“Of course not. No one is supposed to know we’re seeing each other on...”

“I’m just saying. Or did I just get you?”

Lunark had to force an extraordinary calm on her mind in order to keep her body from a flinch.

Because, yes – he got her. He got her good.

Prior to this trip, she paid a visit to the medical staff of her kind, particularly those in charge of collecting and managing medicine. While pretending to check if they are doing what they are supposed to, she watched how they harvest, wash, and pack herbs and plants that will be used at labs and wards.

Lunark did not trust in her own acting skills, so she opted to change the subject in order to stay safe from Frankenstein’s uncanny skills in piecing together what he could see to deduce what he was not there to see.

“Anyways, where’s that damned roommate of yours?”

Though she changed the subject to get herself out of what could be an awkward situation, her excuse was more than legitimate.

It has been two days since the 3rd Elder promised her the list, and she intended to get it.

Thus she expected him to be waiting for her arrival, with Frankenstein, if not alone. Her eyes were displaying foul curves in displeasure as she looked around the lab yet again, knowing that she will pick up no signs of him.

“He’s outside, getting some food. He asked me to make the delivery before he left.”

Lunark pouted as she accepted a thin envelope Frankenstein passed on to her.

“That’s so not like what an elder of the Union would do. I bet he didn’t even dream that he’d turn out like this, wasting your resources and tasked with something that only the bottommost servants would do.”

“Sounds like you have sworn to hate him for the rest of your life. Not that I don’t get why.”

“But is it okay to let him spend time all by himself away from you? What if he uses this opportunity to get in contact with the Union?”

“Don’t worry. That’s why I implanted in him a special recording device, equipped with a tracker. Once it stops functioning, gets destroyed, stays immobile at a given coordinate past the set amount of time, or gets separated from his body, I will get an automatic notification.”

“You devised it yourself?”

“Yes. He’s also wearing a nano-camera on his shoulder, so I can get a visual record of his whereabouts. And of course, he consented to all of this beforehand.”

Lunark nodded, as she could finally see why Frankenstein did not seem worried about the 3rd Elder.

“You must be running out of time every single day. I mean, you must be busy checking what he does inside and outside this island.”

“Nah, not really. Unbeknownst to the 3rd Elder, the recording device and camera do not work while he is within the shorelines of this island.”

Instantly Lunark’s eyes popped wide open.

“What? So you don’t give a damn about what he does as long as he’s on this island?”

“Nope.”

“What are you thinking?! There’s no telling what he’d do on this island once he decides to do something! And this isn’t a moral issue – you said he consented to your surveillance!”

“I’m not like the Union. I have no intention whatsoever to do what those fiends would have done to M-21, Tao, Takio, and countless other test subjects. Since the 3rd Elder believes his camera and recording device are running 24/7, he wouldn’t dare plot something behind my back. Besides, now we’re in this together. So it can’t hurt to give him the least of my hospitality as an ally, can it?”

Lunark fired a huge ball of air from her body, as if she wanted him to feel guilty upon hearing the noise of the air current.

‘I knew it. He’d do anything he can in order to offer the very least of his generosity.’

She tried another complaint out of concern and frustration, only to give up when Frankenstein jokingly bickered, “Please don’t tell me you don’t trust me. And please don’t question what I can do; otherwise you’d kill my pride.”

Lunark then knew there is no way she could talk against his decision or benevolence.

‘Well, what did I expect? This is one of the many reasons that I fell for him.’

Lunark realized how the corners of her lips were tugging upwards on their own at the last part of her own thought and stiffened her facial muscles.

And she just had to meet Frankenstein in the eyes when she has done so. This time, she chose to turn herself somewhat unintentionally towards the entrance.

“You’re leaving?”

Lunark produced a reply that she had composed beforehand in case he calls upon her like this, and it was more than just an excuse.

“I have a job to do – related to the QuadraNet project.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just the day before, a noble messenger visited our land to ask us to escort the researcher sent by KSA. And since I already had a trip to this isle scheduled, I volunteered for the job.”

“Don’t you think you’re making yourself too busy? You should give yourself some rest from time to time.”

“I can’t do that. Not at a time like this.”

“...In that case, make sure you don’t starve.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m about to feed myself on my way.”

Not having anticipated her to give a positive answer, Frankenstein retorted by raising half of his eyebrows.

“Actually, there is this personal dining spot of mine, close to the Lukedonian boundaries. I’ll get there and wait.”

“What do you mean, Lukedonian boundaries?”

Frankenstein’s voice hit a pitch lower than usual. He was rather startled by what she revealed.

“Are you saying you have a history of waltzing near Lukedonian boundaries on regular basis?”

“Yeah. What about it?”

“Why would you do that? What if you get in troubles with the nobles?”

“I said it’s close to the boundaries. I didn’t say it’s at the boundaries. And you honestly think I didn’t take the nobles into consideration?”

“You never know when you might slip and...”

“Well, I’ve never been caught. So why worry?”

Lunark stared straight at him, as if posing incomprehension at his response, which rendered Frankenstein’s eyes no longer pacific.

‘What is with this woman? I knew she’s fearless, but...’

Frankenstein was about to scold her again, before he stopped short in his attempt.

Because he remembered that he, too, has a history of trespassing Lukedonia in order to thwart nobles’ hunt for him, thereby proving he contains no definition of fear in his brain.

And if she has never been caught for nearing Lukedonian boundaries, there was no point or reason for him to reprimand her. Not to mention now the conflict between nobles and werewolves is history. With diplomacy between two kinds set on a smooth sail, nobles will not protest about her behavior whatsoever, as long as she does not bring any threat to them.

“Need I remind you, I’m a warrior. Please don’t question what I can do; otherwise you’d kill my pride.”

She tilted her head and reiterated what he had said before.

She was, in a way, sassy.

Something Frankenstein has never imagined he would get to witness from her, who was usually shy and rather unjust to her genuine feelings.

Which is why he could not get her image out of his head even after her departure.

‘To be honest, she looked kind of adorable.’

As soon as he mumbled in his head, he stomped his own tongue with his teeth in horror.

Did I just dub her adorable?

Ever since he was young, Frankenstein took interest in the influence that illnesses and science would bring upon mankind’s welfare. It was not long before he bowed to dedicate his all to medical arts and technology.

Because of which he naturally cut himself from all means to associate himself with women.

And because of which he got to stay single for more than 2000 years.

In other words, he was clumsy in treating women as women.

So it was no wonder Frankenstein could not understand why he evaluated Lunark as adorable.

However, Frankenstein was a scientist. His instinctive gift in pinpointing causes and effects kicked in, and he soon reached a potential theory at work behind all this.

‘Do I really love her...? No, that’s impossible!’

Frankenstein attempted to negotiate with his mind, to stop it from occupying itself with Lunark.

Unfortunately for him, his curiosity refused to cooperate.

‘I have had spent at least 1000 years at Lukedonia under the wings of my master, but during that time I have never heard for once about a werewolf constantly showing up near Lukedonian boundaries.’

So either Lunark has never been caught by nobles upon her visits, as she asserted, or she has been caught, but not during the timeline when Frankenstein had made Lukedonia his home.

After weighing several options, Frankenstein came up with a new inquiry –

‘Just how old is she? She’s obviously more than a couple centuries old. So how many years are there between our birthdates?’

Then Frankenstein realized there was no reason for him to be curious about their age difference, wasting his time and mentality like some soon-to-be-40-years-old who received confession from a young lady who just became an undergraduate.

And Frankenstein was appalled once again that he just had to come up with such a metaphor.

Frankenstein sighed, his head drooping in defeat after a battle lost against his mental algorithm, infinitely far from sane.

Although the chances are slim, he hoped that Lunark would take as much time as she can to take Yuhyung to her kind’s territory. That way he would get to reserve some time for himself before she revisits, during which hopefully he would sort out his head and free it from thoughts about the werewolf lady so very successfully blowing his mind upon every appearance.

And thus Frankenstein once again ignored his sudden shift of heart, albeit with pain and struggle.

*****

“...This is not what I had in mind.”

Lunark ruefully sucked pink-orange flecks of flesh remaining on her fingers.

It has been less than 24 hours since Lunark left the island (and the owner of the island in mental knockout), until she reached a certain point close to Lukedonian boundaries.

The “personal dining spot” she mentioned to Frankenstein happened to be the Bermudan Treasure Chest. Even centuries before humans named this spot Bermudan Treasure Chest, Lunark made it her personal hotspot for dining.

Because for a reason she could not decipher, the fishes of this place were much bigger and tastier than the identical species elsewhere.

She could not find time at all to look after something other than battles or missions, much thanks to the Union. Therefore, she was thrilled to find this place after all this time. She has exaggerated to herself how it has been at least centuries before she could make this trip, and she was excited for the fireworks that would soon take place in her mouth, which will surely bring glee for which she would not be surprised to find her eyes teary.

Alas, the taste and volume presented by the fish she had hooked up barehanded was not even close to what she remembered. She could find out the fault did not lie in her taste buds.

“Just what on earth is going on here...?”

She muttered upon spotting miniscule pieces of corals drifting by the surface of water, where she dumped the guts and bones of fish she ate.

Lunark was currently standing on a body of rocks stranded in the middle of water, distanced from coral reefs. Nevertheless, she could see pieces of dead corals wherever she turned.

Now she could not name the exact year or date of the time she was last here, but she could bet she had never once seen something like this in the past.

She would have made her move to check and see if this is something happening widely across this marine region, only if she did not happen to be waiting at the rendezvous.

“Greetings.”

The moment she settled with herself to come back here later, a voice beckoned her, not extremely familiar, not completely strange, either.

Rael was addressing her with his eyes, his entrance made so subtle she could not even feel his presence.

“Long time, no see. First time ever since the last showdown against 1st Elder, isn’t it?”

“Quite. I was at your kind’s territory the day before, to negotiate the escort of KSA researcher. But I don’t remember seeing you when I was there.”

“I had something to do. You must have visited when I wasn’t there. Anyways, is he the one?”

“Yes. Uh, so...”

Rael’s face distorted in an unspeakable way. In fact, Lunark was barely holding onto laughter from the moment she had recognized him.

For Yuhyung was clutching onto Rael with his entire body. Lunark would have mistaken him for a koala, had he not been born with limbs too long to be those of the said mammal.

To top it off, he had his face buried into Rael’s back, as if he were actually playing koala.

“...Is there a problem?”

“He assumed such position, saying how he is not used to transportation not using human transportations. I would like to offer an apology in advance; your trip will not be a comfortable or convenient one.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’d be nothing with what we had gone through against Union, and that was only weeks ago.”

Rael tapped Yuhyung’s arm, to hand him over to Lunark. At last Yuhyung peeked and clumsily detached himself from the noble, to go ahead and sheepishly offer his hand.

“P-pleased to meet you. Yuhyung Jang is my...”

Yuhyung got to look into Lunark’s face, which brought about a sudden shift out of blue.

His face turned pale as he squeaked in panic, and his body dropped and made an audible “plop.” His eyes backflipped, and his entire body fell to the ground as he started emitting bubbly fluid from his mouth.

It all happened so quickly Rael and Lunark could not even react.

Fortunately, it did not take long until they lunged towards the human in alarm.

(next chapter)

Personally I really enjoyed writing this chapter. You keep denying it, Frankie, but you know you love her. XD

#fanfic #korean webcomic #korean webtoon #noblesse #frankenstein #frankensteinxlunark #lunark #wolfsbane

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skruffie · 3 years

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I went down a rabbit hole last night on youtube when I was looking for speedpaint videos to get inspired, and it was the realization that concept artists will sometimes utilize this technique called photobashing to get their concepts to be photorealistic. It’s basically taking stock images and objects of existing places/textures/etc and applying them to concept art to paint over. Legitimately this whole time I’ve been thinking that concept artists meticulously render their pieces 100% of the time and so watching photobashing completely threw me for a loop. I also came into more of an understanding about concept art as... a concept... and so the technique makes sense. I’ve just been doing the thing of “no I must toil over my art start to finish”

Then in the midst of this rabbit hole I came upon this video about time saving tips for art and, while hard to describe, it feels like a whole bunch of light bulbs started turning on for me.

There is so much I want to do art wise but especially in the last several years I’ve been way more unfocused on it than I realized. I want to do illustrations, but I also want to do a webcomic, but also I’m trying to practice environmental concepts, but also I want to do an animatic, etc etc etc and I was also operating under the assumption that a good illustration portfolio would be enough but it’s not. For the first time in my life actually I’m looking at my art and going “what do I actually want to do with this?” The answer isn’t QUIT because art is my lifeline but in all seriousness what are my next steps?

I am often also frustrated that it seems like in a lot of social media sites that art is created for the purpose of trying to please the algorithm and build an audience, and I am too damn busy to do that. If I had the energy and the money I think taking the gamble to doing art full time would be interesting but I have my day job that I’m already burnt out from and I don’t want to risk ruining art for myself. Sure, I want an audience, but I feel like a complete stranger to myself without art... so if I burn out on that, where does that leave me?

If I go into concept art, I would probably need to narrow my focus once I can get the right skillset, and there are definitely game studios and things local to my area + concept art itself is a growing industry, but... that requires more moving around. Also the industry standard seems to be Photoshop, which I can use but I’ve stopped using in favor of CSP. I have stories I want to tell with webcomics but that is a lot of work that, honestly, I would probably want to outsource some assistance with (like hiring someone to do inks or something) where I have no resources to outsource with. I want to really work on expanding my skillset which is why I’ve been experimenting with environments the last few illustrations but I WANT M O R E

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betweengenesisfrogs · 5 years

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Homestuck is My Favorite Sprite Comic

Yes, you read that right.

