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mdzsgildedfate · 4 years

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Gilded Fate - Chapter 2

One by one, poppy seeds bloomed across a field of snow. Just a few at first, then a whole field. A field of poppy flowers springing up out of the snow, dotting the pristine blanket red. A hand reached out and plucked one of the flowers, the petals immediately turning to liquid and spilling down the wrist. All at once, the rest of the poppies turned to blood and rushed to snuff out the white snow.

Both hands came into view. Blood spattered both of them. The one on the left was mashed and broken and bruised. The pain screamed and wailed and howled. And then everything went quiet. Black. The pain disappeared. The world fell away. Turning around and round, black in every direction, until finally there stood a figure. Tall and radiant, dressed in white robes, practically blinding against the black background.

Xinyi woke with a start. His eyes flew open and looked around the room wildly, searching for… searching for… he wasn’t sure. His breathing returned to normal and he slumped back against the bed. He glanced over at the clock and let out an annoyed huff seeing that it was minutes before his alarm would go off. Summer had gone by too fast.

Thankfully, Xinyi had been able to get all of his general education credits completed, so this year would be entirely focused on his anthropology classes. The classes his parents were requiring he take just to take over the family collection. He groaned. He couldn’t understand why he had to take college courses for a collection only his family seemed to know anything about. It wasn’t like Professor Lan’s moral philosophy classes were going to teach him how to decipher the cryptic scrolls in the Wang vault.

“One more thing before you guys go-” The Professor’s voice rang out over the sound of students collecting their things to leave. “Don’t forget to put your name on the sign-up sheet for the field trip- remember, this is a very rare opportunity, these priests do not invite outsiders to visit very often, so don’t miss out on your chance by putting it off til the last minute.”

Xinyi was halfway down the stairs of the lecture hall when Chen caught up to him.

“Hey! Xinyi!” Chen threw an arm over the other man, practically toppling them both over. “You’re going, right?”

“What, hiking through the countryside to spend a week in a Taoist temple?” Xinyi asked, laughing. “Hey- you ever think about how two of our anthro teachers are both Professor Lan? Do you think they’re related?”

“Oh come on, it’s a week we don’t have to spend in class.” Chen insisted, already dragging Xinyi over to the clipboard. “And it’s a week of co-ed camping.”

Xinyi rolled his eyes, but signed the paper anyways. “Yeah, I’m sure it’s gonna get so sexy with Professor Lan watching us like a hawk.”

Chen shrugged and dragged him off, talking on as though Xinyi hadn’t just poked a hole in his plans.

~X~

“I think I’m gonna throw up.”

Sizhui put his hand over Jingyi’s, patting it reassuringly. “We’re almost there.”

“I hate busses. I hate cars. I hate every form of transportation humanity has invented the past two hundred years.” Jingyi moaned, his face squashed against the window.

“I know, I’m sorry.” Sizhui gave Jingyi’s hand a squeeze. “At least we didn’t have to take a plane.”

Jingyi moaned harder, squeezing his eyes shut.

Towards the back of the bus, Xinyi stared out the window, listening to Chen chatter about the area they were in, the history of the rural villages, and so on. If he’d have known both Professor Lans were going on the field trip, he definitely would’ve stayed home. It was bad enough having one breathing down his neck, but the Moral Philosophy Lan always gave him these weird looks, as though he was expecting Xinyi to say something weird.

It was a relief for everyone on board when they finally reached the village at the edge of the mountain. The rest of the journey would be made on foot, beyond where the road ended and into the heart of the forest. Everyone poured out of the bus and the two professors led them into a drab, worn-down inn. Once inside their rooms, the professors dropped the oversized duffel bags they’d been carrying onto the floor in front of the students.

“Four at a time, come up and take out a uniform. We’ll be going down the mountain and staying at the temple in traditional robes.” Sizhui announced as Jingyi unzipped the duffel bags and started piecing the robes together.

Xinyi’s face twisted up. “Seriously? We have to wear this shit while we’re hiking?”

Chen snickered, holding one up to Xinyi. “At least it suits you, with your hair so long. The rest of us are gonna look stupid.”

Xinyi rolled his eyes and shoved the robe away. “Why are they white? We’re gonna look like we’re going to a funeral.”

Getting the robes sorted out to the twenty-odd students under the Lans’ supervision was a chaotic event. While Sizhui had significantly more patience and far better mediation skills, Jingyi was about ready to lose his mind at the utter lack of discipline. Once each of the students had been assigned their new clothes, Sizhui and Jingyi were able to change into their own before leading the convoy out of the inn.

“I can’t believe I’d ever miss Cloud Recesses this much.” Jingyi grumbled, rubbing his temples.

“It’s not all bad. Don’t you remember how excited we were when we first met disciples from other clans and saw how much more freedom they had?” Sizhui asked, stroking the hemwork of his sleeve. “This is what we must have looked like to HanGuang-Jun.”

“Hardly!” Jingyi scoffed. “We were never this bad!”

“Hey, how come you guys are wearing different robes?” One student spoke up suddenly, interrupting Jingyi’s complaints.

“Do we get headbands too?”

Jingyi made eye contact with the student for an uncomfortably long second before looking back down the path. “No.”

Sizhui laughed softly. “Our robes, and headbands included, are specific to the school Professor Lan and I studied at together.”

“Oh.” The student pouted for a moment. “What school?”

Sizhui only smiled back before facing forward again.

“Professor Lan just ignored me…”

The children following along behind Sizhui and Jingyi erupted into laughter and broke off into jokes and commentary about the journey as they began their descent down the mountain. Unlike their guides, looking positively regal and elegant in their robes, the students quickly devolved into a sweaty, trudging herd of zombies. The layers of cotton accumulated heat quickly, and the boys who were unused to wearing ‘skirts’ began the choir of complaints.

“I don’t get why we couldn’t change into these once we get to the temple.” Xinyi mumbled, using his sleeve to fan himself.

“It’s more authentic this way.” Chen responded, sounding completely unbothered.

“If you ever try to convince me to do something ‘fun’ with you ever again, I’m gonna kick your ass.”

“Come on, look-” Chen grabbed Xinyi’s shoulder and pointed to the peak of the mountains. “See how much taller they look now?”

Xinyi glowered at him.

“And see how the ground is starting to level out?” Chen smacked his back, “We’re almost there, I guarantee it.”

Xinyi rolled his eyes, but did feel a quiet relief at Chen’s observations. And just as he said, no more than thirty or forty minutes passed before the tall, wooden gate of the temple came into view. The students shed their exhaustion at once and broke out into cheers, jumping and rushing about in celebration of not having to walk anymore.

Jingyi brought them to a screeching halt and turned on them, mustering up his best impression of Lan Wangji and glared back at them.

“This is a Taoist temple. You are about to meet esteemed priests. Can you please try to show some reverence?” He said impatiently.

Sizhui gave a small nod. “Everyone. Please keep in mind what we told you in class. Our hosts have lived in seclusion for a very long time, please mind your volume and keep your manners while we’re here.”

The group quieted down to excited whispers as they passed through the gate into the temple court. Waiting inside was a ghostly pale man dressed in black robes, another man in cream coloured robes who looked somehow already annoyed at everyone’s presence, and a college-aged girl wearing matching cream robes. Sizhui and Jingyi stepped forward, bowing with hands out in front of them to the two men.

“Song Lan Daozhang, it’s an honour to meet you again after all these years.” Sizhui said, practically beaming at the older man.

“Yes, thank you so much for allowing us to visit your temple.” Jingyi hummed in agreement.

“Ah, and no greeting for your friend, whom you’ve not seen for nearly a decade?” Jin Ling huffed, tapping his foot impatiently.

Song Lan cracked a small smile, memories of the young squabbling disciples coming back to his mind. He cast his gaze away from the three as they caught up with each other and scanned over the group of students, unable to help but feel a small spark of excitement at the idea of overseeing young disciples for the first time over 8,000 years (even if they weren’t really disciples).

Once Jin Ling’s temperament had been quelled, the four cultivators took up an authoritative position at the bottom of the stares, turning to address the students. Everyone’s attention slowly fell on the men in front of them and quieted down, quicker now under the gaze Song Lan and Jin Ling.

“Welcome to the Leng Shuang WeiFeng temple.” Song Lan opened, holding his hands out and giving a small bow.

Sizhui gestured for the group to bow back and, clumsily, they followed.

“Over the next seven days, myself, your two professors, and our young master Jin will be instructing you in our etiquettes, principles, archery, sword-fighting, and other such relevant cultures.” Song Lan continued, a warm smile on his lips. “While you’re here, please treat our temple with respect, as this building is very old. Furthermore, my fellow Daozhang also resides in the eastern section of the temple. If he’s not participating in our activity, please do not disturb him.”

Sizhui gestured again for them to bow. They complied again, this time looking more uniform. Song Lan chuckled softly to himself, looking at the youthful faces with a nostalgic fondness. He cast his gaze back to Sizhui and Jingyi, giving a small nod of approval, before looking back to the group-

And froze.

Xinyi’s eyes met Song Lan’s and a strange chill ran down in his spine. With the sun beating down on the priest’s face, he looked deathly white, and the look he gave Xinyi… He couldn’t decipher it, but it made him feel a strange mix of contempt and guilt. He looked away a few times, trying to break the eye contact, but every time he looked back, Song Lan was still staring at him.

“Why is that guy staring at me like I owe him money.” Xinyi hissed, elbowing Chen in the ribs.

“Do you owe him money?” Chen asked, leaning over to get a better look at the man.

As soon as Chen had caught his gaze, Song Lan looked away, seeming to shake some thought him from his mind. He turned suddenly, pulling Jingyi and Sizhui up the stares into the outer pavilion. Jingyi waved his sleeve at Jin Ling as they were pulled away, leaving a wild, panicked look in Jin Ling’s eyes. After the disappeared, he looked back to the group of college students, feeling the pressure of their expectant gaze.

“Uh… Free time until your professors get back.” Jin Ling said, shrugging at MingYue. “Don’t set anything on fire.”

Xinyi followed Jin Ling’s eyes and felt his heart drop to his stomach as he finally got a clear look at the other figure in the court.

“Oh you have got to be fucking kidding me.”

“Hm? What? What happened?” Chen looked around, trying to see what new ghostly figuring was harassing his friend for money.

“Her.” He pointed one finger out at MingYue.

“Oh yeah, what’s with that red dot on her and that guy’s foreheads?” Chen laughed. “It makes them look like dorks.”

“Not that.” Xinyi growled. “That’s my ex-girlfriend.”

Chen paused, mouth slightly agape. “Ahhh….. Rough luck buddy.”

~X~

Whisking the two younger cultivators into the privacy of the pavilion, Song Lan turned on Sizhui and Jingyi. His gaze has darkened and inky black veins had begun creeping up his neck. He squeezed his eyes shut and took in a deep breath. As it let out slowly, the veins also receded, disappearing back beneath the collar of his robe.

“Young Master Lan. Are you aware of the reincarnated soul in your midst?” Song Lan asked after a painfully long silence.

