#This is the illustration done for his short story in the Material Collection

[solradguy]

Sin from the Guilty Gear 2 -Overture- Material Collection. Artwork by Daisuke Ishiwatari

#guilty gear #guilty gear 2 overture #sin kiske #video game art #daisuke ishiwatari #Sin doesn't actually have a last name given to him in his bio in this art book but he's getting one for the character tag lol #This is the illustration done for his short story in the Material Collection #No Daisuke comments on this one either. just the story #my scans #guilty gear scans #This one uploaded weird to Tumblr so I went back to adjust it some more #and I realized SOL PUT A COLLAR AND LEASH ON THIS CHILD????

[albertonykus]

Which Stories from the Doraemon Manga Have Not Been Translated into English?

When I compiled my spreadsheet of Doraemon manga chapters available in English, I noted that 16 stories from the manga remain untranslated. (That number only covers Doraemon manga by the original author, Fujiko F. Fujio, and not the various spin-offs and adaptations by other authors.) However, at the time I hadn't gone to the trouble of tracking down exactly which ones these were. I have now done the work, so here I can provide the complete list of Doraemon manga stories unavailable in English.

As I'd observed previously, none of the stories featuring the retconned character Gachako were translated, of which there are five in total:

"ドラえもん対ガチャ子" ("Doraemon vs. Gachako", 1970)

"ロボットのガチャ子" ("Gachako the Robot", 1970)

"きょうりゅうが来た" ("A Dinosaur is Here", 1970)

"まほうのかがみ" ("Magic Mirror", 1970)

"おかしなでんぱ" ("Strange Electromagnetic Waves", 1970)

In addition to those, the following Doraemon stories lack official English translations:

"ドラえもんのおとしだま" ("Doraemon's New Year's Money", 1971): Doraemon tricks Nobita and his friends into giving him money for New Year's. (Early Doraemon had a somewhat different personality from what we're used to now...) A two-page bonus comic drawn to promote a manga contest.

"遊園地になる木" ("A Tree That Becomes an Amusement Park", 1972): Doraemon plants a tree that does what the title implies. Out of all the untranslated Doraemon stories, this is the only one for which I can't think of any obvious explanation for why it has been omitted. It's a very short, one-page comic directed at kindergarteners, but other such Doraemon stories have been translated for the Kindle release, so... I've got nothing.

"はりええほんドラえもん" ("Sticker Picture Book Doraemon", 1973): An interactive comic in which the reader is encouraged to cut out provided images and glue them into blank spaces to complete the plot. Notably features the earliest appearance of the Mini Doraemons. Given that English Doraemon comics have primarily been released in digital format, it's understandable why this story has not been translated.

"じゅん番入れかわりそうち" ("Order Changer", 1974): Title page pictured above. This was the introduction to the Dorami spin-off in which she takes care of Nobita's identical-looking distant relative, Nobitaro. The other stories from the spin-off were later redrawn to be part of the main Doraemon series, rendering this one out of place for most future releases.

"ドラえもん百科" ("The Doraemon Encyclopedia", 1975): A bonus comic presenting an illustrated guide to Doraemon's gadgets, first published in vol. 6 of the 45-volume Doraemon print compilation. Based on the art style, this entry was not illustrated by Fujiko F. Fujio himself, and it was not included in The Complete Works of Fujiko F. Fujio. It really only qualifies for this list on the technicality of being printed in the 45-volume set (the contents of which were selected by Fujio). Not to be confused with "ドラえもん大事典", which despite also translating to "The Doraemon Encyclopedia" and having been first published in 1975, is included in the English Kindle release.

"ジャックと豆の木" ("Jack and the Beanstalk", 1975): Gian asks Doraemon for a giant beanstalk. This story was released as part of Fujio's Shonen SF Short Story Collection, so it is technically not part of the Doraemon series. However, given that it features Doraemon characters as protagonists, it can be considered a Fujio-authored Doraemon story.

"ドラえもんの大ひみつ" ("Doraemon's Big Secret", 1976): A two-page bonus comic in which Nobita learns Doraemon's backstory.

"未来の遊び百科" ("Future Game Encyclopedia", 1976): Doraemon shows Nobita games that people will play in the 22nd Century. Much of the material from this comic was later merged with "ドラえもん大事典" ("The Doraemon Encyclopedia") when the latter was reprinted in vol. 11 of the 45-volume set.

"さよならハンカチ" ("Goodbye Handkerchief", 1980): A two-page bonus comic drawn as a prize for a contest in which readers could send in their own gadget concepts.

"シューズセット" ("Shoe Set", 1980): A two-page bonus comic drawn as a prize for a contest in which readers could send in their own gadget concepts.

"人間そっくりたまご" ("Human Lookalike Egg", 1981): A three-page bonus comic drawn as a prize for a contest in which readers could send in their own gadget concepts.

That covers the 16 missing entries based on the total number of Fujio-authored Doraemon stories recognized by Yasuyuki Yokoyama, professor of education at the University of Toyama and founder of Doraemonology (yes, that’s a thing). However, there are a couple of remaining stories that should arguably be considered as well, and also remain untranslated:

"道路光線" ("Pathway Beam", 1980): A two-page bonus comic drawn as a prize for a contest in which readers could send in their own gadget concepts. Yokoyama didn't count this as a separate story because it was expanded in 1981 into a regular-length chapter, "歩け歩け月までも" ("Walking to the Moon") (which is available in English), but the argument could be made that it should be, much like how he considered the original short version of "Nobita's Dinosaur" and its extended Doraemon Long Stories version independent entries.

"ドラQパーマン" ("Dora Q Perman", 1979): A crossover with two of Fujio's other series, Obake no Q-Tarō and Perman. This story was primarily drawn by Hideo Shinoda, which is why it was omitted from Yokoyama's list. However, Fujio is still credited as one of the authors and it is included in The Complete Works of Fujiko F. Fujio.

I have added all of the above stories to my spreadsheet so that it now doubles as a complete list of Fujio-authored Doraemon entries.

If there is a takeaway to all of this, it's that the English Kindle release really is a very complete record of the Doraemon manga. If you read every Doraemon story available on Kindle in English, you will have read nearly every Doraemon work made by the original author, outside of a few exceptional outliers. That being said, it's clear that the Kindle version takes some liberties with its translation (as I have previously noted), so if one wishes to gain an accurate picture of the original dialogue, the Japanese version should always be consulted when possible.

#Doraemon #Manga #ドラえもん #Long post

[adarkrainbow]

I recently spoke of Pierre Dubois and evoked the confused and convoluted enigma that are his world-famous Encyclopedias - beautifully illustrated, a masterpiece of fae art, a Renaissance of the fair folk, a deep mine and fabulous treasure of folkloric, literary, mythological references... But also a very convoluted, invented, reinvented, unfaithful-yet-faithful work that freely uses the poetic license and the "storyteller license" to recreate a fairy world that sometimes has little to do with actual folkloric material. And that's because, as I said and as too many people seem to forget, Pierre Dubois is a storyteller and a writer before anything.

Today I want to briefly evoke his purely literary work, not his encyclopedias, or his books about ghosts or trolls, or his manual of elficology, or his anthologies of collected fairytales. His purely literary work - but still deeply inspired by folklore and fairytales. More precisely a short story collection of his called "Comptines assassines" (Murderous nursery rhymes):

This book is actually a sequel to a previous short story collection called "Contes de crime" (Crime fairytales ; a pun on "Grimm fairytales" because in French "Grimm" and "crime" sound similar). Both collections are based on the same key concept: take a fairytale, a nursery rhyme, a fairy-legend, and twist it into a dark short story - sometimes a crime, sometimes a horror novel, sometimes simply disturbing reality.

For example, in Comptines assassines, Dubois tackles twice the topic of "Let's follow the crimes and mad mind of a fairytale-inspired serial killer". Once in his "Puss in Boots" short story, where the titular cat becomes a fairytale-obsessed serial killer of the Interwar era deeply involved with the motif of the Great War mutilees ; and another in his "Bluebeard" short story, making the Bluebeard character a current day serial killer mixed with the Halewyn legend (and it is left unclear if he isn't the ACTUAL Halewyn) who picks of prostitutes and places them in the Bluebeard scenario pretending a "bizarre, excentric role-play game" when in fact he just wants them to end up like Bluebeard's victims... And there's also some really weird and bizarre stories, such as his "Croquemitaine" story (the French bogeyman), which is a Sherlock Holmes story about the titular detective ending up on the trace of a child-killer who somehow returned as a monstrous ghost thanks to a medium's ill-organized seance - and Arthur Conan Doyle actually meets Sherlock... Its typical Dubois bizarreness.

The reason I wanted to speak of this collection specifically is because, as a collection of short story, it truly allows to present the best and the worst of Dubois as an author, since some of his short stories are truly brilliant, and others sadly badly done. I say sadly because Dubois always has good and interesting ideas, and he always cleverly plays of tropes and motifs and archetypes... But the executon is very often lacking.

And this precise collection has two story that are perfect opposites. "The old woman who lived in a shoe" and "The Musicians of the town of Bremen".

"The old woman who lived in a shoe" is the longest short story of this collection, so long it is basically a novela. And the basic idea is very efficient: in an old-but-not-too-distant England, various people of the high society with apparently no relationship to each other are brutally murdered. Here's the twist however: they are murdered by nursery rhymes characters, or by "Alice in Wonderland" ones. And the police, soon driven mad by this insane investigation, ends up calling forth a "fairy detective" expert in supernatural cases (who was involved in a previous story in "Contes de crime"). This is a strong and solid basis, and it works for the most part. Take each of the murders - because the investigation is for a first part pushed on the background, onto quick recaps summaries and "what happened" aftermaths, the better to highlight the dead end and mad frustration of the investigators. The murders are all very interestingly set - each victim is fleshed out in one given scene, each one evokes various archetypes, stereotypes or just "types" of the English society and the English literature, and then the encounters with the nursery-folks are all set in a brilliantly disturbing "fantastique" way, always simple and short but very efficient. The whole thing is told with a distinct British humor, sometimes slight, sometimes very heavy, and Dubois shows here his immense love and great passion for everything British (he always keeps in his bibliographies a section for all the English books of literature or folklore he read).

But here's the problem: this thing is... too much. Too long, too flowery, too flowing, too extensive, too bloated. That's one of Dubois' main vices and one of his greatest writing flaws - he doesn't know when to stop. He writes too much, he extends everything, he describes all with so much detail. We can at least forgive him for the series of murders opening the novel because each one, with such an exorbitant and extensive style, manage to present us a full, lively, complex portrait of each character and scenes, that is always brilliantly cut short by the childishly simple and yet completely reality-breaking supernatural of the murders. We can forgive that - but when the "fairytale detective" gets on the case... By Jove it is all too much. If this had been a novel, I think it would have worked much better - there would have been time to breathe, space for the sentences to flow right, but here everything is so crammed it boils and erupts like a volcano. And while the conclusion is interesting in theory, I do think its handling was... between muddled and dubious. Not to give too much spoilers, but Dubois wanted clearly to mix together the motif of "The old woman in the shoe had many children - and these children were nursery rhymes folks" ; the idea of "The fairies are pissed off humanity are destroying their land and take revenge" ; and an exploration of Lewis Carroll's life and how his Alice work haunts England today. But the result is... let's say it is a difficult result and touchy subject, as Dubois tries to explain Carroll's obsession with little girls by the involvment of a fairy in his life, and the whole handling of this is... Well it needs some careful reading and contextual considerations, because I couldn't tell if Dubois was actually making a big blunder by handling badly the topic, or if he actually did something that could work in some very bizarre way. And I will not insist on how Dubois, in his famous habit of mixing everything, insisted on mixing together the Alice books and the nursery rhymes of England as a whole into one and same world, making it so that for someone who hasn't read Carroll they could believe you'd find in Alice books Mother Goose or Old King Cole...

So yes that's the bad - but what about the great? The great is "The musicians of the town of Bremen" and I am really sad this story wasn't translated in English for me to share with you (or maybe it was?). To give you the simple but brilliant effect of this story I will recap it, but to avoid spoilers if you want to read it I'll put it under a cut.

Contrary to what the title says, the story isn't a rewrite of "The musicians of Bremen" but actually a "mix fairytales together" tale, and Dubois shows here his immense love, passion and knowledge of fairytales in one clever and poetic story - in an effort that reminds me of his Elficology Manual.

Say hello to George Boutonnet, a 20th century man with a frankly... Not happy life. Despite being an adult with a job, he stll is under the control of his old and tyrannical mother who, for example, insists on him having regular dinners with her to which he should never be late and always bring the same food. His mother's bad influence had already started as a kid, when she forced him to listen entirely and repeatedly to "L'Enfant et les Sortilèges" (Ravel's The Child and the Spells) - which deeply traumatized him, especially the scene when the child is punished by living furniture and wild animals and can only scream "Mommy!". He spent a childhood stuck between doing all his homework correctly under the stern eye of his mother, and brief moments of carefully looking at her precous books of fairytales - but these fairytales did not allow him any escapism either, because it was the Gustave Doré's illustrations, that scared him (he preferred Félix Lorioux as a child), and all the stories of Perrault, Grimm, madame d'Aulnoy and the countess of Ségur left him even more depressed - while all those virtuous girls and brave boys and couragous knights defeated the ragons and won eternal love, he couldn't escape his harsh and stern life... And so he grew up to become a middle-class office worker, always careful, prudent and meek, tyrannized by his bosses and his mother, living alone without any romantic potential, and having an extremely strict and precise schedule where every daily activity is timed precisely.

Except one day, when his alarm clock doesn't work, he wakes up too late, and this results in him going into a frenzy panic as he tries to stich up his schedule - because today is the day he is supposed to arrive on time to eat with his mother, and bring her cake. In his chaos and panic, after finally getting the cake and crossing with his car the wood that separates his home from his mother's, he needs to stop in the forest to pee. And... this turns out to be a revelation for him, because all his life, he kept crossing in his car the wood without ever actually stepping his foot in it. His mother never took him to the woods, too "wild and dangerous" - she didn't even taught him how to recognize flower species. So when he finds himself there, surrounded by unknown flowers, bizarre insects, and all those forest scents he never felt before, he can't help it, he walks around, he explores, feeling like a kid again. And as he walks around he sees... Little Red Riding Hood. Or rather a girl dressed exactly like her. Amused, he has a talk with him where he reveals he knows everything about her - much to the girl's amazement, and when she asks him how he knows her identity, he claims to be a wizard, which the girl immediately believes. And when he keeps joking (because he believes it is all a joke) about the wolf - this time Little Red is confused as there's no wolves in this forest, and she flees the man thinking he is one of those bizarre and nasty adults that like to mess up with kids' head.