Homestuck is my favorite sprite comic.

Those of you who remember the earlier days of the internet are probably looking at this post in disbelief right about now. Others of you might be scratching your heads, not knowing what I’m talking about.

But here’s my pitch: Homestuck is the culmination of an entire genre of internet art, and the tools that make it so powerful are the very tools that made that genre once so reviled.

Homestuck is the greatest and most successful sprite comic of all time.

And honestly, I’ve wanted to talk about that for ages, so let’s do it.

WHAT SPRITE COMICS WERE

Many of my readers are probably too young to remember the era of sprite comics. So: what were sprite comics?

Sprite comics were a genre of webcomics made entirely by taking pixel art from video games – especially character art, called “sprites,” but also backgrounds and other images—and placing them into panels to tell a story. They were near-ubiquitous on the internet in the early 2000s, emerging right as webcomics in general were seeking to establish themselves as an art form.

They were not, shall we say, known for their quality. The low bar to access meant that art skill was not an obstacle to starting one. The folks behind the huge swell of them tended to be young people, kids and early teenagers recreating the plots of their favorite video games with new OCs—not the most advanced writers or artists. They were the early 2000s’ quintessential example of ephemeral, childish art. Unfortunately, they look even worse today—blown-up pixels don’t hold up well when displayed on higher-resolution monitors.

Today, they’re mostly forgotten, remembered only as a weird, strange moment in the youth of the internet. Someone who evoked them today, such as a blogger who compared them to one of the most successful webcomics of all time, would be inviting good-natured teasing at the very least.

It would be unfair to dismiss them entirely, though. In this low-stakes environment, comics where the author could bring more skill—engaging writing, legitimately funny jokes, or especially, a real ability to work with pixel art—really stood out. (Unsurprisingly, these authors tended to skew a bit older.)

The obvious one to mention is Bob and George. Bob and George wasn’t the first sprite comic, but it was the most influential. Conceived initially as Mega Man-themed filler for a hand-drawn comic about superheroes, it quickly became a merging of the two concepts, with the original characters made into Mega Man-style sprites, full of running gags, humorous retellings of the Mega Man games, elaborate storylines about time travel, and robots eating ice cream. It was generally agreed, even among sprite comic haters, that Bob and George was a pretty good comic. Worth mentioning also are 8-Bit Theater, which turned the plot of the first Final Fantasy into a spectacular and hilarious farce, and of course Kid Radd, my second favorite sprite comic. (More on that later.)

But even if you weren’t looking for greatness—there was something just damn fun about them. The passion of sprite comic authors was clear, even if their ideas didn’t always cohere. To this day, I think the sprite comic scene has the same appeal pulp art does—it’s crude and rough, full of garbage to sift through, but every so often, something deeply sincere and bizarre shines through, and the culture of its authors is a fascinating object of study in itself.

Okay, full disclosure: I was one of the people who made a sprite comic. I’ve written about my experiences with that in more depth elsewhere, but yeah, I was on the inside of this scene, rather than a disinterested observer, and from the inside, maybe it’s a lot easier to see the appeal.

Still, let me make this claim: even with all their flaws, sprite comics were doing some incredibly interesting things, and Homestuck is heir to their legacy.

TAKE ME DOWN TO RECOLOR CITY

One of the problems people always had with sprite comics was the sprites themselves. They’re the most repetitive thing in the world. You just keep copying and pasting the same images over and over again, maybe with a few tweaks. That’s not really being an artist, is it? It’s so lazy. Re-drawing things from different angles keeps things dynamic, develops your skill, and makes your work better in general. Right?

I’m mostly in agreement. Certainly I think it’s fair to rag on the Control-Alt-Delete guy, along with other early bad webcomics, for copy-pasting their characters while dropping in new expressions and mass-producing tepid strips. And to be fair, digging through bad sprite comics often felt like an exercise in seeing the same slightly-edited recolors of Mega Man characters over and over again. You got really tired of that same body with its blobby feet and hands.

(It should be noted, though, that there were folks in the sprite comic scene who could pixel art the quills off a porcupine. I salute you, brave pixel art masters of 2006. I hope you all got into your chosen art school.)

All this said, I think the repetitive and simplistic nature of sprite comics was often their biggest strength.

THE POWER OF ABSTRACTION

In his classic work Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud makes an observation about cartooning that has stayed with me to this day.

McCloud notes that simple, abstract drawings, like faces that are only few lines and dots on a page, resonate with us more strongly than more detailed drawings. This is because our minds fill in what’s missing on the page. We ascribe human depth to simple gestures and expressions based on our own emotions and experiences – and this makes us feel closer to these characters as readers. Secretly, simple cartoons can be one of the most powerful forms of storytelling. If you want your readers to fall in love with your characters, draw them simply, and let them fill them in.

Video game sprites work very well in this regard. They have that same simplicity that cartoons do. In fact, I’d be willing to bet a huge part of the success of SNES-era RPGs was simple, almost childlike character sprites drawing people in. I think sprites did the same for sprite comics.

Here’s the weird thing: Bob and George worked. Despite four different characters being variations on the same friggin’ Mega Man sprite in different colors, they immediately began to seem like different people with distinct personalities. For me, George’s befuddled, helpless dismay immediately comes to mind whenever I picture his face, while with Mega Man himself it’s usually a wide-eyed, childlike glee. I would never confuse them. This, despite the fact that the only actual difference between their faces is that George is blonde. It’s pretty clear what happened. The personalities the author established for them through dialogue and storytelling shone through, and my brain did the rest.

Sprites, in short, were a canvas upon which the mind could project any story the author wanted to tell. Even the most minute differences in pixel art came to stand, in the best sprite comics, for wide divergences in personality and ideals, once the reader spent enough time with them to adapt to their style of representation.

Wait a minute, haven’t we seen this somewhere before? Character designs that focus on variations on a theme, with subtle differences that nonetheless render them instantly recognizable?

Oh, right.

Look at what greets us on the very first page of Homestuck. An absurdly simple cartoon boy, abstracted to a ridiculous degree—he doesn’t even have arms!—followed a whole bunch of characters that follow suit. Though many other representations of the characters emerge, these little figures never quite go away, do they? Why is that?

Simple: they’re very easy to manipulate. They’re modular—you can give John arms or not, depending on whether it’s useful. You can put him in a whole variety of poses and save them to a template. You can change out his facial expressions with copy and paste. You can give him a new haircut and call him Jake. It’s all very quick and easy.

Sprite comics proliferated because they were very easy to mass-produce. Andrew Hussie’s original conception of Homestuck was very similar: something he could put out very quickly and easily, where even the most elaborate ideas could rely on existing assets to be sped smoothly along. We all know the result: an incredible production machine, churning out unfathomable amounts of content from 2009-2012. I’d say it was a good call.

But it goes way deeper than that. The modular nature of sprites always suggested a kind of modularity to the sprite comic premise. George and Mega Man were different people, true, but also two variations on a theme. Was there something underlying them that they had in common? Perhaps their similarity says something like: We exist in a world which has a certain set of rules? One of my favorite conceits from Bob and George was that when characters visited the past, they were represented by NES-era Mega Man sprites, while in the present, they were SNES sprites, and in the future, the author used elaborate splicing to render them as 32-bit Mega Man 8 sprites or similar.

Suppose there was a skilled cartoonist thinking about his next big project, who wanted to tell a story centered around this kind of modularity, a narrative that was built out of iterative, swappable pieces by its very design. He might very well create a sprite comic named Homestuck.

Homestuck is a story about a game that creates a hyperflexible mythology for its players, where the villains, challenges, and setting change depending upon what players bring to the experience, yet which all share underlying goals and assumptions. What more perfect opportunity to create a modular story as well? Different groups of kids and trolls have motifs that get swapped around to produce new characters, whether that’s through ectobiology, the Scratch, or the eerie parallels between the kids and trolls’ sessions. And yet each character can be analyzed as an individual.

This is an incredible way to build a huge emotional investment from your readers. Not only does this kind of characterization invite analysis, the abstractions draw readers in to generate their own headcanons and interpretations. A deep commitment to pluralism is at the heart of Hussie’s character design. Then, too, it encourages readers to build their own new designs from these models. Kidswaps, bloodswaps, fantrolls—these have long been the heart of Homestuck’s fandom. And what are bloodswaps if not sprite recolors for a new generation? With the added bonus that now a change in color carries narrative weight, evoking new moods and identities for these characters in ways that early sprite comics could only dream of.

In Hussie’s hands, even the dreaded copy-and-paste takes on heroic depth of meaning. Even when Hussie moves away from sprites to his own loose art style, he continues to remix what we’ve previously see. Indeed, Hussie talks about how he would go out of his way to edit his own art into new images even when it would take more time than drawing something new. Why? Because he wanted to evoke that very feeling of having seen this before—the visual callback to go along with the many conceptual and verbal callbacks that echo throughout Homestuck. This is at the heart of what Doc Scratch (speaking for Hussie) called “circumstantial simultaneity:” we are invited to compare two moments or two characters, to see what they have in common, or how they contrast. Everything in Paradox Space is deeply linked with everything else. And Hussie establishes this in our minds using nothing less than the tool sprite comics were so deeply reviled for: the “lazy” repetition of an image.

(It’s fitting that some of the most jaw-droppingly gorgeous images in Homestuck—dream bubble scenery and the like—are the result of Hussie taking things he’s made before and combining them into fantastic dreamscapes.)

But it all started with the hyperflexible, adaptable character images Hussie created at the very beginning of Homestuck.

And if you need more proof that Homestuck is a sprite comic, I think we need look no further than what Hussie, and the rest of the Homestuck community call these images.

We call them sprites.

THE FIRST GENRE-BENDERS

Was Andrew Hussie influenced by sprite comics in the development of Homestuck? It’s hard to say, but as a webcomic artist in the first decade of the 2000s, he was surely aware of them. It’s likely that he quickly realized that his quick, adaptable images served the same purposes as a sprite in a video game or a sprite comic, and chose to call them that.

One purpose I haven’t mentioned up until now: sprites lend themselves very well to animations. In fact, in their original context of video games, that’s exactly what they’re for: frames of art that can be used to show a character running, jumping, posing, moving across a screen. It’s not surprising, then, that sprite comic makers quickly saw the utility in that.

Homestuck was, in fact, not the first webcomic to make Flash animations part of its story. There were experiments with various gifs and such in other comics, but I think sprite comics were among the most successful at becoming the multi-media creations that would come to be known as hypercomics..

Take a look at this animation from Bob and George. It represents a climactic final confrontation against a long-standing villain, using special effects to make everything dramatic, but ultimately, like many a Homestuck animation, leads to kind of a pyscheout. The drama and the humor of the moment are clear, though. This relies in large part on the music—which is taken directly from the game Chrono Trigger. This makes total sense. Interestingly, it also contains voice acting, which is something Homestuck never tried—probably because it would run contrary to its ideals of pluralism. What I find fascinating is that in sprite comics, animations like these served a very similar purpose to Homestuck’s big flashes: elevating a big moment into something larger-than-life. Another good example is this sequence from Crash and Bass. Seriously, it seems like every sprite comic maker wanted to try their hand at Flash animation.

(By the way, it’s a lot harder than it looks!! I envy Hussie his vectorized sprites. Pixel art is a PAIN to work with in the already buggy program that is Flash.)

The result: because of the sprites themselves, sprite comics were among the first works to play around with the border between comics and other media in the way that would come to be thought of as quintessentially Homestuck.

What it also meant was that another genre emerged in parallel with sprite comics: the sprite animation. Frequently these would retell the story of a particular game, offer a spectacular animated battle sequence, parody the source material, or all three. Great examples include this animation for Mega Man Zero, and this frankly preposterous crossover battle sequence. Chris Niosi’s TOME also found its earliest roots as an animation series of this kind. You also found plenty of sprite-based flash games, in which players could manipulate game characters in a way that was totally outside the context of the original works.

The website the vast majority of these games and animations were hosted on?

Newgrounds, best known to Homestuck fans as the website Hussie crashed in 2011 while trying to upload Cascade.

What’s less talked about is that Hussie was friends, or at least on conversational terms with, the owner of the site, hence the idea to host his huge animation there in the first place, and other flashes, like the first Alterniabound, were initially hosted there as well.

It’s hard to believe that Hussie wasn’t at least a little familiar with the Newgrounds scene. I suspect that he largely conceived of Homestuck as part of the world of “Flash animation—” which in 2009 meant the wide variety of things that were hosted on Newgrounds, including sprite animations.

The freedom and fluidity sprite comics had to change into games and animations and back into comics again was one of their most fascinating traits. Homestuck’s commitment to media-bending needs, at this point, no introduction. But what’s less known is that sprite comics were exploring that territory first—that Homestuck, in short, is the kind of thing they wanted to grow up to be.

PUT ME IN THE GAME

I would be a fool not to mention another big thing Homestuck and sprite comics have in common: a character who is literally the author in cartoon form, running around doing goofy things and messing with the story. This was an incredibly common cliché in sprite comics, no doubt because of Bob and George, who did it early on and never looked back. You might have noticed that the animation I linked above concerns a showdown between Bob and George’s author, David Anez—depicted, delightfully, as another Mega Man recolor—and a mysterious alternate author named Helmut—who is like Mega Man plus Sepiroth I think? It’s all very strange. I could ramble for hours about the relationship between Hussie and the alt-author villains of Homestuck and what it all means, but I’m not sure I can nail anything down with certainty for these two. Maybe Bob and George was never quite that metaphysical.

