#my comic art but we are using the term ''art'' loosely

[silverwhittlingknife]

poem: "accident report in the tall, tall weeds" by ada limón

#when i started fussing with this it was going to be a pitch for that never-made comic series where tim moves to blüdhaven #when dick is injured and helps out as nightwing for a while #but then it felt weird having visuals and no text #so instead you get this poem i'm very attached to #it's like mmm okay it's reductive bc this is not actually just the way that men love but the poem is so good <3 #dick grayson #tim drake #dick & tim #my comic art but we are using the term ''art'' loosely #since it's just copy-pasted pictures from the comics + unsplash photos + layering to add outlines/lighting #all the comic book art here is by marcus to + patrick zircher because they are my favorites <3 #so red robin + zircher's run on nightwing

[genericpuff]

Genuinely curious as to if you asked permission to use Rachel’s characters and she said yes or if you just decided Lore Olympus is popular enough to make a fan comic of and are hoping you don’t receive a cease and desist? Can anyone create a remake comic of original content and just change what you don’t like about it and it’s considered legal if you say the characters belong to the original creator? There is plenty of disappointing media out there that could be remade. I understand you cannot use their characters for profit so is just posting it ok?

Yes, anyone can, because it's called fanfiction lmao Obviously in my case the term "fan" is being used loosely here as at this point it's more like "foe"fiction LMAO but the same principles apply. Unless I try to claim LO is my own creation or make a profit off Rekindled, I should be in the clear. If legal action was taken against me then it would set a precedent against all forms of fanfiction, rewrite, redraw, etc. content around LO which are all essentially doing the same thing Rekindled is doing. I think people tend to view Rekindled as somewhat of an "exception" that's vulnerable to legal action because it's an actual weekly comic put into practice in the same playing field as LO (though they're on massively different bases obviously LOL), but there's not much more separating it from the LO redraw accounts or even the genuine fan accounts that have learned how to draw in Rachel's style (and use it to make their own LO self-inserts and whatnot). I had the time and resources and experience to do what I do through Rekindled, but every redraw, rewrite, fanfiction, etc. account are making the exact same statement I am, whether intentionally or not - "I do/don't like the canon, but/so here's what I think it would be like if it went like this".

There is definitely plenty of media out there that could be remade, and a lot of them are by the fanfiction writers out there who are filling that niche within their respective fandoms. LO is the one I want to do because it's the one that interests me and compels me the most to rewrite.

Not to mention, it's already a bold statement in and of itself to say that I'm "using Rachel's characters", a statement that likely wouldn't hold up in court LMAO Her "characters" are literally just stylized self-insert versions of public domain figures. She did not write The Hymn to Demeter. She did not create Hades, or Persephone, or Hecate, or any of the other characters she writes about. She does not own an entire religion or its deities. The only thing that she really "owns" is the licensing rights to the name "Lore Olympus", and while the style of LO is very unique and identifiable, you can't trademark/copyright a style because that uproots the entire foundation of what art is (ironically no one has had an original idea SINCE the Greeks, we all just learn and adapt our styles based on other artists that we get inspired by and learn from).

Shit, there are series completely unrelated to LO that get harassed or otherwise warned that they could cross into "legal territory" with LO just because they're Greek myth comics. Punderworld, Theia Mania, H x P Ficlets, all of these are comics that also tackle the H x P myth, and while they aren't attempting to do the same thing as Rekindled (as they exist on their own terms) it's really disappointing when I see people talk about these comics purely through the scope of Lore Olympus as if LO invented Greek myth. If WT/Rachel tried to pull rank over the story's "characters", they'd be picking a fight with every other Greek myth comic, book, movie, etc. and they oughta know that's not a fight they're gonna win lol

So everything beyond LO's branding is, in and of itself, fanfiction. Rekindled is just another level deeper by being fanfiction of a fanfiction. As long as I'm not profiting off Lore Olympus' namesake or distributing my work with the misconception that I created LO, it's legally fine. Morally, I'm sure it doesn't exactly make me a saint to do it, it definitely took a lot of hubris for me to say "yeah I don't like how you wrote your story enough that I felt the need to rewrite it completely" and I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking doing so is icky. There are certain lines I won't cross - I don't use the general LO hashtags because my content is very critical and my work isn't really for the fans, I don't encourage anyone to "show Rachel" what I do here because none of what I do here is obligated to be seen by her (and I know it wouldn't be in her best interest to see it anyways, she's literally said that she doesn't like criticism so why tf would I wanna show her a comic that exists to criticize her work lol), and I'm not planning on posting it to Webtoons because that's Rachel's territory. I don't want to overstep both in the legal sense and in the moral one. I think it's more than enough for me to just post my stuff here for the people who are seeking it, and not profit off it or directly affiliate it with LO/Rachel beyond crediting.

All that said, in a moral and legal sense, what I'm doing is literally the basis of fanfiction, and I wouldn't be going to such lengths and spending this much time every week putting out episodes every week if I never cared about LO and how it made us all feel, even if some of us don't love it as much as we used to.

#also just as some food for thought and because i couldn't find a place to fit it in the post #sonic mania ended up being one of the best games in the sonic franchise in over a decade and it was made by a sonic fangame dev #a lot of shakespeare's most beloved plays were also 'stolen' from other works #and don't get me started on the screenwriting industry #many of the books they adapt into film are completely rewritten from weaker source material or material that just won't work in movie form #obviously sometimes it's for worse and not better #but rewriting works you're dissatisfied with is an age old tradition IMO #fifty shades of grey exists and it was literally twilight fanfiction when it started LMAO #innovation is found in fandoms #i could just be haphazardly defending myself tho LOL maybe i'm just an asshole #lore olympus critical #lo critical #anti lore olympus #antiloreolympus #ask me anything #ama #anon ama #anon ask me anything #lore rekindled #lore rekindled comic #lore rekindled ama

[paperboy-pb]

"Willful Ignorance" [Life Story]

[Written in August, 2023]

A parent reminded me why I make PB the other night.

For those of you who don't know, I'm a very young creator. 20 in October. And I had one of my co-writers for a different comic ("Weirder Than Usual") over at my place for the weekend. And being the youngest of a hispanic family, my parents have no plans to let me move out anytime soon. When I do leave, it will likely be without their blessing.

I let one parent drive my co-writer back home for the night. I knew I wouldn't be much fun to have in the car that late (I fall asleep pretty early,) and that we wouldn't be free to discuss creative affairs with that parent there, anyway.

I don't like to be myself with this parent around. We are distant. And I keep that distance for a reason.

And despite my absence, this parent reminded me why. Because guess what my cowriter texted me not too long after!

Some hours later, I can't help but think to myself... it's so funny how she stresses my late speech so much. Because now that it's here, it's as if my words don't matter at all.

I will admit my family doesn't know everything that our Special Ed program put me & other children through. But I will ALSO say that that's their own fault. Because as I grew up, I used to tell them every awful thing that I found important. And it was their lack of response that made me stop.

The driver of that car is clueless. She's "forgotten" about the violence that surrounded me in there. Desks crashing to the ground after an adult's angriest shove. Sweaters stretched out and destroyed from middle school fights that nobody broke up.

She's "forgotten" about every time I told her that we weren't learning what we needed to know, insisting that every class must've been doing 3rd grade worksheets in 7th if we were.

She's "forgotten" her 11-year-old asking if he was on the spectrum; how she put on the confused performance of a lifetime as she told me no. But miraculously, she remembers sitting somewhere in the spring of 2005, being told so by professionals.

And she "doesn't remember" us yelling on the phone in 2022. How I spent 80 dollars on an Uber just so we wouldn't share state grounds. And how I screamed for the millionth time, in no uncertain terms, "I AM NOT MAD AT YOU FOR PUTTING ME IN A PROGRAM THAT PROMISED US HELP. You believed them! I know you believed them, they promised you I'd be okay! The problem is that THEY BROKE THAT PROMISE! And every time they did, you just looked the other way!"

Whether she is or isn't being truthful doesn't matter. It's bad on her either way.

Because I know she remembers my dentist reporting bruxism to her when I still had loose teeth. How they would ask her about my environment, or if she knew whether or not anything was stressing me out. And that she chose to question nothing as it continued nightly into my teens. Damaging my adult teeth and concerning all who would sleep in the same room as me. They could hear me all the time. Sometimes my sister would even wake me up.

I know she remembers marking her little one's height against the wall, and seeing the space under his eyes grow darker and darker across the 6th grade.

I know she remembers making leave Autism themed group chats, because to her, my name & that word should never be in the same sentence.

I know she remembers going through his journals and sketchbooks, finding concept art for our Matthew B. And how just one look was enough to make her enroll me to therapy when I was 13.

And she knows that I remember how she hates that boy. Matthew Boston, I mean. And at least one part of her hates everything that he is; disabled, creative, expressive, and headstrong.

I know because she hates those traits in me as well.

Since I spend a lot of time in disability spaces, I try not to assume somebody isn't trying to understand. Comprehension doesn't come easy to everyone. And I especially suspect that she's neurodivergent as well.

But I've tried everything with this one, and I'm truly at the end of my rope. I've tried visuals. I've tried keeping it short and sweet and simple. I've tried having complex and mature conversations where I don't skip a single detail.

I've even tried therapy with her in the room.

Nothing works. And unless this is the convenient work of an undiagnosed memory condition, there's no reason for that.

My Autistic voice matters so little to her that she insists on prying information out of my friends when I'm not in the room; asking the allistic all these questions I've answered myself one thousand times.

She doesn't want to understand. She doesn't want to question her own ableism. Or work past it. And that's why I don't show her "PAPERBOY" at all, and likely won't until years and years from now.

Because PAPERBOY is for the people who do understand. For people who do understand, and everyone who wants to.

#paperboy pb #disability #ableism tw #tw ableism #tw ableist language #emotional abuse #disabled writer #actually autistic #special education #paperboy

[dimdiamond]

hi! i hope this isnt a weird thing to ask, but i was wondering if youve ever posted art/comics with greek writing in them? ive been doing duolingo for greek and realized i dont think ive ever seen handwritten greek - im curious to see if my attempts at handwriting it look anything like handwriting of someone actually from there

Oh not at all! I am not used to be asked about my country or find people learning the language and in general I try to avoid referring to my country or anything me about irl as much as I can because... I don't know really 😅

Anyway I don't mind being asked about my mother language etc and ΜΠΡΑΒΟ for learning Greek, I understand it's not an easy language to learn and grasp the concept of it and wish you all the luck! (Long post so I cut it here)

Now I won't say I have the best handwriting out there but I can tell you that even amongst us we differ the way we writing a letter. For example κ/k, Ω/one of our o and β/v:

So don't stress over it and find a way to accommodate you!

But yes the comics! One is the well known now το γαλλάκι/the little french boy from Rastapopoulos 😂

But to helps you more I translated two more so you can see more of my bearable handwriting

I took the liberty of translating loosely some phrasing so it can make true sense instead of just translating word by word. The translation here is basically:

That count as stretching, alright! A for effort! Still better than Haddock but don't tell him that! / Αυτό μπορεί να μετρήσει ως τέντωμα, εντάξει! Α για την προσπάθεια! Και πάλι καλύτερα από τον Χάντοκ αλλά μην του το πεις αυτό!

Did ya scare away the blasted salesman?! Good job, Milou! Now let's continue training! Whenever ya see Catafiori what ya do? BITE! Exactly! Who's the best boy? YA'RE! / Τον κατατρόμαξες τον καταραμμένο πλασιέ;! Καλή δουλειά, Μιλού! Τώρα ας συνεχίσουμε την εκπαίδευση! Όποτε βλέπεις την Κασταφιόρι τι κάνεις; ΔΑΓΚΩΝΕΙΣ! Ακριβώς! Ποιός είναι το καλύτερο αγόρι; Σύ' σαι!

Salesman normally translates to έμπορος/πλανόδιος έμπορος (eboros/ planodios eboros) but we use the foreign word πλασιέ (plasie) in everyday life.

Also decided to translate ya're aka you are to σύ' σαι (si' se) instead of εσύ είσαι (esi ise) for making it sound more countryside you know.

I don't know if I will ever make comics or write something in Greek since I want to actually communicate with you all when I am sharing my work and also some things are better communicated in English terms, especially when we're talking about something foreign to the Greek language and culture. Not gonna lie, though, that some jokes and things would be great in Greek so who knows? I can use Rastapopolos as an excuse for now!

#hope this helps nonnie #good luck with your lessons! #if you have any other question feel free to ask #answered #tintin #captain haddock #archibald haddock #milou #the adventures of tintin #my art #greek language

[grandhotelabyss]

Any thoughts on the whole "fandom" phenomena?

It's a big topic. I usually defer to my pal Katherine Dee and her collaborators on the subject. It's not that I'm not capable of seeing what's true in the idea and the practice. I have tried to do it justice. I also understand it as a quasi-inevitable feature of mass media, staring with print media, ever since all the sad young literary men started shooting themselves in imitation of Young Werther. Fandom in a loose sense is also just a way of describing the process of modern culture in general, as we all are recruited when young via mass media into one or another aesthetic habitus (lifestyles, subcultures) that will shape the whole course of our lives, from how we dress to who we love to where we live. But fandom in the stricter sense—and, as a writer, I am mainly thinking about fan fiction, fan art, etc.—seems to me a mistake in the end, a way of trapping yourself at an early stage of imagination. I think I was 12 the last time I wrote anything that could now be called fanfiction,[*] whereas some now write it well into middle age. And maybe I should leave them to their entertainment, if that's all they want. But to anyone who wants anything more, I would say this: culture should be an imaginative relay. Handed a world of art, and sparked by it, you should construct your own in turn, and on your own terms, and not live in someone else's; you should make your own variations on the archetypes rather than adopting anyone else's. We were talking about Harold Bloom last post: the motive to write fan fiction is the same as the motive that Bloom analyzes in the tradition of Romantic poetry, where each poet strives to supplant and complete his precursor. But to use the same exact characters, the same exact imaginative world, as your precursor, especially if your precursor is a shallow entertainment product designed by committee rather than the more intricate product of a distinct psyche—this seems like a good way not to achieve Bloom's desired effect of strong poetry: a lie against time, an increase of life.

______________________________

[*] It was my version of a quintessentially Dark Age Batman comic with the following story. Superman, it transpires, has been driven mad, bereft of his Kansan innocence, by his pursuit of a brutal child murder. The Man of Steel's disequilibrium throws Lois Lane, who has chased a hot story to Gotham City, into the arms of one Bruce Wayne. (I still remember writing the scene of their slow dance at the Wayne Enterprises winter ball or whatever, the way they each mutually come to see someone they'd met before but never thought much of in the sudden light of eros and of care.) The whole narrative culminates in a Batman vs. Superman fight I sadistically intended to be more brutal than the one that concludes Dark Knight Returns; I believe Superman ends up impaled on the spire of a Gotham cathedral. Poison Ivy also came into somehow, but I don't remember the details there, and I never finished writing it. Anyway, by the next year, I was creating my own characters, as described here.

#fandom

[daydreamerdrew]

Comics read this past week:

Marvel Comics:

Marvel Team-Up (1972) Annual #2 and Marvel Treasury Edition (1974) #25

Both of these issues were stand-alone Hulk and Spider-Man team-up stories. The Marvel Team-Up issue was published in September 1979 and was written by Chris Claremont, penciled by Sal Buscema and Alan Kupperberg, and inked by Jack Abel. The Marvel Treasury Edition issue was published in December 1979 and was plotted by Mark Gruenwald, Steven Grant, and Bill Mantlo, scripted by just Bill Mantlo, penciled by Herb Trimpe, and inked by Bruce Patterson.