Boutonnet, confused, ends up walking down the path Little Red Riding Hood came from... And discovers a fairytale village. THE fairytale village - with castles and beautiful landscapes and cute little houses and superb towers... Boutonnet thinks it's some amusement park, some local fair - but when he meets Gepetto in his workshop who is sculpting what will become Pinocchio (in fact it is Boutonnet himself who suggests the name Pinocchio), he starts realizing... Maybe something else is up. He tries to evoke Pinocchio's future misfortunes and misadventures, but Gepetto wants to hear nothing of those weird stories - claiming Boutonnet is just like "all those other folks from behind the hill", always coming in whith disastrous warnings when the truth is, nothing bad ever happens here. What truly convinces Boutonnet's however is when Gepetto summons Puss in Boots, who promptly asks the man to become his master, and when the latter agrees the cat literaly changes by magic his 20th century clothes into a fairytale-prince outfit.

Thus convinced he is truly in the world of fairytales, Boutonnet becomes the subject of a tour with Puss in Boots as a guide, to find himself a wife among the numerous princesses, queens and fairies of the area - and he gets to enjoy a wonderful, colorful world of talking flowers and singing frogs directly out of Lorioux's drawings, seeing the Goat with her seven kids, and Polichinelle, and the baron of Münchhausen, and fairies, and Hans my Hedgehog, and Riquet with the Tuft, and the seven dwarfs, and Tom Thumb... This is where Dubois' narrative style works the best, as his over-flowering, extensive listing and complex scene descriptions fit perfectly this "wonderful panorama of fairytales" we are supposed to see - and it is an abundance of fairytales and nursery rhymes references, and tons of puns based on popular culture, and fascinating description of fairy castles, and an abundance of baked goods, candies and cakes that Boutonnet gets to stuff himself with... And Boutonnet is in Heaven because it is everything his life is not - magic everywhere, everybody looking at him with respect and kindness, as much sugary treats as he can eat, cool clothes. An especially important part is that his name (which can translate as "Small-Button" and was a source of mockery when he was a child) is here fully accepted as a typical fairytale name.

Boutonnet is also very impressed by the beauty of the fairytale princesses - notably, after one breathtaking sight of Cinderella, he gets to encounter Snow White herself, described in such passionate, positive, romantic terms you feel like you have the perfect fairytale and mythical princess in front of you. Snow White is indeed the "fiancee" Puss in Boots wants to have Boutonnet fall in love with - and it works as they go for a promenade into the fairy woods and the wonderful village, and Snow White's kindness and beauty and gentleness and purity touches Boutonnet right into his heart... Even better (or worse depending on how you see it) - Boutonnet realizes that this fairytale village is stuck into the perfect moment, into the apex of happiness. Snow-White doesn't know what Boutonnet is talking about when he talks of her wicked step-mother, Little Red Riding Hood is going into the woods with no idea of what a wood is, when Puss in Boots is asked about cemeteries he is horrified as nobody dies in this valley... He is happy at finding a world of ultimate happiness and perfection, but he is slightly worried about how things might unfold if the stories haven't truly happened yet...

Snow White invites Boutonnet to the village's grand feast at the castle - where music will be given by the titular Bremen musicians, and after this invitation (and before Puss in Boots prepares for him a new outfit), Boutonnet has a brief moment of lucidity in the euphoria. He realizes that it is all mad, that such a place cannot exist, that if he returns to the real-world his mother will be mad at him and he'll be taken for a crazy person - but this is also mixed with a deep sorrow within himself, as he is told nobody ages, nobody dies, everything is happy in the fairytale valley... The sorrow that, as it turns out there was a place where wishes came true and dream became reality, there was a wonderful place of chilhood love and eternal youth, but he got denied this place, people tricked him into believing it wasn't real and forced him into living a horrid life...

As dusk starts forming at the horizon, Boutonnet considers leaving the valley and returning to his car and fleeing the forest - but the forest now smells quite unpleasant, of damp humidity, and rotting wood, and all sort of other unpleasant smells of "reality", and he ultimately get smooth-talked again by Puss in Boots into joining the grand festivities of the night. And what grand festivities! A huge banquet with mouth-watering dishes one after another ; and a whole array of old, aristocratic dances for the ball ; and music, so much music ; and Boutonnet sits right next to Snow White and gets to enjoy a soft, discreet, blooming romance between the meal and the dances, surrounding by fantastical beauties and fabulous riches...

... But as the night advances, the guests starts looking a bit less happy, a bit more shameful, things get more quiet. Boutonnet looks around and upon seeing so much beauty can't help but ask: Where are the others? The villains, the wicked ones, with their iron teeth and blue beards and hooked noses and warts and crooked chins... He notices there is some horrible sounds seemingly coming from the palace's door - but Snow White pretends it is "Just the wind" as the Bremen musicians try to cover it up with their music... And yet it is not wind, Boutonnet hears it growing louder and louder. It is scratches, screeches, screams and howls, the sounds of beasts and madmen. Boutonnet asks for explanations, and Snow White ends up sadly telling him the truth (and Boutonnet for the first time feels her hands are as cold as snow):

Once upon a time, a long time ago, fairytales were as Boutonnet heard of them. Snow White feared that every item was poisoned, Little Red Riding Hood didn't care cross the woods because of the wolf, princesses and sheperdess kept being killed by dragons, while brave heroes a la Jack and the Little Tailor kept killing giants, trolls and other gargoyles - and overall it was a constant battle of mutilated limbs, beheaded corpses, spells thrown left and right and constant pyres to burn people. It became so bad that the two side, the heroes and the antagonists, the goods and the villains, gathered one day to sign a peace treaty because they were so exhausted of living a "life of fairytale"... And the pact was such: the good folks and the heroes could live in the valley by day peacefully, while the villains and monsters ruled over it by night. This is why today Hansel and Gretel can eat gingerbread houses without fear, and why the three little pigs build their home in whatever material they like, and why Little Red Riding Hood visits her grandma every day...

But outside? What Boutonnet is hearing at the door of the castle? Its the wild hunt of the villains: Snow White's wicked stepmother is there, and so is the Big Bad Wolf, and Baba Yaga, and the Bogeyman, and the Ogre and the Ogress, and Frau Trude, and all the others: the dragons, the witches, the wicked dwarves, the ghouls, the trolls, the cyclops, Père Fouettar and so many monsters...

Boutonnet, puzzled wonders: But... If they are all outside, unable to attack or touch the good folks and the heroes... How do they survive? What do they eat? What do they kill, harass, maim and scare? Do they turn onto each other?

And Snow-White, sorrowfully but still so charming and beautiful, confesses to him: Alas, my beloved... They feed of strangers.

And the fairytale "good folk", to preserve their peace, throw Boutonnet outside of the castle, into the claws of the monsters and witches and ogres, and he only has time to scream one thing - the same word the little child screamed in "The Child and the Spells" - Mommy!

#pierre dubois #comptines assassines #dark fairytales #fairytale horror #french media #nursery rhymes

[deoffal-mp-adm7000-n-s1-2022]

My technique after the Spits (how the 57 and the 63 were made):

Before showing anymore posts which include images of my work in situ or publications etc, I want to give a quick synopsis of my processes and materials behind the final resolutions, and after having covered my paintings its only fitting that I elaborate on why I didn’t just keep making paintings on mass and instead leaned on revising and getting back into ink and the achromatic through illustration. As this post evidences in the top images and throughout my notes here, I’ve broken everything down into the most layman mode I could possibly do, for the sake of keeping this post about the practice and not the philosophies behind the imagery. This post is about how the job is done, not why the job looks a whole lot like this. 

Firstly I’ll evidence my materials and tools (bare in mind I won’t be showing pencils and rubbers I use, as I only use a simple cheap rubber and a simple and cheap box of 2 pencils, or HB depending on my mood, there’s no real character there either way, if it was super important I would include it, but those tools are just so common it’s not worth evidencing them when comparing them to the more complicate collection of ink tools I will be discussing):

Fig 1. The paper.

Fig 2. The selection of markers.

Fig 3. Whaline brush tip and edged tip markers.

Fig 4. Shuttle Art markers.

Fig 5. Whaline fine tipped liners. 

Fig 6. The Staedtler brand of designer pens. 

Fig 7. The Paint. 

Fig 8. The brushes, scrapers, straws, artificial hair brushes and natural hair brushes etc.

Firstly, I of course go through many of these Daler Rowney sketchpads, they aren’t too expensive and the rigidity of these sheets has often been a great medium for me to work with. No reason to be snobby about paper, when it works it works and I’ve made many hundreds of images on this paper and so I how it well and find it very easy to work with and to exhibit, it’s just as pliable as the lightest canvas material, yet strong enough that it can withstand water and paint incredibly well, and ink doesn’t bleed as easily into it. The selection of pens later applied on this paper run the gamut from making the finest of details in the wisp of a hair, blacking out the borders of a portrait for later painting, or simply to make hundreds of marks quickly without having to painstakingly scratch them in with the smaller tipped liners. This process of using liners and markers in contemporary art is of course a popular medium among comic illustrators and graphic novelists, in particular and found best in the works of Japanese illustrators such as Junji Ito, Suehiro Maruo and Kentaro Miura (as evidenced here, 1 is Junji Ito, from his graphic story: Planet Remina, 2005. 2 is Suehiro Maruo’s version of St Sebastian, 2021, many of his other pieces are maybe a little too graphic for tumblr so you get the picture. 3 is Kentaro, emblemised best by his series Berserk, 1988 to 2021, 41 volumes, may resume production this year after the death of Miura suspended the series in typical japanese manga tradition, in short, mangas often die with their creator, but Berserk is a gigantic franchise and won’t fade from public consciousness just yet, and with this one panel you can see why)

1.

2.

3.

These panels of course take hours upon days at a time and are often drawn with much of the same tools, the greyscale and tonal differences between the gray and the rest of the marks is made in post through various forms of editing software, this of course being a graceful advancement for illustrators such as this, given just how many panels they make in a year and how often the panels have to be approved or reworked for specific stories and to best showcase all the narrative elements without overdoing it. I of course have no love for grey scaling within my pieces, as that would conflict the value found in the extreme contrast within each piece, in turn symbolising my work as the bridge between dark subjects and the literal and figurative ability to shine a light onto them, in turn making such bright details and yet with absolutely soaked in black backgrounds, further emphasising the faces on show. In the examples shown you can see the build up of marks in both my work and that of my featured idols, alot of what I do is about taking a simple sketch and ever adding and mutating it into the image I want it to be, and that’s why ink is such an exciting media, with it’s strong and dense pigmentation in it’s black choices, you can really see just how the page becomes a work of art and how the white isn’t merely dredged over, but becomes just as important as the patterns over it.

It’s important to mention that my pencil sketches as discussed in a previous post are automatically drawn and a featured best here, are by no means the same image by the end, it’s an evolution and this is of course most fitting given the subject of this piece. I also chose this piece to document as it’s one of the earliest works in the 63 and so I wanted to document atleast one piece for Instagram and for this project, knowing full well it would look good to explain and properly show how I work beyond a starting sketch, especially before I finished the 63. This trend of showing progress is quite popular on social media and so it’s a trend I can easily get behind given just how many sketches I make per month (at one point it was 40 within 3 weeks), I have been posting my sketches every time a new batch are started to clue my audience into the realism of what I do, and the response seems to be quite positive. Speaking now of my actual processes, firstly I take the finest of liners as evidenced above, and build up the essential shapes, this means outlining all the minute and much more minor aspects is essential, everything has to have an outline first before the larger, faster and darker marks are made. Once this beginning stage is out the way I work to strike in the majority of the black into the most dense of areas, while using various modes of hatching and scratching with the fine tips and more brush like tipped pens to create the texture of the piece. Once I am satisfied that the entire piece is marked up (This being shown best in the 5th descending order picture of my piece, all central and and greater details blacked in and well textured but no overworked due to how quickly I fill and finesse an area, with a combination of the smaller brush like dual tipped liners and the bigger fine point markers that are the average ink marker, sharpie sized I guess if I had to compare it to anything) I put a thick black mark round all the outer edges, so as to blend the final layer of paint with the rest of the piece, and so no outlines are lost when I go to paint, unless areas need softening to blend better with the background. The final steps are to paint in some darker shade and to fill in the background, this is done with a wide array of brushes, the background may be painted with straight square tipped brushes so that I don’t go madly over those outlines again, yet mainly to connect the ink border and the paint smoothly. The central detail may be worked over with a much smaller, rounder brush to keep the detail blended into each other, if I wanted more rigid blackness in the piece then I would just stick to the square tips and dry them so that the brush can use the paint the same a felt marker stiffly marks ink into things etc. I only apply as much paint as I need to cover areas of importance, the black I use for my paint and ink markers, typically dry quite matte and very pigmented so I don’t need to overwork or add multiple layers of paint and ink to any of this piece just to get a good concentrated blackness all over. Once the piece is painted it is dried in sunlight on my windowsill, then pressed under some books and old sketchpad boards, this flattens the piece for scanning, you can’t scan bowing pieces because it messes with the fitting of the piece in the scanner and it ruins the symmetry of the paper when scanned, so I use any weight to take the bow and it works perfectly. The ultimate and total resolution of the work is handled first by scanning the works into my laptop through my home printer and scanner, then filing the work into a plastic wallet into it’s grouping of ten pieces (just a way to chronologically group pieces so I can find them far easier, especially when working with tens of pieces that are all the same scale), then I work over the pieces on the laptops own editing software to up the contrast and replicate the real world look of the piece, given scanning can often make a piece brighter and so I have make the piece darker and more contrast centric and the ink and paint can reflect differently at first, looking often as if they are different tones of black, so I correct that and use the digital version for my Instagram and coursework of course so it has to represent the real piece exactly. Once a piece is edited it’s uploaded to my google drive for storing the works somewhere where they won��t be lost or mishandled, the last pictures of the piece on this post show how I edit on borders through a free mobile app called Snapseed (it allows you to make adjustments to a picture that don’t exist in the original image and is akin to something like adobe illustrator and/or photoshop), as I redownload the works onto my phone and then edit them thusly, the very last picture is me editing the image to a 3:2 aspect ratio so they can be well fitted to a typical Instagram post without losing any of the image. The choice of black border is quite the motif of social media horror art, so it’s typical that you do that, especially if you have a really dark collection of work like I do, though I may make white versions too just to have some variation, I prefer the black as it pops the whites more but that’s just personal preference.