“Well, yes…” Sizhui said, biting his lower lip. “I’ve found a purpose in seeking them out, providing guidance if they’re on the verge of awakening. I’ve not been able to identify him, but he doesn’t seem in danger of recalling anything so far.”

Song Lan studied his face quietly, considering a number of thoughts before speaking. “Do you remember who else you met in Yi City?”

Sizhui exchanged a worried look with Jingyi.

“You don’t mean…” Jingyi started quietly, his voice trailing off.

“Xinyi is…” Sizhui furrowed his brow, recalling his brief encounter with the man. “Xinyi is Xue Yang?”

Song Lan nodded solemnly. “It would be impossible for me to send you all away, even more so to try to send away just him, but this puts me in an extremely difficult position. For myself, and for Xiao Xingchen.”

The two Lans hung their heads. “We understand. If there’s anything we can do to lessen the burden we’ve imposed on you, please tell us directly.”

Song Lan shook his head. “Don’t feel too responsible. It’s an unfortunate fate that keeps crossing our paths, I assume it has very little to do with either of you. Just try to help me keep him away from Xingchen.”

They nodded in agreement.

“This is a very precarious situation. Not just for you and Xiao Xingchen Daozhang, but for everyone present.” Sizhui spoke carefully. “Souls who recall their past lives too suddenly can become unstable, unhinged. I can only imagine how Xin- Xue Yang… could become dangerous if that were to happen.”

“At least he doesn’t have a sword.” Jingyi said, trying to bring some light to the situation. “That’s five immortal cultivators with swords against one unarmed Xue Yang with no spiritual powers.”

“That’s true. I’d very much like to avoid that outcome, if at all possible.” Song Lan took a couple steps over, peering out at the courtyard. “Keep an eye on him. Let me know if he shows any signs of recollection.”

Sizhui and Jingyi stepped out alongside Song Lan, their eyes falling on Xinyi, finding it hard to believe the bright, cheerful boy they’d spent all last year teaching ethics and culture and history to was the same unhinged murderer they’d met in Yi City. There was no rage behind his eyes or forked tongue behind his teeth. Xinyi had unnerved Sizhui in the past, but never to the point of fear Xue Yang had instilled in him.

Exchanging another worried look, the cultivators came out of their hiding spot and rejoined the rest of the group in the courtyard. Sizhui stepped up beside Jin Ling, leaning over and whispering their revelation into his ear. His eyes grew wide, looking back at Sizhui in disbelief. His grip on the hilt of his sword tightened, his knuckles turning white from the pressure.

Xinyi glanced over at them and they all averted their eyes, looking anywhere but at him. “What the fuck did Professor Lan just whisper to that guy?”

Chen and the two other students that’d broken off to sit with them both craned their necks to see what Xinyi was talking about.

“You guys saw that right?” Xinyi asked, looking at the three expectantly. “Chen, you saw the way that priest guy was looking at me! The professors just disappeared with him, came back, then Lan Sizhui whispered something into that guy’s ear and he looked at me like…”

“Like what?” QianHua looked back at Jin Ling. “Ooh, he’s looking at you again.”

“See! See what I mean!” Xinyi threw himself back, lying flat on the ground.

“Maybe it’s because you’re the one and only heir to the famous Wang Collection.”

Xinyi frowned and sat up. “Jealous?”

MingYue smiled. “Don’t be so mean, we haven’t seen each other in years. Didn’t you miss me?”

“Who’s fault is that?” Xinyi pulled himself to his feet, straightening up until he was a good six inches taller than the girl. “You’re the one that broke up with me by texting me that you’d already moved to the other side of the country. “

Her eyebrows turned up, pushing the vermillion mark out prominently. “I already told you I couldn’t help that, my parents-”

“You could have told me before you left.” Xinyi crossed his arms over his chest, glaring down at her. “Could’ve tried to spend time with me instead of my books.”

She frowned, letting her head hang slightly. “You’re right, of course… I thought I had more time…”

Xinyi shrugged. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Just stay away from me while we’re stuck here.”

~X~

The breath hitched in his throat, choking and gurgling through the blood spilling out of his mouth. Whole minutes passed, blinking through the dark, before Xinyi realized he was awake and there was no blood in his mouth. He took a deep breath, gulping in the air his mind had deprived him of with another dream about dying. The breath staggered out slowly as he looked at his hands, counting all ten fingers, clean and free of blood.

Xinyi wiped the sweat from his forehead and stood up, turning his phone flashlight on to lead the way out of the room and down the hall of the temple.

“This place creeps me the fuck out.” He whispered to himself, trying to remember the way out to the courtyard.

Just as he was about ready to turn around, movement caught his eye. He aimed the light down the hall, just in time to catch a flash of white disappear around the corner. The tips of his fingers turned numb instantly. After the momentary shock faded from his limbs, he urged himself forward down the hall.

“Ghosts aren’t real…. Ghosts aren’t real…. I’m a grownass man…. Just trying to get outside to take a piss…. I’m not afraid of the dark….” He muttered to himself under his breath, urging himself to move down the hall faster.

At the turn, he stretched his arm out and shined the light down the hall before peeking around the corner. At the sight of the empty hall, he let out a sigh of relief.

“Yeah, see? Nothing there.”

His shoulders relaxed and he continued down the hall, walking with a little more confidence. One more turn and one more hallway and he was finally outside, sucking in the cool night air. He hesitated for only a moment before crossing the courtyard and disappearing into a patch of trees. By the time he finished, he’d almost forgotten about whatever it was he’d seen moving in the hallway before. The dream, too, was fading from his mind as he turned around and started to walk back towards the temple.

The heartbeat in Xinyi’s chest had almost returned to normal when he noticed the figure standing in the doorway. This time, the numbness went all the way up to his knees and elbows, dropping him to the ground with a gasp.

“Do you frighten so easily now?” A soft, quiet voice came from the figure.

Xinyi shook slightly. “I-... wasn’t expecting anyone else to be out here.”

The figure descended slowly down the steps. The moonlight poured over him, revealing breathtaking features. Another soft gasp escaped his lips. The feeling returned to his limbs and he pushed himself back up to his feet. With the gap closing between them, Xinyi could tell that the man was a couple inches taller than him.

“It’s late. Shouldn’t you be in bed?” The man asked, looking him over meticulously.

“Couldn’t sleep.” He replied, awestruck by the man.

“I should have guessed.” The faintest hint of a smile flickered across his lips. “Do you know who I am?”

Xinyi blinked, confused by the question. “Uhm… You’re, uh…. Oh! You’re the other priest. I don’t think we were ever told your name though.”

His smile widened slightly, his face practically glowing in the moonlight. “Tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine.”

Xinyi’s heart skipped and fluttered in his chest. “...Wang Xinyi.”

“Wang...Xin...Yi…” He echoed the characters back slowly, contemplating each one. “How interesting.”

“Interesting?” He asked, unsure of how long he’d been holding his breath.

“Nothing.” He smiled sweetly. “My name is Xiao Xingchen.”

The smile broke out across Xinyi’s face against his will. “Xiao. Xing. Chen.”

Xingchen laughed, the sound of starlight and bells.

“Wang Xinyi. Why are you visiting my temple?”

Xinyi cocked his head slightly. “Class field trip.”

Xingchen took a step closer to him. “No. Why are you, specifically you, here? What desire in your heart urged you to come on this class field trip?”

He swallowed hard, his adam’s apple bobbing visibly. “I guess… I see temples in my family’s paintings all the time, I wanted to see one in person.”

That soft smile returned to the corners of Xingchen’s lips. “Paintings?”

Xinyi opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off by someone calling his name, rather angrily, from the temple door. They both turned around to see Song Lan, looking unreasonably annoyed, standing at the top of the stairs. As the man descended towards them, Xinyi felt a strange urge to rush towards him, meet the approach head-on. But fear of the ghostly man held him in place.

“Wang Xinyi.” Song Lan repeated his name, closing the gap between them. “I believe I told each of you not to disturb my fellow Daozhang outside of group activities. It’s the middle of the night, where are you out here harassing him?”

His brow twitched angrily. “Harassing him? All we were doing was talking, and I-”

“Quiet. Return to your room.” Song Lan grabbed Xingchen’s hand, intertwining their fingers, and led him back inside without another word to Xinyi.

Xinyi scoffed indignantly, lost in disbelief at how flippantly Song Lan had just accused him of harassing Xiao Xingchen. Whatever that man had against him, it wasn’t going to dissipate over the next six days. All he could do tonight was head back to his room and try to go back to sleep, but he’d already decided- if Song Lan Daozhang didn’t want him doing something, he definitely wanted to do it, especially if that something was being around Xiao Xingchen.

#mdzs #mdzs fic #xiao xingchen #xue yang #song lan #xiaoxue #junior disciples #jin ling #lan sizhui #lan jingyi

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magma-paint · 4 years

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Tutorial Tuesdays: Heads Up!

It’s been a long time, life is a jerk. Anyway, drawing heads! Before continuing, I recommend reviewing the last Tutorial Tuesdays post on pencil pressure and drawing with basic shapes since those are going to be put into effect. Ready to go? Alright, since this is going to be a long one, click the Read More link and away we go!

The head is likely the part of any character you’re going to find yourself drawing the most. Expressions, headshots, closeups, busts, you name it. So let’s start by drawing a basic head and start with the most common view, the 3/4 view.

This is the most basic process condensed into four steps. Lightly sketch a circle and a guideline, the former typically is the form of most of the skull and the crosslines will help with placement of the eyes, nose, and ears. Then define the shape of the face, including the cheeks and jawline, with a bit stronger pressure but still keeping pretty light. Sketch in the ear and the curvature of the back of the head, as well as the neck. The furthest line of the neck will be relatively close to where the jawline and ear connect. Then sketch in the features; very lightly sketch in circles where the eyes are--above the horizontal guideline but no further down than touching it--and sketch the eye shape and pupil/iris, alternating sides with each stroke to alleviate the frustration that comes with “drawing the other eye”. You know what I’m talking about. The nose will be close to the guideline intersection, if not actually on it at certain angles. And viola, a basic head at 3/4 view. This same process is used when facing at 3/4 the opposite way.

For a profile view, or looking at the head from the side, same basic four-step breakdown:

You’ll notice that the nose sticks out and you can see where the head connects to the neck at the back. Another guideline helps with ear placement. I should have put the guideline for that on the 3/4 view, but I find that the main guideline and jawline contour work better for me. Use the additional guideline for the ear if it will help with the spatial relation of that feature. More experienced artists may tweak areas to fit their signature style. For example, placement of the lips. In anime, especially more realistically styled anime, the lips appear as very small peaks with the valley between them being there the mouth is.

Now onto probably the second most common view, the front view. Also using the same four step condensed breakdown:

(Some of it cut off, oops) Now you can see how the face is arranged when looking at the viewer straight on. This is the easiest to practice, followed by 3/4, then profile. You can even cheat by using the Symmetry pen in digital programs (just make sure you anchor down the point of reference first with Control+Click!). While basic, this works for just about any human character, though using references is highly encouraged to get a feel for the anatomy before messing with it to fit a particular style.

