#and some guy who only nutty refers to by name and every time he says the name it's completely unintelligible lmao

[touch-me-unscientifically]

hi bertie's friends!

so, I've been working on getting transcripts made of the episodes since there aren't any, it's been a really fun process, but I can't do it alone!

there are certain lines I haven't been able to hear properly, and others I have, but that I need spelling suggestions for because there are quite a few made up words that are said throughout.

I'm up to episode 10, and they're all in google docs fully editable if you have the link, with timestamps and comments on parts I can't figure out! :)

I have a few friends who've offered to help, but we could reeeeally use more ears. I want to start getting some of these up on the wiki we started soon! pls comment or dm me if you'd like to help, and I will send a link to the transcript folder <3

reblogs help too!

#there are also a ton of latin plant names which I've been able to find but others i haven't no matter what way i spell them 😭 #and some guy who only nutty refers to by name and every time he says the name it's completely unintelligible lmao #and he's not listed as a character in the descriptions (as far as I've seen) #so I've just named him “MAN” #tmsoubb #the mysterious secrets of uncle bertie’s botanarium #jemaine clement

[twistedtummies2]

Count-Down: Number 15

Welcome to Count-Down! All throughout the month of October, I’m counting down my Top 31 favorite portrayals and reimaginings of the King of the Vampires, Count Dracula! Today’s Dracula proves that family matters. Number 15 is…Al Lewis.

This is the last of the “Funny Draculas” to be featured on the Count-Down. We’ve had a few earlier in the Top 31, and several in the Honorable Mentions. And out of all the Funny Draculas out there, he’s one of the most classic and iconic. When I think of Funny Draculas, the first three I think of are The Count, Count Chocula, and this fellow. And since the latter two aren’t TECHNICALLY Dracula, this is the only one that can count highly on the list. I am, of course, referring to Sam Dracula (yes, they give his name as Sam in this version), better known as Grandpa, from The Munsters. The Munsters was a 1960s sitcom released as a direct response to the success of The Addams Family; the two are often compared and contrasted with each other, given the similarity of their subject matter and sense of humor. Between the two, I do prefer The Addams Family, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like the Munsters. The show focused on a family of characters inspired by the classic Universal Monsters: among them was Herman Munster, the patriarch of the family (and one of apparently several Frankenstein Monsters), his son Eddie (a young werewolf; his Uncle Lester was the actual Wolfman himself), his wife Lily (Dracula’s daughter), Grandpa, of course…and Marilyn, the “Ugly Duckling” of the family – a beautiful young girl who vaguely resembled Marilyn Monroe. While she looked the most normal, her personality and senses of taste and so on were identical to the rest of her family. The show primarily centered on the antics between Herman and Grandpa, with Lily often acting as the peacemaker between the two (although, naturally, Eddie and especially Marilyn had subplots and focal episodes of their own). Al Lewis – who had worked with Herman’s performer, Fred Gwynne, on the show “Car 54, Where Are You?” – was cast to play the geriatric Dracula. Lewis’ makeup and costume are obviously meant to evoke the iconography of Bela Lugosi’s famous 1930s portrayal, and he does have many of Dracula’s classic traits beyond that: his advancing age (which is pretty old, even by vampire standards) has not mellowed his literal taste for blood, though he apparently mostly gets it via visits to the blood bank. (Har Har.) He can still turn into a bat, a wolf, mist, and pretty much anything else he wants. However, he doesn’t seem to have any allergies to the daylight (although he DOES still prefer to do things at night), and things like crosses, Holy Water, and the like I don’t think ever get brought up, let alone do we know if they have any effect. Lewis’ comedic character may have had some superficial similarities, but the actual portrayal was entirely his own. Owing to the style of the series, Lewis speaks with a distinct Brooklynese dialect, and has a personality that is both jovial and snarky: he will insult you to your face and laugh good-naturedly immediately after. He likes practical jokes, and is more of a mad scientist than a typical vampire: always tinkering with new inventions or brewing strange concoctions in his underground laboratory, usually with some sort of nutty get-rich-quick-scheme in mind. Occasionally cantankerous, but always loveable, he was one of the most important and fun characters in the show, and his fast-talking, quick-with-a-comeback persona left one with a snicker every time. In many ways, I think he might have been my favorite character in the series…and given how iconic the Munsters remain for many, even nowadays, I’d say he’s earned his place easily in my Top 15.

Tomorrow, the countdown continues! Hint: “You…Are My Number One…Guy!” (Well…technically number 14, but let the reference rest.)

#count-down #top 31 draculas #count dracula #dracula #halloween advent calendar #october special #al lewis #number 15 #the munsters #grandpa #sam dracula

[kcrabb88]

Goodnight Boss

I wrote this little Ted Lasso piece as a gift for @librarianladyx, since today marks 11 years since we first met in library school, and she rescued me from a weird guy who was trying to flirt with me. This is her preferred genre of “nice people being nice to each other.” :D

This takes place in season 1 of Ted Lasso, in the wake of Ted’s panic attack and the return from the away game. 

Ted sits and he sits and he sits. He sits long after everyone else has gone, the locker room eerily silent. He should go home, but he can't, not yet, when going home means being alone. He’s alone here too, technically, but not in the same way. Here, he can think of the game, and how no one thought they could win but they did, and in his apartment, he’d only be thinking about how empty it feels. Here, he can see moving images of the team in his mind's eye, and hear sounds, too. Sam's infectious smile. Roy's grunts of approval (or disapproval). Dani's laughter. 

Beard left a while ago, tired from their trip and the long bus ride and giving Ted that look that wouldn’t be a look to anyone who didn’t know him, a look of concern, a look of what are you doing? But it is not in Beard’s nature to press, so he didn’t. Ted’s not even sure what he would say if Beard did press, both grateful and mortified as he was at Rebecca’s kindness after he came dashing out of the karaoke bar, sure of two things—that he was going to vomit and that he couldn’t breathe, though he did not vomit, and he could breathe. He was not mortified that she was kind to him, only that what happened happened so fast he could not name it, a soon-to-be divorced man reduced to that at the sound of a Disney song. Still, it wasn’t so ridiculous was it? The song was overplayed, but damn if it isn’t a banger.

You’re not quitting, you’re just letting me go.

The mental smoke of his now ex-wife’s words vanish at the sound of footsteps coming into the locker room. Particular, high-heeled footsteps.

Ted jumps out of his skin, nearly upsetting his chair and shouting in surprise. The person, who he realizes belatedly is Rebecca, shouts too.

“Sorry boss,” he says in apology. “I thought I was the only one here. Thought you might have been a ghost.”

That familiar smirkish smile curls at the edge of Rebecca’s mouth. “A ghost in high heels? I thought you took care of this club’s spirits already.”

“Well…” Ted leans back in his chair, gesturing at her to sit down. “First, I don’t know much about ghost footwear, and two, we sure did, but whose to say there aren’t more ghosts doing their haunting outside the treatment room? Don’t tell anyone I said that, though.”

Rebecca laughs softly, and something about the gentleness of nighttime brings out her kindness, he thinks, like she’s less fearful of being judged when the stars are out. She shifts in her chair, and he wonders if she’s uncomfortable. She was so at ease, so natural when she helped him outside the bar, her voice, her hand the only thing that turned off the screeching alarm bells telling his body to run. The fact that they’re both still here remains unspoken, but Rebecca speaks first. Ted can’t say he isn’t usually the one speaking first, but if she came down here, he wants to make sure he listens.

“I just…” Rebecca twists her fingers in her lap. “I wanted to make sure you were all right. After the other night.”

“Oh I’m all right,” Ted says softly, and Rebecca peers at him like she doesn’t believe it. No one is all right when they’re getting divorced. “You know, I looked up panic attacks on WebMD, and I would not recommend doing that, you type in one symptom and then next thing you know, it’s telling you you’re dying in six weeks. Thank you though, again, for helping me through it.”

Rebecca laughs again, but it’s sadder this time. “I’ve had…friends with them, so I noticed it in you.”

Ted wonders if when Rebecca says friends she means herself, but he doesn’t push her. She’ll tell him if she wants to.

“I was sorry to miss the rest of your song,” Ted continues, fiddling with the top button on his polo. “What a voice! Keeping secrets from us boss.”

A fluorescent light buzzes as Rebecca shakes her head. “My goddaughter Nora was obsessed with Frozen—I wake up in the middle of the night with those lyrics in my head sometimes.”

Ted nods sagely. “Henry went through an Elsa phase.”

“He did?” Rebecca asks, one well-defined eyebrow shooting up toward her hairline. “I thought Frozen was the kingdom of little girls.”

“Oh it is mostly.” Ted smiles, some of the weight lifting off his chest at the mention of his son. “But he kept Frozen on repeat there for a while in the DVD player. Drove Michelle nutty.”

His wife’s name rests between them. He’s so often referred to her as my wife, since coming here, and not usually Michelle, that the familiar name tastes odd on his tongue. She is not his wife anymore. Just Michelle. And he is not a husband, and he grieves that role that he did not want to leave behind.

“Rupert never would have let a son watch a Disney princess movie, if we’d had a child.”

Bitterness, anger, shoots through Rebecca’s voice at the mention of her ex-husband, and Ted can’t blame her, much as he wants to think the best of everyone—the auction showed him that Rupert Mannion was a piece of work.

“You and Michelle are good parents, whatever happened between the two of you. I think that counts for something.”

Ted nods, another smile sliding across his face. “It does boss. It does.”

“Well.” Rebecca stands up, an awkward look passing across her face. “I’m going to get home. Don’t stay too long. It’s late.”

“I won’t.” Ted gives her a wave. “Goodnight boss.”

Rebecca looks at him one last time, and there’s something in her eyes, and he doesn’t know what it is. Something sad. Something…strange. But then, he’s in a strange mood, tonight. Maybe he’s imagining things. It’s gone in an instant, replaced not by the maternal friend with her arm around his shoulder in a dark alley in Liverpool, but by the woman he sees almost every day—sharp-edged and secretive, who doesn’t know how kind she truly is.

“Good night, Ted.”

#Ted Lasso #My fic

[kenzieam]

Beauty and the Blackheart - Chapter One

@jewels2876​​  @moonbeambucky​  @jeremyrennerfanxxxx123​​  @iammarylastar​​@captstefanbrandt​​  @badassbaker​​  @pinknerdpanda​​  

I know I’m forgetting people, sorry. If you want in, hit me.

************************************************************************

Rating: M

Warnings: Language, general nuttiness, smut

Word Count: 2750+

************************************************************************

Okay, so……

Lev, the serious one, is visiting her wild-child twin brother, Clint. There she meets Bucky, a tall, dark, brooding mystery who’s her total opposite in every way. Of course, she’s intrigued even as her mind screams to run for safety, but what could go wrong, right??

***********************************************************************

As the seatbelt light shut off, Lev exhaled a deep breath and stood, pulling on her plain white button-down shirt to smooth the wrinkles and drew her backpack from the overhead compartment. Slinging it on her shoulder, she waited quietly to exit, grimacing faintly as a Karen behind her began to object loudly to the order, demanding she and her little darling exit first.

Lev agreed wholeheartedly, about to push the bitch out of the plane herself, boot her offspring out behind her, but held back, taking another deep breath.

Thankfully, no one else seemed inclined to indulge Karen and she subsided with a few indignant, unladylike sounds, falling into line with something resembling humility.

And, thankfully, Karen headed off in the opposite direction once they hit Arrivals. No doubt to find someone else to pay for her inconvenience.