I thought that both of these issues had a great Hulk voice and entertaining interactions between the Hulk and Spider-Man, who I think is the best character for the Hulk to be paired with in a team-up because they play off of each other so well.

The Marvel Team-Up issue also had a good amount of Bruce in it because it focused on nuclear bombs, which is a topic he's actually well-suited for as a character but one I haven't seen him used that much for since the 60s. He has been used in stories intended to tell readers important messages about other topics, but that always falls kind of flat for me because it feels disjointed as he's not really a 'person' whose opinion I'd value on other topics; it's not like Bruce really has his life together. In this story Bruce gets kidnapped for assistance in stopping a nuclear bomb threat to the United States, and he at first tells the man "If you're trying to kidnap me for the atomic secrets inside my head, you've bitten off more than you can chew," which I thought was interesting as I hadn't thought about someone attempting that before. Back in the early 60s, when Bruce still had his job as a civilian scientist specializing in gamma radiation in the U.S. military, it was common for his strange unexplainable disappearances from transforming into the Hulk to be taken as evidence that he was secretly a spy for a foreign power. Now he's well-known that that's not what was happening, but I could see him being loose as a fugitive from the government being thought of as a security risk, the Hulk notwithstanding.

At the conclusion of the story, Bruce talks about the usage of nuclear bombs as "the death of everything. The horror every nuclear weapons physicist has lived with since the first a-bomb test at Alamogordo… the horror which cost Bruce Banner his humanity." Bruce, of course, was transformed into the Hulk during the testing of a nuclear bomb he designed. I think it would be interesting to explore his changing perspective on his work with the military over time, as he presumably was more positive about nuclear bombs when he was actively working on them, and he actually kept his job after the accident and only fully left it when him being the Hulk was revealed. Even so, despite his fugitive criminal status he's had some friendly interactions with the military over the years. This story ends him questioning whether or not we have the courage to "rise up and say 'no more bombs'" and "learn to live in peace with one another."

Iron Man (1968) #12-14 and Captain Marvel (1968) #14

In this batch of solo Iron Man comics I went from January 1969 to March 1969. I also read that Captain Marvel issue- which was written by Gary Friedrich, penciled by Frank Springer, and inked by Vince Colletta- because it was mentioned explicitly in the endnote of Iron Man #14. Issues #12-14 of Iron Man were written by Archie Goodwin. Issues #12 and #13 were penciled by George Tuska and inked by Johnny Craig, and then issue #14 was both penciled and inked by Johnny Craig as a one issue stand-in for George Tuska. I haven’t had any complaints about George Tuska’s work so far, but I really liked the art in that one issue drawn entirely by Johnny Craig and I definitely would have enjoyed him penciling more issues of the book.

Tony and Janice's relationship in this batch of issues went from them seeing each other and being on positive terms to Tony questioning whether or not it was right for him to date when his emotions for her could effect his decision-making as Iron Man and when he could die at any time due to his weak heart and then ultimately deciding that, while he really wants to be with her, he can't. It's probably worth noting that Janice risked her life for Tony's sake back in issue #11. Something had to happen as Janice had been portrayed as this perfect girl that was always understanding and forgave Tony when his Iron Man responsibilities made him look bad (but not before we got to see Tony freaking out about it, of course) and that couldn't just go on in circles forever without getting boring. But I'm thinking (and hoping) that she won't be written out of the story completely since her company had been referred to as a competitor of Tony's and she could still appear in the book with that reasoning but as someone who Tony has uniquely conflicted feelings about. Though it's also worth noting how in the Captain Marvel issue, which took place right after the end of Iron Man #14 and so right after Tony's "How I long to take her in my arms, confide in her- tell her everything about me! And yet, I can't!" internal monologue, Tony was doing his playboy flirting with a random woman.

Iron Man gets mind-controlled to fight Captain Marvel in the Captain Marvel issue, a problem that is solved by Tony just having a heart attack in the middle of the fight and Captain Marvel telling the soldiers he'd been having a stand-off with before Iron Man arrived to get him to a hospital rather than continuing on. Tony wakes up in the ambulance and it was very amusing to me how he handled the situation by pretending that his very real heart attack was just him faking a medical emergency to get out of the fight because Captain Marvel was too tough for him.

The Avengers (1963) #1-5 and #1.5 (published in September 1999) and Fantastic Four (1961) #25-26

Within the original Avengers issues, all of which were written by Stan Lee and penciled by Jack Kirby, I went from from July 1963 to March 1934. Issue #1 was inked by Dick Ayers, issues #2-3 and #5 by Paul Reinman, and issue #4 was inked by George Roussos. The #1.5 issue of The Avengers was published in September 1999 and was written by Roger Stern and penciled and inked by Bruce Timm. And the two issues of Fantastic Four were also written by Stan Lee and penciled by Jack Kirby and both were inked by George Roussos.

This batch of issues was just me rereading what of the Avengers I'd already read back at the beginning of my Hulk readthrough before I continue on with them for the sake of my Iron Man readthrough. I'm in 1969 with Iron Man right now but have only been reading through his solo comics and not all of his appearances in order, and I've reached the point where it's actually really uncomfortable for me to not be getting the full context of his portrayal and characterization and relationships. I had decided to just stick with his solo comics when I first began with Iron Man because I wasn't as invested in him as I was with the Hulk and because I hadn't enjoyed these issues that much when I first read them. But I was really not that into Iron Man's solo comics when I first started them and then found how they evolved to be really compelling, so I'm hoping that these Avengers comics will also evolve into something more appealing to me, even though I'm not ordinarily into team books.

In this batch of issues it was the Hulk that had the most compelling portrayal, and behind him Captain America, and then Rick Jones. It might end up being the case that I get interested in Captain America too and/or uncomfortable reading through these issues and not getting the full context of his character, so this could spark me beginning reading through all of Captain America's appearances too. It'll also be good to be seeing the Rick Jones appearances that I missed because they were when he wasn't with the Hulk, though I don't think I'm interested in reading his appearances with Captain Marvel in the late 60s just yet, so I would at the very least stop there with him when that comes up.

DC Comics:

The New Champion of Shazam! (2022) #4

This issue, which was published in January 2023, was the final issue of a 4-issue miniseries that was entirely written by Josie Campbell and drawn by Doc Shaner. My feelings about this series are overall very positive, though I’ll say that this final issue didn’t quite stick the landing for me because the final big villain confrontation was a bit unsatisfying and, more importantly, the end of the series was a tie-in to an event, rather than a proper conclusion to this story. It’s not that this issue didn’t work as a conclusion to the series at all, but I think that the first issue (and, to an extent, the marketing before it) built up Mary’s away-at-college experience and then never delivered on that front. For example, aside from the cover of the second issue, Mary’s college roommates that she meets in the first issue are never seen or mentioned again. I would have liked to have seen Mary heading back to Vassar or at least making tangible plans to. I want to see this story that this book put in my head and made me want in the first place.

the Shazam Family story in Lazarus Planet: We Once Were Gods (2023) #1

This story, from an anthology one-shot that was published in January 2023, was written by Josie Campbell and drawn by Caitlin Yarksy. I was honestly not very happy with this story. The positive characterization of Billy didn't make an impact on me because I have no real attachment to this version of him. What did effect me though was the portrayal of the Wizard Shazam, in that it really bothered me. I think it's unfortunate that this negative characterization of him, which is so at odds with how previous versions of him were characterized, is not only being maintained in this new era for the characters, but is being emphasized in how he's built up here as an antagonist against Billy and Mary for the upcoming Lazarus Planet: Revenge of the Gods (2023) miniseries. It was also, to a lesser degree, an issue for me that the Rock of Eternity was used in this story as an antagonistic force against Billy and Mary as well, even though it's partially because of the Lazarus Planet event corrupting things, because it's also partially because of how it was used back in the Shazam! (2021) miniseries. These are integral parts of these characters' mythos, and making gradual slight adjustments over the years from the post-New 52 reboot version of Billy's original harsh characterization in Shazam! (2013) doesn't change how the character's fundamental concept was based around rejecting the original's. And that's inherently still the case, because these elements aren't out of sight and out of mind, but still very present in how they're approaching this character and the stories they're telling with him. It's not that the character is forever tainted and I'll never be able to enjoy a main continuity story with him again, but that nothing that's been published in a comic book so far has been able to carry on my love for the classic character to this one. I would actually consider myself to be a lot less picky than other classic Captain Marvel fans, but I think that not portrayed the Wizard so negatively is pretty bare minimum.

Human Target: Final Cut (2002)

This graphic novel, published in May 2002, was written by Peter Milligan and drawn by Javier Pulido. While it follows up the Human Target (1999) 4-issue miniseries that I didn’t much care for, I was surprised at how much Human Target: Final Cut genuinely really worked for me. A driving reason for that was because Final Cut actually primarily focuses on Christopher Chance as the main character, whereas the preceding miniseries divided more of its time between different characters original to it, none of whom I was convinced to be interested in. I also thought that the approach Peter Milligan is taking with the concept of the Human Target as a character that impersonates people having identity issues was better executed here.

While I prefer Tom King and Greg Smallwood’s The Human Target (2021) as a mature take on the original 70s iteration of the character, outside of that specific context I find the characterization of Christopher Chance in Final Cut compelling. The reason why I prefer Tom King’s approach to Christopher Chance is that it expands on how that he specifically impersonates people who are slated to die and how his backstory of watching his dad be murdered in a degrading away as a child effects him; whereas Peter Milligan’s approach is in exploring an identity issue that, while based on the concept of the character of an impersonator, wasn’t suggested in the original comics and (so far) doesn’t make any use of his original backstory. Also, the usage of noir tropes and the art style in The Human Target makes it feel more like an evolved take on an older character, whereas Final Cut feels like early 2000s comic.

The bulk of this book is spent with Christopher impersonating someone he killed to try to figure out where they might have hidden a kid they kidnapped for ransom. At the very beginning of the book on a different job, we see Christopher’s skills in understanding the people impersonates (which go so far that he’s able to genuinely struggle to understand that he’s not actually them) presented in an almost supernatural way when he’s able to inexplicable replicate parts of a client’s life that they didn’t tell him about. Of course, impersonating a person that’s dead and that you’ve never met is a bit trickier, and I liked how the story approached Christopher trying to learn about them and then integrate himself into their life. But I particularly liked the conclusion of the story, which has Christopher have to impersonate another man which quickly goes awry as he did not actually understand him at all and the unexpected repercussions of his misdeeds are misdirected and catch up to Chris. There’s a part earlier in the book where Chris shows a bit of self-awareness and makes a lot of assumptions based off of a photo and then thinks to himself “For Christ’s sake, Chance. What horseshit! You can’t tell that from a photograph! You’re making it up!” But that self-awareness doesn’t last as he explains some later behavior to himself while impersonating the aforementioned misjudged man as “For a moment you thought you were in love with her. Because at that moment you were Frank White. But Christopher Chance isn’t in love with her. He’s just out of love with the rest of his life.” At this moment Christopher is trying to grapple with his concerning though patterns directly, but, while so much of this book is spent on the difficulty of fully understanding exactly what a person thought and did just from what was around them in their life, he can’t let go of the comforting belief that he actually becomes the people he impersonates, and then it’s his fixation on Frank White’s life and the belief that it’s ideal that creates problems for him.

Judging from the ending though, it doesn’t seem that Christopher learned his lesson from that harshly-presented revelation. I’m now very interested in reading the follow-up ongoing series. Though I’m not sure I’m going to be able to finish all of Christopher Chance’s appearances before the final issue of The Human Target comes out on the 28th.

Eternity Comics:

Spicy Tales (1988) #8-11

Spicy Tales was a series that has so far reprinted comic strips from Frank Armer’s line of pulp magazines, which otherwise primarily contained text stories that had some accompanying art. These comics were unique as the editorial by John Wooley in issue #6 explains, quoting Will Murray that “Sexy comics strips were a staple in the girlie pulps before the Spicies came along- in mags like Pep, Breezy Stories and College Humor. But they usually revolved around college girl situations, not genre stuff.” While the comics from the 30s contained many scenes of women in suggestive compromising scenarios, the action beginning as they happened to be in a state of undress or them being stripped and erotically tortured when kidnapped and such, the comics from the 40 and- starting with this batch of issues- the early 50s were noticeably less so; the content becoming more and more subdued over time in respond to outside pressure.

And the rest of this comics round-up is gonna be under a cut for the discussion of those 'spicy' comics, which also contained some racist depictions:

Sally the Sleuth

There was one 8-page Sally the Sleuth story, written and drawn by Keats Petree, from Crime Smashers (1950) #8, which was published in January 1952. A long way here from her days of regularly being chained up in her underwear, in this story when Sally gets kidnapped all of her clothes stay on. I wouldn’t say that there’s absolutely no sex appeal- she makes no unappealing poses when she’s restrained and there’s a nice close-up shot of her removing a gun from her garter holster- but that’s truly nothing in comparison to the kinds of scenarios and positions she used to end up in and only worth noting to make the comparison, it wouldn’t stand out to me otherwise. By this time the Chief is still appearing alongside (and saving) Sally, though there wasn’t any mention of Peanuts here. The end of the story genuinely startled me because it had the Chief interacting with Sally in a way I hadn’t seen before, with her saying “You often say I’m not too bright” and him replying “You’re a honey just the same, you little dumbbell.” While I wouldn’t say that the Chief shows a remarkable amount of respect for Sally and her work in the 30s or 40s stories, he’s certainly never insulted her before (at least, in the stories previously reprinted in Spicy Tales). Other than that, I really did like Keats Petree’s work on the character better than Adolphe Barreaux’s in the 40s, though Adolphe Barreaux’s work in the 30s is still my personal favorite Sally. The art style is nice and I wouldn’t mind reading more Sally the Sleuth work from him.

And there were three 2-page Sally the Sleuth stories, written and drawn by the character's creator Adolphe Barreaux, from the October 1937, December 1937, and January 1938 issues of Spicy Detective. The first two of these stories followed the typical pattern of Sally being saved by the Chief, but the one from the January 1938 issue broke the mold by having Sally save another woman instead. Not that that’s never happened before, but it’s still a notable occurrence. It has Sally go undercover at a college to catch someone that’s been “peddling dope” to “pretty co-eds.” She gets a “snowbird” to lead her to the buyer by pretending to do coke (it was really just powdered sugar) in front of her after seeing the student do actual coke herself, then saying that she was out and needed to buy more. But Sally fails to capture the crook when she first meets him and the criminal then tracks down the student that introduced them to make sure she can’t ever snitch on him again. Of course, this happens when the student is about to go to bed in a lingerie dress that then barely stays on for the rest of the story. When Sally comes across the dealer throwing the student off a cliff, she shoots him, and then sees that the student has managed to keep a hold of a branch. Sally, of course, takes off her clothes to use as makeshift rope for the student to climb up on. The story from the October 1937 issue had Sally found (in her underwear) while snooping on a ship and then thrown overboard to drown (though the criminals took the time to take everything but her garter socks off first). And the story from the December 1937 issue had Sally kidnapped (and stripped to her underwear) by a cannibal killer, which notably then had her chained up among the naked and dilapidated corpses of other women.