“I draw anthro animals, does this still work?”

Yes. For both super cartoony stylized characters and more realistically built and furry styles. Let’s start with looking at the fastest thing alive:

See? Circle, guideline, map out the features, and soon you got a cool boi.

Furries or more realistically styled anthros will tend to have more shapes and forms in their facial construction to better adhere to the anatomy of the animal they’re based on. JKU, my friend Elliot’s fursona, is an alien but the anatomy is based on a dog or a wolf. Study the animal you’re drawing if you need help or even to make a basic breakdown of the shapes you would need.

“How about object heads, like Cuphead?”

Absitively-posolutely! I personally use the circle foundation when drawing the Cup Bros or even just for general mapping the direction they’re looking, but once you master it, you can take the basic shape of the object you’re using, like this candle girl, and manipulate it to get it where you need them to face without relying on the circle.

Alright, now that you understand the basics of drawing a head, let’s move onto

Hair is a total mess and if there’s one thing I will warn beginning artists right now, DON’T DRAW STRAND BY INDIVIDUAL STRAND. It helps to think of hair and draw it in larger chunks and forms as a whole than by each individual one. As I shall demonstrate with my boi Guzma:

Okay, now that we have removed accessories from the picture, let’s set this up.

The process goes by starting with a basic head and the respective features of the character. Now we add the hairline, a visible boundary where the hair coverage begins. You‘ll sketch it for the forehead, the sideburns, and the nape of the neck if you’re in rear views. Now, piece by piece, we sketch the hair; I started with the floof at the top, then the right side of the sketch, then the left. If you have a character with a symmetrical hairstyle/haircut, remember the technique to avoid “the other eye” (or cheat by using the symmetry pen in digital).

The hairline itself varies from character to character or style to style, sometimes more seasoned artists won’t use it since it becomes hidden anyway. It does come in three basic shapes: flat (as seen on Guzma), protruding (it comes out a little bit in the front but following a smooth contour), and a widow’s peak, as seen on Equius:

The hairline is also useful in drawing and styling a character’s bangs or even indicating how the hair parts. Know what else it’s nifty for? It’s actually one of the most noticeable indicators of age. And you knew this example was coming and you probably even saw it coming from a mile away so let’s get it over with.

In 2018, Ace of the Gangreen Gang from The Powerpuff Girls became an official member of Gorillaz, temporarily taking up the role as the bassist while Murdoc was in jail. Since the band members age in real time, the same applies to Ace. Besides the addition of a couple wrinkles, the most noticeable effect time has had on him is the receding hairline and decreased volume/body his hair has compared to when he was within spitting range of becoming a legal adult. I could even do an entirely new tutorial on hair by age, but this is just the basics.

So we talked about hairlines and drawing in large chunks. What about characters with hair accessories or their hair pulled into ponytails or pigtails? Allow Plumeria and Bubbles to demonstrate:

Take your basic head and define the hairline (though it may be impractical on any angle on the PowerPuff Girls). Draw in the part and bangs if applicable and define the volume of the hair close to the head. Lightly sketch a circle on each side where the hair gathers on the head and map out the length of the hair. Define the pigtails first and then the hair accessories. And you good!

For specific textures of hair, look for references or additional tutorials. Bald characters such as Russel Hobbs or Dr. Eggman don’t really need much of a tutorial, but you do want to make sure the head is constructed very well to make it convincing. And on that topic...

TROUBLESHOOTING

These are some traps that beginning artists fall into or rookie mistakes seasoned artists shouldn’t be making on prime pieces. Let’s break them down:

Balloon Heads and Painted-on Faces

These two are beginning (more pronounced for anthro) artist pitfalls and tropes that were very common among the Sonic fandom back when Sonic X was at the peak of its popularity online in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Ohohoho... man, those were some times. Now, I do like Sonic X and even Sonic Underground, but it’s frustrating how prevalent balloon faces are in these professionally--well, mostly professionally--made shows put to television. As demonstrated here:

On the left, the example keeps all the features of Amy’s face within the basic circle with no indication of volume. Nothing that would indicate what parts of the face are supposed to stick out and it’s not exactly in a style that makes it simplistic enough to slide. The right, while not perfect, could reasonably be translated to 3D or CGI and the anatomy would check out and make it more convincing. At least, in 3/4 view or front view and some frames of Sonic X can be brushed off as an odd camera angle or going into a moving frame or just being too far away from the camera to properly discern some features. In profile view it’s less forgivable and more common to Sonic Underground and beginning artists.

In profile view, balloon heads/painted-on faces are a very noticeable mistake derived from keeping all the features inside the circle. At the very worst you can have the inset in the middle, where the nose is inside the guide circle and looks very much like it was just painted on. This is something that most artists usually grow out of in their last years of elementary school (or for those who use the metric system, primary school). At best, the mistake is just sticking the nose on the outside of the circle without accounting for convincing shape of the face, such as the Amy sketch on the left. On the right, the muzzle and, if you can see it, “eyebrow” stick out to convey how the eyes are covered based on the Mobian skull and the muzzle sticks out to accommodate the internal structure of the face. As seriously as you can take a cartoon character’s anatomy and biology, anyway.

Really the only case I could see these mistakes being fine or harmless is on object heads like Lucius (a billiard ball) and Claire (a sugar bowl) in the rubber hose style. However, the style is deceptively easy in which it may look simple but you have to have a good grasp on the style or it falls into the uncanny valley. Balloon heads and painted on faces seem to be more common to stylized anthro characters, but I’ve made a number of fluffy anime creatures and anime-styled human characters in seventh grade that fall into the trap.

Lopping

More common to human and humanoid characters, lopping is a mistake in which you draw the face alright but the hair at the top of the head really doesn’t look right to the point that the head itself doesn’t look right.

You’ll notice in this drawing of Lapis that the face shape looks okay, the eyes and nose and mouth are where they need to be, the hair is the right style, but it looks... off. Sketching a dotted line to outline the head at its most basic form shows that the hair placement defies the rules of anatomy. Such a mistake is what I call lopping, as it looks like the head was lopped off and the hair is trying to cover it. This is why I stress starting your sketch with basic shapes and then constructing details around the foundation.

Looks much better, right? And since in Steven Universe the gems don’t really have ears (at least, that’s my observation), you can lightly sketch in an oval where the ears normally are (in 3/4 and profile views) to help draw in the face shape and jawline.

As always, practice drawing these regularly and don’t shy away from references if you need something to study or a visual aid or guide. Happy drawing!

Next episode: No plans, but will take requests or suggestions in my inbox/Discord.

#tutorial tuesdays #tutorials #drawing heads #art reference #references

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mmmmalo · 5 years

Text

Some Words on Openbound

This is a step towards a more comprehensive account of A6I3 (Openbound). The basic idea: Meenah’s interactive adventures can be read as a dream-sequence from Roxy’s point of view expressing the following motifs:

The threat posed by (Lord) English functions as a metastasized metaphor for problems posed by language itself.

To escape from the clutches of language is to achieve perfect communication, represented by a return to a pre-lingual, child-like state (“pre-lingual” at once referring to image, sensation, and silence)

The recurring motif of 'merging with child’ is also used to a. to express the desire for pregnancy b. to express the desire to become one’s True Self, conceptualized as an inner, child-self that is “born” within oneself like an embryo c. to express pedophilia

First: Meenah is Roxy’s doppelganger. When we are introduced to Roxy’s fenestrated planes, we are promptly informed that if someone were caught half in/out one of the windows when the power cuts off, the poor soul would be sliced in two (4510). By Chekhov’s gun, this introduction ought to result in someone getting gorily bisected by the window, but it never happens. Instead we get this:

Gcat warps the panel away, trapping Roxy in the void, and we are shown a bisected horse puppet (left). The half-horse reiterates the looming threat of Chekhov’s guillotine. Roxy’s body is intact, but the scenery suggests she ought to be split. The suggestion is followed by the initial appearance of Meenah (right), implying that Meenah herself is a piece of Roxy, snipped away and running rampant. Thus, a doppelganger.

So, taking Meenah to be a esoteric mirror of Roxy, it follows that her adventures in the dreams bubbles are a narrative frame for /Roxy’s/ dreams. This is the basic assumption of everything that follows.

1: Language is the enemy.

Time is an impermeable barrier. It ticks on irreversibly, edging its victims unto entropic dissolution. The Lord of Time and the destruction he brings embody the inevitability of death. Aradia cracks a joke about this at the beginning of Openbound: within the ageless confine of the dreambubbles, “time is a figure of speech”, she says. Though ostensibly asserting the endless flexibility of time, an alternate interpretation would indicate that Lord English, time, and language itself are apprehended on similar terms. The most useful one presently: language, like time, is regarded as a barrier.

Throughout Homestuck, characters struggle with abstractions, beginning with the frustrating data mechanics of the sylladex and culminating in various tightrope-walks along unorthodox configurations of space and time. Language numbers among the headaches: Caliborn characterizes the text he reads as “walls”, further declaring them to be “impenetrable” and “migraine-inducing”. On one level, this aligns with Caliborn’s statement that the kids talk/think too much and he’d like them to just GET THE FuCK ON WITH IT ALREADY: speech is an obstacle towards both the completion of the kids’ objectives and Caliborn’s attainment of what he wants. On another level, this aligns with the later discussion of Caliborn’s learning disability: in all likelihood, he has difficulty reading. Another example of this disdain for language is Jade, who, in her rapturous treatise on the wonders of anthro, answers the call of the wild by renouncing words.

No need to answer. Words slough from the busy mind like a useless dead membrane as a more visceral sapience takes over. Something simpler is in charge now, a force untouched by the concerns and burdens of the upright, that farcical yoke the bipedal tow. It now drives you through the midnight brush, your paws whisking through creepers, unearthing with each bold stomp bright odors demanding investigation.

Just prior to Openbound, the sentiments expressed above (that language is unnecessary, an obstacle to unmediated communication and pure sensation) are restated in mythic terms: REALITY ITSELF is being DESTROYED by (LORD) ENGLISH! Language the inhibitor of direct experience becomes language the rot of the universe, language the malevolent destroyer of the capacity for any experience at all.

Meenah witnesses English’s destruction of reality and rushes off to recruit soldiers to fight him. There is harmony between the imminent threat of English and the gameplay: the primary obstacles to Meenah’s objectives are words. Literal walls of text stand between you and the end of the level, as you must navigate exhausting conversations to satisfy the game’s win conditions. Within the conversation themselves, the motif persists by showcasing various ways that speech can obscure meaning.

Kankri couches his points in overly ornate terminology and uses social justice as a tool for settling personal disputes. Latula laments how her commitment to her RAD speech affectations and persona can make her harder to understand. Cronus trips over his own accent, Mituna tumbles through various word spasms. Meulin’s deafness is thematically succeeded by Rufioh’s inability to communicate his unhappiness to the Horuss, who has sweat in his ears. The two characters who you cannot understand at all, the silent Kurloz and the pseudo-Japanese speaking Damara, are revealed to be direct servants of Lord English! Failure to communicate – inability to bridge the barrier of language – is the enemy.