Jesus, that was why she’d chosen Trauma medicine as her specialty, the situations were too life-and-death for such foolishness. Shaking it off, she raised on her tiptoes to see over the crowd, looking for a certain familiar face.

“Hey, Trouble!”

Lev startled, whirling. “Jesus, Clint!”

He laughed gleefully, killing himself and Lev fought a smile, crossing her arms over her chest.

“You’re a bastard.” She said, by way of greeting, which only added to Clint’s mirth. Still howling, he slung an arm around her neck, giving her a close-up view of his heavily tattooed forearm.

“I missed you,” he laughed, pressing a messy kiss to her hair, roughing it up just the way he knew she hated.  

The perfect definition of ‘good twin/bad twin’, Clint and Lev were alike only in a shared birthdate and parents. Even from birth it was obvious they were polar opposites; the fair-haired little Clint wild and incorrigible, the darker Levka all seriousness and calm serenity. While Clint could rock and roll for hours past bedtime, infant Lev would settle right away, ignoring the antics of her slightly older brother as he weebled and wobbled the next crib over.

The dichotomy continued throughout their childhood, with Clint deciding to refer to his serious little sister as ‘Trouble’ entirely to illustrate just how ‘un-trouble-like’ she truly was, while he happily answered to anything she threw at him, up to and including ‘you little shit’.

“I missed you, too.” Lev admitted, fighting a grin; although complete opposites, they were inseparable, yin and yang all though their shared lives.

“C’mon.” Clint pulled her towards the luggage carousel, squinting at the rotating bags. “So, which plain black bag is yours?”

Lev made a face, just because he preferred shades electric didn’t make hers plain. Reaching for the familiar case she smirked when Clint whistled.

“Whew, a silver one? Who are you and what did you do with my baby sister?”

“Shut up,” Lev laughed, dropping the case unceremoniously in Clint’s arms, grinning when he grunted under the weight. “Take me home, I’m hungry.”

Clint rolled his eyes, jerking his chin in the right direction as he turned and walked away.

“So, how’s the life of a doctor?” Clint asked as they roared down the highway, perched high in his jacked-up pickup.

Lev grinned. “I’ve just finished my residency, I’m not a true doctor yet.”

“But you will be, soon?”

Lev nodded. “Yeah, I took a few months off but I’m pretty sure I’ll be working with Dr. Hawkins.”

“That ER guy? The one you trained under?”

“He’s the one.”

“What is it with you and that ER trauma stuff?”

“What is it with you and tattoos?” Lev shot back mildly. “You never even had a tattoo until you met Nat out here.”

Clint shrugged, glancing down at his fully inked arms. Ten years ago, when Lev had been heading directly to university after high school graduation, Clint had thrown a duffel bag into his old beat-up Camaro and gone on a road trip, no destination in mind, no real plans. After a while he’d met a similarly spirited woman named Natalie and, after a whole whirlwind week of romance, married her in her hometown city hall, calling afterwards to inform his family that he was surprise! married and moving in with his new wife.

If Clint had been anything less than a Tasmanian Devil all his life, this might have surprised his family, but his parents took the news in quite a blasé way, even laughing as they told Lev during their weekly check-ins.

While Lev had met her sister-in-law a few times in the decade since, it had always been when Clint had flown home to visit, and Lev happened to be home from school as well. She’d never gone out to visit her brother, and these few months after her residency had been the perfect time to remedy that.

“You going to let me give you a tattoo finally?” Clint asked, waggling his eyebrows.

Lev leveled a glare at him. “Are you any good?” It was a joke, and they both knew it. Despite having never touched a tattoo gun until after he’d married Nat, Clint had proved himself an absolute prodigy, joining Nat’s brother and his friend as an apprentice in the local parlour and quickly becoming a startling skilled artist.

Five years ago, that brother-in-law, his friend and Clint had all gotten together to open their own shop, Blackheart Ink and Body Mod, where you could get a wrist tattoo and a nipple piercing all in the same day.

“You know I am.”

“No.”

“C’mon, get a piercing at least.”

“No!”

“It doesn’t have to be visible-”

“Clinton Derrick Barton!”

“Levka Valentina! Or should I say Dr. Levka Valentina Barton!”

“Don’t,” Lev rolled her eyes. “I still say mom was high when she named me, you at least got something normal, which is ironic, since you’re anything but.”

“Love you, little sis.”

“Love you too, ass. Are you taking me to your place?”

“Nah, I thought we’d stop by the shop first.”

Lev hesitated, she felt dirty and wrinkled, always preferred meeting strangers looking her best.

“You look fine.” Clint deadpanned. “Stop worrying.”

Lev huffed at her infuriating brother, pulling down the visor to check herself in the mirror. Frowning, she pinched her cheeks for color, making Clint shake his head and chuckle. Running her fingers through her hair she contemplated grabbing some facial wipes from her backpack, but by then Clint was slowing down, flipping on his signal light.

“Here it is.” He announced proudly, pulling up in front of a large storefront. Painted black, with the shop’s name displayed prominently you would be hard to mistake this as anything but a black hole of debauchery and Clint grinned, elbowing Lev when he saw this in her eyes.

“You’re such a snob.” He teased, laughing.

“And you’re deranged.” Lev lobbed back, sticking out her tongue.

“Do that again and one of the guys will pierce it.” Clint snickered, yanking open the glass door. “Hey assholes, I’m back! Oh, hey Spider, didn’t know you were here, getting a touch up?” Instantly Clint integrated himself into his habitat, heightening the difference between him and his sister, who stood just inside, looking lost.

“Christ, baby. You could introduce her to everyone.” Nat scolded mildly, elbowing Clint as she passed. “Hey, honey. Welcome!” She opened her arms, gathering Lev into a tight hug, pulling back to grin at her. “You look great, Lev. How are you?”

“I’m good, Nat. Thanks. What about you.” Lev replied, grinning, almost stupidly grateful.

“Oh, getting by. These guys keep me busy.” Nat gestured over her shoulder with the flip of a wrist, which seemed to be some kind of signal for Clint and a tall blond holding a tattoo gun and leaning over whom she assumed was ‘Spider’ based on the giant Black Widow tattoo on his bald head, to start hooting like monkeys. Nat’s gesture morphed instantly into the bird, which she doubled by adding her other hand when she spun to face the men. “Oh, shut the hell up!” Glancing back at Lev she grinned fondly. “See, barbarians and fools.”

“Hey.” Spider protested with a grin.

“And bikers.” Nat teased back, taking Lev’s hand and pulling her nearer. “Lev, this is Spider, as I’m sure you’ve figured out.”

Lev offered a timid smile, received a crooked grin and wave back, one gold tooth glinting underneath a thick goatee.

“And this big dickhead is my brother, Steve.” Nat continued.

Steve pulled his attention away from Spider’s tattooed bicep and nodded, a surprisingly handsome smile lighting up his face. “Hi.” His deep voice was gentle, a startling contrast to his intimidating bulk, highlighted by a fitted tank top that hugged each muscle and showing miles of velvety, inked skin. A short crewcut showed off strong, clean-shaven features and his blue eyes sparkled with good humor. “So, you’re Clint’s twin sister. We’ve heard a lot about you.”

Lev felt her cheeks warm; she could only imagine the stories Clint had told. “Oh, really?” She squeaked, flicking a glance at Clint, who grinned merrily back.

“Uh huh,” Steve turned his attention back to Spider’s arm, wiping carefully at a spot before speaking again. “He says you’re a doctor.”

“Yeah,” Clint broke in, slinging an arm around Lev’s neck. “She can take a look at that growth on your ass-”

“Clint!” Both Lev and Nat screeched, and he yelped as Nat connected with the back of his head.

Steve threw Clint a look, one of mild exasperation and brotherly tolerance before turning his blue eyes back to Lev. “I don’t have a growth on my ass, but maybe you can prescribe your brother some sort of heavy sedative.”

“Hey!”

Steve grinned at him, lessening the dig then winked at Lev. “Welcome, Lev. Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” Lev replied, feeling herself relax. He may have looked like a barbarian, as Nat had put it, but Steve seemed to be a kind soul, a genuinely benevolent person.

“I was wondering where you were hiding!” Clint suddenly shouted, pointing as if Elvis himself had just appeared from the back room. “Lev, this is the other third of the Blackheart team, Bucky.”

Lev turned at Clint’s direction and froze, her heart suddenly afflicted with tachycardia.

If she’d thought Steve was big, she was wrong, for Bucky was bigger still. Thick, corded muscles flexed as he paused, brow furrowing slightly as he seemed to be working out what Clint was babbling about. A thick but neatly trimmed beard obscured most of his face, while his chocolate brown hair brushed his shoulders and fell over a pair of startingly blue eyes.

He looks like he could pick me up and snap me in half, Lev thought shakily. She’d seen similar builds and musculature on heavyweight cage fighters, brought into the ER with some gruesome injury after their latest match and she couldn’t be sure if her pulse was racing in fear or something else entirely.

Bucky, the name didn’t belong on such a giant and Lev licked her lips nervously, feeling like she was standing in the entrance of a dark forest, able to hear a low growling from inside.

The silence in the shop was suddenly overwhelming to Lev, she could feel her heartbeat making ripples in the surrounding air and she stumbled to speak.

“Hi,” it came out little better than a squeak, broadcasting to everyone in the room that she was scared shitless of the newest arrival.

Piercing blue eyes locked on hers and a shadow passed through them, too fast for Lev to understand. He started moving again, lumbering to a workstation closer to where Lev, Clint and Nat stood. The padded stool groaned under his weight as he sat, setting a series of drawings on a light-up tabletop and he grunted, nodding once at her, before returning his attention to his papers.

“Okay,” if this was unusual, Clint gave no indication. “Let me show you around, kid.”

Lev followed obediently, saw Bucky glance up at her once as she passed, then look quickly back down and she hoped she didn’t stink from her plane ride.

In the back was a supply room, large break room and three private rooms. All three men, Clint explained, had a private room for quote ‘nervous’ customers or ‘intimate’ piercings, in addition to their spaces out in the front and the customer was free to choose where they wanted to be, however most decided to stay out front to be a part of the varied conversations that flowed like cheap beer.

“So, you all do body piercing too?” Lev clarified, eyeing a clearly sterilized and sealed tray in what Clint had said was Bucky’s room.

“Yeah,” he answered, peeking over her shoulder. “Bucky does the most of the three of us, but we all do a fair bit. Why, you thinking about one?” He elbowed her and snickered, then grabbed the side of her head and pressed a loud kiss to her temple. “Shit, I missed you little sis. It’s been too long!”

Lev agreed, for all their differences, there was nobody Lev loved more than her infuriating twin brother and smiled at him, leaning in for a quick hug.

Clint squeezed her bone-creakingly hard for a moment then released her. “You want to go? You’re probably tired.”

Relief washed over Lev, she’d kill for a shower and nap. “Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks.”

“So….” Lev began, then wished she’d kept her damn mouth shut. Steve, Nat and Spider had bid her goodbye with friendly calls and waves, while Bucky had continued to glower, like a toad on a stump, Lev thought sourly and it had continued to bother her, even as they left Blackheart in the rear-view.

“So?” Clint asked leadingly, cocking a brow in question as he kept most of his attention on the road. The truck rumbled underneath them, the obligatory air freshener, in the iconic silhouette of a Trucker Girl, swinging from the rear-view mirror.

“Is Bucky always that talkative?” She gritted her teeth, hating herself instantly for asking. Clint could take this as anything from a dig at his friend’s personality to a thinly veiled show of interest and, with her luck, he’d assume the latter.