There was also one 2-part 4-page Sally the Sleuth story, which was also written and drawn by Adolphe Barreaux, from the February 1938 and March 1938 issues of Spicy Detective. This was the first 4-page Sally story from the 30s that I’ve seen, and it may have been the only one as she was traditionally kept to only 2 pages in this era. It’s unfortunate then that this longer story didn’t take the opportunity to do something more interesting with Sally’s character. While it draws out the mystery more than other Sally stories from this time are able to, it does so while making the Chief more prominent of a character than he’d ever been before, rather than letting Sally do more significant detective work. And the story still follows the standard format, just with a prologue, as the first story doesn’t have much of any sex appeal if you don’t count Sally fully dressed but in a v-cut dress and one panel that has a woman’s naked corpse barely covered up. But the second story has Sally kidnapped, stripped to her underwear, and found in an erotic position as the Chief saves her, as per usual.

Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective

There were two 8-page Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective, stories- written by the character's creator Robert Leslie Bellem and drawn by Adolphe Barreaux- from the October 1949 issue of Hollywood Detective and from Crime Smashers (1950) #8 (published in January 1952) which was actually a reprinted story from a 1950 issue of Hollywood Detective but of the exact month I'm unsure. Dan Turner came across to me as a bit of a creep in these stories when he hadn’t made that impression on me before. The story from the October 1949 issue had him forcing a lady murder suspect into his apartment and seemingly extorting her so that he’ll help her while she notably only had a robe on over lingerie. Then in the course of his investigation he barged in on another woman in the shower. The story ends with him saying that he collected his “promised fee” from the first woman” and that he “spent some pleasant hours comforting” the second woman whose sister ultimately went to jail for the murder, concluding that “it’s nice work if you can get it!” And the story from the 1950 issue that I wasn’t able to find the exact month of publication of had him ripping off a piece of a woman’s dress while she was wearing it for evidence.

Ray Hale, News Ace

There were three 8-page Ray Hale, News Ace, stories- written and drawn by Newton Alfred- from the February 1950 to April 1950 issues of Super Detective. This is a new character in Spicy Tales, but to me the most interesting story of his was the one from the April 1950 issue because it sidelined him and instead prominently features the girl “sob sister” reporter Ruth Meridan, who didn’t appear at all in either of the other two stories. The story had them both assigned to report on the same case. They both end up chasing after a murdered, but only Ruth Meridan notices the clue as to the killer’s identity, which she doesn’t share with Ray Hale or the viewer. Instead, she decides to get more solid evidence on her own to use as a scoop in her story for the paper. Ray Hale supports her on this because he thinks she’s entitled to break the story. His big role in the story is interrupting when the killer comes after Ruth Meridan to try to steal back the important evidence, then the two of them are both instrumental in chasing after the criminal and getting them caught by the police. The story ends with Ruth Meridan explaining the case she solved, Ray Hale calling her a “smart girl… and a sweet one!” and the two of them planning to go on a date. This is a far cry from the way lady detectives were portrayed in the comic stories of Super Detective’s predecessor Spicy Detective. I’m referring of course to Sally the Sleuth, who generally just ends up kidnapped and then saved by her boss, the Chief, rather than properly solving mysteries herself. The other two Ray Hale, Ace Reporter, stories didn’t have the character Ruth Meridan in them at all. The one in the February 1950 issue had him solving a murder out of a pool of suspects and the one in the March 1950 issue had him solving a murder in Chinatown with the help of a local boy.

Gail Ford, Girl Friday

There was one 7-page story and one 8-page story about the character Gail Ford, Girl Friday- written and drawn by Gene Leslie- from the June 1949 and February 1950 issues of Super Detective. Another new character in Spicy Tales, this is the secretary of a police inspector, but she actually does detective work herself. The June 1949 story has her going undercover and pretending to be new to the city in order to catch criminals who are leading naive girls who just moved to the city into criminal work. And the February 1950 issue has her taking on the identity of a girl who was arrested on the way to picking up a supply of drugs in order to identity the top smuggler. In both stories it was presented that while she did this there was a police officer, Tim McQuade or “Mac”, nearby waiting to intervene if things went wrong. While he did have to intervene in both stories, there was an earlier point in the February 1950 issue where she shooed him away because she thought she could handle to situation and she didn’t want to tip off the criminal as to what was really going on. This seems to be the staple premise of the character’s stories, as there’s a bit of narration early in the February 1950 issue that says “And so, once again, under the watchful eye of Mac, Gail sets out on a dangerous mission.” It seems to me that she’s essentially a police officer, so I wonder if the reason she’s described as just a secretary is because women couldn’t be full police officers at the time. There does seem to be a bit of sex appeal to the artwork, but it’s not obtrusive to the story. There’s a part in the June 1949 story that has Gail and another women talking in the morning while still getting dressed, so they’re both just in their underwear. And a part of the February 1950 story where Gail is in a bikini at a pool. Still, again, this is a long way off from now Sally the Sleuth used to be depicted in this magazine’s predecessor.

Polly of the Plains

There were four 2-page Polly of the Plains stories, written and drawn by Joseph Sokoli, from the August 1937 and October 1937 to December 1937 issues of Spicy Western. Although the December 1937 doesn’t completely conclude Polly’s story, it was the last Polly of the Plains story ever published. Well, the August 1937 and October 1937 (as well as the missing one from September) largely conclude the storyline that had been going on since Polly’s very beginning by killing of Pancho, the villain that instigated this whole conflict. But then the November 1937 story had Polly, Jean, and Ken get sidetracked on their way home and stumble across a new plot which leads to Polly getting kidnapped in the December 1937 issue by a new villain (a stereotypical Native American Chief instead of a stereotypical Mexican bandit). It seems as though rather than continuing and concluding this new plot thread they’d just introduced, they decided that the original Polly storyline was enough. I’d say that out of all of the material in Spicy Tales so far, Polly of the Plains was the spiciest with the most sexually-charged torture scenes of them all. I’ll also say that I overall liked Joseph Sokoli’s artwork for the series.

Diana Daw

And there were thirteen 2-page Diana Daw stories, written by Clayton Maxwell and drawn by Max Plaisted, from the March 1936 to December 1936, February 1937, April 1937, and May 1937 issues of Spicy Adventure. Diana Daw has always been the one in Spicy Tales that’s able to do the most story-wise in just 2-page stories. It’s genuinely admirable. The plot is always moving and, like Polly of the Plains, there’s an overarching plot that is moved along in every story instead of just being a bunch of standalone stories starring the same character, like Sally the Sleuth. But whereas Polly of the Plains pitted a group of characters against one main villain in one main location, the Diana Daw stories star just one main character that is always going to new places and fighting off against new antagonists. At the beginning of this batch of stories Diana is captured and then sold in a slave market to a sheik named Tarafi who turns out to have been educated abroad and so doesn’t keep a harem. He doesn’t treat Diana poorly, but she still attempts to escape him though she is immediately captured by a band of criminals, who then also capture Tarafi as he had been following Diana. The criminals go to kill him, but Diana is able break free and save him. Then Diana and Tarafi get married and Tarafi instructs his followers that if anything happens to him then Diana is their leader. Tarafi is, of course, immediately fatally and his followers don’t actually respect Diana, so he gives her a secret gun that he had and has her lead a charge against a group of thieves. Among the captured survivors from that charge was Ted, who has previously betrayed Diana because of a love potion given to him by Rama, and Rama herself. Diana is still angry with Ted and keeps both him and Rama as prisoners, then tortures Rama to force her to use her knowledge to save Tarafi. But Rama ends up seducing Tarafi and Diana and Ted both have to flee for their lives. Then there’s a bit of a jump as there’s some missing parts, which I believe takes up to a point in the story chronologically before the Tarafi and Rama parts. We next see Diana in the desert with Ted right after he had been able to purchase her from a slave market (she’s been captured and sold in slave markets many times) and the two of them travel together until they’re captured by a band of bandits, which is interrupted by the bandits being overrun by French soldiers.

Then there’s another jump, this time back to after the Tarafi and Rama part, where Diana and Ted are back in the desert and still upset over what happened. Ultimately Diana is captured by bandits to be sold as a slave again and Ted is left to die in the desert, but Diana is able to seduce one of her captors in order to divide them and then defeat them to go save Ted. The two of them find the sea and buy passage of a ship, but the ship turns out to be a slave ship, and there’s a fight when they try to kill Ted in order to more easily take Diana. Ultimately Diana and Ted win but there’s a storm and they are shipwrecked on an island, which they discover is populated with slave girls as it had been where the men on the slave ship they had just escaped were keeping their prisoners. They free the slaves, but then the women all fawn over Ted, which frustrates Diana. In order to keep him to themselves, the women capture Diana and lock her up so that she’ll starve to death in a cave then tell Ted that she escaped on a raft because she was upset with him. Even with Diana out of the way, Ted rejects the women and intends to find Diana wherever she went, never considering that their story was a lie. He never gets to go searching for her though because a British ship arrived and because they are angry with Ted all of the women tell the soldiers that Ted was the slaver who captured them. The British take everyone off the island, but don’t find Diana. Eventually the other slavers return to the island and are frustrated to only find the now-decrepit Diana and are going to just leave her there until one younger slaver says that he’ll take the time to improve her health to sell her. That slaver then reveals to Diana that he was actually and undercover British soldier and that the two of them can work together to undermine the slave trade, though Diana is focused on wanting to find and reunite with Ted.

#comics read this past week #my posts

[the-inner-alfi]

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧Project 3:Genre Mock-Up ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

So this is a comic script rough draft: Characters: - MC who struggles with trauma - Their Trauma personified - Friend/Roommate - Mother Main plot: Mc has gone through a traumatic event in their life, having to come to terms with the effects it has on themselves and the world around them. The reader gets to view the effects through a third person lense and can also see the healing process as well as the opposing theme LOOSE Script: Epilogue: [Start with black screen] -Monologue while sharing the details of that trauma-inducing night -Share the origins of the trauma's "birth" - introduce trauma - explain the current setting Episode 1: - we get an introduction to the main character's life and their daily struggle when all of a sudden their roommate comes in to have a heart-to-heart that falls upon deaf ears as their trauma bickers back point Episode 2: -Some friends come to visit and once again try to get MC to cheer up and open up about what caused them to be like this. We get a moment of realization as MC realizes what they really have lost. Flashback, to memories of childhood - leading up to the show about mother Episode 3: - Mother comes to visit, worried that her daughter has become disconnected. She reminisces about her youth; for the first time, it all becomes too much to bear. MC has a mental breakdown, starting a message of realization that they need help Episode 4: - Mother and Mc have a quiet moment, where Mother tries to sway MC's ideas of therapy, resaying Trauma's main points against the idea. They agree. MC gets a push - a cry for help - before speaking up for themselves - trauma is stunned. MC explains their emotions and the mother finally agrees. - takes MC to their first session Episode 5: - explaining the purpose of treatment and how it's affected MC''S daily life, shows trauma is not fully gone but more compliant than before. Not happily ever after but a start in the happy direction. Sources Cited: https://docs.google.com/document/d/132pR60VXkZwVehf7Mbof_TfTpiDlQ6HTHtNO1nJXges/edit?usp=sharing

WHAT DO THE HIGHLIGHTS MEAN: Because this is a comic, many of the quotes I will be using from my sources will be put into the actual dialogue or the explanatory text in the comics to help give more of an authentic feel to the overall text. CITATIONS: "causes of childhood trauma can originate from a variety of sources. These sources can be classified as "Type 1" which are single events usually marked by intense surprise and/or "Type 2" Which are considered complex or repetitive and marked by prolonged and appalling anticipation (Armsworth and Holaday, 1993; Terr 1991)" (Kramer, pg. 6) Chpt. 4 "students who have experienced trauma may be consumed with intense worry about the well-being of loved ones especially if they're uncertain of their family's whereabouts (Pynoos, Steinberg,& Piacentini, 1999) " (Kramer,8) EP.1? - EP.4 "These long-term reactions can include feelings of helplessness, fear and anxiety, existential insecurity, rage, sorrow, and grief, intrusive images, self-reproach or guilt, and a change in values (Dyregrov, and Mitchell,1992) " (Kramer, 12) EP.4 "Coping mechanisms are strategies used by people who are managing painful or difficult emotions caused by stress or trauma" (Kramer,15) EP. 2 ""Coping is defined as the cognitive and behavioral efforts made to master, tolerate, or reduce external and internal demands and conflicts among"(Folkman & Lazarus,1980)" (Kramer, 15) EP.2 "People will begin to disengage or avoid stressful interactions as a way of dealing with their discomfort (Ayers, Sandier, West,& Roosa,1996; E. A. Skinner et al.,2003)" (Kramer, 18) EP.3 " "Helplessness can be another way of coping, examples of this coping method include inaction or passivity and lends itself to giving up or relinquishing any control over the situation (E.A, Skinner et al,2003)" (Krammer, 18) EP.3 "Social withdrawal involves the art of avoiding other people and preventing others from knowing about stressful situations, particularly in regards to the emotional impact of this particular situations (E. A. Skinner et al., 2003; Tobin et al, 1989) "(Kramer, 19) EP.3 "Opposition includes such factors like aggression, anger, venting, and blaming of others for the situation (E.A.Skinner et al., 2003)" (Kramer, 19) EP.2

"standards have been made and implemented in what is known as trauma-informed care." (Taylor, 19) EP. 5 "Trauma-informed care and services involves " understanding, anticipating, and responding to the issues, expectations, and special needs that a person who has been victimized may have in a particular setting or service at a minimum, trauma informed services should endeavor to do no harm - to avoid retraumatizing survivors or blaming them for their efforts to manage their traumatic reactions" (According to Bath, 2008)"(Taylor,20) EP. 2 ""Understanding, anticipating, and responding to the issues, expectations, and special needs that a person who has been victimized may have in a particular setting or service. At a minimum, trauma-informed services should endeavor to do no harm -- to avoid retraumatizing survivors or blaming them for their efforts to manage their traumatic reaction (According to Bath (2008). 19) " (Taylor, 20) Ep. 2 "Exposure to traumatic events is becoming a collective experience for children and adolescents (Holmes et al., 2015)" (Thompson, 3) EP. 3 " Long-term exposure to traumatic events has been shown to have damaging effects on a child's brain (Cook-Cottone,2004)" (Thompson, 3) Ep. 4 " A child's exposure to trauma can also impact how they perceive themselves. A child with adversity can view themselves in a negative light that limits them and does not allow them to see the positivity (Ramburuth & Härtel, 2010) " (Thompson, 4) EP. 4 "Since traumatic events are happening more frequently, early identification and interventions are imperative, primarily when trauma occurs during critical developmental periods (Holmes et al., 2015)" (Thompson, 3) EP. 5 ================================================ PROLOGUE: [Start at black screen] "I Don't remember when it started feeling this heavy" [ Insert scene one: at a party ] - people dancing - drinks on the table. - music drowns out and an ominous door shows up and the edges around the image turn black. "I just know, that my body hurt. It was so hot, too hot, my skin felt like it was wax melting.," [Scene progresses to a hand against an arm- tight grip] "there's a force that makes me feel like I'm drowning" "And then nothing" --- [ Insert scene: alarm clock ] "I only know one thing for sure, this THING showed up the next day" "it follows me" [Bathroom eye contact] "everywhere.." [Walking into the kitchen] "I never know what it wants, sometimes all it does is sit there quietly" ['you want some?'] -- "Mornings like this make me forget that -" ['Trauma void'] "I hate when it talks" ============================ EPISODE 2: ROOMMATES: "[ ], I brought food" [Roommate enters, the house seems empty] [still shot of cup on coffee table] [knocks onto the door] "[---]?" [She opens the door and sees {mc] on the floor] "hey" "hey"

