Look what finally came in the mail!!! Ava's Demon! (@avasdemon)
So excited to read it (and re-read volume 1)! The artwork is amazing and the story is so original!
I haven't been very active lately and results can vary, but I've found the most amazing graphic novels and comic books on Kickstarter. I started by supporting a project to reprint Canadian comic books from World War II, including Nelvana of the Northern Lights, one of the first female and an Indigenous superheroines:
(Pictured: Mr. Monster, Brok Windsor, Sally the Sleuth, Fashion in Action, and Johnny Canuck, all reprinted historical comic books)
Then I found this amazing series about post-apocalyptic mice, Scurry (I cannot even describe how amazing the artwork is):
And this retold fairy tale painted entirely in watercolour, Blue Eyes & the Beastling:
Just to name a few! I really love well-done graphic novels and I don't find enough on the market. I've found a ton of amazing ones.
11 notes
·
View notes
Back in October 2020, my good friend @tikki-tok (i.e @tikki-makes-art ) decided to start a Platinum playthrough together! We got into the Hall of Frame on March 12th, 2021, and after exploring some of the post game, we decided to follow my long standing tradition of drawing my team after beating a pokemon game, by collaborating on the art piece together. I did the sketch, Tikki did the lineart, I did the coloring, and then Tikki finished it off with the background and lighting effects!
We had tons of fun playing the game and coming up with this drawing, so now without further ado, some team info and playthrough commentary under the cut!
Team Tikki, in the order they were caught (Name, Species, Sex, Moveset):
“Paprika”, Infernape, ♀, Close Combat - Mach Punch - Fire Blast - Grass Knot
“Freya”, Staraptor, ♀, Close Combat - Return - Roost - Fly
“Korrina”, Floatzel, ♀, Aqua Jet - Crunch - Iron Tail - Waterfall
“Malibu”, Garchomp, ♂, Dragon Claw - Rock Slide - Earthquake - Crunch
“Skadi”, Glaceon, ♀, Shadow Ball - Ice Shard - Hail - Blizzard
“Leoru”, Lucario, ♂, Aura Sphere - Stone Edge - Dragon Pulse - Drain Punch
Team Nelvana, in the order they were caught (Name, Species, Sex, Moveset):
“Zest”, Torterra, ♂, Curse - Rock Slide - Earthquake - Razor Leaf
“Xena”, Luxray, ♀, Return - Crunch - Iron Tail - Spark
“Bridget”, Floatzel, ♀, Ice Fang - Waterfall - Strength - Crunch
“Fothe”, Drifblim, ♀, Shadow Ball - Fly - Psychic - Minimize
“Tottle”, Lopunny, ♀, Return - Jump Kick - Quick Attack - Bounce
“Tempest”, Glaceon, ♂, Blizzard - Hail - Shadow Ball - Quick Attack
General Playthrough Notes:
We played every Tuesday evening until we beat the game and explored as much as the post game as we could (I’ll get back to that in a moment) Which for me brings us to the in-game time of nearly 39 hours. I believe that Tikki’s in-game time was about ten hours more than mine because she spent a lot of time, among other things, actually doing honey tree shenanigans and catching extra pokemon (which had to be trained up).
Speaking of, the final team they used for the Elite Four was not all the pokemon used by Tikki during the playthrough! It was just the team that he felt was best suited for tackling the league with. Some other honorable mentions of teammates for her are: “Syrup” the Bibarel, “Titanium” the Heracross, “Majesty” the Vespiquen, and “Lancer” the Roselia.
Actually funny story, while Tikki was off using several pokemon at once and just switching the roster every now and again, I sat with a party of five for most of the game! I told myself I’d only use glaceon if I didn’t have a full team by then, because I love glaceon but you can only get it by the seventh gym, which in most instances would be way too late in the game to be adding new team members, but for me? I never found a different pokemon I wanted to round the team out, so Tempest got to come along after all!
Okay back to the post game, turns out Platinum’s post game is really weird?? You have to fill out the regional dex to access certain bits, which for a game that just seeing each pokemon fills out the dex slot, is reasonable, except that manaphy is part of that dex and you cannot see a manaphy in Platinum without trading or having Pokemon Rangers. Unless we were both missing something, we were forced to miss out on some of the cool bits of that whole northern island of Sinnoh.
When we fought the E4, we had trained both our teams up to at least level 45 (though half my team was at least level 50), which is still quite a bit low for Cynthia, but we made it work.
Tikki, however, tried going through the game without using healing items, and this extended to the E4. The E4 was so difficult for her with that rule that they had to reload the save and ditch the rule last minute.
Everyone in Sinnoh has ADHD. Sorry we don’t make the rules.
Because I was playing on an emulator and sometimes experienced lag, and Tikki was playing on an actual DS but sometimes knocked the cartridge out of place and had to reload saves, we started making the semi-joking headcanon that we were connected to space/Palkia and time/Dialga respectively, which then escalated to our rivals being connected to Arceus and Giratina.
Speaking of, because I was playing the female trainer and Tikki chose the male trainer, our Professor’s assistant rivals were swapped, so to make things easier in conversation, we started calling Lucas/Dawn “Sapling” instead.
Also! We came up with the headcanon that the in-game mother character, Johanna, kinda looks after trainers who are away from home and helps support them on their journey. Since she also gives you the costume outfits and I am not a fan of dresses but Tikki liked how the dress looked, we like to imagine that she meant to give me the suit and them the dress but accidentally gave me the dress and them the suit, so we just swapped.
Why were there so many npcs that talked about being starving while standing next to berry trees? Is this a Sinnoh thing? Why is no one eating?
The seventh gym was really funny because I just swept with Zest using earthquake, and due to a flinch on the steelix with the kings rock, I never saw a single one of the gym leader’s attacks. I finished it so fast, in fact, that Tikki hadn’t even started, so I just said “I’d give you advice on how to beat the gym but I didn’t even see what it had to offer”
All in all, we both had a really fun time and I would highly recommend the Platinum experience! The AI is the best I think it ever has been for pokemon so it even poses a good enough challenge on top of just being a really fun time.
20 notes
·
View notes
I know that grimdark superhero deconstruction is overdone by this point, but when Nelvana of the Northern Lights drops into public domain I really want someone to make an adaptation where the Nelvana comics were like. A heavily revised piece of propaganda inspired by an actual Inuit superheroine
Where the actual Alana North was a woman with the power to create an electromagnetic field that just so happens to look a bit like the northern lights and got drafted into a secret Canadian superhuman military division. All the bits about her being the daughter of the god of the northern lights and fighting nazis in a miniskirt was so much white man nonsense added to the comics to make her more appealing to the public
That said she still fights nazis and gangsters and at one point finds a secret alien civilization under the arctic
I think it’d be interesting
54 notes
·
View notes
what are some books on your bookshelf?
[Floating canada head looking to the side]
Uhh... "Adventures of Moominpapa”, I have a handful of books on mythos, “The Herbal Drugstore” which is a book on the medicinal properties of plants, a bunch of cook books, “Killing the Black Body”, some historical pieces that hold accurate accounts of what actually happened, “Plan Your Gardening Year” among other gardening books, and --OH!
[Floating canada head with stars in his eyes looking very excited]
One of the original printings of “Nelvana of the Northern Lights”, canada’s first female comic book super hero and she’s been around longer than wonder woman by a few months (is there a conspiracy there?)! She’s first nations, too, which is just very neat.
Obviously I now have a reprint so I don’t damage the original.
30 notes
·
View notes