“Yeah….” Clint drew out the word, as if considering what to say next. “Just be careful around him, little sis.”

Lev jerked her head to stare at him. What was he talking about? Had he opened a business with a convicted murderer or something?

Clint chuckled, reading her horrified gaze correctly. “Nothing like that, kid. Buck’s just…. intense. He parties hard, lives hard. Nicest guy you’ll ever meet if you’re a friend, but I’ve never seen him with the same girl more than once or twice.”

Oh. That was crystal clear. Hands off.

“I didn’t-”

“No judgement,” Clint interrupted. “But we all know he’s a handsome guy and you wouldn’t be the first to get burned if you tried to touch him.”

Sometimes, a completely different side of Clint appeared; a stable, rational man and Lev knew better than to waste that guy’s wisdom by not listening the rare times he did surface.

“Don’t worry, though. He’s alright. He won’t, like, try anything with you. You’re not his type.”

“Oh, really?” The sand in the Sahara was wetter than Lev’s voice.

“Yeah,” Clint nodded, signalling to turn down a residential street, waiting until an old lady hobbled slowly through the crosswalk. Lowering the window, he leaned his head out. “You need a hand, Sylvia?”

Sylvia peered upwards to see the speaker then smiled. “No, dear boy. I’m fine. Thank you, though.”

Clint sat back upright, completing the turn and glanced sideways at Lev’s surprised look. “What? She’s a nice old lady, asks us to fix little things around her house, brings cookies by the shop.”

Lev grinned, warmed by her brother’s sudden display of heart then remembered their earlier conversation. “Not his type, huh?”

“Nah,” Clint took the change of subject easily, turning into the driveway of a modest little Craftsman. The only hint that someone like him lived there was a ‘Tattoo Gods Only Parking’ sign above the garage door. “You’re too buttoned-up, too serious. He dates girls that can twist cherry stems into knots with their tongues and deep throat like a porn-star.”

“Ewww!”

Clint shrugged before gesturing out the windshield. “We’re here!”

#bucky barnes #bucky #au bucky #au bucky barnes #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes fanfiction #au bucky barnes fanfic #au bucky barnes fanfiction #au bucky romance #au bucky smut #au bucky drama #bucky and lev #bucky x lev

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 62

Thank you, everyone, for bearing with me on the delays for this chapter.  There was a benefit: @satan-parisienne got to beta the chapter, AND our other sister got caught up all the way in the meantime.

Right now, I’m at 463 followers.  As soon as I hit 500, do we want to do another character contest, or Name the Colony??  I am honestly dying to have all of you name the Colony... I feel like it would make you ALL crew-members of the Ark!

Same warning as always: this is a plague arc, so there are several references to medical procedures.

“There has to be a correlation.”

It was the first thing I heard as I woke up from yet another episode of passing out.  Once again, I had been wandering a dream version of the Ark, complete with ever changing levels of dereliction.  No matter how hard I tried, I was unable to speak with the Else again, however, and if the Council asked anyone else to even try, no one had informed me.

Blearily, I glanced toward the voice that I had heard.  Grey’s hair was ruffled in every direction, as though they had run their hands through it repeatedly.  Antoine was asleep, a tube trailing away from a bandage on his arm – I wasn’t the only one in the room needing transfusions anymore.  Maverick and Conor were berthed on either side of me, blotches taunting me from the skin around their eyes.  Tears pricked at my eyes as I tried to steady my breath before speaking. “How long have you been at it, Grey?”

With a sigh they turned toward me, forcing a kind smile on their face. “Sophia. How are you feeling?”

“Like I’m living in a horror movie. Again,” I groaned. “But seriously. Are the shadows because you’ve been working too much, or are you sick, too?”

“Medical scans only show slightly decreased iron levels from my baseline,” Grey admitted. “But that could also be related to standing and running tests for the last twelve hours.”

I tapped the space beside me in my berth. “Sit down for a minute. Take a break. You know as well as I do that wearing yourself out is counterproductive.” With great reluctance, they folded themselves to sit beside me. “You’re stressed out, aren’t you?” I asked, tapping their fingers gently.

The smile this time was reluctant but genuine. “People are falling ill all over the ship.  I have been trying to find a connection – some common activity that they all may have come into contact with each other during.”

“There’s the Food Festival,” I pointed out.

“Very few Terran viruses have such a long gestation period,” Grey explained. “And those that do, have a much different set of symptoms.  Additionally, in a setting this small, there are precious the majority of the ship do not share.”

“And you have the problem with the platforms,” I realized ruefully before glancing at my partners.

Cool fingers tapped my cheek. “That issue can wait,” Grey admonished gently. “It is not as important as the health of the people on this ship.”

“Speaking of…” I tried to prop myself up on my elbows, but a pointed look from my friend – as effective as any of Tyche’s glares – had me surrendering to leaning back on the pillows again. “Is there anyone on the ship who isn’t sick so far?”

Grey nodded with a grimace. “The number of those not affected numbers in the low double digits, unfortunately.”

“What do they have in common?”

“Hermits, every last one,” a voice announced quietly as the door hissed open. “And that’s saying something, coming from me.”  A tantalizing smell wafted over, setting my mouth and eyes watering as Tyche grinned like the cat who got the cream.  She shoved a forkful of something deep reddish brown into her mouth and moaned. “Phaal curry with scotch bonnets. Why didn’t you tell me about this stuff, Soph?”

“Noah is going to kill you if he comes in here,” I warned. “They have officially deemed that a biohazard.”

Grey winced. “I feel I should deem that a biohazard.  How are you eating that? Where did you even find it?”

“Four menus deep in my sister’s food console when I stopped in to water the plants,” she explained around yet another mouthful. “I warned Noah I have it, and they promised to wait for the scrubbers to clear the room before they come in here.”

“Give me a bite and I won’t complain,” I wheedled.  Noah never let me take that stuff out of my quarters.  “And tell me what you mean by hermits?”

Obligingly, she sauntered over and held out a forkful of nuclear-spicy lamb as she clarified. “The few people who aren’t sick are the ones who haven’t left their quarters since arriving.  They make me and Derek look downright outgoing.”

“Wait,” I sputtered as sweat beaded and started to drip from my quickly-numbing face. “They haven’t left their quarters in over a year?”

“Nope,” she confirmed. “They contribute, but all of it is remotely.  Programming, online tutoring, that sort of thing.”

“Well, that tells us a great deal of nothing,” I sighed. “We can’t even narrow down what activities they haven’t participated in, because they haven’t participated in any.”

“So go the other route,” she shrugged. “Who is the most sick?”

“Nixe,” Grey and I answered in unison.  Our resident mermaid was still holding on, but she hadn’t regained consciousness yet.

“Wait,” I interjected as I realized something. I squinted at my sister. “Your symptoms showed up before Antoine’s. How come you’re up, bouncing around?”

“You kidding?” she cocked an eyebrow at me. “Soph. I’ve lived most of my life with sever anemia. Even now I probably have more in my body than I ever did back on Earth. I feel amazing, by comparison.”

“She also has a habitually high-iron diet,” Grey added, tilting their head and glancing at me. “Current comestibles notwithstanding.”

“That makes sense,” I conceded. “So we can’t even build a timeline around onset of symptoms, can we?”

“Negative.  Several people on the ship have high-iron diets for various reasons. Particularly your sister and Maverick.”

I rolled my head to left and squinted. “Really?  He’s one of the pickiest eaters I know.”

“Spinach, tofu, red meat,” they started ticking off on their fingers. “Lentils and other legumes, pumpkin seeds, broccoli, and organ meats are among the foods with the highest iron content.”

My eyes widened. “You practically listed Maverick’s entire diet, Grey.”

“I am well aware.  I do monitor his nutrition closely, as he still has to prove he has consumed sufficient healthy calories in order to start his daily shift.”

“Huh,” I grunted. “So, he could have been sick the longest and we are just now seeing it?”

“While I highly doubt it, your theory is somewhat correct.”

“Weh di’ oo geh ‘im oo ee ohgah mee?” Tyche asked delicately around the last of her curry.

“Conor likes kidney pie, black pudding, and liver with onions,” I explained, trying not to wince at my sister’s breathtaking lack of manners and reminding myself that she just found out she can eat food she only dreamed of trying in the past.

She gulped, a look of revulsion on her face. “Liver and onions? That’s disgusting.”

As Grey completely lost their composure and gaped openly at the statement, I shrugged and soldiered on. “Not my idea of a good time, either, but they like it, so it’s their bonding time.”

“Surely not all three at once?”

“Christ, no. I would kill them if they ate kidney pie without me.”

“Okay, just checking.”  Tyche made her way to a disposal and made Noah aware that the curry had vacated the premises.

By this point, Grey was absentmindedly scratching at the rash that appeared from simply being near the dish.  “Can one of you explain to me how someone even eats something like that?  My eyes are burning just from being near food that spicy?”

“Ask her,” Tyche gestured. “I’m still figuring this out.”

I scowled at being put on the spot before turning to our friend. “I’ve always loved spicy food,” I admitted. “And I’ve never had any digestive issues with it. As I got older, I tried spicier and spicier food. It’s all so – vibrant. So full of flavor. Sure, you have some stuff that is just spicy for the sake of being painful, and I hate that kind of food. It’s just hate and spite made into food. No one should do that.” I sighed, struggling with my words. “Most spicy foods are ethnic foods, and I always liked being able to enjoy the ‘full’ version, for lack of a better term.  Being able to go to any country and say ‘I want to eat this the way you eat it,’ and mean that.  It just opens so many doors.”

“And it isn’t just spicy food,” Tyche pitched in. “She found this old show once, where this guy went around the world and tried weird native foods, and that was always her dream.  Every chance she got to travel like that, she tried the weirdest, most disgusting foods she could, just because she knew she wouldn’t get sick.”

“What was the worst?” Grey asked.  When we looked at each other in doubt, they laughed quietly. “It helps me get my mind off of all this.” They waved vaguely at the lab equipment. “So, tell me.  I never got to travel much before this.  I would like to hear.”

“Well,” I started hesitantly. “I only managed to choke down one bite of balut, but that may be more squeamish heart than squeamish stomach. Anything involving hard fat or cartilage is just right out, sorry.  I can’t get past the texture.  Once I got past the smell, durian was actually pretty good.  Most bugs are really nutty and delicious, surprisingly.  Balut was probably the one I liked the least. But – “ I held up my hands in a defensive posture. “I literally don’t remember what it tasted like, I couldn’t get my mind past the thought of what I was eating, so take that for what you will.”

Grey paled slightly as they looked the dish up on their datapad. “People eat that?”

Tyche nodded. “Yep.  I don’t get it either, but it’s a delicacy.”

They paled further as they looked up other dishes and confirmed I had tried them. “How did you not get ill?”

“Cast iron stomach,” Tyche and I explained, laughing at ourselves for responding in synch.

“Cast iron stomach, indeed,” they murmured.  Suddenly, their head snapped up.  They stared intently at the wall behind me before squinting slightly. “Cast iron…”

Without explanation, Grey jumped up from my berth, brushing past my sister on their way to the lab equipment. “Iron.  Whatever we are looking for is impacting iron absorption and red blood cell function. – “ Tyche and I looked at each other in confusion as Grey continued their impression of a rambling mad-scientist. “But nutritive iron does have elemental iron as part of the molecule…” Images flickered around the researcher as they scanned through notes and images; expanding this one, discarding that one, squinting at a few. “What if we are segregating the two for no reason… bacteria are bacteria, and the tail failed, too.”