The counter to the hyperbolic threat of language-as-mediation and is a fantasy of perfect communication. In Jade’s scenario, attainment of this ideal is presented visually as Jade acquiring the superficial markers of a wolf (“Wouldn't these ears suit you? Would not this proud long snout assist you in the hunt?”), whereupon she acquires the rich experience that she associates with the idea of animal, unmediated by language. Just as Jade merges with the image of a wolf, there is an image in Openbound that Meenah seeks, the attainment of which embodies the goal of some idealized communication, without words.

The image is that of childhood.

2: Kankri and Porrim form a spectrum of identity

In Homestuck, desire is generally structured as the restoration of a lost unity. Consider Cherub reproduction, itself inspired by a Platonic model of love: in seeking a soulmate, one is actually seeking a fascimile of their lost half, that with which they were originally united. The force that fractures this unity -- the boundary that prohibits access to the desired object -- is the law.

I elaborate on the various corollaries of this motif elsewhere (x)(x), but for present purposes, let it suffice to say that time itself functions as a law of sorts, insofar as time rips you away from childhood and bars the possibility of a return.

That’s a little abstract, so here’s an example: due to the the status of trolls as manifestations, we know that the characters Meenah visits in the afterlife are expressions of her (and thus Roxy’s) psyche. This relationship is difficult to map on a troll-by-troll basis. But things begin to click when you view each cluster of interactions with Beforan trolls as a mental constellation, their interplay showcasing pervasive internal dialogues and dynamics.

In the first cluster, Latula appears between Porrim and Kankri because SHE IS THE LAW, dividing Jesus from Mary, Child from Mother (which, as I will show, seems to be the trajectory Roxy imagines for herself). This is the reason that Latula successfully interrupts Kankri and Karkat’s “conversation”: they are clones, more or less, and the law is that which divides the child from itself.

I don’t claim Kankri represents a child just because he’s a brat who gets ruthlessly mothered by Porrim: it’s also implicit in his politics. Humans are not stratified by blood color, so the hemospectrum is not directly analogous to any real life example of power, privilege, or what have you. Neither is it perfectly generic. In a given context, the hemospectrum is often analogized to some particular notion of hierarchy. Eridan’s drive for blood purity marks him as a analogous to a racial supremacist; the depiction of Zebruh’s attitude towards low bloods is well interpreted as being rooted in a particularly exploitative brand of misogyny (x); and Kankri’s polemics pivot upon the particular role that AGE DIFFERENCE plays in structural oppression of Alternia, a metaphor for what is popularly termed “adultism”, injustices stemming from the power adults hold over children.

Kankri emphasizes that the lifespan discrepancy between warm and cool hemochroma means the upper classes are allotted far more time (unto eons) to consolidate power and define cultural norms; their immense lifespans constitute a structural basis for the oppression of lowbloods, whose relative youth means less time to organize. This doubles as a description of a political limitation of children, relative to adults. Kankri describes the lowest grouping of blood colors as Burgundy, Ochre, Umber, and Yellow -- BUOY for short, which not coincidentally is Meenah’s nautical permutation of BOY. All of which is to say that Kankri rankling at Porrim’s doting is mutually analogous with his politics, in the context of Beforus, where coddling is the de facto relation between castes. His being a brat raging against an overbearing mother is an analogy.

And funny enough, that’s something he and Porrim have in common, in a way. Porrim balks at the /role/ of motherhood expected of her, among other injustices upon women in Beforan society. And Porrim likewise objects to the role of RAD GIRL that Latula 'pro+jects’, encouraging her to just ‘be yo+urself’... the idea being, in the same sense that Latula’s GAME GIRL persona masks her ‘real’ personality, femininity itself is construed as a shell encasing the ‘true’ child-self within. Or rather, the feminine persona is portrayed as being pregnant with the child-self, which is the true self. So Kankri’s raging against Porrim is a metaphor for a spirit balking at the gendered expectations that encase them.

If I can speak with any confidence on this psychological reading of Kankri and Porrim’s opposition, it because the invocation of pregnancy to communicate as sense of inner/outer self is repeated throughout the dream, through the language used to describe characters who are otherkin. Take Cronus for example: he is named after a god famous for devouring his children. And his lusus (an expression of his desire) is a seahorse, notable for their child-bearing males. The net effect is the impression of a baby in Cronus’s belly -- but instead of literal pregnancy, we see Cronus describe himself as ‘a human “born” in the body of a troll’, essentially invoking the image of pregnancy to communicate his status as humankin.

Here you might begin to see how this is Roxy’s dream -- the mental conflict between Porrim (womanhood) and Kankri (childhood, which while ostensibly gender neutral can be rendered masculine by opposition to womanhood) creates a spectrum of identity available to Roxy, as made explicit by their gender exploration in the epilogues. This seems to be the joke at play whenever Latula reiterates the “GIRLS RULE, BOYS DROOL” line from her theme song: taken literally, it is a succinct summary of the Kankri/Porrim conflict, wherein the feminine persona is construed as dominating the (at times masculine by contrast) child-self.

Kankri’s description of a “warm-identifying physically-cooler caste” is Roxy: she identifies with her child-self.

And as I mentioned before, just as Latula stands between Porrim and Kankri, time is the law separating someone feeling trapped by femininity from a childhood where such concerns were nonexistent. Time is thus the enemy, which is one of the thematic reasons the Lord of Time warrants such resentment. A certain longing for childhood also characterizes the glimpses of John that punctuates Openbound: he laments the inability to recapture the feeling of watching Con Air with his Dad when he was younger (throwing his big tantrum at the exact moment that Cyrus threatens the bunny, which really ought to go back in the box, the perfectly generic object). Roxy later voices a similar sentiment in Wizardy Herbert via Beatrix, who would “trade all the badges in the world to go back to when things were simpler.” Elsewhere in the story Roxy emphasizes a growing tension between a figure with ~100 merit badges (symbolizing complexity) with another character, Russet (an apple, the emblem of atomic simplicity, as per drunk!Rose). Kanaya might describe this as a tension between Space and Time (1093), but here it chiefly serves to further underline the Child and Adult distinction.

3: The corollary of “perfect communication” is silence.

If Time divides the child from itself, it can be hypothesized that Lord English can embody this divide in his other symbolic functions, such as his embodiment of language. If true, it follows that the union of the child-self represents perfect, unmediated communication. Our first example of such a union then are the enmeshed Vantases (who are basically clones) -- but instead of some transcendent transmission of thought, we see an endless one-sided lecture. Spoonful after heaping spoonful of heaving diarhetoric fed directly into Karkat’s gaping earhole.

And on a psychological level, perhaps that’s an apt description of what it means to “just be yourself” without interruption, no commentary or insecure protests interjecting their way into your stream of consciousness. Ordering yourself around without a second thought. And I’ve been in the zone in that way, where I’m so immersed in a task that the task becomes me. But on an interpersonal level, it’s clear that “perfect” speech is entirely unequal.

Despite ostensibly championing the rights of children in the face of domination, Kankri asserts himself as the “teacher” to Karkat’s “pupil”, assuming that the transmission of truth will be one-sided. When confronted by Porrim about this hypocrisy, Kankri defensively insists that he is having a “man to man conversation” with Karkat, an equal exchange. (And oddly, even as she advocates for Karkat, Porrim leaves Karkat in his silence, gently assuring him that his dejected glance has said all he needs to say...)

At any rate, the Karkat-Kankri dynamic illustrates that the immediacy of communication within the primordial union brings with it an element of domination. The subsequent pairings (Cronus-Mituna and Kurloz-Meulin) elaborate on problems and abuses that can accompany compromised speech and silence, each section emphasizing a particular child symbol: respectively, angels and cats (which I’ve established previously).

Angels first: Cronus’s claim that “as a wwingman [Mituna] is a total disgrace” uses “wingman” to invoke the image of angels. This method is repeated by Lil Hal, who observes that Dirk views him as a “counterproductive wing man”, to which Dirk sarcastically replies “nice deduction Lil Einstein”. The reference to the Disney Jr. show neatly ties the angel reference into the fact that as Dirk’s creation, in a sense Hal can be considered Dirk’s child. And in the same way that Hal (the child/angel) functions partly as a reflection of Dirk’s own nature, Mituna’s angel status indicates that he can function symbolically as Cronus’s “inner-child”, the self with which one is pregnant.xx

Silence is an interminable pregnancy. Not speaking means not birthing the baby, not letting the angel fall to earth. The hush is a measure against the corruption and ruin associated with English. (Even though the silent characters are his most devoted servants?)

Cronus demonstrates this with the command “vwait here, try not to fall dowvn, and ABOVWE ALL, try not to be seen” in which “above all” doubles as the place from which Mituna is falling. Language is the instrument of descent, Mituna’s garbled speech emphasizes his “fallen” status within the paradigm. Cronus “really hates the sound of” Mituna partly because he views Mituna as a caricature of himself, again not unlike Dirk’s violent rejection of the negative qualities he identifies in Hal.

This is why Cronus’s opening gesture is to fail a tongue-twister and cry GLOBES in exasperation: it is as though he has hit a snag in his verbal kick-flip and face-planted onto the earth (the globe) -- Mituna bombing his literal stunts and falling down being the root visual. Skateboards (and other 4-wheel devices) are vehicles unto “unreal air”: a status of immaculate lofty ideality, and thus untouchable and pure. The other skateboarder, Latula, made a point of emphasizing her untouchability as she performed some “objectively rad” tricks for Kankri. And more to the point, Latula claims that her intuitions “just make sense” and explaining them would not be "radical”, saying in her own way that bringing her feelings/intuitive knowledge into the realm of speech would in some way tarnish or degrade them. “4 grlz gott4 s4cr1f1c3 und3rst4nd4b1l1ty for th3 s4k3 of r4dn3ss” she says.

Another way to put it is that not expressing a thought can make seem invincible -- it cannot be exposed to the risk of contradiction or mockery. A relevant quote:

MEENAH: i heard a rumor you think youre a human now MEENAH: that true

CRONUS: its a privwate matter. i dont see vwhy i should havwe to talk about it vwith you, and open myself up to more of your judgmental scorn.

MEENAH: sounds like another desperate cry for attention imo

(Aside: an old friend of mine faced almost this exact conversation on facebook when they came out as a trans man, so this one actually hit home a little bit.)

Roxy’s sensitivity to the reactions of others is perhaps implicit in the paranoid staring contests with the void, but in relation to their gender expression, it becomes most explicit in the epilogue -- not only in the faltering manner by which Roxy begins to assert their gender expression, but in the narration itself. Although Dirk’s narration seems to largely reflection his own hesitation to embrace Roxy’s newfound identity, it should be remembered that he is effectively Roxy’s brainghost when narrating their thoughts. That is to say, Dirk’s reaction to Roxy is symbiotic with what Roxy imagines Dirk’s reaction would be. The mockery in the narration is the mockery Roxy expects and fears. Thus, Roxy’s level of comfort and security with their current gender expression necessarily coincides with the level of ease expressed by Dirk’s later narration.