"did you eat?" "ill eat later" 'the food will only make you bigger than you are ' [ Silent still shot of the two of them] ".. you've gotten quieter" "Maybe I was always this way" 'no you weren't, you've changed " stop that" "stop what" ' she's judging us ' " Stop acting like you don't have a problem!!" [Trauma and [ ] grow silent as they both look at their angered roommate] [Roommate sighs before reaching to gently grab [. ] 's hand] "im worried about you [---]" 'she's not worried, who would care for someone like you "Why, nothing wrong" "don't say nothing wrong- you need to really think [----]; you know there's something - up with you" "Im. Fine" 'you're fine you're fine you're fine you're fine" [distress clearly on their face as raised up anxiety is beginning to affect them] " you're not - look I don't know what's up for sure - but - looking for some healthcare person who can just- listen to you-" "do you think I'm crazy?" ' crazy crazy crazy' "no! god- no! look healthcare people are specialized to help you - they can understand what's happening - whatever that is - they can help YOU understand what's wrong-" "THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ME" [Trauma grips onto MC] [Roommate stares silently noting that they seem more distant]. "okay." "Trauma-informed care and services involves " understanding, anticipating, and responding to the issues, expectations, and special needs that a person who has been victimized may have in a particular setting or service at a minimum, trauma informed services should endeavor to do no harm - to avoid retraumatizing survivors or blaming them for their efforts to manage their traumatic reactions" (According to Bath, 2008)"(Taylor,20) EP. 2 ""Understanding, anticipating, and responding to the issues, expectations, and special needs that a person who has been victimized may have in a particular setting or service. At a minimum, trauma-informed services should endeavor to do no harm -- to avoid retraumatizing survivors or blaming them for their efforts to manage their traumatic reaction (According to Bath (2008). 19) " (Taylor, 20) Ep. 2 ==================== EPISODE: 2: HAPPY BIRTHDAY: "[. ]!! open up!!" [Mc. who has been on the couch looking slightly disheveled looks away from the TV and walks to the front door with the blanket - the trauma hiding under it] [Door opens] [Several friends stand outside all holding various birthday items - all with bright smiles] [MC Looks back in silent shock] [ still shot of the sky as a speech bubble of "happy birthday"] -- [show the pop of champagne as everyone sits around the coffee table] "you all didn't have to come..." "nonsense! Why wouldn't we come to keep company to our dear friend?" "Why do you always sound so posh-" "ANYWAY- how do you feel? How's your birthday so far? " "It's, okay.." "just okay? big 21? and it's just okay?" "It's an age" [They all continue talking and having a good time taking a sip of their own drinks] [MC feels unnerved noticing their eyes- are their eyes on her, She feels trauma whispering into her head, she doesn't want to be there. she's crowding into herself] "[. ]? are you alright?" "huh?" "you seem... out of it?" "oh, yeah i'm fine" ' you are fine' "you sure? you don't look well" "have some cake" [Mc looks uncomfortably at the cake] 'you're fine' "i know" 'there's nothing wrong with you' "you're attention seeking' "i don't want to be here" [shows everyone having fun] 'why? you like parties, you've always liked parties' "I just don't anymore" 'what the hell the matter with you, you should be happy ' . 'yeah, why am I not happy.' 'why do I feel so, far away '

"Coping mechanisms are strategies used by people who are managing painful or difficult emotions caused by stress or trauma" (Kramer,15) EP. 2

""Coping is defined as the cognitive and behavioral efforts made to master, tolerate, or reduce external and internal demands and conflicts among"(Folkman & Lazarus,1980)" (Kramer, 15) EP.2 ============================= EP: 3: HOMELAND [I've been thinking about my situation. trying to think about wether or not I should be afraid for myself]

[it doesn't help that - that thing has been more persistent than usual. Like it knows me better than I know myself... Like a certain someone, I know] "Mami?" "I brought food!!!" [a short woman with a perfectly pressed dress and blouse holding up multiple bags. Her smile is evident] ============ [the small woman walks around judging everything, her child and trauma following suit] "you live like this" "Mami- it's been a busy week-" "busy doing what? I raised 5 children and I lived cleaner than this when I was your age-" "Mami, times are different now" [scene change, showing a disgruntled face of the mom] " the only thing that's changed is this generation, always just blaming anyone and everyone and just never getting things done" [ fade into the mc, the mc seems distracted and distant as their trauma repeats and warps their mothers' words] [Mom turns around] "[. . .]?-" [she gasps lightly as she sees the trauma. Her eyes fixed on it, in her own fear she grabs her daughter's hand] "Come, let's do your laundry" == [Folding laundry] [mother glanced at her as she folds, noticing they look tired and drained] She sighs "

"People will begin to disengage or avoid stressful interactions as a way of dealing with their discomfort (Ayers, Sandier, West,& Roosa,1996; E. A. Skinner et al.,2003)" (Kramer, 18) EP.3

" "Helplessness can be another way of coping, examples of this coping method include inaction or passivity and lends itself to giving up or relinquishing any control over the situation (E.A, Skinner et al,2003)" (Krammer, 18) EP.3

[aro-comics]

Canon Vs. Fanon Aros: Princess Merida

I PRESENT: A NEW ANALYSIS POST ON OUR ARCHERY QUEEN, PRINCESS MERIDA OF DUNBROCH!!! 😄😤🏹✨

Haha okay, but in all seriousness, I’m glad I managed to wrap up the loose ends with this post and get this out to y’all 😅 (sorry about the lateness, I’m fine but lately the combination of work and getting ready for fourth year has been pretty exhausting).

Obviously, as we all know by now, I love a good media analysis, and especially when you look at things from an Aro Lens – and it always fascinates me when I find a character that’s widely regarded by the community as an icon, if not perceived as arospec in some way! 🐸💚💚 Merida is no exception, and I loved having the chance to delve into her character and what (I believe) she represents for our community. Personally, I didn’t watched Brave as a kid, but watching it as an adult and being able to see all those points of tension at the beginning of the movie surrounding marriage – and especially how Merida’s dad described her as wanting to remain single forever and ride off into the sunset shooting arrows – was really relatable, especially as a young woman who’s kind of at that age where people “expect” you to start dating/thinking about things like long-term romantic relationships 😭😭

Anyways, I feel like I’ve covered most of what I want to say in the actual textpost for once 😂, so I’ll just sign off with a note that I will be sharing some extra art and stickers tomorrow. 

ARTIST’S NOTE: Since this is tumblr (and I can throw in more than 10 slides at once XD) I’ve just shared the rest of the post here! Link to the stickers. 

As always, feel free to let me know what you think! Do you see Merida as Arospec or an Icon for the Aro community?

[Image Description:

Slide 1: Title slide. Text says: “Canon Vs Fanon Aros, feature: Princess Merida.” The title shows a drawing of Celia sitting and reading a book, relaxing. Bottom text says “a textpost buffer series” and by “aro comics (the Instagram username)”

Slide 2: Note: For the following slides, information is quite text heavy. As a result, the original script written will be pasted here with additions of any visual notes if needed.

Slide Title: Intro

About: Princess Merida of DunBroch

Canon vs. Fanon – Circle Fanon

Basic facts:

Personality: Bold, courageous, energetic, freespirited, and a bit stubborn and rebellious

Loves archery, sword fighting, riding her horse Angus, and exploring!

A princess that rebels against traditional training and etiquette, the plot of the movie follows our protagonist on repairing her relationship with her mother after a falling out and an accidental curse.

Slides 3-4:

Slide Title: An Aro Icon

Why is do people think Merida is aromantic, or at the very least an Aro Icon?

Great question! To be fair, the movie doesn’t go into the topic of romance so there’s no canonical evidence to Merida’s romantic orientation.

Even so, however, the narrative presented resonates deeply with many aromantic viewers. Merida is ADAMANT about not getting married off (though this is based more in the fact she’s SIXTEEN and doesn’t know any of these boys, which is very understandable) and makes a point of it by rebelling against the archery contest her mother set up to pick her suitor.

Screenshot: A defiant Merida speaks in front of the gathered clans at the Highland Games. She announces: “I am Merida, first born descendant of clan Dunbroch. And I’ll be shooting for my own hand!”

NOTE: This is significant because the games are meant for the first born descendants of other clans to compete for her hand. However, since she has chosen archery as the competitive sport, and she is technically the first born of her own clan, this is a clever moment where she is able to use this rule to rebel and attempt to maintain her freedom!

Slide 5:

Slide title: Meaning

Her behaviour and portrayal really strikes a chord with the aro community, because we are often asked to engage in romance or marriage despite our discomfort. It’s empowering to see a character stand up against these norms!

Given the way amatonormativity also tends to insert as many romantic subplots as possible, it’s uncommon to have no love interest in a movie. Because of this, aros we rarely get to see a story and growth occur without romance, which makes Brave all the more meaningful. Merida’s growth and her agency as a character in this story feels a lot more relatable to us.

Slides 6-7:

(Continued from previous)

It’s because of these elements that many people will consider Merida an aro icon, if not aromantic herself (although this is more of a headcanon)! Also … she’s literally good at archery, which in and of itself is kind of perfect for an aro icon.

Also, Merida’s a Pretty Cool Character for other reasons too!

The focus on familial love in this movie is very heartwarming, and it’s not something you see too often in princess movies. There’s also the intersection between amatonormative ideals and feminism - Merida’s a strong role model for young girls. Though it may seem common now that there are strong/free spirited princesses/female characters in movies for children that take control of their own destinies, it wasn’t so much in mainstream media when Brave first came out.

And especially it’s uncommon to see princesses not have a love interest – historically, patriarchal society uses women’s relationships to men as a indicator of their value, so it’s important to have media that reflects how women can have compelling and complex narratives that feature their importance as a person independently too.

Slides 8-9:

Slide Title: Conclusion

Why is Merida’s existence important to aromantic people and beyond?

In short, it breaks romance norms and also gives aro people a fictional character to relate to! But before we wrap up, I wanted to address the discussion/discourse around “projection” of identity onto Merida – as some people have pointed out before, why is it that if a woman doesn’t show interest in a man in the context of a story should they be interpreted as gay or aspec? This does tie into issues of sexism for women, as mentioned before. But this being said, as an aspec woman I would say that it’s perfectly valid and good for LGBTQ+ to interpret characters to be like them/to have more diversity in interpretation, because we’re so far lacking in representation. It’s a good point to make/ask why we may view a female character this way, but ultimately its understandable, and not harmful/engaging in sexism, to imagine a character that we relate to be like us.

Overall, Merida’s storyline and character was quite groundbreaking regardless of whether or not she’s aromantic, and she’s VERY cool! And personally, I’m glad to have her as an icon for our community!

Slide 10:

Sources:

1: Screenshot from Original Brave Movie, sourced from an online clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWbxhKTbTkA

Although I don’t quote any other direct sources for this textpost, I used the following sources for additional research and would encourage you to read them if you’d like to learn more!

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/06/does-it-matter-if-the-heroine-of-brave-is-gay/258979/

https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Brave

https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Merida#Personality

Slide 11: A page full of sketches of Merida. The text: “Some Merida Sketches (Yes I’m still messing around with my art style)”. The sketches include a headshot of Merida smiling and winking, another half-body shot with her nocking an arrow, and a third chibi of her with her bow. All three sketches are coloured and shaded, albeit in different styles.

Slide 12:  A redraw of a key scene from the Brave movie. Merida is holding her bow as she defiantly exclaims: “And I’ll be shooting for my own hand!”

Slide 13: A graphic showing cutout versions of the two stickers made from the previous sketches (the Chibi and the Headshot). The title: “Free Stickers! (Check the Carrd)”, and below a note reads “Free for personal use only”]

#CanonVsFanonAros #NotAComic #Fanart #Merida #PrincessMerida #InfoTextpost #aromerida

[galina]

Hey, wondering how you got into sketching and design, if you don't mind sharing. Wish you a lovely day!

hi, hi, hi. short and truest answer is I always loved drawing as a kid and my parents were super encouraging because it kept me quiet lol, then I went to art skool (where I did creative writing, not fine art) and found a way to approach writing and design in an interdisciplinary sense. but it also got me thinking and I wrote this longer thing about my childhood which is very loose and random.

short story long, when I was born, my parents found themselves (as many do) as a young immigrant family newly in the uk who needed to work. working nights at a bar was not a long term solution. somehow they found work together doing translation, mostly for technical manuals and instructions for machinery. whilst they worked I used to draw on the back of dot matrix paper that came from one of these machines for which they were translating a new manual. one of my first memories is the feeling of drawing on the perforated paper which had code printed across it. I would draw in and around the data, my drawings and the random letters becoming one big mess. I still think of that strange forced blend of computer generated type and hand drawn lines as the first time I encountered design physically. 

so drawing was the thing that occupied me and kept me quiet whilst my parents worked, until they bought their first television around 1999. after that I was treated to jolly phonics, the reading and writing programme for small children led by a puppet mouse and snake. everywhere we went I was drawing and writing on bits of scrap paper until I was able to go to school where I was pretty much sated (until maths came along, which I disliked). 

my parents moved into an abandoned church which was initially uninhabitable. with the help of friends and a large bank loan they worked to make its attic a home for us. drawing and writing became part of the physical house -- on the new plaster, on bits of wooden frames for stairs and windows, on old chalkboards left by the former tenants from the sunday school which once ran there. design was everywhere, architectural and very much part of growing up. one wall was left as bare plaster, a job to get around to for 20 years. I used to wet the tip of my finger in the sink and draw on the dusty plaster, making temporary dark shapes.

my design marks were usually temporary but my parents also loved to bring creativity into the house. my fondest memories are of my dad’s huge photo collages of us which he hung around the house alongside works by artists he had known before he moved. my mum made all the furniture -- she would buy from second hand shops and re-upholster, strip or stain everything. she had a desk which she covered in decoupage from old national geographic magazines and sealed with varnish. I loved how a glass eye met a waterfall or a bird in the pastiche. 

when I was about 9 my best friend, who I was totally in love with in the truest sense, discovered japanese popular art. there wasn’t a huge amount available to us in the small town but we consumed everything we could get, particularly after spirited away came out we were able to get hold of a lot of ghibli dvds and popular english translated manga at the waterstone’s in town. I feel like that was a turning point, reading in the back (or front) of a manga about how the authors studied in the traditional style to become elite comics artists. that turned all this from a passtime into something very real that was happening outside of my world. comics solidified the relationship between art, writing and design for me as an interdisciplinary craft to be honed. it was something I came back to over and over again after that--unlike the forced relationship of the dot matrix paper with my childhood scribbling, comics were bridging design gaps in a way that was truly graceful and felt almost natural-- 

ummm this is turning into a life story lol it’s very boring! but it was fun to write something different and a bit more personal. if you read this far I am sorry haha. I will probably get embarrassed n delete later! thanks for coming on such a random childhood journey with me