The tail failed? Tyche mouthed at me. I shrugged, lost as she was.  We stared on in concern as Grey muttered, only half-audibly, into the night.

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#the miys #humans are weird #humans are space orcs #aliens #science fiction #original writing #original fiction #apocalypse

[ithinkthingsaboutstuff]

What is with Birds of Prey criticism?

i have seen BOP 

and i have read comments and review’s from different people (male and female) and i have decided to throughout my observations into the void. 

now personal taste is personal taste and everyone is allowed to like or not like whatever they want. 

but i will be looking at this from a ‘structured’ pov so i will be breaking the movie down into what others have got to say about it.

and with that in mind i will be taking things out of context but i will be summarising and linking to the sources when possible.  

i will be looking at how people have persevere them (again male and female) and why this might be so (but i will say now that it is only my best guess, and i will try to be as fair as possible)

and i will also add i have only seen the movie once at this point so i may miss some things or misremember others 

so from here on out we this will be nothing but 

------------------------------------------SPOILERS-----------------------------------------

ok so with that out of the way. 

PLOT 

the plot is basically 

Harley and the joker have broken up (joker, dumped her) 

this makes Harley lose her immunity in Gotham as she was protected by the fact she was the jokers girlfriend.

black mask is one of these people and is one of the most powerful in Gotham.

but he needs a diamond (that belongs to Helena) to be the most powerful in the city,

but when Zsasz and Black canary, get it take off them by a street girl (Cass) 

Harley says she will get it back to square herself with mask and he will protected her afterwards 

(there is also a b plot with Helena going around kill everyone who was involved with the death of her family)  

things happen 

and they all end up fight Black Mask men in a amusement park 

and Harley kills him on a dock.

then they all part ways.

now this is an oversimplification. 

but that does allow the movie to explore the characters and their relationship's with the world and the story.

but over all an average plot but no so more them say 

-the avengers (2012)

-thor (2011)

-age of ultron (2015)

-spider-man homecoming (2017)

and so on.

Criticisms

this is what one critic had to say about the movie

review from  Mick LaSalle

“but no, even that makes things sound better than they are. There’s no character there at all. There’s a look. There’s an attitude, and there’s an assemblage of mannerisms, but these are all veneers surrounding a vacuum.”  

“None of them suggest a personality, beyond some generalized zaniness.”

now i am no expert but is having a look, an attitude and mannerisms all things that make up someone’s personality? 

i can see if he was trying to say she has not much to add to the overall story or if it over shadowed everything in the movie, for sake of being “zany”   

but it was integrated into the movies narrative as a the main story telling tool,

e.g. Harley’s narration and the cartoons/ animation that came with. those where there to add character to the movie through Harley’s, so basically Harley’s personality is the films personality. 

and this is what he had to say about the plot

“If she wanted the Joker back, that would be something. That could be a movie. If she wanted revenge, that would be a weak motive, but it would still be something.”

now this has some interesting connotations,

what he was trying to say with this sentiment is only something i can guess, but i will want to give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe he was asking for a story similar to ‘mad love’  from the s4 of the Batman new adventures.

looking more at the sickness of that relationship (that some people admired and fawned over in suicide squad) so if that is the case then its not a bad thought,

however the way it is phrased makes it sound like more like Harley needs the Joker to be major part of the story for it to be any good. 

but Harley has had comic’s for year’s that prove the opposite.

now to compare this what he had to say about the Joker (2019)

“What’s terrifying and brilliant about Phoenix’s Joker is that he seems to be operating from an intricate yet alien form of logic. There is very little common ground between the character and the viewer, no shared understanding of right and wrong, real or unreal. He erupts into laughter without warning — a terrifying, piercing laugh that he can’t control. He sits in the audience at a comedy club, joyously and maniacally laughing at setups, not punch lines.”

now i am not saying Joker is a bad movie, I am just saying that he complained about the lack of story and character in one film and praised it in another.  

now i also understand that these films are different, and they have different tones and messages. and ever genre (one is action, the other is drama)

but basically

he is saying Joker’s lack of clear “personality” made the movie good and Harley’s made it bad (again this is apples and oranges, and way to simple)  

but the main point is that he has failed to look for WHY Harley is that way, or how that adds to the movie like he did for Joker.

now moving on to

Anthony Lane

“ No one could call Harley Quinn a recluse. She loves to go out, get wasted, meet people, and fight them. In onscreen graphics, she proudly reports what it is about her that vexes her opponents. (“Voted for Bernie.” “Have a vagina.”) Yet Harley is often alone in the frame—marching toward the camera in her T-shirt and shorts, smiling madly through lips of fire-engine red, and peppering us with unceasing chatter, as if words were buckshot. She lives on her own, too, with a stuffed beaver in a tutu and a pet hyena named Bruce. (As with the title, note the surfeit of nuttiness. Rarely have I seen a movie strain so hard to seem out-there.) Our heroine needs some kindred spirits, and quick.”

ok benefit of the doubt this is just a colourful way to describe the movie and Harley’s set up,

however with the next paragraph that follows i don’t think so

“No surprise, then, that Yan’s movie, peopled as it is by women who talk among themselves, with only fitful reference to men, doesn’t so much pass the Bechdel Test as ace it, while also ticking the profanity box, the ear-splitting box, and the bone-snapping box—every box, in fact, except for the tricky one that requires a motion picture to be good”

the strange thing is that he was so close to an epiphany

yes Harley is social but she is lonely that is the point of her being with the BOP, taking in Cassie.

and saying someone who is social is not able to be lonely is the dumbest thing i have ever heard.

and i can name dozens of movies off the top of my head that is a group of guys ‘talking among themselves, with only fitful reference to women’

like 

-  the hang over (1,2 and 3)

- die hard

- pulp fiction 

- fast and furious (all 9 of them)

- the other guys

- Sherlock (RDJ movies)

- the dark night 

- scarface

-  any Adam Sandler movie for the last 20 years

-memento

- rush hour (all 3)

- fight club 

like damn dude your getting all bent out of shape for women having the nerve to want to tell story’s about other women.

(and i would also like to point out that very on in the movie was a ‘bad guy’ or did bad things all throughout the film and the men are just what they are up against you know like some kind of antagonist??? fucking wild idea right, and as we all know every female villain in movies are always written with respect and dignity, can you feel my sarcasm)

and this is what this man also said about ‘ford vs ferrari’   

“Ford v Ferrari” is directed by James Mangold, and it may be his strongest film.

like dude you are showing your hand here.

but i am not wasting any more time on this dude.

 let us move on to the lady’s

MOLLY FREEMAN

“the movie ultimately embodies different kinds of liberation - not only of women breaking free from their abusive boyfriends, psychotic employers and the restrictive boy's club, but also the freedom and power that comes with finding a group where they feel accepted and supported.”\

“Cathy Yan's directing and vision for the film, which is realized in the action, costumes and music. The fighting sequences are absolutely brutal and choreographed in a way to showcase the characters' respective abilities. Harley's gymnast moves make a return, and when she gets her hands on a bat, the Cupid of Crime really lets loose - and it'll leave audiences breathless with exhilaration. Birds of Prey stands out because it's uniquely female, from the characters' fighting styles down to the details of Harley pausing mid-fight to give her friend a hair tie. This further extends to the costumes, designed by Erin Benach (A Star Is Born), which are exquisite and perfectly showcase each character's personality.”

Susana Polo

“Each character’s storyline is given a slightly different genre and tone, as well, one of a number of tactics the production employs to mimic Harley’s manic internal life. Huntress stalks around Birds of Prey like it’s a Kill Bill-esque revenge epic, while Renee Montoya is in a hard-boiled cop flick. The main heroine ensemble actors all breathe a wonderful amount of life into little-known characters overdue for mainstream attention.”

“Winstead delivers a comedic twist on the Huntress’s classic personality that I hope makes its way to comics as soon as possible, and the 13-year-old Basco deserves particular credit for holding her own alongside Robbie in their many scenes together. Robbie’s Harley Quinn is just as scene-stealing as she was in Suicide Squad, appearing to operate on at least 20 percent cartoon logic at all times — a useful skill for an occasionally fourth-wall-breaking narrator. Cartoon-channeling is also a useful skill for the star of a movie with such splendid fight scenes.”

 now i am not saying every man hates the movie, and every woman loved it that is insane and dumb.

but what does seem to be a common theme is that positive or negative, men and women are looking at different aspects of the movie 

women look at the movie on its own terms and men seem to look by comparing it to other “guy movies” 

now this a generalisation but this is a common idea that seems to run through it.

and here is some general thoughts from some people who have made comments, online.

female 

“I am sick and tired of being told what movies I need to like as a woman, this is a bad movie. It isn't a zero nor is it a ten and anyone rating it that way isn't being honest either with you or themselves. The storytelling is odd and the flashbacks are weirdly placed to the point where they take you out of the movie. This movie has too much exposition and then not enough which I congrats I guess. I don't think men are rating this film low because they are "man babies" I think they are rating it low because there are far better superhero and anti-hero movies out there to choose from.”

this is based on personal taste and why it didn’t sit right with them (and that’s fine)

male

“A rush movie without any type of storyline and God knows where they are heading with DCEU and it's characters..It's only Harley and Harley who has never been in BOP in comics...Mis usage of characters and movie..Just make a decision where do you wanna go with your movies”

now this interesting, when this people has the same feels as the person above 

they don’t look to the movie itself they look to find out evidence to discredit instead of anything in the film itself.

again i am not saying this person is wrong to feel this way i simply think the method of expressing it, is interesting.      

(and for the record this is actually an incorrect statement Harley and Poison Ivy have been apart of the team at different points) 

male

“The girls looked terrible like they were going Break-Dancing or something and Harley Quinn was dressed up like a Bird with makeup?? The ending was ridiculously stupid and predictable and the misogynist male pig attitudes towards the females in the film were jaw dropping cringe moments, like who acts like that??”

now this is about appearance, and the male characters, now this is showing that men see a violent, man who literally gets someone to cut a MAN’s face off  

and the only thing they focus on is that ‘oh he is mean to women damn SJW’s’

that is the weird’s thing? like you the bad guy is bad to the hero’s? shocking.

now i am not saying that the character is perfect and well crafted like loki or kilmonger but he serviced the purpose he was meant to, he was powerful intimidating and unpredictable.

(and black mask has always been a nut case)  

but i also think its interesting that these men who cry about SJW’s and how they mock men (and that does sometimes happen, it would be dumb to say they didn’t) 

never seem to mind that that women get called bitch’s and whores in every other movie.or that women are used shallow props to move the movie along. 

almost like it is distressing when you see someone you can identify with is treated like the peace of garbage. 

female

“The Film was decent enough for a lowkey Friday night out with the girls. Nothing you'd rant & rave about or even remember seeing in a few months but it was entertaining in places. The script felt a little bit underbaked & the story itself felt a bit disjointed. The direction of the film was lacking for me. In a world where Todd Phillips pulled off Joker (2019) this seems like a more rushed project that would've been better at Netflix or even Amazon Prime for release. I think the deserve another crack at this movie & another attempt at something with a bit more substance”

honest to the point and is looking at the movie on its own term's

notice how she does not need to devalue other women to get this across, not the character’s, not the write or director but was looking at it from a personal taste and rewatchablity,

the anger about this movie is so strange 

like how many hero movies have been worse then this and was not taking very chance they get to bash the creators and that they should not do their job’s because the movie had women as most of the cast and was mainly about them.

anyway i hand it over to all of you.    