Those are my processes and typically it can take around 2 hours to fully complete one portrait, I of course had to do this dozens of times during January, February, March, April and May, the majority of time so far on this project has been about finishing and cataloguing this overwhelming collection. Each piece is also numbered in pencil and catalogued in a small notebook to properly keep track of all my current and completed collections. I run quite the tight turn around with my work and so now you can see why I’m focusing solely on the documentation aspect of this project, the practical side is just so time consuming, but I still greatly enjoy the busyness and prolific nature of my practice due to how busy it keeps and me and how often I get to work on new collections of amazing one of a kind ideas through my portraiture, it’s often been one of the reoccurring peer compliments I get, I just have quite the work ethic and always have so I’m lucky.   

[thegoodomensdumpster]

ALL THE OMENS

I keep seeing people confused / discovering one or several iterations of Good Omens, so here is a masterpost of everything Good Omens that officially exists (and that I could gather, so there might be mistakes):

WILLIAM THE ANTICHRIST (1987)

The original draft of what would later become Good Omens, written by Neil Gaiman before he teamed up with Terry Pratchett. It notably features a demon called Crawleigh who would then be split into Crowley and Aziraphale.  The draft exists in a book form included in the Ineffable Edition of the illustrated Good Omens.

LINK TO A WTA RECAP (by @fuckyeahgoodomens)

BOOK (1990)

The core material of Good Omens, written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Exists also as an audiobook read by Stephen Briggs (for the English speaking crowd of course). There is also some audio of David Tennant reading part of the book during the recording of Playing in the Dark: Neil Gaiman and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in November 2019. LINK TO DAVID TENNANT’S READING (by @merinathropp) @good-omens-covers is a blog where you can have a look at book covers from accross the world

MOVIE SCRIPT (1992)

The script for an aborted movie project. Attempts to write a movie script were made by both Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, but this is the one Gaiman ended up tackling on his own after Pratchett wisely decided to step away. The conflicted requests from the producers lead the way to a story that was related to Good Omens only in name. The movie script is only available in few numbers on specialized websites for a very high price.

THEATRE PLAY (2013)

An adaptation by Amy Hoff made with the permission of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, that was played by the Cult Classic Theatre for the Glasgow International Comedy Festival. As far as I know, no footage or script is available anywhere. I know nothing about this play besides the fact that Crowley looks wild. Amy Hoff’s website mentions that GO is currently unavailable for stage production or adaptation. LINK TO THE (BROKEN) PAGE OF THE THEATRE PLAY LINK TO A PHOTO GALLERY OF THE PLAY

RADIO DRAMA (2014)

An audio adaptation originally broadcasted on BBC4 in 6 episodes, adapted by Dirk Maggs and directed by Dirk Maggs and Heather Larmour. It is however available in an 8 episodes longer format (including bloopers) on CDs and such. The cast includes, notably, Peter Serafinowicz as Crowley, Mark Heap as Aziraphale, Josie Lawrence as Agnes Nutter, and a cameo from Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

LINK TO THE BBC4 PAGE FOR THE GOOD OMENS RADIO DRAMA LINK TO AN IMAGES GALLERY

TV SERIES (2019)

A six episodes long TV series, produced by the BBC and Amazon, that premiered on Amazon Prime in June 2019. Directed by Douglas Mackinnon. The script was written entirely by Neil Gaiman as the whole project was the achievement of years of struggle trying to get a video adaptation of GO, and as promised by Neil Gaimand to the late Terry Pratchett that this would get done. 

The cast still includes Josie Lawrence as Agnes Nutter, David Tennant as Crowley, Michael Sheen as Aziraphale, and many other talented actors and actresses that would be too long to list here but are worth watching. 

As derivative products coming out of the making of the TV series, the script book of the entire show (including cut scenes that were never shot) is available, as well as some storyboards that depict, without a doubt, the least expected looks for Crowley and Aziraphale. The TV series is available for streaming on Amazon Prime, in DVD and in BluRay. The soundtrack composed by David Arnold can be found in CDs, vinyls and mp3 sets.  Additionally, there is a TV Companion book for behind the scenes and interviews that can be purchased, and very few official goodies such as enamel pins, and, of course, the very necessary Good Omens Nail Polish. A Q and A with Neil Gaiman and David Tennant is also available on Amazon Prime, broadcasted live and recorded in May 2020. In 2017, Neil Gaiman made a reading of cutscenes in Austin, Texas, for the Long Center event.

LINK TO THE DVDs / BLURAYs MASTERPOST (by @fuckyeahgoodomens) LINK TO THE SCRIPT BOOK MASTERPOST (by @fuckyeahgoodomens ) LINK TO SOME STORYBOARDS VISUALS: PART 1 and PART 2 LINK TO NEIL GAIMAN’S READING OF CUTSCENES

THE LOCKDOWN VIDEO (2020)

As a direct result of the TV series (and a direct result of a worldwide pandemic and a several months long lockdown...), Neil Gaiman wrote a little script for a short video that is, actually, mainly audio, in which David Tennant and Michael Sheen reprised their roles as Crowley and Aziraphale.

LINK TO THE LOCKDOWN VIDEO ON YOUTUBE LINK TO THE LOCKDOWN VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

MUSICAL (still in developpement as far as I know on this date in June 2020)

An Australia based project that has been years in the making, developped by Vicki Larnach and Jim Hare. So far, what has been officially released on the internet are a few videos of a reading by the actors, a sizzle reel with footage and audio of several moments from the show, as well as promotional pictures. The musical has been played on stage in front of an audience a few times these past two years in a version that is probably rather close to what the end product will be, and hopefully, once the final version exists, it will be made available for the widest audience possible.

LINK TO THE MUSICAL WEBSITE LINK TO THE MUSICAL SIZZLE REEL LINK TO THE MUSICAL INSTAGRAM LINK TO A REVIEW OF THE MUSICAL (by @seraphofshadows) LINK TO A GALLERY OF PICS FROM THE SIZZLE (by @crunchy-goblin)

OTHERS THINGS THAT ARE (AND THINGS THAT AREN’T)

668—The Neighbour of the Beast AKA the sequel that doesn’t exist. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett talked about writing a sequel to Good Omens, came up with a few things (the most infamous being Aziraphale watching a porno in a hotel room, but only catching glimpses of it and trying to figure out the plot by writting it down in a notebook), but it was never written. LINK TO AN INTERVIEW GIVEN TO THE LOCUS IN 1991 MENTIONING THIS SEQUEL LINK TO A POST ON GAIMAN’S BLOG MENTIONING THE PORNOGRAPHY BIT LINK TO A RECAP OF THE SEQUEL + COTTAGE THING The movie directed by Terry Gilliam Before GO became a TV series, it got stuck for years as a movie project meant to be directed by Terry Gilliam. For various reasons it never happened, and the rumors about Robin Williams being cast as Aziraphale and Johnny Depp as Crowley seem to have started from there. The cottage “canon” The widespread concept of Crowley and Aziraphale sharing a cottage originated from a blog post made by Neil Gaiman, reporting a conversation between him and Terry Pratchett regarding the whereabouts of their characters. Gaiman has since offered the precision that this cottage sharing thing would happen way after the events of the sequel that was never written, so years after Armageddon, and that the location would be Devil’s Dyke in the South Downs. LINK TO THE ORIGINAL POST ON GAIMAN’S BLOG LINK TO A COMPREHENSIVE EXPLANATION (by @irisbleufic) LINK TO A TUMBLR ASK FOR GAIMAN ABOUT THE SOUTH DOWNS LINK TO A SCREENSHOT OF A TWEET BY GAIMAN The New Year Resolutions List (made for Harper Collins, now taken down from their website) A list of resolutions written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett on request of the publisher in 2005, one list for Crowley, one list for Aziraphale. LINK TO THE LIST ( by @ladylier )

LINK TO AN INTERVIEW WHERE NEIL GAIMAN TALKS ABOUT A FEW OF THE THINGS MENTIONNED IN THIS POST And as an ultimate bonus, as I was gathering all the informations for this masterpost, I found back Michael Sheen’s Spotify Good Omens Playlist. EDIT (02/08/2020): Someone mentionned (in a post I can’t find anymore ?) that on the list of existing merch that was absolutely unexpected, there was a whole collection of Good Omens perfume oils. It was made around 2007 with the approval of Pratchett and Gaiman and was apparently updated when the series came out in 2019. The profits of the oils go to different charities.

I was also reminded of the Chattering Order of Saint Beryl, a group of singers promoting the TV series before its release in 2019.  Their Youtube Channel has a playlist that was last updated in June 2020. There is one video clip of the song Brand New Baby Smell that features a cameo by Neil Gaiman. And I found back @fuckyeahgoodomens‘s masterpost about the merch, even though I mentionned most of these in this masterpost, I’ll include the link for convenience sake.

#good omens #masterpost #all the omens #book omens #scrip omens #shitscript #william the antichrist #tv omens #radio omens #musical omens #merch #fandom #neil gaiman #terry pratchett #long post

[paper-n-ashes]

The Late Shift - Part 2

Characters: Paul Sevier x Female Reader

Words: 2k

Warnings/Tags: Little inklings of sexual themes. Otherwise we’re still in PG territory. Oh and mutual pining from two idiots. My favourite kind.

Authors Note: One shot? I don’t know her. Honestly, I don’t have any excuse. I just felt the urge to continue on with this dumb fluffy story because it makes me feel a little warm and fuzzy inside and I needed that. Will we drive this car straight into smut town afterwards? Ah you’ll just have to see. 

Catch up with Part 1 here

*

Paul always considered himself a smart guy. Perceptive, knowledgeable, with years of grueling education behind him to be where he is today.

His schooling, work, almost every minute of his waking moments was spent in the realm of artificial illustrations of correspondence. He could happily spend hours sifting through the words and numbers that made up all types of message transmission, might even admit he had a talent for decoding their significance and origin. Exchanges born from machinery were easy to analyse – they had set rules and gave little room for differing interpretation. He was comfortable in that world. Knew how things worked, what paths data and carefully devised information would take.

Human communication was infinitely harder to navigate. It was a skill he knew he was lacking in, compared to others at least. His words never came out the way he wanted, he struggled to say exactly what was wished to convey and agonised over the fact expression and tone could morph any remark into something with a whole different meaning.

Every day, he encountered people who used this as a tool - a weapon to obscure the truth and conceal hidden agendas. It was hard not to, working for the US government. In time, he’d become cynical. Wary of what people spoke aloud, assuming it was all said without much sincerity or reliability unless proven otherwise.

And then after another arduous day, there you were. Out of nowhere. Kind. Honest. Genuine. Within such an excruciatingly short interaction, you’d exuded all these traits so effortlessly. A breath of fresh air after being smothered by the smog the rest of his life contained.

Paul would easily admit his attraction to you was surprisingly swift. The rapturing smile you wore when you’d looked up from your notepad had him snared from the moment it appeared, an aura of natural vibrance and radiant energy shimmering out from your animated expression. What he’d expected to be a dry, tedious endeavour turned into a spark-filled scene, where an excited stranger made him feel both horrendously nervous and unusually at-ease. It had been a long time since someone made him feel like that.

It had also been a long time since he’d asked someone out on a date, for more than a few reasons. The more prolific Paul became in his job, the more unpredictable and unstable his life outside of it was. It took him across the country at a moments’ notice and consumed most hours of his day, meaning forging even short relationships was fairly difficult.

Plus… he just wasn’t good at it. Putting himself out there. He was shy, paralyzingly so. It’s not exactly something he could refute. His confidence was always born from experience and understanding, in knowing the reasons behind why things worked the way they did, along with being able to calculate what would happen next. No textbook could ever cover the entire spectrum of human personality, and there was no way to truly predict what a person might do or say. 

So, without the security of knowledge behind him, uneasiness and apprehension took over in most of his social interactions, particularly with those he felt a magnetism to. It’s exactly how he thought he seemed during his time with you. Awkward and floundering. Not exactly the most charming attributes for a man to have. And yet, the longer he was in your presence, the more he sensed those foibles fade into the back of his mind.

Talking to you was easy. Easier than it had been with anyone during a first meeting. What hadn’t been easy was enduring the seconds your touch grazed over him in your delicate workings while taking each different measurement - his heart beating a little faster, his muscles becoming a little more tense. When you’d eventually let your stare reach his, he’d seen how your eyes moved to trace the lines of his mouth, and it set his insides on fire. He’d been frozen by the unique type of burn, his body locked in place while a rare impulse begged him to sink his lips onto yours. In the past, he struggled to kiss a woman even after several dates, unable to push past the fear and doubt to turn his desire into action. However, in that moment, he’d been all too eager. His hand had moved on its own accord, fingers slinking up your waist, about to pull you closer when interruption instantly shattered his resolve.

The urge was still there in the dialogue that followed, although the promise of seeing you tomorrow made it easier to walk away, safe in the knowledge he had another opportunity to ask you out when his confidence was properly steeled. For once, he could be smart about this. Use his natural intellect to plan and act accordingly, giving him the best odds of securing more time with you.

Oh, but that all went to shit when your text message popped up on his phone screen. Seeing those words, even if they were meant for someone else, made his excitement reach an unfathomable peak, and in turn made him recklessly send a response without taking a second to think about the consequences.

And now, Paul had never felt so stupid in his entire life.

Sitting in the driver’s seat, the phone in his palm lit up with your conversation on display, he felt his stomach spasm with anxiety. Were you going to reply? What would you say? What if his bluntness freaked you out? What if you weren’t even talking about him? Was this all something his mind conjured up?

As the minutes passed without any sign of a response, the initially minor sense of panic began to compound, weighing heavy on his chest, the chaos of his mind soon melting into one certainty - he’d totally fucked this up.

About to slump his forehead into the steering wheel in a display of despondency, Paul suddenly felt a flash of courage at remembering the view of your face peering up at him. He knew the image of it would haunt him if he didn’t do something. He had to fix this. Explain himself. But it needed to be in person. He wouldn’t let technology mess this up for him again.

With a purposeful breath, Paul exited his car and began to retrace his steps past the other shopfronts, silently rehearsing what he wanted to say to you. He hoped to surrender himself to a collectively embarrassing situation, laugh off the turn of events, having it all culminate in an offer of dinner once your shift had finished. He already had a place in mind, only a street away, a little dumpling house that was always open late. Perfect for a cosy, quiet date after a chance meeting.