But yes, bringing the author into the story in some form was already a cliché by the time Homestuck started up. Indeed, I think that’s why Hussie’s character refers to it as “a bad idea” to break the fourth wall—he’s recognizing that people will have seen this before, and are already tired of this sort of shit. And then he goes and does it anyway and makes it somehow brilliant, because he’s Andrew Hussie.

Homestuck breathes life into the cliché by taking it in a metaphysical/metafictional direction. I don’t think that was really the motivation for most sprite comic authors, though. Let’s see if we can dig a little deeper.

I think the cliché kept happening because sprite comic authors were writing about a subject that very closely concerned themselves: video games. I’m only kind of joking. The thing about video games is that even though they’re made for everyone, playing through one yourself feels like an intensely personal experience. You develop an emotional relationship to a world, to its characters, that feels distinctly your own. Now, suddenly, thanks to the magic of sprites, you have an opportunity to tell stories about that world for others to read. Of course you’re going to want to put yourself in the story in some form.

When it wasn’t author characters in sprite comics, it was OCs. You know Dr. Wily? Well here’s my own original villain, Dr. Vindictus. You know Mega Man? Here’s my new character, Super Cool Man. He hangs out with Mega Man and they beat the bad guys together. Stuff like that. Most sprite comics retold the story of a game, or multiple games in a big crossover format, with original elements added in. There was quite a lot of “Link and Sonic and Mega Man are all friends with my OC and they hang out at his house.”

What’s interesting, though, is that because these sprite comics were very aware that they were about video games, this was where they sometimes got very meta. It started with humorous observation—hey, isn’t it funny that Link goes around breaking into people’s houses and smashing their pots? But sometimes, it grew into more serious commentary. Is Mega Man trapped in a never-ending cycle, doomed to fight the same fight against the same mad scientist until the end of time? Is it worth it, being a video game hero?

Enter Homestuck. What I’ve been dancing around this whole time is:

Homestuck is a sprite comic…because Homestuck is a video game.

Or more specifically, Homestuck’s a comic about a video game called SBURB, where the lines between the game and the comic about the game blur as characters wrestle with the narratives around them, both those encoded into the game and those encoded into our expectations.

Homestuck presents the fantasy of many a sprite comic maker: I get to go on heroic quests, I get to change the world and become a god. I get to be part of the video game. And then it asks the same question certain sprite comics were beginning to ask:

Is it worth it, to be that hero?

I want to tell you about my second favorite sprite comic, a comic called Kid Radd.

Kid Radd distinguished itself from other sprite comics of the time by being a completely original production. Its sprites looked like they could be from a variety of NES and SNES-era video games, but they were all done from scratch, and the games they purported to represent were all fictional. Kid Radd used animations with original music, and sometimes interactive, clickable games, to tell its story. It also used all sorts of neat programming tricks to make it load faster on the internet of the early 2000s, which was great—unfortunately, these same techniques made it break as web technology evolved, something Homestuck fans in 2019 can definitely relate to. The good news is, fans have maintained a dedicated and reformatted archive where the comics can still be seen and downloaded.

Kid Radd’s premise is that video game characters themselves are conscious and alive—more specifically, their sprites. Sprites developed consciousness as human beings projected personality and identity onto them, remaining aware of their status as video game constructs while also seeking to be something more. The story follows the titular Kid Radd, at first in the context of his own game, commenting on the choices the player controlling him. He must endure every death, every strange decision along the way to save his girlfriend Sheena. Then the story expands into a larger context as Radd, Sheena, and many other video game characters are released onto the internet as data. They try to find their own identities and build a society for themselves, but struggle with the tendency toward violence that games have programmed into them. The story culminates in an honestly moving moment where Radd confronts the all-powerful creators of their reality—human beings.

It’s a very good comic.

The first sprite comic authors wanted to fuse real life with video games. Later sprite comic authors decided to ask: what would that really mean? Would it be painful? Would you suffer? Would you find a way to make your life meaningful all the same? Despite the limitations of sprite comics, these ideas had incredible potential, and in works like Kid Radd, they flourished.

Homestuck is heir to that legacy.

It takes the questions Kid Radd was asking, and asks them in new ways. It tries to understand, on an even deeper level, how the rules of video games shape our own minds and give us ways to understand ourselves.

At its heart, Homestuck is a sprite comic, and it might just be the greatest of them all.

EPILOGUE

I’ve seen a lot of good discussion recently on how Homestuck preserves a certain era of the internet like a time capsule: its culture, its technology, its assumptions, its memes.

I think sprite comics, too, are part of the culture that created Homestuck. Do I think Hussie spent the early 2000s recoloring Mega Man sprites? No, probably not. But what I do know is that sprite comics were part of his world. The first webcomic cartoonists came of age alongside an odd companion, the weird, overly sincere, dorky little sibling that was sprite comics. Like them or hate them, you couldn’t escape them. They were there.

And maybe a certain cartoonist saw a kind of potential in them, in the same way he summoned Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff from the depths of bad gamer culture.

Or maybe he just knew, as some sprite comic authors did, that the time was right for their kind of story.

On a personal level—Homestuck came along right when I needed it.

Around 2009, the bubble that was sprite comics finally burst. People were getting tired of them, or growing out of them, and blown-up sprites no longer looked so good on modern monitors.

I was more than a little heartbroken. I’d enjoyed Bob and George, read my fill of Mega Man generica, and fallen utterly in love with Kid Radd. I’d been working on my own sprite comic for a long time out of a sense that there was huge potential in them that we were only scratching the surface of. I’d dreamed of maybe someday doing something as amazing as the best of them did. But I was watching that world disappear. I had to admit to myself that my work wasn’t going to continue to find an audience. That I could live with. But it was painful to think that the potential I sensed, the feats of storytelling I wanted to see in the world, would never be realized.

And then, in the fall of 2010, a friend linked me to a comic that broke all the rules, that mixed animation, games, music, images and chatlogs. A comic that crafted its own sprites, just as Kid Radd did, and remixed its images into an ever-expanding web of associations and meanings. A comic that took on the idea of living inside a video game with relish and turned it into a gorgeous meditation on escaping the ideas and systems that control us.

That this comic would exist, let alone that it would succeed. That it would become one of the most popular creations of all time, that it would surpass other webcomics and break out into anime conventions and the real world, that it would become such a cultural juggernaut, to the point where it’s impossible to imagine an internet without Homestuck—

I can’t even put into words how happy that makes me. It’s the reason I’m still writing essays about Homestuck nearly eight years after I found it.

And it’s why Homestuck will always be my favorite sprite comic.

-Ari

[Notes: The image of the kids came from the ever-useful MSPA Wiki—please support and aid in their efforts to provide a good source of info about Homestuck! They need more support these days than ever.

For more on Homestuck’s place as a continuation of the zeitgeist of early 2000s experimental webcomics, this article by Sam Keeper at Storming the Ivory Tower is excellent and insightful.

Thanks for reading, y’all.]

#homestuck analysis #homestuck #homestuck's influences #hypercomics #understanding homestuck #sprite comics #internet culture

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20dollarlolita · 4 years

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Hey! I have a slightly off-topic question, but I thought you might know a little bit? I'm applying to colleges for costume design, and I'm confused about portfolios (although I'm excited to say I'm including some lolita stuff I made partly thanks to stuff I learned from your blog, so thank you so much!). Do you have any advice? Like, how many sketches should I include, should I include multiple angles of the same piece, should I include non-costume art too? Any advice is very welcome, thank you!

Hope this isn’t too late, but here goes.

I don’t know for sure about how well this tailors to college, but here’s what I’ve learned about making a portfolio to get costume work, and usually they just want to see the same kind of professional work.

All of this is super subjective. There’s a lot of people out there who have very different portfolio styles than I do, and many of them are probably more successful than I am. However, when I have no idea where to start, reading someone else’s style can really make me feel like I have enough of a handle on things to begin, so I’m going to just barf out what my personal guidelines are.

So here goes:

First of all, you need a portfolio that stands on its own, without you having to explain any pieces. It’s nice to be able to have things to say about it, if you’re presenting in person, but you also need to be ready for someone to see it without you there. People with know knowledge of you should be able to tell what’s going on.

Part two, don’t use paragraphs of text. In fact, except for page headers, I try not to use text at all. This sounds really counter to the first point, showing that your work and photography of your work is good enough to stand on its own really shows professionalism in this field.

Part three, don’t crowd the pictures together. Try not to overlap anything. Avoid weird crops. You don’t want a lot of clutter on the pages. This isn’t a graphic novel. You want your page layouts to encourage viewers to spend time looking at the details of a single image, instead of you trying to direct their gaze to details. Too many detail shots can make it look like you’re hiding something.If you have a specific detail that you need to show on a piece, and that isn’t visible on a simple front/back view, a single little detail shot is sometimes nice. For example, I made a ton of wigs and custom hair accessories out of clock parts, and none of my actor shots had the most elaborate hair clip on it, so I had a little back view of that wig on a head form.

Of the more subjective parts, what work you have and have done is going to make a huge impact on how you arrange your portfolio. I’ve had the most success with having sections for my different categories of work. I have one for design, a basic construction, a draping/patterning section, a costume crafts section, and a specialty skills section. Each are arranged slightly differently.

For the costume design section, I have a two page spread for each theatrical show. The left page will have several costume renderings (resized). The right will have production pictures from the show, making a point to have the costumes from the renderings I chose visible in the pictures. Larger shows can have 25+ renderings in them, and it’s not helpful to have all of them in the portfolio. I like using actual production pictures in these. Any legitimate theater that cares about promotion will probably take production/archive pictures, and it’s totally acceptable and a little bit expected for you to ask to get copies of some for your portfolio. While a behind-the-scenes image is more likely to show the costume better, a production image shows how your work translates into the stage, and that’s usually more useful for the people considering hiring you.

Also, it makes your work look really good. For example, in 2010 I did a few costumes for a show, which were all plain clothes. It’s one thing to show a picture of a hoodie sweater and some jeans. It’s another thing to have a picture of the scene. You get the advantage of someone else focusing on the staging and lighting and modeling in the image. Costume design for film works pretty similarly, with one major note I have: when you’re getting screenshots from your film, keep them in the same aspect ratio as the film. You want them to visualize your work as a film, so make your screenshots look like a film.One of the things about my design section is that it’s not necessarily pieces that I made. I’m also showcasing how I can work from prefab clothes and rented costumes, and how I can make rented costumes from different areas and hand built costumes mesh into a cohesive world of the play. This is a very important skill, so include shows that you didn’t build from scratch into this section.

My basic construction section is for projects where I did a lot of creating things, but not very much in the way of designing things. This happens if I’m a stitcher and another person is the designer, if I made something for a personal project, some cosplay and things like that, and heavy alterations (wedding dresses, mostly). In this case, good shots on a dress form or on a model in relatively neutral poses work really well. You can have a nice backdrop and things like that, but don’t use a pose that doesn’t show off the garment. You want pictures large enough for someone looking at it to see details, but that are also clear enough that someone who’s just flipping through your pages will stop and look at it to see the details. Hold it at arm’s length and squint, and see if the picture still looks somewhat interesting. If I’m a stitcher in someone else’s design, it’s not unexpected for me to use the designer’s renderings, while making it clear in the portfolio that they are not my renderings. Building from someone else’s designs is an important skill and you want to show that off. In general, however, this is the section that I have for just finished pieces. I make a lot of tutus without designs, so there’s just some pages of tutus with no design images or explanations.

The only section that I show WIP shots is the patterning/draping section. Sometimes, I make patterns without making a full design, and then I’ll have a picture of the pattern and the muslin mockup.

Usually, I’ll stick some kind of watermark on these, or take off certain pieces. You’re looking at if you want to hire me. You’re not here to steal patterns from my portfolio.

Anyway, moving on, costume crafts is my section where I put things that aren’t really sewn. This is where wigs go. This is where tiaras go. Gloves? Hats? Jewelry? Fabric fans? Did I make it for a costume, but didn’t sew it? Here it goes. This one tends to get a bit more cluttered, because I don’t want this section to be too big. This isn’t a hello, hire me for my costume crafting ability. This is a BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE! I ALSO MAKE WIGS! I ALSO DYE SHOES!! It’s a good way to remind a potential employer that there’s all these small things that they’ll need, that not every costumer can do, but that I can do.

Specialty skills is another small section. Do I do anything particularly well? I do a lot of custom dye jobs, so I’ll have a couple of pictures of that. I make costumes for dogs, so there’s a picture of that. Embroidery? put a sample there. This is just another section for where they might hire you for just a random skill you have. I know an actress who got a job because she mentioned that she can make realistic baby noises on her resume. I know another actor who got hired because his special skills section said he could skateboard.

So, that’s a lot of sections, and you need to be really careful that your portfolio isn’t too long. Since I go around to a lot of places that might want different things, what I have is one very long portfolio, and then a second, shorter portfolio book. I can take pages out of the long portfolio and fill up the short portfolio, which requires me to decide what pages are the best and the most relevant. Editing a lot of information down to the best and more relevant is another really important skill.

So, that was way too much information. Sorry about that. If it’s a college portfolio, don’t freak out. They’re usually looking to see 1) if you have any experience and 2) if you’ve gone through the effort to arrange a portfolio and 3) if you vaguely understand what “professional” looks like. One of the first things we did in my program was get all our portfolios and resumes together and discuss why they worked and didn’t work, so that we could improve. No one’s expecting it to be great (though it’s nice if it is). They just need you to take that first step and show that you’re trying and that you care, and that you can do some googling and asking around for portfolio tips.