But let’s return to Openbound.

The traumatic deafening of Meulin is analogous to the deathening of Jaspers: one is blasted with the violent shriek of a clown, the other sassacrushed by the “daunting text” of Mark Twain. With the cat as a symbol of the child-self, the message is basically that the child’s encounter with language is a violent experience. (Lord English is destroying reality, etc etc) Kankri neatly echoes this point of view by announcing one of his lectures as “my crushing harangue 9n this delicate su6ject” -- to rephrase, he is crushing the delicate subject (child) with his harangue.

Like much violence in Homestuck, violence of speech is sexualized. There is a moment where Cronus openly relishes the unilateral communication first displayed in the Kankri > Karkat pipeline. He basks in the fact that Mituna is incapable of repeating anything coherently, or that Mituna’s word is otherwise held in such disrepute that no one will take Mituna seriously. As Cronus does this, Mituna laments that Cronus is touching him and will not stop.

The bad-touch motif continues with Kurloz and Meulin, who achieve their own mode of “perfect communication” (union with child-self) via streams of wordless, emotive images. In the above exchange, Kurloz mimes an Ewok rubbing a child, to which Meulin responds with a small frown and a laughing Sailor Moon, as if to convey that she were the one being tickled in the previous gif. She slams the UNSEE button to emphasize her displeasure. (It is only after this sequence that we learn Kurloz can control Meulin’s mind, further linking harmonious union with tyrannical, unilateral communication)

It’s worth noting here that Meenah’s goal in parts 1 & 2 is to get through gates established by Karkat, ultimately convincing him to join up with her. Karkat who, alongside Kankri, currently represents the child-self. Just as Rufioh interprets Meenah’s invitation to join as a romantic proposal, Meenah interprets her successful recruitment of Karkat as a date, sealing the euphemism by reassuring her recruit that he “will not regret hitchin [his] wagon to [her] starfish”, which is a sex joke. The undertones of age disparity later surface as Meenah joins up with her second Vriska (x):

MEENAH: can i ask a kinda personal question MEENAH: i mean not even that personal but whatev

VRISKA: Sure...?

MEENAH: how old are you

VRISKA: Uh, VRISKA: Almost seven and a half sweeps. VRISKA: Getting close to eight!!!!!!!! VRISKA: I pro8a8ly sound like a fucking nerd, 8ut I've 8een excited a8out reaching that milestone pretty much my whole life.

MEENAH: 7.5 huh MEENAH: i guess thats a lil more respectable

VRISKA: More respecta8le than what?

MEENAH: nofin

For Roxy, the libidinal investment in kids is confined to subtext for basically the whole story: jokes about the speculative mechanics of boning chess people and elves, the sexual tension between Russet and the boy with 100 merit badges, the time Roxy was briefly upset to learn she had been “flirt-larping” with a 13 year old Dirk, only to resume the game a page later -- little moments. In the epilogues, Roxy being highly conscious of her interactions with children and the potential for reproducing systems of domination seems embedded in her trepidation towards any of the players governing the world they created (a hands-off attitude toward parenting that may also offer some rationale for Mom’s neglect of Rose, if all that is true of Roxy holds true for her past self).

But let’s move forward.

4: To See Oneself as a Host Plush

I’d like to reiterate here that the Kankri-Porrim dichotomy suggests that the categories of ‘baby’ and ‘boy’ are blurred in their mutual opposition to ‘girl’. Again, the letter of the law: BOYS DROOL! This offers a rationale for oddities like Roxy wiping John’s mouth for him during their date in Candy (boys drool), or this little slip-of-the-tongue which I wouldn’t quite call subtle:

ROXY: doin ok up there b?

JOHN: i’m fine!!! JOHN: wait. b?

ROXY: yea like short for babe ROXY: cuz ur my babe b

JOHN: oh, haha. right.

If we’re being less charitable, you could characterize this as Roxy keeping her eyes on the prize -- as though in addressing John, she is actually addressing the baby that he can provide her. And while I’m not certain of that, the notion of such double-speak (seemingly addressing the person in front of you when you are actually addressing an unborn child) is crucial for understanding the metaphors embedded in the Damara-Rufioh-Horuss triad.

The motif of pregnancy is here introduced via Fiduspawn: impregnate the host plush and a baby pony comes out.

You might remember that Rufioh refers to girls as ‘doll’ -- this quirk links the host plush to the feminine (at least within the context of this dream). To be more precise, the doll is characterized as a void that invites (or even demands) filling: this is a complementary reading of Horuss’s claim that Rufioh “stole his breath away”, synonymous with the claim that Rufioh “has a way of drawing the breath out of people”. The Rogue of Breath has difficulty standing up for himself (Horuss calls it “affable pliability”), so Horuss often speaks over him or on his behalf, as though Rufioh were a marionette. Horuss is saying that Rufioh’s passive demeanor invites this sort of behavior, that Rufioh’s effective silence means he is “asking for it”, to use a loaded phrase.

How funny then that the “doll” of their group Damara (whose name means Silence) is literally “asking for it”, constantly. The same logic applies to Dirk’s decapitated head (from just before this intermission!) and Vriska’s comatose body -- through narrative contrivance, each voiceless vessel hauntingly implores a living Page to kiss them, to fill them with a Breath from without. The sequences suggest a conviction on the part of the kissers: that which is “empty” must desire to be “filled”, a framing that becomes particularly unpleasant when sexualized.

What Damara is asking for is ambiguous, at once referring to sex and the child to which sex serves as vehicle (among other potentials). I wrote awhile back (x) that Mom gave Jaspers an ostentatious burial as a proxy mourning for a miscarried child that preceded Rose, and her cat-cloning was oriented towards the eventual revival of her lost baby. For Damara (and thus Roxy) this becomes a fundamental myth: the desire for children is complemented in intensity by the conviction that the child has already been lost, or stolen from you. Horuss observes that Damara’s remarks a leaning “bloo” because (it’s a pun) her dirty talk is tinged with mourning. There is, inexplicably, sorrow when Damara says she wants to feel her nipples between your teeth. She’s not talking to you -- she’s talking to the baby.

This is also the joke when Latula/Terezi threaten to kill Damara for approaching Mituna/Karkat: the LAW will not permit you to access BABY! You may not recover your child or your childhood, time has barred you from both. (Though of course, through the pedophilia lens this becomes much less sympathetic).

A similar moment can be read into Horuss: Kankri, like all trolls, acts as a manifestation of some emotional surge, so Kankri’s sudden appearance implies that someone is legitimately triggered, despite the comic’s apparent commitment to denigrating his point of view. Like Cronus, Horuss’s horse-kin status entails an identification with his inner (child) self -- but the trans allegory melds seamlessly into other modes of union with the child image, such as pregnancy. So when Kankri asks Horuss to confirm that he is triggered by Meenah’s skepticism towards his identity, the reply “Trigger sounds like a wonderful name for a hoofbeast” is not merely a flippant non-sequitur, but also another echo of the core lamentation, a wistful musing on names for a dead/unborn child.

A brief step backwards: at the beginning, we outlined how Lord English’s destruction of reality was (in the present context at least) a mythic expression of fears and frustrations about communication and speech. Dissatisfaction /produced/ a fantasy individual to whom the problem could be sourced and blamed assigned. A similar attitude should be adopted in examining Damara’s theft of Rufioh’s “happy thought” Tinkerbull -- she represents an already existing discontentment with his circumstances, crystallized into an individual.

This is where Damara would seem to slot into the dysphoria proceedings: she crushed Tinkerbull with a refrigerator, a reprisal of the sassacrushing of Jaspers. The refrigerator is a womb symbol (I insist), suggesting that the womb is a hostile force on par with the Law of English (Girls Rule!). From the perspective of Mom, this could be read a response to her miscarriage, a result of blaming her own body for the child’s death. From Roxy’s perspective, it might be better characterized as ‘the body itself is a domineering force suffocating my child self’ -- and thus dysphoria. Damara crushing Tinkerbull represents the sense that your own body is a meat prison, a shell imprisoning (if not outright killing) your happiness.

This is why Damara manifests for Kanaya, who struggles to reconcile herself with Porrim, a daunting image of ideal womanhood, especially as it concerns the care of matriorb (ie motherhood). Porrim assures her that even though motherhood is to some degree a societal imposition, a role, this does not mean Kanaya cannot embrace the perpetuation of her species on her own terms. This is a good lesson, and Kanaya agrees -- but there stands Damara regardless, joy-stealer, lingering discomfort with self-conception as a host plush. “Just ignore her until she goes away” is all the advice Porrim has to offer on the subject.

(Passing thought: It occurs to me that the phrase ‘happy thought’ used to describe Tinkerbull could be replaced with ‘euphoria’, forming a clean complement to ‘dysphoria’... but wordplay reliant on a missing link is somewhat suspect, so let’s leave that one in the margins)

5: High Euphemistic Density

Let’s review by playing with some euphemisms in Horuss’s opening address to Meenah. I’m dividing his words into 3 sections for ease of reference:

1 HORUSS: 8=D < Your Harness... I mean Hayness. Highness I mean. HORUSS: 8=D < F*DDLEST*%. Please pardon my utterly e%ecrable language, and unforgivable stammering, your Horseness. #Sh*ot! #I mean Hayness! #Whew. 2 HORUSS: 8=D < I am a bale of nerves in your royal presence, and it has been so long. 3 HORUSS: 8=D < And when I am so spooked, you must know how that causes me to even more firmly identify with the majestic hoofbeast.

Starting with three: recall, “girls rule”. Femininity is characterized as a daunting (or even domineering) imposition. Kanaya displaying anxiety at the prospect of measuring up to the image of Porrim is one way this motif crystallizes into a character dynamic. Another way seems to be Horuss’s anxiety before his empress -- just as Kankri (child) rebels against Porrim (mother), the presence of Meenah (mother) induces Horuss to identify with the hoofbeast (baby). Both cases present a shrinking away from a feminine authority figure as metaphor for rejection of the societal strictures of femininity.

Two is a dick joke: while Horuss is ostensibly lamenting his anxiety, a penis is a literal ‘bale of nerves’, a sensory cluster. “It has been so long.” The pun is reinforced as the expense of Rufioh, who apparently did not have ‘the nerve’ to ‘finish [Damara] off’ on her quest bed, which is an innuendo for sexual inadequacy. That Horuss’s smiling face emoji is itself a dick suggests a conflation of identification with his happy thoughts and identification with the member -- which, based on previous discussion of Tinkerbull, would seem to blur the line between having a dick and being pregnant? Which aligns with the notion that pregnancy becomes a metaphor for masculine identification via union with the child self.

(“You very nearly caught a glimpse of a horse penis and began to cry” conveys a mournful yearning of the same order as “I want to feel my nipples between your teeth”?)

But the metaphor goes both ways: the brain is another ‘bale of nerves’, thus offering a rational for Mituna’s presence on the outskirts of the dream. His fall from the brain tree strikes me as less an ejaculation (from brain-dick) as birth (from brain-womb) -- hence the use of Mituna as the lost child, forever denied to Damara by the law (Latula).

