#but feel free to join my patreon there’s tons of stuff

[retellingthehobbit]

The front door of Bag End in my webcomic adaptation of The Hobbit, as seen in Chapter 1 vs Chapter 18 :). It turns out your art style changes a lot when you draw a webcomic. (I love painting Ghibli-inspired backgrounds!)

Chapter 18 hasn’t been posted publicly yet, but you can view the first several pages (along with other art) on my Patreon.

#the hobbit #retelling the hobbit #not chapters #the hobbit comic #lotr #lord of the rings #:3 #but YEEEE this chapter is takin some time #because elaborate backgrounds #it’s important to convey the world! #but feel free to join my patreon there’s tons of stuff

[open-hearth-rpg]

I thought I should probably post about what Open Hearth is. Open Hearth is an online gaming community focused on indie RPGs, storygames, and other TTRPGs—with a commitment to safety and inclusivity.  I’m edige23 and I manage this channel for our community (that’s why there’s a lot of my stuff here).

To be a little more specific, Open Hearth Gaming Community is dedicated to supporting TTRPG players and event facilitators. We have a dedicated calendar app which we use to organize events from one-shots to series spanning months.

You can see our website here. 

We have a ton of free resources for online play, including character keepers you can use. 

We have a Community Code of Conduct (which you’re welcome to use and modify)

This is supported by a Patreon. Folks at the $4+ level have a 48-hour priority sign-up window from when events are posted. After that, anyone is welcome to sign up for sessions. Some sessions are run specifically for new players and waive that window. Full sessions have waitlists, and folks who sign up for those often end up in games.

You can check out our community gaming calendar at Playabl

All sessions are run using a layered set of safety tools and adhere to our community code of conduct.

We have a dedicated Slack for discussing and planning events on the calendar. Anyone who plays in a session with us or supports our Patreon is welcome to join.

We also have one of the largest collections of AP ttrpg videos out there, including several ttrpg talks and panels. 

There’s a lot more to what we do: we offer free gaming weekends to introduce folks to online play and new games; we have free game facilitator camps; we have regular talks and seminars on gaming; and we’re working on a relaunch of our podcast. These are all freely available to everyone and made possible by the generous support of our patrons.

If you have questions, feel free to contact us at [email protected]

#open hearth gaming #online ttrpgs #ttrpg #rpg #indie ttrpg

[mack3030]

No offense but do you have a life other than the sims paywall issue? Any friends maybe other than other haters ? Really so weird spending all your life on this. Looks miserable.

You wanna know what's actually miserable? - Doxxing people who pay you for content - Content that you didn't actually make, but stole/bought from 3D modelers and claim you made - Tracking your patreons emails and names and sharing that info with third parties - Creating/buying tons of sock puppet and shell accounts on tumblr to harrass people who call you out on this behavior - Using said sock puppets to make comments about people's personal appearence, and to make negative comments about people's mental health in order to drive them to hurt themselves - Being transphobic in reddit comments and in posts by implying a trans-man doesn't "actually exist" - Contacting people's jobs 4x with bogus claims because your feelings got hurt that they called you out on your shit on the internet - Getting your "friends" to make false claims about death threats and then fake screenshots to try to make the other side look bad - Purposefully joining piracy groups in order to dig up "dirt" on the members and or doxx them and release screenshots if they betray you - Threatening leakers by saying "next time they die" - Using the brand names, logos, and designs of real companies without their permission - Stealing the propritary designs of small family owned businesses and making 3D models of those designs so you can profit off them on patreon - Publicly doxxing someone who called you out and encouraging people to harrass her and contact her work -Deadnaming a trans person and threatening them - Ruining the reputation of a big custom content creator simply because she's friends with one of your detractors by releasing fake screenshots and getting sock puppets to claim she's involved - Sending hateful asks/anons to friends of those who are accusing you to try to get them to turn on your accusers, putting them through mental and emotional anguish. DID I FUCKING MISS ANYTHING? I'M SURE I DID. SIMBLR HELP ME OUT. :) Fun fact, for me, staying in and researching and doing stuff like this relaxes me. I actually had a full day of work today and my "wind down" process is to get on tumblr. Now it's obvious you're a sock, so I'm saying this more for the benefit of others: YOU DO NOT GET TO TELL OTHERS HOW TO USE THEIR FREE TIME UNLESS THAT FREE TIME IS DIRECTLY HURTING YOU, SOMEONE ELSE, OR SOCIETY. And frankly, I doubt me trying to get justice for my friend (who these bullies are REALLY trying to make hurt themselves) falls into that category. So fuck off.

#ask #it's hilarious

[celtfather]

Isn't it Grand to be Walking Undead #268

What happens when a traditional Irish song is rewritten about zombies? And I have CDs!!!! If you didn’t say, “You have Cds…”, you’ll find out why it’s important. It’s kind of funny.

This is Sci Fi Pub Songs & Stories #268.

0:16 - “Isn’t It Grand Boys” from Happy Songs of Death

4:09 - WELCOME TO SCI FI PUB SONGS & STORIES

This is the audio edition of my newsletter. I am Marc Gunn. I’m a rhythm and folk Celtic musician living in Atlanta, Georgia. I play traditional Irish and Scottish drinking songs. I’m also a songwriter. I write songs inspired by Celtic culture as well as pop culture, things like Lord of the Rings, Firefly, Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who and more.

If you’re new to the show, please subscribe. You can do that PubSong.com/free or even better or you can subscribe and download all of my songs in this show. Just send me an email.  pubsong@ celtfather

You will get an auto responder with a link to download this month’s songs. You will also get that subscribe link. It’s quick and easy.

While you’re emailing me to get your free EP, let me know what you’re doing while listening to this episode.

We kicked off the show…

5:04 - WHAT’S NEW STORY

I really should talk more about the stuff I sell in my store. But it feels uncomfortable to do so. That’s one of the reasons if you go to any of my live shows, and I say, “I have Cds”. Audience members will shout “you have Cdddsss?!”

It’s a little gimmick I use to draw attention to my merch. And it’s really catchy.

I was listening to the last episode of the podcast about writing drinking songs. While I talked about my song “The Cat Came Back… the Cat’s Perspective,”. It’s from my C-D… And then I paused, just like I do at live shows.

When I listened to the episode, I responded, “You have CDs…”

It got me thinking. Could we do that same thing through a podcast?

I don’t know. But we’re gonna try. We’re gonna make this podcast into a sort of an interactive drinking game.

Each time I mention CDs, your job is to audibly respond, “you have CDs…”

6:25 - UPCOMING SHOWS

APR 1-9: Sherwood Forest Faire, Paige, TX

APR 6: Dragon Con Filk Music Concert with Brobdingnagian Bards @ 7 PM CST

APR 20: Cat Drinking Songs on Bandcamp @ 7 PM EAST

APR 21-23: Jordan Con, Atlanta, GA

APR 29. The Lost Druid Earth Day Biking Concert, Avondale Estates, Ga @ 6:30-9:30 PM

JUN 3-10: Celtic Invasion Vacations, County Mayo, Ireland

9:24 - The Celtic Kitchen Party “Covid-19 Shanty” from Last Call

11:11 - COMMENTS

I don’t get a ton of feedback for this show. But if you send an email to pubsong@celtfather with a short comment about the show… or just mentioning CDs that you love, that’s a great way for us to interact and have more of a conversation.

In fact, if you need a starter, I’d love it if you would grab your phone. Go to your voice recorder app. Say, “You have Cds”. Then email it to me.

Marisa Halvorson emailed: "Hello Marc! I have been listening to your songs practically nonstop this St. Paddy's season (I'm in NOLA and work on Magazine street so season it is) I had to work on the day the Irish Channel parade rolled and definitely enjoyed it more with your songs keeping me company while locked in my building by parade goers. Thank you for always keeping me company and my spirits up with your music."

Kennedy Johnson emailed: "Happy St Patricks Day to you Marc.  I hope you and your family are well on this day of Green & Orange 🇮🇪   I love your podcasts!!  I have today’s show cued up and ready to play.  Always a tradition foe me to list to your music podcast on this day!!"

13:50 - JOIN THE CLUB

As always, this show is brought to you by my Gunn Runners on Patreon. If you enjoy this podcast or my music, please join the Club. You get something new every week. It might be a podcast, a song, sheet music, a blog, or a photo. And of course you will get videos, including my weekly Coffee with The Celtfather video concert series. Sign up for as little as $5 per month and save 15% with an annual membership. Thanks to my newest Gunn Runners on Patreon: Alice M, Karla A, Triskele, Ayden B

14:34 - Marc Gunn “The Maid Went to the Mill” from Kilted For Her Pleasure

16:49 - THE STORY ISN’T IT GRAND, BOYS, TO BE WALKING UNDEAD

What happens when a traditional Irish song is rewritten about zombies?

One of the cool things about drinking songs is when the audience gets involved to make the song their own.  I don’t know if that is the origins of the “dead, dead, dead” line in “Isn’t It Grand, Boys”. But it seems likely.

It also seems like a great inspiration for a geek to turn it into a song about zombies. My friend Cathy Dailey did that and wrote “Isn’t It Grand, Boys, to Be Walking Undead.” It features all sorts of undead tropes like BRAINS, crushed flowers, and hunting undead, which totally takes my brain to Buffy, The Vampire Slayer.

The “Brains” line is my favorite because it replaces the “dead, dead, dead” with “brains, brains, brains” in the most-zombie-like style.

The chorus is also fun because it includes the “Wilhelm Scream”. That’s the term used for that death yell I make at the end of “Just time for one bloody last cry”.

Oh! Check this out from Wikipedia:

“The sound is named after Private Wilhelm, a character in The Charge at Feather River, a 1953 Western in which the character gets shot in the thigh with an arrow. This was its first use following its inclusion in the Warner Bros. stock sound library, although The Charge at Feather River is the third film to use the effect. The scream is believed to be voiced by actor Sheb Wooley.”

Sheb Wooley is best known for his song “Purple People Eater”.

But the trope of all tropes that makes the song for me is “Up come the hands of another undead”. It’s creepy, very visual, and just perfect.

The song features Nathan Deese on guitar, whistle, bass and “Brains” comments.

20:34 - Marc Gunn “Isn’t It Grand, Boys, To Be Walking Undead” from Sci Fi Drinking Songs

23:47 - CREDITS

Thanks for listening to Sci Fi Pub Songs & Stories. The show is brought to you by my Gunn Runners on Patreon. Every week, you’ll get a new podcast or song or video or video concert. You’ll also save 25% off all the merch in my store. The show was edited by Mitchell Petersen with graphics by Miranda Nelson Designs.

You can subscribe and listen to the show wherever you find podcasts. Sign up to my mailing list to read the show notes for this episode and find out where I’m performing.

And of course, please tell one friend about this podcast. Word of mouth is the absolute best way to support any creative endeavor.

Have fun and sing along at www.pubsong.com!

#pubstories #theceltickitchenparty #walkingundead

Check out this episode!

#pub songs #stories #Celtic Music #Irish music #best #best of #behind the music #song stories

[popculturebuffet]

Go Team Venture!: Venture Bros Retrospective Season 3

PLEASE CONSIDER JOINING MY PATREON TO HELP ME PAY FOR STUFF. 

CONTRIBUTORS GET A FREE REVIEW ON SIGNUP AND TO PICK ONE OF THE CHOICES FOR MY MONTHLY POLLS. THANK YOU, ENJOY THE REVIEW. 

Hello all you happy venturoos and welcome back to Go Team Venture! My retrospective look at the venture bros. 

Season 1 Found Here

Season 2 Found Here

And once again I have to give you all a hearty thanks. Once again tons of you read this retrospective over the past month and it warms my heart to both know you guys love the show as much as I do and love my thoughts on it enough to keep coming back. Seriously you guys are awesome. 

So moving on to the season itself, Season 3 is an important season for me as this is where I first became obsessed with the show. Sure i’d watched season 1 (and famously remember my mom seeing me watch Careers in Science and forbidding me from watching the show... which while it didn’t end up stopping me was fair for the time. A middle school aged kid probably shoudln’t be watching brock have rough sex with a woman while two teenage dopes think he’s fighting a phantom spaceman. That’s just good parenting. ), and kept up with Season 2, but I just hadn’t quite gotten hooked. I watched it more because it was adult swim and I watched everything on adult swim since it first premired. It was just what I did. 

Season 3 changed that. For starters it had an heir of prestige as episodes would air on adultswim.com the friday before they aired on tv.  Naturally loving the idea of seeing an episode before it aired, still do provided it’s not leaked of course, I decided to check it out and seeing this deep and fun backstory for the monarch made me want to check out more of the show. So as I kept up with Season 3 I also caught as much of seasons 1 and 2 as I could. And being older and marginally able to understand the show better, I throughly loved it and by The Buddy System, still one of my faviorite episodes to this day, I had gone from casually watching the show because it was on to a ride or die Venture Bros fanatic who wrote terrible fanfiction and glommed onto the show each year.  The Venture Bros was one of my first great obessions and I will always think fondly of it for that. Also ironically I did some Scott Pilgrim Crossover fanfiction... it was bad but I just find it neat the two obessions overlapped once. And no it’s not anywhere on line. Thankfully I was too self concious for that. 

So Season 3 has a special place in my heart, but even putting that aside this is where the show really starts to hit it’s stride. Rewatching this I didn’t hate a single episode. The Jackson Publick Pissed in God’s Eye Winner this time was just mildly boring.. and STILL has what’s easily my favorite line of the season.  It’s a season that was a joy to watch again. 

This season feels more confident and that’s not by accident. As Jackson himself put it in the book Season 2 as largely season 1, but better since they knew what they were doing more. So Season 3 was a chance to take this world and really dig into it and flesh it out. Flesh out these characters, this world and really go into Team Venture. And while this would lead to a lot of flashbacks, it also finished evolving the characters into fully fleshed out people, something started last season, and the show into what it was always meant to be. 

Part of this energy came from a two season pickup. By this time the show’s cult fanbase had picked up steam with the season 1 dvd selling incredibly well and Season 2 doing strong raitings. The show had finally found it’s people, we’d found our show and the raitings would only climb from here. 

So with Job Security for the first time in the show’s history, Jackson went to work: with the help of an all star crew (itself a stroke of luck from someone elses misfortune as a nearbye hip startup stuido had failed and Jackson knew a lot of the people working for it as old friends and aquantinces, so he was able to give these talented people jobs when they needed one most) he went to work redoing all the set pieces for the show. He and Doc had decided that with HD becoming the standard format it was time to upgrade and since Jackson had been annoyed with a lot of the primitive season 1 backgrounds anyway, this gave him an excuse to remodel, giving the venture compound a bunch of new rooms, a cohesive layout and making the rooms that we did know look better.  He took the same coat of paint to other backgrounds and even touched up the character models. As a result this is the sharpest looking season yet and the show would only get more gorgeous as time went on. While it never looked bad this is the season it started really looking spectacular. 

So with all this hype join me under the cut for a look at Venture Bros as it soared to glory, filled in it’s past.. and did an episode with a bunch of music video refrences for some reason. This is season 3!

Seasonal Stylings:

Back in the season 1 review I said that it was the odd duck of the series structurally. I’ve realized with this season I was wrong: Every season of this show is weirdly and wonderfully unique in how it’s presented. No two seasons have the same structure, delivery schedule or what have you. Sure from season 2 on Team Monarch’s arc’s are a constant, but how each season is delivered is diffrent every time. It’s noticable because other shows like Steven Universe, OK KO, Amphibia, Owl House , Bojack Horseman, Tuca and Bertie and many, many more have a very clear way they structure the show and it’s arcs. Each season may be fun and unique but ther’es certain rhytms to it. And while again not absent, you get the monarch plot and the tag sale ep every season guaranteed, it’s clear Jackson and Doc’s style of throwing things together as they go as well as throwing some pieces in due to deadlines effects the structure: since they don’t really tend to think of HOW the season is going to play out and more what’s going to happen, every season is unique in how the arc flows, the episodes are ordered that sorta thing. It dosen’t harm the show, it’s honestly neat each season is something truly it’s own, it’s just something to note. 

Season 1 was more episodic as I pointed out, with an arc only kicking in in the final two episodes. Season 2 is the most standard of any season with a mon-arc mixed with Team Venture shenanigans. So what’s season 3′s deal structurally? Simple: it’s weirdsly segmented. While the show normally has one setup episode, an episode to lay out how the situation this season for both Team Venture and Team Monarch, here it takes three before everything’s in place. The only episode that isn’t setup is The Invisible Hand of Fate, a whole episode flashback... only ONE episode after Shadowman 9 itself mostly a flashback.  While the show gets going buisness as usual after that it’s still odd the show takes a whole four episodes to really get going, not stopping once it does.

And even then the pacing is still weird as the final 6 episodes are all connected in some way. Tears of a Sea Cow directly leads into the Lepodorists. And while Now Museum is in between those it not only takes place between tear’s main plot and stinger, but also takes place on Spider-Skull Island, the first episode to fully do so and thus sets up it’s structure and what not for the Lepordorists.. which THEN leads into the two part finale, with ORB likewise leading right into it with it’s own stinger. It just feels having a season that’s one part setup, one part buisness as usual and the last half seralized. It leaves me a bit discombubulated thinking about it. If I honestly have any major complaints about the season it’s this as it makes it hard to watch as a binge and even week to week as it takes a while to get going then has weird changes in plot momentum, going from a little bit to full throttle in the blink of an eye. The episodes themselves are fine but it hurts the whole. Thankfully the next few seasons would feel more cohesive, even season 4 which is essentially two seasons in one. 

The other notable thing this season has over others stylistically is flashbacks.  Half of this seasons episodes have a flashback jammed in there, and two are almost entirely flashback. Jackson even flat out admits that while the flashbacks were necessary to flesh out the world, they probably shoduln’t of put all of them in one season. 

That being said unlike fans at the time and even me until the rewatch.. I feel it works for the most part. I still don’t think putting Invsible Hand, which could’ve fit anywhere in the season really, not that far apart from Shadowman 9 was a mistake, especially since Shadowman 9 ALSO gives us a villian’s origin, otherwise I think their VITAL to making the series better. The Flashbacks outside of the two flashback episodes and the guild ones in ORB flesh out Jonas Venture turning him from some distant paragon we know little about to the selfish, negelctful , violet, racist creep who saw his son more as an accesory to carry around than a child to love and nurture. I’ll get more into Jonas’ character in the roll call but without these bits of dickery great and small, fully intentonally and completely accidental, we don’t really get to know the man. And knowing what a monster HE is explains why Rusty himself is borderline one. It dosen’t excuse Rusty’s actions but it does allow us to pity him more, to really feel for this bright entuastic kid who was bullied and traumatized into the shell of a man we see today. 

The final intresting style bit involves some explaning: See I feel the show falls into three Eras: Classic, Changes and New York, seasons 1-3, 4-5, and 6-Movie respectively. Each one has it’s own unique status quo and changes the show up in a way it can’t walk back easily. The reason I call this era is classic is simple: when you think of venture bros, you usually think of the boys , doc and brock as they are in the first 3 seasons: getting into classical adventures we never see , while we instead see ones tearing down tropes for fun and profit or the moments inbetween them nearly dying. The Monarch goes from his base status quo, to prison, to pining after Dr. Girlfriend, to marrying her, to not arching venture in this time. While Brock and the Boys do evolve, with Brock easily getting the most character development out of the main four the situation is largely the same. From here on out something shakes up the venture’s world every year from Hank’s rebellious phase and hatred replacing brock, to Dean’s emo phase, to the whole family getting uprooted to new york and all having new fun and exciting challenges to face. While Hank and Dean are treated as the main cast more and more and aren’t ignored, after this they go from the less important two of the main cast to the center of the show as much as their dad. 

It’s also telling 24 dosen’t make it past this era, growing gary as a person.. something i’ll get into more in a bit as it’s time for...

Roll Call!