#ask #not what you asked for lmao

[createandconstruct]

can i ask about amarant coral? the monk in red himself~

Can you ask about Amarant Coral? *cracks fingers* Oh I insist that you do. Welcome to my Amarant Appreciation Post:

favorite thing about them: First off best thing about Amarant? His theme. The percussion and the guitar. It’s great and it captures him so well. People out here like “take Amarant out of the game he adds nothing.” EXCUSE ME? You remove the Amarant you remove the Amarant Theme my friend and that is something I do NOT vibe with. 

least favorite thing about them: I wanna know more about him. Now Amarant doesn’t need a backstory or history in the game. In a sense, he already has one that connects him to Zidane and explains his motives and actions and eventual arc. But my issue is, Square never gave him anything else. If you look at Ultimania there’s additional lore about other characters, like Steiner for instance. You learn Steiner was a war orphan who was saved by the Pluto Knights - explaining his devotion to them. Amarant though? Square was like “uh... yeah he was born....? And then he uh got famous...? Idk then he met Zidane. You figure it out.” Square. I hate you. 18 years from his birth until he became “well known”. WHAT WAS HE DOING. WHY’D HE BECOME A SECURITY GUARD. WHAT WAS ON HIS RESUME. TELL MEEEE. Like, okay, what the actual in-game canon gives us on Amarant is sort of enough. He’s a purposely written mysterious “cool-guy” character so we’re given scraps to make him unknown but come on. In the published after-game canon, like Ultimania, we could have been given a bit more. He says he doesn’t remember anything about his origins or parents, but why. Was he another victim of Gaia’s wars? Probably. Was he born on a battlefield? Fighting for his life, living without comrades, taking scraps whenever he could? Was he betrayed when he was young? Is he a supposed to be a version of Zidane had he not been adopted into Tantalus by Baku??? These are questions I deserve answers to, Square.

favorite line: “’I can't just walk away. It goes against my nature...’ You're a real simpleton. Forget it, guys. There's no stopping this fool." I love this. Amarant figures Zidane out pretty quickly after Ipsen’s Castle. Zidane is hardheaded and also an actor. He acts cool and pretends his reasons for doing things are loose but when he’s decided something it’s always for a reason. You don’t need a reason to help people, but Zidane has his reasons for helping Kuja and while Amarant doesn’t give two shits what they are he knows Zidane won’t be stopped because, despite everything, Zidane saved a loser like him. Also this line “Tell me! Why didn't you kill me!?" Because I quote it all the time and it makes myself laugh. Amarant is such a drama queen and Zidane knows it. Zidane’s like “dude... what is your damage, it’s 5 pm on Tuesday in Madain Sari. I ain’t getting blood on my gloves cause you’re having a temper tantrum.” And then Amarant runs away to have an existential crisis. He’s 26 but compared to Zidane, he’s the real teenager with angst.  

brOTP: I could talk about Zidane or Freya with Amarant but instead I’m gonna say the underrated dynamic of Amarant and Eiko (and also Vivi).  Amarant with the kids is truly the greatest gift given by his presence in the game. Amarant has never known true suffering until he became a designated legal guardian of a group of minors. It also kills me how he’s the one to volunteer to carry Eiko and Vivi up the Iifa tree. He looks at Zidane and is like “you have seriously been the ‘adult’ of this group???”

OTP: Gotta say the Freya and Amarant dynamic. I really enjoyed their unlikely friendship in the game but then the content. The fan content. The Freya x Amarant fans out there, you win. Ya got me. You captured me and I am now imprisoned by their banter and begruntled allies to lovers story. Even if they’re not romantic I love them together and really wish the game gave us more of them. But even Lani and Amarant together are valid, though I prefer them as butting head bros. Not much content for my girl Lani out there either, she deserves more.

nOTP: Nothing I can think of. I tend to like platonic pairings for Amarant. The dude needs friends because he can barely define the word friendship.

random headcanon: Before Zidane returns at the end of the game Amarant wanders around a bit, unsure of what to do. He doesn’t feel any place with the others in Alexandria, Burmecia, or Lindblum. I imagine he goes off on his own for a bit like before but this time he’s not after Zidane or a fight. Instead he’s got no particular destination. Yet he somehow always finds himself running into people just like him - or the old him - friendless lonely people who are looking for a fight. He doesn’t go out his way to find these folks he simply runs into them and decides he might as well knock some sense into them. He does however make it his business to go after any murmur of people hatching any ideas of going after the far off little village on the Lost Continent. The home of the genomes and black mages. They were so helpless, so weak that anyone who’d want to mess with them is pathetic in Amarant’s book. Until Zidane returns, no one has the chance to even look at the Black Mage Village the wrong way because in the shadows Amarant lurks, making damn well sure of that.

unpopular opinion: I kinda love that he’s just there for most of the game? While I agree he gets the short end of the stick in the same way as Freya, not receiving additional individual character spotlight (which could have very well been supplied through discoverable lore in the world/npcs or through sidequests) I never considered his “standing off to the side” as a detriment to his character. 

Many would probably agree that Amarant always felt like a bit of a parody of the loner character, or at least the stereotype of the loner character. Amarant is so easily paralleled with Squall and Cloud’s surface-level attitudes because his dialogue always felt like something to poke fun at. As the player we’re supposed to align with Zidane’s way of thinking and how he views Amarant. When Amarant loses to Zidane and pretty much grits his teeth and goes “KILL ME,” along with Zidane we’re supposed to kinda raise our brow at him and go “...really, dude?”

 Amarant’s a character introduced as an antagonist who has more in common with the power hungry villains of the game. Like many of the characters in FFIX, Amarant is in search of purpose in life, which he has never found, because he was always looking in the wrong places - in places of violence and power. Very toxic-masculinity of him. Amarant is “cool” on an aesthetic level but in reality he’s the polar opposite of cool in terms of what FFIX states about the need for others to be intertwined in your experiences so that you can live a full life. 

I sort of love that he’s like a grumpy pitball following a 16 year old and his friends around. Then he sits in the corner when they all meet up and discuss current events acting like he doesn’t care (not to mention he casually walks as everyone is running as fast as they can to escape Terra - made me laugh cry on my first playthrough) He is “just there” but that’s because he has no where else to be, no where else to go, he’s a man without a home. And until Zidane offers his hand, at the point where Amarant is most willing to take it at Ipsen’s Castle, he’s not truly a party member. He IS an outsider for almost the entire game but at Ipsen Castle he joins the party, becomes a comrade, and decides he’ll allow himself to change paths and start a life where he has friends and lives, as well as fights for them. Which is why after that moment, Amarant finally has a victory pose.

song i associate with them: I was scratching my head for so long trying to think of a song or track that had Amarant vibes until it hit me. Outskirt Stand by Tsukasa Tawada (from Pokemon Colosseum). Amarant is so chill, he’s not a bombastic guy, so he needs a theme that drops me in the rocky open desert of the Lost Continent like I’m just lumbering around looking for a monkey-tailed menace. Some other Amarant tunes:  Pyrite Town, The Under, Snagem Hideout tracks from Pokemon Colosseum. This post is just an elaborate call to action for everyone to listen to the Pokemon Colosseum soundtrack. Tsukasa Tawada is so great and he has a YouTube. Check him out.

favorite picture of them:

Yoshitaka Amano’s Salamander Coral. I love him. He had too much power. 

Also everything drawn by @crispy-ghee. Everything. I will think of this Comic forever until I die. Tattoo it on my flesh. The banter, the dynamics, the post-game content, the Zidane prince-consort outfit, the new Amarant outfit, the stuck-in-the-same-place relationship him and Freya have. Perfect. Go read it and consume Crisipy’s stuff. And also check them and their current art out, they just consistently get better and better. Here’s a first panel preview of my fav comic. Read it.

 @hannahlady​‘s Amarant art and their Freya/Amarant art is just ugh. *Chef’s Kiss* Here is another preview because you should go look at it.

Here’s a piece that deserves so much more love by @snackage. I LOVE how they drew Amarant. Here’s a little preview. It’s SO GOOD

Anyway TL;DR: Amarant is love and life and you’ll have to pull him from my little gremlin hands.

#asks #scriberat #amarant coral #ffix #final fantasy ix #amarant #final fantasy 9 #freya #amarant x freya #lani #zidane tribal #eiko carol

[silverwhittlingknife]

i love a lot of things about dick & tim's relationship but one of my favorite things is that sometimes dick gets to be the unhinged one <3

#dick and tim #dick grayson #tim drake #my comic art but we are using the term ''art'' loosely #look - as an unhinged-dick-grayson enthusiast - it is important for his enrichment!! #he may APPEAR to be unhappy but the emotional release is very important for his long-term well-being in the comics enclosure

[yurimother]

LGBTQ Comic Review - Amongst Us Book 1

A masterful combination of comedy, subtle romance, and incredible sensuality

I make no attempts to hide my complete admiration and infatuation with Shilin Huang's Yuri webcomic Amongst Us. The slice of life AU featuring reimagined versions of the lead characters from fantasy series Carciphona as a lesbian couple has held a special place in my heart for a long time. I named the series one of the best Yuri works of the past one-hundred years, can frequently be found lurking in the author's Twitch streams, and even have a wall in my office dedicated to the artwork of the main couple (or I did before my office became a remote classroom). So, when a Kickstarter by Shilin and Hiveworks Comics launched promising a print version of the work, I was eager to support it financially and promote it with my humble platform. The Kickstarter took place in March, and books were initially estimated for release in May of 2020. However, as you have probably realized by the dates alone, the world went very South around this time. A combination of disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, a healthy amount of bad luck, and what I am inclined to believe, for various reasons, was some awful mismanagement by Hiveworks led to numerous delays. Indeed, by the time the book finally shipped, I had moved, so my copy arrived a little later as it had to be forwarded. But, at the end of this frustrating and anticipation-building event, I finally have the volume in my hands, and it was worth the wait. While I adore the webcomic, this gorgeous print volume completely enthralls me. The book is absolutely the preferred way to read this spectacular comic.

Before getting into the exquisite details of Amongst Us Book 1: Soulmates, I need to take a minute to praise how well this book is put together. The paperback binding is thick and features amazing spot glass that sparkles in the light. This feature only accentuates the fantastic and bright the cover illustration of main characters Veloce and Blackbird loving holding each other is. The back cover has a simpler but more imaginative illustration of the two flying through the sky, and the character's expressions tell you everything you need to know about this fantastic, odd couple. There are a few things you will notice upon opening the volume. The first is how well Amongst Us made the challenging transition from vertical webcomic to the page. The assembly and paneling are fantastic and clear, and chapters feature stylized illustrations and title cards. You will then see the inside cover, a powerful display that perfectly contrasts the front's glowing and tender love. Finally, there is Shilin's presents moving forward and dedication, where she lovingly dedicates the book to her partner, Kristen.

I assure you, as good as the book's presentation and assembly is, the contents within are even better. Amongst Us follows Veloce and Blackbird's bombastic relationship. The two women are eccentric and striking musicians in their early twenties, and I swear you will never forget them. The slice of life storylines are, per the genre's definition, mundane and include events like shopping at the mall, riding the train, and having lunch with a friend. The charming simplicity of the story serves well to the reactions of the characters. Shilin effortlessly transitions from adorable moments of affection to explosive and hilarious comedy and irresistible and delightful moments of sexual tension; Veloce's neck and jawline alone could topple a monarchy. Often, slice of life works can become dull or repetitive, but these stories and the frequent changes in tone help the reader stay engaged and excited.

Putting slice of life aside for a moment, it is also important to note that Amongst Us is also has an interesting place within the Yuri genre, or "Girl's Love/GL" as it is often called in webcomic circles (originally an analogous term of Boy's Love). Webcomics have often been a bit more adventurous with their storylines and styles than Japanese manga. While the genre rose to popularity in the space thanks to digital manhwa and manhua, some (not all) of the Yuri tropes did not carry over between the similar mediums. Many modern webcomics and webtoons take their inspiration more from manhwa and manhua GL, which has developed its own canon and tropes over the years. However, even for a webcomic, Shilin's work feels somewhat divorced from most other worlds of Yuri. This first volume exists mainly against the Yuri genre's expectations. However, the next book, which flashes back to the couple's origin, undoubtedly is more in line with convention, for better or worse. It feels like the author decided to screw the norms and write a work that she would enjoy, and I am so glad that she did. Veloce and Blackbird are young adults, out of school in an established relationship with no drama. This (sadly) unconventional setting is made all the more irregular because of just how distinctive, and unwonted Blackbird and Veloce are.

Blackbird and Veloce, originally from the fantasy world of Carciphona, take on a new life, literally, in this wonderful modern reimagining and homage. You do not need to be a fan of the original work to enjoy their bizarre and larger-than-life personalities. Indeed, when I read Amongst Us online for the first time, I had not ever even heard of Carciphona. Veloce is the quieter and more stoic of the two, although she is not afraid of showing a more relatable and human side as she reacts to Blackbirds wild antics. Veloce's (not)straight man approach is hilariously sobering. But, her best moments are in those when she lets loose a little bit, like when she is rendered drooling by the promise of her favorite smoothie or in her stoic yet alluring flirtations with Blackbird, only to get close enough to steal a healthy chomp of ice cream.

Blackbird, on her part, is completely insane. She continuously pulls of wild antics like jumping on Veloce to surprise her or singing an especially threatening song after a glorious battle over lunch. However, she is perfectly capable of showing her love and admiration for Veloce in her own cheeky way. However, true to form, each softer or more personal moment between the two is often immediately and perfectly juxtaposed with comedy, with the apparent exception of the book's touching and thoughtful finale. Veloce and Blackbird will both more than please readers individually, but you will fall in love with them as a couple. I must have read this at least a few dozen times between the webtoon and the book, and I am just as enchanted as ever by their loud and unapologetic love.

The ordinary misadventures of Blackbird and Veloce are accompanied by genuinely astounding artwork. No, that statement does not do Shilin's illustrations justice. Veloce and Blackbird lead from the page thanks to stunning, full-color illustrations that detail every moment of hilarity. Every movement from the slightest smirk to the over-the-top dramatizations of regular events thoughtfully and beautifully sprawl across the pages and invite you to stare for hours. Shilin is the only person possible who could make something as simple as someone softly singing Happy Birthday so epic and sultry. Speaking of which, my goddess of Yuri is this work titillating. No, there are no gratuitous scenes, but just the characters leaning over each other or touching the other's chin makes my hands shake. My only small complaint is that some early chapters show their age slightly with noticeably lower quality linework and flatter colors than the dazzling and dynamic work demonstrated towards the end. Still, even on its worst day, Amongst Us looks better than most of its peers and the entirety of its many inferiors.

Amongst Us is nearly the perfect work. It has a uniquely compelling and mirth-inducing way of displaying a young yet very unordinary couple's everyday life. Its characters, from design to personality, are instantly memorable and striking. Despite being ready to rip each other's heads off at the drop of a hat, or rather because of it, Blackbird and Veloce feel the perfect and natural couple we so rarely witness. Shilin's masterful combination of comedy, subtle romance, and incredible sensuality is astounding. This book is worth it for the outstanding and vibrant artwork alone, but its combination with excellent writing create a sonorous and majestic modern romance unlike any other. I believe that Shilin has created something genuinely special here, and I can confidently say that out of the hundreds of webcomics I have read, this one is the pinnacle of its kind and my absolute favorite.