When his eyes latched onto your figure through the glass window, he stopped his hand from reaching for the door handle. You were crouching down in front of a small boy, his mother behind him cradling a newborn baby, your hand gesturing towards an array of child size suits. Paul couldn’t help but watch as your warming smile beamed, guiding the boys hands to touch and feel over the material, your words evidently making him feel more at ease as his expression slowly relaxed out of its worried frown.

Creeping backwards to make sure you didn’t catch him in your periphery, Paul felt a wave of relief wash over his skin, having evidence that your lack of reply wasn’t due to any of the worst case scenarios he’d been fretting over. You were just busy, concentrated on your work, giving your time and expertise to others in the same way you’d given to him.

The realisation was enough for him slink away, still impatient for your next encounter but assured in it being set within the next day cycle. He just had to wait.

Although, waiting wasn’t exactly a talent of his either.

 *

You were dying inside.

A friendly grin was plastered on your face as you conversed sweetly with the woman in front of you, making idle chit-chat while her son changed out of the suit you’d picked together, but the smile had never felt so insincere. Usually you loved when children came in to pick out ensembles for weddings and similarly formal events, but at the moment your mind was stuck on a small battery-powered rectangle sitting at your desk with a half-written message remaining under your lock-screen.

In the time before Paul’s response came through, you’d never felt more humiliated in your whole existence. Evaporating into thin air would have been a welcomed miracle. But when the returning text slid into focus, your whole mindset shifted.

He felt the same. He wanted you too.

You’d been in the middle of typing out a hasty invitation to come back and make true on his intentions when this overwhelmed mother with a fussy baby caught your attention. Her eldest son had done his best to iron out his only formal suit for the role of ring bearer in an aunt’s wedding this coming weekend, unfortunately resulting an a house full of smoke and a clump of burnt wool.

Personal matters withered into the background at the comprehension of her drained, exhausted demeanour, all your focus pointed back towards the job you’d been distracted from. Well, mostly.

You couldn’t avoid the thoughts and questions glinting in the back of your mind. Of what might have happened if this woman never appeared. What might be happening in an alternate timeline where you’d been able to send that waiting reply. Without intention, your wonderings turned into moving pictures – leading Paul into the back workshop, being roughly picked up onto the cutting table, his lips and yours finally connected in a heated clash, shedding all of his clothing until that heinous mustard shirt was crumpled on the floor-

The high pitched beep of the receipt machine snapped you back into reality, noting the relieved smile the mother wore while her son excitedly grabbed at the bags containing his dashing new suit.

“Thank you!” he hollered without needing to be prompted, waving his hand vigorously before skittering away to the door.

“You’re an absolute lifesaver,” the woman echoed, taking the receipt from your outstretched hand. “I’m really sorry for keeping you so late.”

“Oh don’t worry about it.” The time on the monitor screen just ticked over to 8:17pm, long after you would usually shut up shop and head home to your empty apartment. “I've got nowhere special to be.”

You each said your goodbyes, waiting until the precise moment her silhouette was out of sight before jumping to your phone. The same half written message was there, but now it felt impossible to finish. All traces of adrenaline had long since worn off, and the bravery that made you type out the risqué proposition was reduced to almost nothing. Your timid nature rushed back in full force, a thumb pressing hard on the little x button to erase all evidence of your out of character impulses.

Who were you kidding. You weren’t this person. Unashamed and brazen enough to dive into a fiery entanglement with a handsome stranger in the same evening you’d met. You wished you could be. There was never a time the concept was so enticing. But… it was a fantasy not meant for you to live out. They were destined for the outgoing, the cool and composed, the bold and sure-footed. You rarely felt like any of those things. And Paul, like most men, probably reserved their interest and attraction for those types of women. It was so silly of you to think any different. Getting your hopes up was foolish, and would only end in-

The tingle of the shopkeepers bell sounded, internally groaning as you slid your phone back onto the desk. “We’re closed,” you hawked, a coldness in your tone you couldn’t hide. Eyes snapping up to the intruder, a bolt of lightening shot through, barely able to stop the delight mixing into your blood.

“I just, uh, figured out something more that I needed,” Paul said softly, scratching the back of his neck, clearly nervous.

“You did?” you breathed. “W-what was it?”

His chest rose and fell with a calming exhale, making sure your stares were secured before giving his answer. “…You.”

*

Tagging some lovelies who might want to read. Feel free to let me know if you don’t want to tagged in future works!

@tlcwrites @roanniom @princessxkenobi @hopeamarsu @blowthatpieceofjunk @mariesackler @leatherboundriot @foxilayde @modernpaw @cornmousequeen @direnightshade @mylifeisactuallyamess @caillea @jynz-andtonic @paterson-blue @miraclesabound @prismaticpizza​ @millenialcatlady​ 

#paul sevier #paul sevier x reader #paul sevier x female reader #adcu #adcu fanfiction

[whattheheehaw]

Hi! I’m sorry you’re getting shitty anons about this and you’re probably sick of it so I apologise for asking this but I’m genuinely curious what made you start actively disliking zutara? Like, considering how much excellent and insightful content/meta you yourself used to make/write? I get that interests change over time and you’re totally valid!! the anons sending you hate over it are really dumb, but if you’d be ok with sharing, I’d be really interested in hearing why you’ve done almost a complete 180 on the ship? Was is just burnout/end of a hyper-obsession? Or was it some of us in the rest of the fandom that turned you off? Or was it even something about the ship/characters themselves that you changed your mind about? xx

In short, it was a combination of burnout, dissatisfaction with fandom, and disappointment in myself that caused my disinterest for Zvtara.

I got asks similar to this one a couple of times before, but I never gave a comprehensive answer, mainly because I didn't know how to articulate my reasons why I don't like it anymore. But now that I've been out of ZK fandom for a month and have had some time to reflect, I think I can give a much more thorough response. Beware, this is long and I heavily critique the Zvtara fandom, so if you're a ZK shipper, keep reading at your own risk.

My first minor annoyance with Zvtara is that the fandom has a tendency to idolize certain fics and creators. And while there’s certainly nothing inherently wrong about that, I feel like the Zvtara fandom does it to such an extent that it influences the type of content that content creators make in order to get recognition. And to illustrate my point, I’m going to talk about one of the most famous Zvtara fics of all time: Once Around The Sun by eleventy7.

Don’t get me wrong, I love OATS. I think it’s a great fanfic and I think the author devoted a lot of time and effort to make it such an excellent fic. The plot, the development of the characters and their relationships to one other, and the messages about family and love were all brilliantly written. I mean, there is a reason why it’s regarded as the “Zvtara Bible”. This one fanfic had such a profound impact upon the ZK fandom, and I think the biggest impact that came from it is the dramatic influx of post-war Zvtara AU fanfiction. 

Because so many people kept reading OATS and recommending it to others, I think there was an overall interest in ZK fics that take place in a post-war setting. And I think that all of the high praise towards OATS made more fic writers start to write post-war fanfics because of this demand for post-war AU.* I normally wouldn't complain about it because more content is more content, but in my opinion, 99% of ZK post-war fics are the same fic but in different fonts.

Like, there's at least 3 of these elements in every ZK post-war fanfic:

Ambassador Katara

An assassination attempt (usually on Zuko's life)

A healing scene between Zuko and Katara (usually Katara heals Zuko)

Aang and/or Mai is pushed to the side or vilified to some extent in order to make ZK happen

A private journey between Zuko and Katara to facilitate #6

S L O W B U R N (that's not really slowburn and more like "I love you and I very much want to be vocal about my feelings but #7 is in this fic" but the love story takes up like 30 chapters so I guess it's a slowburn?)

Zuko's advisers don't want him to get married to Katara because ✨racism✨

Ursa is found

Azula is in the fic because a) she's going to get a healing arc ft. Zuko and Katara and thereby helps them get together or b) she's the villain and thereby helps them get together

ZK wedding happens in the FN

After reading multiple post-war fics back to back, I could tell that the format was pretty much the same across the board, which isn't very interesting for me to read. My only other fic options in the Zvtara tag on AO3 are canon divergence fics which almost always take place during The Crossroads of Destiny or after The Southern Raiders. And to some extent, those stories are pretty much the same too. There's nothing really new or creative going on in the ZK fandom fic-wise, and because of that, my interest in ZK fandom started to dwindle.

My second issue with Zvtara is that it's a very old ship from a very old show. Because there's been 10+ years since the end of A:TLA, every nuanced point about shipping and the show itself have been talked to death.** There's just nothing new to say. It's the same arguments being rehashed over and over again in the tag because there's no other interpretation one can come up with.

For example, there's so many people who talk about why Zvtara as depicted in The Southern Raiders is not toxic and that's great and all, but I (and most likely many others) have read those same points about five times already. And for some reason, each time this happens, people act like someone just discovered the lost city of Atlantis when they bring up their new-but-not-new argument in defense of Zvtara. Honestly, I'm ashamed to say that I'm not exempt from being part of the group of people that reiterate old arguments. I've done it with one of my posts about The Southern Raiders and I've done it again with my Zutara/Omashu parallels post.

There's no new content to really dissect and analyze (especially considering Zuko and Katara are rarely in the same panel in any of the post-war comics), and because of this, people are just restating points that someone else made several years ago.*** And even if someone did have a different interpretation of an episode, their ideas would most likely be shut down because for the past several years, the same interpretation has been recycled through the fandom repeatedly and people are resistant to new perspectives.

This brings me to the third thing that I dislike about Zvtara: the insistence that there can only be one way to interpret The Southern Raiders. For the longest time, I've read take after take that said if Katara decided to kill Yon Rha, it would be ok because that's her grief to deal with and if she thinks that's the best way to mete out justice, then good for her. And again, I'm ashamed to say that I perpetuated that idea in a few of my own posts. I have always thought that "Katara killing Yon Rha is ok" is just a bad take in general, but I didn't want to vocalize that opinion when so many people—so many of the nice mutuals that I made—all shared that same opinion. Taking down a popular opinion of your own ship is completely different from taking down a popular opinion of a ship that you dislike. The Zvtara fandom is the first fandom that I was actually active in and I wanted to fit in so badly with everyone else that I just parroted whatever other people said, even if I didn't agree with those sentiments.

This leads me to my final reason why I don't want to be a part of ZK fandom anymore. I think I established myself as a "meta" person pretty early on and because of that, I constantly felt pressured to come up with new takes on the ship. And when people started flooding my ask box with stuff like "Can you write a meta about your thoughts on the idea that 'Zuko only took Katara on that field trip in TSR because he wanted her to forgive him'?" and "What are your thoughts about antis saying Zuko and Katara are toxic because of TSR?", I realized that I don't need to come up with new takes. People just want me to paraphrase something that 10 other people said about the same exact topic, because if I said what I actually thought about the subject (i.e. there is some truth in what antis say about TSR and it's not as much of a "Zvtara episode" that most people make it out to be), I'd probably get ZK shippers in the replies telling me that I'm wrong because x, y, and z or "you shouldn't tag this as Zvtara".

And that was pretty much how my love for ZK turned into disinterest. I was and still am disappointed that I didn't stick to my personal opinions. For as much as I talk about herd mentality on Twitter, I certainly don't practice what I preach. In all honesty, the only reason why I held on so long to ZK fandom was because I had so many nice mutuals there and we all shared this collective distaste for antis. I think I started to become more anti-Zvkka and anti-Kataang than pro-Zvtara, which isn't what I wanted to do when I made this Tumblr blog.

The thing that made me joke about becoming anti-Zvtara was the fact that some ZK shippers just like to send shitty anons to people whom they've reblogged countless different metas from. Sending shitty anons to people in the first place is wrong, but sending them to people who tagged their posts correctly and did nothing wrong is just disgusting.

*I'm not a fic writer and can't speak for fic writers, but it definitely feels like a lot of ZK fic authors are pushing themselves to write the next OATS, and by doing so, they are proliferating the tag with post-war fics that have very similar aspects to OATS.

**I think that as more people point out the same nuanced points about Zvtara, it diminishes the actual significance of those points. Like, it's hard to explain but the more people talk about the subtleties of the ship, the more those parts become glaringly obvious and I become numb to their actual impact on the characters and the show.

***At this point, if someone wanted to make a new argument about Zvtara, I think they would have to look very closely at every little detail in every single one of their scenes together to find a crumb of new meta material. And speaking from experience, it's not very fun trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. Whenever I post a "meta" like that, I feel like I'm reaching to make a point that doesn't exist.

#anti zutara #anonymous #ask and ye shall receive

[morgan--reads]

I Hold a Wolf By the Ears - Laura van den Berg

Summary: A collection of short stories that hover on the edge of the surreal. 

Quote: “I read up on double exposure and grief. I read up on spirit photography. I tried to understand why my husband would not, or could not, see the boy in the tree even after I had made his presence known. Had his not-seeing been a charade or some kind of test? From the library I checked out Chronicles of the Photographs of Spiritual Brings and Phenomena Invisible to the Material Eye. Yet nothing provided an explanation as satisfying as the one I knew to be true the moment I saw the photograph—my husband had done something to that boy in the tree.”

My rating: 3.5/5.0  Goodreads: 3.96/5.0

Review: I enjoyed van den Berg’s eerie novel The Third Hotel, and some of the stories in this collection are just as unsettling. All the stories have interesting and tense undercurrents, but only some of the stories make the unease worth sitting in. At their best, they are destabilizing, creating an uncertain reality where anything might happen. At their worst, their strangeness is hollow and queasy. I really enjoyed “The Pitch”, where a children’s book illustrator confronts her husband about a brother he never told her about, and “Karolina”, where a woman runs into her brother’s ex-wife who has been living on the streets.

#I hold a wolf by the ears #Laura van den Berg #book review #short stories #surreal

[techbranding]

Does My Startup Need A Tech Branding Agency?

We recommend having bi-weekly check-ins to discuss the process, open questions, etc. However, we prefer to present results and updates asynchronously − it saves a lot of time for both sides. SketchesAt this stage, we explore concepts and general directions on how the logo could look. We follow Visual positioning and Brand expression findings and recommendations. This stage helps to examine a lot of concepts and shapes fast. These Terms of Participation permit you to join the Discussion only https://craftandroot.com/industries/tech-startups/.

We are aware of this issue and our team is working hard to resolve the matter. Take your marketing to the next level with our insightful posts. Be sure to subscribe to stay current with the leading trends and strategies. Join over 1,000 marketing pros who receive monthly B2B marketing tips and insights. Write your growth story and leave a lasting marketing legacy.