#Birds of Prey #birds of prey movie #Harley Quinn #bop #long post

[comicteaparty]

February 1st-February 7th, 2020 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from February 1st, 2020 to February 7th, 2020.  The chat focused on the following question:

What is the nicest thing someone has said about your story, whether its published or still a WIP?

Deo101 [Millennium]

Well, this is one I can answer right away. It's not a very straightforward answer, but I had someone reference me and my comic in an essay about reasons why they were able to love themself... It was for a creative writing class, and they just used me as an example of a greater thing (indie media)... and I only know about it because they asked me permission. but they let me read the essay, and it made me cry. I havent heard from them in a while and I really hope they're okay, but that really stuck with me in a way nothing else has. It's not really a quote, though, so the nicest comment I have recieved was "I can tell how much you love people by reading this story." It was really sweet in a way I can't quite articulate. People have been incredibly sweet to me, and I feel very blessed. I could make a long list detailing the kindness I have been shown.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Apparently Phantomarine (http://www.phantomarine.com/) has made more than one person cry already. Which, to me, is pretty darn high praise, given that I've barely begun the story

Having people find it and say "THIS IS EXACTLY THE KIND OF STORY I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR" also hits a nerve. I know that feeling. You like certain themes/motifs and you wish someone would blend them together in just the right way. It can be magical.

And the last one is when I learned that children like it. A few have come forward so far - either in person or through their parents - and told me they loved it. It was around that age that I was building my own 'inner library' of inspirations for the comic. To know that I might be part of theirs, even in a small way, is just... the best?

Deo101 [Millennium]

that's all so incredibly nice <3

and now I wanna add to my list actually I don't want to interrupt, this is just a topic I wish I could sing from the rooftops about... I also had a student of mine (I am a teacher at a church) come out to me because he knew I would be okay with who he is. And, I have had people tell me it's inspiring to them, which kinda makes my heart melt. I'll stop now but, really I could go on and on about how open and loving people have been with me and my work, and how much it means to me.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Man... This is somewhat difficult for me to answer since I am so early into my comic creating journey. However, I will say that I recently got a comment on my comic Whispers of the Past (https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/whispers-of-the-past/list?title_no=191366) that made me smile. A long time reader commented that they always read my new pages twice, once on Webtoon, and again on Tapas. This really made me realize that my work has meaning to somebody other than myself, which is definitely what I need to hear when I'm doubting myself.

Mei

It's so nice reading about nice comments people have gotten and honestly... y'all deserve it!! I need to be in a better habit of commenting myself because I will promote comics to my friends for days on end but I'm too shy to leave a comment, even though I love receiving comments myself. I think the nicest comments I've received have been in combination with the conventions I was at last year. People told me that they thought the comic was funny, which I am incredibly thankful for. And one person who bought the book at the convention took the time to find it on Tapas and then comment on the latest page, saying that they'd talked to me, read the book, and that they liked it. That meant so much to me it was crazy! And another time, I was showing my book to someone at a convention and she said that she actually read the comic online, which honestly... It's so strange and surreal to me to meet anyone in real life who reads things posted online. It made my heart do smiley emoji. I think what LadyLazuli said is really right, this idea that you're a small part of someone's life or inspirations or just general day is pretty amazing?! Also this one guy commented on every page week to week with the same 'vase' joke on several updates and honestly the commitment was truly astounding

kayotics

I think some of the nicest comments come from one specific reader, who has mentioned a couple times that going back and reading the comic has helped them through some tough times. There was also one person who went to the effort of contacting me after their books were damaged from flooding, and wanted to buy new books to replace the old ones. This was wild since they wanted to do something so inconvenient (paying with cash by mail, and I didn't even have an online storefront in the first place) to replace the books.

twothirty

really early on i had 1 reader that would leave in-depth analysis of some character interactions and they were were spot on and made me really feel like people cared about this story . The other interaction that really stands out was doing the convention circuit last year I had a reader come up to say hi, and usually that interaction is just "i love your comic!" (which is amazing) but he also then talked to me at length about the story and again it was this feeling of just knowing someone out there cares about what you're doing. Comics feels particularly isolating so interactions like that really keep me going.

Funari (Raison d’Etre)

I've had two different readers tell me our comic has brought them joy during bad days. Sadly one of them I haven't heard from in 2 years and they were going through some rough times. I hope they're okay

Nutty (Court of Roses)

The nicest thing I've heard was when my coworker told me him and his daughter were reading it, and he told me that she's "drawing like me" with panels and stuff and keeps asking him "how do i make the bubbles" So they're gonna work on that and then he's gonna show it to me.

keii4ii

Any time someone gets what I'm trying to do with the story. I have a great fear of getting good intentioned people trashing the most important parts of my story (without realizing their importance). So whenever someone gets what the story is all about, whether as a whole or just one scene, it's a huge weight off my chest. Legit brings tears to my eyes. Even if I manage to overcome that fear some day, comments like that would mean a lot to me. Being understood has always been very important to me.

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Someone recently said they wanted to get a tattoo of something in the comic and that was cool. It also means a lot when people respond well to the jokes in the comic because I put a lot into the writing to make it funny. I hope it makes someone cry someday Joe Is Dead http://joeisdead.com/read

DanitheCarutor

Ffff all my readers have been so compassionate, it's jarring! In a nice way! Choosing one nice thing is hard, every comment has been nice. I guess the most flattering is when a someone takes the time to go back to the previous chapters to link little things up with the current events in the story, or when they manage to remember in spite of how webcomics update so slowly. There was a comment I saved a while back where someone remembered a small thing in chapter 3 and was doing some brainstorming with it relating to the current chapter at the time.

Every so often someone also leaves a paragraph with some of the most motivational gushing, it's so nice! Oh! Also, there have been a few people who've asked me to print my comic so they can have a physical copy (which I'm slowly starting to do), which is super motivating knowing a couple people like my depressing comic enough to want to own a copy of it.

keii4ii

Oh man, I too have saved screenshots of some of my favorite comments, but I don't wanna share them because 1) some of them are long and 2) maybe the commenters wouldn't want their names disclosed in a different context? They are great to save for a rainy day, though!

Tuyetnhi

Oh this is hard I remember one comment on tapas that they got their aunt and cousin reading it and I was flattered! Most comments I got were about the artstyle and progression of the story, which I hope to continue if school lets me. Still, I'm quite surprised that it drove someone to get their family to read a romance about someone's dream lover lmao

also same keii!

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Honestly, I have far too many comments I should screenshot. But so many of them are praising the art, and I never know how to feel about it. Like, those types of comments make me happy, but I never know how to truly feel about them.

keii4ii

Art is admittedly easier to comment on. If I'm commenting on art on anyone's comic, I try to point out how it contributes to the storytelling, rather than "ooh pretty and shiny." Pretty and shiny is valid but I'd be just doing illustrations if that were my main goal!

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

But if 9/10 comments are, "Wow, the art is so pretty!" I can't really react to it much, especially since my own self-doubt is constantly reminding me of my mistakes.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

I've been really excited to answer this question because it gives me an opportunity to thank any and all the fans and people who celebrate our work. I've been so humbled by all of the wonderful and amazing fanart we've received, music paired with scenes from our comic, and fans even imagining scenarios of the characters themselves-- I'm constantly blown away! I do have my most treasured moment however, and that was when we were tabling at TCAF a couple years back. We had been swamped with crowds, selling, and early mornings-- it was a long day! That was until we had one person who went through the trouble to see us in person, and handcraft a drawing to deliver to us, saying thank you, and in that moment I bawled!! They quickly left after us thanking them so much, and I'll never forget that and how much it gave us a fire to see this whole project through. We have it framed and it sits in front of our cpu

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I got one comment where someone said that one of my main characters "seems sweet," and it just left me confused because, a) he's only said about ten words total, and b) in those ten words, he has somehow managed to be rude.

So how is he sweet???

But I mean, I should be happy that he seems likeable despite his attitude and reticence

Tuyetnhi

nice lmao

I do agree about the comments about the artwork being pretty and idk how to repond other than thanks lmao(edited)

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Yep

That's pretty much all I can say

Because I would HOPE my art looks pretty good after a decade drawing haha

Tuyetnhi

tho tbh because of the nature of my comic, I do get the occasional thirst comment and I'm just sitting there bawling

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Oh yeah, I get those

Tuyetnhi

"Wow he's buff"

"yea bc I made him like that lmao"

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

People drooling about my male MC mainly

It's so awkward, but I knew it would happen

Tuyetnhi

same, but for the male love interest and i'm like "this is expected lmao"

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I KNEW WHAT I WAS DOING

keii4ii

I get like 0 thirsty comment despite one of the MCs being an athletic cat dude with literal secret tentacles (I'm okay with not getting a lot of thirsty comments, but I do find it interesting)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I've gotten thirsty comments and my comic is not meant to be romantic or sexy at all

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Oh, I can leave you some thirsty comments

I love Lu

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I was going to say they are inevitable(edited)

but kei proved that wrong

Tuyetnhi

same I love Lu too lmao

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

And will gladly praise his hotness

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

if your comic goes on for long enough, i think you will get some eventually. it is a rule of the internet

keii4ii

It's been ongoing since Nov 2014 XD But I guess it takes longer for some than others!

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

@keii4ii I don't think you quite understand

I have never been attracted to animal-people before

I have always found anthros and such weird

And yet

Lu is totally my thing

Tuyetnhi

Strangely attractive for a cat guy lol

points for those who get the ref

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

how do you guys know what their comic is?

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

He is way too attractive

keii4ii

Mine? Cronaj and Tuyetnhi came across it outside this Discord, I believe!

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Yep

I have been reading it for a few years now

Although I can't say exactly when, because HoK has been a part of my life for so long

Tuyetnhi

I think I started reading it a year or 2 ago lol

DanitheCarutor

@keii4ii The only nice thing about Webtoons is that there aren't any profiles to check, so you can't look up fans via their comments. Also if you did Google their username there isn't a guarantee whoever you find would be that Webtoons user without them telling you. Lmao! About the thirsty comments, I used to get them a lot of Webtoons. There was this one scene where my smaller MC pulled the taller one to their face to say "Your friend is dead", before shoving him away and walking off. Some of my readers went wild! They wanted the two MCs to make-out so bad, even though the scene clearly had no romantic chemistry... or even the entire comic for that matter. My thirsty bunch came off really desperate and reaching at times.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Omg, that's just precious

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I really have never gotten thirsty comments, with the exception of one or two very mild 'Oh, that character is attractive' comments. But I think my comics just don't really attract thirsty readers. Of course, I rarely get any reader feedback, so that's probably part of it.

keii4ii

@DanitheCarutor Yeah, that's a plus about the semi-anonymity! My screenshots are from less anonymous places, so yeah. Some are also from like... Discord, where the person may not even have expected the comment to be archived in any way. (Sometimes I actually asked if I could screenshot, but I don't know if I asked every time...)

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

No one has ever reported finding my characters attractive

Deo101 [Millennium]

People thinking my characters are hot is a pretty common thing, and usually I don't mind but... sometimes it's the bane of my existence.