You can purchase Amongst Us book 1: Soulmates exclusively on Shilin's online shop and read the webcomic now for free on Twitter, Webtoon and Tumblr​ @okolnir​.

Ratings: Story – 9 Characters – 10 Art – 10 LGBTQ – 8 Sexual Content – 5 Final – 10

#yuri #reviews #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtq+ #queer #gay #anime #manga #amongst us #shilin #lesbian #gl #wlw #girls love #comics #comic #webtoon #webcomic #cute #funny #lol

[superman86to99]

Superman #85 (January 1994)

Cat Grant in... "DARK RETRIBUTION"! Which is like normal retribution, but somehow darker. On the receiving end of Cat's darktribution is Winslow Schott, the Toyman, who suddenly changed his MO from "pestering Superman with wacky robots" to "murdering children" back on Superman #84, with one of his victims being Cat's young son Adam. Now Cat has a gun and intends to sneak it into prison to use it on Toyman. She's also pretty pissed at Superman for taking so long to find Toyman after Adam’s death (to be fair, Superman did lose several days being frozen in time by an S&M demon, as seen in Man of Steel #29).

So how did Superman find Toyman anyway? Basically, by spying on like 25% of Metropolis. After finding out from Inspector Turpin that the kids were killed near the docks, Superman goes there and focuses all of his super-senses to get "a quick glimpse of every person" until he sees a bald, robed man sitting on a giant crib, and goes "hmmm, yeah, that looks like someone who murders children." At first, Superman doesn't understand why Toyman would do such a horrible thing, but then Schott starts talking to his mommy in his head and the answer becomes clear: he watched Psycho too many times (or Dan Jurgens did, anyway).

Immediately after wondering why no one buys his toys, Toyman makes some machine guns spring out of his giant crib. I don't know, man, maybe it's because they're all full of explosives and stuff? Anyway, Toyman throws a bunch of exploding toys at Superman, including a robot duplicate of himself, but of course they do nothing. Superman takes him to jail so he can get the help he needs -- which, according to Cat, is a bullet to the face. Or so it seems, until she gets in front of him, pulls the trigger, and...

PSYCHE! It was one of those classic joke guns I’ve only ever seen in comics! Cat says she DID plan to bring a real gun, but then she saw one of these at a toy store and just couldn't resist. Superman, who was watching the whole thing, tells Cat she could get in trouble for this stunt, but he won't tell anyone because she's already been through enough. Then he asks her if she needs help getting home and she says no, because she wants to be more self-sufficient.

I think that's supposed to be an inspiring ending, but I don't know... Adam's eerie face floating in the background there makes me think she's gonna shave her head and climb into a giant crib any day, too. THE END!

Character-Watch:

Cat did become more self-sufficient after this, though. Up to now, all of her storylines seemed to revolve around other people: her ex-husband, Morgan Edge, José Delgado, Vinnie Edge, and finally Toyman. After this, I feel like there was a clear effort to turn her into a character that works by herself. I actually like what they did with Cat in the coming years, though I still don’t think they had to kill her poor kid to do that -- they could have sent him off to boarding school, or maybe to live with his dad. Or with José Delgado, over at Power of Shazam! I bet Jerry Ordway would have taken good care of him.

Plotline-Watch:

Wait, so can Superman just find anyone in Metropolis any time he wants? Not really: this is part of the ongoing storyline about his powers getting boosted after he came back from the dead, which sounds pretty useful now but is about to get very inconvenient.

Don Sparrow points out: "It is interesting that as Superman tries to capture Schott, he at one point instead captures a robot decoy, particularly knowing what Geoff Johns will retroactively do to this storyline in years to come, in Action Comics #865, as we mentioned in our review of Superman #84." Johns also explained that the robot thought he was hearing his mother's voice due to the real Toyman trying to contact him via radio, which I prefer to the "psycho talks to his dead mom" cliche.

Superman says "I never thought he'd get to the point where he'd KILL anyone -- especially children!" Agreed about the children part but, uh, did Superman already forget that Toyman murdered a whole bunch people on his very first appearance, in Superman #13? Or does Superman not count greedy toy company owners as people? Understandable, I guess.

There's a sequence about Cat starting a fire in a paper basket at the prison to sneak past the metal detector, but why do that if she had a toy gun all long? Other than to prevent smartass readers like us from saying "How did she get the gun into the prison?!" before the plot twist, that is.

Patreon-Watch:

Shout out to our patient Patreon patrons, Aaron, Murray Qualie, Chris “Ace” Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, Bheki Latha, Mark Syp, Ryan Bush, Raphael Fischer, Dave Shevlin, and Kit! The latest Patreon-only article was about another episode of the 1988 Superman cartoon written by Marv Wolfman, this one co-starring Wonder Woman (to Lois' frustration).

Another Patreon perk is getting to read Don Sparrow's section early, because he usually finishes his side of these posts long before I do (he ALREADY finished the next one, for instance). But now this one can be posted in public! Take it away, Don:

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow​):

We begin with the cover, and it’s a good one— an ultra tight close up for Cat Grant firing a .38 calibre gun, with the titular Superman soaring in, perhaps too late.  An interesting thing to notice in this issue (and especially on the cover) is that the paper stock that DC used for their comics changed, so slightly more realistic shading was possible.  While it’s nowhere near the sophistication or gloss of the Image Comics stock of the time, there is an attempt at more realistic, airbrushy type shading in the colour.  It works well in places, like the muzzle flash, on on Cat Grant’s cheeks and knuckles, but less so in her hair, where the shadow looks a browny green on my copy.

The interior pages open with a pretty good bit of near-silent storytelling.  We are deftly shown, and not told the story—there are condolence cards and headlines, and the looming presence of a liquor bottle, until we are shown on the next page splash the real heart of the story, a revolver held aloft by Catherine Grant, bereaved mother, with her targeting in her mind the grim visage of the Toyman.

While their first few issues together meshed pretty well, it’s around  this issue that the pencil/inks team of Jurgens and Rubinstein starts to look a little rushed in places.  A few inkers who worked with Jurgens that I’ve spoken to have hinted that his pencils can vary in their level of detail, from very finished  to pretty loose, and in the latter case, it’s up to the inker to embellish where there’s a lack of detail.  Some inkers, like Brett Breeding, really lay down a heavier hand, where there’s quite a bit of actual drawing work in addition to adding value and weight to the lines.  I suspect some of the looseness in the figures, as well as empty  backgrounds reveals that these pencils were less detailed than we often  see from Jurgens.

There’s some weird body language in the tense exchange between Superman and Cat as she angrily confronts him about his lack of progress in capturing her son’s killer—Superman  looks a little too dynamic and pleased with himself for someone ostensibly apologizing. Superman taking flight to hunt down Toyman is classic Jurgens, though.

Another example of art weirdness comes on page 7, where Superman gets filled in on the progress of the Adam Morgan investigation.  Apparently Suicide Slum has some San Francisco-like hills, as that is one very steep sidewalk separating Superman and Turpin from some central-casting looking punks.

The  sequence of Superman concentrating his sight and hearing on the  waterfront area is well-drawn, and it’s always nice to see novel uses of his powers.  Tyler Hoechlin’s Superman does a similar trick quite often on the excellent first season of Superman & Lois.  The full-bleed splash of Superman breaking through the wall to capture Toyman is definitely panel-of-the-week material, as we really feel Superman’s rage and desperation to catch this child-killer.

Pretty much all the pages with Cat Grant confronting Winslow Schott are  well-done and tensely paced.  While sometimes I think the pupil-less  flare of the eye-glasses is a cop-out, it does lend an opaqueness and mystery to what Toyman is thinking.  Speaking of cop-outs, the gag gun twist ending really didn’t work for me.  I was glad that Cat didn’t lower herself to Schott’s level and become a killer, even for revenge, but the prank gun just felt too silly of a tonal shift for a storyline with this much gravitas.  The breakneck denouement that Cat is now depending only on herself didn’t get quite enough breathing room either.

While I appreciated that the ending of this issue avoided an overly simplistic, Death Wish style of justice, this issue extends this troubling but brief era of Superman comics. The casual chalk outlines of  yet two more dead children continues the high body count of the  previous handful of issues, and the tone remains jarring to me.  The issue is also self-aware enough to point out, again, that Schott is  generally an ally of children, and not someone who historically wishes  them harm, but that doesn’t stop the story from going there, in the most  violent of terms. In addition to being a radical change to the Toyman  character, it’s handled in a fashion more glib than we’re used to seeing  in these pages.  The mental health cliché of a matriarchal obsession, a la Norman Bates doesn’t elevate it either.  So, another rare misstep  from Jurgens the writer, in my opinion.   STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

I  had thought for sure that Romanove Vodka was a sly reference to a certain Russian Spy turned Marvel superhero, but it turns out there  actually is a Russian Vodka called that, minus the “E”, produced not in Russia, as one might think from the Czarist name, but rather, India.

While it made for an awkward exchange, I was glad that Cat pointed out how  her tragedy more or less sat on the shelf while Superman dealt with the "Spilled Blood" storyline.  A lesser book might not have acknowledged any  time had passed. Though I did find it odd for Superman to opine that he  wanted to find her son’s murderer even more than she wanted him to.  Huh?  How so?

I love the detail that Toyman hears the noise of Superman soaring to capture him, likening it to a train coming.

I  quibble, but there’s so much I don’t understand about the “new” Toyman.  If he’s truly regressing mentally, to an infant-like state, why does he wear this phantom of the opera style long cloak while he sits in his baby crib?  Why not go all the way, and wear footie pajamas, like the lost souls on TLC specials about “adult babies”?

I get that Cat Grant is in steely determination mode, but it seemed a little out of place that she had almost no reaction to the taunting she faced from her child’s killer.  She doesn’t shed a single tear in the entire issue, and no matter how focused she is on vengeance, that doesn’t seem realistic to me. [Max: That's because this is not just retribution, Don. It's dark retribution. We’ve been over this!]

#superman #dan jurgens #joe rubinstein #cat grant #adam morgan #toyman #dan turpin #joke guns that only exist in comics #cat grant the dark retributor #coming soon to image comics

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

OC-tober Day 2: Glass

OC-tober prompts put together by @oc-growth-and-development​! I have to ramble in meta instead of write, because my brain is Mush lately. (I know I’m behind but I have a lot pre-written, I just need to put it into coherent words!)

This one especially can be rambled about at length, because the most important “glass” object in my stories is one I greatly enjoy exploring: Dove’s mindscape mirror!

^ I drew it forever ago; here’s the deviantArt link if you’d like to see the big version! 

https://www.deviantart.com/ravenshiddensoul/art/Dove-s-Keepsakes-Mirror-and-Box-284227087

It’s largely modeled after a bird stretching its wings upwards, with a handle like a tail and certain details are inlaid with Azarathean gold to better channel its magics.

Now, this is where the rambling begins: The mirror’s backstory, and I’ll be exploring one of my favorite things to develop in all of my stories: Dove’s mindscape!

Dove's mirror isn't one of her most prized possessions, nor super incredibly sentimental, but it IS an object touched with her mother's magic, it has flourishes of Azarathean gold (some of the last pieces to exist), and it's useful for introspection and self-soothing, so it does have some value and importance.

Dove struggled with meditating quite a lot as a child, and there was only so much her mother could do to help. Meditation was pretty important to them as both a means of helping Dove control her powers, and as a staple of Azarathean spirituality. As she so often did, Alerina poked around and asked enough questions around the temple that she was told about Raven's mirror, and she decided to replicate it for Dove. She custom ordered a gold-lined wooden hand mirror, and then cast the spells to connect it to Dove's inner world herself. It took a few tries (it's much harder to connect something to someone else's mind than your own, after all), but she was nothing if not determined to help her daughter, and eventually figured it out.

As for its main purpose: Self-reflection! (If you'll pardon the pun.) Dove uses it to meditate, but where Raven uses hers for centering and compartmentalization, Dove uses it more as a blend of escapism and a focusing aid.

Much like Raven's, Dove's mirror acts as a portal to the depths of her mind, and this is where it gets fun!

The vortex that transports the users is usually white and gold, imbued with the same energies that give Dove her powers, at least on her mother's side. It's noticeably touched with black and red in DDD. (Dove's evil side starts taking over her mind, and thus its energies manifest through the mindscape, and Dove's portal into it, hence: black and red energies instead.) It tends to open up like a light tunnel and almost opens the mental world around the user, rather than dragging them in.

Once inside, one can't expect to navigate the same way as Beast Boy and Cyborg did in "Nevermore". Every mind is different, after all! We saw Raven's mindscape divided nearly into emotional sections with a neutral space between them, and the way through each area was preset and linear. While different parts of Dove's internal world manifest in different "areas", they're not so totally divided and separate, and there's no real "neutral" zone except at the very "center". The scenery changes, but it's more of a gradual transition, and though Dove employs thresholds to mark key areas, they're very much just visual aids.

Dove's mindscape is laid out more like a series of rooms and courtyards in a very (very, very, very) large mansion. The ground is generally of crystal, spires and columns decorate the scenery, and the thresholds are modeled after birds with their wings outspread. (While this seems like a play on Dove's namesake, it's actually based on Azarath's architecture, particularly that of George Perez's Azarath in the 1980's New Teen Titans comics.)

Dove's sky shows various stars and often casts moonlight from an uncertain source, particularly when she's introspecting. The ambient temperature varies amongst the locations, chilly in the regions ruled by fear and sadness, uncomfortably warm near her demon's domain, and comfortable and breezy where her peace and contentment reside.

One could easily get lost in her mindscape if they don't know where they're going. The place can shift and change on a whim.

Where Dove spends her time building that peace and contentment, it's very closely modeled after her mother's memories of Azarath (which is where she learned how to find peace, after all): there's marble and gold everywhere, and the stars twinkle with dozens of colors in the sky.

Where Dove retreats when there are feelings of timidity, her excruciating shyness, her grief and doubt, the world becomes shrouded in thick fog. Broken buildings and pale light litter the grounds.

Where she built her love for reading, for history, for creativity and study and learning, it's arranged as rooms with dark marbled tile and a carpeted path, the floor for dozens of feet on either side littered with piles of books.

Dove's inner happy place is an open field on gently rolling hills, where thoughts take the form of birds and somehow the sky holds both the stars and suns. One might find trees, flowers, abstract forms of cottages, and forts loaded with mugs and cozy cushions. If you wander far enough you'll find very tall stone walls surrounding it, because Dove's mind is such that her happiness is one of the few things she really truly believes she needs to protect from the rest of herself.

And then there are the aspects of herself that she shoves the deepest down, secreted far away from the surface: the anger, the hunger for power, the mean streak. (Yes, believe it or not, Dove does have a mean streak! You just have to work especially hard to bring it out. Or trigger her in just the right ways around sadism, violence, war, or death. It's very much Not Recommended; bringing too much of that mean streak out could mean Dove loses control of her powers, or worse: her demonic aspects.)

Those secret forces aren't so much located in one particular space of her mind as they're hidden in every dark corner, coursing through the underside of all the ground, a tantalizing power running through every part of her, only ever set free enough to use the dangerous powers to her own ends.

Her places for Fear and Curiosity in particular will be explored in the upcoming Missing: Raven rewrite. (As they're the strongest things Dove is feeling in that story, that's going to be what Beast Boy and Cyborg encounter.) I also explored the way these things manifest in DDD, and in that same story Dove will focus on rebuilding Peace in the final chapter.