And we arrive at one, which repeats a bit from Cronus’s introduction: Horuss trips over his own speech, illustrating the Fall. Just as Cronus attempts to silence Mituna to avoid the embarrassment expected to accompany self-expression, Horuss attempts to c*nsor himself before the judgement of his empress. The need to hide himself (as the stoic smile might indicate) is also embedded in the way Horuss describes his mouth as a load-gaper, and begs pardon for his potty-mouth: silence is golden, and conversely speech becomes excrable, fallen and profaned.

(Silly thought: on occasion, censorship can also designate the holy, eg censoring the name of G*d so as not to besmirch it. That in mind, I find it amusing to take Roxy’s line “holiest of shits // the shit.... // is down right // SACROSANCT” as a literal deification of excrement, making Horuss and Rufioh’s self-censorship look like a last ditch attempt at keeping the angel-child up in heaven. No?)

6: Conclusions and Questions

Obviously, this isn’t all that can be said of Openbound -- people have written extensive character studies of the alpha trolls, mined their stories for clues and parallels to less tangential plot-lines, and otherwise made whatever sense could be made of things. My contribution is some words on the mixed metaphors, word play, and psychological motifs that surround the proceedings.

If you, like me, are frazzled by the sheer density of double and triple speak at play, this is the gist of what I’m arguing for:

“Merge with child” seems to be the overarching motivation expressed in Openbound. But to follow that command verbatim is impossible -- the goal must be interpreted (as getting pregnant, as being true to oneself, as pederasty, as nostalgic pursuit of simplicity, etc) in order to be realized.

That the ideal merger is an image whose wholeness/breadth of possibility is lost in the specificity of actualization would seem analogous to the Fall occurring between silence and speech... so the motif persists on a meta level, maybe? But we don’t need to dwell on that more than we already have.

Instead, I’d like to end with several new points that give me pause.

It’s still not clear to me why the silent characters are the direct servants of Lord English. Communication with them is impossible, and that frustration is what causes language to be conceived as a threat in the first place, but I have an itch that tells me there’s a bit more to it than that.

I don’t know what the transmission of the codpiece has to do with anything. I suspect it may number among various metaphors for trans masculinity, but that’s confirmation bias speaking -- from the scene itself, I gathered very little.

I wonder if Aranea’s info dumps at the end are factored in... you could construe them as placing Meenah in the position of Karkat relative to Kankri -- on the receiving end of spoonful after heaping spoonful of words. So even though Karkat disappears after you follow him, you’ve nonetheless “merged” with the child-function that he performs here? But again, I worry that this sort of hasty integration means I’m missing out on new info.

I’m pretty firmly of the mind that this whole intermission is chiefly devoted to Roxy, but I do worry that Meenah’s doppelganger status could have misled me on that point. After all, Jane’s planet quest contained references to her friends desires, not only her own (x)(x) -- would it be so odd for the same to be true of Roxy’s dreams? In which case it would be worth revisiting this intermission to double-check whether any given section might map more closely to the other alpha kids -- especially since Rufioh/Horuss is a transparent commentary on Dirk/Jake

This is a good a place as any to note that when I was operating under the assumption that Roxy was a trans girl, I was inclined to read the Rufioh/Horuss break-up as ambivalence on the question of getting rid of your dick -- which seemed sensible enough at the time, though the present model seems more consistent across the various conversations. It should be noted though that the language of gender questioning can easily serve multiple directions at once. So... I guess I want to make sure the apparent success of this approach doesn’t blind me to other interpretive potentials? Fingers crossed

...there’s more things to question, probably, but I think that’s good for now.

Special thanks to @red-zora for giving this mess the once-over.

Good night everyone.

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anarzaabloodladen · 4 years

Conversation

CHAPTER 3

The recess bell rang, the children all ran out of the building to the playground. Well, except Six, Seven, and Noodle. They all waited for the other mawchildren.

“Hey, guys! What’s the wait for? We’ve been here for hours, you should be outside!” came a voice from behind them, it was Four, who was with the rest of them.

“Hey, sister! How was the class for you two?” asked Six.

“Not good really.” Four replied. “Mrs. Luna is nice and all, but she loads us up with work.”

“Gee, that sucks,” said Noodle.

“Well,” asked Flicker, “How was your homeroom experience?”

“Ummm..,” Noodle backed away a smidge. “Our homeroom teacher is… no.” he tried to explain how strict Ms. X was without insulting his twin on accident. “She’s strict. That’s all I’m gonna say.”

“Let’s leave it at that for your protection, Noodle,” said Ten.

“What did you all have in mind for what we’re gonna do?” asked Eleven.

“Hmmm... I was thinking of talking to this girl in my class. She seems a bit… odd.” explained Six.

“Odd, you say!?” Ten looked confused and surprised. “This town is one heckling of an oddball if you’re asking me!!”

“True that.” Seven said.

“Does anyone agree that we should be going before the bell rings?” Flicker sounded impatient.

“Yep,” said Eleven. “Good idea.”

The children walked behind the building where Six suspected Tamara was, and she was correct.

“Ok, guys. Here’s the plan. We can introduce ourselves if you are brave enough, you can come with me if you want.” Six said.

“Got it, Six. I think I’ll stay here though,” said Seven. Everyone decided the same.

“Ok then, see ya in a minute.” Six walked off after kissing Seven on the forehead.

“Hello.” she walked up to the jaguar.

“AAH! WHAT THE- I mean.. Um.. hi.. Who are you?” Tamara asked.

“I’m Six” Six tried to introduce herself.

“Um... really? You’re a bit young to be in this class.”

“No, my name is Six.” Tamara looked at Six’s legs, examined her necklace, and stared into her emerald green eyes.

“Cool” she said. “Do you by any chance know someone named, um... Nightblade?”

“Um.. no. who’s that?” Six asked.

“You asking this girl if she knows the devil herself, boss?” a humanized bull terrier in a tattered leather jacket and jeans with a leg ripped off walked out and asked Tamara.

“Wait, who’s the new girl?” asked a brown ridgeback dog in a black hoodie with holes in it.

“Why is everyone crowded over here?!” a basenji inu with shorts and a gray t-shirt asked.

“Ugh, guys! Make some room in here!” Avery stumbled out, to Six’s surprise.

“OMG OMG! IT’S A LITTLE GREEN EYES NIGHTMARE!! Can we keep it, boss?!??” a tosa inu remarked about Six.

“Oh my gosh, settle down, dogs!” a male black jaguar bared his teeth and pushed the dogs out of the way.

“What’d I miss?” an anthro rottweiler in a leather jacket and cargo pants cautiously walked out to the others.

“Boys, settle down,” Tamara said. “This is Six. Six, the bull terrier is Adrian, the ridgeback is Richard, the basenji is Akoni, the arctic fox is Avery, the tosa inu is Ekon,

the rottweiler is Max, and my brother is Tasheel.”

“What I failed to mention when we met is that I’m part of one of the biggest gangs in school,” Avery said.

“Cool!! What do you guys do here?” Six was intrigued.

“Black market down at the subway station,” Tamara said.

“What do you sell?” Six asked.

“Anything you can imagine, girlfriend.” She gave Six a flyer that said what they sell.

“Cool. I’ll introduce you to my friends.” said Six. she introduced the others.

“Nice to meet you all.” said Seven. Suddenly, the bell rang and everyone ran inside except those at the back of the building.

“Oh crap. The bell rang, we usually split up and run with the rest of the students at this hour so we don’t get caught. Maybe we should go. Nice meeting ya though!” Tamara said to the Mawchildren.

“Good idea. Avery, you come with us.” said Six.

“Six, Seven, I just noticed something.” Eleven pointed out, “Six, what’s with the necklace? Seven, your shackle is gone.”

“Oh,” said Seven. “I was able to take it off in place of this foot brace.” Six said,

“I found this on my nightstand, I like it.” back at the dorm, Ten was cooking something and Eleven was programming an old computer on her desk.

“Did anything weird happen while I was shopping?” Ten asked.

“No, not really. I just woke up from a nap and found leaf-shaped earrings on my desk. They’re pretty cool actually.” Eleven answered.

“Maybe you should wear them sometime.” said Ten.

“I’ll think about it.”

The next morning, Eleven wanted to test them out early. She woke up and self pierced her ears with them, it hurt, but she tried not to wake anyone up.

“Ow!” she huffed. As soon as she put them on, she felt a rush of energy, and grass grew under her feet. “What the... Ten has to see this!”

“What do I have to see again?” Ten woke up. “You’re being a bit loud.”

“Oops, sorry.” Eleven apologized.

“You’re fine. Those earrings look nice on you by the way.” said Ten.

“It’s not just that, these are enchanted or something!” Eleven pointed to the ground.

“Holy crap they really are.” Ten exclaimed silently.

“I know, right? Also, I wanted to know what was up with the choker that looked like it was lit on fire but it wasn’t burning” Eleven observed.

“The what?” Ten asked.

“Oh, y’know. That thing.” Eleven pointed to the choker on Ten’s nightstand.

"Where did this thing come from?" She asked. Eleven shrugged. Ten picked up the choker but it didn't burn her hand. "Here goes nothing I guess." she said, and put it on.

"Does it burn?" Eleven asked.

"No, genius. If it burned, I would have dropped it."

"Oh, right." Said Eleven. Ten put it on, and to her surprise, nothing noticeable happened.

"Hm, I mean it looks nice!" She said and laid her hand on a wooden lamppost. The lamppost flamed up instantly.

"TEN, DID YOU DO THIS?!" Eleven screamed.

"MOST LIKELY, ON ACCIDENT." Ten freaked out.

"I'LL CALL SEVEN!" Eleven rushed to the phone and dialed Six and Seven's room number.

"Hello?" He picked up.

"Hello Sev, yes we kinda have a situation here!!" Said Eleven.

"What is it?"

"THE ROOM IS BURNING!!" Ten screamed.

"No questions asked." Seven hung up the phone and knocked on their door.

"Come in please, neither of us can take care of this." Eleven showed him the lamppost.

"That's not burning the room and it won't if it's extinguished quickly."

"THEN EXTINGUISH IT!!" Ten was in a visible panic.

"K geez." Seven rolled his eyes and sprayed water at the fire, which disappeared shortly.

"Thank you, Seven." The girls said

"Hey, no problem. I'm gonna head out now" Seven said.

"We'll meet you in the lobby in a minute." Said Eleven.

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fyrapartnersearch · 5 years

Text

Seeking potentially long term partners for discord, kik or hangouts.