Okay starting with team venture we have Rusty. Last time I was at the end of my rope with the dick after two seasons of him just being the worst with not enough depth or charm to compensate. Thankfully this season felt like a much needed course correction: Rusty Venture still sucks suprising no one, but he’s now often way funnier when he does it. An instance that sticks out is Doctor Guymn Medcine woman where he sinks to his lowest point by trying to have Brock and dean teach an orangutan to box so he can make money off it. His actions are so cartionishly dickish and Dean and Hank’s reactions to it so honest (Dean feeling it’s “the saddest thing ever” and Hank being too busy trying to reinact Every Which Way but loose to care), and Brock so disgusted it works. Instead of focusing on how he’s not his dad people now just find Doc sad and pathetic for who he is. He also gets his commpuance WAY more often and in more satisfying ways, from being told how pathetic his leaching off his dad is, to getting a body dumped in the tub with him, Rusty gets humilated way more often when he tries to do something terrible and i’m here for it.

Most importantly.. we see more of his human side. For starters the mask is pulled off his dad, letting us see just HOW traumtizing being a boy adventuer was and just how bad his father was as a person. We have Jonas casually letting his dick hang out whlie having breakfast with his son, having sex on top of him, and see rusty forced to kill a guy and hear it wasn’t the only time. We see now he dosen’t just hate his dad because he resents being in his shadow. .he hates his dad because he resents being trapped in this LIFE: being nearly killed al lthe time, not being able to just live a normal life, having to constantly be compared to said dad by people who don’t know the real monster Rusty had to put up with. While it dose’nt forgive him being such a bad person, Rusty could’ve moved past his trauma, it makes him less sleazy and more pitable: we wish this poor kid had gotten away from all this instead of beign turned into the burnt out wreck we see now.

He also has far more pet the dog moments that show DEEEEP beneath his layers of selfishness and self loathing there’s still some good. The biggest moment is early on: Dr. Killinger comes into his life and slowly shapes him into a super villian.. and in doing so rusty would have more money, be able to strike at his brother with impunity, and be happier. Yet when given the choice... he turns it down. Doc may resent JJ sure.. but he dosen’t hate him. He may be morally shady as fuck.. but deep down there are lines he won’t cross. There’s a part of him that IS a hero.. that WANTS to do the right thing and make the world better... but it’s his own selfishness, stupidity and self loathing that keep him where he is. Rusty’s biggest enemy isn’t Jonas or JJ.. it’s himself. He dosen’t get therapy till next season and it dosen’t last either, he dosen’t see how badly he treats his kids or other people. He’s thorughly unhappy... because while his dad certainly started digging the hole Rusty’s life fell down, Rusty finished the rest of it. 

That said he again has his moments: While his initial reasons for getting together with Tara are purely to have sex with her, because of course it is

Rusty Sucks Su..

No.. once again PATIENCE. 

But he geninely bonds with her and connects with her. His ruining things is ENTIRELY an accident and one he’s unfairly blamed for. Sure he accidently torched the forest.. but it was WHILE Ginny was trying to MURDER HIM. For once Rusty DIDN’T fuck up a situation by sheer incompetence. Why the show or Tara blame him I have no idea whatsoever. 

His next one comes in ORB.. epsidoes upon episodes later. Look just because he has a FEW moments dosen’t mean he’s not an asshole, it just means he’s less of one than even he realized. While he complains about it he does still wear his old outfit for billy instead of changing it first chance he got, and endulges his friend in a go team venture. More to the point instead of trying to profit off the ORB or mess around with it he’s careful. He may hate his dad, for damn good rason.. but he knows if JONAS didn’t fuck around with something, it has to be taken care of carefully. Took him a WHILE for that lesson to sink in but hey it happened. 

The biggest one to me though is the finale as he gets one with each boys. When Dean has a complete panic attack Doc is shockingly the ONLY one not to demonize the boy for it, instead trying to comfot him and his response to Dean revealing he dosen’t want to be a boy adventuerer and just wants to be normal.. is just REALLY sad

“I had that dream once too”. 

It gives subtext to his pushing dean as a super scientest. He’s not doing so to be cruel and is going about it horribly instead of just trying to compromise with his son, again dick, but he knows Dean can’t escape this life even if he WANTS to, that the Venture name will be a curse on the poor boy same way it was for him and that maybe Dean can at least be succesful even with this albatross around his neck. 

Meanwhile with Hank while, naturally not as great, he not only lets Hank waste the backup clones on the OSI, which as he puts it “There goes my lifes work” but when Hank wants to get out there he wistfully says “you only live once”. He wasn’t just making a joke Hank would never get.. he geninely wants his boys safe and even if he sure as hell dosen’t show it, especially next season, Doc does love them both. It’s not a LOT by most standards but after two seasons of Doc barely showing any sort of goodness in him it’s a nice change of pace. 

Next up is Brock. Something I didn’t notice, even knowing how this season was but thought about looking back is how.. tired of Rusty brock feels this season.  While he’s always been annoyed at his boss friend’s antics, its clear this season he’s even more annoyed as Rusty’s antics sink lower: he is completely against the daycamp, the cloning after rusty’s negligence ineveitibly kills a kid, training a chimp to box, and how Rusty treats hank. His exausted “welcome to my life” when Rusty only realizes a big tag sale style event, JJ”s museum, is a bad idea when he’s not the one in the middle says it all: He wants to be Rusty’s friend and he loves him like a brother.. but he’s fed up with all this shit he gets pulled into because Rusty can’t grow. He held rusty at Rusty’s lowest, saw rusty shocked by being labeled a villian.. and then sees him not change at all. It’s clear that whlie the events of the finale Spur brock to quit, he was on the verge already and simply didn’t have a way out of the job, nor did he want to leave the boys.  He dosen’t kill rusty in orb sure and is heartbroken at the prospect.. but the fact he was clearly on the cusp of doing so if Rusty really activated showed how strained the two had become. 

But before we get to that faithful finale, we also see more of his past. Him as a young osi agent deathly loyal to hunter and willing to do whatever it takes, even if it leaves one student dead and puts billy’s life at risk. It shows that while Brock will never NOT be pragmatic he was far more in line with Hunter’s ruthlesness once.. and it’s likely billy’s injuring, mindwipe and the OSI’s plans to use Billy still that spurred his first change of heart. The first time Brock lost everything, he took it out on doc and friends, beating them up simply to get the rage out of him nad barely apologizing. Here even at his lowest.. he still risks everything to save billy. It was his fault the Quizboy ended up like this, and he does his best to make amends.

But of course the main meat of Brock’s changes.. is in the finale. Brock, in one of the most shocking moments in the shows history, quits. Not just the OSI but the Ventures, planning to leave to parts unknown. When I first saw it I was shook, and even as a naive teen part of me assumed he’d be back not long after... but this change stuck.

As for why Brock quit the finale sets it up well. We’d seen his annoyance with rusty all season, with it hitting it’s breaking point here with him shouting at the guy about forgetting hank and only tolerating his friend because he dosen’t want him to die. As for everything else it slowly breaks down over the two parter, something I didn’t even notice till I pulled at the string: Everything Brock cares about most in his life turns to shit. The OSI seemingly betrays him then instead of pulling at the obvious threads tries to reassign him, blaming one of the worst stretches of days of his life on some mental snappage, Mol ENTIRELY betrays him, using him as a pawn, something he clearly realized the second he heard the kill order didn’t come from the osi, meaning the love of his life didn’t care about him as more than a tool (and not in the fun way), gathers did the same AGAIN, and worst of all he saw the clones die. That to me was the last straw: he could leave the the osi and swear off mol while staying with them.. but seeing Doc sacrifice the boys safety net, seeing that HIS boys were now mortal and would likely die for real if he slipped up once broke him. Sure his leaving them is cruel ;he leaves them without a father really.. but I can’t blame the guy for knowing that his children will likely die with or without him and not wanting to stay to watch. He’s already seen them die enough but to see them die for real? He can’t take it. So he just leaves. And gets hit by an exploding car but he’s brock freaking sampson.. he’ll be back. But sometimes the hardest wounds aren’t the buckshot and various bullets and shark teeth you leave in you, but the ones to your soul. And those heal harder. 

Onto Hank whose his usual delightful self but still gets a rather big change that will have ramifications as the series goes: he meets Dermott, his best friend, secret half brother, and the kind of surly pile of dough and axe body spray every guy’s had as a friend at one time or another. The guy you pal around with for reasons you don’t really understand or if your Hank because you think he’s cool. I had one named Tyler so I very much related to this as well as Dean’s annoyance at this guy’s existance as I was both friends with the guy.. and questioned his boasting and weird mumbly tones. 

To hank though this mumbling, bullshitting, sweaty doofus is all he could want in his friend and Dermott hangs out with him because besides being a nice guy Hank fully buys into his stupid crap and lets him crash at his place and eat his food. The two are both outcasts: one because he was raised in an isolated compound nad has no real way to make friends, and the other because he’s a dipshit who likely assumes other people not liking them is because “their pussys” and not because he’s a wenis. 

And that friendship is WHY dermott works for me: Sure he sucks but ONLY hank takes him seriously. Everyone else treats him like the dumbass he is. As such it’s a case of two weirdo’s who offput people finding their person, and that’s sweet as hell. The two were brothers LONG before it was revealed they literally were.

This also nicely spices up the plot as it isolates Dean. For the first time i’ts not just him and Hank anymore, but this third guy who Dean can’t stand and vice versa. It takes time for the two to tolerate each other let alone be in the same room without Dean being annoyed at him and Dermott being a prick. For the first time Dean’s really on his own. Sure he had the crush on Triana but Hank was supportive of it. Teasing sure, brothers and all, but supportive. Here there’s something that truly seperates the two for the first time.. and the divisions of their brotherhood are only going to get wider as it goes. To quote one of the great poets of our time..

Dean really breaks out this season.. not in hives thankfully but character wise he really comes into his own. While Season 2 had fully developed who he was, Season 3 gives him some chances to show it off. He gets endearingly dorky moments such as trying to calm hank for the arrival of Jesus, not giving you context on that just yet, thinking the twins trying to seduce him means their turning into werodiles, turning up as a clown to try and comfort 24, giving him the device that “live your dreams even if that dream is of a spider that has your dad’s face for a penis”, and of course his crowning moment. After a day of being terrified of Dermott he gets his courage when the fucker hits on Triana. This is not only after the first time the two have had geniuine chemistry as not only does she listen to him rant, but calls him cute, thus runining his moment, but he only TRULY unleashes his might on the fucker after he dispresctfully hits on Triana and ignores her blatant hatred of her. She didn’t NEED someone to step in, the show makes that clear, the show dosen’t take away it’s agency.. it simply shows another side to Dean. That if pushed TOO far he will push back and he has far more rage inside him than he seems to. It’s also cathartic: Dermott was geninely being the worst and while punching people usually isn’t the solution to your problems, it was the only way he’d ever back off. And noticably while Dermott does needle dean still he not only isn’t AS horrible with his insults, but dosen’t test him too bad. Granted a lot of this is, much like his brother.. in music hank, is that Dermott has the self preservation instict of a bag of sand, but still the fact he dosen’t go as far as he did mocking dean again, mostly making understandable jokes on Dean’s old timey newspaper man outfit, and at worst lies that he won the fight later shows he did at least learn not to push the kid too far. 

We also finally see Dean outright break down about his adventuering life. While we had a massive hint at the end of season 2 with his speech and a smaller one with the spider dad penis, this season has him come right out and admit it while sobbing and having a panic attack. I just feel so bad for the kid, not just because I have those too but because I know the feeling of being mocked while having them or your parent not knowing what to do to calm you when your like that.  It’s harrowing and I feel worse knowing no one there has the empathy to actually help him. Doc at least for once dosen’t pile on which is shocking but at least shows some deceny. 

So before we move on to Team Monarch we have another character to adress who will be in this section for the rest of the series so best to include him now: Sgt. Hatred. Hatred is properly introduced here after last season.. and had a lot going against him to start since the last scene we’d had with the guyy had him droolling over his wife’s feet (fetishes are okay but maybe don’t be extra creepy about them at a wedding) while hank cringed not just because of.. all of that but also because the guy had tried to molest him once. 

Somehow though.. Hatred is a decent supporting character. He has an earntestness about him, geninely gave up being a pedophile and tries to stick to it and gets some really great moments; Shooting Doc with the rubber bullets, his schmoozing with Dr. Z and of course his attempts to get doc to kill him (”I tried using a shrink ray but all I got was a baby tounge”). I can kinda see why Doc and Jackson upgraded him to main cast: he had potetial. My problem is they never really quite got how to handle him being a refomred pedophile without making it into some sort of joke like him telling them “I can’t be around these sexy children” (the only time it worked for me all season). There is an episode showing him geninely struggle with it in a fairly good dramatic way, but it was just a thing they never quite knew how to deal with without it coming off creepy and it feels weird having him inegrated into a family with two teenage boys he almost molested once. It just.. never quite worked for me. Maybe that’ll change, maybe that won’t, I’ll have to see as we go. 

Moving on to Team Monarch we have our mighty Monarch.. going through a bit of a rough period. While he’s married the love of his life everything else isn’t going well as he barely gets to use his henchman at first and has to put up with the Moppets who.. we’ll get to. Oh we’ll get to them. But while that all could be managable the fact is the guild is forcing him to not arch dr. venture. And honestly they, and his wife should’ve seen “Forcing the guy who built his whole career around meancing one guy to leave that guy alone” would end VERY poorly. As in a bunch of bodies piled up nad him going half insane till said wife finds a loop hole to get him back to dr. venture insane. It’s intresting to watch though. Creepy to watch his weird psycosexual attraction to his own brother though... especailly the robot fucking. Yeah monarch molesting a robot with Ruty’s face on it is the height of his madness. It shows the two sides of who he is: when he’s able to arch who he wants he’s in the zone, able to do so well against both older venture brothers. But without it, he lacks passion. He lacks any purpose to do it because this is what he’s always done and later seasons will chip away at what it means to really hate a guy you don’t know why you hate and who dosen’t hate you back. 

Then we get to Shiela “Sigh” Oh Shiela. While she does debut her fresh as hell Dr. Mrs The Monarch Costume, otherwise she gets the short end of the stick this season. SHe’s mostly there to tell the monarch he can’t arch dr. venture and ignore his bigger issues till they almost blow up in his face. It comes across as out of character since the whole reason she loves the guy is just HOW passionate she is at this.. and knows it’s simply about this ONE GUY.  Making him quit because the guild wanted him to is one thing but Jackson and Doc can’t decide if it’s because she dosen’t like him doing it or just to keep him from getting killed. Her side of things is just.. never really explored. Instead she just plays mother to the moppets which again dosen’t fit. They.. they aren’t childen. Their grown men. And transparently creepy with her. Why does she keep them around?

And since we’re on the subject let’s get it out of the way shall we? I fucking hate the Moppets. I went into this season with an open mind figuring that like many episodes, I probably overplayed how bad they were in my brain. But nope like Love Bheits or Guess Whose Coming to State Dinner I didn’t oversell it they really REALLY suck. For starters playing your only characters with Dwarfisim as creepy perverted sociopaths is.. a choice. But even beyond that there’s just.. nothing likeable about them. Their creepy, they bully 21 and 24, try to KILL them along with the boys, and make a ton of creepy unsettling comments about Shielia. I don’t get why she keeps them around for the next two seasons or why Jackson and Doc thought adding two creeps who do nothing but try to murder people and sexually harass a beloved character would be a good idea. Jackson tried to justify it as a mirorr to 21 and 24, showing what you get with more compitent henchman but it just.. dosen’t work. Their just creepy assholes who overstay their welcome...

Moving on. So this is the last season of 21 and 24 as a duo. Not much else to say before we tackle the flaming skull in the room: they have a rivalry with the moppets that dosen’t work because the moppets are obejcetivly terrible, and two episodes really focusing on them: Tears of a Seacow and THe Lepordtrists. One paints them at their best the other.. not so much. Tears gives the both tons of great moments, especially 24 from putting the roof up , to “by god let’s go take a dump in his pool” to his interaction with dermott with 21 not far behind with the slide gag and thinking hanks a highlander, along with his “why dont’ I know anything”. It’s a truly classic episode. 

The Lepordortists though.. dosen’t work for me. They spend a whole episode being a dick to Scott for no other reason than they somehow luckily surivive everything. I do not remotely blame him for snapping and doing an elaborate revenge plan later, after being mocked by two jackholes for simply doing your job and being beaten to near death by brock fucking sampson i’d snap and kidnap a bunch of sidekicks and henchman too. 

That said even with that black mark on their records.. 24′s death is geninely heartbreaking. His pathetic “I don’t know”, and the fact he clearly died being blown up by two guys who hate him. Seriously the only reason it took the moppets so long to die for this is that Jackson and Doc kept having to put it off and that inferuates me more as they just hung around like a wet fart. But even the skull black comedy just dosen’t undersell how stupid and pointless his death is. 24 died because two idiots pressed a button and a robot hyjacked a car.  It’s pathetic, i’ts pointless.. it’s the venture bros in a nutshell. Perfect stuff. 

Moving on to our supporting cast Pete and Billy who at the time were really not liked by the fans or Mike Lazzlo according to the book. The former found them annoying the latter was Lazzlo seeing them as everything he felt wrong with the shows deep cut nerdery.. a criticsim he backed off of once the show took off and it was clear that same very specific brand of refrences was part of it’s appeal.  Wether it’s teenage me or adult me missing a refrence, I can at least appricate it’s thorughly theres and there’s plenty I do get. There’s an obscure refrence that hits the sweet spot for anybody and sometimes opens you up to new things. I found David Bowie thanks to this show, and even as late as the final season it introduced me to the Flash FM station from Grand Theft Auto Vice City. Fucking smooth as butter. 

And while I get the former for season 1, the two were incredibly flat as characters and both just awkward nerds with no personality and Pete was a bullying jackass in college (and present day), Season 2 helped flesh both out: White was still an asshole, but had a bit more charm and Billy got his incredibly nerdy side. There were kinks to be worked out.. and that’s what Season 3 did.  Even putting aside the character defining backstory in “Invisible Hand of Fate”, the two are more at ease: Pete is rightfully shuffled into being mocked more, onl really getting in zingers on Rusty (who always deserves it ) and Billy on the occasions he does actually deserve it. 

Billly however gets the most as he’s now an unabashed audience surrogate: a fanboy who oos and aahs at cartoons and comics in the same way I honestly do. I don’t have tons of collectables because i’m broke, but that sheer enthuasim and love for superhero stuff warts and all is something I admire and I too get way into the weeds of a TV Show.. as evidenced by the fact this article isn’t even close to the end yet. The two have really settled into the show well and it’s made obvious why it uses them: their the kind of people who watch it and fit neatly into the universe, being the only friends rusty has because they lack better options and so does he. I mean white wise as I can contest Billy is pretty great. 

But what solidified that is of course Invisible Hand. Invisible Hand of Fate is an excellent episode, one I didn’t like as much on first airing but love dearly now, a truly tragic piece that shows WHY Billy is the way he is. Even as a quiz show champ he probably had the capability to be the next great adventuer and to follow in rusty’s footsteps.. but a cheating scandal and White’s dubious advice lead the poor kid astray. He ended up sans an eye, abused by the government, loosing a hand to a guy he geninely grew to like who was also geninely evil by pure accident and is now scraping by with the guy who did this to him and keeps trying to keep the guy mindwiped. It’s a miracle after getting all his past back in invisible hand he didn’t outright kill Pete and Brock. Well the latter the former would’ve killed him. But he still got to punch Brock in the nuts and live. 

That said we also see WHY the two are friends: besides having a lived in dynamic with one another, Pete, despite himself, is incredibly loyal. He geninely feels bad for the quiz scheme and while yes he needs Billy’s underground quizbowling to get them to the venture compound, it’s also clear he geninely feels sorry for Billy as an outcast himself thanks to his albinoism and wants to help make up for screwing over the poor bastards life. He even leaps in to protect billy after he looses his eye. Sure it looses them the money but Pete White is usually the first to run the fuck away from a problem and was even less responsible back then, which is somehow possible. The fact he ran toward a snarling poor pupper who was forced into this and gave up money to save him. But the telling sign is where he is when he gets billy back... in the middle of the desert, in a trailer, half dead by the thing that can hurt him most , hoping his best friend will come back. As TV Tropes pointed out to me he waited in the desert , where he could die most, where he lost his friend just hopping he’d come back to him... and hasn’t left him since. Pete may pick on billy and may of kept up with brock keeping him in the dark, but he loves the guy and will never abandon him again. It humanizes pete, making us actually like the guy for once.. which is rare because he’s ALMOST as much of a prick as rusty. Almost. 