I also have a “casual costume scrapbook” that I keep in my car, which is useful for when I’m trying to foot-in-the-door my way into a small theater. Having my professional portfolio on me is dangerous, because I don’t want to damage it, and looks like I’m trying way too hard if I’m just striking up a conversation with someone in Starbucks. This has a couple of techniques in it. Specifically:

“Yeah, sewing with cats is the worst. Look at her.” *casually opens the book to this page* “I was gone for one second and then I came back and here she was, right on my cutting mat. Oh, yeah, you can look at the rest. That’s cool. I should have some of my cards taped in the back page.”

But I’d never, never actually bring this as a portfolio to an interview.

There’s other costume people out there, so if anyone else has portfolio tips, please share!

#not lolita #long post

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cruddyborderlandstheories · 5 years

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Museum of Mayhem Art Analysis

ahhh it’s finally here and it’s AWESOME. Lots of credit to @ifalnasminiatures for bringing this to my attention! Also credit to Hayder Hype for providing (nat zero six on gearbox forums) sources (Ashley Landry on twitter) in the description of his video because oh man it’s a lot

you can view most of these art pieces on the borderlands instagram as well

lots to talk about especially regarding the calypso twins so let us dive right in

tl;dr: tyreen has a weird red marking on her face in some old designs. i think troy used to be blind and missing his metal plates. more proof for my elpis/chemical sludge/lost legion theory that the twins are using said chemical sludge to give their followers psuedo-siren powers bc a dahl pumping station (hyperion pumping stations on pandora) but dahl had a presence on the moon

one of my favorites, it reminds me a lot of the Mask of Mayhem, but for villains.

Punk Girl is shown again twice, probably further proving she’s tied in with the CoV somehow

we also got some crazy looking villains such as

baby face. which is all kinds of extremely fucked up

this dude who looks like he could be a miniboss with the glasgow smile and the cool goggles

this guy who i legitimately thought was dr zed for a hot second there

could it be

the evilest brother?? pfft nahhh

this girl who seems like she could be a unique character with a baseball cap. wondering if maybe she’s related to Punk Girl in any way. What’s the verdict on the other band members? 🤔

uhh let’s give it a solid maybe and move on

this piece! very interesting to me

so, the very first thing i noticed is zane’s eye patch being on the other eye lol

amara’s tattoos are also gone, however that might’ve been for reasons similar to the japanese cover art of the game.

most interestingly is a point @ifalnasminiatures made and it’s that the calypso twins are actually palette swapped! you can see Troy is the one with the white hair and Ty is the one with the darker hair. which I think mayyy play into a few things we see later about the twins

we also see a tiny ship in the background. i can’t tell if that’s sanctuary-iii or the blue/yellow ship, it all blends together a lot due to the quality of the pic. but it is next to the calypso twins, which makes me want to believe it’s the blue/yellow ship we see with red markings all over it. you know this one from the mural of mayhem wallpapers

you can see the reddish markings on the back right next to the engines

then we have ummm

this cover art

😬

thanks for not using this one gearbox cuz

oh my god

she just reminds me of suicide squad, that’s not a good image you wanna dredge up from the deep recesses of your fans’ brains

she might be a unique character given the clothes/hair? cuz you don’t normally see psychos with stilettos on. or yknow, shoes in general. the hair also seems way to clean and neat to be a psycho/cultist

i just feel uncomfortable looking at this, so moving on

a different logo. also not my favorite cover art, but at least im not physically uncomfortable looking at this. that poor girl’s pelvis... anyway

lots of silhouettes

interestingly, i feel like the roses might have been a thing they just put in for the new cover art. haven’t seen hide nor hair of them across any of the pictures i’ve seen.

we got a lot of figures. out of them i most definitely recognized amara, salvador, maya, another salvador?, zer0, moze (maybe?), and axton. i thiiink one of them is maya as well, but im not 100% on that.

i can guess why they didn’t pick this one: it’s hard to tell who’s who. a lot of these poses make the silhouettes kinda hard to see and the merging together at the bottom makes things even worse. i do think it’s interesting there are some bl2 characters on here as well, but hayder hype mentioned they very well could be placeholders, and given that i can’t make out fl4k or zane, im inclined to believe him.

this art which was used during the promo for this event

rip elpis i guess LMAO

a better look at the psycho himself from the promo released by the borderlands twitter.

there’s a new red planet which hasn’t been shown off before, looks like a gassy planet kinda like jupiter, but interestingly it has this green crack in the side?

very reminiscent of pandora’s eridium scar. i am wondering if this is because this planet had a vault opened, or if it is tied to the Eridians at all. be interesting if it was their homeworld.

also i have no idea what the symbolism is in the homeworld destroying another planet but maybe we shouldn’t think about it too hard e_e

the other planet that’s being destroyed... idk fellas

it doesn’t match up to me but like, this is only one shot

i don’t know 🤔 if you really squint, maybe you can see that hint of purple at the bottom there?

here

tbh, i thought this was elpis the first time i saw it due to the cracks, but i figured elpis doesn’t have like continents across its surface, just craters. and wayyy more cracks.

so it’s probably not pandora and it’s probably not elpis.

huh...

i do think the actual shot is suspended above promethea, you can see the familiar asteroid belt surrounding it

there’s also a planet in the background,

which i imagine isn’t pandora bc no eridian scar

could be elpis or eden-6, or the 5th planet we don’t know about. i kinda get the feeling the 5th planet may be that gaseous red planet tho. which is probably going to be super weird to traverse now that i think about it. they said oz kits weren’t coming back, right? i wonder how that would work. hmmmm

there’s also this redder planet here which i actually DO think is Pandora. if you squint real hard u can see the purple from the eridian scar. plus the color matches up pretty well with the pictures provided above.

there’s also these two bodies over in the corner where the light is coming from. i can’t tell what they’re supposed to be

there are also these little dudes in the top right

i assume they’re maliwan? they remind me a lot of the maliwan drop ship things that fly overhead when you enter promethea

YESSS okay this is the start of some PRETTY WILD twin stuff

troy: missing his tattoos, blind in one eye, has a weird mark above his eyebrow. also, no metal bits!

Tyreen!!! with a red stripe across her left cheek going up to her eye??? no tattoos on her left arm as far as we can see, but that might be for marketing reasons (she’s also covering up part of her bicep). she’s also missing her coat and chains and wearing a different glove.

we also have a bunch of bl2 VHs taking up space. again i think hayder hype is right in that they’re simply placeholders. not much else to say, but

this trend of Tyreen having red markings on her face and Troy being blind in an eye (or both) actually continues through a fair amount of these posters!!!

more cover art. one of my least favorites again... i just think it looks like the psycho is puking out the VHs. also, seems to be an older version of the psycho mask.

fl4k seems to be less rendered than the rest of the cast? like they have less detail, especially on their coat

also you can see an older looking space shuttle up at the top, which reminds me a lot of the one we use in TFTBL to get to helios. except less caravanny and more rockety

the splatter also reminds me of siren powers, with the purple and the glitter. it’s cool that it’s showing a different shot than what’s behind it. maybe a hint to siren powers because it’s sort of like a portal.

more puke!

this time troy is blind in both eyes it seems,

tyreen seems to still have a mark on the left side of her face, im wondering if this ties into her scars at all? it doesn’t seem as prominent as the previous red mark.

Zane seems to have an actual eye patch instead of his more high-tech eye patch, which reminds me a lot of the leaked character concepts from like january i wanna say

amara seems to be dual wielding lol i wonder if originally that was going to be one of her 3 skills but then they were like “wait salvador. wait. nisha. FUC-”

also fl4k is being obscured by this weird saturn-like planet. let them be free!

moze is missing, the saturn like planet shows up 2 times total, and that blue/yellow ship is seen again behind troy

as for the purple stuff? you already know my theory that the twins are going to be using the chemical sludge on elpis to empower their followers. it could also just be straight eridium/slag. you know, like the testing from the WEP with bloodwing and even krieg. we’ll have to see. it would be interesting if they tied krieg into the story through there.

i do lowkey think it’s chemical sludge though, because some of it is actually glowing blue in places, you can see it clearly below amara’s feet. maybe some tie in to siren powers cuz they glow the same blueish color. who knoooows not i

big shot of this psycho here, looks like he’s crumbling.

i really like the 4 VHs standing at the base with the elongated shadows. very dark vibes from this tho, probably not suitable for the series as a whole. i can see why maybe they decided not to do it.

i wonder if we’ll see this giant psycho statue somewhere on pandora. it would certainly be a sight to behold.

also i kinda wish we had cloaks like the concept art shows. cloaks are cool

more sketchy art. this one is also kinda strange, i definitely get why they decided not to go thru with it.

possibly tie-in with the ‘mother’ imagery we get on the propaganda signs across pandora.

lmfao the foot

very bl2 like, im glad they didn’t stick with this. i like that they decided to change things up

troy seems to be blind and also missing his metal implants on his face. his jacket also looks a lot different, it looks more like tyreen’s with the spikes and stuff across it. we also can’t see his metal arm at all, tho we do see his sword! which looks a lot different, im glad they decided to revamp it to be more visually interesting lol

tyreen is more interesting to me. it looks like her right arm has like a silver coating over it? unless that is a metal arm as well. she also is wearing a different kind of glove. her tattoos are missing as well, but again, it’s probably because of the cover art. her scars also definitely seem to have reached her left cheek at some point.

zane also looks a lot different, tho amara, moze, and fl4k look about the same.

another shot of the ship, this one is definitely the blue/yellow one. there’s gotta be some significance with that, right? either we’re getting skins for sanc-iii, we’re going to be painting it a new color, or it’s a different ship.

what the HECK

maybe the twins stole sanc-ii and we’re using sanc-iii. idek. this ship is driving me up a wall lol

gun head.

not a lot to say here. i actually like this one lol it’s very mellow and straight to the point. it’s nice that the logo is right in the middle, not at the top like most of them.

game. buy it. okay? cool.

similar to the other background we did, a bit different. again, like @ifalnasminiatures pointed out, the twins are actually palette swapped here.

Zane also has the old eyepatch on his right eye instead of his left eye, and his jacket is black instead of blue. fuckin’ edgelord.

one of my favorite ones out of all of them. it’s beautiful, i really wish they had kept it. Fl4k is missing but i assume they were meant to go next to Amara? i also think it’s interesting Moze is in the front, as I took Amara to be the leader this time around. Zane is also an older design, with the eyepatch back on his left eye again (starting to think this is an aesthetic thing lol) and a black jacket instead of blue.

We see the twins on the top. Tyreen has that mark on her face again, and Troy is the same as the last few covers.

We also see Maya, Zer0, and for some reason Brick? Which is weird to me considering we have a few other characters who initially feel much for important to the story (cough Lilith cough), but I’m not complaining.

the purple splatters again make me think this is a tie in to eridium/slag/elpis’s chemical sludge. i also like the logo being worked into the design instead of just thrown on top, i think that’s a nice detail

i couldn’t find a great shot of this poster which is a shame because it’s one of my favorites

a lot of baddies to go around on here. i love the dude up top, he reminds me of the Anchormen from the captain scarlett dlc in bl2!

these dudes

we can see Punk Girl on the left again

and this guy who appears to be in some medieval armor

i have no idea what’s going on there but i am EXCITED

i’ve been thinking and tbh i think the multiple planets thing was just an excuse for gearbox to go absolutely ham on the character designs/settings.

i mean why should they have to hold back all their medieval armor designs for another dlc like tiny tina’s? all their pirate/sea-fairing designs for a pirate dlc? fuck it! go WILD. i think they did, anywho

there’s also this post which... tbh i can’t make out much at all. again, seems like an older psycho mask design. it looks like there are characters in the splatter on the bottom left, but it’s very hard to tell who’s who, especially at this angle and image quality lol

if we get a better shot later on i may return to this piece and try to figure things out!

we also have this piece which is giving me huge ‘Happy Together’ vibes. very trippy

moze looks like she’s using an untextured atlas gun? dunno what’s going on with that tbh lol

i really like this one too. it’s cool. i get why maybe they wanted to go a little crazier tho, feels too simplistic for the MAYHEM vibe they’re going for.

oof! can we get an F in chat for whatever planet/moon this is

lots of pink floyd vibes going on here as well

we see a different looking blue/yellow ship flying away from the explosion. it seems to missing a lot of the parts that make sanc-iii so recognizable including the engines/wings

i like the destruction vibe they’re going for here, really sells the “universe destroying power” the twins are supposedly going to get.

anyway, in addition to the cover art pieces, we also got a few concept art pieces as well!

this bit which looks like a gun

you see the aiming mechanism up there? you see how it’s aimed at that planet/moon? yeah i 100% timed this so you’d see the above concept art with this immediately after :P (im kidding i didn’t but hey now you don’t have to scroll)

fuck yeah babey

we also have seen something similar to this in the gameplay trailer!

i didn’t actually think it was a giant fucking GUN tho. can we get an F in chat for Promethea and/or whatever else this thing gets aimed at

yooo

i thought this was opportunity at first cuz of the bridge but it’s more likely promethea

when u go meet zer0 you can see some water surrounding the city so i would guess this is somewhere else on promethea

im mostly interested in the giant fuckin triangle in the middle of that courtyard looking area

oh also the giant trench of destruction on the right there. that’s probably important, too.

more concept art!

i think the bottom of the 4 VHs is actually what was leaked in january.

some art of the twins on the left there, tyreen is so much shorter than troy omfg

and this does indeed looks to be a younger version of angel so credit to @prettypinkdork for mentioning that on my angel post. it is nice to see those tech-y wings in action, definitely does prove it’s her.

we can also see this art of what i think is Punk Girl, which is interesting to me because she looks to be doing something with her right hand. possible siren powers? maybe!

we also get a much cooler, bigger version of that maliwan ship people were talking about, with what look to be maliwan... eye bots? surrounding it. this is soooo fuckin awesome to me because it reminds me of a sailboat. and airships are fucking COOL

but something interesting is that i don’t think this ship was actually always maliwan

we got an A in the back here... for Atlas? i mean... you know it’s coming... the colors would match up. Yeahhhhhhh...

more interesting is that it actually looks like maliwan covered it up with their flags/tarps. i would not be surprised if this was claimed by maliwan possibly during the takeover.

a cyclone, with a whole fuckin lot of detail. just... holy shit.

not much else to say here though. i like the stuffed animal on the side, though

a better shot of jakobs manor which holy shit looks badass as fuck

big turret/observation thing on the right there? im not sure

pretty sure this is eden-6. also more tropical trees? possibly a water planet? but maybe just ocean on eden-6. also there seems to be like webbing on whatever is on the road, so maybe some spider-like wildlife?

most important to me is this

yeah i would bet that’s eridium/slag/the chemical sludge from elpis

im pretty convinced this is something on elpis mostly because the DAHL logo on the side. which again, they were on pandora yes but they were mining for iridium not eridium. if this was pandoran pumping stations, that would be hyperion.

i do think this is elpis. and i do think the twins are using the chemical sludge that mutated the lost legion into those fake siren things to give their followers superpowers.”holy holy holy” indeed.

this, plus the rakk wings on the psycho in the mask of mayhem are just convincing me more and more

that’s all for now folks. i gotta run

#borderlands #bl3 #borderlands 3 #OOF

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arecomicsevengood · 4 years

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Is This How I See Jaime?