Tonal launches 300% ahead of target by bringing the digital into the physical. Launching the most important insurance brand since the birth of the internet. A $4.5B HR Tech startup and the biggest brand comeback of 2017. Everything you need to know about rebranding your business - and avoiding costly mistakes. Everything you need to know about rebranding your business-and avoiding costly mistakes.

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The tone adapts to communicate with them while upholding the overall voice’s focus. (Namer is pretty close — after all, a name is a very, very short poem that captures a brand’s eidos.) When not creating kickass names, she may be found kayaking with her son or making music with her husband.

We are not condoning or admiring this approach but it’s almost certainly part of a bigger strategy. Intel uses video to spark emotion and create a connection with their audience. Health care workers, ventilator makers, teachers, drivers and key workers. It’s a play on their key messaging “what’s inside” but it’s on trend and very smart.

Watch our event replay from Tuesday, January 19, where we continue to discuss and answer questions on the new coronavirus relief bill and how it pertains to small businesses. CO— aims to bring you inspiration from leading respected experts. However, before making any business decision, you should consult a professional who can advise you based on your individual situation.

Gift card fraud can be a gateway to stolen payment credentials, drained bank accounts and even stolen identity. Certain projects, images, and products are trademarks of and/or copyrighted by their respective owners. Develop a Personality.Your business has a personality – a tone that it uses to communicate to the audience. Many businesses don’t sufficiently develop a personality, or don’t keep it consistent. Yes, send me the BizBuySell SellerNewsletter, which contains advice on selling a business and email only promotions. We are sorry, we were not able to submit your issue for this listing at this time. The information in this listing has been provided by the business seller or representative stated above.

Brand Name Creation

Taco Del Mar gets a brand refresh and a fresh new point of view. Their expertice created additional revenue we would have received from traditional advertising alone. Two entrepreneurs came to us with a new app that puts power back in the hands of patients. The brand we developed helps consumers get on the right path when navigating their healthcare. We are data-backed creatives who get the most out of every click. All TOP agencies combine deep subject expertise with world-class execution. Applying consistency in your brand’s voice and tone helps build your reputation, trust, and ultimately stronger brand recognition.

Our referral partners enjoy a sweet finder’s fee and peace of mind knowing their client is in good hands. Cambridge Technology partnered with Mower to modernize their brand and update all platforms the brand touches. The GIF of the XPS 12showed the face of the tablet flipping to morph into the laptop. The screen was filled with Windows software to illustrate that the convertible was a Windows 8 product as well as a touch screen. Dell uses videos, gifs and live behind the scenes to grab attention and explain and introduce their products. And the cool kid theme continues on Twitter where Apple actually don’t follow anyone or tweet anything and yet has 4.3 million followers.

If your startup can bend light, slow time, or stretch infinitely, we should talk. Established in 1996, the website is an international marketplace of businesses for sale.

A play on okey-dokey, Mochidoki makes use of the product descriptor in a fun and playful way, all while recalling the product’s Asian roots and sounding bite-sized and delicious. Designed for business owners, CO— is a site that connects like minds and delivers actionable insights for next-level growth.

Cast a wide tech branding agency net at first and bring the top three back to go through the process with you. Be incredibly clear about the goals and objectives of the project. Tap your network, do your research, check the rankings to see what firms measure up. Omni-channel marketing campaign showcasing the “connecting” benefits of being able to access Tower Health’s growing health system. Thank you for Trajectory’s splendid healthcare rebranding work. You’ve done an outstanding job blending respect for the past with gentle nudging of inherently sensible and winning ideas. Our health system brand is an emotional lightning rod for many, and you navigate it extraordinarily well.

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Thanks for sending that over, one of our team will be in touch real soon. Go from over 15,844 agencies to a shortlist with Agency Spotter. Firebrand has given my team the bandwidth to focus on what's really important. Webgamma produced effective deliverables that contributed to significant growth of our brand.

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With a BA in English Literature from Dartmouth College and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts’ English MFA for Poets & Writers, Stevie is also no stranger to the power of words. As head of Catchword’s East Coast operations, he’s typically the project lead on all right coast accounts, and recently managed projects for Volkswagen, McDonald’s, Kellogg, and First Alert. He graduated from Brandeis University with a BA in History, and earned his JD from the State University of New York at Buffalo. is a collection of ultra-premium brandable dot-com domains—merging the best in messaging, memorability, length, and flow. Our linguistic and cultural evaluation is backed by an international network of native speakers in more than 100 languages. And, when Catchword first sampled Gordon Dessert’s new line of mochi , we knew we were naming a truly category re-defining confectionary.

Let us guide you on how to use the appropriate tools to reach your marketing goals. Abundant growth opportunities; little to no marketing up to this point. We apologize, but the feature you are trying to access is currently unavailable.

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BizBuySell has no stake in the sale of this business, has not independently verified any of the information about the business, and assumes no responsibility for its accuracy or completeness. We partnered with Oculus to pioneer VR’s mobile and social future.

Their posts aren’t strictly oriented to the product but are tied to events and occasions that people everywhere find significant and interesting. You have an innovative, ground breaking idea – now it’s time to share it with the world. A full-spectrum agency leading the legal profession into a future of equal justice. Class action firms benefit from the speed with which we can launch your initial marketing campaign. We have been working together for several years now, helped them revamp their brand, built a new website and campaign sites, and most recently a transit campaign that can be seen all over the Bay Area.

We provide a cost-effective route to market for business owners and their representatives and a one stop shop for aspiring entrepreneurs and business buyers. You will receive newsletters, updates and offers about business and franchise opportunities. We will also send you information about related business and franchise events. BusinessesForSale.com is committed to protecting your privacy. Ticking this box means you are consenting to us sending you marketing emails. You can change your mind at any time by clicking unsubscribe in the footer of our emails. Just because you don’t have time to deal, doesn’t mean you have to completely give the work away.

They keep their brand voice highly practical and focused on solving prospects’ pain points. They use demo videos to educate and inspire confidence in their products. This is an example that companies do not need to invest their energy into all available channels, but rather pick one or two to focus on. Partner testimonials, PRs on closed deals, fundraisers and case studies by the likes of Yahoo Finance and Harvard Business Review communicate the reputation and importance of this brand. Communicating diverse topics across different channels whilst maintaining voice consistency and brand integrity. The Facebook page features a cover video with main takeaways of what the company stands for and a striking summary of their offers. They connect their user base with immersive food and beverage tours, skip-the-line tickets for attractions, craft classes, niche offerings and other immersive experiences.

[verdantspringcourtyard]

Bonded with You Event

Another 2-week long event. It coincides with the releases of the new SSR Enmusubi. The event is similar to the Castle of the Sun and Protecting YinYang / Onmyoji Guardian events.

Matchmaking Experience

Use 3 items to send Enmusubi out on a 4-hour dispatch quest. The items are obtained from the 2nd tab in the exchange shop, they all cost 10 event currency and 999 of each can be bought. When she returns you get event currency, event AP, Prosperity Charms, and a random reward.

Wind Chime Wall

When a certain combination of items is used to send Enmusubi out, a special story will get unlocked and appear on this wall as a wind chime. There are a total of 8 to unlock, collecting all of them grants you a reward.

The rewards for unlocking wind chimes is event currency, event AP and. The rewards for unlocking all 8 is an Enmusubi loading screen illustration.

To unlock the special stories you must the following item combinations:

Mochi, Pinwheel, Pink Charm

Sake, Umbrella, Gold Charm

Sushi, Letters, Blue Charm

Tempura, Scroll Painting, Purple Charm

Konpeito, Teru Teru Bouzu, Brown Charm

Pickled Kelp, Brush, Green Charm

Onigiri, Pendant Tassel, Red Charm

Kidoumaru's Chain

Magatama

Feather Tassel

Book Paper

Sun Key

Using the last 4 items will trigger some short easter egg stories. It doesn't matter what other items you use with them, same goes for Kidoumaru's Chain.

Matchmaking Realm

Progress through multiple stages by clearing tiles. Before starting this you must choose the stage difficulty (easy or hard mode) and the type of rewards you would prefer to get (gold, EXP, evo materials, mitama/souls). Rewards and difficulty gradually increase as you progress through more and more stages. And as the difficulty increases the stages will slowly become larger and more obscured by fog.

The recommended reward type to choose for each stage is gold or mitama/souls. If you choose to play on easy mode, the amount of 6* mitama/soul drops is slightly higher than on hard mode.

Unlike previous events, the stages can be done on auto using mochi. On auto, only 3 mochi is consumed per tile cleared, correct quiz answers will always be picked for you, and when continuing to the next stage the same reward type and difficulty will also be selected. The downside to this is that you’ll only go towards the exit, even if you’re right next to a boss/reward/quiz tile. So if you want to clear all the bosses or get all the reward boxes, you’ll need to manually navigate your way to them.

Types of tiles include;

Boss Battles: Costs 1 event AP and 3 AP to do solo or co-op. "Concentric Knots" and "Sign Boards" are potential drop rewards.

Bosses with 2 minions or have no minions are tankier and harder to one-shot.

Paper Cranes: At the end of a battle there is chance for a paper crane to appear. It gives a boost to your rewards for the next 3 boss tiles you clear.

Reward Boxes: Contains random rewards such as Prosperity Charms, event currency, gold, evo materials, orochi scales, etc.

Bells: Clear all the tiles on an entire path and grants you rewards from them.

Quizzes: The quizzes are the exact same as the ones for Demon Encounter. On auto, only the correct answers will be chosen for you.

Sign Boards: Read messages from other players.

The purpose of this is to help other player’s navigate their way through the fog by keaving messages like “go left”.

Portal: Let's you continue to the next stage.

Sometimes they may block the path to more bosses or reward tiles, but if click "cancel" button once or twice you can continue exploring the stage.

You can assist others with Boss Battles by doing it co-op. Can be done up to 50 times per day, but you only get rewards for the first 5 battles.

Recommended Teams

3 AOE attackers + Oitsuki or Zashiki + Yama Usagi or Peach & Karashi or snow spirit Kiyohime

3 AOE attackers + Kaoru + maneki/fortune cat Kujira

2 AOE attackers + snow spirit Kiyohime + Oitsuki or Zashiki + Yama Usagi or Peach & Karashi

2 AOE attackers + Enmusubi or Ushi + SP Shuten + Oitsuki

Some good choices for attackers: Ootengu, Ryomen, Takiyasha, Inuyasha, Kisei, Ubume, SP Ootengu, SP Tamamo, SP Iba, Orochi, etc.

For stages 60+, crit DMG sets are needed to one-shot Boss Battle tiles.

Love Advice 

The server must "work together" to give Kappa love advice. This is done by voting for one of 3 options, pick whichever option you think is best. Use "Concentric Knots" to vote and get Prosperity Charms, event currency and random rewards for voting.

The reward for successfully giving good love advice is Kappa finally confessing his feelings to Koi and a cute new loading screen illustration of Kappa and Koi.

"Concentric Knots" can be obtained by clearing your dailies, as drops/rewards in Matchmaking Realm and in the exchange shop, 99 can be bought for 1888 event currency each or 999 for 20 jade each.

Even after the voting ends, you can still use the knots to claim “voting” rewards by clicking on Kappa.

Rewards

The exchange shop has 2 tabs: one with typical event rewards, one with items for Matchmaking Experience. Both has items that are unlocked when the shop reaches ranks 1-2-3. To increase the ranks you need 100 Prosperity Charms for rank 1, 300 for rank 2 and 500 for rank 3. The only thing that can be bought at rank 0 is event AP and 9 types of items for Matchmaking Experience.

The most notable in the exchange shop are: event icon frame, 4 loading screen illustrations, new Enmusubi skin, random SSR/SP, skin tickets, 6 blue summon tickets, orochi scales, demon souls, 3-4-5* white daruma, black daruma, lots of gold and AP, "Matchmaking Shrine Packs", etc. There's 8 lots of 150 event AP that be bought with jade, 4 that cost 5 jade per 1 event AP and another 4 that cost 10 jade per 1 event AP.

The event icon frame and 1 loading screen pic is unlocked at rank 1. Enmusubi's skin, another loading screen pic and the black daruma are unlocked at rank 2. The random SSR/SP, "Concentric Knots", "Matchmaking Shrine Packs" and 2 loading pics are unlocked at rank 3.

Note: If you don't get the Enmusubi skin during this event, it will be become avaible again some time during 2021.

#Onmyouji #Onmyoji #events #tl;dr this is a very chill event #to buy all the event ap you need 9000 jade #to buy all the knots for voting you need 20000 jade

[siandvisualdiary]

friday 16/10/2020

 the history of publishing with David

task 1

i chose this book for the pre 2000 

Info from the V&A Search the Collections website 

Book - The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Newly Imprinted ...

Book - The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Newly Imprinted ... Object: Book

Place of origin: Hammersmith (published) Date: 1896 (published)

Artist/Maker: Morris, William, born 1834 - died 1896 (printer) Riley, Dominic (binder) Burne-Jones, Edward Coley (Sir), born 1833 - died 1898 (illustrator) Kelmscott Press (published)

Materials and Techniques: 'The boards of the book were made of laminates of millboard, card and hand made paper, stuck together with rabbit skin glue. [. The book was covered in black Harmatan goatskin, with the same leather for the joints and doublure, black suede for the first flyleaf, and red and black Fab cut-away areas were painted with red acrylic paint. The gold tooling and board edges was done by Trevor Lloyd, and I tooled both the title panels and the lines on the front and back cover. The binding is sig The book is housed in a double-walled, reinforced clamshell box lined with double red-and-white suede pads, and with a title label on the spine.' Dominic R

Credit Line: Given/Loaned by the American Friends of the V&A through the generosity of: Paul Chrzanowski. Museum number: LOAN:AMERICANFRIENDS.716-2016 Gallery location: National Art Library

Public access description

The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer published by the Kelmscott Press was the last great work of William Morris, and the icon of the private press movement, the printing revival he inspired. The volume contains 87 wood-cut illustrations by Edward Burne-Jones, who was a close friend of Morris. The Gothic-inspired type was specially designed by William Morris and named 'Chaucer' after this book. The book brought together Morris's passion for the medieval period and his commitment to beautiful hand-crafted productions and was published shortly before he died. 425 copies were printed, sold at £20 each.