Speaking of pricks, let’s talk about Jonas. Jonas gets fleshed out too this season, going from a mythical figure we rarely saw who was at worst ignorantly neglectful.. to the complete and total asshole we all know him as. As we see over the season he flashed his penis to his son, had loud sex without a care if Rusty heard (it’s okay for him to have an active sex life, no shame in that, but he has a big ass compound. He didn’t have to do it right next to rusty’s room.), left several astronauts to die by ape and never told anyone, was blatantly racist with his disguise in “Now Museum” being so over the top racist and half assed it speaks to the times no one saw through it, and of course his crowning moment of terrible actions: building a fallout shelter, plannig to alter the people’s moods with chemicals.. and leaving ORPHANS stranded down there with said chemicals to die, never having told anyone what happened. Jonas was a monster, a egotist who adventuered not for the good of man but for himself. His sex life isn’t the issue, apart from accidently having sex on top of his son, but his callousness, treatment of rusty (leading to the poor boy killing a man TWICE. I take that rusty venture cartoon incident as canon since.. come on of course Action man would do that). It makes why Rusty’s so bitter about being excluded from the museum by JJ: it’s not just ego for once, but that JJ wrote Rusty out of his own legacy after all the shit he had to go through to be a part of it. Sure Rusty’s shitty, I get that, but this is one of the few times his shittiness makes perfect sense. JJ built a museum honoring the man who tormented Rusty so much and didn’t evfen bother to include him, at most giving the guy a speech.  Rusty may suck.. but now we know why.

And since he makes a good segue it’s time to talk about the other Jonas. This is his last season being incredibly relevant. I THINK he makes a cameo next time and knows he makes on in season 5, and then of course.. we all know what happens between seasons. 

But this is the last time he’s a major part of the recurring cast, getting two episodes centered around him and several other apperances, showoing he’s both grown his company even more.. and that he’s grown tired with rusty. At this point it’s clear he’s onto the fact his brother’s a prick and is tired of it.. which is fair. 

But we also see this season JJ himself is far from perfect, which I really like: like his father JJ seems like a flawless paragon on the surface but like his brother and dad has an egotistical and seflish streak. He’s just not as horrible about them. But they do show up in full force in now museum: he takes advantage of the pirate crew, the captain and invites richard for synergy despite him having horribly abused his partner.. now JJ”s. He shows the same lack of carring for other people’s feelings his dad and brother have for one moment and annoyingly to me gets away with it with a schmaltzy montage. Said montage shows why the museum opening of alll thigns is what brings out his inner prick: it was his chance ot try and honor the father he never got to know and the people whose stories and experinces let him know his dad. Deep at heart he just wants to know his dad.. and i’ts better he never truly got to. Dosen’t excuse his behavior, but hey. He also needles the pirate captain about his past which is shitty. Don’t do that. 

That said we also see while JJ did pick up layers of prick he’s not nearly as bad as his family: his relationship with Sally hits a speedbump with Now Museum but by the end she gets why he went overboard and both of JJ”s spotlight episodes make it abundantly clear that while Richard hid sally as some sort of shame and abusively controlled her, JJ happily let’s her into his life and is nothing but proud of his loving wife/girlfriend/whatever. He neglects her at the museum due to work stuff, but he also makes a point of introducing her to people. His treatment of ned though is easily his biggest pet the dog moment, treating ned as you should treat anyone with a mental disablility: just like anyone else. He is soft when talking to the guy, geneinly has nothing but love and respect talking to him and when desiinign his robot happily made a magic clown for his faviorite brother. He also gets undrestandably pissed at Monarch using the r-word and at Doe and cardholder trying to shoot him. While granted treating a mentally disabled man should be the bare minimum of decency JJ goes above and beyond to show nothing but love and support and it warms the hell out of me, especially since I had a step-aunt with downs syndrome who sadly passed. One of the nicest women I ever knew. So seeing it being portrayed with such tact here for the most part really makes me smile. 

Speaking of the lepordoritsts that brings out another side of jj and i’ts an intresting one. It’s doc and jackson posing a simple question: now they’ve set up the game of arching, of a super scientest being stalked by some jackass in a suit, what happens when someone dosen’t want to play by the rules and just kill the guy meancing him. JJ is Jackson and Doc’s stand in for every comic nerd, therselves included, who has wondered why the army dosen’t just shoot the green goblin. Granted I could probably explain that myself, he’s a small time criminal and can likely take out said army with his bombs honestly, but that’s not the point. The point here is this episode explains WHY the good guy side of thing puts up with the system. For the bad guys it’s obvoius: get out of jail free card, support when they need it, arch matchmaking. They even have gated communites and apartment complexes. While the guild won’t give you a ton of resources, like Dungeons and Dragons they’ll at least give you the basics for free because they want as many people in this as possible. If you can raise or steal or be born into enough money to escalate your threat great. Play by the rules and you get to be some jackass with a costume with no consequences. Break them, which thankfully includes sexual assault, and they’ll break you.  It’s fair.

As for why the OSI puts up with it despite not over the board acknokwledging the guild, it’s simple and Brock puts it best when he’s brought in to explain to JJ WHY this crap goes on. 

Brock Samson: Hey, no disrespect, Jonas, but it isn't so easy. These guys like their system. It's what they do. You take that away, and you are looking at a bunch of pissed off nutbags with ray guns and giant... I don't know, a giant octopus-slash-tank with laser eyes!

The OSI is constantly annoyed with the guild, understandably.. but they also understand NO guild is way worse. I mean let’s use their green goblin example shall we? Without a guild to tamp down on norman and keep tabs on him, he KILLED gwen stacey, died, came back , and has on various occasions taken over superheroing in the us, killed several people including flash thomspon while draped in a symbiote and taken over a country. Stuff the guild would never allow him to do provided it didn’t benefit them. If you don’t have some structure in place everything goes fucking nuts and Brock gets that. It explains, as agro as he gets WHY he has never killed the monarch: the guild WILl escalate and it wo’nt be pretty. We even saw what a kill order form them looks like last season and the ventures survivied it by the skin of their teeth: doc lost an arm, brock barely got to the boys in time, and they ONLY called it off because brock was willing to go scorched earth on them if they touched the boys. The system is obnxious sure but it works. Rusty even figures it out this season: while he’ll never not be annoyed with the monarch the period between hatred and monarch was full of half assed arches trying to take the covetted venture arching spot and dying horribly. With monarch and hatred at most he has a bunch of property damage he can’t get insnurance for which sucks, the guild should cover that shit honestly, but is better than actually dying. 

JJ just dosen’t fit into this world: Rusty barely does but JJ really just wants to be a cool science guy.. but dosen’t get as Reed Richards sometimes you have to fight Dr. Doom.. and sometimes he makes your brother-in-law constantly on fire because your brother in law slept with his fiance because Dan Slott is stupid. It’s just the things you have to put up with. It’s likely why he got sidelined: JJ isn’t a bad character.. but he’s just so succesful your basically stuck between either turning him into an asshole, as they almost did or not using him. It’s not like Doc and Jackson didn’t have ideas, the clear layout of each of his families rooms after our side of the venture family takes them over shows they did think about these characters.. but their just too good at their jobs to fit cleanly. It’s likely why they just let Sally, Rocket and Ned have a quite, peaceful retirement mourning JJ but drug Pirate Captain into things: a former scooby doo villian and recovering tranq dart addict just.. fits this weirdly specific world from trying to recruit kids into scooby doo villany (”The rubber mask set.. the little guys”) to having the dart monkey on his mask. He’s good people. But I see why JJ was off in space then was sadly killed off in the most tragic way possible: he was fun while he lasted but eventually his shtick of being better than rusty would just get tiring. The only real arc for JJ would be finding out what his dad REALLY was as a person.. and it just feels cruel to do that to him. Rusty has to live with Jonas being a monster... JJ dosen’t and got to die not knowing what his dad truly was.  And honestly h’es probably better off that way.

So we’re now down to team Triad. Their delightful as ever.. but this is the start of their diminsihing importance sadly. Dr. O is still around plenty but he’s no longer part of the main cast and will only see less and less apperances each season, till vanishing entirely in season 6. Outside of that season he averages one important episode a season and maybe a few cameos. That said they go out on a high: Jerfferson chides Dr. O for not really knowing him, Al wears a machine gun crotch and a moment to shine in ORB. They get some dignity. Dr. O really dosen’t change much and while he gets good focus in the Doctor is Sin, it’s nothing out of the ordinary. He looses his home but we don’t really dwell on that for long on his side. 

Triana however gets it far worse. Next season is her last and it was clear by this one they’d ran out of ideas of what to really do for her. She shows up thrice: her apperance in The Dr Is Sin is heartbreaking, loosing her home and her friends and not being in a great place (though her dying al’s hair is fantastic, I wish he’d kept it up. She also gets the most ship tease she’s had with Dean, talking with him normally and even calling him cute. but it goes nowhere and feels unecessarily cruel to the shippers. It teases progress... only to fairly but still totally torpedo any chance of them as a couple next season. It’s the right call but then maybe don’t tease it. I feel they wasted this character: Triana was a snarky, down to earth contrast to these two dorks and while Dermott stepped in, their one interaction this season, and all series even, shows there was plenty of potetial as she didn’t remotely take his crap. I’m sad to see her go next time even if i’ts a fitting sendoff. And that will be our sendoff for characters so onto the funnest part of this

EPISODE BREAKDOWNS

You remember how last time I said I was probably done making new catagories? well

I’m adding two regular ones and a suprise very specific one I didn’t know i’d need. I thought about doing one for the moppets but their only relevant this season and I don’t want to relive their shit. Not a big fan of reliving Rusty’s worst moments either but frankly if I didn’t my brain might explode from the stress. So out of the ones you get to know about up front we have Jonas Sucks Suprising No One: This idea only came to me in the leadup to writing this one, but I realized it was necessary. Jonas sucks way more than his son, he just dosen’t do it as often because it took him two seasons to get going and we only see him in flashback. But he’s still so ungodly horrible that like rusty I need this sectoin to cope. I also thought about giving the moppets one but while it’s cathartic to call out Rusty, Jonas and Brock with them it’d just make me more angry having to remember them. Also he’s already start: Jonas Sucks Surprising No One: 1. The only time from the first two seasons I can think of that truly warrants this: testing a ride on Rusty because “you said you wanted to help daddy son” Aka the only hint we had of just how bad he was.  Dermott is Spare Parts Bud: Just because I don’t hate Dermott dosen’t mean he isn’t delightful stupid and edge lordy, so this is one part compensating for his ego and one part just plain fun as his specific egotistical bullshitting is so hilarously stupid and nonsensical it has to be recorded. Plus his brothers each get a section and while not a twin or appearing as often Dermott warrants one too.

27. Shadowman 9: In the Cradle of Destiny 

Summary: The Monarch and Dr. G are put on trial for the Monarch’s unauthorized arching, leading to a trip down memory lane as the two revisit their origins as villians up to their first true meeting. Meanwhile 21 and 24 have to put up with the moppets.”Sigh”  My Thoughts:  This was an excellent start to the season. I only vaugely remembered this one but it’s packed with good stuff, from the Monarch’s blues brothers style first arching (that’s naturally foiled by getting out of the car) to the lampshade hanging on the wipes and public domain soundtrack. Honestly this would’ve been a Super Good Award contendor had it not had the moppets in such a big roll. Though the big moment with all the villians coming to help is classic as is the gatorade stabbing. This is a fun origins episode and one i’ll likely go back to.  One last thing I almost forgot to adress.. much like the show. The bungling of “Monarch I’m...”. The series ANSWERS IT, turns out she revealed she got him to stop arching dr. venture on the guild’s say so, but it’s so offhand it dosen’t FEEL like a resultion and for years I assumed they hadn’t. Jackson takes full responsiblity for it and apologized for it in the book so i’m not going to overly hash it out, it was a stupid mistake that happened because by the time they got to writing this episode, they forgot to care about it. It’s far from the series worst mistake.  Best Moment: Again the Monarch pulling a Blues Brothers. While the editiing joke and Shielia’s response to phantom limb’s speech are very close (”You evilved your legs?” will never not kill me) The Monarch screaming inside his car while giving us a tour of the compound only to get his ass decked the moment he gets outside (while lying his ass off about it in present day) is fucking classic and had their rivarly summed up from the world go: Venture is barely cohernt of what’s going on while the monarch tries incredibly hard while at the same time missing a basic point.  Questions For Later: Phantom Limb’s cameo at the end. While the manitaur joke dosen’t work fo rme it does hint that he’s out there... though we won’t see that till next season i’m fine with it. Guy just got a full arc, and the show had other things to deal with. Not only that it’s not very long into season 4, only episode 5 before they get to that and the first four of that are spent cleaning up more important threads and giving us one of the best guest spots in human history. So fair enough.  First Appearance: Vain Gloria, the Council of 13. I”ll properly count the individual members of importance, Mantle, Dragoon, Vendata and Dr. Z when they show up later, but the rest of them are an amporphous collective for the most part so they get counted as one. 

28. The Doctor is Sin

Summary: Doc’s life somehow gets crappier as he’s set upon by tons of second rate villians and Col Manhowers rejects his latest pitch using his dad’s stuff. Things are grim till everyone’s faviorite evil Mary Poppins, Dr. Henry Killinger (And his magic murder bag) shows up and makes Doc’s Life better.. and makes Orpheous’ worse by evicting him and Triana. Now it’s up to Dr. O, Al and Brock to stop Killinger before he makes Doc into a villian.  My Thoughts: Another standout. While the first episode format here is weird, split into two basically due to constraints it works. This episode was also Jackson proving Killinger could work more than once, with Doc happy to be proved wrong on the topic. The episode wonderfully dives into just how bad a person rusty is and why he’s that way, while showing that beneath the layers of grease.. he’s not an outright villain. We also get al and hank both wearing a crotch mountned machine gun, Brock being explained his tennat rights, Al with purple hair and Killinger calling Dr. O a silly billy. This episode rocks.  Best Moment: Lot of choices here as always but for once i’m going with the dramatic one: doc’;s heel relization. The man left there standing naked, and desperatley asking brock “am I a bad person”.. the most Brock can say is “ehhhh”. He’s left cold, alone, clinging to a reluctant brock as he ponders just how bad it is. It’s a shame it didn’t sink in but it’s still incredibly powerful.  Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: 61 Letting Killinger evict Dr. O and not even notcing he’d done so, 2 for having brock wear blackface, and another 3 for writing clearly sexual lines for the underage trian and him MAKING OUT WITH HER into the script. Good fucking god Rusty was one count of statutory not enough for you? Jesus.  Jonas Sucks Surprising No One: 2. Showing his dick to his son. I know that happens accidentally a lot but like... he didn’t even bother to cover it or anything.  Sucky Sampson: One of only a few this season brock improved dramatically between seasons, but agreeing to wear brownface also nets him 2. 17.  Hanktastic: Crotch Gun Hank. Nuff Said Deanarific: Dean riding in those hover boots. So fucking precious. What a precious boy.  This Didn’t Age Well: Brown. Face. 

29. The Invisible Hand of Fate 

Summary: It’s flashback time again as Billy’s wiped memories reawaken, setting him on a journey as he remembers his past as a disgraced quizboy, underground quiz champion, dog fight particpant, and OSI mole investigating Phantom Limb.. and causing the accident that would change both their fates.  My Thoughts: Another one that I didn’t think much of due to shoddy memories that was excellent as hell. The only complaint I have is, like I said earlier, it’s placed weirdly early in the season despite being able to fit anywhere. Otherwise it’s a blisteringly good character piece as we witness Billy’s tragic fall and further fall thanks to Pete and the OSI. We also get a great origin for Phantom Limb, seeing why he turned against society (being an outcast), and that while already working with the guild he only became a villian himself after the invisible hand of fate choose him. Great title by the way. It’s also nice to see Brock’s past, see what dropped him to Venture duty and why he was so loyal to hunter. It also nicely explains WHY Hunter went rogue: the OSI badly screwed him over for a botched mission that turned out ot be completely on the nose and all thanks to a mole. No onder he fomred SPHYNX!. The ending is also truly great, one of the shows best and only not the best because of how next season ends. More on that next time.  Best Moment: The ending. Poetic, tragic, sums up this episode and the shows character perfectly.  Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: 62. Refusing to hire Pete and Billy despite White being his only friend and ghosting Moira. Granted she is DANGEROUSLY unstable but doing this only made that go so much worse and put his unborn kids in danger.  Questions For Later: Sgt. Hatred’s past with the OSI, Shore Leave and Co’s breief apperance, the pyramid wars, Gather’s motive for betraying the OSI, MOira being around the time the kids were born but NOT being shown as the mother,  Billy never having graduated.. this episode is a cornocopia of setups for later payoffs.  First Appearance: Shore Leave and Mile High

30. Home is Where the Hate Is 

Summary: Sgt. Hatred starts his arching gig with Dr. Venture while Monarch has trouble letting the same gig go. Both end up colliding at Sgt. Hatred’s shin dig celebrating his new arch, while The Venture Bros, 21 and 24 end up on the run for their lives from the Moppets.  My Thoughts: This episode almost won the Pissed in God’s eye award. It was back in forth with the actual winner. But it’s highs are just a touch higher. Hatred at the compound is a treat from his storming leading to one of the series funniest jokes, one I had honestly forgot until now and never realized it’s true brilliance, his interview with venture and his basket of howdy do. As much as i’m very conflicted on the guy, he was a riot this episode. It has some really great bits.. but the moppets chasing the henchman and venture bros just does not work as they suffer no real commpuance for almost killing two dopes and two teen dopes for petty reasons.  The party stuff is also mostly just.. okay. Not the best episode but it says somethign to this seaosn’s quality that one of i’ts low points isn’t NEARLY as low as Season 1 or 2′s.  Best Moment: Dean’s reaction to Sgt. Hatre’s opening salvo fo rhis arching: a blood red cloud “Hank don’t be scared when you see a man emerge from the clouds.. that’s JESUS”. It’s all in Mike’s wonderful delivery. Hanks baffled reaction helps though.  Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: 63. Being mad at the boys for almost not getting to go to the party. You have friends and Dr. O hire a fucking sitter.  Hanktastic: Hank and his best buddy 21 giggling as they leave 24 to Dean’s patch adams bit Deanarific: Again the jesus line though i’m willing to give him another for his hosptial clown routine and his spider penis dad speech resulting from it.  Questions For Later: The moppets plotting a gas leak. Why were they kept on so long again? 

31. The Buddy System (Super Good Best Episode Winner)

Summary: Rusty decides to open a Day Camp on the compound to cash in on his Rusty Venture Cartoon fame. Shockingly only one child dies horribly in the process. Meanwhile Hank makes a forever friend brock has to restrain himself from murdering, The Monarch spies on the camp using the moppets and Action Johnny has a nervous breakdown.  My Thoughts: This is my faviorite episode of the show, closely tied with Operation Prom. It’s the episode that made me fall in love with the show and revisiting it it was even better than my memory, with more jokes popping out  a me. It’s why I love Tag Sale eps and honestly probably why this retrospective exists as it’s what lit the flame that burned all this time for the show. 