Objectively speaking, I am not that old. Still there’s no getting past the fact that I am getting older every day, like everybody else. I might not be at the point where my body betrays my age, where I ache all the time and grunt when I stand, but my mind still carries with it the weight of decades of lived experience, and this can at any moment make me want to lie down.

There are few artists that capture the feeling of aging quite like Jaime Hernandez. Partly this is because of his working method. No one else does what he does, making serialized comics for close to forty years, that tell stories with the same characters. These are not truly STORIES, utilizing flashbacks that provide crucial context to events and create literary effects, even as the overall narrative they tell moves forward in time and builds an attachment between reader and character comparable to long-running television series. Still, when broken up into serialized installments in issues of Love And Rockets, it can frequently feel like nothing is happening. Often, what you get in an individual issue is around fifteen pages, split between multiple pieces focused on different characters. These fragments are focused, compressed in a manner closer to cinema than television, but you’re still only getting what might amount to three to five minutes depicted on-screen. With a few exceptions, what you get in an issue is not a complete short story with a beginning, middle, and end. For all the influence the Hernandez Brothers have had on alternative comics, reading the people they’ve influenced will not prepare you for how much Love And Rockets is modeled off of serialized comics, and how much of its power it draws from continuity and extended engagement.

This pacing demands a certain level of expectation-free interaction, which is crucial to deep relationships. It’s worth noting Jaime’s strips run alongside his brother Gilbert’s work, which is similar in some ways, but by no means the same. Gilbert’s body of work is a lot more complicated, due in part to how prolific he is, the meta/self-referential/self-deconstructive elements of the stories he’s telling, and also how he draws tits like Mark Newgarden draws noses, that just keep getting larger. He deserves a deep critical reading, but I don’t have the energy, money, or time to keep up with him. Running the two brothers’ work side by side makes Love And Rockets implicitly about family, which then in turn becomes a subject each cartoonist explicitly makes work about. And not just “chosen” family, but the actual people who’ve known you your entire life. Which is, inherently, a concept which both means more the older you get, and remains somewhat alienating. As a reader, it helps to be prepared to extend to Love And Rockets the goodwill one would a family member, to begin to get on its level.

On a superficial level, making work about family seems somewhat conservative and nostalgic. That’s not to suggest it’s not valuable, or worth fighting for. There’s just a certain adjustment of values or attitudes a reader needs to make to get on board with the work, that might be at odds with the punk rock alternative comics reputation that precedes it. The comics themselves are built on a formal language of cartooning that’s older and out of fashion: Sixties Ditko comics, Lil Archie, Dennis The Menace Goes To Mexico. This adds to a feeling of being about aging in a way younger art cartoonists inspired by their same-age immediate peers can’t get to. For instance, I love Olivier Schrauwen, and I can see the influence Yuichi Yokoyama has on his work, and I view the two of them as peers in dialogue, creating the future of comics, which creates a totally different reading experience than I get reading work that feels more in dialogue with the past. The formal choices of the Hernandez brothers, including that their work appears for the first time in serialized comic book formats, calls conscious attention to history. Consciousness of the past hurts, and this truth is a huge element of the plots and themes of Jaime’s work.

It’s the sheer graphic strength of Jaime’s drawing that enables it to stick in the memory. He’s able to capture a tiny gesture and render it iconic through use of line and spotted blacks. The precision he brings his images gives them a certain ease of recall. This is the crux of a two-page spread at the climax of The Love Bunglers where, as a bunch of different stories and images are recalled, now rendered at different angles, they’re all there in your consciousness, in a mix of your memories of the comic and your memories of your own individual life. It’s a hugely cathartic climax.

However, both Gilbert and Jaime have this aspect to what they do that can easily frustrate a reader, and it is seemingly inextricable from the core of their power: Once a point is reached where you can easily follow along, and a satisfying conclusion to a story occurs, the next several issues will completely destabilize that and you will again not know what exactly is going on. For instance, if you read the Perla La Loca collection, collecting the “Wigwam Bam” and “Chester Square” graphic novels, by the end of it, you will have a very exciting experience that should convince you Jaime Hernandez is one of the greatest cartoonists in the world. Reading the Penny Century collection of the work that followed, plenty of stories will leave you feeling like he lost his touch, or is spinning his wheels. At the end of the book, and the “Everybody Loves Me Baby” story, you’re knocked flat on your ass again, but if you had read the original comic books as they came out, who knows if you would’ve stuck it out that long.

This, by the way, is one of the most realistic things there is. Life’s “things just keep happening” quality will fuck you up time and again. While I haven’t given up on life just yet, I have stopped reading Love And Rockets a few times. I’m not the sort of reader who sticks with a series out of inertia. I have always been hyper-aware of the value of my comic-book buying dollar, and therefore pretty fickle. If I read two issues straight of a comic that feels like it’s treading water, I would be done with it. I’ve gone back and picked up things after the fact and filled in gaps, or I’ve switched to reading trade collections checked out from the library. I bought the first two issues of the recently relaunched Love And Rockets volume 4 in one go, realized that it was continuing stories from Love And Rockets: New Stories, and didn’t go back for more, put off by the stories’ continuation from the previous volume.

It’s only now, with the release of Is This How You See Me and Tonta, that I am reading the stories that followed up The Love Bunglers in a complete form. They blew me away. The effects Jaime’s going for at any given moment may be subtle, but they accumulate, and this accumulation then becomes the true effect, and why I analogize it to aging: There’s this sheer weight that results from how things just continue to happen, and each time they hit you with what feels like more force, even as the moments themselves are minor ones. This is a true-to-life feeling that is very hard to capture. It’s present in the relentless pace of Charlie Kaufman’s masterpiece Synecdoche, New York, but that is a movie too intense to rewatch for many. Jaime’s work is built around you returning to it, which means it has to be somewhat inviting, and include levity.

Is This How You See Me focuses on the characters of Maggie and Hopey, introduced in 1981 as teenagers, now presumably in their mid-fifties, happily married to other people but still weighing the possibility of cheating with their ex. The characters return to a “punk rock reunion” in their hometown, to reminisce on the past with old friends, and old characters we haven’t seen in years appear, visibly older than when they were last drawn, but still recognizably themselves. This plot lends the comic some elements of nostalgic fan-service that I intellectually feel an aversion to. It feels almost like the plot is designed transparently for those purposes. Bringing back old characters would strike me as a crass project in the pages of X-Men or Legion Of Super-Heroes, but the naturalism of Jaime’s approach means that it allows him to show me things I legitimately haven’t seen in a comic book before. It’s probable they’ve been in movies or books, but I would argue they work better in comics.

For instance, there’s a scene where the reunited cast are showing each other photos on their phones. This is a normal thing people do, and so surely it has been depicted in a film. But in a comic, there’s this weird meta element to it. Smartphones have text message conversations appear in little word balloons, right? The word balloon being a technique comics used to depict speech, as part of their normal communication system of images. Then, when interacting in physical space, people show pictures to each other, using this device they usually use for the mimesis of speech over distances, but they’re communicating using pictures to show what their life is like. Which is what the comic itself is doing more generally. So, there’s there’s this semiotic quality to the gesture of the outstretched hand with phone in it which feels really profound when depicted in comics, while it would feel sort of stupid and uncinematic in a movie, where the aging theater audience would have to squint and ask their neighbor what is being shown in the text message they’re seeing on screen.

Similarly, we see the married couple of Maggie and Ray, separated from each other for the length of the weekend, fretting over how much they should be in communication, drafting texts and deleting them. There’s an intimacy people who live with each other share, where much of what they encounter apart from the other person they want to talk to them about, because to be close to another person is to have them in some ways always present inside your head. Depicting the writing of a text, and then the decision to delete it, captures both the intimacy of a couple and the intimacy of one’s own private thoughts, in a way that only a form with the intimacy of a comic is able to depict effectively. Prose alone can’t capture the fluctuations of posture and self-presentation which is the heart of deleting a draft.

Concern for one’s image is depicted as well in the title pages to individual chapters, showing characters taking pictures of themselves in mirrors with their phones. These pages seem to depict not so much the cultivated selfie but the self-awareness of the drafting process, the titles above them taking on a certain poetry, built around the words spoken to oneself unconsciously that are the opposite of the language one chooses to send in a message to convey a precise thought.

This stuff really impressed me, and it all fits within a language of small gestures. While there are tons of books that are about how connection works in the digital age, it also always feels like that stuff is a commentary on how young people live. I’m not sure I’ve seen anything as interested in how people in middle age use these devices. Of course, it’s possible examples exist in work targeted to older audiences, and I just missed it because it wasn’t marketed to me.

It was actually Jaime’s other 2019 book, Tonta, that spoke to me more. Here, the aging the book is about is a coming-of-age thing about a high school student, and the book has this spirited youthful quality to it from the outset. While other, darker, plot elements unfold as it goes on, what was interesting to me is that the noir-like narrative that exists as a counterpoint in the finished book might not have even seemed part of the same story to a reader of Love And Rockets, where the character nicknamed Tonta just sort of suddenly emerged. There’s even a few pages in this collection given over to narration by Ray, who otherwise doesn’t appear in the book. These elements don’t seem dissonant or like they don’t belong. It just makes the book itself feel loose, like it feels as free and exploratory as a teenager looking for something to do. Placed together inside a book, the disparate threads become united by having a main character to pay attention to how developments of the plot affect her. The book has a real tonal arc as it unfolds, and the way the book gets you in its grip from such a goofy start seems to replicate how the stories about the Maggie character developed over time, here captured in miniature.

The sum of these two books will at some point only be a portion of a future volume of the Love And Rockets library, the formatting of the Perla La Loca and Penny Century books I mentioned earlier. There are portions from recent issues of Love And Rockets that are natural continuations and codas from these books, and what tapestries these fragments will be woven into is unknown to me. Another gutpunch could be just around the corner or years in the offing. There’s really no way to know what the future holds.

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theeverlastingshade · 5 years

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Ashes Grammar- A Sunny Day In Glasgow: 10th Anniversary

Of all the artists that emerged throughout the prior decade, there wasn’t another quite as elusive, mercurial, and underappreciated as A Sunny Day in Glasgow. They released their debut record, Scribble Mural Comic Journal in 2007, and its homespun concoction of hazy atmospherics and sun-kissed melodies that peaked out from beneath layers of playful noise bridged the gap between Creation Records and Flying Nun, but it also established them as an island unto themselves. They seemed considerably more reserved than most of their peers, and not nearly as easy to peg. Two years later they dropped their stellar sophomore LP, Ashes Grammar, and all those points became even more pronounced. AG is a collection of 22 tracks that run from 11 seconds to just under 6 and a half minutes, and the sequencing is impeccable. Nothing sounds accidental or ill-placed, and while the idea of an album playing through like a single song is a tired cliché at this point, there are few records that fit that description as well as AG. The record is more fleshed out and stranger than its predecessor, and the palpable glee that the band have as they take immense risks throughout is infectious. It’s one long, joyful dream that finds the band upending the well-worn conventions of shoegaze and dream pop to delirious affect, and in the process creating a future benchmark for these respective genres.

AG unfolds like a euphoric fever dream pitched somewhere between a religious ceremony and a twee dance party. ASDiG was a seven-piece band when they recorded AG, and so unsurprisingly there’s quite a bit going on at all times. There’s a sharp pop sensibility coursing throughout the record’s veins, but the band rarely engages that impulse directly, more often than not they tuck their melodies under waves of guitar distortion, four on the floor beats, and a wide assortment of texture. When the melodies are pronounced, as on “Close Chorus”, or “The White Witch” the results are simply breathtaking, and that playful sense of mischief that renders those moments far and few between is a large part of the record’s appeal. The vocals are consistently gorgeous but many of the actual lyrics are indiscernible, and so even when the vocals soar they still function as additional texture. On many of the songs the vocals don’t seem like the true focal point of the music, but there are plenty of stunning vocal melodies and harmonies throughout AG that negate the sense that they were an afterthought. And for a band that understandably scans entirely as headphone music, ASDiG provide these songs with quite a bit of infectious rhythm that you can actually dance to. The juxtaposition between the rhythms and the rest of the arrangements that their songs are composed of is remarkably fluid from start to finish, which gives AG on the whole a potential appeal beyond the the vast majority of comparable contemporaries.