It's always a little bit weird, though

every time someone is like "dat ass " I'm like alright bud keep it to urself

it's part of why I made all of my characters adults, actually

people even before I started making it, just when I was talking to them about it or showing my art would STILL be overly sexual about my characters so I aged them up where it felt less weird for me.

kayotics

I’ll get thirst comments every once in a while, usually on tapas. I don’t mind it too much, especially since I’m usually making characters that I’m also attracted to? I usually think thirst comments are funny

DanitheCarutor

Pfff I'm in a similar boat to Deo's. Usually I don't mind, but there are moments where it sucks. Like there will be a really serious, or heavy scene and someone will pop up with "Make them kiss!!", "Don't be mean to your future hubby, X! Kiss him and make up!!". It totally feels they don't actually care about the story and just want something to jack it off to. xD I don't get a whole lot of thirst anymore, which is nice. I think the vocal group lost interest after being blue-balled for 3-4 chapters. Weirdest thing, I have yet to get anyone saying my characters are attractive... well, some readers used to say Julian (my questionable looking non-binary character) was pretty but they weren't really thirsty, just observations. At least they came off like that. My style makes characters look kind of ugly, so comments about any of my cast being attractive is non-existent. @keii4ii Ooh yeah, I can see how that would be an issue. Although, if you really want to show off some super nice comments, you can also just cover or blur out their username and icon image. A lot of people do that, it's really good for keeping up the user's anonymity, and I don't think they would mind since you're not using their words slanderously.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Can I admit I sort of wish I got some thirsty and shipping comments? I also draw characters I think are hawt so I kinda wish my readers felt the same way. XD I don’t really want them in Ashes were my characters are teens, but in Eryl where 95% of the cast is legal age, I kinda wish some people wanted to be a little bit thirsty about it. XD

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah, i just wish it wasnt... Idk sometimes it seems like thats ALL people see and it makes me sad

Like theres other stuff going on...

eli [a winged tale]

I feel you too Cap’n! I sort of expected shipping comments for AWT https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/keyspace-a-winged-tale/list?title_no=322364 but yeah they’re still kids discovering themselves! When I start my adult fantasy comic (tentatively planned), then I’m all on board for sure. For the question, I love and screenshot every comment to peruse whenever I feel down. I treasure all of them but one that particularly stood out for me was a writer reimagining all their stories with my art and characters and that just about made me cry happy tears

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

So far the only 'thirst comments' I've gotten are when the comic gets even the slightest bit... gay I can't say my story revolves around major LGBTQ+ themes, but people have picked up on random bits of subtext between characters (which is mostly intentional on my part, not gonna lie) and specifically take time to comment on them. It makes me happy to see people reading between the lines. And it also helps me know what the readers like or are really looking for. So... yeah, I'm gonna keep on that path

eli [a winged tale]

Did I miss that in phantomarine?? Howww

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

The subtlest of subtle subtext... which will become far less subtle over time

Nutty (Court of Roses)

i am deliberately pushing my main ship to get ppl into it lmao

YOU WANT THESE TWO TO KISS, I PROMISE

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

GOSH I know this feeling too well I feel like I don't want to overwhelm the readers, but I want them to still realize "...Hmmmmmm, yeah I kinda want this."

eli [a winged tale]

I’m so intrigued now

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

good

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

wait i can't think of anything remotely gay/romantic in phantomarine

besides maybe

phaedra and... cheth?

eli [a winged tale]

The shipping comments in AWT are currently on point at exactly where I want them to be

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i don't believe you would go for that, but shipping enemies is a very common fandom thing

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I wish I had more people shipping my characters because I'm all alone in it right now

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

@Nutty (Court of Roses) I'm doing the same in Ashes. I'm being super obvious about Anor x Rava being a future couple. XD

So far I haven't really gotten any comments about it. Idk if my readers care about romance at all.

Which is okay, because I don't really write much romance into my comics.

Even though I secretly wish for a bit of shipping from readers.

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I have to find out how visibly and obviously gay the characters have to act before people pick up on it

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

sssfrs, your comic just doesn't feel like the kind of comic people would ship characters in, though. Even the relationship between the captain and the guy that left, though lovely, feels, i don't know, too mature to really ship?

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

It's not the focus of the plot though so it's not essential just would be fun

Deo101 [Millennium]

people were shipping page 2 for me so idk

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

That's a fair way to look at it

Deo101 [Millennium]

apparently they need to be next to eachother , in my experience

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i think the art style plays a part, too

people were shipping my characters also from page two. But I have a "prettier" style than sssfrs

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Yeah, I think the only way readers even know my characters are queer is from the extra art I make of them for Pride month each year. On panel the gay isn't incredibly obvious.

Deo101 [Millennium]

yeah, and I do WANT people to ship them so its not like I mind. I like shippers (when they are in line with my plans)

eli [a winged tale]

Yes Deo!! Exactly

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Some characters I think have a great dynamic but I just haven't published enough of the material that shows their chemistry yet so I can't blame anyone for not seeing it

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

^same for me

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

looking forward to seeing that in both your comics!

i follow both

eli [a winged tale]

That’s fair ssfrs I’m all for the slow burn

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

It's true that my goal isn't to make the characters visually attractive and appealing in that way as much as in personality and interactions

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I do keep seeing people leave 1* ratings for Eryl on WT and I can't help but wonder if it's homophobes angry about a character sheet I shared that mentioned the character was lovingly raised by two dads. Bc there has been nothing really controversial on-panel in the comic, and I have such a small audience it has no other reason to keep attracting hate.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

yeah, that's what i was trying to say. couldn't think of a good way to say that though. but i like your art and feel like it fits your story well

( at sssfrs)

i don't think there are a large number of homophobes on WT. If anything, there's an overabundance of the opposite- fetishists

people leave 1 star on WT for random reasons like you not updating enough

don't worry about it

eli [a winged tale]

Link your webcomics? With <> . Love to check them out

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/puppeteer/list?title_no=290620

Deo101 [Millennium]

I get a lot of fetishists, yeah....

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/dark-wings-eryl/list?title_no=287293

Deo101 [Millennium]

https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/millennium/list?title_no=110866

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Idk, maybe they don't like that I update in traditional pages, then, Who knows

All I know is every time my ratings start crawling back up, suddenly they'll take a big hit.(edited)

Deo101 [Millennium]

idk, some people just seem to do that kinda thing

I have thought it could be other creators before, too...

trying to make less competition or something. but that would be cruel and I dont like to think someone would do that

so I prefer to think its just someone who didnt like my stuff

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

eh i prefer to think the best of people

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

It's not like I'm super successful or anything. The algorithms haven't been kind to either of my comics so I'm hardly competition.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i'm not going to think it's other creators

Deo101 [Millennium]

yeah that's what Im saying

like its popped in my head and then I was like literally who would do that

thatd be reaaaaal messed up

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

hey, how to i add my comic name in paren to my name on this server?

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Unfortunately I know a lot of creators who would. They just don't hang out in spaces like these.

Deo101 [Millennium]

just edit your nickname in the options

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Mine is called Joe Is Dead, on here http://joeisdead.com/ and on tapas https://tapas.io/series/JoeIsDead

Deo101 [Millennium]

oh right I actually have another comic. It was on hiatus over a year so I havent gotten into the habit of sharing it...

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Yeah, go to the ... next to the server name and it opens up a menu with the 'change nickname' option.

Deo101 [Millennium]

https://tapas.io/series/Time-and-Time-again

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I put the title in my name

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

My other comic is here on WT: https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/children-of-shadow-ashes/list?title_no=145048&page=1

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i just don't like dismissing negative feedback. I don't want to get negative reviews and just brush them off as jealous people because i know my comic definitely has room to improve and would rather negative feedback motivate me to look for ways how

got it, thanks!

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I love negative feedback. I want to put out the best work I can & hearing what people don't like or don't think is working helps me do that

Deo101 [Millennium]

theres constructive feedback, and then theres people telling me my characters are stupid and I think I can brush the latter off

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Unfortunately, I have been the victim of vicious jealous reviews. I've seen a lot of ugly in the webcomic world over the many years I've been doing this. Some creators be petty.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

@sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD) hm if i were to give negative feedback about your comic I'd say the biggest things are that you have a lot of characters that in my mind are kind of hard to differentiate, and also it can be really hard to tell where your characters are in space. But those don't matter too much, as they both will probably get better with time. Your biggest strength imo in your dialogue anyways

keii4ii

Not every negative feedback is relevant to my goals, is key for me. It's the whole "you can't please everyone" principle. My target audience does not include every person out there. If my target audience falls in love with what I make, then that's success for me. I don't need to impress the rest of the world.

keii4ii

(Thanks Tatsu.)

Deo101 [Millennium]

You have a different definition of "negative feedback" than I do.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

who are you referring to?(edited)

Deo101 [Millennium]

You

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

in what way?

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I can usually tell the difference between 'This person has a different idea of what this story should be than I do' and 'This person has it out for me because of jealousy or spite'

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Yeah I've found it really hard to juggle the consistency with where characters are standing all the time. I write out lists of the order they're spatially located in an effort to keep track of them. Hopefully I'll get better with practice

Deo101 [Millennium]

the negative feedback I am talking about is basically straight up hate. Constructive criticism, pointing out the flaws of a work, isnt "negative feedback" by my definition.

so saying "I want negative feedback" means something different for you than it does for me.

i WILL dismiss people being straight up rude to me

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

hm, I feel like a lot of people define negative feedback the same way i do, constructive criticism about what you could do better. If you say you dont want negative feedback you might get people thinking you don't want critique at all. imo what you are referring to might be more clearly just called "hate"

Deo101 [Millennium]

I'll consider it if someone is trying to help, even if most of the time I ignore it

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I also get the random 1 star ratings on Webtoon, so I think some people are just easy to hate stuff(edited)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

yo sssfrs, you keep track of where characters are in space by writing lists??

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

These are probably also the same people who dislike videos habitually on Youtube

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i can't imagine working with that

Deo101 [Millennium]

I actually dont want critique at all.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

it seems so hard

Deo101 [Millennium]

not if I dont ask for it.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Con crit and hate aren't the same thing, though

One is genuinely trying to help you improve, the other is just trying to bring you down.(edited)

And it's okay to not want the former

Deo101 [Millennium]

and I would say "negative feedback" doesnt include con crit

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Just because you make something doesn't mean you have to want people to give crit on it.(edited)

Yeah

I agree, because GOOD con crit is usually polite because if the person knows what they're talking about, they were where you are now and will be nice about it.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

From my experience the best critiques come from other artists doing similar work to you

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i don't think all negative con crit is helpful, either. people also need to know what their strengths are so they know what to keep instead of just what to remove

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

They might not even be trying specifically to be nice about it

But their words feel less hurtful

eli [a winged tale]

I feel like there are comments which are reviews (fair enough, everyone has subjective opinions) but I feel like constructive criticisms should be more private and take place in specific settings (most importantly where the creators are in a position of wanting them)

Nutty (Court of Roses)

@eli [a winged tale] https://courtofroses.spiderforest.com/

eli [a winged tale]

What I think most readers don’t understand or know is that the comic that does make its way to the public quite often has already been through rigorous critique and feedback

Nutty (Court of Roses)

(sorry, was late to that haha, i agree on your feelings about crits)

Deo101 [Millennium]

see, I dont know what you mean by "negative con crit" In my experience, a critique that is negative is not a critique and is more an opportunity for someone to flex.

helpful critiques may FEEL negative, because they are pointing out your flaws, but they arent negative

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i think you're defining "negative" and "hateful" the same way, but other people are not(edited)

eli [a winged tale]

I call them constructive feedback. Then on the other hand, yeah there are negative comments that are there to serve the OP’s sentiments(edited)

Deo101 [Millennium]

I use constructive if it is helpful, and negative if it is harmful

eli [a winged tale]

But I just don’t think the comment platform supports the constructive feedback part. The comments currently represent the OP’s views which are very much subjective. It’s hard to know if they are providing feedback from a place of knowing story structure/art competency

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

critique does mean a lot more when I ask for it from an artist I respect

eli [a winged tale]

Indeed. It’s quite an intimate process

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

but i can still take casual comments into consideration when trying to improve

things like, it's confusing, or i don't understand what's happening

eli [a winged tale]

I think trust in the critiquer’s background and intention for you to improve are imperative(edited)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

speaking of comments that say the comic is confusing, god i hate getting those comments the most. Because they come from people genuinely trying to read and like my comic and represent a failure of my storytelling skills

eli [a winged tale]

Plus there is a skill/art (no pun intended haha) to giving feedback. That’s a whole nother can of worms

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

but better to hear that and know it than not

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

It's not always a failure of storytelling skills, though. Some people's brains work along a certain line, and when a story is told that doesn't gel with that, it seems confusing to the person. That doesn't mean the writing was bad, it just means that the author communicates differently than the reader.(edited)

Deo101 [Millennium]

^ thats what I was gonna say

I have a small group of people who I trust who are editors, writers, or artists. I go to them to see if I'm doing the best I can for my goals.

if people get confused then there isnt too much more that I can do...

not saying my work is perfect, of course...