And despite this I DID consider other eps.. but even ignoring the comfort food feelings it brings out in me.. this ep is just that good. It’s packed densely with great jokes. Bringing together most Allies doc has (only Pete and JJ are absent from this scam) will do that. From the rubber mask set pitch, to the order of the triad’s saftey demonstration to Action Johnny and Dr. Z, there’s just so much to go into i’d need a full review for this one and out of the episodes it’s the one i’m most likely give it’s own review. It’s just that good. Every moment of it is entertaining, every moment of it engaging and it even contributes to the plot, moving the monarch’s along a bit while also bringing Dermott in to shake things up. It also gives dean his shining moment beating the shit out of Dermott, a moment that woudln’t be topped till season 7. It’s just good and I could spend all day quoting it but I’m restraining myself because I have other episodes to get to. Simply the best better than all the rest. Better than any one, any one i’ve ever met. Also the ONLY time the moppets work for me as them obviously not being kids works as does the with a knife bit.  Best Moment: A hard choice yet I have to go with the most obvious answer: Dean beating the shit out of dermott. The lead up is great with Dean slowly breaking down.. but the unexpected snap from impotently raging at dermott for disrpescting triana to absolutely wailing on him, literally snot nosed

While Hank and Triana stare in shock. The reactions of the adults are also great: Dr. Z’s iconic line of “That boy is a spinning murder top!” (Dr.Z is also just plain great the entire episode, one of the best additions to the cast even if a white man should not be playing him. I’m glad his roll only balloned from here), Doc trying to stop him, and Brock enthuastically stopping doc from that so he can enjoy Dermott’s commpuance. A true landmark of the series.  Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: Given he runs a neglegent day camp, a lot. Counting them up first: setting up the camp in the first place, charging extra for autographs (something the guys based on seeing many blowhard assholes like Rusty at cons at their tables), not giving the kids food only giving them combos, getting me to try combos by mentoning them (which are not great. YOu’d think a pretzel filled with cheese  would be great and it should be but it somehow isn’t. ), calling brock racist because of his own stupidity, being a dick to hank for wanting to show his new friend his room, not admitting he was a dick to hank, overly grounding hank for simply trying to fit in, leading a group of chidlren into a part of the compound he didn’t bother to inspect, leaving billy for dead, triple points for LEADING TO A CHILD’S DEATH, using a barely sober action johnny, giving the parents of the child he killed a barely fucntioning clone slug, then having the fucking balls to say he did them a FAVOR. That’s 15, the highest count in any episode thus far bringing him up to 78. I didn’t expect him to get up THIS high as he was more entertaining about his jackassery Jonas Sucks Suprising No One: 3. Leaving astronauts to die. Not as bad as Rusty getting a child killed but trust me, he’ll do much worse Hanktastic: When dean asks what Dermott his his response is “Dean that’s a teen ager” saying it so weird I will quote it forever more.  Deanarific: Decking dermott. Spinning Murder Top indeed Dermott is Spare Parts Bud: Oh so many. His mouthing off to ACTUAL martial artist brock sampson (which only BARELY dosen’t get him murdered), his calling Triana a suicidegirl (a goth fanservice site), and his constant treatment of dean. Dermott is VERY lucky the only person he pissed off was Dean and Brock whose hands were tied by his code.  Questions For Later: Dermott thinking brock’s his father and his “mom” sending him there in the first place. Also the gorilla place will be back in season 5 surprisingly. We also get the seeds for Action Johnny and Z to reunite later.  First Appearance: Dr. Z and Dermott Fictel

32. Doctor Quymn, Medicine Woman (The Jackson Publick Pissed in God’s Eye Award Winner) 

Summary: Doc heads to the amazon to hit an all time low and ends up reconnecting with an old sweetheart, while  having to deal with a wererodile and her overprotective bodyguard. Meanwhile Hank gets a crush on said sweetheart’s twin daughters who prefer Dean who prefers solving the mystery.  My Thoughts: This is one that like Assasinanny I dreaded for the finale..and yeah no ways around it the twins ignore Dean’s consent, and while they clearly don’t know how consent works given the time this episode came out and their sheltered background it’s still incredibly creepy. I do think the girls could redeem themselves but the moment itself is ... not great.  The rest of the episode is ehhh: I’ts neat seeing a weird parallel verison of the family: a brock analogue whose in love with her charge, twins who act exactly alike and a dr. venture who just wants to help. That said it just dosen’t come together. Ginny is a bad steroytype of an obessive butch lesbian (or pansexual given she also comes onto brock, but same principal), and while the twins and Tara hav epotetial, they never come back to reach it. We get one mention of this incident. 

I also don’t like the whole fire being played as rusty’s fault and osme great betryal, even by the creators. He fucke dup. Rusty does that. And given how bad he usually is his romance with tara was suprisingly sweet. He’s still a dick and came to the jungle for the worst reasons but for him, and only for him, this is far from the worst he’s done.

Overall it’s just so beige and unintersting that it ended up winning the worst episode aware while I typed this summary. No really I was going to give it to the next episode but I realized that one at least tried more. This one had a great premise.. but just didn’t do anything cool with it. You have a distaff team venture... how do you bungle the ball this bad with sterotypes and attempted rape? How? Also why did Doc call this the dean almost get laid episode?

Also i’m following OSW Review’s playbook and since he’s won the award THREE TIMES, the award is now offically the Jackson Publick Pissed in God’s Eye Award. I like the guy but he wrote the worst episode in every season thus far. We’ll see if he can shake this going foward. 

Best Moment: The boxing orangutan, aka Doc’s lowest point. Dean saying “i’ts the saddest thing ever” (which brock agrees with) and Hanks’ attempts to reinact any which way but loose are priceless.. as is “Clyde” beating the shit out of hank. Who I love but.. .come on I can’t not laugh at hank’s stupidity getting him beaten up by a wild animal. The cherry on top is Doc trying to say “it isn’t what it looks like” only for Dean’s matter of fact response of “yeah it is”  Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: A double pointer for the orangutan thing. THat’s fucked up even for him, and another for his response to brock calling him out on this being “I like to mix it up”. He also gets another for his itnitial plan to sleep with tara and one more for not stopping his sex metaphors despite brock not only getting them but CLEARLY wanting him to. 83. He’s close to a hundred. Will he reach it before the end of the season? Stay tuned.  Jonas Sucks Surprising No One: 4. Accidently having sex atop his child. I mean it was unteitonally but he still had no clue where his kid is and didn’t remotely care if he saw him.  Hanktastic: His weird CSI rant is close (Seriously who let him watch that? How could that end well) but again.. Bang Clyde wins.  Deanarific: His simple curt “yes it is”  Questions For Later: Tara being Col Gentelman’s daughter will come back to bite Rusty in the ass in a few episodes and the twins get mentioned again. Otherwise not much.  This Didn’t Age Well: Guess

33. What Goes Down, Must Come Up

Summary: An attempt to use an old Drill leads to brock being trapped with a subpar antman and a super computer trying to nuke the world and Doc being trapped with a bunch of music video refrences. ONLY THE ORDER OF THE TRIAD CAN SAVE THEM.  My Thoughts: As you can tell by the “I thought the next episode would get it” , this one was almost a pissed in god’s eye award winner. It’s better than I remembered.. but still not the best. I think i’d honestly like it better if I got more of the music video refrences, and I do give the guys credit for something this creative. It’s why I ended up NOT giving it the award: the idea of these guys is just too creative and their weird cargo cult too funny not to give it to them. And the circumstances behind them are just too damn horrifying. This is easily one of the worst things Jonas ever did and the fact it’s not the worst shows just how much further he can sink.  We also do get some genuiely great comedy moments: The triad, “And because he’s gay”, Pete accidnetly starting the apocalypse, and the ending where Pete and the tirad are prepped for doomsday while Dean and Hank celebrate. It has it’s moments when i’ts NOT focused on the doc and brock plots. But said plots drag: the cargo cult thign is creative, but it just isn’t funny, especailly since the punchline for why their dressed like that dosen’t come till the stinger which feels very exposiny while brocks’ part.. dosen’t quite work. Jackson admits this was his fault: he underwrote Entman hoping for john hodgeman didn’t get him and the result is a waste of a parody of one of my faviorite marvel characters whose also a jewish sterotype. Overall not a WASTE of time but certainly not one i’m going to go back to. Still it’s telling that the most I can say about the worst episodes this season is that their eh. Outside of the actual winner they aren’t offensive, none are deprived of good moments. Their just not the best episodes.  Best Moment: The line that inspired this whole ep, for better or worse, Doc’s reaction to the firestarter guy “Help i’m trapped down here with a confessed arsonist!”  Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: 85. Shutting the cult people down there, seemingly not rescuing them and being a dick to brock. Gee I wonder why He quit.  Jonas Sucks Suprising No One: 11. Yes he gets a 5 for his loathsome actions here. He left orphans in a gas filled tunnel to die and a 2 for the idea to brainwash people to start with. Rusty may be a prick more often but when Jonas shows up he really shows his son how to be an absolute monster.   Hanktastic: Hank’s attempt to help the possible nuclear end of the world scenario “Okay I got it.. what if.. this was all a dream!’  Questions For Later: Entman starting as the Humongolid. We’ll get the payoff for that later this season too.  First Appearance: Dr. Entman. 

34. Tears of a Sea Cow

Summary: Bored with killing his new slew of lesser arches, the Monarch decides to go with his top men to fuck up an empty venture compund. Problem: it’s not empty as Doc left the boys behind leaving them and Dermott to deal with the three idiots while Dr. G tries to get her husband back home before he gets the guild’s notice.  My Thoughts: Nothing but net from here, thankfully. While I pointed out the final episodes are seralized their also REALLY good and memorable. And this one kicks us off well with some fun shenanigans and great character stuff, with the monarchs attempts to arch someone besides venture failing and leading him back home.. and to fucking his brother’s robot self which is wrapped in so many levels of psychosexuality I can’t possibly unwrap it right now.  The episode also just has some great moments, my faviorites being with the three venture brothers and their robot as Dean takes the roll of stuffy older brother and tries to get Hank and Dermott not to jackass around, Dermott takes potshots at him, and Helper won’t shut off his drums. We also get the genisis of shallow gravy (in it’s protypical form of Goat Blood Sacrifice/Lip-Glossary), and it is great. We saw hanks bass in DGMW, but my god is it fun to see it here. Fun fact from the book: They actually had Nick Demayo, who’d unsuprisingly later go on to work on steven universe, their head animation guy map the bass riffs as Doc was impressed by what Brendon Small was pulling off over on metalocalypse. Funner fact: Nick isn’t the only future steven universe person to work on this. Ian Jones Quarterly worked on the show, something I was unaware of till I watched the credits for the last episode of the season (I usually fast forward them to get to the stinger for speed purposes). Looking up his IMDB he worked for the show for seasons 2-4, inking before moving up to being one of the animation directors, as well as art director for three episodes this season. He left the show right for adventure time, stayed onto that till steven unvierse and only left that for OK KO. IN otherwords every show the man has touched has been vastly important to animation as a whole and has  been one of my personal faviroites at one time or another, with Adventure Time being the only one that still dosen’t have that status (Still enjoy it mind you, just not on the same pedstal as the other three) . So yeah good ep. Best Moment: One I quote reguarlly when a character annoys me “I just wanted to kick his ass, I just wanted to build a machine to kick his ass, I just wanted to build an empire to house the machine to kick. his. ASS!”. 24′s followup is also great “Then by god... Let’s go take a dump in his pool!”

Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: 86. Even when he’s only present asleep he still gets one for leaving the boys behind entirely so he can try and score. He didn’t.. unless he fucked his “Voom Broom”.. which given this is rusty is entirely possible.  Hanktastic: Hank’s wonderful prospective band name “Lip Glossary”  Deanarific: Dean’s 20th century newsman’s outfit. It’s truly amazing I don’t know what dermott was on about.  Dermott is Spare Parts Bud: Shoving a lighter up his ass. Now 24 belives he’s hank’s friend. Also him bragging that he can’t show off his swee gymkata moves. Not only is that joke a deep cut even for this show, but it’s just hilaroius that of all the fictional martial art styles, he chose gymkata. I’d of gone with Cobra Kai (especailly given Hank’s cobra kai gi)  Questions For Later: Dr. Dewgong’s death will bite the monarch in his pasty ass like nothing he’s ever experinced.. speaking of which Monarch Ass Shot Count: 2. Suprise! I honestly forgot we saw his ass more than once or I would’ve started it and given that maybe i’ll see it again. In fact I need to bump that up to three as while i’ts in a speedo we still see it in the premire too.  First Appearance: Dr. Dewgong. God bless him , his cuttlefish and his having a mr.robotto for reasons known only to him. 

35. Now Museum Now You Don’t

Summary:

JJ hosts a big opening for his island based Jonas Venture museum and manages to piss off everyone in his family but the boys while Spider-Skull Island’s former owners plot revenge, Old Team Venture sets up autograph, a dead man returns from the grave, and Dr. Impossible hits rock bottom. 

My Thoughts:

Another Tag-Sale ep, another classic. This one’s just full of great stuff, with Rusty being smug at not having to be in the center of the chaos at once, Old Team Venture shamelessly setting up an autograph table (and rightly pointing out JJ didn’t cut them in for the tips so fair enough), Billy commiting theft thanks to a brain man, and Dr. Impossible finally getting his commpuance. Sally’s leaving has left him a drunken wreck, she utterly shuts down his attempts to get her back, and the most he gets is a heroic moment.. driven from clearly trying to end it all that STILL dosen’t get her back to him. And again after all the abusive shit he puleld seeing him a total wreck who has ZERO power over her and who no one respects anymore is fucking satisfying. He gets his groove back EVENTUALLY as a super villian but never quite gets his full joy back. As he shouldn’t. I also loved Col Gentelman’s ressurection and writing a book about the whole thing. I feel the team geninely thought to kill him off the first time.. but realized a swaggering sean connery parody was way too good to kill off. Thankfully they didn’t think the same about dr. entman. 

Best Moment:The shocking return of Col Gentleman. Even if his punching rusty was suprisingly unwarranted. 

Rusty Sucks Surprising No One:87. Leaving his brother and several people he knows to die and then joking about going back. I mean I can’t entirely blame him given the way JJ was acting but it’s still a dick move. 

Jonas Sucks Suprising No One:14 as he gets a 3 for Dr. Fandragon. A disguise so racist and half assed it defies logic. 

Hanktastic:Getting his tounge stuck on a frozen caveman.  Deanarific:Betting Hank to try putting his tounge on said frozen caveman

Questions For Later: Richard and Phantom Limb are revealed to have been in the boys brigade together, something vital to next season.  First Appearance: Scarmantula and Kiki (Who had been mentioned before but only shows up on screen this time)

36. The Lepidopterists

Summary: The Monarch tries arching the other Dr. Venture, Trying JJ’s patience, while Brock helps.. and really wants to try a late 60′s death ray. Also 21 and 24 are dicks to Henchman 1. This comes back to haunt the one of them that survivies to next season. My Thoughts: This is a decent ep but as I said before 21 and 24′s dickery really wears on me. Scott did nothing wrong, and their just ragging on him for trying to be professional. Their not ENTIRLEY wrong in some of their critcisims but their too dickish to be likeable. That said they get their compuance for this shit soon enough. The more intresting stuff is with JJ being out of his element and being used as a pawn to get rid of the monarch.. and the monarch using JJ as a pawn to get back to arching the right dr venture. A good ep, that one subplot just does not work for me and I could see it working for someone else.  Best Moment: Ned’s Magic Clown. It’s just majestic to see a robot with a clown for an arm. Nicely done ned.  Questions For Later: Doe and Cardholder will unsuprisingly be back and important later and more suprisingly Scott Hall will be back. Less suprisingly his revenge will involve 21.  First Appearance: Scott Hall, Mr. Doe and Mr. Cardholder. 

37. ORB 

Summary: Billy takes Rusty on a treasure hunt for a hidden pieces of Jonas’ past.. one that may cost Rusty his life as Brock is forced to make a hard choice.  My Thoughts: A solid ep and the start of our three part finale. While it has a diffrent name this one both sets up finale and directly leads into it. And it’s decent. The finale that follows is so kickass it easily overshadows it, but it’s still a decent ep, with some nice dramatic tension and worldbuilding as we meet the founders of the guild. 

The Orb itself.. was never meant to be this big huge focus of the show now. Jackson and Doc always intended for whatever happened with it to be some form of Anti-Climax. This has never been a big maguffin driven action show, about clues and an overarching mystery. There are mysteries that get solved over the shows two decade seven season run, but it’s not some carefully planned out master plan. It’s just two goofuses writing what feels write at the time. The whole point of the show is that while we see some awesome shit, most of what we’re seeing is , at least for the first three seasons in the margins of this big action adventure show.  But really this one is mostly just some fun gags and some setup for something big later. 

Best Moment: While “Frickin myspace” is close... I’m going with my heart as always. “The Rusty Venture Show, brought to you by.. SMOKING!”  Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: 91. They are making his boys do his hard work for him, calling Dean’s heatstroke “lollygagger’s syndrome”, and taking away dean’s slammer pog and ancient gear fist as gambling. The last one is partly because he’s a very stupid man but you don’t take someone’s yugioh card away man. You just don’t. I do love the little fact Dean plays Yugioh. Fucking love yugioh. I imagine he got tired of beating hank and taught helper to play. God i’d kill to see that.  Hanktastic: When Doc asks if the boys have anything to say, his response of “I’m the one who carved dean’s initial in the bathroom” “Thanks hank’ “I love you Dean”. Just the way that last part is delivered. It’s geninely sweet and earnest while still being gutbusting... which is really Hank in a nutshell.  Deanarific: Again the fact Dean has yugioh cards.  Questions For Later: The Orb itself, Lloyd Venture having founded the guild and most curiously out of these, Kano saying he killed “a great man”. And while for years that shut me up on what happened to jonas.. turns out... it’s not. And if you didn’t know that well.. stay tuned. But the fact they thought to resolve that, let alone swerve us the way they ended up doing. Fucking fantastic.  First Appearance: Lloyd Venture and Sandow. 