The majority of the tracks that AG consists of scan far closer to sketches and interludes than they do proper songs. There are a few obvious high points that are far more fleshed out than the bulk of what’s here, but most of the songs on AG are just a few minutes long, and develop their ideas quickly without overstaying their welcome. In this way AG is more reminiscent of a Flying Lotus record in structure than most of the obvious shoegaze and dream pop touchstones that they’re building off of sonically, and that approach remains engaging because it consistently keeps the listener on their toes. No two songs sound alike, but they’re clearly the work of the same band, and more so than any other ASDiG record AG showcases a staggering amount of range from a fairly well-defined set of parameters. Songs like “Headphone Space” and “The White Witch” are among the best songs that ASDiG ever recorded, and necessitate their respective lengths to develop their exceptional melodies and mesmerizing arrangements. Most of the record is told through short, sweet bursts like the touching guitar drone of “Miss My Friends”, the stomp/clap rhythm and high-pitched synth squeal of “Canalfish”, or the alluring combination of bass, harmonica, and sleigh bells on “Loudly”. These songs succeed in building an engrossing patchwork of disparate pieces that, when listened to within the proper sequencing, showcase a staggering amount of growth from their relatively lean and more straightforward debut.

While every track on AG bleeds together superbly, there are a few songs here that loom large over everything else. Opening to clanging guitar riffs, a simple tom beat, and a gorgeous, wordless vocal melody, “The White Witch” takes a little over a minute to establish its presence before the arrangements break away to reveal a gorgeous dream pop song hiding beneath the squalls of distortion. The song chugs along for another two minutes steadily incorporating additional guitar overdubs before dipping into a mesmerizing outro with the surging guitar easing up for an emphasis on pure atmosphere. The following song “Nitetime rainbow” is one of the more interesting songs on AG, and opens to a rapid-fire procession of hi-hats while waves of bright synths wash over them. A hand-clap/kick drum rhythm emerges alongside scattered chants, faint harmonies, and jangly guitars that create an alluring framework, but everything dissipates shortly thereafter, replaced with nothing but a four on the floor bounce. That tension of building up their arrangements, and quickly cutting them back down persists throughout the following few minutes, and as the song concludes they bring everything back for a satisfying conclusion that transitions superbly into “Canalfish”. The 41 second interlude “Life’s Great” only exists for pure kindling, but it’s a perfect segue into closer “Headphone Space”, the grand culmination of everything that the band accomplished on AG. On “Headphone Space” ASDiG set colorful synths that explode like fireworks against a throbbing low-end while angelic harmonies triumphantly swirl around the chaos in pitch-perfect harmony.

While many of the songs on AG are among their best, the absolute best song that ASDiG has ever released is hands down “Close Chorus”. A quick burst of kick drums ignites an immediately entrancing vocal melody that the band lay softly over synths that swell with euphoria, jangly guitars, and a bouncing bassline. Shortly afterwards they add a hi-hat polyrhythm, and continue to build on this groove before everything drops away save for the vocal melody, a procession of heavenly harmonies, and a kick/snare rhythm. “Close Chorus” then hits a bridge that locks everything into a sort of spiraling stasis before a chugging hi-hat/kick rhythm comes barreling into the mix alongside the guitar, bass, and synth motifs from earlier. After the vocals return to build the intensity back up “Close Chorus” erupts into a fit of pure ecstasy propelled by their finest vocal melody to date. ASDiG then go into a legitimate guitar solo that flexes their pedal board acumen, and from there the song crescendo’s into one of the most cathartic moments in any song that I’ve ever listened to. It’s difficult to genuinely talk about a song as good as “Close Chorus” and do it justice without lapsing into hyperbole, but it’s the kind of song that you remember where you were when you first heard it, and it’s a perfect demonstration of ASDiG firing on all cylinders while making something that no one else could have.

After AG ASDiG continued to undergo several more lineup changes, most notably adding Jen Goma into the fold whose vocals played an increasingly large role in defining their sound on subsequent LPs. Following AG came their short and sweet Nitetime Rainbows EP in early 2010, their underrated third LP, Autumn Again, in late 2010, their masterful fourth LP, Sea When Absent, in mid-2014, the surprisingly heavy and too brief No Death EP in early 2015, and a solid double EP called Planning Weed Like It’s Acid / Life Is Loss in late 2015. They’ve never released anything that’s less than good, but their profile has never really seemed to rise above unanimous critical acclaim, and outside of specific music-obsessive circles they remain almost universally unknown. No other artist has managed to fuse shoegaze, dream pop, psychedelic pop, and experimental electronic music in a way that’s anywhere near as exciting or singular since ASDiG dropped SMCJ in 2007. While AG doesn’t quite sustain the immediacy of SMCJ, nor does it consistently impress with its songwriting like SWA, AG is nonetheless an impressive work of art that finds the fluid septet’s sound crystallizing into something wonderfully inimitable. ASDiG have always seemed to own their elusiveness though, and just like the rest of their records, AG seems meant to have been a lost secret brimming with colorful vistas worth exploring for those curious and patient enough to give them the time that they necessitate.

Essentials: “Close Chorus”, “The White Witch”, “Headphone Space”

#A Sunny Day in Glasgow #ashes grammar #mis ojos discos

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ultimate-miles · 5 years

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Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man (2014-2015) - Not with a Bang, but a whimper

Post Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #19, Miles Morales’ written career as Spider-Man has not been great. After fridging one of the only central supporting female characters in his cast – Rio Morales, his mother – the state of the narrative became preoccupied with manpain, and framing the grief of a teenage boy as, in the words of Miles Morales, someone who “didn’t understand what it meant to be Spider-Man” (Ultimate Cataclysm: Spider-Man #1), which required his entire supporting cast to shame and emotionally manipulate him back into the job.

If there was any good that came out of the last five issues of UCSM, it was probably the introduction of Ultimate Cloak and Dagger and Ultimate Taskmaster.

Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man, unfortunately, offers very little in the way content improvement outside of one side story and its art direction. Otherwise, it doubles back in circles on subjects and issues that should’ve been laid to rest and ends on an inconclusive whimper.

Ultimate Spider-Man #200 + #Issues #1-7

Death in comic books means nothing, and holds no weight unless you’re a wildly unpopular (or non-white) character that any given publication is looking to get rid of in order to appease their narrow minded (and white) audience. When the Ultimate Marvel universe was created, one of the creeds it presumably lived by was that “death mattered”. When a character died, it would mean something, it would impact the narrative, and every character that died would remain dead.

It’s a shame, then, when they chose to stick their guns, they let Jeph Loeb decimate almost half of the Ultimate Universe’s roster in one of the uglier displays of wanton violence, sexism, and just plain shit writing, with the 2011 “Blockbuster Event” Ultimatum. Ultimatum more or less ensured, despite maintaining the promise that no one would return from the dead, none of the deaths mattered – a lot of it was just Loeb masturbating to his own cruelty if we’re being honest.

With the “Death of Spider-Man”, Brian Michael Bendis added salt to an otherwise unhealed wound that was Ultimatum, which wasn’t even a year old at that point. To his credit, he made Peter Parker’s death matter – book ending it with the first villain that more or less was responsible for the creation of Spider-Man (Norman Osborn) – with reverberating consequences throughout most surviving series in the UM. Yet, following the introduction of Miles Morales – the new and Black Spider-Man (reportedly meant to honor Bendis’ Black children, whom I pity) – you could tell, in the years preceding the removal of Peter Parker as the protagonist of the Spider-Man title, Bendis was regretting his decision.

After a 160 issue run (where Peter made actual appearances and was the protagonist until his death), the questionably numbered Ultimate Spider-Man #200, once again sees Bendis fantasizing about what he might’ve done had he not killed Peter Parker and replaced him with Miles Morales. Most of the original cast of characters that were central to Peter Parker’s story – plus Miles and Ganke – gather together at the Parker House at the behest of May Parker and Gwen Stacy (who appears to be a creep perving on underage teen boys no matter what), to commemorate the life of the late Peter Parker. Considering the previous three iterations of “Memorializing Peter Parker” in the UM, Ultimate Spider-Man #200 brings nothing new to the table, but should’ve been a red flag to anyone paying attention to the declining quality of Miles’ title.

Miles’ final title in the Ultimate Universe, Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man, begins with the reintroduction of a supposed-to-be-dead Norman Osborn – in the custody of S.H.I.E.L.D. – and two generic Spider-Man copycats robbing banks. There’s nothing really of note to say about the first seven issues of this thirteen issue title. Bendis decides, with the Ultimate Marvel universe doing the death rattle, to undo the death of both Osborn and Peter Parker – with Peter getting a half-assed excuse for his being brought back from the dead (to sum it up: “because reasons”).

I don’t think a Spider-Man comic has made me quite as angry as this series has. In the moment I read the issue wherein Peter Parker tells Miles, “It’s time for the Original Spider-Man to get back into the game”, I could’ve torn the book into shreds and smote its ruins if I thought it was going to hurt Marvel’s sales and not be an even greater waste of my spent $3.99.

“I can’t believe we’re beating this dead horse again” was what I was thinking and I just stopped buying the book altogether. I think that the first step to mine ceasing to see Miles Morales as a legitimate character, but wasted potential in the hands of non-Black creatives. I only ended up reading the trades for the sake of reference and fact checking and it’s only this year, three-four years after the fact that I bothered to do that. The only thing worth noting about the first seven issues of this title is that it sets up the last four, which are even worse.

Cataclysm: Ultimate Spider-Man #1-3 + Issues #8-9

Cataclysm: Ultimate Spider-Man is one of seven miniseries titles part of the “Blockbuster Event” known as Cataclysm, which sees Ultimate Galactus (or 616 Galactus, I’m not sure which tbh. There’s very little difference between the two when you get to the nitty-gritty) attempting to destroy the 1610 universe and devour it all. You get the distinct feeling that, before someone came up with Secret Wars, Cataclysm was meant to be the true end of the Ultimate Universe – but someone upstairs changed their mind and rendered it to a mere false start. Long story short: The grand majority – if not all of – the Ultimates (the Avengers of the 1610 universe) are killed or sent into the void with Galactus by Ultimate Shadowcat – who is later hailed savior of the world. The All-New Ultimates are formed.

Das it.

But, within Miles’ slice of the Cataclysm story, Bendis finally decides to focus on the elephant in the room: Jefferson Davis and his open and his fantasy xenophobia toward superhumans and how it has literally silenced his own son from admitting to his double life as Spider-Man. Moreso since the death of his mother, Rio Morales, at the hands of Ultimate Venom. I’ll be perfectly honest – I don’t think Jefferson Davis is a great guy – I actually ended up liking his no-account brother (Aaron Davis, gone too soon) far more because he was upfront about his ideals and his mission statement. He never pretended or tried to be a better person. He was just rotten and enjoyed it.

For that one piece of sage advice Jefferson offered Miles in the earliest tenure of his first title, Jefferson is the perfect example of a man who expects his son to “do as he says, and as I do”, but expects no consequences visited upon him whenever he dehumanizes people. He’s a walking metaphor for the heterosexual Black father who spews homophobic slurs in casual conversation around their gay daughter or son and I’m sure as hell that was intentional despite the incompatibility of the allegory.

Cataclysm: Ultimate Spider-Man doesn’t do much to repair his character, if anything it makes him thrice times worse. When Galactus starts wrecking all of New York City and Brooklyn, Miles, Bombshell (Lana Baumgartner) and Cloak and Dagger, struggle to save the people caught in the monster’s wake – all while recounting where they were when the Ultimatum event occurred.

In Miles’ flashback, we see Jefferson lose his head over the knowledge that the title wave was caused by a mutant (Magneto), all while loudly proclaiming everyone stuck in traffic was going to die. The most important nugget of information taken away from Miles’ flashback is the knowledge that his father more or less promised that he would abandon or disown Miles if he ever found out his son (then, probably only 11 or 12 years old at the time) was a superhuman.

I never had much sympathy for Davis (I tolerated him because of Rio), but the moment Miles tries to convince his father to come with him out of the city to safety, and Jefferson decides to blame a now fourteen year old Miles for the death of Rio and Aaron, I just outright hated him. Cataclysm: Ultimate Spider-Man is not a bad read all things considered. It tells its story concisely and never loses focus of its characters in relation to the catastrophe. The downside is that you have to read the rest of the Cataclysm series to know what was going on. I’d probably recommend you read it, especially since it ties into two issues of The Ultimate Spider-Man.

The conflict between Miles and Jefferson is left hanging until issues #8 and #9 of Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man – also known as “The Only Redeeming Thing About This Comic Book Title”. The eighth and ninth issues of MMTUSM sees Jefferson Davis finally owning up to his past and basically just spilling the beans about his life as a criminal with Aaron and how he became involved with S.H.I.E.L.D. during the 80s – when Miami Vice, Jerri Curls, House Party Flattops, and ill-fitting suits with shoulder pads were all the rage – and how he met a young, already-at-it, Nick Fury.

The complete tonal and visual shift in the issues are a welcome respite from the Peter Parker nonsense of the previous seven. The story arc, “Miles Morales: An Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.?”, carries with it the kind’ve of visual flair I see a Tim Sale illustrated graphic novel (like Spider-Man: Blue or The Long Halloween), but it’s still David Marquez illustrating the story from beginning to end.

It’s got the look and feel of a pulp novel, or one of those old newspaper comic strips where the spots of the print were obvious through the inking and character sketches. The narrative, which sees Jefferson and Aaron working for smalltime criminals to Jefferson’s eventual graduation to protecting the Kingpin (with a minor explanation as to why he loathes mutants), is, in my opinion, the highlight of a story that could’ve worked as a full-fledged miniseries about the Jefferson brothers.