I can't talk about Dove's mindscape without mentioning the "emoticlones". These fun little guys are called by the fanon term given to Raven's "emotion clones", the separate parts of her that express a specific set of traits based on particular aspects of her personality. I had so much fun playing with their voices and thoughts in Dove's head during DDD, you have no freaking idea! I also copied the concept of them having Colored Cloaks from Teen Titans canon, because honestly it's a quick and easy way to identify them, and the fandom's familiar with this system through Raven.

Which colors mean what was more inspired by details from a really old, now-defunct website called Cartoon Orbit that had separate "online trading cards" for each of Raven's emoticlones! On that site, Raven's were labeled as such, and this is what I based Dove's system on, loosely: - Pink: "Raven Happy" - Red: "Raven Rage" - Orange: "Raven Rude" - Yellow: "Raven Smart" - Green: "Raven Brave" - Brown: "Raven Fear" (I'm pretty sure there was a purple one, but I don't recall what it was called. "Love" maybe? That might be from fanon; this site was running like 15 years ago, and I was like 10 years old, so I hardly thought to pay Super Special Attention to it...)

But I digress. The point is, I adapted that system for the key aspects of Dove's unique personality, and came to understand them as follows:

- Pink: Joy, relief, coziness - Red: Cruelty, impulsivity, anger - Orange: Apathy, indifference, disregard - Yellow: Curiosity, study, intrigue - Green: Courage, determination, activity - Blue: Contentedness, pacifism, spirituality - Purple: Compassion, friendship, romanticism - Gray: Sadness, grief, longing. - Brown: Fear, fear, fear!

But for Dove's mind in particular, it's not only HER experiences and personality that form the world! She's a telepath, and though she holds others' privacy in very, very high regard and tries never to read someone's mind without their permission, her sense of receptive telepathy is ever-present. Echoes, lights, shadows, reflections of others' memories and thoughts might affect the very edges of her mind. It's a constant sense, but it only ever causes very ephemeral changes unless something deeply affects her.

Her mindscape also grows and changes as Dove grows and changes, experiences life, learns to cope, and changes how she handles her own emotions.

Most notably, the internal struggle in DDD tore her mind apart. Initially it was due to a breakdown of certainty and confidence, hastened by guilt and grief, but it soon became a deliberate tactic to wage war on the parts of Dove's mind that were trying to resist the evil; eventually her inner demon began intentionally breaking/corrupting everything it could touch.

By chapter 20, that evil is the only strong and stable thing in Dove's mind. Raven's attack to remove the evil in her took away that stability, and strength, and thus took away what was essentially the last support holding Dove's mind together. As it says in the story: "everything collapsed". Dove's mindscape was utterly destroyed, and only the most basic aspects of her remained.

For awhile, that left Dove unable to remember things clearly, or feel emotions without great pain. Rebuilding it to the point where she was able to talk and feel Mostly Normally again took months of meditation.

When Dove is kidnapped and Leyla has distressing dreams about her mother, she, Srentha, and Raven use the mirror to check on Dove by accessing her mindscape. With her powers stripped away, surrounded by people who mock her, and certain Fauni rituals sickening Dove to her soul, naturally her mind is very different: shadowy forms flitted at the edges of vision, the ground wavered, her discomfort was thick in the air and the constant fear made everything so, so cold. "Shadows" of others' thoughts flashed in and out of existence, and Dove's desperation manifests as fleeting voices on the wind. It's uncomfortable to be in her mind while she's so distressed.

It's also worth mentioning that her mindscape changes again, essentially "growing" the part of her that belongs to Love when she finally lets herself love Srentha, and it expands again when Leyla's born and Dove once more finds depths of love she didn't know she could carry.

#oc tober #oc tober 2021 #rhs has ocs and this is the tag about them #iala yona #ddd #rhs oc tober

[1dclicheficfest]

The time has come, my dears! We’ve compiled, organized and sorted your submissions and we’re ready to share them! We’ve had so much fun reading your clichés and we hope it’ll give you a good laugh.

Important disclaimer because it has to be said: we do not endorse any of the clichés submitted and these are not meant to spark Discourse™ . This is all in good fun, to spark your imagination and perhaps inspire some prompts!

Before we get to the fun part, don’t forget that prompt submissions open on February 1st and will run until March 28th. The full schedule can be found here.

And now, without further ado, here are your brilliant clichés.

HARRY

Green eyes

Huge eyes

Dimples

Always smirking

“The flirt”

Jobs: Works in a flower shop/Used to be a baker/Frat boy/LA socialite/Mermaid

“Quirky”

Clumsy/balance issues

Health nut/Workout junkie/Eats a lot of avocado and kale/loves yoga/gross green health smoothies

Very slow speech

Paints his nails

Beautiful long luscious curly hair

Long legs/large hands

Tall/large/big

Nudity/loves walking around starkers

Obsessed with being pregnant/babies

Kind to everyone

Bites his lip a lot

Tells terrible jokes/loves puns

Naive and oblivious

Clothing: Pearl necklace, Chelsea boots/gold boots/boots in general/Gucci everything/Flared, high-waisted trousers/’red and black sheer floral shirt with black skinny jeans’

Always unbuttons his shirt to show off tattoos

Baby seal laugh

Bad at driving

Hipster/takes artsy photos

Acting out for attention/Petty jealousy for no reason or because of a misunderstanding or when anyone comes near Louis

Bad dancer that gives it his all/makes awkward shapes with his limbs when trying to dance

Cat mom/Wine aunt

Resting bitch face

Rides a motorcycle

LIAM

Little clueless

Insecure

Louis is constantly messing with him

Roommates with Louis

Puppy/a lost puppy/puppy in human form/puppy eyes/puppy who doesn’t know how hot and strong he is/loves puppies

Manly muscle man/buff af/loves working out/sweet himbo beefcake

Bullied in the past

Giant heart/incredibly kind/soft/super loyal

Worry-wart/mother hen of the band/gets nervous when things don’t go to plan

Voice of reason/the responsible one/Daddy Direction/level-headed/most serious of the five/keeps the others grounded

Doesn’t know how to let loose and have fun

Lacking in experience/innocent about sex things

Oblivious to his feelings/other people’s feelings for him

Jobs: Firefighter/boxer/athlete

Super soft for Zayn

Protective

“Wants to cry as soon as Louis opens his mouth and doesn’t know if it’s because he’s scared, because it’s too funny, or because he just can’t handle any of it.”

Fear of spoons

Timid/

“being very shy/awkward in the beginning and then getting more confident because of Louis”

Snake habitat turn around!

Can’t spell

His turtle losing a foot

“Smelly pasta house”

Loves batman

Being alpha in ABOs

Unruly curly hair then trimmed to a crisp buzz

LOUIS

Blue eyes: ocean blue/blue as the sky on a sunny winter day/twinkle eyes

Arse and/or tummy as a defining feature

Sassy/sass master/feisty/snarky/cheeky/witty/playful/funny/sarcastic/joker

Flamboyant

Heart of gold/”Louis IS the sun”

“Does not suffer fools gladly (that’s your job you fooking loosah)”/hot-headed to pick fights only in defense of those he loves

Protective/Mama bear/loyal/Daddy of the group

Small/Dainty stature emphasized

Runs fingers through his fringe/hair always styled

Jobs: Footie player, teacher, drama teacher, actor, plays in a band

Loves music and writes songs

Plays footie (even if it’s not his job)

LOUD

Can’t cook/chicken wrapped in parma/”Can’t cook to save his life and if he does the kitchen ends up in flames”

Soft with Harry

School: Studying drama, being the bad boy, pop!punk Louis

Bratty/petty/snappy

Smoking

Zayn’s partner in crime

Rooms with Liam

Calls everyone ‘love’/uses too many terms of endearment

Yorkshire accent emphasized/always talks about Doncaster

Clothing: Vans or Adidas shoes/Toms/trackies/braces/red jeans/dressing in comfortable clothes only/no socks/scarf

Very good with kids/loves kids/family-oriented/looking after siblings/having a huge family

Eats junk food only

“The gay who cannot drive”

NIALL

Drinks a lot/Drinks everyone under the table because he’s Irish/Guinness lover/fun drunk/Will sing Gaelic folk songs when drunk/big social drinker-always making friends via alcohol/will kiss anyone when drunk

Food: Eats all the food/doesn’t season his food/loves Nando’s/”100% will take the last slice of pizza and not feel bad about it”/can and will eat you out of house and home/actually eats and cooks healthy but everyone thinks the opposite

Irish/Irish and proud/Wey Hey lads!/leprechaun Niall

Carefree/nothing bothers him

Romantic: falls fast and hard

Captain Niall!/Captain of the ship(s)

Music: guitar always present/Goes into the zone when he has an instrument in his hands - nothing will distract or get through to him/The Eagles fanboy/Damien Rice fanboy

Funny/always laughing/joking around/head back cackle of a laugh

Single/hooks up with a ton of people but no serious relationships/sleeps around/Serial Ladies man/Friends with benefits with multiple people at once/

Turns up the charm 100% and never half-asses it/”Scrunches his hair in thought and knows he looks cute doing so (like girls that purposefully bite their lip)”

Friends with literally everyone/has a thousand surface-level friends that think they’re close to him but keeps all at arm’s length/the greatest friend but also pickiest about who he becomes friends with

Clothing: Constantly shirtless/shorts over trousers/flip-flops as house shoes/gold chain/coin necklace/hoop earring/”golf dad that tucks in his shirts and unironically wears polos”

Obsessed with golf and football/practices his putt in the hallway with an empty loo roll

A bro

Secretly insightful/Tactless but gives essential advice as a result

Secretive/keeps his shit quiet/Definitely the guy with the most secrets

The blond one

Hairy chest

Worst poker face

Finger guns/peace signs

Blushes when he’s excited

Adores Shawn and Lewis

Cares a lot about what others think

Says no judgment but really judges a lot/judges you based on music taste

Rings in at 0 on the gaydar but could surprise you/the only het one

Tries to avoid conflict by remaining ‘on the fence’ and not picking a side

Always the roommate

Face mask selfies

Emotions rotate between sad, sexy, and fun - combination vary

Never a villain

Close with Harry

“Violent masturbating in the next room”

Constant pet names for everyone/”Even has pet names for his devices (like his vacuum robot”

ZAYN

Super smart/nerd/wise/The Ravenclaw

Smokes a lot

Secretly very soft/gentle/biggest heart/”His confidence and aloofness hide a sensitive heart of gold”/Bad boy secretly soft

Heart-eyes at Liam/Soft with Liam/”Lee-yum”

Mysterious eyes

Best friends with Louis

Jobs: Artist, tattoo artist, English teacher who loves art, works in comic book store,

Shy/withdrawn/mysterious/brooding best friend/quiet/”Seems intimidating until you realize he’s just shy”/bad boy outside, soft boy inside/”not as cool as he seems but way sweeter”

The artistic one/tortured artist/art student/skater/also does graffiti/spray-paint

Marvel fan/comic book fan/superhero fan

Clothing: Wears his clothes like armor/leather jacket/”He’s the only one with good taste and he knows it”

Most ‘devil may care’ about his sexuality

Family-oriented/family man

Involved with his religion

Model figure/carved by gods/vain but not obnoxious about it

Catchprase is ‘sick’

Needs time alone to recharge

Changes his hair a lot/that one strand of hair that falls over his eyes

Thinks Malibu is called Malabami

“Eats candy underwear off of Harry’s crotch”

#1dclicheficfest #cliche results #resources #masterpost #character cliches

[vancafreader]

Fine Art Comics of Canada: Sixties to Seventies - Heart of London, Snore & More by Robert Dayton

Part One: The Heart Of London

There was a time where artists were making vast ripples away from Toronto and other outsized hubs. London, Ontario was such a place, all eyes were on it in the late 60’s and not Toronto. The Heart Of London comic book from 1968 was actually an exhibition catalog, an overview of the art that was happening there at the time. Organised by The National Gallery of Canada, this exhibition traveled from London to Toronto, Kingston, Edmonton, Victoria, Charlottetown and, of course, The National Gallery H.Q. itself in Ottawa.

This catalog/comic book consisted of fumetti, comics done using photos for the images. Fumetti was most prominently used in the 60’s by Harvey Kurtzman in Help and Playboy, prolifically in numerous Mexican comic book melodramas, and in Italian comics featuring the masked master criminal Satanik. Heart Of London’s particular fumetti is further stylized by heavily contrasted processing causing colours so bright that they make everything heightened artifice, buzzing as if emanating from a higher plane of being.

Cover of the Heart Of London catalogue

The Heart of London logo in Pepto-Bismol pink is rendered somewhere between Archie and underground comix titles. Above it, The Comics Code of Authority symbol -a comic book mainstay of the day implying that the work is of safe moral quality- has been altered to “National Gallery of Canada”, the institution that made this comic book and exhibition happen. The cover features what appears to be London public workers, perhaps? These men in yellow hard hats casually stand in front of a store with a Coca-Cola logo also coloured Pepto-Bismol pink, Pop Art style, at the city’s main intersection in what very well may be the heart of London.

The comic opens with a quote placed above a looming Brutalist parking lot, huddling various small businesses below it. This quote contains the phrase “heart of London” but it is rather self-deprecatingly not about London, Ontario but London, England in World War One. Sharing a name with London, England has often made this Ontario city the butt of many a joke, ie. “I live in London… (long pause) Ontario” with its population being just over 200,000 in 1968. Named in 1793 by Lord Simcoe, Upper Canada’s first Lieutenant-Governor known for starting the abolition of slavery, he was also fervently British, his vision for Canada was for it to be like England which he looooved, desperately (but stiffly) wanting this particular London to become Ontario’s capital. Alas, Toronto was chosen instead. Related, always related to everything: the term “cosmic consciousness”, the higher state of consciousness, was coined in London in 1872 by Richard Bucke, a psychiatrist and head of The Asylum For The Insane, after he received a blinding vision, illuminating him. Besides being active in asylum reform, Bucke was heavily involved in the arts -the vision occurred after an evening spent reading Romantic poetry as well as poems by Walt Whitman, who he later befriended. Yes, London, Ontario is an eccentric place.

The artists involved in the Heart Of London show were part of what was known as “London Regionalism”, a loose-knit movement of artists who were adamant about residing in London, away from Toronto or New York. Artist Greg Curnoe helped establish some of the very first artist-run centres there. He was an early member and huge proponent of CARFAC, a Canadian organisation that fights for artists to get paid and paid fairly for their work. CARFAC was founded in London by Heart Of London artists Jack Chambers and Tony Urquhart -along with Kim Ondaatje.

Besides Curnoe, Chambers, and Urquhart, the eleven artists in Heart Of London included John Boyle, Bev Kelly, Murray Favro, Ron Martin, David Rabinowitch, Royden Rabinowitch, Walter Redinger, and Ed Zelenak. They are all profiled in fumetti form talking about their practice through speech balloons and captions, along with quick biographical details. Many of these artists were known for their inventiveness, they were influenced by a variety of subject matter -including comic art- without falsely delineating these influences into false boxes of high or low art. They didn’t just make work in the visual art field either. Along with a Hart Of London work-on-paper, Chambers made an experimental film with the same name in 1970. This film intensely shows brutal shots of an abattoir in Spain interspersed with London scenes; it has been described by Stan Brakhage as “one of the greatest films ever made.”  Both Curnoe’s Heart Of London painting from 1967 and Jack Chambers’ 1968 work-on-paper Hart Of London are in the show.