38. The Family That Slays Together, Stays Together Part 1

Summary: Brock is seemingly marked for death by the OSI and must outrun the world’s deadliest killers while trying to get the Ventures out of the kill zone, while the Monarch tries to make his triumphant return arching Dr. Venture only to instead find a suicidal Sgt. Hatred sobbing in an empty compound.  My Thoughts: This episode is pure excellence and were it not for the Buddy System, it easily would’ve won along with the second part. It’s an action fest, a rarity for the show but one that feels earned as Brock is up against guys on his level who aren’t remotely holding back, resulting in what’s probably the shows best action set pieces: the tense car chase with Heir Trigger, the awesome shark flavored costal battle wtih Go fish and the brutal hotel room fight with Le Tuer. All awesome. It’s a shame these guys only lasted one episode.. except maybe Heir Trigger. I have my fetishes but that guy creeps me out. Still it’s a fucking gorgeous nonstop ride and the stakes are at their highest in the series thus far.  While the last finale had the ventures at risk simply by chance and a drunken arching, here their firmly in the crosshairs and may not make it out this time. And even when they do, we DO have 4 seasons and a movie to go.. they do not make it out unscathed. The Monarch stuff is also good, and Hatred sobbing on the toilet is gold, but it’s not the main show here. This is an episode of Brock sampson doing the coolest shit imaginable. We also get a bibleman parody on top of that because this show can’t just settle on great actoin and character stuff, it has to give us a deep cut enjoyable as hell bit of parody too. God I love this series.  Best Moment: The shark kill is VERY close, god damn that’s awesome... but i have to go with one that’s lived in my head since this ep aired: Doc forgetting Hank and the echange that follows. James and Pat are at their utmost best here, specially pat’s bellowing of “Hank ass!” Brock: Take a look around the cockpit, Doc. You forget something? Rusty: Er, travel bingo...? Brock: Try your son, Doc. Rusty: No, Dean's right here- Brock: HANK, ASS! Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: 96. He probably won’t make a hundered but damn did he try. We have him not taking the situatuation seriously which is a double given BROCK of all people is clearly scared, he sees at least two assasination attempts.. and still dosen’t remotely care. Good god man. He also gets points for “Hank, Ass!” (And brushing said incdient off), hitting on Hunter while their CLEARLY giving Brock vital info, and “See boys this is why daddy has to drink to relax!”  Hanktastic: Hank had a few choices here but I have to give it to his sneaking along, knowing Brock loved him and was just pulling the “lassie trick” was it a dumb move? God yes. Was it also throughly hank. Also yes.  Deanarific: Dean’s happy “hi brock” over the intercom.  First Appearance: The Blackhearts

39. The Family That Slays Together, Stays Together, Part 2

Summary: With the OSI and the Monarch on our heroes backs, Brock pits both against each other in a desperate attempt to save his family.. a choice that ends in a clone massacre, his own reseignation, and the death of a beloved suppporting character in one of those “Nothing will ever be the same again” moments that only come around a few times in a work’s life.  My Thoughts: Another banger. While the first part stuck out more in my mind and has more over the top awesome moments for Brock, this one still rocks with Brock pitting his foes against one another. We also get great moments for Hank (who even if it has horrible unforseen consequences, was right in wanting to do something instead of leaving it to brock), Dean, who finally breaks down and Hatred. We also get one of the series best supporting characters. Despite only four apperances Col Timothy Treister is easily one of their best, a jack pallance type who has to show you he can still do pushups, as Jackson put it in the book.  A mixture of nick fury, thunderbolt ross and teddy rosevelt voiced by God’s faviorite son Toby Huss. God bless you Toby. And Treister will only get better from here.  It also has a LOT of gusty as hell Status Quo changes and all of them are good ones in my book: While Hatred replacing brock is a topic to deal with next time, Brock leaving after all this shit is a great move: it upends the show leaving the ventures without their safety net. Even if it was n’t hatred whoever came in next would never be Brock Sampson and thus theirs no guarnatees our heroes will make it out anymore. The only times that happened before was in situations Brock could barely handle like this two parter or a guild blackout. Now every day is a dice roll. Plus it allowed us to see what happens to the boys ESPECIALLY Hank without their other parent, for better or worse.  It’s not the only saftey net to go either. Just one season after establishing it the clones are gone. This was Doc’s idea and Jackson fully backed it as the right call. It was: As Doc puts it “everyone has a red shirt on them now” the boys now HAVE to grow as people for keeps as there’s no going back, no resetting a few months later. Before fans were likely wondering when Hank and Dean would die next, figuring it would happen again. By removing that expectation, it raises the stakes: now any situation their in they can die like a regular person. And don’t get me wrong the clone thing HAS stakes: as X-Men has shown us you die before certain info is backed up and it can be bad or people can do stuff while you die for their own goals. But this isn’t some cutting edge piece of sci fi where you can explore that like the current line of X-Men. This is a sad, goofy , beauituful comedy. There was still plenty to explore with the clones for the rest of the series, including the boys finding out their clones as we’ll get to in season 5, but it works better when Hank and Dean aren’t replaceable. Their now fragile and now have to evolve and get to truly grow up as they always deserved and we’ll see that starting next season.

Finally we have the death of 24. I went over this before but again, I feel this ended up being brilliant, as did both jackson and doc. And their allowed to toot their own horn: they took 21 from the pathetic half of a comedy team to a truly deep , fully fleshed out character like everyone else. Gary had the potetial, i’ts all over this season.. but with 24 gone and the death weighing heavily on him.. Gary changes for the better. And with all these changes so does the show. 

Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: 100! Seriously I don’t tally these up ahead of time. But he made it. This also gives this season the high score for Rusty Sucking! Will Season 4′s longer runtime knock this one down, well we’ll see. But first how he hit this milestone: his reaction to helper being held hostage is “Is he serious?”, a twofer, expecting brock to help clean up and making a pissy face when Brock leaves.. instead of you know being at all devistated his best friend just left.  Jonas Sucks Suprising No One: 16. He gets double for having a child kill someone with a house key. Honestly i’m not doubling just to play catchup or something. Jonas just exudes awful.  Hanktastic: There are some truly good choices but I have to go with Hank’s reactoin to meeting at Dawn “Dawn! You hear that Dean? We’re finally gonna meet our long lost sister!”  Deanarific: Dean’s panic attack. Poor kid.  Questions For Later: Where we go from here with all the plot threads mentioned above, as well as why Gathers threw in with Mol’s scheme. Turns out he was plotting at something bigger.. but next time.  First Appearance: General Treister. Wanna wrestle?

Season Rankings:

Yup a new section! I held off on this till we had enough and the rankings are pretty simple for now, going in reverse order of seasons:

Season 3 Season 2 Season 1 But I expect with Season 5 being lackluster from my memory, and Seasons 6 and 7 being really good, but season 4 being the best, it’ll be harder from season 4 on. Still I wanted to get this going. As for overall scores, this season beat out last season in terms of first apperances by a slim margin. About the same number of new apperances and if you take away the council of 13 it’s deadlocked (I counted the blackhearts as one since really their more a group than a character, but still have enough plot importance twice over to count).  So that’s season 3. With that I can finally rest.. for about like a minute I have another full review to work on today and Shaq to watch. But still I did not mean for this one to take days: I had it almost done yesterday but was so exausted I had to finish it up today. Still overall this season was awesome and next time we enter my faviorite season. Season 4 baby! See you in a month for that but please feel free to stick around. I got great stuff in the meantime. 

#the venture bros #dean venture #hank venture #brock sampson #rusty venture #the monarch #dr. girlfriend #henchman 21 #jonas venture #season 3 #cartoon network #hbo max

[jackdaw-kraai]

For everyone looking for more things related to me and my creations, I present to you: The Short List.

The Guides Discord Server, where you can join up with other fans and discuss all manner of things, as well as talk to me, and be privy to a whole host of behind-the-scenes stuff! Said stuff includes snippet previews from upcoming works, me rambling about lore and answering questions, and general tomfoolery.

The Guides Audiobooks, as recorded by Sam Gabriel. Do you ever just don’t feel like reading, but you still want to enjoy the Guides? Do you know someone who might like the Guides but isn’t interested in reading all those fucking words? Then this is the thing for you. Professional recordings by a professional voice actor, edited and with special effects and all. New recording sessions happen every Thursday in the discord server at roughly 6 PM UTC+1.

The Guides TvTropes Page, where fans work hard to index every bit of the series as best as possible. Check it out for a fun time, and join in if you feel like it! It’s a pride and joy of mine, even though I stay out of the actual work on the page as author.

My Patreon Page, where I post tons of extra lore articles, Karilaa dictionary entries, ramblings on world and narrative building, detailed descriptions of original characters, deep lore on the various deities, a rotating set of merchandise designs that come with every patron tier, and much, much more! Check it out if you’re interested in something like that, and even if you aren't, the tier descriptions are themselves a fragmented story of one of Lukkesh's many, many adventures as Keshiro.

My Kofi Page, where you can support me monetarily. Nothing is obligated and everything is voluntary, but with the time, effort, and heart that goes into producing stuff for you guys it’s nice to sometimes find a tip in the ol’ tip jar. 

If you want to send me stuff, I have a PO box as well. Feel free to DM me for the address, as well as the rules I put in place to ensure that packages reach their intended destination.

I've had many people ask me this before, so I'll just put it here for ease of location: I operate under a general blanket permission for people to adapt my works, or use elements of them, or honestly whatever, in their own works. As far as I'm concerned, the Guides Verse is a sandbox, and while my sandcastle may be the oldest and biggest one in it, that doesn't mean there isn't room enough for other people to create their own from the same sand. The only stipulation attached to this permission is that proper credit is given to me for the elements you use, i.e. "This work/these elements/this version/ect. was inspired by the Guides Verse as written by Jackdaw_Kraai on Ao3" preferably with a link back to me, or with an @ to me depending on the site it's posted on. The @ part isn't mandatory if proper credit is given, but I love seeing what other people make from or with the Guides, and generally love to show it to my followers too. So if that's you, and you were wondering about this: go right ahead, I don't mind in the slightest. I may or may not be a fan of the thing produced (think squicks or differing opinions on style) but that's no reason to deny someone their fun, no? I look forward to seeing what you make!

My fanart tag is "fanart that might make me cry" where you can see all the other brilliant and wonderful stuff people have made with the Guides as a muse.

#The Guides Verse #Engineer Luke #My writing #guides verse

[gb-patch]

Ask Answers: January 28th, 2021 (Part 1)

And we’re back with many more ask answers! Thank you for waiting.

Is lizzie/the main character tripping over a rock a random event in barbecue? or does it require certain choices? i picked the same choices in multiple different playthroughs but ended up with three different outcomes (1. nothing happens 2. liz trips 3. i trip)

Yep! It’s completely random. Just a little moment of life you don’t have control over, haha.

wait just double checking you stated that derek would be another romantic interest you can pursue in step 4 right??? im just asking cuz hes my fav character 

oh wait and btw i was the one that asked the question about derek being in the step 4 just now, and will you have to pay extra for like a dlc or something bc i play the free version rn and i just wanted to check!! 

Yeah, you will eventually be able to romance him, but unfortunately it is a paid DLC. Cove is the only love interest who’s entirely free-to-play. You can  follow our social media for when we giveaways for a chance to win a key for it, though.

i know that y’all said the step 3 dlc and step 4 will be released early 2021, is there any update to that? for example, a rough amount of days/weeks until release? no pressure at all, i’m super excited!! <3 

The Step 3 DLC will be about in maybe two-two and half months or so. Step 4, we’re not entirely sure. Maybe a few months after the Step 3. We don’t want to give set dates until we’re really close to the release since otherwise we wouldn’t be able to 100% guarantee them.

First off love the game. Second I'm a little confused on how the nsfw dlc is gonna work. Because based on some stuff you've said it sounds like a patreon only thing and others make me think it could be an itch/steam thing after the fact? Would you mind clarifying for me 😅. Also if it's a patreon only thing do you need to become one before it's released? 

It’s not going to be on Steam/Itch. The actual game of Our Life is safe for teens with no adult content. Any 18+ stuff we’re releasing is separate bonus content. Right now the only for sure plan is having it available through Patreon. If there’s another hosting site that’s not Steam or Itch that’d be easier for people than Patreon we might consider uploading it there too, but nothing else is set.

If you want the bonus Moment you’d have to join once it’s already out or sometime after the release. Joining now would get you our current rewards, but wouldn’t get you future content that’s coming later.

this is probably an awkward question and i apologize, feel free not to answer, but i just wanted to address the elephant in the room....will step 4 acknowledge covid/2020 world events?? i kind of hope not bc i'd like to just exist in a fictional version of the world where things are happy in this quaint seaside town and the world isn't falling apart, but i'd understand if there are some references to it. just thought i'd ask so i can Prepare if that makes sense

Step 4 isn’t going to include Covid or even reference it. When we set Step 4 in that year we definitely didn’t know there’d be a global pandemic during it. It’s too late to move the timeframe earlier or later, but we’re not going to make Step 4 stressful for anyone because the real world became so much more stressful. The universe of Our Life will just be an even more idealized place than it was before.

hiiiii! i'm really sorry if this is a bother. i was just curious if cove has a canon setting for each step, like is it canon that he stays candid the whole game and is super sporty for instance and the rest are variations? thank you for your time!

None of those settings are canon. They’re all equally valid.

I love the game and Cove so much that I ended up spending most of the holidays playing it. Definitely worth it! Idk if you're taking suggestions/criticisms, but I chose the peach skin tone and seeing it written as "my peach skin" in the game broke immersion for me because I kept thinking it was referring to the fruit instead of my skin color. I think that skin color is most commonly referred to as "fair" but "peachy" or "rosy" would work too if you're looking for a different word 

Thank you for sharing your experience. We’ll change it to “peachy” in the next update!

So I accidentally overwrote a save file with a different one, is there any way I can recover that save? 

Sadly, there isn’t. Not unless you had a backup of the actual save file files in a separate location you can get. I’m really sorry. You can try using the skip feature to quickly speed through the game and get back to where you were though.

Do you try to maintain the color scheme for the clothing throughout the years in Our Life? 

Yes, though in hindsight not as much as I wished I did, haha. It could’ve been a little more cohesive. It was a bit too broad in my opinion.

I noticed that Cliff mentions he wasn’t much older than Cove before finding out he was going to be a father when he finds MC in bed with Cove during Part 3 so doesn’t that Cliff and Kyra were teenage/young parents? 

Yeah, Cliff was nineteen and Kyra was eighteen when Cove was born. They were just a couple of kids.

Does Cove have a favourite holiday? 

It changes depending on the year. Around Step 1 he’s not a huge fan of a lot of holidays because he’s not together with his whole family for them. But once he’s older and Kyra comes around more, he starts appreciating major family holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas more than other holidays because he knows how it feels not to have that. Though summer vacation is of course his most favorite all the time, if that counts as a “holiday”.

I tried to join your patreon but I can’t seem to? The website keeps saying something went wrong and to try again. 

I’m sorry you’re having trouble! I think contacting Patreon support would probably be the best option if the joining process itself is having issues.

How much is it to become a part of your Patreon? I don’t have a lot of money currently but would love to help you out more than just buying the games and dlcs. 

Aw, I appreciate you wanting to support but the Patreon is really optional. You don’t need to push yourself to join if you don’t have extra funds for it. To still answer the question, the tiers are $1, $5, $10, $15, and $20 in USD. Each come with different perks.

I had this idea for a future daughter for the MC and Cove being named "Poppy", after the flowers on their hill~

That’s a really sweet idea! I’m sure Cove would be a fan.

So if you don't mind me asking, how do you get Cove to propose to you in Step 4 and not the other way around? 

I’m afraid that’d be too big of a spoiler to give away before the epilogue’s release, at least in terms of specifics. Generally you’ll just have to be patient and try not to propose first, haha.

will we get to move in with cove in step 4 😮?? or is that a secret 

You can be living together with Cove in Step 4! Though you wouldn’t get to see the place itself. That’s up to your imagination.

Is it bad that I'm completely in love with Cove's dad... What I gotta pay to romance Cliff 😭 (I don't mean as Jamie because that would be wack) 

That’ll cost one million 20 twenty dollar bills, haha. I’m really glad you like him, though sadly we aren’t able to make a separate game where you can romance Cliff. I wish we had enough time to make tons of new scenes/extra stories in the Our Life world, but it just takes too long. Maybe people will make fanworks about it.

—–

We released a new FAQ! It answers common questions and we’ll keep adding more to it. Please check there before sending an ask. FAQ   Also, if you prefer to just see the main posts without all the asks/reblogs, feel free to follow our side account instead: GB Patch Updates Blog  

#our life #Our Life Beginnings & Always #ourlifeba #ask #gb patch #gb patch games

[esbarrison-writing]

Hi everyone!

With all the recent changes in my writing life, I decided to re-introduce myself, my projects, and some other initiatives I have going. 

So for those of you who don’t know, my name is E.S. Barrison (or Elayna...I’m not really hiding anything regarding my identity. I just like the way initials look on book covers). Recently, I published my debut novel after over 13 years of work! I’m happy to talk about that at a later date, but I am so happy to finally have the story out in the world! 

I’ve been on tumblr for a couple years now, primarily under @elaynab-writing​, which is more of a procrastination blog at this point. I recently changed the name of my writing blog to @esbarrison-writing​, where I will post snippets, characters, and other fun things! 

So, what is this crazy story I’ve been working on for 13 years...well I’ll tell you.

The Life & Death cycle is an anticipated 6 book series about Brent & Rho, two individuals who are placed in the forefront of a conflict among magic, Death Gods, an oppressive religious order, and a dying world. 

The Mist Keeper’s Apprentice is the first book in this series and was released June 14th, 2020. 

So what is it about? 

Storytelling was outlawed. Magic had all but vanished.

That all changed when the woman in black came to town. Branded with the black stamp at a young age, Brent thought he would end up a vagrant like his father. His craft was telling stories, but the Order had long forbidden any weaving of tales. When Brent sees the woman in black, she leads him into a menagerie of tunnels beneath the earth where his life falls into the nauseating, but beautiful, mist of the dead.

He finds friendship in Rho, a young woman who hides her face with a tree branch while roots and vines bow to her every whim. Together, they embark on a journey to explore the world, escape the watchful eyes of the Order, and discover the woman in black’s secrets.

For thousands of years, the mist and the tunnels were under the sole guardianship of the Council of Mist Keepers. But as new monsters enter the mist, and magic is forced out of the shadows, the Council searches for young blood to join their ranks and Brent's next in line.

It is available for purchase NOW! 

The next book, A Pool of Peony, will pick up 6-months after the conclusion of The Mist Keeper’s Apprentice. I will be looking for beta readers very soon, and the book is predicted to be released sometime in Summer 2021. 

I will be making a post detailing the entire anticipated series, but if you are interested...why not check it out? 

And don’t forget to add the book on Goodreads!

Another thing I strongly believe in is the camaraderie and support that indie authors, like myself, need to give each other. So I have opened myself up for book reviews on my website (as well as on Goodreads and Amazon). I have availability starting in October 2020.

If you are an indie or small-press author, feel free to check out my review policy and submit your book. I typically check my review requests twice a month and follow up regarding if I’m interested. 

As a part of my indie author initiatives, I’ve also started up a book club that specifically focuses on reading books written by indie authors! You can follow it RIGHT HERE on tumblr: @hotsinglebooks​!

We also have a discord server where we blabber about books! Why not stop in? 

I also have a patreon! I’m trying to get more active on there. A lot of my writing will start on patreon first, and most will be patreon exclusive for a month before going live and shared here on tumblr. 

But! I have a bunch of rewards for those interested. Check out all the benefits below!

If you’re interested, why not check it out HERE? 

But if you can’t, don’t worry! A lot of my writing will also be shared here as well!

Finally, the fun stuff...I’m on a ton of other social media where we can connect! Check it out:

Website

Discord First-to-Know Group

Instagram

Twitter

Facebook

Goodreads

I hope to connect with all of you soon! And thanks for reading this far...I know this was a lot!

<3

E.S. 

#writeblr #introduction #published #indie author #writeblr intro

[indig0tea]

Final 2020 Update: 2021 Goals!!

Cross posting from my devART

Also links to all my alts and shit will be at the end of the post if you need them!

So some of these may be unrealistic due to my struggles with ADHD/Depression Combo but. I wanted to get these down somewhere so you guys can see them and be aware..

Please note, my executive functioning abilities are absolutely Butchered on the regular by my ADHD alone, and the various stressors of 2020 have absolutely taken anything else I might have had in that department and tossed it out the window.

Something something something, financial stressors outside of my control sends me into shut down mode and I can't do anything productive or even fun until it's handled, but because I'm not doing anything productive, I'm not making any money, and the stressors gets worse and worse and it just ends up in a horrible cycle where I constantly want to die because I'm not able to create anything to relieve the stress! Which is why you've all seen... pretty much a standstill on my productivity save one or two pieces a month if I'm lucky

That said, I'm going to start trying (hopefully with some outside help/accountability to keep me on track while I'm unmedicated) to put a system in place that doesn't make me constantly want to die while like. maybe actually getting stuff done! So I'm making some optimistic goals for 2021 regarding both my art and ability to make money, so here goes!

I'm breaking this down into 3 parts:

Changes to expect regarding my social media, commissions in general, posting, etc;

Overall Goals for 2021;

and Goals for January specifically.

Changes to expect going forward from here:

I'm going to be making some changes regarding my social media accounts, including this one, mostly concerning when, where, and how I'm posting.

I am also going to be making some changes to my commission policies, prices, and payments in the coming year, namely:

Lastly, I will be making some changes to my art discord server!

Moving forward, I am going to be MOST active on my twitter and tumblr accounts. They're just easier for me to maintain in general, and although I hate twitter's formatting, it's just easier and faster, and frankly after deviantART and Instagram fucked with their websites/algorithms, it just makes the most sense for me as an artist.

I'm also going to be making an effort to make scheduled cross-posts on all my accounts. In the past, I've been really irregular about when and where I post things (most things got posted to my old tumblr account but never here, i rarely remember to post to instagram, etc).

This is going to include commission slots, finished piece dumps, etc.

I will also be making an effort to semi-regularly post sketch dumps, both digitial and traditional. I am also considering at this time offering a monthly digital download of my sketch collections, though I am undecided as I'm not really sure how many people would be interested.

Increasing commissions prices to reflect time spent working on specific commission types, as well as my personal cost of living.