My only quibble with the framing of the narrative is that the early inclusion of S.H.I.E.L.D makes Jefferson look more like the unwilling participant of crime he was manipulated into thinking he had to do for “the greater good”, as opposed to some young blood who didn’t give much thought to right or wrong (which is how the early issues framed it) before he had an epiphany. I always assumed the crime came first, then S.H.I.E.L.D, then Rio. Honestly, if you’re at all interested in this storyline, just look for the single issues and don’t buy the trade. You’ll be doing yourself a favor.

#Issues 10-13

Marvel and its twisted, present-day romantic relationship with Neo-Nazism is a fairly ironic one, given most of its early artists were white Jewish dudes with alternate names designed to explicitly hide their Jewishness on account of antisemitism. But, I suppose the publications preoccupation with Nazism to begin with (even if it was denouncing it) would’ve inevitably steered its future publishers to romanticize it in the end. I mean, that’s what happened after all.

You know shit it bad when Marvel wants you to pity [white] characters like Grant Ward of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D for joining a Neo-Nazi group, despite the repeated and angry affirmations of protagonist Daisy Johnson, who flat-out reminds the audience, “You are a Nazi if you join Hydra”, who is undermined anyway by the narrative that continues to bleat, “pity the Neo-Nazi.”

Brian Michael Bendis, in all his infinite lack of wisdom, decides – the biggest way to differ Miles Morales’ love life from Peter Parker’s, is make an underdeveloped character, his girlfriend, Ultimate Kate Bishop, a member of Hydra. Miles’ white girlfriend rides on the agenda of the Aryan Ideal and white supremacy. Brilliant.

The Ultimate Spider-Man issues, #1-#4 and #7 prelude the last four issues with Miles deliberating whether or not he should tell Katie Bishop about his double life as Spider-Man. Instead of being supportive, everyone from Ganke to Cloak and Dagger warns Miles against telling her, thinking it would be a bad idea. He does it anyway, Katie panics and runs away.

The aforementioned issues give the reader a glimpse into Kate’s life with the Bishops, with one conversation with her older sister casually mentioning that “they” would have to kill Miles and the seventh issue concludes with her uttering the phrase, “Hail Hydra.”

If The Ultimate Spider-Man had something to say about the issue of Nazism, especially in relation to Miles’ life as a Black teen – or the cautionary tale of “you never know someone until…”, then I could maybe understand the decision to make Kate Bishop (a wildly popular Avenger in the 616 universe, be she an adult or a teenager) a Nazi.

But, it doesn’t, it basically does exactly the same thing Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D does with the Daisy Johnson/Grant Ward dynamic. The narrative depicts a “Sympathetic Nazi” (Katie) trying to explain their position, and a furious significant other (Miles) outright declaring their relationship is over. Only, where AOS more or less dragged that subplot out to its natural conclusion (“Sympathetic Nazi” isn’t really sympathetic and dies),

The Ultimate Spider-Man did nothing to that extent. Readers barely have gotten to known Katie Bishop since her introduction in issue #23 of UCSM. She was given no time actually to be anything other than “Miles Morales’ girlfriend”. And when it comes right down to it, the Hydra subplot was nothing but an excuse to bring Dr. Doom into the narrative at the last moment. So, the “My Girlfriend is a Nazi” storyline just falls flat.

On a smaller note, the way the last couple issues decide to use Judge – the minor character from Ultimate Comics Spider-Man – is sigh inducing. It’s like Bendis realized his book was coming to an end and figured the best way to a handle a character that barely had any face time since the first twelve issues of the UCSM, is to just plop him in the middle of the story with his already knowing Miles is Spider-Man.

But, he does it in a way that, if you removed him from the story, nothing would change. It’s a superfluous addition and kind’ve discourteous, especially since Bendis doesn’t do anything with Judge later on in Miles’ new 616 title, the unfortunately named Spider-Man.

Outside of issues #8 and #9, Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man is a sad conclusion to Miles Ultimate Universe solo-title career. It reminded me why I stopped reading his title four years ago, and knowing that none of his recent stuff isn’t any good either kinda makes me glad I made the decision so early on.

#miles morales #spider man #katie bishop #brian michael bendis #david marquez #ultimate miles meta #1610 miles morales #1610 judge #1610 kate bishop #1610 jefferson davis #media: long posts

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melonbreadreviews-blog · 5 years

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Playing ‘The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’ Three Years Later

I’ll admit, I’m often late to the party on major title releases in gaming. I’d like to tell you that it’s an intentional choice of mine, that it’s in my best interest to let the best and worst parts of these landscape altering pieces of art simmer in a pot together. I picked up Bloodborne on a whim three years after its release, and after about a two hour play session, I decided it wasn’t for me; three months later I was glued to my TV every night after work searching every nook and cranny that the hunter’s dream had to offer me.

My point is that buying a game upon its initial release is a commitment to either loving or hating that game. I often feel compelled to shower praise on the solid parts of games that I love, and pressure to explain with hyperbole the games I just couldn’t vibe with. Playing Bloodborne years after its release at a much lower price allowed me to put it down when I didn’t enjoy it, and pick it back up when I needed it. The parts of it that I didn’t like weren’t exacerbated by a pressure to validate my own experiences relative to the gaming community. Likewise, when i picked the game up again, I loved it not because I thought I should, but because the experience itself was legitimately breathtaking.

Three months later, set against the familiar hum and drum of my slowly dying Playstation 4, my experience with CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt begins. I tried to begin this same journey a few months earlier, but that run died on the starting line in a messy tutorial and a post-Bloodborne haze. One enormous Dragon Quest XI run later, and I’m finally ready to give this journey three years in the making a chance. My expectations are a mixed bag; I carry with me the influences of a thousand burning reddit threads and the weight of an inescapable question: Has this game aged well?

For those of you who aren’t familiar with The Witcher franchise (I’ve never read the series or played a mainline game before touching The Witcher 3, so you’re not alone!), the main plot of the game follows the journey of a Witcher named Geralt as he searches for his protege and ward Ciri while also fending off the primary antagonistic force of the game, the Wild Hunt. Witchers serve as bounty hunters of the region, often dealing with the monsters and villains ordinary folk are incapable of handling themselves. Throughout the game, players can feel the tension in the air between Geralt and the people around him, often including the ones he saves. Witchers exist outside the realm of normalcy in this universe, and to some extent the amount of agency the franchise gives you over the lives of the people who exist around you is a direct cause of the aforementioned tension. Though the social world Geralt inhabits mirrors the dangers of the physical world around him, there are romantic options in the game that allow for a deeper understanding of his character and The Witcher universe. The lore aspect of this game really separates it from similar titles in the same genre.

My first memories of the game still hold true, though my feelings about them have changed. I love the comic style art that flashes across the screen as the game loads, not because it matches the aesthetic of the game, but precisely because it does not. If I compare The Witcher 3 to other iterations of the same genre like Skyrim or Fallout, I find myself enjoying that not every moment of The Witcher is something that I need to take seriously. Sometimes, it’s okay to be reminded of the fact that I am actually playing a game and not living and dying by the decisions I make in this world.

That isn’t to say that decisions in this game don’t matter, though; I find that The Witcher 3 places weight on its decisions in a similar fashion to Mass Effect, rather than Skyrim or Fallout. There are several moments in the game that require a timed quick response in conversations or during action, and those quick responses sometimes dictate both the flow of ongoing dialogue and possible relationships with the characters around Geralt. There are even dialogue options that seem quite diplomatic on the surface, but end in brawls or even death for characters that the player did not expect. These moments are meant to teach the player just how much agency they have over the lives around them; sometimes Geralt feels like a god, and sometimes he feels just as vulnerable to the whims of the world as the people around him.

Normally, worlds that freely give that sort of agency to the player overwhelm me. I feel paralyzed by just how much my choices matter, and my love for the friends I’ve made throughout the story keeps me from playing the game as intended. Through the use of guides and reddit threads, I orchestrate my game in order to keep those characters alive, and that leaves me with less of an experience in the end. The Witcher 3, however, doesn’t leave me paralyzed in the same way. Because much of the main narrative is decidedly linear, Geralt is free to explore the world around him, which includes contracts to kill creatures and free spirits and occasional games of a fairly fun but not too complex card game called Gwent. Not every decision has a role to play in the main story, and the ones that do feel natural in the game’s flow. Geralt is both insanely powerful and incredibly vulnerable, but I never fear for the outcome of his story while enjoying the fun of making decisions.

The skippable tutorial of the game remains not so skippable considering the amount of experience I have with The Witcher 3’s combat, but I appreciate that I have the option of ignoring it if I decide to run through new game plus. It’s here that the meat of the game comes to the forefront. The reason I initially put down The Witcher 3 was because I didn’t enjoy the flow of combat, which includes the two primary slashing attacks with two variants of weapons, a myriad of magical powers called Signs, and the use of items like bombs, crossbows and oils which can be applied to Geralt’s main weapons. If you’re just judging the combat of the game on the first few hours, The Witcher 3 may not meet your expectations of a major title release. When disjointed in the name of learning, the combat feels clunky, and the first few contracts in the region, especially on higher difficulties, are a major challenge for the uninitiated.

But in the same way I came to love Bloodborne, I’ve come to adore The Witcher 3 because of my journey with it. Sitting through the first few hours of the game, especially in 2018, can be sort of a grind. The story has yet to materialize, the combat is underdeveloped, and Geralt himself can seem unrelatable, but as the hours move on, the game opens up in parallel fashion to the world it encompasses. The combat itself feels incredibly fluid, each piece of it tied together in a way that challenges the player to learn how to be a Witcher, while also rewarding enough to encourage growth and not detract from the side-questing and story that make this game fun. The Witcher 3’s systems include a hearty dodging mechanic that feels clunky outside of battle, but seamless in it, and a parry system that is absolutely necessary on higher difficulties. Geralt’s magic, Signs, interact with objects in the world, but they can also be morphed and shaped into crowd control devices. The ability tree is extensive, but in a way that represents a mixing of action and role-playing. Each playthrough can be different, but Geralt remains much of the same, just upgraded.

Though not combat in a traditional sense, I think The Witcher 3’s in-game card system, Gwent, represents an entirely different method of fighting for players. Though not required, there are various quests given to Geralt in different regions of the game which involved beating skilled Gwent players at cards. While the game involves a little bit of strategy, it’s never overwhelming, and because Gwent isn’t a major factor in the story, it’s skippable for fans who don’t enjoy it. I found myself going from inn to inn, challenging keeps to games for their best cards, and I really came to love a part of the game I didn’t enjoy all that much at first. It’s a missable portion of the game, but it definitely adds dimension to the gameplay without requiring too much effort on the part of the player.

Much of the game’s story is very compelling, and it isn’t saddled with an extensive lore that the player is forced to grapple with. There is lore, yes, but that lore is discoverable all over the world, and it’s the player’s choice to explore it, or not. There is a distinct moment in the first 20 hours or so of the game that allows the player to learn about about Geralt’s relationship with Ciri through dialogue options with another character. The player can listen to all of the heavy lore in the dialogue, or simply skip it. The Witcher 3 is chalk full of story, but it never asks the player to share the burden of that story. In much the way you can flow in and out of the narrative of the story through side-questing and contracts, you can simply choose not to pay attention to certain parts of the main quest line.

That isn’t to say that the story is lacking or is unfocused. There are reasons to want to stay on track, including a wide array of characters who are, though not as interesting as Geralt, incredibly complex. The Witcher 3 does a fantastic job of presenting its best qualities though, and those qualities encourage players to explore the world around them and creative a narrative journey that varies significantly from player to player. Whether or not a player values that storytelling approach, though, depends on their own taste. Personally, I found that I could have my fill of Gwent and monster hunting, and then pick right back up where I left the main story.

The Witcher 3 is not without its faults, despite my glowing praise up to this point. While the world itself is rendered beautifully, I found the interactions with other characters to pose the biggest problems for the game’s graphics. There were times where Geralt’s face would simply teleport all over the screen until the game was able to settle into the set animations for the dialogue, and I distinctly remember an interaction between Geralt and Triss Merigold which involved Triss pressing a hand to her face that was stuck in the Igni battle animation for fire. While these graphical glitches don’t detract from the overall product, they are wrinkles on the surface of the game that begin to show its age. I was surprised that the world remained incredibly stable, save for a few times I found my horse could fit between a clustered group of trees better than I could, while the dialogue options proved incredibly difficult for the animations in the game. It reminded me a lot of my time with Mass Effect, in both good and bad ways. There was a certain novelty, but maybe that novelty is a bit too dated for a Playstation 4 title.

I’d like to end this review where I started, and that is on the subject of playing games years after they’ve already debuted. I wish I was a strong enough person to not feel the pressure that comes with making a commitment to a new title, but I often let reviews and recommendations, either positive or negative, affect the way I experience games. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a near perfect example of my current status as a consumer, because I’ve been able to enjoy all the good that the game has to offer without taking the bad bits too seriously. I did expect the game to be great, of course, but I didn’t expect it to be perfect, and that’s partly because I don’t have a need to be justified in having purchased it. I haven’t tasked myself with deciding The Witcher’s place in history; that’s already been decided. So, for now, I feel quite content to stroll along cobblestone city roads and swampy marshes, living life as a Witcher.

#game review #writing #the witcher 3 #geralt of rivia #video games #review

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piermanwalter · 6 years

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Star Wars Army Swap AU Part V: Condensed History of the Droid Wars

Due to my ipad dying, Part 5 is coming out before Part 4, and there are no arts. Sorry about that.