This Kelmscott Chaucer had an undistinguished binding when acquired by the present owner, so that he felt justified in altering its condition. He selected Dominic Riley, a distinguished British designer bookbinder for the commission. Riley studied at the London College of Printing. He has won several major bookbinding awards, and was elected a Fellow of the Designer Bookbinders in 2008. He now works and teaches in Britain and the US.

The binder conceived the work as an overt homage to Morris, basing the design upon the mirror forms of his initials: ‘W M’. Several techniques were used (including modern digital methods to produce the stamps). The final work is grand and dignified, its geometric exactness relieved with touches of naturalistic ornamentation based on the book’s border decoration, and its use of the colour red echoes the red used for the rubrics in the text (based on medieval and Renaissance practice of highlighting headings in red ink).

Descriptive line

The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Newly Imprinted ... (Hammersmith: Kelmscott Press, 1896), newly bound by British designer bookbinder Dominic Riley.

Physical description

Hand-printed book on paper with goatskin binding.

Dimensions

Height: 44 cm

Museum number

LOAN:AMERICANFRIENDS.716-2016

Object history note

Given/Loaned by the American Friends of the V&A through the generosity of: Paul Chrzanowski, 2016.

URL

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1407076/the-works-of-geoffrey-chaucer-book-morris-william/

2. info from https://collections.artsmia.org/art/80115/the-works-of-geoffrey-chaucer-now-newly-imprinted-william-morris

Details

Title The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, now Newly Imprinted

Dated1896

Artist William Morris; 

Author: Geoffrey Chaucer;

 Illustrator: Edward Coley Burne-Jones; 

Engraver: Wood engravings by William Harcourt Hooper; 

Editor: Frederick S. Ellis; 

Printer: William Morris at Kelmscott Press, Hammersmith, England; 

Publisher: Kelmscott Press, Hammersmith, England 

Nationality British

Artist Life 1834 - 1896 

Role Designer 

Gallery Not on View 

Department Prints and Drawings

Dimension 17 x 12 x 2 5/8 in. (43.18 x 30.48 x 6.67 cm) 

(closed)30.5 cm 43.2 cm 6.7 cm 

CreditThe Frank P. Leslie Collection, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Frank P. Leslie in memory of Mr. and Mrs. John Leslie Accession Number B.67.1dup Medium Wood engravings, letterpress in black and red ink; bound volume Country England Century 19th century 

Provenance (Sold to Leslie by unknown vendor, London, England, c. 1952); Frank P. Leslie, Wayzata, Minn., c. 1952-67; given to MIA, 1967.Rights 

Public Domain Classification

Prints; Books

Object Name Illustrated book Catalogue Raisonne Franklin, p.192; Sparling 40; Tomkinson 40; PMM 367; Huntington Library (Great Books in Great Editions) 24; Needham 101A; Peterson A40; Ransom (Private Presses) 40; Garvey 45; Ray 258; Walsdorf 40; V & A 9

2nd book I chose was the 2018 sketch book ( 2018 Sketch Collection) by South Korean Artist  Kim Jung Gi I discovered his work on instagram a couple days ago and I loved the variety simplicity and the different style of his work so when i thought of an artist for this task I selected him :)    https://www.kimjunggi.net/biography-v2/   https://www.kimjunggius.com/pages/about-artist

Korean artist Kim Jung Gi was born in 1975 in the town of Goyang-Si, located in the province of Kyongki-Do South Korea.  At 19, this budding artist enrolled at a Fine Arts School, majoring in Art and Design.  He attended Dong-Eui University in Busan for three years and did his two years in the South Korean army as a part of the Special Forces Unit.  Here, he was able to memorize the array of different weapons and vehicles.

Kim’s most notable creative asset is his memory, something he has developed over a number of years.  His ability to render extremely complicated scenes near-perfectly from memory, without the aid of references, has stretched the boundaries of what many artists believed was possible.

Kim Jung Gi’s first publication – Funny Funny – was published in Young Jump magazine. He wrote a number of short stories and held exhibitions for his work that led to his teaching manhwa (Korean comic book) to various private schools and universities.  Kim collaborated with Seung-Jin Park, the writer of Tiger the Long Tail, to draw six volumes for his comic.  Kim also worked alongside French author Bernard Werber, illustrating two novels he had written – “Paradise” in 2010 and “Third Humanity” in 2013.

In 2011, Kim Jung Gi partook in the Comic Festival held in Bucheon where, for the first time ever, he drew live. In most cases, artists showcase a framed drawing or painting, but KJG decided to do something different. He placed paper up on three walls around his table and began drawing.

Superani CEO Hyun Jin Kim videoed and posted the entire process on YouTube and, as some videos tend to do, went viral. This led to the invitation to different worldwide events.  In recent years, he has accepted invitations to perform in France, America, all around Asia and now in Japan for his first show simply titled “Drawing Exhibition”.

Kim has six sketchbooks in print, which equate to about 4,500 pages’ worth of drawings in a span of 12 years. He also collaborated with the legendary Japanese artist Katsuya Terada in 2017.  The pair put together an amazing sketchbook of various drawings, showing off their talents.

He’s worked in various industries – movies, music, and government. Kim put together a feature exhibition in Cheongwadae” the Republic of Korea’s president’s official workplace and residence.  He was also hired by Korean Hip-Hop artist Drunken Tiger to create the album cover.

He holds the record for “Longest drawing by an individual” in the Guinness World Records book.

https://www.kimjunggius.com/collections/frontpage/products/2018-sketch-collection

I like both works because to me they are quite similar william morris working on Chaucer is legendary in itself the level of attention to detail is extraordinary and the colour pallette is simple and the typography is grand and archaic in nature a level of excellence rarely seen nowadays.Kim’s work is highly skilled and varied a comic book style but still unique to him I love black and white simplicity as well as colour however I love the detail and excellence shown in both works.To me skill is important to do one’s best and show originality whilst doing so.Clarity,skill and originality are demonstrated here and that is why I was drawn to both artists.

#art #uni #studentlife

[eljackinton]

Jack’s Writing and Artwork Masterpost

Hi, I'm Jack Harvey.

I'm an independent writer and artist who's had work published and self-published in prose, illustrated storybooks and comics. Sometimes I do my own work, sometimes I collaborate with other artists.

Either way, here's a master post of where you can find all of my work, in whatever form it comes in.

My most recent project, The Whitehaven Siege, is a comic book about the history of John Paul Jones' attack on Whitehaven Harbor, the only mainland attack by the US during the War of Independence. It's physical copy is mostly available around the Cumbria area.

A digital version is available here

I write and illustrate short stories over on my main blog. These range from fantasy-noir adventures to murder mystery comedies. I try and at least get out one a year, each experimenting a little with style and genre.

The Modern Realms fantasy-noir stories have also been released in an expanded and remastered format. It’s a series that aims to look at a fantasy world of Elves, Dwarves and Dragons if it had reached the 20th Century. This is the definitive collection of these short stories, and includes bonus background material that you can’t find anywhere else.

You can buy a copy here.

All my other illustrated short stories can be found collected in Foul Cheeses and Space Diseases. The collection also includes some previously unreleased work.

You can buy a copy here

Up until recently I had a Sci-Fi/Fantasy short story series being published through Less Than Three Press. Sadly LT3 went under in 2019, so I'm currently looking for a new publisher to pick up the series. Watch this space.

I wrote a novel length fanfic about the Sisters of Battle from Warhammer 40k. I'm really proud of the work and the cover by Windlass, and encourage people to give it a read. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

You can read it here.

Other than that I occasionally dip my feet into the world of stand up comedy, but it has been a while and I've been somewhat waylaid by other projects. I'm also a recurring guest on the Bat Minute podcast.

You can find out more about that here.

I’ve done provisional work on a web-comic called Sea of Spheres, though that’s on hold for the moment while I work on other projects. I am thinking of commissioning other artists to render their takes on the characters though, like this wonderful piece by Willohdraws.

All updates on my projects, convention appearances, and more, can be found over on my main blog.

Beyond that, you can usually find more of my thoughts and writing over on my twitter, deviantart and my tumblr right here.

Thanks for reading!

#eljacksrbs #my art #my writing #not my art

[catandguitarsnugglingonthecouch]

The legend of the Roggenbuk

As you may know, I live near the Baltic Sea, at the coast of Northwestmecklenburg, which is a part of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Germany. The land is rich with Castles and Churches, and with tales of dragons, mermen, mermaids, nymphs, trolls, knights and witty fishermen. But it takes some digging to actually find those stories. The Brothers Grimm did collect a huge amount of legends but sadly did they miss our coast.

The legend of the Roggenbuk plays at the shore where I live, right before Travemünde. In 'de ole times' people worshipped their old gods and strange creatures. The people of the then small settlement by Travemünde were haunted by a merman (Wassermann) with green hair and ugly fangs. He lulled his victims into the water by playing a magic harp made of human bones. But as he was never quite satisfied with the sound he constantly needed new material. The poor bastards couldn't help themselves, the sound of the harp held them in thrall until they were deep in the water, Roggenbuk then grabbed them with his claws and ripped their arms and legs off. The rest did he give to his army of sea monsters. (nice guy, I know) This went on for a long time, and nobody would go fishing anymore or even near the water. People left the land and the remaining few were poor and lived in despair. They went to an old, wise woman to get her advice. She went to the waterfront and called for Roggenbuk to show himself. Before he could begin to play his harp she called out to him, asking him if he would be willing to compromise. The village would give one of theirs each year, and he wouldn't bother them for the rest of the time. Roggenbuk needed new bones for his harp and of course he noticed that no one came near the water anymore. So he said he wanted the most beautiful maid each year, in May, and he would let the village live in peace. So the deal was made. This they did, for years and years. But the village was still bathed in sadness. They loved their children as anyone does, and it killed their spirit to give one of them to a cruel and cold death.

But what could they do?

So each May a crying procession slowly went to the coast, in their midst the maid, afraid and trembling, bound like an animal for the slaughter. But one year a young knight on his horse came by, stopped and asked what the villagers were up to. They told him the gruesome tale and he couldn't believe it. 'Stop this now!' he said, 'go home, I will talk to this Roggenbruk and free you of its presence.' The villagers were sceptical, but they were willing to give it a chance. If the knight was drowned by Roggenbruk, they would just leave the land and start elsewhere anew. They were tired of all the sadness anyway. They asked him after his name: 'Jürgen', he told them.

So knight Jürgen rode right into the shallow water at the beach and banged his lance against his shield, shouting 'Roggenbruk, you green-haired, ugly monster, show yourself!' and Roggenbruk rose out of the deep, asking in his hypnotic voice 'Who are you? Where is my maid? I'm waiting.' But the knight kept on mocking him and calling for a fight. Roggenbruk got angry, turned himself into a dragon and attacked Jürgen. The knight wasn't afraid, he wielded his shining lance and stabbed Roggenbruk between the gaping jaws, killing the monster instantly. The villagers, who watched the fight from a distance, came to say their thanks and asked the knight, what he wanted for his deed. He just wanted them to promise to never make their children into victims again. And off he rode. The villagers loaded Roggenbruk's dead body onto a big raft and paddled it as far off into the deep sea as they could. There they sank the body and it turned to stone.

And there it lies still today, the Roggenbruk, a big stone, vaguely in the shape of a gigantic snake, close under the water. Legend says, that if one day the stone touches the sands of the beach, Roggenbruk will come alive and sing again.

Of course, this is one of the tales told by missionaries to coax the then Slavic people of the coast to convert to Christianity. Young Jürgen rode under the sign of the cross, therefore he was able to kill the beast so easily. It's a metaphor, the good (Christianity) is victorious over the evil (the old Gods) in the form of a dragon (snake). Anybody who does know something about the Old Testament will recognize what that stands for: Snake = Demon/Satan

The name Jürgen is a German variation of Georg (George), which means "peasant" deriving from the Greek: ge = earth and ergo = working. That a knight has such a name seems peculiar, but as the Holy George (3rd/4th century, England) was a legendary Dragon slayer, not so much.

But even so, the whole thing is dam interesting. That the merman is playing a harp had me thinking, that of course some of the oldest refined instruments in northern lands were harps, played by Druids for example. All in all this is religious propaganda, dissing the older religions as cruel, monstrous and ugly. My oldest daughter asked the logical question: "What did he play on, before he caught his first victim?" Errrm... She is six by the way, and wasn't impressed by this story at all. Poof!

An Illustrator turned the story into a short graphic story. It's very well done. It may be in German, but you already know the story if you read the text till here ;)

© Till Mantel

#Old German legend #Roggenbruk #graphic novel #monster #merman #old religion #christianity #Dragon #Knight #St. Jürgen #saint george #baltic sea #A regional legend #The stone is still there #And it's called Roggenbruk even today #Hm... #Should I go swimming? #Legend #Storytime #Excuse my poor translation

[prorevenge]

Power hungry president sucks the joy out of a local artist collective, ends up having to leave town.

A warning and an apology: this is long.

For background, my older sister, who I'll call Beth, is married to her high school sweetheart, who I'll call Craig. Beth is a pretty laid-back person, but she has one hot button trigger that causes her to have zero chill: anyone treating her beloved Craig poorly. Craig is very quiet and kind, just in general a mild-mannered, good-natured guy who's not great at standing up for himself, so he often attracts bad actors who view him as an easy mark, and because he alwaysassumes that other people have good intentions, he's not great at realizing when he's being mistreated. Beth is usually pretty relaxed about things, but she will basically turn into a howling, vengence-seeking banshee if anyone takes advantage of Craig.

Which brings us to ~2-3 years ago. Craig works a white collar job remotely, but he's an amateur artist/craftsman as a hobby. He does wood carving, a little bit of light metalwork, and 2-D art (mainly pencil sketches and pen-and-ink illustrations). He joined an artist's collective/makerspace where he could work on these hobbies around likeminded people, and he absolutely loved it. Whenever I hung out with him and Beth around this time, Craig would excitedly talk about the space and his projects there with infectious enthusiasm. His eyes were practically beaming out of his head whenever it came up. Beth joined too to learn/improve on her own hobby of fiber arts (mainly weaving and dyeing), but she was way less into it than Craig.

Some time after this, the president of the makerspace stepped down. It was essentially a volunteer position, though it came with a small (mostly symbolic) stipend. Since the makerspace had no actual staff, being president of the makerspace was a huge undertaking that involved being a one-man show for everything--for a start, coordinating with the board, keeping day-to-day operations going, and chasing the grants that kept the lights on. The current president just couldn't do it anymore with his full-time job, and announced his intention to vacate the role. Craig had come to love the makerspace, and he figured he had the resources to be an effective president. His job is entirely remote and deliverables-based (he can work whatever hours he wants as long as he's meeting his objectives), so he figured he could work out of the makerspace on his laptop and be available there if anyone needed him, and then do the heavy lifting of the role outside work hours. So he threw his hat in the ring.