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i can't just brush it off by saying I communicate differently than the reader when I'm trying to communicate to the reader

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

But not every reader is your audience, though

Nutty (Court of Roses)

^^^^

your message sometimes can't reach certain people, and that's not your fault

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

If all the readers are confused, that's one thing. If only a few are, well, your writing style just wasn't for them.

eli [a winged tale]

For sure. Agree Capn and Deo. There’s a lot of work that goes behind the scenes that readers are unaware

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

true true. But there are a few people who have said the same things, so I've taken those to heart and added dialogue that made it more clear. I don't regret that

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Your comic is public, and it's going to be seen by a very wide variety of people with all different kinds of reading comprehension and tastes. You're never going to appeal to all of hem, and plenty won't understand what you're trying to do. But that doesn't mean what you're making is bad. It just means it, like every story, is for a particular audience.

Yeah, if it's a repeated crit, it is something to keep in mind, but just remember that incorporating a crit shouldn't change what you're trying to do, only refine it.

Deo101 [Millennium]

Ive had a couple people say "I'm confused but Im enjoying whats going on" and I dont even know what I would begin to do about that

eli [a winged tale]

I usually trust my beta readers for that. If there are confusing parts then I would ask them how to clarify that best

I think these creator based forums are best to seek feedback and see what could potentially be remedied

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Of course. And I don't think my comic is bad. But one example was when I realized some confusion stemmed from me having a speech bubble that read, "without her," and didn't realize "her" could refer to two different characters which would make what was being said have two very different meanings. It's easy to overestimate how understandable your story is as an author that already knows everything that's going on. I think confusion is a good thing to pay attention to- I've definitely read comics before and dropped them because the author didn't pay enough attention to introducing things to the audience

(also dropped comics because they paid too much attention to introducig things but)

Deo101 [Millennium]

yes, like I said I have a small group of friends who are all writers, editors, and artists who can give me a pretty dang good beta read.

eli [a winged tale]

They are so great. Don’t know what I’d do without them

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

At that point I'd honestly keep going with what you have - there are several stories I've gone into with confusion, but also greatly enjoyed them, or even got less confused over time. Some readers need time to put the pieces together. So long as someone enjoys it on some level, I think that makes the comic successful. Maybe not completely - but not every comic will be everything to all people.

eli [a winged tale]

Indeed. Sometimes as well you gotta trust your story writing/art skills.

Deo101 [Millennium]

yup!

and like I'm not doing too bad for my first comic so I think I got something going for me at least.

I understand I have room to grow...

but I would like to keep that to people who I trust wont steer me wrong

eli [a winged tale]

Always room to grow for sure!

Deo101 [Millennium]

and arent just pushing what they want from me on me

eli [a winged tale]

Indeed. Feedback/ beta reading has its own set of skills. There’s always places to improve but the key is to determine specifically where that can be and how feasible(edited)

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I remember the first time I read Unsounded, I had absolutely no idea what was going on because of how Ashley structures her world-building. But there were aspects of it that were very engaging, so I stuck with it. After finishing the archives, I went back and reread. Now that I understood what all the terms meant, it made perfect sense on the second go-round. It's now one of my favourite webcomics. Some stories are just told differently, and that's okay.(edited)

eli [a winged tale]

There’s certainly an element of trust you must put to the creators that it’ll all make sense at the end

Deo101 [Millennium]

someone got very mad at me for how I have shown my trans characters so far.. I had to explain that the story isnt done yet, and they have to trust I'll bring it up

it's a WIP and there is some trust that NEEDS to be had

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

lol I have only one artist/writer friend (struggles of working in a non-art career), and she understands everything I write exactly as I intended it and I love it. But she's my friend for a reason- we tend to think the same way and read similar things. Don't think it's wrong to try to cater to a wider audience as well

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

@Deo101 [Millennium] I wonder if anyone will react once I reveal that Anor is intersex/trans on panel. I'm really hoping I don't find out if any of my readers are transphobes -or- angry that he isn't ostentatiously trans.

Deo101 [Millennium]

someone was mad I didnt show my cyborg transitioning cause it could be so cool of a concept to see his original robot body and I was like literally none of what you said applies to him also thats kinda gross

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Uh

Wut

Deo101 [Millennium]

YEAH

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

There might be some transphobes. But it's worth dealing with them for the people who your comic will resonate with more for having a trans character in it

Deo101 [Millennium]

alsooooo some people might be upset, but then they will leave and you will be left with better people.

Nutty (Court of Roses)

I feel like me having a non-binary character and insisting on correcting everyone who misgenders them deters transphobes away p quickly.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

^^^ some people will dislike, but those who like will really like

and a smaller, better fanbase is better than a larger one that cares less(edited)

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

hear hear

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

@Eightfish (Puppeteer) I'm hoping some will resonate with him! I don't think I've ever seen any intersex rep in any story, so I really want people to know they can have a hero like them.(edited)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I'm trying to think of stories with intersex rep

I feel like there must be some, but I can't bring any up : /

Sazed from Mistborn is written as though he's intersex, but he clearly identifies as male and the story treating him as intersex actually feels a bit disrespectful

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Me neither. The only thing I've seen in stories is gross 'hermaphrodite' jokes when mocking a cis character.

I really want to give positive representation.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

webcomics have so much lgbt representation. I feel as though I must have seen an intersex character somewhere in there, but I'm not sure I have.(edited)

it feels kind of weird(edited)

I've seen characters that don't have genders because they're gods or whatnot but I feel like that's different

Deo101 [Millennium]

I mean, I have intersex characters I supposed but theyre alien genders so I also think that's different and wouldnt call them intersex

DanitheCarutor

I don't know the whole conversation, but @Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios), you'll be fine! Most transphobic people quietly leave, only the really sad, pitiful ones make a stink and their opinions are pretty laughable. If you get crap laugh in their faces like they're morons. I would also say my character Julian is intersex, but I'm not sure how much it counts since it was a recent decision I made (after doing a lot of research) due to readers headcanoning them as an intersex character.

I think I know of a couple other comics with intersex characters if you want to check out some, lemme go look through my lists.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

@DanitheCarutor I'd love to see other comics with intersex representation! And I think Julian totally counts? I don't see a problem with reconsidering a character's sex, gender, or orientation as we become more aware of issues in the world, or even just more aware of our own characters. Webcomics are always a work-in-progress and things change as we go.

eli [a winged tale]

@DanitheCarutor I’d love to know them too!

keii4ii

Re: clarity and confusion, sometimes a small change in wording or such can improve the clarity greatly, and that's great! But I agree that reader confusion doesn't necessarily = failure in storytelling. I've published my comic first in Korean, and a much improved version in English. The cultural difference in the audience has shown to be a huge factor in terms of what's clear and what isn't, or how certain things come across. And that's just one factor.

DanitheCarutor

So I only know of one comic personally, Drop-Out! Sure the characters are anthros, and the bubbles can be hard to read, but it is one of my favorite comics! Of course it's kinda heavy so be aware of that. http://drop-out.thecomicseries.com/ Although I checked out the Webcomic Library tagpacker and found a few. (including Drop-Out) https://tagpacker.com/user/webcomic.library?t=Intersex LGBT Webcomics also has a few that aren't listed in the above list. https://tagpacker.com/user/lgbtwebcomics?t=intersex @Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios) Lol yeah, I guess so. My readers made me put a lot of thought into it, and after the research being intersex actually fits a lot better with Julian's type of gender dysphoria and confusion than when they were AAB male. It also make some small, more intimate parts of the story feel more natural? It's hard to explain, it just feels better.(edited)

keii4ii

Like, making my work as accessible as possible has never been a goal for me with this story. So to me, it's not a failure that a large number of people can't see parts of the story that aren't being spelled out. I can totally respect "I want my work to be more accessible, so if all these people are not Getting It, then I need to do a better job" as a valid stance. Just not one I'm taking. It's all about individual goals and priorities.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Oh boy, writing a fantasy story with a very developed culture is kinda scary, because NOBODY is going to pick up on cultural nuances except for me(edited)

Deo101 [Millennium]

I DO want my work to be more accessible/reach a wider audience, but that still doesnt mean it will be for everyone, too.(edited)

keii4ii

Not gonna lie, I get a little salty when I see someone claiming their story is "for everyone." I feel like such a claim is disrespectful to different cultures and tastes.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i just started drop out and damn, that's one hell of an opening

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah I genuinely don't think it's possible to make a story for everyone lol

like... idk literally just by making it "sci fi" that excludes many people who just don't like sci-fi

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i've never seen anyone claiming their story is for everyone

Deo101 [Millennium]

I feel like just to get to your premise, not even your personal execution you're already super narrowing the people down who will be interested

which is fine!!! and is necessary to accept imo

keii4ii

@Eightfish (Puppeteer) I've seen it. Not often but I've definitely seen it.

I've even seen a creator accuse another person of being heartless because the person was not interested in their Very Emotional And Universally Heartfelt comic, so uhhh yeah

Deo101 [Millennium]

Ope

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Well then

That just sounds like an illusioned creator

Deo101 [Millennium]

I kinda like to think of it like music

I dont like a lot of songs that other people love, it's not that they're bad songs just... not for me(edited)

keii4ii

Yeah! I also think the word "taste" is very fitting

Deo101 [Millennium]

yeah for sure

keii4ii

Some of us can eat ghost peppers like popcorns. Others would even avoid like... crackled black pepper

Deo101 [Millennium]

ahahhahaha

mac n cheese has a very wide audience, but some people aren't into it

DanitheCarutor

@Eightfish (Puppeteer) Lmao! Drop-Out is quite a unique piece of fiction. I have also seen creators who say their comic is for everyone, then get made when someone isn't interested.

Deo101 [Millennium]

I'm gonna start saying millennium is like mac n cheese now

keii4ii

@Deo101 [Millennium] That reminds me of "what drink would your comic be" !!

Deo101 [Millennium]

ahahahahah

someone: my comic is WATER EVERYONE NEEDS IT

keii4ii

I answered: "I want HoK to be liquid bacon fat, so that it'll stay in your heart forever."

Deo101 [Millennium]

ew LMAO

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

even if your comic is water, some people don't drink water

Deo101 [Millennium]

but cute? I gues????

DanitheCarutor

That sounds like a fun game, "If your comic were food what would it be?"

Mine would be sardine pizza, only weirdos like it.