In a galaxy where the Confederacy of Independent Systems went super into biotech instead of mass industrialisation, and the Jedi’s secret deal with the Kaminoans fell through so they had to create a different army, the Republic soldiers are droids and the Separatist soldiers are clones.

SUPER SUMMARY: Darth Plagueis makes some contingency plans in case he dies. Nobody could have predicted how far the ultimate plan of galactic domination of the Sith spiralled out of control because of that. Palpatine is in denial about how uncooperative and dangerous the Separatists are and eventually gives up on controlling anything further than the Mid Rim.

Before the War

After millennia, the Sith, once though to be extinct, begin plotting to take over the galaxy by splitting it in two, forcing the sides to fight, then seizing control of the galaxy after they wasted their lives fighting each other.

Darth Plagueis uses his industry contacts of his public identity as Magister of Damask Holdings to slowly shift the huge corporations from mass manufacture to biotech in order to further his goal of immortality by skimming lab data off their work. He sets up the foundation for a fully fledged clone army.

His apprentice, Darth Sidious, uses his political clout as Senator Palpatine to increase resentment of the Outer Rim planets towards the better funded and protected Core, and eventually gets elected as Chancellor of the Republic. Right after the day of his election, Sidious kills his master. Unbeknownst to him, Plagueis planned so if he ever died, nobody could control the galaxy in his place.

After the death of Plagueis, there is no one to keep an eye on the experiments he secretly planned, and the biotech of the galaxy is able to advance unchecked. Made-to-order organs become nearly as cheap as cybernetic replacements. Cloned celebrities and war heroes are mass produced and sold illegally to crime syndicates as slaves and enforcers.

Count Dooku abandons the Jedi Order as Darth Sidious’s new apprentice. His first mission is to procure an army for the demilitarised Republic to fight the biotech clone armies of the newly formed Confederacy of Independent Systems. Erasing Kamino from the Jedi Temple archives, he sends fellow Jedi Sifo Dyas to order the Kaminoans to produce another clone army. A squad of Dwarf Spider clones from the vehemently anti-Jedi Commerce Guild managed to kill Sifo Dyas before he could get to Kamino, so Dooku is forced to commission the army himself.

The Techno Union is able to isolate a strain of Force-sensitive single-celled algae from the Dathomiran Water of Life, and are trying to find medical applications for it as a lucrative bacta replacement. SoroSuub Luxury Consumer Products releases a line of extravagantly expensive anti-aging creams filled with deactivated midichlorians. Count Dooku is incredibly concerned about these new developments, but Darth Sidious dismisses them as false advertising and mad science that is scary to the weak-minded, but will ultimately go nowhere.

Five years later, Dooku visits Kamino to discover legions of well-trained clone cadets, but an enormous mistake was made. All of them were being indoctrinated to serve the Confederacy. The Trade Federation hacked into his comm lines to discover Dooku, the head of the Separatist Council, ordering a massive secret clone army. Assuming the new clones were for them and not the Republic, as any sane person would, Viceroy Nute Gunray sent vast shipments of food and supplies to Kamino in thanks, leading to the Kaminoans believing that they were the true clients. Dooku is unable to correct himself without everyone knowing he is playing both sides.

The galactic civil war is put on hold for six months so Dooku can sort out this unmitigated disaster. Instead of two equal armies to fight an endless stalemate, the CIS gets a colossal super army, and the Republic gets no army. Eventually he is able to commission Kuat Drive Yards and Cybot Galatica to put together the best droid army they possibly could at short notice. Five years had already been wasted. The Battle of Geonosis, the first conflict of the Droid Wars, begins two years behind schedule.

Now, finally, rebellion stirs in the Outer Rim.

Early Droid Wars

Following this truly embarrassing series of insubordination, Sidious orders the entire Separatist leadership together and electrocutes hundreds of them, including Dooku, in a single devastating wave of Force lighting. Threatening them all with the terrifying legends of the Sith of the Old Republic, he tells them all that the Sith will rule the galaxy again and there is no way to stop them.

The Confederacy ruins the mystery of the Sith by announcing everything they learn about them on public broadcast. Once arcane Sith legends like Bane, Nihilus, and Plagueis become household names.

The Trade Federation disobeys because their cloned ysalamiri renders them immune to most types of Sith attack. The InterGalactic Banking Clan disobeys because they hold too much sway over the galactic economy and the clone army itself. The Techno Union disobeys because Foreman Wat Tambor has threatened to release the entire Sith data archive left by Darth Plagueis in Tambor’s estate on Hypori.

The Confederacy of Independent Systems officially announces its rejection of Sith control. The Jedi have no idea how to react, but are pressured by the rest of the Republic to keep fighting. Many Jedi, such as Bariss Offee and Pong Krell, abandon the Republic to fight for the CIS.

Without a firm leadership, the Separatists dissolve into in-fighting, clone rebellions, and near-constant treasonous conspiracy. Republic propaganda mocks them as being dysfunctional and unfit for government, whereas the CIS itself views the successful revolutions and constantly shifting balance of power as a true example of Separatist spirit. If anything, since the CIS never had a centralised leadership to begin with, all it does is make them even less predictable.

Count Dooku still keeps in contact with the Separatist council, even leading clone armies by himself, partially to maintain some semblance of Sith control, partially to keep tabs on these dangerously subversive alien freaks at all time, and partially because he is legitimately proud of what the Separatist cause has become, but Sidious doesn’t need to know that. One morning, he wakes up to check the holonet and receives a message about Wat Tambor cloning himself 600 times, listens to three minutes of a two-hour paranoid rant from Admiral Trench about how everyone wants to kill him, a report from a spy droid about Asaji Ventress’s death cult, a report about the Republic droid troopers turning sentient, and a message from Sidious threatening to dismantle him chromatid by chromatid if he is unable to get the Separatists to spend much more money on the war, then he goes back to sleep because that’s just the way things are now.

Late Droid Wars

Leading machines to fight against living beings is beginning to take a psychological toll on the Jedi commanders. The Grand Droid Army of the Republic splits in half by leadership, with conflicts of Jedi-led armies being more for show and protection while the Jedi try to negotiate peacefully with enemy leaders, while conflicts of non-Jedi-led armies are the most brutal in history, as many human Republic military leaders do not see their cloned enemies as sentient beings. Republic news castigates the Separatists for using child slaves as soldiers, while the Separatists argue that Jedi Padawans are also child slaves.

Piecing together old lab data left behind by Darth Plagueis, the CIS tries to make their next generation of new soldier strains Force sensitive, with partial success. Strange supernatural occurrences begin to appear among the battle clones. Commando Tup is able to sneak across an active battlefield and shoot two Jedi one after the other. An Aqua Clone survives a hull puncture of a Mon Cal space station by somehow swimming faster than water being pulled into the vacuum of space. An injured pilot-class B2 regrows an entire lung in one week without medical attention. General Kraken sends Dooku a heartfelt video thanking him for such useful electromagnet arms, levitating a metal blaster between his new mechanical hands. The cybernetics do not contain electromagnets.

Asaji Ventress, Savage Opress, and other Sith acolytes are terrified of this new development. The Force powers that once made them so indispensable are now being thrown around by lab-grown barely sentient meat. They leave to the Unknown regions to start a death cult together before their masters realise how obsolete they are.

General Grievous attacks Coruscant, the capital of the Republic, and managed to kidnap Chancellor Palpatine. Sidious intended to let himself get captured on purpose while remaining completely safe at all times, but at this point, he can’t be sure anymore. Although Palpatine was later rescued by Kenobi and Skywalker, the residential district near the intended target, the Jedi Temple, was destroyed when half of Grievous’s flagship crash-landed into it, killing over a million people. Count Dooku dies in the process.

Anakin Skywalker is rejected from becoming a Jedi Master and joining the Jedi Council because of the many needless deaths in the Battle of Coruscant. He is extremely angry at this verdict. It was Obi-Wan’s fault as much as his, but he still gets to be a Master. If it weren’t for the Super Tactical Clone Tey-Zuka punching them both while they were trying to steer half a ship and seizing the controls, nobody would have died.

Darth Sidious orders the Separatist Council to meet on Mustafar. Naturally, none of them listen to him and they all disperse to random corners of the galaxy.

Darth Sidious enacts Order 99, not as the capstone of a perfectly executed plan, but out of desperation. There are no other choices for him. Turning against their leaders, the clones gunned them down, then each other.

Chancellor Palpatine, in the middle of the greatest wave of Republic victories in the Droid Wars, suddenly shuts down the Grand Droid Army. The Jedi, fighting easy battles against confused and leaderless opponents, find themselves without soldiers and are slaughtered. Mace Windu survives and leads a Jedi team to assassinate the Chancellor. Skywalker fights them off, but not before Palpatine is disfigured.

Anakin Skywalker follows the intel trail and goes to Mustafar, but nobody was there. Sick with rage, he massacres the native Mustafarian miners until Obi-Wan and Padmé Amidala try to stop him. After Anakin killed Padmé, Obi-Wan kills Anakin and disappears. His current whereabouts are unknown.

Order 99 had limited effectiveness, since the low standards of manufacture meant that not every clone was implanted with a brain chip, and the higher level clones with more willpower were able to intercept the signal anyway. Many Separatist leaders are still at large. Sidious sends his mysterious new apprentice Darth Vader on a mission to kill them all. This takes two and a half years.

In the meantime, the Jedi Temple, heavily damaged by the debris from the Battle of Coruscant, loses funding and support from both the Republic’s government and its citizens. The newly discovered Sith faction is much more effective than the Jedi in fighting Separatists and the Jedi are blamed for the civil war stretching on for so long. Some Jedi with good foresight were able to evacuate, but when Darth Vader assaulted the Jedi Temple, he left no survivors.

Beginning of the Galactic Empire

Palpatine announces that both the Republic and the Confederacy were weak and corrupt because they both rejected the teachings of the Sith. The remains of the Republic are reforged into a Dark Side theocracy, the Galactic Empire.

The Death Star is finally completed, bringing much stability and pacification to the newly formed Galactic Empire. In a shocking move, instead of destroying any of the dangerous Confederacy-aligned planets such as Skako or Kamino, the first planet to be destroyed is Alderaan, a peaceful low-populated planet with no military, simply for their leaders possible ties to the Rebel Alliance.

Under control of Order 99, the human Commando Clones are incorporated into the Imperial Army. Supertac Tey-Zuka is finally captured in the Coruscant underlevels on the opposite side of the planet he crashed on. All Banking Clan assets are taken by the Empire, including their private army of IG-Strain Assassin Clones. After brainwashing and threats, many previously Separatist clones now work for Palpatine.

The Empire cuts off all transmissions in a radius of 40,000 light years from Coruscant. There is nothing beyond it. All of the Separatists are dead. All of the Jedi are dead. Good obedient Imperial citizens have nothing to fear. The old maps with so many planets in Wild Space are wrong. They are Separatist propaganda to make their territory look bigger than it truly was. Anyone who claims to come from a planet that does not exist, such as “Tattooine”, “Felucia”, or “Utapau” is lying. Report them. We should not worry about Separatists when there are space accidents to worry about. The asteroid storms are getting worse and we are losing more ships than ever. Do not waste time and energy reporting Jedi or battle clone sightings to us. All of them are dead, except for the fortunate few we rescued and reformed. You have nothing to fear.

A PIRATE SIGNAL BREAKS THROUGH THE FIREWALL!

Once again, rebellion stirs in the Outer Rim.

Many anti-Imperial organisations were able to form outside the jurisdiction of the Empire, but it was a real challenge for any of them to communicate with rebels within Imperial territory. Travelling freely from the Outer Rim to the Core is borderline impossible. Instead of directly aiding the Core Rebels, the Outer Rebels indirectly fought against the Empire by disabling signal blockade satellites, smuggling datachips, and other ways of spreading subversive information.

Despite Imperial propaganda, entire communi of battle clones and droid troopers can be found all over the galaxy. With the clones seeing the Empire giving up entirely on controlling the Outer Rim as a Confederate victory, and the droids seeing the Empire’s absolu control of the Core as a Republic victory, the two armies were to reach a compromise. Although some small skirmishes between droids and clones still occur, they are nowhere nea the scale of the conflicts of the Droid Wars. wever, many clones and droids still do not believe the war has ended and ntinue fighting the each other, the Empire, and the rest of the galaxy.

eral Kalani, a Separatist Super Tacti Clone, is confirmed to still be in operation. e Empire turned a blind eye to his actions, since most of his attacks seem e gainst he cell of Rebel terrorists led by Saw Gerrerra.

Many clones nd droids found ne jobs as bounty hunters. IG-88 is obv ously an unauthorized indepen IG-Strain ssin Clone. Boba Fett, regarded as the greatest bo in the galaxy, is rumored by some to a Separatist Commando Cl , and by othe to be an ARC-Class Republic droid troope

Jedi sightIngs abouND in the Outer Ri ee from the tyranny of the Empire, have jo ned th ebellion, whi some re content to live in peace bscurity. A few new Temples

Ahsoka Ta , Jedi n Rebe Core Rebels, the Ghost influen oid trooper Captain Rex he wAs a Padawan when possi l smuggli connections wi w Gererra ered Kalani small but dangero nough to the Empire that arkiN, the Inquisi Vader, and Palpatine himself.

h Sk r Bai Lars l are, in fact, the childre nakin Skywalker s ei ed t g h wa c

#star wars #army swap au #darth plagueis #palpatine #count dooku #this is actually fanfiction #in this setting the sith instead of being mysterious and all powerful to everyone #they are seen as potentially interesting test subjects and that is terrifying #long post

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