Planning and announcing commission slots in advance.

Taking and finishing regular commissions to cover living expenses on a monthly basis

Payments will be exclusively through paypal invoice, and will be broken up in halves: first half will be taken up front after I have started and given proof of start (base sketch), the second half will be paid after completion, with WIPS given between first and second payment. Fully completed art will be given after receipt of second half. This is both for my personal protection as an artist, as well as for the comfort of the commissioner as my completion time can sometimes be long due to my ADHD/executive dysfunction.

Moving forward into 2020, my discord will be SFW, but 18+ only. This is a personal comfort thing. I'm 25 years old now, and just really don't want to spend time hanging out with teenagers.

I'm also going to start trying to schedule art streams again! Since this is the only place I can live stream due to my art computer's limitations, it just makes sense to like. Schedule them so more people are able to attend. I haven't decided exactly how that's going to look, but once I have I'm going to make an announcement and formatting guide somewhere for people to see so they can make an informed decision about joining the server.

I will also be regularly posting in the server again. This may or may not be cross posts from twitter and such, we'll see, but I DO plan on being more active there since it's been kind of dead.

I may also reformat the whole server again. We'll see!

Goals for 2021

Regular Adopt Sets -- 2-3 per month. Size, price, and number in set will be decided on case by case basis.

I'll be doing a monthly prompt for myself as well. This is just to get me back in the habit of creating things I like for myself to just feel... less bad about my art in general, and about making art. Also it'll be good for my artistic development i think?

Keeping a monthly sketchbook for warm-ups and in-between pieces. May be offered as a paid download at the end of the month, we'll see.

Might start a patreon? This is EXTREMELY dependent on what my userbase looks like. Tiers and rewards to be decided at a later date

Regular traditional sketches + scan and upload of said sketches. May also be offered in the monthly sketchbook.

Draw more self portraits & self-expression pieces! I don't know if any of yall realize how repressed I've been in the last year without therapy, and I did't either until I forced myself to pursue a vent piece earlier this month, and then felt immensely better afterward so. Going to start doing that! Maybe I'll feel better weee

Regular posting to social media! (see changes above)

Drawing less fantrolls bc I'm just bleh about them lately, drawing more original content!

Drawing fancontent that ISN'T homestuck? We'll see but I'd like to. I don't usually draw fan art bc like. Idk in my mind I don't feel like my interpretation of things is important or cool and I think thats a confidence thing and I'd like to change that so! I'm gonna start making more fan content.

Draw more full illustrations & backgrounds in general because I actually enjoy doing them it turns out?

Practice painting more !! Both traditionally and digitally....

Goals for January 2021

Finish at LEAST 1/4 of my art queue. I'm shooting for half, really, because fully completing it might actually kill me but! We'll see! Maybe I'll surprise myself. But I'm setting the goal low to keep my mental health problems in mind.

Finish and release the base set i've been working on, on and off. It's an homage to  the old pixel doll days of 2009-2012, and the full sheet will be free to use (with stipulations, as I have some people blocked that I don't want using it). BUT! There will also be a mix and match .psd that will be pay to use (it'll be pay to use a, bc it'll be huge, and b, bc the edits to make it mix and match results in like 6 seperate bases in general so.... yeah. pay to use)

Finish the pay-to-use base pack i started in june (i may scrap and restart though, we'll see)

Possibly release all old p2u bases of mine in one pack on gumroad? price tbd but it will include old iterations as well as unreleased remakes.

Making some dainty-specific bases! One will be f2u, one will be p2u.

I have a whole dainty YCH set for january! I just have to finish the example... (:

Perhaps I'll be announcing a collaborative project later in the month! It depends on where each of us are at, at the time! We'll see! (: You should be excited though! It'll be a ton of fun!

EXTERNAL LINKS

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[welcometophu]

where’s Tris? not gone, but not here, either...

This is an edited version of what posted for my patrons...

I'm not gone. I just thought I'd clarify that right off the bat, since I'm barely visible on social media these days, and I just seem... silent. I've been really bad at communication these last few months.

2020 is wearing on me much like I know it has worn on most people. My job got busier in March. I support the platform used for streaming media at a university, so we abruptly onboarded an entire campus worth of professors, and continued through summer, and are now looking at a very strange fall semester. It's been chaotic and every time I think I have a handle on my world, it turns upside down.

My brain decided to take a vacation on me. I've been working on notes for NYGA in the background, but I have not actually managed to write a single word of it. I've got a lot of information, and a lot of little character bits and twists, but I'm missing some really important points to the story, and Pels ain't talking to me (she's a pain in the arse, seriously).

Obviously I'm not going to start posting next weekend.

For those who follow me on Pillowfort, you know that my vacationing brain wandered off into fic and decided that the "I'll work on this when I can" WIP I was writing was Too Big to let sit without being finished, so I've been trying to crank that out. In good news--my word count has improved, and I'm feeling better about making words overall. I'm hoping this is a positive thing that will carry forward. But it's not NYGA or any other original work.

So where does that leave us?

I’ve paused my Patreon which means current subscribers will not be charged for September. I may leave it paused for October as well. If anyone new joins, they’ll be charged for the current month, but not any others while it’s paused.

I’m going to finish writing Pitfalls (TW, Musician!AU, Sterek, for those who don’t know).

I’m going to jump in and start out pantsing NYGA which means I’m really plantsing it since I have a ton of notes, just not some of the most significant ones. I’m hoping that by getting Pels to open up and start talking for a couple chapters, she’ll get around to telling me the important stuff.

I need to write a short story to try to submit it for an anthology. Um. Yeah. Wish me luck on that. I struggle with “short” as many of you already know.

I have a lot of offline things that need to be dealt with, including the day job, and parenting, and home things, and family things, and well, life day to day and preparing things that need to be done to live in the world as it is now as opposed to how it used to be.

If anyone wants to find me while things are quiet, please feel free to poke me on Pillowfort, or Twitter, or Discord. I'm tryslora everywhere and I’m most active on those platforms.

Hope you all are well and surviving this strange as hell year. I miss PHU, and I miss you, and I'd really like my brain to get back to normal so we can get back to the good words.

#tris talks to people #administrivia

[acaseforpencils]

Mary Lawton.

Bio: I was born on Long Island, New York in 1958, and loved drawing and making art since I was pretty young. I remember really loving Rat Fink, the anti-hero of Mickey Mouse, and tracing pictures of him. I even had a plastic Rat Fink ring when I was eight. I am the youngest of a very loud and raucous group of six siblings who always encouraged me to make art. My parents were my biggest fans, they would parade their friends through my bedroom to show them the murals I drew on my walls. I read MAD and National Lampoon with a fervor, and I still remember some of the insanely hilarious cartoons I saw in those magazines, although Alfred E. Newman's face gave me nightmares. After backpacking in Europe for a while after high school, I moved to Boston in 1979, and became friends with a bunch of artists, some of them cartoonists and animators. We were all enamored of Lynda Barry and Matt Groening, who were bursting on to the alternative comics scene at the time. I devoured their comics, and also loved Roz Chast, B Kliban, William Steig, Mary Fleener, Gahan Wilson, and many others. I knew that I wanted to do what they were doing.

Find this print, here!

I was drawing very primitive, autobiographical strips about my childhood at that time. I sent them out to magazines and newspapers and they began to get published. It was a nice time to be an 'alt' cartoonist as there were so many markets and the pay was great. I also loved cooking, so I worked in restaurants during the day to make a living, and drew in my little bedroom/studio at night.  After ten years cooking and cartooning, I left Boston in 1989, moved to Manhattan, and worked at Chelsea Animation, an ink-and-paint studio on 23rd Street. Working there with a great group of like-minded artists was like going to a party every day. Non-stop hilarity. We all sat over our light tables wearing white cotton gloves, painting cels of all sorts of commercial animated films. At that time I took a few classes at the School of Visual Arts at night.  

Since then, my art has been in many magazines and newspapers, books, greeting cards, museums and galleries, and I've done a gazillion commissions. In the 1980's I sent samples of my cartoons to William Steig for his advice, because I just loved his drawings and books. He became my friend and mentor, and always encouraged me to send to The New Yorker. I did this for nearly thirty years and finally got one accepted in 2017. I have sold several to The New Yorker online, and a few more in their hard copy magazine. Around the same time, I was invited to join Six Chix, a comic strip by six women, a different one each day of the week, syndicated with King Features. It was created in 2000 by Jay Kennedy, the masterful editor at King, who died tragically in 2007.  Mine is the Thursday comic, and every six weeks I draw a Sunday. I love being part of this group of women cartoonists!

I have saved all of the rejection slips I got since I started sending out my cartoons in the early 1980's. They are in an album that now weighs 4.5 lbs. It's my reminder to never give up, to just keep returning to my work table. Persistence pays.

Favorite cartoon: I think my favorite cartoon that I have had published in the New Yorker magazine is my very first [editor’s note: the cartoon at the beginning of the interview], because it was so dang thrilling to finally be in that magazine. I happened to be in New York the week it appeared in print. On my way back home to Texas, as my plane flew over Manhattan at night I looked down at those lights below and I felt like I had really made it. It was a dream come true! Also, since it was an airplane cartoon, I shared it with the flight attendants, who all got a good laugh, and they brought me a glass of champagne. Later that year I was part of the Funny Ladies exhibit at the Society of Illustrators in New York. Liza Donnelly was so kind to invite me to be in the show. To be there on opening night and to meet Emma Allen and the cartoonists that I have admired for so long, felt like being at The Academy Awards. Only better.

I really love to draw political cartoons, so I'm also proud of the ones that have made it into The New Yorker Daily Cartoon.

Tools: I drew with Rapidograph pens for many years. I switched to dip pens, which I enjoy depending on the paper.  Lumpy or textured paper, ugh. Smooth paper, and it's perfect. I practiced using the dip pen by doing calligraphy for a long time, with lots of different nib sizes and shapes. At the moment I use Pigma Graphic in all sizes, but they are disposable, so I'm on the hunt for a new reusable pen so I don't add to the land fill. I sketch out cartoons in pencil most of the time, then ink in. I love Arches papers, and use them for finishes and gouache paintings. Or Bristol paper. I buy big sheets and cut them up. But every day, I use a lot of printer paper for roughs. The pencils I mostly use are the Faber Castell 9000, in a 3 or 4 B. I also love Ticonderoga pencils, not only for their beautiful name but they feel perfect on Boise all-purpose printer paper.  I love paint brushes of all kinds. I use gouache every day. It took me many years to learn about gouache, to finally get how it works. It's complicated because of its soluble nature. I looked at instructional videos on Youtube, and got the hang of it. I use black gouache for my washes, and Titanium White right out of the tube for covering up mistakes, or all sorts of highlights.  My old work lamp has a long arm so I can move the light all over my table, which is really handy.

Tools I wish I used better: Sketchbooks! That seems odd, but it's true. My sketchbooks are very messy, and not something I'm proud of, or want to save and look back on. I have seen beautiful sketchbooks which are themselves art pieces, but it's not my style! I mostly want to toss them into the recycle bin once they are full. Also, I wish I could use computer drawing tools.

Tool I wish existed: Can't think of one.    

Tricks: I don't look at social media much, and I think that helps my creativity, and certainly gives me more time to do stuff.    

Misc: I have three big-time men in my life, my husband and my two sons. Four, if you count my dog Buddy. All bring me a ton of joy. I've lived in Texas for 25 years, and I encourage visitors! We always like to show folks the Texas we know and love.  

Website, etc: 

Instagram

newyorker.com

sixchixcomics.com

funnytimes.com

narrativemagazine.com

thenib.com

Editor’s Note: If you enjoy this blog, and would like to contribute to labor and maintenance costs, there is a Patreon, and if you’d like to buy me a cup of coffee, there is a Ko-Fi account as well! I do this blog for free, and your support helps a lot! You can also find more posts about art supplies on Case’s Instagram and Twitter! Thank you!

#mary lawton #how to be a cartoonist #mary lawton cartoonist #artists on tumblr #art supplies #drawing process #art process #cartoons #cartooning

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales Treasure of the Golden Sun: Three Ducks of the Condor or Now with More Racism!

Hello all you happy people! And welcome back to my look at Ducktales: Treasure of the Golden Suns!, the pilot episodes that started it all. This look was one of my patreon stretch goals. To explain them in case some of you aren’t familiar with patreon it’s essentially like a kickstarter stretch goal: every milestone I reach in my monthly earnings means a crop of reviews for you guys, with this being 10 and my review of the movie, and the goofy movies in two weeks and September respectively, being the 15 dollar one. So if you want reviews of the OTHER Ducktales mini series Time Is Money and Super DuckTales, then hop on aboard and help me reach my 20 dollar goal so I can keep making these reviews for a living and give you all more. Said goal also includes a Darkwing Duck review eveyr month AND a review of teh Danny Phantom special The ULtimate Enemy so hop on board HERE AT MY PATREON.  Patrons also get exclusive reviews, access to my discord server (Though if anyone would be more intrersted in me making that public let me know), and to pick a short each time I do a birthday special for a character from Looney Tunes, Disney and Beyond. And next month is my boy Donald’s so since you all already sat out goofy NOW is the time. 

So now my very necessary plug is out of the way, i’m very poor, we can get to the review proper:

When last we left off Scrooge and the Boys went on their first proper adventure together, heading to Central America to follow the map from the first episode and running into Dr.Claw  El Capitan and his new best buddy Glomgold. Mild racisim, moonsoons and much better pacing ensued. 

So join me under the cut as my boy Donald returns, some iconic characters are introduced in Webby, Launchpad and Beakly, though this series only made one of them iconic to be fair, and we get some more mild racisim because fuck my life. Onward to the cut! 

So yeah as I’ve mentioned a few times now this episode had a content warning.. which was fair as there is some pretty cringy stuff in here but it had the side effect of me holding my breath until the racisim came up and whapped me in the face. So i’m keeping that tension up for you guys so I don’t have to suffer alone. 

We open at the Mansion. Scrooge is trying to find a governess for the boys, but they keep scaring off all the clients because they don’t like the idea. And for once.. i’m on Scrooge’s side here. Yes I know there’s a sterotype of rich people hiring a nanny to not have to parent. and it’s sadly often true and it’d SEEM like Scrooge is doing that.. but really he just wants the boys to be safe. He’s fully grown to care for them and just wants someone cheap and responsible to look after them while he’s busy and clearly still makes time for them. As someone who is a former nanny, albeit for someone working class, I get that as much as you WANT to spend every moment with your kid you often can’t. I say all this because SO MANY kids movies and shows villianize parents for not spending time with their kid when their clearly just working to support them. There are nuanced exceptions to this and refreshingly Craig of the Creek has outright avoided this: JP’s mom is gone almost all the time due to working as an airline pilot, but while he clearly misses her he never resents her or guilts her over it, he understands sh’es supporting him and goes out of his way to make sure his friends can meet her. It’s really swee.t And while again I get it, this guys a billionare, most examples aren’t, Scrooge still really CAN’T stop working: He has more money than god and like most bilionares REALLY should give most of it to charity or to help with programs instead of hoarding it in a massive bin.. but he’s also got tons of companies, factories, investments... people COUNTING on him to make sure these are working correctly and keep their jobs. So yeah i’ts nice that the show isn’t demonizing scrooge for this or dosen’t even consider it: he’s getting help beacuse he needs it, that’s what’s important. 

So while the boys widdle down the nannies, Scrooge talks to a renowned coin collector. He does show off his collection to the guy, but his main goal is naturally to show him the coin from last time. Turns out that naturally for a five part episode the treasure they lost last time was just a fraction of the real thing and the real titular treasure is a mythical horde even Scrooge, who normally has proved something out of myth is very real 5 times before breakfast, didn’t think existed. 

Something I do love about this five parter is how every treasure hunt has ended up being important each piece of the puzzle leading to the next like any good treasure hunt. As for where this one leads the collector HAS heard of only one other coin like it, up in the Andes Mountains in a mysterious fortress whose mountain habitat and being a fortress makes it hard to get to and the owner is apparently a real piece of work.. but Scrooge isn’t afraid of a little hard work and is ready to go after it.. he just has to find a Nanny first. 

And he does as there’s only one left: Mrs. Beakley, who we FINALLY meet after two episodes. Yeah for some weird reasont his episode choose to cram the rest of the major main and supporting cast into one episode.. it still works, they all still get great introductions it’s just weird to me when you have five episodes to not say introduce Launchpad last time. 

But regardless as I said it’s a good intro.. despite the boys wilding a lasso and a snake.

 Beakly is unphased and even dosen’t remotely fall for them trying to say she got the wrong name. And while Scrooge is a little impressed, he’s even more when she states she’ll work for free... with one condition: Free room and board for her and her grandaughter, Webby, who has been there the whole time and looking cute as a button. Scrooge is unsure but one minute of Webby being adorable later and he’s agreed. She can’t eat much right? He also hopes she’ll help the boys not be douchebags, unaware that their inherent poorly written sexisim means that was never going to work. And why yes I will call it out eveyr time it happens because it happens every time they have an episode together and only gets worse. 

He goes to Gyro for help and Classic Gyro.. is utterly delightful. While I clearly have issues with Classic Scrooge, whose a greedy poorly aged asshat and the boys, who are sterotypes of male children, Gyro? He’s nice, friendlya nd eccentric, using a delightfully wakcky pogo hat thing to think and takes only a mintue to figure out how to solve a seemingly unsolvable problem and only needs a few hours to build his cool looking bird ship, using bird legs to offset the hard to sort out landing conditions. But since it’s a fancy bitch, it needs a pilot and i’m sure we all know where this is going...but since Carol Danver sis busy he has to go with Launchpad. 

Launchpad’s intro is great, cheerful as he does a job testing a plane and naturally crashes it, and when thought dead walks out seconds later unharmed and jolly as ever. Scrooge is naturally terrified of the prospect of flying with him but dosen’t really have another choice “I hope my insurance is paid up.” Scrooge it’s you.. of course it isn't. 

So with that our hero bids a farewell to the boys and ends up unteitonally coming off MASSIVELY unlikeable. No really he leaves them behind for their saftey despite needing help... and then upon finding out Donald is going to be on leave soon in the andes, and just assumes that YOU KNOW, he’d LIKE to go on a dangerous exausting adventure instead of actually get some rest after working in the goddamn navy and STILL dosen’t take the kids along despite having a very tearjerking farewell IN FRONT OF HIM that happened at most a month ago. Granted i’m suprised Donald is getting leave this soon.. but since I genuinely like to look into this sort of thing and the last time I didn’t I was correctly reminded Gulliver’s Travels was a satire.. and found out someone HAD actually watched the Jack Black movie. I only vaugely remember a trailer.. I thinkn it was a trailer? Maybe it was the middle part of a juinor novelzation where htey have all the photos? I really don’t know. I know almost every pokemon on sight but not where I saw pictures of a forgetable jack black movie, what a shock. 

So long story short I DID google it. Here’s what I got

So given clealry more time has passed than we’ve seen on screen, enough time COULD have passed for Donald’s three day pass to kick in. So credit to the crew for actually thinking that out. They still get all the blame though for not only not seeing how bad not taking the kids to see the uncle whose like a father to them a month after he left when he CLEARLY can is bad, but how worse it is that the first break donald gets ina  month.. is spent helping scrooge against his will on a life or death treasure hunt. 

And I get WHY they wanted to try out having Donald on an adventure: he was in most of the carl barks material.... but I also dont’ get it as Launchpad was deisgned entirely to fill in for Donald when needed, we’re only three episodes into the series and this gives the wrong impression Donald will guest star a lot more. In practice while he still did get a meaty 8 episodes on the show including this one, 2 of which were cameos and the pilot only dosne’t count because of the exnteded slapstick sequence, and dosen’t appear at all after season 1, likely because Fenton’s introduction made him reduntant as he was an even more blatant Donald stand-in. It just feels weird to shove him into the pilot movie when we should be focusing on our main cast, epsecially with so many getting intorduced this episode. It woudl’ve made more sense for Gyro to be the third man instead and it woud’ve elmaited Scrooge’s uttelry horrible actions here of depriving his nephews of their surrogate father. 