Enter Jamie, a recent industrial design grad. Jamie was known to be flaky and very dramatic, but he'd been a member of the makerspace for a couple of years, almost as long as it had existed, and he felt entitled to be handed the presidency because he had seniority. He lost his damn mind when he heard that Craig had the audacity to go for the same role and complained to several members about how Craig was massively overstepping. This got back to Craig, who didn't really take it seriously, and it also got back to Beth, who, of course, was already irritated that Jamie was shit-stirring, but kept it to herself.

Long story short: Jamie won the member vote by a small margin, which Craig was very gracious about. Craig congratulated Jamie on the victory, then settled back into business as usual. Jamie... was not so gracious. He was enraged that Craig had gotten so many votes, and made it known to everyone that he was trying to figure out who had voted for Craig, and that they "would pay." Many of the members who had voted for Jamie passively because he'd been around forever and they didn't really know Craig were shocked by this behavior and started privately expressing regret to each other. But it gets worse. The makerspace had always offered members the perk of sponsoring workshops, meetups, and classes that anyone, members or non-members, could attend; all you had to do was sign up for the space on a first-come, first-served basis and kick up 20% of any profits to the makerspace if you charged a fee. Jamie started preemptively cancelling classes and workshops sponsored by anyone on his shit list by blocking off all available reservations during the regular times certain classes would be held. So Craig had traditionally sponsored a popular casting workshop on Wednesday evenings, and suddenly all Wednesday evenings were booked solid before the sign-up sheet was even available. He tried switching to Thursday, but after just one rescheduled workshop, suddenly Thursday evenings were out too. He tried Tuesdays, but because it was so early in the week, no one could come. Craig was bummed, but was still too good-natured to realize Jamie was intentionally sabotaging him out of spite, despite a righteously angry Beth trying to paint the picture for him of what was going on.

Beth. Was. Pissed. But she wasn't banshee pissed yet. Not until...Jamie selectively told the people on his shit list that member fees were going up. By almost double. He presented this as a makerspace-wide policy, but he made one crucial error. Somehow, Jamie never picked up on Craig and Beth being married, probably because he was never around both of them at the same time. So Beth flew under his radar, and he didn't raise her member fees, just Craig's and some of Craig's known friends, which confirmed to her that he was intentionally retaliating against Craig.

At this point, Beth had steam coming out of her ears and went to go talk to the board, since they have the power to cite or even throw out the president. They were uneasy about what she told them, but they said the president was technically allowed to set member fees, and they'd keep an eye on things.

Beth didn't really believe the board that they'd be keeping an eye on things, because Jamie was already dropping the ball all over the place, and the board wasn't making a peep over it. He wanted to be president because of the prestige, but he was never willing to do the work, so he just--didn't do it, and things were falling apart. The makerspace was getting late notices on unpaid bills, basic maintenance of the space wasn't getting done, materials weren't being restocked as they ran out, and the record keeping was nonexistent. It got so bad that the previous president who had stepped down because he couldn't handle the time commitment anymore (who had run the makerspace from its inception) quit as a member altogether because he was so saddened and disgusted by how bad things had gotten. He'd put his blood, sweat, and tears into this place, and stepped down from a role he treasured because he believed it was in the best interest of the organization, and now he had to watch Jamie run this place he loved into the ground out of sheer laziness. Craig was also losing his excitement over the makerspace, because he no longer had the space or resources to do the things he enjoyed there.

Beth, at this point, had gone from furiously angry to strategically angry. Suspecting that Jamie was being shady in more ways than one, she spent a few days being friendly to Jamie and sucking up to him, and then sprung on him the offer to help with the organization's bookkeeping and records. Still not realizing that she was Craig's wife, but knowing that she worked as a project manager in her day job, Jamie saw a chance to get some skilled work done at zero effort to himself, and he happily agreed, and gave her access to the makerspace's Google Sheets (not the most high-tech operation). For a little while, Beth bided her time, bringing the financial accounts up to date and continuing to be diabolically friendly to Jamie.

After a while of this, she calmly pulled together six copies of documents comparing the official organizational income that Jamie was reporting to her with the actual income, which Jamie was completely unaware she was tracking. These documents proved that Jamie was not only skimming money off the top of class and workshop fees, but was actively stealing money from the grants the makerspace was receiving, which is highly illegal. Beth gave the six board members her impeccably compiled proof of what was happening.

Almost immediately, the board "fired" Jamie and issued a lifetime ban from the makerspace. They were afraid of losing their grants if news came out about the gross misappropriation, so they didn't report Jamie to the authorities, but instead gave him 48 hours to return the stolen funds, the implication being that they would report him if he didn't. He panicked and complied, selling his car quickly to do it and scrounging up the difference in a ton of quick loans from friends, many of whom were makerspace members not aware of what was going on (no, he never paid them back). He's now persona non grata with all of his former friends, and while he still has a clean criminal record, word traveled pretty far in the local artist community, which means he was black listed from most of the industrial design jobs in the area and couldn't use his degree if he wanted to stay in town. As far as Beth and Craig knew, he moved away about six months after all this went down, but they haven't kept up with him, and don't know where he is.

The makerspace board realized their setup was bad, so instead of a single president, they restructured to have a panel of volunteer officers running the operation. Craig is one of them, and has happily thrown himself back into wood working and metal casting. Beth still helps out with the books.

TL;DR: Power hungry industrial designer tries to sabotage my brother-in-law's hobby; gets his life destroyed by my protective sister, who reveals that he's embezzling.

(source) (story by SisterSist)

#prorevenge #by SisterSist #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #revenge story #last10

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z Special: History of Trunks

The second DBZ special aired on February 24, 1993, right between Episodes 175 and 176.   I was always kind of curious about the timing on this special, because it was included with the Trunks Saga box set back in the day, which led me to believe that it meant to be viewed around that part of the story.   More likely, Funimation did it because the Trunks Saga was really short, and the “box set” would have been two VHS tapes without something else to throw in.    

The collected editions of the manga placed it right around the same order as the TV show, right after Mr. Satan insists on fighting first.   However, Kanzenshuu.com lists its original publication date as August 11, 1992,  as part of a double feature alongside Chapter 396, which features Trunks taking on Perfect Cell so Krillin could rescue Vegeta.   That might explain why episode 164 featured a lengthy flashback to Trunks’ boyhood.   Toei had the special to work from, and while they eventually adapted the special outright, they were able to do a filler scene with some confidence in what Trunks’ future word was really like.    That makes a lot of sense, because Trunks vs. Perfect Cell was probably the high water mark for the character, and after that he became much less important in the series.  

To be clear, the manga version came first, and the anime version adapted and expanded it.    So unlike the DBZ movies, this one is about as canon as it gets.    It also stands in stark contrast to the first special starring Bardock.    Toriyama had nothing to do with creating “Father of Goku”, but he liked the special so much that he briefly referenced the climactic scene in the manga.  

So yeah, this is basically an account of the future timeline Trunks is from, so it opens with Goku dying of the hear virus Trunks predicted in Episode 122.   

I know that feel, kid.   

Then we flash forward about six months to May 12, Age 767, when the androids attacked.    They kill all the Z-Fighters, and then we flash forward again about thirteen years.    Things look pretty much the same, but only because this just happens to be one of the towns the androids haven’t attacked yet.   Also, this one kid has a baloon with Goku on it, which seems really out of place when he’s been dead for so long. 

So the Androids attack... I think it’s Peppertown, and we then find Master Roshi’s house is abandoned.    Turns out he took cover in a submarine, along with Oolong, Puar, and Turtle.    Apparently, this is just what they do when they hear of an android attack on the radio.   I assume that means Peppertown is close enough to Kame House to warrant this sort of thing, but then again, they may just be really jumpy.  

In Peppertown, 18 helps herself to a clothing store, and that’s a pretty cool sequence.    The shopkeep is terrified, of course.  

Then 17 blows up the store as soon as she leaves.   18 chews him out for this, because she wanted to at least spare the clothes.    17 had agreed to this, but forgot.   

And that’s kind of the theme of the androids’ reign of terror.    A lot of the early material surrounding Trunks’ future world made it sound more like the post-apocalyptic world of the Terminator movies.    In Episode 139, Trunks even flashes back to a group of humans, many of whom are wearing outfits and swords like his, which imply that they’re all part of some human resistance movement.    That wasn’t hard to go along with, especially since we had just finished the Frieza Saga, where the main villain was more about oppressing people than killing them outright.   But once we finally met 17 and 18, it turns out that they’re not terribly motivated by anything.     They kill people indiscriminately, but they’re in no great hurry to get it done.   This explains how they can be strong enough to kill a Super Saiyan, and yet there’s still a world left thirteen years on.   

As a consequence, Trunks’ world doesn’t look like a hellish post-apocalyptic nightmare.     At least not all of it does.    Peppertown looked pretty much business-as-usual, until the androids finally got around to destroying it.   It’s not a quick, sudden thing that happened.   The world is slowly being torn down, city by city, person by person, and that’s actually scarier when you think about it. 

For example, Bulma and Trunks hear about the attack on Peppertown while they’re returning from a grocery run, but they have to drive a long way for groceries because so many cities have been ruined.   So there’s still food and cars and fuel for cars and such, but things are a lot harder to access.    I assume the world population has had to become more decentralized, since any major population center risks getting targeted by the androids. 

Anyway, Trunks has had it with the androids, so he asks his mom if she doesn’t mind heading home alone, and she knows what he’s up to, but she can’t really stop him from leaving either.   

But when Trunks reaches Peppertown, it’s too late.    The androids are gone, and so are all the people he wanted to save.   

But he does run into Gohan there, and so the two of them head back to the Capsule Corp. building, or what’s left of it.     There, Trunks pleads with Gohan to take him on as his student, and teach him how to kick some android ass.   Gohan agrees, since Trunks reminds him a lot of himself as a boy.   But they agree to keep his training a secret from Bulma so she won’t worry.  

This is one of the commerical bumpers they used in this special.    I’m putting it here because I want to point out that this is maybe the only time I’ve ever seen them actually color in that bit of purple hair sticking out of baby Trunks’ hat.   usually hey just leave it the same color as his face.   He looks a lot cuter this way.  

Gohan has dinner with Trunks and Bulma, and it’s weird to see Bulma cooking, but in this world, she probably had no choice.    It looks like her house took a pounding from an Android attack, but it’s mostly in tact.    My guess is that West City is mostly deserted, and Bulma stayed here because she needs the lab and other equipment, and she figured a deserted city would be safer than a full one.  

Later, Gohan starts training Trunks.   He’s strong and he has loads of potential, but he won’t really be in any shape to fight the androids until he can turn into a Super Saiyan like Gohan can.    Gohan keeps telling him that anger is the key, but Trunks just can’t quite pull it off.   

Ox King and Chi-Chi are still alive in this timeline, although they both look pretty haggard.   From what I can tell, they never see much of Gohan anymore, and so all Ox King has for her are stories he’s heard of Gohan fighting the androids in various places.    She longs for the days when Goku was still alive and Gohan had a chance of becoming a great scholar, but that future was taken away from Gohan when he was left as the only one strong enough to fight the androids.

Then we pick up at some later time, in another city.   Things look pretty peaceful here, and they even have an amusement park.   One of the people in this shot says it’s because this is one of the few cities that has any sort of military, so they think that’s kept the androids away all these years.

Only it wasn’t.   17 and 18 are here right now.   They just never got around to this city yet.   How is 18 doing that with her arm?   Well, she is a cyborg...

Someone calls the military for assistance, but we see that there’s no one to answer, because 17 and 18 already took them out before they got to the park.   

Soon, Gohan and Trunks show up, and we see Gohan turn Super Saiyan for the first time in the special.    Not sure why he does that jazz hands thing, but whatever.    A lot of what he’s been doing lately has probably been self-taught.  

Now, we first saw 17 and 18 fight in Episodes 135 and 136.  There, they took out Vegeta and Trunks--both as Super Saiyans--with tremendous ease.   Afterward, Trunks mentioned that they were far more powerful than the 17 and 18 in his own timeline.    He was at least able to fight them there, and the main problem was the numbers game, and the androids’ superior stamina.   They never get tired, while Super Saiyans burn through their energy pretty quickly.  

This fight pretty neatly illustrates the problem.   Gohan does pretty well while he’s fighting 17 alone, but then 18 jumps in and saves 17 before he can come close to finishing him off.   If Gohan could just get one of them isolated for a while, maybe he could divide and conquer, but that just never happens.    If he had a partner, then that guy could keep 18 busy while Gohan takes out 17, and then they could double team 18 and be done with it.  

And Trunks does pretty well in that respect, considering he’s only 14 and not even a Super Saiyan.   He’s no match for 18, but he does get in a few hits, which is more than he managed when he was older and more powerful and tried to fight 18 in the altered timeline.  

Ultimately, things go really badly for the boys, because Trunks gets overwhelmed and Gohan ends up having to fight both androids and save Trunks at the same time.   He tries to hide, much like we saw him do in the flashback from Episode 164, only this time it dosn’t do him any good.    The one advantage he has on the androids is that they can’t sense his ki, but that doesn’t matter here, because 18 just fires a big energy blast that happens to be right next to him.     There’s no escape.  

The only thing that saves them is that 17 and 18 can’t find them in the rubble, so they give up and go “home”.   I wonder what their home looks like.    Gohan digs himself out and one of his arms is gone.   He pulls out his bag of senzu beans and finds that he only has one left.    And this is truly the last senzu bean ever.   Apparently the plant that they grow from died off.   I don’t know if 17 and 18 attacked Korin’s tower or what.   

I’m also not sure if eating the bean would grow back Gohan’s missing arm.    I guess Yamcha’s injuries at the hands of Dr. Gero were at least as severe, but somehow growing back a limb seems much more extreme to me.    Regardless, he gives the bean to Trunks, because that’s the kind of guy Gohan is.    I like the dub version of this, because Gohan just stares at the bean and asks himself “What would your father do?”   and then he gives it to Trunks.   

Trunks eventually gets Gohan home and they have a doctor tend to his wounds, and before long Gohan’s back in action, minus an arm.    This is about where the manga verson starts, so everything you’ve seen up to now has been filler.  