What’s this? Another post from me? Yep that’s right folks lotoliderden is on the search once more for some partners since a few of my old ones have left the nest or have ghosted me. I’m just your average Aussie twenty year old who loves to rp and fortunately has the time to do so often which is why I search for partners who are just itching for a good story. Before you awesome people get excited and message me I do have a list of requirements you must make sure you fulfill. The list is down below. 1: please be literate, write in the third person, have decent spelling and grammar and give me at least 5-6 well fleshed out sentences. One liners, one worders and poorly fleshed sentences do not cut it for me. 2: you must be 18+ (I will not rp with anyone who isn’t at least eighteen). The same goes for characters. no amount of “oh but I’m legal in my country.” Or “I’m underage but okay with it.” Is going to convince me to rp with someone who isn’t at least eighteen years of age. 3: no godmodding, Gary Stu’s or Mary Sues, characters who are nothing but flaws, carbon copies of my characters or a character from a known fandom or media and characters who are overly submissive or overly dominant. Please also do not control my character or dictate their actions for me. 4: you must be okay with dark themes, adult themes and NSFW themes (I don’t fade to black). 5: you must be okay playing with/as lgtb+ characters/characters with disabilities/characters who aren’t human/etc. 6: you must be able to respond once or more a day at the most and once or twice a week at the very least. Any longer and I’ll assume you’ve lost interest or may be ghosting me. 7:please make sure this is something you have time for. All too often I get excited people contacting me only for them to be unable to rp a few days later due to life stuff. Life comes first, if life is too busy for you to even breathe than you’re probably too busy to rp with me. 8: you must have discord,kik or hangouts. I will not rp on any other platform. 9: please be willing to participate in brain storming ideas for the rp or plotting. Do not be afraid to put an idea on the table if you have one. Please also don’t be afraid to tell me if something isn’t right, I’ll always listen to my partners and try to remedy anything that may be wrong. 10: please don’t message me then suddenly never answer me again. Ghosting is not okay and I will not tolerate it. No I don’t want to know why you’ve disappeared for five minutes but I do want to know why you’ve disappeared off the face of the earth. I hope this isn’t too much to ask for. Down below is a list about me. 1: I’m literate, write in the third person and stick to the at least five or six lines rule. I like to write paragraphs when possible. 2: I only play male characters (due to bad experiences rping as female ones) but they’re all pansexual meaning the gender of your character will not matter to them or me. I also don’t mind what you’re in real life gender is. My characters are also switches in everything but will not fill the role of dominant if you play a submissive character or be submissive if you play a dominant character. 3: my characters are premade. I don’t often play canon characters and very rarely will I make up new characters on the spot just for an rp. I do not have face claims or pictures of my characters, I do have descriptions. 4: my time zone is the eastern Australian time zone but I’m available almost every hour of the day. Your time zone doesn’t matter to me. I’ll always make sure to respond whenever possible should you respond at a time I’m not currently on. 4: I prefer to play as non human characters (aliens, dragons, even anthros) but I’ve also got plenty of human characters should that be what’s required in the rp. 5: I’m okay with romance but it must be slow burn and not the sole focus of the rp, if you’re looking for a fast paced romance at first sight then I’m not the person for you. Please do not force romance on my characters or expect mine to make the first move as they most likely will not (they’re a bit submissive and unsure when it comes to romance). Showing an interest in my characters is okay. I also only do switch dynamics, I do not do top/bottom dynamics. 6: brainstorming and coming up with ideas is one of the things I love most about my rp’s, I also like to talk about non rp related things as well. Still with me so far? Sweet! Down below is a list of the fandoms I do. Please do not approach me and ask if I do any other fandoms besides the ones listed or what ships I do. I don’t rp fandoms for the soul purpose of shipping canon characters. I also don’t strictly follow what is canon to fandoms as I feel it limits creativity, I do not have no canon stuff at all of course since it’s needed to keep everything together. 1: voltron (legendary defender, defender of the universe, voltron force) 2: spyro (reignited, legend of spyro, skylanders.) 3: how to train your dragon (any of the movies) 4: lion king (any of the movies or before or after them) 5: zootopia 6:Pokémon (any gen except for sword and shield as I’m unfortunately not quite familiar enough with it just yet) 7: ice age (before, during or after the movies) 8: lady and the tramp (before, during or after the movies) Again, I do not rp canon characters solely for the purpose of shipping so please do not come to me requesting I do so. If you wanna be a canon character it’s fine. Down below is a list of non fandom stuff I do. 1: sci-fi 2: fantasy 3: sci-fi fantasy 4: post apocalyptic 5: anything with dragons 6: anything with aliens 7: anything with animals (anthro or non anthro) Please do not come to me and ask if I do anything else besides what I’ve listed as it’s most likely a no unless you’re willing to discuss and negotiate with me. Don’t hesitate to put an idea forward but please don’t be too disappointed if I say no to it. Now that we’ve got the fandom and genres sorted out we can now get to the romantic side of things. Romance wise I’m not a fan of the whole “boy meets girl” or “love at first sight” thing. Slow burn Forbidden romance is my interest. Down below is a little list of the stuff I like in romance. 1: MxF 2:MxM 3: rivals/enemies to lovers 4: captain/superior officer x lower ranking officer 5: king/queen/prince/princess x commoner/guard/knight/rogue 6: supposed bad guy x good guy 7: rich brat x non rich person 8: anything that’s considered forbidden romance between two consenting adults. For those who have read this mammoth of a post thank you and congratulation! If any of this interests you please do not hesitate to message me. My discord,kik and hangouts are down below. My discord is: tiberionsunsconqourer#6187 My kik is: Tiberionconqueror My hangouts is: [email protected] I cannot wait to rp with anyone interested!

#oc rp #multiple paragraph #para #long term #submission

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sebeth · 5 years

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Crisis On Infinite Earths #5

Warning, Spoilers Ahead…

Psycho-Pirate’s master is very upset – he’s destroyed the two prime universes, murdered the Monitor, and he still isn’t able to level up!

The Monitor - via pre-recorded message – reveals the he used his death energies to create a netherverse that absorbed the Earth-1 and Earth-2 universes. However, the two universes are merging and will cause the other’s destruction.

Alex Luthor (son of Earth-3 Lex Luthor and Lois Lane) reveals the Monitor left him with instructions to save the two universes. The rapidly aging Alex is now a teenager.

The Flash and Red Tornado are prisoners of the mysterious master. Psycho-Pirate abuses poor Barry out of sheer boredom.

Lana Lang for WGBS-TV reports on the current insanity of the newly-created planet. In one city, you have dinosaurs, Neanderthals, Viking ships, blimps, horse-drawn carriages, and buildings from the 30th century.

Sinestro himself has a “What the hell?” look on his face – and he’s seen some stuff!

Alex Luthor and Harbinger have gathered an assembly of heroes and villains. Big two page spread of the assembly. We have the Legion of Super-Heroes, the Outsiders, Infinity Inc., the Metal Men, Cave Carson & his team, the Teen Titans, the Sea Devils, the survivors of Easy Company, Dr. Light II, Swamp Thing, All-Star Squadron, Ragman, Riddler, Captain Boomerang, Kamandi, Rag Doll, Star Sapphire, the Persuader, Elongated Man, Steel, Hawkman, Hawkwoman, Captain Comet, B’Wana Beast, Bir Sir, Solomon Grundy, the Mist, Aqualad, Tula, Lori Lemaris, the Blackhawks, Phantom Stranger, the Cheetah, Robotman, Per Degaton, Dr. Polaris, the Creeper, Cinnamon, Monsieur Mallah, Phobia, the Legion of Substitute Heroes, Batgirl, Batman, Earth-2 Robin, Earth-2 Superman, Earth-2 Huntress, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern (John Stewart), Martian Manhunter, Celsius, Arion, Scalphunter, Green Arrow, Killer Frost, Firestorm, Deathstroke, and Plastic Man.

The main thing I love about George Perez’s artwork – the man is not afraid to draw a large group of characters. The groups are never standing in straight formation either. The characters are reacting and interacting. A few examples:

1) Easy Company is clearly freaked out by Swamp Thing.

2) Beast Boy (Changeling) re-uniting with the missing Cyborg.

3) Aqualad and Tula assisting Lori Lemaris. Lori can’t stand because she’s a mermaid.

4) Solomon Grundy is very annoyed.

5) Couples are standing next to each other: Nightwing/Starfire, Brainiac 5/Supergirl, Lightning Lad/Saturn Girl, Bouncing Boy/Duo Damsel, etc.

6) Elongated Man, Plastic Man, and the Metal Men are using their stretching abilities to great effect.

Lois Lane – also from WGBS-TV – interviews people on the street: Tomahawk and Grixx of Ceti Alpha 6. Poor Tomahawk doesn’t even know he what a television is – only moments ago he was fighting with George Washington’s troops.

Back to the assembled heroes. Adding to the roll call: Sargon the Sorcerer, Firehawk (the Western character), Black Orchid, Gizmo, Deadman, Gypsy, Penguin, Brother Blood, Validus, Jemm (Son of Saturn), Amethyst, the Warlord (Travis Morgan), Catwoman, the Atom (Ray Palmer), Jonah Hex, Vibe, Captain Cold, Earth-2 Wonder Woman, Ocean Master, Dolphin, and Black Canary.

We take a quick peek at Rann where Adam Strange battles monsters from the pre-historic era.

Superman steps up with the big hero speech: “Maybe I’m wrong talking for everyone but I will. Send us back. Let the doubters decide. But I promise you this, if we can save the worlds that remain, we will!”

The series has consistently shown Superman as the standard bearer of the DC Universe – the one you turn to when the end of the world is here. It has also demonstrated the struggles Clark has with the role: he has fears and vulnerabilities but has to ignore it and order to be the “shining light” for the other heroes.

A team of Green Lanterns, including Arisia and Katma Tui, arrive on Oa. They discover the Guardians in stasis but are quickly taken out themselves.

Lois Lane is attacked by a sabretooth tiger but is quickly saved by Earth-1 and Earth-2 Superman.

Rip Hunters and his Time Masters are adrift in time.

Alfred and Jason Todd call for aid as Anthro, Embra, and a host of Neanderthals are invading Wayne Manor! Batman responds and he brings back-up. The back-up consists of Earth-2 Robin, Earth-2 Huntress (logical as they know the secret identity and are part of the family, Katana & Halo of the Outsiders (Batman’s team, also in on the identity), Nuklon (he’s trustworthy), Per Degaton, Kung, the Brain and Monsieur Mallah, Poison Ivy, Plastique, and Weather Wizard. What?! Bruce is obviously not concerned about maintaining his secret identity at this point.

We have a brief panel of Batman putting his arm around Jason Todd’s shoulders. Jason is in civilian attire, not in his costumed identity. Earth-2 Robin (an adult Dick Grayson) is clearly looking at the duo with an unhappy “Who are you” expression. Again, George Perez – master of small details.

Unfortunately, my adorkable Anthro has no dialogue. The world is missing out on what would have been an awesome Alfred-Anthro interaction.

Starfire, Sun Boy, Firebrand, Firestorm, Polar Boy, and Killer Frost head to the Soviet Union to assist Red Star. Killer Frost has reverted back to her lovable “I will kill you all” self.

Red Star refuses the aid until Starfire reminds him: “It’s our world. Please, we have to work together if we’re to save any of us.”

Red Star concedes: “Your words should be heeded by all. I apologize. You are right. Perhaps if we all survive, the politicians will remember this cooperation and build a better world for us all.”

Good luck with that!