So Uncle Dickstick leaves with Launchpad to go abduct donald.... and tha’ts not me being funny, that’s what actually happens. Donald is singing out on leave.. with his superior... weirdly doing paper work outside on the flight deck. 

And is angry at Donald because of him taking pictures and stuff and threatens him if he’s not back exactly in time... because look he’s on a boat with a bunch of sweaty men but as the most superior officer he can’t enjoy that so he has to get off SOMEHOW and ruining donald’s life just happens ot be a thing for him. 

So yeah Scrooge straight up naps Donald via claw and Donald is angry, wondering, as you’d expect “What’s the big idea”.. and once Scrooge clairfies he did it.. still asks that because what the fuck. And the episode treats this as comical, as it does Launchpad not understanding Donald.. and don’t get me wrong you CAN make a good “I can’t understand Donald Duck” joke, the 2017 series made PLENTY. But said series also spoiled me as they did it with far more effort, while also still showing just how much it would suck to have everyone around you struggle to hear what you say and never listen to you. They actually cared abotu Donald’s well being where as this one thinks “Gee you knwo what would go great iwth a hard month’s naval work? MORE WORK HELPING YOUR UNCLE GET RICHER FOR NO PERSONAL BENIFIT AFTER HE KIDNAPS YOU”. 

So our heroes.. and scrooge, head to Andes and find the temple and it’s here “Sigh” we met our antagonist. A Conquestador Douche who DOES have a name and it is on the wiki.. but is so generic and unlikeble I’m just going to keep calling him conquestador douche, whose introduced waving his sun coin around while the natives all bow to him because of the coin.

Welcome to the racisim! Admitely it’s not as bad as Treasure of the Lost Lamp, that’s a high bar to clear, but ti’s still not great to have the racist cliche of “character conquers a civilization because of they belivie he’s a messenger for their “silly” god”. And the saddest part is not that I didn’t notice this trope and how bad it was as a kid watching shows like this... but that as an ADULT about 4 years ago when I watched this episode how racist it and this trope in general was didn’t register to me at all. That.. really bothers me that it took me this long to pick up on things like this and i’m sorry for it. 

That’s honestly WHY we need these warnings and WHY i’m so hard on this racisim: it wasn’t necessary, it could’ve been removed and you clearly just didn’t care or didn’t realize it was racist. And even acceptable for the time dosen’t work for anymore: I learned recently that the creators of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, both white, hired black writers..and actually LISTENED, looking to them for personal stories and to check them if one of the white staff wrote something that wasn’t true to the black experience. I know that sounds like the bare minimum but this was the early 90′s, that kind of thinking wasn’t hte norm like it is in most writer’s rooms now.. and sadly not ALL writer’s rooms. Not only that but just today I ran into a MST3K skit that lampooned this kind of bullshit from not long after this episode. People clearly knew better, the writers of this episode just didn’t’t care

 So yeah, I get this was a kids show in the 80′s, I get the writing staff being almost all white.. but they still coudl’ve avoided cliche sterotypes and done something diffrent. It was was still wiithin white people like myselves power to actually think about something other htan themselves and we did not. So i’m never going to stop holding my own people accountable for just how BADLY we’ve fucked up in ways great and small because it still hasn’t stopped , likely never will so I won’t. 

But yeah.... the tribe here are portrayed as ignorant, mindless dumbasses who blindly follow tradition and a clearly corrupt leader. It’s patronizingly stupid to assume just because a belief system is diffrent than yours a person will belieive anything. Religion CAN make people act stupid, the fact many people are homophobic simply because the bible, a centuries old document written and distrbuted by humans that could of been altered by people with a clear homophobic agenda, says they should be. But there’s the very clear very gross implication here that any god but the christian god is invalid and simplifies wonderful and well thought out myths and beliviefs from various cultures into “well they belivie in da sun god because of the shiny coin”. It’s gross, i’m glad it’s stopped and it’s VERY telling that the closest Ducktales 2017 came to this was the most dangerous game night which while a tad cringe inducing at least showed the tribe it used was clever, disposed the person they mistook for a god after it was clear he wasn’t one , and were wholly sympathetic. 

Naturally Conquistadouche orders the tribe to attack Scrooge and it works briefly , though Scrogoe prepares to take on the ENTIRE villiage.. and given this is Scrooge and on this blog we’ve seen him take on an entire town before, and that was a more inexpericed less bastardly scrooge yeah their fucked, and only escape death because the coin falls out of scrooge’s coat when he tries to help donald who naturally injures himself trying to help. 

And since as per white dumbass racist logic, the villiagers thought Conquistadipshit was a messenger of the gods because of his coin, they think the same of Scrooge, this causes them to stop and bow instead and protect scrooge when Conquistadumbass tries to attack our heroes. Their given a room for the night naturally. 

Conquistadick demands they give him the coin and leave, but Scrooge has none of that: he has no reason to leave and has all the leverage so he instead demands to know wha’ts going on. 

Turns out Conquisineart is the decdendant of one of the crew from the ship Scrooge found: their captain rain off with it, leaving two of his men behind, though both had the map to the rest of the treasure and split it: one left for the Arctic, the other stayed and did the whole racist god bit. And somehow despite all the time passing Conquistadoodoohead still has his half and Scrooge aranges a trade for the coin. And why yes their is the obvious problem of “what if Conquistascoobydoo say tells them he’s the true god and attacks scrooge like he ends up doing in the climax”. And Scrooge’s plan.. is to have the plane ready and to run to it, despite Launchpad not being a mechanic and saying as much. Instead of you know... stealing the guy’s coin while he’s asleep or something or just having launchpad, whose bigger and stronger and donald whose not bigger but is also stronger hold the guy while Scrooge steals his sun coin, then simply walks to the plane with the map, the coins and all the leverage. at worst the guy tries to do the same scheme without any coins and as the end of the episode shows, that wouldn’t have worked. He was stupid. Oh and the cherry on  top of this shit sundae is scrooge objects to the guys tyranical rule.. but is okay with letting it keep going if he gets his coin and DOnlad, whose there for the deal, never call shim on it. 

We then get a bit of Launchpad being forced off a cliff to ride a giant Condor...

Look this episode is filled with racisit sterotypes, a generic villian and Scrogoe being awful. I’ll take a fun sequence of Launchpad riding a condor, with Donald providing an assit with his camera  by blinding the beast so Launchpad can ride him properly giving them more leverage now Launchpad is popular. And a deadline to fix things by tommorow. 

The next day Launchapd and Donald have defied logic and their own tendency to screw up and fixed the bird, while Scrooge makes the deal.. and naturally it goes EXACTLY how you’d expect and Scrooge runs, though our real heroes get thigns running. 

That’s when the people arrive on condors to persue, a fight insues yoru standard hero stuff.. not bad but given the racist context I can’t really enjoy it like Launchpad flying a condor.. which had some mild racisim in them making him do that as a ritual clearly deisgned to kill him but i’llt ake mild over pretty damn obvious. Eventually douchebag looses his coins, his ctizens abndon him. Happy end. 

So with the map Scrooge decides to do the logical thing.... have launchpad drop him in the middle of the ocean in a raft and steer there

Launchpad takes Donald home in time and his superior is mad he dosen’t give him a proper salute.. even though he CLEARLY just got home and is diisorented from a crash. Launchpad makes a quip and this episode mercifully ends. 

Final Thoughts:

This episode starts out okay.. but quickly goes downhill fast and steep. There are massive bits of racisim, massive leaps in logic, and massive amoutns of scrooge being a dick.. not his WORST in this series but it’s still bad. It’s just not very good. It’s the second worst episode of Ducktales i’ve seen, only held up by my boys Donald and Launchpad. This was miserable.

Next Time on Treasure of the Golden Suns: Our heroes head to the arctic for another offensive episode to rescue scrooge from his own stupidity.  Next Time on this Blog: We return to Green Eggs and Ham and hop on a train as our raging bitchcanoe mother and daughter duo meat our ambigiouslyg ay duo at last. 

See you at the next rainbow.

#ducktales #donald duck #scrooge mcduck #launchpad mcquack #huey duck #louie duck #dewey duck #bentina beakley #webby vanderquack #gyro gearloose #treasure of the golden suns

[bottlecaprabbitgames]

Weekly Update 7 April, 2019

Hey, guys!!! I am SO sorry for the dead silence that was happening from us for the last little while! Over my spring break, I had a really really bad case of my depression flairing up and missing my dad so much I couldn’t do much other than basic tasks :c. Over this week, I have been super busy just trying to get my class work done for college; as I graduate May 9th, there’s a LOT of work to get done, so I just didn’t have time to update you guys!!!

So, welcome to all of you new peeps!!! I’m so glad you joined us!!!

There are a LOT of announcements to be made today.

Starting with Rewind and Nelroche. Unfortunately, after a lot of feedback and trying to fix our game mechanics, we realized that both of these games need to be changed from interactive fiction. There is just no way we can force them into that format and still keep the story we want to tell you guys!!! Rewind’s demo will still stay on the Choice of Games website for those of you who want to replay it!!!

Now, this is not to say we’re quitting interactive fiction. Quite the opposite, we’re putting Rewind and Nelroche on the backburner until we actually have a way to fund those projects. For now, we have decided to focus our efforts on our projects that still can be fitted into the interactive fiction format!

Rissa currently has a project in mind for her focus, but I’m still a little finicky on mine. I am still very much working on Chronicles of Rebirth!! But I also want to take up the mantle on another project or two so I have places to go when I hit a block or need to think. You’d be surprised what kind of inspiration I hit while writing other stuff :D

Now, as for Chronicles of Rebirth (COR), there has been a LOT going on with it! I’m on Chapter 4, and the beginning scene is very tailored to the different ways MC feels over being turned into a hunter, meaning each option opens new dialogue and sometimes new actions! But, certain options can only open based on your earlier options! Other new things in COR:

Pronoun and gender overhaul! I’m sure I mentioned this, but you can choose quite a few things in Chapter one, like if you’re a man or woman, if you’ve always identified as such, and a whole SLEW of pronoun stuff for people who don’t identify as any of the above! You even have the option to input your own pronouns!

A lot more customisation is available than in Rewind. So far, there is hunter garb, sleepwear (or lack thereof), and soon there will be the option of casuals with LOTS of options! There will likely also be a combative armor choice based on what type of fighter (or otherwise) you choose to be!

So, so many eye colors. You have your human eyes, and then there might be some new options of your choice now that you’re no longer human...

So far, I have 4/5 options done for scene one in COR! It takes me longer to write them due to the differences, but it also makes a better feel for your playthrough! :D I also may have went mad with power and added a shite ton of hidden variables... some of which reference certain well-known television shows or video games. I also have random things added in every now and then.

Given all of this, I hope you all stick around and see what else we can create! It’s super unfortunate Rewind’s and Nelroche’s storyline really need a different format, but we have much more to come!!! Please, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them!!!

My Patreon is also (sort of) launched! It deals with my original works, fanfiction, and the interactive fiction (and future video game) characters I make. Please feel free to follow it along! There will be public posts a lot of the time too! :D

https://www.patreon.com/caprithebunny

#weekly update #rewindseries #nelroche #chronicles of rebirth #cor

[yukipri]

Main Home Floor Plans

(of the poly family in my YOI Future!Verse ABO AU)

So! Here they are the floor plans of the big poly family's main home.

NOTE: I know jackshit about architecture or real floor plan drawing, and this was meant to just be a fun imagination exercise/reference for myself for my comics, so just roll with it ^ ^;;

Headcanons beneath cut! Also full view to see the teeny ass text...

For an easier to view version of this post + my earlier draft of their home, please check out my Patreon!

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IF YOU ARE NEW TO THIS AU: It’s a Yuri!!! on Ice AU, Yuuri-centric with end-game polyamory in an ABO setting, Yuuri gets married to four mates (Victor, Yurio, Phichit, Minami) and they have OC kids.

BASICS and timeline of this AU

INTRO to how ABO works in this AU

A SUPER DETAILED world-building headcanons post on ABO+ in this AU

OTHER POSTS (comics + illustrations) in the Future!Verse ABO section of my YOI Masterpost.

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Please keep ship bashing out of the comments/tags. Don’t like, just skip <3 Thank you.

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PLEASE DO NOT REPOST, EDIT, TRANSLATE, OR OTHERWISE USE MY ART. More detailed rules available on my Rules & FAQ Post.

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Headcanons below!! VVVVV

I say "Main Home" here because they do have multiple homes, at least one in each mate's home country (pretty hugeass ones in St. Petersburg and outskirts of Bangkok), but this is their "home base" so to speak.

It's located in Hasetsu, and without researching too much into Karatsu's actual layout in rl, I'm placing it somewhere within long but manageable jogging distance to both the Ice Castle and Yuuri's parents' inn. A lot of Japanese rural towns (including my own hometown) have slowly been losing their traditional single storey homes and ricefields and have been turning them into apartment complexes to maximize money yield. In this AU, I HC that Victor and Phichit bought one of these lots and turned it into a huge ass fancy mansion for their family. Again, in this AU those two are filthy rich (though Minami also comes from money), and given the very rural location of their home, the location should be comparatively affordable. Given their family's fame and the amount of frequent travel they do, I figure it's okay for them to want their main home away from big cities and in a place harder for fans/paparazzi to stalk them.

In general, their home is modern but homey, more cream and natural wood colors over pure white, with areas that are more traditional Japanese. Each personal area is customized to its inhabitant’s liking.

While I think most of the rooms are pretty self-explanatory/I haven't thought that much about them myself, here's a floor by floor breakdown of some of the important rooms and what they're used for.

F1 (G) - Ground Floor

Main Entryway - Is traditional Japanese style, very large area where people can take off shoes, big ass shoe cubies on both sides where both family and guests can store their shoes. Inside the home, in general no shoes except in the basement floors.

Living Area - Main area to entertain guests/chill. Tons of couches, super plush carpets to roll around in, huge ass glass doors with a great view of the back yard to watch kids through. Small movie theater screen can descend from the ceiling in front of said glass doors.

Kitchen - Pretty big but manageable domain, everyone considers it Phichit's domain whenever he's home but Yurio spends a lot of time in there too. Also has a small corner for kids to watch parents cook/help if it's a task that requires some extra table space.

Bar - Victor and Chris especially like chilling here, another great guest entertaining spot. Tons of alcohol beneath counter.

Dining Area - Has a huge round table that can fit all of their main family members and a few guests. Because it's so large and therefore impossible to reach around, it's Chinese dim sum table style, with a center that can rotate. It's fantastic because plenty of room for everyone, but it can also be pretty lonely when a lot of people are away, in which case the present family members may choose to dine in another area.

Chill Area/Music Area - Another place with lovely carpet and nice couches, also a grand piano bc every Rich House needs one of those right AHAHAH (of the kids, Arisa plays most).

Study Room/Library - Has lots of tables and computers and books in every language. A good place to chill, but also where Minami likes to tutor the kids. Sitting at the tables gives a great view of the back yard.

Back 2nd building (with kitchen/dining/living) - Second entirely unnecessary smaller building in the back, most important feature is the elevator, which goes through all the floors.

Back yard - Lots of pretty lawn and nice cobbled paths. Is completely enclosed by a stone wall high enough to discourage trespassers but low enough to not feel cut off from the rest of the world (and allow in neighborhood cats, but keep the dogs safely in when they're romping free). Yurio is half-assedly attempting a vegetable garden in the corner with varying levels of success. They like having barbecue parties in the summer, followed by mini fireworks <3 Victor and Chris like skinny dipping in the pool in the middle of winter, Yuuri and the others will watch from the balconies thanks. There's also an area in the back that has a retractable cover, which can look down into the giant communal bath in basement 1.

F2 - 2nd Floor

The "Parents' Floor," also has open areas that look down into the 1st floor and up into the 3rd floor, makes the ceiling feel super tall in those areas :'D

Nest - The biggest main feature of this floor. A huge room with an enormous round bed, it's heavily padded and shaped a bit like a very shallow and plush bowl filled with blankets and pillows. Any of the family can sleep there, and it's usually the favorite place to sleep. Can fit all the main family members including the kids when they're a bit older comfortably. Also has some nice lil tables and desks and a huge veranda overlooking the backyard if people just want to chill. Absolutely no sex allowed in this room because kids can come in at any time.

Other Communal Sleep Room - Also known as "The Icky Room" by the kids, aka the communal room for when the adults are feeling frisky >.>; If people are doing stuff in that room, it's okay for the other adults to assume it's an open invitation to join. Also has a very big bed that can comfortably fit most of the adults at once, and also a very large jacuzzi bath for cleanup...The kids have all had their own Experiences TM, but in general have learned to steer clear if they hear Noises.

Yuuri's Room - All bedrooms are the private domains of the individual, and everyone needs to knock and get permission to enter. Most of the time people prefer to sleep in the Nest, but it's important to have a private space too. Also holds personal belongings, personal closet, etc.

Yuuri doesn't have as many belongings as some of his mates (other than merch of Victor which he absolutely won't get rid of HAHA) and has a relatively small closet as someone who doesn't particularly care for fashion. That being said, he's the most likely to invite a husband or more to come join him, so his private bed is the biggest.

Phichit's Room - While he can't be at home as much of the others especially when he's younger, he needs access to all of his work when he happens to be home, so has a decently sized office attached to his room. Has a big walk in closet and shares a bathroom and veranda with Yuuri, reliving their good ol days as roommates. Also has 3 enormous glass tanks for his hamsters, which Yuuri and the kids take care of when he's away.

Victor's Room + Yurio's Room - These two honestly don't spend that much time in their own rooms except to access their huge ass wardrobes, but again having a private place to retreat to when needing space is important. They share a bathroom and veranda.

Minami's Room - While he assumed he was a guest, he intentionally asked for a room close to the nursery so he could sprint in to take care of the kids before they bothered their parents. He, like Yuuri, has comparatively little in personal belongings (except for Yuuri merch, which he also stubbornly refuses to let go of). Has his own private bathroom, which is nice because he frequently stains it with hair dye...

Chris's Room + Otabek's Room - While technically "guest rooms,” they stay so frequently and for so long that they more or less naturally became "their" rooms. They're across the wing from Victor and Yurio and mirror their rooms in most ways.

Nursery - Easily accessible to both Yuuri and Minami, though the kids weren't there often as they often sleep next to their parents in the Nest or their respective rooms. Also partially taken over by cats, who think the cribs make excellent cat beds...

F3 - 3rd Floor

The "Kids' Floor," pretty much has the same cut outs looking down into the first floor as the 2nd floor.

Big Chill Area - Directly above the Nest and is very open, with a veranda that overlooks the veranda of the Nest. Good place to chill and roll around in. Also connects to several other pretty big rooms for specialized activities for the kids.

The Twins' Rooms - Were offered separate rooms but they asked that the wall be torn down so they could share the space. They have a hugeass walk-in closet honestly bigger than any of their parents' because they haven't learned moderation. They also like having their beds pressed together into one larger bed. Their veranda overlooks Phichit + Yuuri's. Share a bathroom with Arisa and Yuuji.

Arisa + Yuuji's Rooms - Relatively moderate rooms, Yuuji has to go through Arisa’s room to access the bathroom but they don't mind.

Play Room + Study Room - More places for the kids to chill, though adults are in there sometimes too.

2nd Kitchen/Dining Room - Because sometimes the main kitchen is occupied and it's easier to go up a floor? Arisa also likes experimenting with baking here.

Corner Chill Area - 'Nuff said, why you rich people need so much space, gods.

Big Guest Rooms - Some nicer bigger guest rooms, including a fancy one with access to a jacuzzi bath. For Important Guests like Yakov and Lilia.

Window Glass Hall - Big hall with all glass walls that goes over the back yard. A refreshing place to practice dancing, but if anyone wants to do anything there they generally have to shoo off the occupying mass of sunbathing cats.

R - Rooftop

Rooftop Ice Rink - Because of course they freakin' have one. Generally only iced during the winter, and they can skate right up to the edge where they can look down on the back yard and also Hasetsu and probably the ocean. In the summer is a nice flat field for other things.