I get the impression that this scene is right after Gohan recovered, and they haven’t fought the androids since he lost his arm.    Trunks still can’t turn Super Saiyan, and Gohan reminisces about how he did it when he thought about Piccolo and the others dying to the androids. 

I get the sense that Future Gohan has some serious flaws as a warrior.    No disrespect intended, I just mean that his game plan seems to be largely improvised.    Ox King mentioned hat he seems to be determined to “avenge” the Z-Fighters, which makes sense, except that he probably needs to be more focused on protecting humanity, or figuring out a way to defeat the androids.    From what I’ve seen of him, it looks like he’s more interested in just fighting them.  He shows up, they mix it up a little, he gets in over his head, and then he has to hide until they get bored and leave.   If that’s his standard operating procedure, then I doubt he’s ever actually driven off 17 and 18.   Why would they stop attacking a city after he’s out of sight?

I’m not saying that Gohan doesn’t care about the people, but it seems like his strategy is just “Hit the androids until they explode,” and that hasn’t gotten him anywhere.    If Vegeta were still alive, then they might have enough firepower to make that plan work.    If Piccolo were around, then he’d probably make Gohan understand that he needs to think outside the box on this.    But Gohan’s not a tactician or a fighting genius.   He’s very talented, but on his own, his shortcomings become very apparent.  

Anyway, while they talk, the androids start attacking West City.   Trunks wants to help, but Gohan insists that he stay behind.    Trunks hates that idea, especially since Gohan’s lost an arm already.   So Gohan agrees to let him come along.... only to knock him out cold while he’s not looking.   

And this leads us to Gohan’s Last Stand.    He actually does pretty well fighting both 17 and 18 at the same time, with only one arm at that.    But it doesn’t take them long to turn the tables on him.   My guess is that Gohan pushed himself too hard and wore himself out faster than usual.   Also, as I recall from the manga, 17 told him that he hadn’t been figthing at full strength until now, so he may have underestimated them.   

But Gohan warns them: Even if his body is destroyed, what he represents will live on, and someone else will rise up to carry out his last wish.    Z Stands for the end, but not yet.   

Later, Trunks wakes up, and find him in the city, lying face down in a puddle.   

And the pain and grief and rage well up inside him, and finally, Trunks realizes what it takes to be a Super Saiyan.    It wasn’t just anger, as Gohan told him.  It was a kind of anger that he couldn’t truly understand until now, because as bad as this future world is, it’s the only one Trunks knows, and as long as he had his mom and Gohan, he’d never really lost anything before now.    But Gohan was his best friend and martial arts master, and his hero.     He was the best, and the androids killed him and threw him away like so much trash.    

To be honest, I’m a little choked up on this screening, because I’ve been watching all of DBZ up to this point.   The audience has watched Gohan grow up.    We’ve seen him as a baby, we’ve seen him make friends and do very brave things, and this is how it ends.   A couple of shithead androids kill him like he doesn’t even matter.  Well he did matter, and Trunks has the yellow aura to prove it.   

And this is what’s so grim about Trunks’ world.   The Dragon Balls are long gone, senzu beans are extinct, and the last Z-Fighter just died a lonely death.   Yeah, Trunks has become the Legendary Super Saiyan, but so what?   By the time he’s pulled it off, it’s too late to do any good.    It won’t bring Gohan back, or save all the people who died.    This is a very bitter moment for Trunks.     Goku and Vegeta might have found their Super Saiyan awakenings to be cathartic, but not Trunks.   

Three years later, Trunks has been helping Bulma work on her latest invention, the time machine.   Her plan is to send Trunks back twenty years into the past to see if Goku could have stopped the androids if he had survived his illness.    But by this point, her lab has been destroyed, so it’s taken a long time for her to charge the time machine for a round trip.    As for Trunks, he thinks they won’t need the time machine, because he thinks he’s finally strong enough to beat the androids by himself.    Bulma hates that idea, since that’s exactly how Gohan got himself killed.   

But when Trunks hears of an android attack on the radio, there’s not much Bulma can do to stop him from going.    He straps on his sword and flies out to wreck their shit.  

At first he seems to do pretty well...

But his attacks don’t hurt them at all.   As Trunks eventually realizes, it’s not that his attacks aren’t strong enough, it’s that they’re just fast enough to dodge a split second before they connect.  

And then he realizes his mother was right.    He’s in over his head, and the androids won’t just let him walk away from this.    He’s gotten sucked into the same routine Gohan was in for over a decade.  

Also, look how much he resembles Vegeta from his battle with Frieza, right around the time he realized the same thing about Frieza.  

So the androids toy with him and chase him around for a while as he tries to escape.   Not sure why he turned off Super Saiyan during this...

But then they toss him out of a building and he’s back in Super mode again.    Are those flower petals supposed to be like cherry blossoms?   Did Trunks finally go through puberty? 

They keep picking on him, mainly because he’s too stubborn to lay down, and when he asks them why they do this, they say it’s because they hate humans, and so they’ve decided to kill everyone they find.    

Eventually, they blast him and leave without making sure he’s dead, and then Trunks wakes up a few days later to discover that his mom found him and got him medical attention.    At long last, Trunks is finally on board with using the time machine.  

And so Trunks recovers, and he prepares for his fateful journey.    Bulma assures him that Goku will be able to help, not just because he was strong, but because he had a way of making you feel like everything would turn out okay.    Oh, and Vegeta... certainly... uh, was alive back then.   Yeah.   

And that’s it.   The credits show clips of Trunks debut in Episodes 120-122, and now you know..... the rest.... of the story.   Paul Harvey...... good day?

In the past, I never had much use for this special, because most of what happens in it is stuff we already knew about from Trunks’ description of his past.    Also, for a few years I struggled to accept DBZ stories that went backwards on the power scale like this.   Future Trunks and Future Gohan and their android enemies are much weaker than Cell or the Saiyans in the Cell Games Saga, so what’s the point?  

Also, I went through a period where I didn’t have much use for Trunks as a character, maybe because he didn’t seem to matter much after he beat Mecha-Frieza and lost to Cell.    He just seemed to whine a lot and never had much to contribute, unlike Gohan and the others.    

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to appreciate Trunks’ story more.    He has a mission, and things to prove, and loved ones to protect and avenge, and he just wants to get through this thing in one piece, you know?    He’s not big on foolish heroics because he’s seen bad things happen to people who do.    Sometimes his cautious, calculated approach to things doesn’t work either, but you can’t blame him for having that attitude.    In his world, you’re working without a net.   

#dragon ball #2019dbliveblog #history of trunks #dbmovieliveblog #trunks #gohan #bulma #android 17 #android 18 #goku #vegeta #piccolo #krillin #yamcha #tien #chiaotzu #chi chi #ox king

[that-bog-witch]

"A Story of Somnos,” a Fairytale

(Hey, so this isn’t terato stuff but I wanted to post some of my writing. Reblogs and comments are greatly appreciated! -Aksel)

"A worn, thin storybook sits on a shelf. It's handwritten by a gnome by the name of 'Theadric Drunser-Abalind Pallens-Sarn'. The gnome has a short segment where he talks about how he researched the fairytale and determined what parts of it were later fabricated and what parts actually belonged in the original story. He has reliable sources. Several of his notes are stuck between the pages. It appears as though he wasn't finished writing it, and the original copy appears to be defaced in several places. An ink spill- likely accidental- covers up an illustration of a map inside."

Long ago, or perhaps not long ago at all, there was a fey lord by the name of Wandros. [A note jammed between pages reads: "I say that it wasn't so long ago because it's difficult to tell with the Feywild. Any given place could have a time distortion of mere seconds or entire years. To be entirely certain, I'm not even quite sure the lord's name was Wandros. You see, fey go by many names. At least in most tellings of the story, the fey is Wandros."]

[This appears to be written after the rest of the text "So, let me restart. An indeterminable amount of time ago, a fey lord that may have been called Wandros ruled over the Miststep Pines."] The Pines were a glorious sight on the border of the Material and Fey. So glorious their name ought to be capitalized. Every morning, the grass and stones brimmed with frost. It was like walking through a world of silver. In the afternoon, this frost would melt into a gentle mist that ran like a river across the landscape. Great mossy stones were piled along the trails in the Pines. Runes were carved into them, blessing travelers with protection and haste. By all accounts, Wandros was considered a benevolent lord. Dryads spoke of his name in their songs to the birds, and mortals thanked him for providing them with safety and a bounty of herbs that could be used in medicine.

It was no surprise that some mortal groups worshiped Wandros. He enjoyed the attention. Particularly devout followers were blessed as clerics of life, so that they could spread his blessing to blighted lands. [A note between the pages reads: "It helped Wandros to fight back against unseelie fey. In fact, many of his clerics did such a good job working against the unseelie that many mortals view seelie and unseelie as 'good' and 'evil', respectively. The truth is that the seelie court is more based in tricks and illusion of beauty, while the unseelie is based in power. The politics of it aren't of much mind, right now. The point is that Wandros was popular, in the area."]

One fine summer morning, a traveler came across a town on the border of the Miststep Pines. They said to an innkeeper, "Ma'am, this is quite a fine town. May I know its name?"

"Oh, you mustn't know the name," she said. As all villagers knew, names held great power so close to fey realms.

"Then how may I return here?" The traveler asked, "Your town appears on no maps. It was an accident I arrived here at all."

"An accident? It was no accident. Travelers come upon our town when they need it, like all of the other villages in the Miststep Pines," the innkeep said, "If you want to return here, again, you must merely want to find us."

"I'm sure that will work," the traveler didn't sound at all sure. They spent the night in the inn, and woke up on solid ground. They cursed under their breath and prayed. If they were devout, they should find the town again. So they prayed, and so there was a town over the next hill between two summer pines. [A footnote is written in pencil: "I use neutral pronouns for the traveler because there doesn't appear to be any consistency between tellings. The surviving pages of the original text don't have any pronouns to reference."]

"This is amazing magic," they said to a priest in the town, "What makes your town come and go?"

"Wandros," the priest replied, "A lord of travelers and medicine. He is the fey that brings us our life."

"That's wonderful," the traveler said. So they went about their business in the fine little town, and rested the night in the inn. Again they woke up on the ground. It was a nice enough day, and they continued their hike through the woods. Now, they weren't sure that they wanted to continue their journey to the coast, as they had planned. They wanted to become part of the town. Part of it that it could not leave on the forest floor. So again they searched for the town, and again it left without them. Every day, they prayed to the strange fey that made it possible.

On a warm morning much like the one when they first discovered the town, they found a tower. It was more moss and ivy than stone, and appeared to be rising out of the mist. A stained glass window cast colorful light in front of them. With little else to do, they approached the tower and knocked gently on its oaken door.

"I've heard your prayers," the creature that opened the door was of ethereal beauty, cloaked in river mist, "And I wanted to make you an offer, dear traveler."

"An offer? Surely a lord of your power could bend me to your will."

"I do not know your name. In fact, you have forgotten your own name," it said, scrutinizing them with silver eyes.

"I have?" The traveler had forgotten when their name had slipped away from them.

"Yes," it said, "I know you were jealous of my priest, the second time you discovered my town. I can give you power like that."

"What's the cost?" The traveler knew better than to make deals with fey, or so they told themself.

"Nothing."

"There has to be a cost," they insisted.

"Not to be a priest. But you wouldn't be content in these woods without a purpose. For you, I would offer a pact."

"I shouldn't make a deal with you," they wanted to believe themself.

"Is it not exactly what you've been seeking, to show others what you've found? That is what you would do, as my warlock," it showed no expression. It was like the mist and pines, itself- a piece of the scenery more than a being.

"I suppose it is," the traveler conceded.

It only took a few years for the traveler to gain power they had only dreamed of, in their months wandering the forest. They fought back against unseelie fey and brought medicine to those in need. They shepherded travelers along winding trails and collected fruits for them to eat. They felt like they had a purpose. All the years before this felt like a dream. Like they had been asleep for their own life. The sensation was unnerving to them, so they continued to serve the Miststep Pines.

Two decades passed since the traveler had made their deal, and yet they seemed no older. The nameless town was exactly the same. The only tell of time was the moss that grew up the tree trunks and the rivers that ran dry. The landscape changed around them, but the traveler was the same. Again, they felt like they were asleep. They needed the same rush they had gotten when they first made their pact. They needed more power. They returned to Wandros, who merely chuckled.

"You have been doing an excellent service. I will reward you in due time," the words were like harsh bells to the traveler's ears. They left into the woods.

The Miststep Pines appeared more grey than silver. The mist was more fitful that cloudlike. The town was more disorganized and muddled. The tower in the woods creaked in the wind. Wandros was sick. Wandros had been sick for quite some time. Many mortals believed fey couldn't be sickened, and they might be right. It wasn't exactly sickness, not quite.

The traveler was not receiving their power from Wandros. The traveler was siphoning it. The process was so slow, over so many decades, the fey paid no notice. Not until now. Wandros couldn't feel every forest path beneath its feet as it once had. It couldn't maintain the frost, the town, and the trails. It was unraveling. It asked its warlock to do something- anything- to help. It was completely unaware that its 'warlock' was the cause.

[Another note is jammed between the pages: "Because this tale is quite old, many can't agree on its ending. Most stories say that Wandros passed quietly into an eternal slumber, and its warlock took over its position maintaining the forest. I know this to be false. The original story has the traveler leaving."]

Wandros knew what the warlock had done before it fell into its slumber. It wasn't enraged. It was impressed. It, a fey lord, had been outwitted and bested by a mortal over nearly forty years. A mortal it had regarded as a friend.

"You're too strong," Wandros had whispered, almost proudly. The traveler didn't say a word, "That's why, I will give you a name. Mortals will sometimes give names for achievements, yes?"

"Yes, though they are mostly titles," the traveler responded.

"I will call you Somnos. Because of all fey who have tried to kill me, and of all monster hunters who sought to put me to an end, you are the one that did it. Not by claw or sword, but with my own energy. You haven't killed me, you've spared me. I will be asleep in this woods for all time, thanks to you. And that is why you should be called 'Somnos'. That is why you should be called 'Sleep'."

With the last of its power, Wandros gave the traveler a true name. They thanked their patron and left the forest to its innate nature. No one heard from them, again. Some say they are hibernal state, watching and waiting. Others say they are still abound, and more dangerous than any fey. That is why Somnos' story is told. To tell their name, so that anyone who hears this tale might stand a chance.

#long post #story #writing #my writing #writers on tumblr #fairytale #fairy tale #fae #fey #fairies #magic #fiction