Psycho-Pirate is still picking on my poor sweet Barry. Meanwhile, the master is transforming the Red Tornado from machine into a primal force.

The Legion, The Justice Society, Zatana, and Sargon are attempting to combat the out of control weather only to discover that it’s being caused by the Red Tornado. Wildcat’s spine is shattered by a lightning bolt – he will never walk again. We also get a quick two panel glimpse of Yolanda Montez. Yolanda will become the second Wildcat.

The heroes and villains unite to save the universe. Alex Luthor informs the group there are five universes that need to be saved.

The master reveals himself to Psycho-Pirate and Flash: Call me…the Monitor!” A very corpse-like Monitor.

We end on Earth-X: “An earth where World War Two had continued for more than forty years.” AKA the home of the Freedom Fighters (Uncle Sam, Phantom Lady, The Ray, the Human Bomb, and Black Condor).

So…Five Universes to save…

We have:

1)Earth One

2)Earth Two

3) Earth X

4) Earth F – Marvel Family

5) Earth C – Charlton characters – Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, Question, Nightshade

Earth One and Earth Two are DC’s golden and silver age characters. The remaining three earths feature characters from various comic book publishers DC bought out over the years: Charlton, Fawcett, Quality, etc.

#Crisis On Infinite Earths #DCU #DC Comics #Batman #Superman #Dick Grayson #Jason Todd #Psycho-Pirate #Green Lantern Corps #Monitor #Alexander Luthor

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webcomixtape-blog · 7 years

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DISCUSSION: The Holy Trinity (And Talking Dog)

DISCUSSION/GENERAL

Here’s a fun one. In starting up this blog, or whatever you call this sort of nonsense, I’ve had to re-read a bunch of comics from the beginning. Well, no, not HAD to. My promise to myself when I started this was to have read through every comic I review once and only re-read before a review if I thought it was vital/I needed an excuse to take a trip through Atomic Robo again. But this being me, I’ve done a lot of re-reading anyway, and have noticed some peculiarities I had overlooked before.

Today we’re going to talk about one of those. It’s something I should have noticed, but just never had an easy shorthand for in my head. How many webcomics spend their early strips following the adventures of two dudes, a girl, and some kind of cute animal/robot/alien? Kind of a lot of them, right? Not all, but enough that it’s a trend.

It’s related, I think, to the ‘Two Gamers on a Couch’ trope. Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade, Ethan and Lucas from Ctrl Alt Del, that sort of thing. You start your comic with a pair of 20-something men sitting on a couch with controllers in their hands and snark on their tongues. It’s one of the classic archetypes. It’s also a temporary condition for most. See, eventually you need SOEM kind of plot, some kind of drama, and that usually means more characters! And a mascot!

Three humans and one inhuman. That seems to be pretty stable.

Though it pains me to do so, consider Crtl Alt Del. The initial pair were soon joined by Lilah, very much THE GIRL when she first showed up, and… Whatever the X-Box robot was called. X-bot? No, I’m sure he had a name… Zeke? Sure, Zeke. For a long time, that was the core cast. Another example? Questionable Content, before it became more of an ensemble cast, centred around Marten, Faye, Dora (A rare boy-girl-girl trio!) and the ‘Anthro-PC’ Pintsize. Another, this time without a robot? Sure! Sluggy Freelance centred around Riff, Torg, Zoe, and the homicidal rabbit Bun-Bun. Zebra Girl spent much of the first half focusing on Sandra, Jack, and Crystal, and while the demonically transformed Sandra WOULD count as the inhuman member of the team, the cartoon rabbit with attitude Sam joined in and took that role by the throat. Two Guys and Guy would count but the inhuman fourth member tends to be whichever of the three humans is being extra psychotic that day.

Three humans and something zany for comic relief.

Now, they rarely stay that way. QC eventually moved away from the relationship drama between the three core cast members, instead devoting much of its time to whole secondary groups of hipsters and robots. Ctrl Alt Del was going to add a fourth human to the mix, but after some LOSS and eventual robo-murder, it turned into a joke-a-day comic instead.

I’m talking a lot about webcomics growing up and turning into something new lately, huh? Could be something in that.

So what? That’s the question, right? Why bring this up? Well, to continue with what appears to be the general gist of my discussion updates lately, this could well be another sign of a comic still getting its footing. It’s infinitely more common in the early days, in comics before their dramatic injection. It’s also one of the less helpful ones, I think. Is it not a little incongruous to have that wacky sidekick tagging along just because they were grandfathered in from the first few strips? ‘it’s a cute bunny, but it will murder you’ got old pretty quick, and that was several thousand strips ago. I may be biased, of course, as along with children, I’m in the camp that wants all cute animal sidekicks removed from fiction. Do we really need comic relief to come from a magically talkative house pet that’s going to demand SOME form of explanation a few hundred pages from now?

I don’t really have a problem with a limited cast. The ensemble isn’t for everyone, and unless you have some particularly dull protagonists you can tell a perfectly fine story with only three of them being the focus. And anyway, in practice such trios often play out as a single protagonist with two supporting characters, either throughout the whole comic, or on a story-by-story basis. Hell, this can even apply to your shitty comedic relief animal/robot if you can make it work. Hell, that may be a better use of the cast than remaining focused on the one protagonist all the way through. Side stories can help avoid burnout from the viewers, and a truly rotation focus can allow for a breadth of storylines without having your main character bloat obscenely.

Basically, I get it. I can see why it happens.

Now, excuse me, I need to play more Zelda.

-James

#discussion #general #i mention a bunch of comics but don't care to mention them all #back to zelda

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fyrapartnersearch · 4 years

Text

Long term partner search

Greetings everyone. It’s lotorliderden who is once again on the prowl for rp partners. This time I’m looking for either one of two things: a voltron rp (one that’s a mixture of lores between dotu, vf and vld as well as a few head cannons I’ve come up with and ones we come up with together) or an arranged marriage type of rp. Further explanation of the ideas are down below: After the galra invasion on earth was successfully stopped and the enemy taken care of, everyone knows that the paladins spent some time on earth formulating a plan to go take down honnerva and save the universe. What would happen if they took a different route? One that involved creating other animal ships like the lions and training the cadets to use them? Well, this is what this idea is about. The paladins are worried that whilst they’re off on big missions trouble could potentially occur somewhere else and voltron will be unable to help. to counter that risk the team discussed a plan and decided to propose it to the rest of the alliance: train the cadets to fly ships just like the lions. After some careful thinking (and considerable bickering on lance and Keith’s part) the paladins put forth the plan and was surprised at the agreement it received. With the plan in action, the cadets would build a robotic animal companion that would serve as the model to their ship that they’d build upon graduation. Thanks to special machinery developed by the holts themselves, space ships that once took months could be completed within a few days. With what was considered a peace period occurring, the paladins wanted to give the newer pilots and pilots to be as much time as possible to prepare for the war that wasn’t yet over. Sounds awesome right? Well there are a few other very important things I need you to know about should this rp be the one we choose to do and I’ve listed them down below: the canon characters are playable but I will only be playing as an oc. I will not be doubling or taking control of multiple characters (npc or not) by myself as I prefer that we share the job. If you want to ship canon characters you must organise that yourself in the rp. I will not play canon characters to fulfill your shipping desires. If you want to do oc x canon character shipping you must play as the canon character. Oc x oc shipping is completely fine and I’ve got no complaints about it just please do not have the first thing in your message be “what ships do you do?” Or “will you play this character so I can ship”. All characters, canon or not, must be 18 or 18+ as underaged characters are a very big no. You must also be 18 or 18+ as I myself am in my very early twenties and will get into trouble for rping with a minor nor am I comfortable with rping with one. There will be smut in this rp (I do not fade to black) and there will be other adult themes. There is going to be a mix of dotu, vf and vld lores and things in this rp. If you have not seen dotu Or vf that is okay and I’ll happily tell you what it is as well as tell you where to find the shows themselves. If you’re gonna be a canon character please please PLEASE be flexible with them. You’re not following the script of a show so you can do whatever you like with them whilst still keeping true to how they’re portrayed. Zarkon and lotor are not dead (they’re still alive but they’ve become their own separate threats to voltron, hence the need for such a plan in the first place.). There are alien cadets as well as human ones (furry, anthro, alien, half alien, list is endless and I’ve always wondered why there was never any alien cadets.). I myself will be playing an alien character. I play premade (I don’t care if you make one up on the spot) but flexible characters who are all male but swing both ways. Want a sweet and pure gay relationship? You got it! Want the traditional boy and girl relationship? You’ve also got it! Just please no sub/ dom dynamics whether in the bedroom or in a normal situation (I understand preferences but please do not let that be the sole aspect of your characters personality). This will be long term and i need you to answer at least once or more a day. Any less just unfortunately won’t cut it for me (this of course doesn’t apply to circumstances where you’ve been too busy to even tell me why you’ve not answered of course, life happens but preferably I’d love it if you could warn me in advance if you have to disappear for a bit). Bully x victim, rivals to lovers, former friends who become more. The possibilities of what kind of pairings that can occur are endless but slow burn romance only please. No love at first sight. I will only rp on discord, google hangouts, emails and telegram. No where else. What animal you choose, your personality, strengths, weaknesses and ability to work as a team will determine your eventual spot on the team you are placed on (animals can be mythical or normal. Hybrids are also welcome). Unfortunately the pilots will not be able to make their own voltron (there can be only one). One small paragraph written in third person with correct spelling, grammar and punctuation is the very minimal post requirement. No one liners. I do not do face play or pics, only descriptions. There is more but I wanted to keep the list as short as possible, down below is the other idea: For centuries two planets, two kingdoms ruled by rival kings and queens, have been at war and peace was something that the people have been begging for. Many feared that one day they’d wake up to an enslaved world or be killed. Normally such things were resolved by betrothing the heirs to the kingdoms to each other to bind the two planets but since one planet was without an heir and the other had too many a compromise was made and the highest ranking military commanders were betrothed to each other instead. Neither one of them is particularly happy to have their choice made for them but it’s a tactic that will ultimately work. Neither would dare go against other with the knowledge they knew every battle tactic, strategy and secret they used. Important points down below: I’ll be playing as an alien (you can play as a human, furry, anthro, alien or even a hybrid if it suits you) and I do not care whether this is a gay pairing or a straight one. I do not do face claims or pics, only descriptions. There will be smut in this rp (again, I don’t fade to black and no sub dom dynamics.) This is a very flexible setting and I’m willing to mould and change it till it is something we both like. This rp is meant to explore and promote character growth and development (with the pair eventually developing true feelings and perhaps starting a family if we both feel that such a thing should occur). 18 and 18+ characters and writers only. I will only rp on discord, telegram, google hangouts or emails. One small paragraph written in third person per post at the very least. This will be long term For those who’ve read this to the very end thank you! Please make sure that when you contact me you tell me what idea it is you want to rp so that we can get straight to the planning. My contact info: Discord: tiberionsunsconqourer#6187 Google hangouts and email: [email protected] Telegram: Tiberionwars.

#oc rp #multiple paragraph #para #long term #smut rp #submission

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