Noted curator and historian Judith Rodger told me that Curnoe’s Heart Of London piece depicts The Forks Of the Thames downtown, “arguably the heart of London” near many of the artists’ studios with Greg’s studio as the main hub or heart of it all. As for the idea of a comic book catalog, it was a mystery until Rodger guided me to Katie Cholette’s PhD thesis Memory and Mythmaking: the role of autobiography in the works of Jack Chambers and Greg Curnoe which states that it was the idea of William Bragg, assistant to the director of The National Gallery’s extension services. Cholette’s paper quotes Bragg from the Sept 29, 1968 New York Times’ Arts Notes column, “…The idea was to make a kind of scrapbook, to talk as a group, not individuals. Their work is kind of echoed by the comics—it’s really their bag […] Everyone likes to read comics once in a while, anyway.” Due to its uniqueness, the catalog garnered a lot of press for the show. Beverley Lambert (Bev Kelly in the show) says, “I think we all thought it was pretty neat and it was funny. It got people’s attention.”

When I talked to artist John Boyle about this comic book catalog, he said right away, “It’s too bad that Greg Curnoe isn’t with us anymore, because he was really interested in comic books. And he always did comic book or comic-like drawings from the time he was a little kid.” In the book Greg Curnoe Life And Work, author Judith Rodger’s description of his 1963 painting Myself Walking North In the Tweed Coat could be ascribed to many of his works. “The flat, vivid colours; schematic outlines; and text all come from his love of the comic book.” As well as the inclusion of the name of the newspaper strip Mary Worth in the piece. Another colourful painting casually inserts Dick Tracy into the frame as a representative of one of his interests. Curnoe’s series of cut-out collages were often shaped into cartoony and anthropomorphic forms.

Curated by Pierre Théberge at The National Gallery, Boyle readily notes, “Both Curnoe and Chambers talked up all the other artists who were around in London, and ended up persuading Théberge to have a group show to get a sense of the whole London art scene.”

The comic book itself doesn’t give William Bragg’s name at all, nada. The designer is credited: Roger Duhamel, FRSC, Queen’s Printer and Controller of Stationery, a federal government official, as well as the design firm: Eccleston + Glossop International. All of the photos, however, were done by the late Don Vincent, of whom Boyle says, “He was a friend of ours, of all of us. And a really terrific photographer. And he documented the whole London scene as it unfolded taking photographs all the time of everybody in this show and just of London, his whole life was photography.” Vincent’s work also appeared in 20 Cent Magazine, a delightfully scrappy local art magazine started in the mid-60’s with many of the people in the show, including Boyle and Curnoe, contributing writings and drawings. 20 Cent Magazine sold for 25 cents, ha! Vincent also photographed The Nihilist Spasm Band who are regarded as the first noise-rock band; this amazing, mind-blowing, intense and milk-spurtingly funny act was founded by the late Greg Curnoe, with Boyle and Favro (playing unique guitars that he builds himself) as still very active members over fifty years later. They are unique cultural ambassadors bringing such songs as “No Canada” to the world, having performed in Japan and in Vancouver at The Western Front with poet George Bowering guesting on guitar, and have had a documentary made about them by the late noise artist Zev Asher.

In one of Heart Of London’s comic book panels about Boyle an early issue of the four color MAD sneaks its way in. I asked him if he read MAD, “Yeah. Although that is from the designer. I read MAD, although not madly.”

A very young Boyle states in one of his panels, “The day I can truly defile myself in public, I will have accomplished everything, and I will no longer have a need to paint.” Reflecting today he says, “I still think that actually, and I think I may have succeeded. Because I do still have the need to paint. But I don’t have the need to show it anymore, or to get applause or approval from anyone. And I don’t know how that arose in me. But I kind of had a fair amount of attention and approval and acceptance and shows in fancy places and meeting important people and pleasing art administrators. And I kind of reached the conclusion that most of them aren’t worth pleasing and their opinion was not as good or not as important as the opinions of other people that I happen to know. And I thought they made a lot of mistakes and people that they chose to support. And also, their approval was very fickle. They were very fickle about it because as soon as fashions would change, their eyes were directed elsewhere and the people they thought were geniuses today were no longer geniuses tomorrow. I did kind of lose my enthusiasm for the art world, but not for painting. So, I was mistaken.”

The final pages of this catalog feature a few reproductions of pieces from the show itself, including Bev Kelly’s window paintings which, with its window panels, adapt quite easily to the comic book form, comparable to an ornate and mysterious painted comic page. The layout, however, was a bit fast and loose with one of her works being printed sideways. In her fumetti section she says, “These windows aren’t ‘real’ windows, they are still paintings. They don’t have sashes and you can’t see through them. A real window is to look through, these are to look at.” Painted on canvas, the window pieces used lumber to make the frames of the paintings, carved to look like the ribbed mouldings of window frames.

Bev Kelly was the sole woman in the show and when I asked her about this she said, “I’m very happy that they didn’t concentrate on this issue that I was the only woman. I didn’t want to be known as an artist because I was a woman.” Having recently moved to London from Saskatchewan with her husband, they were warmly welcomed by Curnoe and she would go see The Nihilist Spasm Band play every week at The York Hotel. Her first solo show was at The 20/20 Gallery in London.

She spent the first two years of her life in Biggar, Saskatchewan where the signs read, “New York Is Big, But This Is Biggar.” Being in London changed her notions of places like New York being the absolute cultural mecca. Beverley says, “There was a really vibrant cultural community there. You know what a regionalist Greg was. He really believed, as a lot of writers do, that you should write about what you know, or you should do your art about what you know, including where you live and so on. And, of course, when I started on the windows that was right out where I was living. The first ones were of my house and then I walked around and took pictures of various houses that I thought looked interesting. When I got a studio in London above one of the businesses downtown I used some of the windows there as inspiration for my works. And then when I went back to Saskatchewan, I was very into that, looking around at what is there where you live. I even got a grant to travel around small-town Saskatchewan and look at the local -in air quotes- ‘folk art’ or untrained artists, let’s say, just painting odd things on their house or their property or whatever. So, I went and I did interviews, took pictures of them, and I imagine I must have produced some kind of a report on it because I probably had to for my grant. So that led me into being more observant and looking more at where it’s from and what is around you and that you don’t have to go to some huge, big place to find art.”

Bev Kelly was her married name and she returned to using her original name, Beverley Lambert in the 1970’s. Lambert did a series of three large lithographs for International Women’s Year in 1975 on women’s issues dealing with real news stories that happened on the prairies. Many of these prints were donated to many women’s centres across the country. She has also worked in clay doing an entire main street based on the fictional Saskatchewan town in the humour book Sarah Binks by Paul Hiebert. Beverley Lambert currently resides in St. John’s, Newfoundland where she makes art and is active as a conservator.

Flip the comic over and it is the same but in either French or English depending on where you first started reading!

Boyle comments, “Last night, my wife and I were looking at the Heart of London catalog. She was amazed that this was a National Gallery touring show with a lot of artists who became major artists in the country. And it looked like they were trying to spend as little money as possible by making this skinny little comic book-like thing on newsprint and I think there’s a large measure of truth in that. Because, again, I remember when Greg Curnoe had a big one-man exhibition retrospective at The National Gallery and the catalogue that they did for him was kind of a minimal thing. It was like a paperback book with one colour reproduction and a number of inferior black and white reproductions and basically a list of artworks in the show. And in the same year, The National Gallery did a big one-man exhibition of Donald Judd, the American sculptor, and his catalogue was a huge coffee table book that weighed about 15 pounds and was three inches thick and loaded with colour from beginning to end. And that just, I think, represented a specifically Canadian problem.” When I mention this to Hairy Who member Art Green he responds, “Well, of course, because they’re trying to impress their betters in New York, so you get a job at The Whitney or The Museum of Modern Art. Canada has been an incubator for museum directors since forever.”

Hairy Who catalog page by Art Green, courtesy of the artist

This style of catalog for Heart Of London corresponds nicely with The Hairy Who, another such grouping of artists around that time who were part of “The Chicago Imagists.” Their three Chicago art shows starting in the mid-60’s were accompanied by comic books that also doubled as exhibition catalogs. The Hairy Who weren’t very aware of the underground comics scene then just barely getting started, they chose this method out of creative necessity, printing a glossy catalog was cost prohibitive. Green explains, “And the printing was expensive and not very good. And we didn’t want to have a show that was called ‘Six Recent Graduates’ or something unexciting like that. And so, we realised we all liked comics and we all knew how to do colour stripping because we’d taken silk-screening courses, we figured out we could do it. And it was cheap.”

Delineating further, The Hairy Who made playful art inspired by a wide range of neat stuff. The London artists were well aware of The Hairy Who. In fact, The Hairy Who were even going to show in London at The 20/20 Gallery. Boyle notes, “20/20 was kind of a precursor to the art in the so-called artist run centres, most of which aren’t run by artists anymore. But anyway, it was one of the first and it was all sponsored by local people in London. And I don’t think it lasted longer than a couple of years, but it was a terrific gallery while it lasted.” Many of the artists in The Heart Of London show were active in 20/20, which lasted from 1966 to 1971. Greg Curnoe discussed the show with Hairy Who artist Karl Wirsum, who in a letter to Art Green wrote, “Well, if they go ahead and publish a comic book, that would be all right.” Green notes, “He may have thought that the 20/20 Gallery was more well-funded than it probably was. But it was on, we all agreed to do it. We were looking forward to it.” Green himself left Chicago for Canada in 1969. The 1968 Democratic Convention had transpired and as Green puts it, “Everybody was angry at everybody.” He was dissatisfied with his teaching job there as well, so when offered a job at NASCAD, the art school in Halifax, he leaped at it.

Alas, the show didn’t happen. In a letter to Art Green, Curnoe writes, “We had to cancel The Hairy Who show and a lot of us were disappointed.” Boyle notes, “I suspect that it got caught up in the death throes of the gallery. And they would have had to cancel whatever exhibitions they had coming up.”

Green notes that both London and Chicago are far enough away from the more major centres that artists can, “…be free to go their own way because there’s not much at stake partly and nobody’s paying attention. And I remember the first time I had been in London, we were driving on our honeymoon to Halifax where I got the job. And I thought, ‘I’m gonna stop here and get a Canada Dry.’ I’m driving down what’s the main street that runs north south and pulled into a corner store. And I said, ‘Do you have Canada Dry?’ ‘No, but we got America Dry.’  I have never before or since seen a bottle of America Dry. I bought it and it wasn’t as good as Canada Dry. And, and that’s not a dream. I mean, I have never seen it ever again. But that made me say, ‘Wow, this is a weird place.’”

While Green was teaching at NASCAD, Curnoe came for what Green calls, “One of his annual excoriations, if that’s a word, he would rip them up one side down the other in public, for being a Canadian art school with no Canadians teaching, hardly any, and all yanks -and it was true! And so anyway, they would invite him and it was almost like a ritual. He would be in the public, there’d be 400 students there and Greg would just rip the place apart. I had known Greg, I heard about the show and so on, and we got along fine. And afterwards he’d come up to me and say, ‘Well, how did I do?’ ‘Greg, you’re doing great, but you do realise I’m a yank’, but I agreed with him 100%.” Both Curnoe and Green commiserated on how Canadian art was neglected at the school. “If he had been in Chicago, Greg would have been a member of The Hairy Who or maybe started it. But he was more political, he had to be, and Chicago, the politics were so acidic that you wouldn’t have wanted to be to be involved in it, unless you went in full immersion. And we were decidedly unpolitical. Although we all agreed on the politics of it. We were a collective in the sense that we wanted people to collect us.” On this, Art Green is a tad glib, having made art responding to and criticizing Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Both Art and Greg would visit with each other in various Canadian cities: Halifax, Vancouver, Toronto. “Nobody appreciated Greg in Toronto, they went out of their way to un-appreciate him. And luckily, they did put a put up a pretty nice retrospective after he was safely gone.”

Of London, Green notes, “I think that for a period of time. I don’t know how long it was maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours, maybe a few months? Maybe a few years. London, Ontario was most interesting art scene and literary scene in the whole world.”

The propensity for great art still ran in the water there, the stream flowed, there was a continuum and a recognizing of that history. London has some great galleries including Forest City Gallery, founded by Jack Chambers and Greg Curnoe, where The Nihilist Spasm Band plays every Monday night.

In 2013 The London Museum held the group show L.O. Today with artists Jason Mclean, Marc Bell, Jamie Q, Billy Bert Young, Amy Lockhart, Peter Thompson, and James Kirkpatrick. Many of these artists are a part of the Canadian Psychedooolic art comic movement that began in the 1990’s, captured and collected in the book Nog A Dod, edited by former Londoner Marc Bell and released by Conundrum/PictureBox. Much of the work in Nog A Dod occurred in Vancouver with a couple of these London artists relocating there, immersing easily, doing a lot of collaborative drawing and art books with other Vancouver based artists. Yes, ‘Canadian Psychedooolic’ was named after the fact by Bell, but we weren’t thinking of ourselves as a movement or a group at the time. Yet all of these art books had an unfettered comic wildness, funny, and expansively playful. And Nog A Dod got out there, impacting and influencing a lot of artists the world over. Furthering the connective tissue, in 2003, The Western Front in Vancouver put on an art show featuring ‘documents and ephemera’ from musical acts The Nihilist Spasm Band, The All Star Schnauzer Band (a somewhat fake band as mail art project involving Bell, Mclean, and Thompson) and July Fourth Toilet, a Vancouver based group that often involves many Nog A Dod and Nog A Dod related artists, including yours truly occasionally wearing outlandish semi-functional semi-nude costumes specially designed by Jason Mclean. The show was curated by Jonathan Middleton, who is now Executive Director at Art Metropole, a Toronto based artist-run centre dealing primarily in artists’ publications.

Getting back to Greg Curnoe. Released in two parts in 1970, The Great Canadian Sonnet contained numerous images by Curnoe. Described as a “Beaver Little Book”, the format was modeled after the popular Big Little Books, distant cousins to comic books so named for being small, square and thick. Big Little Books were marketed to children and featured popular comic, cartoon, radio and film characters of the day in text-based stories with illustrations on every other page. Some Big Little Books had flip-it cartoons in the top corner so one could make the character move. With its second volume The Great Canadian Sonnet does this as well, stating “See ‘em move – just flip the pages” on the cover and, sure enough, in the corner a spot rolls up a hill-like abstract shape transforming into a medley of human faces.

Written by poet David McFadden, Curnoe riffed off lines in his text creating a great many detailed pen-and-ink drawings for the book with titles that included “Proud Possessor Of Meaningful Pain”, “One that will be Truly Loved by the Prime Minister”, and “The Empty Universe” which featured a drawing of a tin of apple juice and a packet of bird seed -the book’s drawings contained many such absurdist pairings. The Great Canadian Sonnet was published by Coach House Press who were -and still are- known for releasing all manner of experimental works including poetry, prose and beyond. Both volumes together weigh in at over 400 pages, with every other page being a drawing by Curnoe.

Many thanks to Jason Mclean, Marc Bell, and Judith Rodger for their immense help with this piece.

Thanks as well to Art Green for use of his respective artworks.

Part Two: Scraptures, Snore and More coming tomorrow, Friday, August 20!

Robert Dayton

www.robertdayton.com

www.patreon.com/CanadianGlam

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