Track - "Go run some laps on the track," Victor can command and they don't even need to leave the house...

Living Area - Another nice place to chill.

Dining Area - How much do these people eat...

Misc Room - Why do rich people have so much space.

B1 - Basement 1

Aka, Exercise Floor

Ice Rink - The indoor one, available all year round because of course they have one. Not nearly as big as a full size rink, but large enough for some decent solo practice, is great for when weather sucks and they don't want to go out to the Ice Castle. Yuuri especially loves going to it at bizarre times of night when he can't sleep and wants to meditate on the ice.

Weights/Mat Room - 'Nuff said, gym at home keep those muscles ripped yo.

Cardio Room - All them runnin' machines. Also has access to a multi-stall bathroom.

Dance Studio - Pretty darn big, honestly bigger and nicer than Minako's ballet studio. So Minako teaches the kids here. Walls can change between mirror mode or multiple solid color modes, and door seams are near invisible. Also has drop down poles.

Sound Proof Practice Rooms - For all your deafening screaming and instrument shrieking needs...

Communal Bath - Because apparently being jogging distance to an actual free onsen wasn't enough. Big ass bathing area, sure most of the bathrooms come with baths but why bother when you have this masterpiece in the basement. Has a changing room and multi-stall bathroom for after various exercise, opens into a cleansing/shower area, and then nice big private communal bath. The main bath area has a section of the ceiling that can roll back so they can bathe beneath the open sky/let the snow fall on them which is honestly the best type of onsen experience. Even has a small waterfall that Victor can sit under in comfort however long he wants. On the other side, there's a small area with even hotter water and a sauna, along with a pretty lil rock garden.

*Note, while some people wear shoes on this floor because of the various exercise rooms, they all have pairs of shoes that they only use here. In other words, it's relatively clean, no outside dirt, and people generally also feel comfortable padding around barefoot or with slippers only.

Heat Room/Emergency Room - Where Yuuri goes when his heats are strong and he wants more privacy than the 2nd floor rooms. Is separate from the rest of the house and has multiple pheromone blocking doors that keeps his scent mostly inside. Has a big bed, a fridge, and a bathroom for his mates to care for him. They clean up really well after each heat, and because of how isolated the room is, how well equipped it is with sustenance and a bathroom, and how sturdy the walls are, it can double as an "emergency room" in case of threat. Built so it can survive a bombing, and the hall door can close seamless. Helps that only family members know this room even exists, as heat rooms aren't usually openly talked about ^ ^;

EDIT, added: Washing/Drying Machines Room - BECAUSE IT WAS DRIVING ME INSANE that I forgot to add one in the first time round because yes it's a small detail but NECESSARY. It's a big room that has a ton of machines so everyone can do their loads separately, with plenty of counter space for folding and racks for things that can be air dried indoors. It's Japan though so they like to dry their things outside when it's nice out. Located conveniently right next to the elevator.

B2 (P) - Parking/Garage

Ramp - Leads down from the ground floor, is very wide and can comfortably fit 2 large cars side by side.

Parking Lot - Can hold all the family cars (Victor's hot pink convertible, Yurio's custom tiger-print Jaguar convertible, Phichit's cutesy hamster-themed Volkswagen, Minami's painfully plain but honestly most useful family van, Yuuri's also very normal energy efficient car, and a handful of motorcycles courtesy of Otabek and Yurio's growing collection) plus that of guests.

Basement Recreation Room - Called that, but honestly mostly a garage/tinkering area. Generally considered to be Otabek's domain when he's around, he likes bringing in bikes and sometimes cars through the big ass doors they can drive through so he can fiddle with them. Nice couch area for people to watch.

Boiler Room - Bc every bigass house needs a bigass one right? *squints* IDK ARCHITECTURE MAN, just say it works 'kay...

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Aaaaand that’s it folks! Thanks for reading ^ ^ I may or may not draw how it looks externally bc I freakin’ HATE drawing buildings but eh, this should be a decent enough reference for now imagining where they live ^ ^

#YukiPri art #Future!Verse ABO AU #YOI #Yuri!!! on Ice #Polyamory #Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics #Omegaverse #long post #longpost #AHAHAHAHA SORRY GUYS it took way longer than expected to type up all the text orz #I worked on this for so long and went through so many drafts you have no idea #i mean there's a chance this'll still change too but #for now it's good enough i tell myself #yeah i know my lines are crappy and skewed all over the place #and my understanding of architecture or rich people houses is nonexistent #shhhhh just roll with it it's supposed to be fun #I also had a last minute job today teaching at the Japanese school that pretty much killed my whole day #we'll see if i can crank out the comic for tomorrow orz #at least I finished this tho sobs #I TRIED GUYS #also please don't ask me for the sub-homes' floor plans bc man this is enough for my lil brain #all their other houses are like Big but Not This Big and Probably Don't Have Internal Ice Rinks

[coffeefueledauthor]

Fanfiction Ideas: Which do You Like?

Here is a list of all of my current story ideas that I plan on writing. As you know, my plot lines are generally kind of crazy. >w< But I will be sure to include more grounded, normal stories as well. 

PLEASE BE SURE TO LET ME KNOW WHICH IDEAS ARE INTERESTING TO YOU.

I will be writing the first chapter of all those that people show interest in. And if you REALLY like what you read and want to be REALLY awesome, please be sure to donate to my patreon. Because I will only be able to write all these tales if I can gather enough patrons to make this my full time job. Patrons will recieve plenty of exclusive bonuses and early access.

Title: Out of Place Fandom: Inside Out Style: Full novel Description: A young girl feels like her mind has been numbed, and she begins to blame it on the mysterious figures appearing around the house. Join Riley as she attempts to help these tiny creatures, who claim to be her own emotions, back home. But with cats, exterminators, and her own nosy cousin, the task may be harder than she thinks. Notes: This story is already posted up to chapter 44. Find it on fanfiction.net

Title: Always By My Side Fandom: Inside Out Style: Full novel Description: Delve into the mind of Riley's mother during her pregnancy. For while she is carrying the developing infant in her womb, her emotions are busy raising the childs five infant emotions. They have only 9 months to prepare the youngsters for life inside their new host with the pressure of their inevitable separation weighing heavily on their thoughts. Notes: This story has been plotted out for over a year. A sneak peek is available on Fanfiction.net

Title: Infected Fandom: Super Mario Style: Full Novel Description: Luigi could tell something was wrong. Mario never acted this way before. But he never could have predicted just how destructive this mysterious affliction would become. Luigi desperately attempts to find answers before his brothers entire mind is consumed by this horrible infection. Notes: Lots of crazy stuff happenning. This story already has 10 chapters. They will be posted to Fanfiction.net in the coming days.

Title: Wrong Place, Worse Time Fandom: MST3K Style: full novel Description: After a string of freak accidents, the Satellite of Love is forced to crash land on a far off alien planet. The bots attempt to relocate one another so they can repair thier ship and blast off again. But they happened to arrive during an all out alien war, and the invaders have taken Joel prisoner. To save their creator, they'll have to work alongside the planet's natives and win a war that they had nothing to do with. Notes: Originally The MST3K Manga, now rewritten as a novel. A mix of comedy and adventure as the bots bumble their way through a planet at war.

Title: Death Can Change in a Single Night Fandom: Grim Fandango Style: Oneshot Description: It had been a long day for both of them. They had only met earlier that day, and both had lost their jobs and found themselves setting off on some grand adventure. Glottis finds himself lost in his thoughts during their first night away from the department of death; deep in the Petrified Forest. As Manny rests, the demon wonders what might lie on that long road ahead. Notes: Just a wordless little story of Manny and Glottis after they find each other in the petrified forest and decide to travel together.

Title: Demons Don't Have Queens Fandom: Grim Fandango Style: full novel Description: A huge, unique, and powerful demon appears in the Land of the Dead claiming to be the Ancient Demon Queen. She rallies all the demons of the world, leading them in a violent uprising against their human soul 'oppressors'. Manny remains unconvinced, and Glottis loyally stays by his side. But when the demons assume control, it's up to Manny and Glottis to find a way to dethrone this ancient queen. But as they dig deeper into this demons backstory, things only get more complicated. Especially when they discover that, unlike bee's, Demons don't have Queens. Notes: A really wild adventure full of Manny's dry wit and tons of crazy plot elements. Takes place after the game, but I guess before Manny leaves.

Title: The Lost Testimony Fandom: Phoenix Wright Style: Full Novel Description: Shortly before he is to testify in a mysterious murder case, renowned Forensic Medical Examiner Dr. M. Balmer goes missing. Phoenix, the defense attorney for the case, takes it upon himself to locate the missing witness. But during his search, Phoenix is attacked and falls victim to the same fate as the disappearing doctor. Now a prisoner in what feels like the other end of the world, Phoenix must unravel the mystery behind this black market trade he's become involved in if he ever hopes to return to his normal life. Notes: Part of my suuuuuper old For the Birds AU. All characters are different species of bird, with Phoenix as (obviously) a phoenix. Weird AU, but interesting story with a crazy mystery and bittersweet ending.

Title: Not Our First Abduction Fandom: South Park Style: Full Novel Description: Alien activity isn't exactly unheard of in the lonely mountain town. In fact, Stan barely bats an eye when he and nearly a dozen other children find themselves forced aboard a rouge spaceship and taken to a far off planet. But things turn drastic when, in their grand escape attempt, one child fails to break free of the alien clutches. Finding help on the home planet of their captors seems impossible, but they'll have to try. With assistance, they'll be able to bust out their buddy and fly their stolen spaceship back home. Otherwise, they'll be forced to attempt to fly the alien ship themselves, leaving an imprisoned Kyle stranded on the floating rock forever. Notes: Though dotted with darker notes, a lot of effort is used to keep an element of humor to the story. Lots of craziness, but none beyond what we get from the actual show itself.

Title: END TRANSMISSION Fandom: Pikmin Style: Oneshot Description: While out on a mission to catalog the native plants of the nearby worlds, Hocotation Botanist Gotto ends up stranded with no fuel and only 30 days of life support. But by day 15, its clear that fuel is nowhere to be found. Accepting his fate, Gotto spends his last days doing what he loves; cataloging the beautiful foliage of the world that will be his grave. As his thirtieth day draws to a close, Gotto logs one last transmission to his 'blackbox', explaining his fate to anyone who stumbles upon the crash site and offering a final farewell to those he had loved. Notes: One of a slim few stories I have involving an OC. But I wasn't about to kill off Olimar, heh. Definitely one of my sadder stories.

Title: It's Only a Game Fandom: Psychonauts Style: Short story Description: A mans slow decent into madness as his repeated failure to win a simple board game breaks his fragile psyche and takes him from an insane asylum orderly to an inmate. Notes: I bet someone has already written this, but I wanted to take a crack at it, since he was always my favorite.

Title: Digimon: Of Chaos and Time Fandom: Digimon Style: Full novel Description: Just as before, eight humans are transported to the Digital World and paired with unique Digimon Partners. They are instructed by the sage Salvusmon to locate the digital Time God to save the Digital World from being consumed by the rapidly growing Chaos World. Though they start in high spirits on their journey, things begin to look bleak when they realize they arent the first Digidestineds to attempt this same feat. Notes: Much like its own season, this follows unique humans and Digimon of my own design. This is a story I have been working on since I was 10. A lot may have changed, but the heart of the tale never did.

Title: Asterisk Fandom: Oddworld Style: Short story/full novel Description: Abe never really saw himself as a hero. But now the role of 'savior' has been thrust upon him. Wandering through the Scrabania and Paramonia wilderness to recieve his Shrykull scars, he muses to himself about the way history will remember him after his no doubt unavoidable failure. The word Savior, he figures, will be marked with an asterisk. And the beings following him in silence are forced to agree. Notes: Depending on how crazy I'm willing to make it, this could either be much longer or much shorter. I haven't decided yet.

Title: Escape from Dimension Q! Fandom: Iz and Auggie: Escape from Dimension Q! Style: Video Game Novelization Description: Teenager Iz and robot Auggie are bandmates that find themselves with one shot at recieving a record contract from the biggest name in the business. But for reasons neither of them can explain, their instruments had refused to play their song, and they failed their audition miserably. They have little time to grieve, however. When two agents in black send them on a mission into an alternate dimension, Iz and Auggie realize that losing the contract was the least of their concerns. Notes: A direct novelization of a computer game by Headbone Interactive. Two chapters are already finished, and will be posted in the coming days.

Thats all the ideas I can remember right now. But I have way more to come! Let me know which ones sound interesting! Or let me know which fandoms I should think of more ideas for!

#fanfiction #so many ideas #if i can get the funds then i can write them ALL #we can do this together #WOO #inside out #out of place #super mario #infected #mario #luigi #grim fandango #manny calavera #glottis #mst3k #crow t robot #tom servo #phoenix wright #ace attorney #for the birds #south park #stan marsh #kyle broflovski #pikmin #oc #psychonauts #fred bonaparte #crispin whytehead #digimon #oddworld

[thematildaeffect]

Caption: Tera and Christine (both smiling) at the East Bay Zine Fest, Dec 2017

An Interview With Christine Liu of Two Photon Art and The Stem Squad

In the cultural imagination, science and art are opposing fields, with no overlap in techniques or practitioner. But Christine Liu, a fourth-year graduate student studying neuroscience in the Lammel lab at UC Berkeley, is proof of just how wrong this stereotype is. Using techniques like optogenetics, which allows scientists to turn “on” and “off” genetically-modified neurons and ion channels with light, she studies how nicotine addiction changes the brain, probing what neural cell populations are responsible for the positive and negative feedback loops associated with nicotine. As accomplished outside of the lab as she is in it, Liu is the co-founder, along with Tera Johnson, of the Two Photon Art collective. The two make beautiful and informative zines about scientific topics ranging from volcanoes to prosopagnosia, or face blindness. Liu also created the social media collective, which currently boasts a Facebook group and Instagram page, “The Stem Squad,” a place for women working in, and interested in, STEM to come together, support each other, and connect with others in their field. Because of her prowess in science and art, Liu was a runner-up in the Search for Hidden Figures contest. Liu was kind enough to sit down with me, and talk to me about her work with the Two Photon Art Collective and The Stem Squad (questions and answers have been edited for clarity).

Soleil: Could you tell me a little bit about your background in science, and how you got interested in neuroscience specifically? Were you always sort of drawn to the field or did you come to it after a certain experience?

Christine: I started getting really into neuroscience my senior year of high school. People were trying to figure out what college they wanted to go to, what major they wanted to pursue, and I was always good at science but I never sort of saw myself as a scientist. I was gifted a few books by friends, one of which was the Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat by Oliver Sacks, as well as The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge. Usually, even today, I’ll read about 3/4ths of a book, and I just won’t be able to bring myself to finish it. For some reason, I’ll get bored of it. But these were two books that really stuck with me, especially the idea that our brain is involved in the control of our lives, and that missing even just a small chunk of it can alter a human’s ability to go through life the same way that others do. I ended up going to University of Oregon, which has a very robust neuroscience research core, and I was able to start doing neuroscience just a few months into my freshman year and I haven’t stopped since. I feel very lucky I was able to start doing research so early in a field I love. I just kind of stumbled upon it; it was never really a mission of mine. Even going to pursue my Ph.D. wasn’t really a mission either; it just seemed like the next logical step.

S: What does science-art means to you? What are you trying to accomplish with the art you do?

C: Fundamentally, art for me is something that takes the pressure off of other aspects of my life. Its something I really enjoy doing.  Even before I started Two Photons with Tera, I really enjoyed going home after a long day in lab and painting. My friend Tera, who I met doing a summer research program, and I do Two Photon Art together. It’s grown very organically based on who we are. We’re both women of color who do research and science, but didn’t always grow up being fed this (kind of) information. Science was never something I saw myself doing necessarily, which I think might be because I never had much access to this world until I became a part of it serendipitously. One of the main goals we have is to increase access to science, especially for people who don’t really identify with it. There’s this dichotomy that people often fall into that you’re either creative and artsy or you’re analytical and scientific, and oftentimes people put themselves into one box and forget to explore other sides of them. Sooner or later people forget they have that capability. So some of the work we try to do is to remind people you can be both, and you can be proud of both. We try to choose interesting topics that will reel people in who wouldn’t normally be interested, or might be intimidated by science. We make pins because of a slightly selfish motive. We were getting really active in a zine community full of artists and creative people who get to wear their passion on their sleeve. A lot of them screen print their own t-shirts, or wear enamel pins of stuff that they love. There wasn’t a lot (of enamel pins) for science, so we created them. Really, the fundamental thing is that we do the art for ourselves, but we’ve found a lot of opportunities along the way to make science a little more inclusive and welcoming to other people.

S: What was the first thing you guys created together?

C: It was the volcanoes zine, because we were in Nicaragua (together) where there are tons of volcanoes. We were hiking on volcanoes, and we were swimming in lakes with volcanic ash all over them, and we took the opportunity to be where we were and to try to disseminate the information we were learning a little more widely. We’ve grown a lot since then in terms of citing our sources, and formatting and illustration, so it’s kind of fun to look back at that one. We were just doing it for fun, and wanted to find a way to keep in touch with each other, and a driving force to hold us accountable in making art. We started it for fun, so we’ll stop doing it if it’s not fun anymore.

S: Could you tell me a little about how you started The Stem Squad, and what exactly you’ve done with it so far? How does one get involved with it?

C: So I’ll start with your last point, I would love for you to join the group. We have an Instagram page where we have the most followers, but most of the support we have occurs in the Facebook group, which has almost 800 members now. It started because I started to get more active on Instagram, with my personal account and with the Two Photon account, and I noticed that there were a handful of really expressive, honest, women in STEM who were telling the stories of their lives, and who were unafraid to embrace their femininity. I thought that was such a cool community that I really wanted to be a part of and foster connections with. We made a Facebook group, and people started inviting their own friends, and we made an Instagram page. With the Instagram page, we let people in the community take over for a week and post whatever they want about their work, their background, and it’s just grown exponentially over time. It’s really amazing. It's a very organic, pure kind of community. I don’t have to do anything to advertise it. It’s just grown from people who stumbled upon it and found that they really want to be apart of it, and there’s very little that I have to do in terms of administration to keep things caring and kind, because people in the group are so intrinsically nice and supportive and creative. I always feel weird when people give me credit for founding it, because all I did was name it and create a logo for it, but really it’s all the people inside it that do all of the work. Anyone can join, anyone who identifies as a woman, or a girl, or female in science and STEM, especially if they are interested in joining a caring community and providing resources for others as well.

S: I really like the way that you talk about it, it seems very caring, and the way you guys center care is very nice, especially since science is seen in some ways, I guess correctly, as kind of this one-man, often white, for themselves, hypercompetitive world. Community can be such an important starting point in so many things

C: Absolutely. I didn't realize how much I needed this community until I had it. It’s been really amazing seeing all the beautiful things that have come to fruition from this community. Tons of people meet up that found each other through the group. People who have started podcasts have found guests through the group, and everyone is really in there to support each other. It’s a community founded on support and collaboration, and there’s no place for competition at all. This is a place we want to be safe and free to talk about things that might be taboo to talk about elsewhere. This is just how women in STEM want to interact with each other; it’s full of love.

S: Are you working on anything in particular right now?

C: We are always working on like 3 things at a time. It’s actually pretty overwhelming because we have so many ideas, and we can’t wait to get them done, and sometimes people approach us with things we just can’t pass (up on). So one zine we are really close to being done with is a collaboration with an artist called Natelle Draws Stuff, and she does a lot of enamel pins and will donate some of the proceeds to conservation efforts. We are making a zine with her called “Same Difference”, which is about convergent and divergent evolution, and why we see so many kinds of animals that fly, but also why closely related animals have evolved different functions.

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If you want to learn more about Christine Liu and the art and science she does, check out her Twitter and her webpage. To learn more about her and Tera’s zine collective, check out Two Photon Art’s webpage and Patreon/Etsy.

#science #women in science #women in STEM #science-art