Deo101 [Millennium]

next weeks creator babble question

LMSLDJGLASJGK

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

@DanitheCarutor its got such good art. The characters are so unique and expressive. Don't think I've seen anyone not use anti-aliasing on such detailed art before, but it works here

almost all webcomics are some weird food. We're niche just by nature

DanitheCarutor

It DOES have great art! And it gets better as you go too, by the time I reached the end then looked back on the first pages for nostalgia it was almost like night and day with the quality.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

fuck, really? but it's so polished already

DanitheCarutor

I mean, I guess that's not something to get excited about, most webcomics get better artwise as they go. Lmao! But still!

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i love how the about page makes this sound like a fun roadtrip adventure

Deo101 [Millennium]

this feels mayble like the wrong chat for this discussion?

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

My comic would be a latte: A lot of people like it, but some people will never like coffee.

keii4ii

I can imagine HoK being like Chung Gook Jang soup? It's 1) Korean, 2) it warms you up, 3) it is very polarizing even among Koreans. It's kinda like... imagine miso soup on ultra mega steroid. Like a vegan version of supersharp stinky cheese. And 4) I love it.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

im alphabet soup because i have a fuckton of dialogue

Deo101 [Millennium]

I'm actually gonna stick with mac n cheese. a bit childish, but it's nice! you can do some fun things with it to shake things up, but it's still cheese and noodles.

keii4ii

Mac n cheese is amazing.

Deo101 [Millennium]

I love mac n cheese.

another reason why it's my comic! I love it, and it's something I can actually make

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

As for food, WotP would definitely something like authentic Mexican tacos. Again, generally well-received, but can be a bit intense for a lot of people

keii4ii

I really like food analogies. Sometimes it's not Gordon Ramsey you're trying to impress. Sometimes you want to make something you and/or your loved ones will enjoy, and if that's "WAY too much [ingredient]!!!!" for everyone else out there, that's not a flaw!

Deo101 [Millennium]

yeah! :D

keii4ii

That's actually good food for thought (no pun intended): what niche aspects does your comic contain? How/why are they niche?

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

@Eightfish (Puppeteer) How do you do it?

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I think I once described mine as a corrupted tropical cocktail. On the surface: sweet, pretty, very colorful - but all the ingredients used to make it are rotten

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I thought of Cricket as intersex for a long time and I still don't know exactly where I stand on that.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I draw a diagram of where characters/ furniture are from above. Niche things: Most conflicts are resolved through anticlimactic conversation. Also there's this huge bit about consensual mind control. I wrote the comic I'd want to read, and somehow found a few people like me to follow along

I also usually don't have more than 2 characters interacting

so it's easier for me

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I have so many busy group scenes with people moving around. The most recent chapter was kind of a mess also because I wasn't really sure about the dimensions of the space they were all in

This scene was also pretty rushed in general

Re: intersex characters I feel like I've been shying away from that because I don't feel like I know enough about the topic to adequately represent intersex people

Joe Is Dead has a really specific aesthetic to it but I don't know how to define that niche. It's definitely something

Deo101 [Millennium]

I honestly could not answer that question about what niche things my comic contains. I don't know what about my comic is mainstream or not, I'm just making what I want to see and not really worrying about stuff like that.

keii4ii

For me, having an idea of what's niche about my comic actually lessens my worries!

It's a "okay, so I know these things are niche, which means people not liking or even getting those things =/= my failure!" kinda thing for me!

But I can also see how not thinking about what's niche or not can lessen the worries for others, too.

Deo101 [Millennium]

mhm, for me it means I can just go "well I like it anyways sooooooooo"

keii4ii

Yeah, that's the destination! We're just taking different routes to get there

Deo101 [Millennium]

I also genuinely just have a hard time determining whether or not something is niche

even if I thought about it for a while (I've been thinking about it since you asked, and I have thought about it before" I genuinely couldnt pinpoint it for you...

keii4ii

I used to beat myself up very badly every time someone didn't like a thing about my comic

Deo101 [Millennium]

D:

keii4ii

and "oh, 1) this is subjective, 2) I like it like this, and 3) my liking of it is valid" was how I crawled out of that hole

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I don't know if my comic is specifically niche, unless you count "low fantasy" (or essentially fantasy with less magic and such) as niche

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

My comic has a lot of specific nautical and history content that you could call niche

Also surrealism

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i would call Joe Is Dead "niche," but not WoTP

I've read both

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I... used to think my comics weren't niche. Ohohohohoho how wrong I was!

Deo101 [Millennium]

Id say millennium isnt niche then it's basically just gay sci fi it's p straightforward

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

My comics are very, incredibly, undeniably niche.

DanitheCarutor

@sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD) It is difficult to understand if you're not intersex yourself, even though I studied a lot before making the decision about my character I still don't know if I'll represent the topic properly. The best you can really do is get into researching all the medical stuff, talk to people willing to share their experiences with being intersex, and watch videos of people talking about it from a professional and personal perspective. The hardest thing to get right about something so subjective and personal is that everyone's experiences are different, so no matter how much you research you just gotta do your best with the info you have, then figure out how your character would experience it personally.(edited)

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I don't think anything magical happens until Chapter 11 of WotP, now that I think about it

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Also @DanitheCarutor thank you for the links!! I'll have to give those comics a look!

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I’m still backreading and I just saw the food question, that is great

JID would be saltcod

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Ooooh

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Or like pickled herring maybe

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Bacalao

Noice

(Bacalao = Puerto Rican salted cod)

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

They have it in spain too iirc

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Ashes would be very bitter black coffee someone forgot to drink and it's just been sitting there for two days. Eryl would be well-aged wine spiked with tabasco sauce.

DanitheCarutor

Sorry for derailing. Anyways, I feel like my entire comic is just a ball of niche? The subject matters are uncommon and the main characters are awful and unreliable, but that's my aesthetic so I'm sticking to it. I've never particularly cared about people liking my comic due growing up not being liked myself (you kinda get over it after a while), but I do like finding people like me. @Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios) No problem! I hoard stuff like that, so I probably have a link for everything.

Urm, I don't mean I like finding unlikable people like me, I mean people who like the same types of stories as me.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Honestly, Dani, I connect to your comic quite a lot, for what it's worth!

DanitheCarutor

Thank you! ;v; In a way it's kind of nice having a comic that doesn't fit in. It tends to stand out, especially with my choice of medium. Although at the same times it's really hard to get feedback that applies to what you're doing! Arg!

keii4ii

It is such a Struggle, for sure -- getting relevant feedback

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I feel you! I'm in the same boat with Ashes. It's also incredibly niche and there just aren't that many pencil comics out there- coloured or graphite.

DanitheCarutor

Being a creator who likes feedback, but also likes making niche content, is so hard! Why can't everyone like niche content??

Lmao!

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

As niche as the setting and tone of Joe Is Dead are, the main story arc is a very generic hero adventure thing that I hope will appeal to wide audiences

eli [a winged tale]

Niche content

I’d love to know more! What niches are you exploring?

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

The nicest thing anyone's said about Super Galaxy Knights Deluxe R http://sgkdr.thecomicseries.com/comics/ is that they really became invested in the characters. Like, that's the kind of story I want to make - the kind where the characters really stick with you.

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

As for what food my comic would be... I'd say squid ink pasta. It's the kind of food that makes you go "what the heck is going on here" if you're new to it, but once you actually eat it you'll (hopefully) go "oh, that made way more sense than i expected and was actually pretty tasty"

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I don't know if you're talking to me directly but I'm using a lot of maritime history and literature stuff that I've been obsessed with for a long time as the setting of the story, and then the whole thing has a really morbid and nihilistic tone, while also somehow being funny because I have a background in comedy/satire writing

And then heavy biblical themes

It's essentially a Renaissance period retelling of the Joseph story from the bible

With pirates instead of shepherds

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

For me, I’m not even sure what niche Ashes belongs to. (https://www.flowerlarkstudios.com/cos/) It’s dark, it’s weird, it has a twisty plot that slowly trickles information, and it’s an odd mash-up of genres. I often try to describe it as Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children meets Farthing Wood. It’s mostly urban fantasy with some horror elements and talking animals. Basically it’s about a bunch of unaging teenagers with supernatural, angel-gifted powers and a bunch of woodland critters fighting (although so far it’s more running from) eldritch monsters. But it’s main focus is on each character battling either mental illness or some other kind of inner demon.

keii4ii

There's also the aspect of: what's niche in one culture may not be niche in another. In Korean media, Fantastical Old Korea is a very common setting for all sorts of genres: gag a day, romance, all-ages adventure, gritty crime drama, zombie apocalypse, you name it. If the work spends a lot of visuals showing mundane everyday moments, often that's a shorthand for "sit down and stay a while; this is a heartfelt tale that takes its time." My comic uses such a setting. When I began to publish it in English, I was surprised that people were expecting it to be one of these AND NOTHING ELSE: a) exciting magical action adventure b) mythology-driven, all about gods and spirits My comic is neither of those. It definitely contains elements of adventure, but that's the plate the meat is served on, not the meat itself. So I guess the usage of the setting is niche.

Like, imagine a civilian life drama set in WWII time. The civilian MC may have a family member or a close friend in the military, but the story focuses on the MC's experience. Imagine presenting that story and people expect it to be... military action? Not a perfect analogy, but hopefully a good enough one.

Kelsey (Kurio)

To be fair, Korea would find fantastical old Korea less exotic than those outside of Korea heh

keii4ii

That is definitely a factor. Even today, you can find semi-Old Days-like places IRL within like... 3 hours of drive.

I'm weirded out that my culture is considered exotic, but it is what it is

(To clarify, weirded out =/= offended.)

Kelsey (Kurio)

Well any culture can be exotic to people outside of that culture

As an outsider looking in, it can be fascinating to learn about a culture I don't know much about

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Anything unfamiliar is usually considered exotic. I know in both England and America, I never really learned anything about any Asian country growing up. I had to seek out the info myself, and as it was very unfamiliar to me, it seemed exotic!

Kelsey (Kurio)

Especially their myths and stories

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Oops, exactly what Kelsey said, I typed too slow.

keii4ii

Yeah, the thing is I've been told I should not be using this setting to tell this story because it's a doomed combination. But ehh, I decided not to listen to that. This story with this setting and all of its elements is what I wanted to read.

carcarchu

slice of life set in a historical setting sounds really refreshing actually(edited)

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

But I know I’d probably feel strange if someone told me New York was exotic!

carcarchu

sometimes historical settings can get really bogged down by politics and whatever other drama, having a quiet slow paced story set in the same kind of world is something i'd be interested in reading

Kelsey (Kurio)

Nothing wrong with trying the approach you want to

Who knows, you might end up with a unique combo that helps your work stand out

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Yup. I’m a firm believer in writing the kind of story you’d want to read. No matter how niche.

Tuyetnhi

Totes agreed on this. For me, when I had to drop my dark drama series for my romance story, folks were like "Dang, I thought you like writing dark things!"

I do, but romance comics.... [clenches chest]. I also want to write a story that I want to read so lmao. Dream lover elements along with some dark horror influences is something I want to try doing lol

carcarchu

this is not a webcomic but try reading coelacanth if you're interested in the combination of horror with romance @Tuyetnhi

Tuyetnhi

ooo I'll keep that in mind

carcarchu

it's really so unique i love coelacanth so much

Tuyetnhi

is it a novel? :0

carcarchu

it's a manga

Tuyetnhi

aaa

Yeah I probably check it out sometime lmao

back on the idea tho, I also wanted to add some Vietnamese influences in the mix since there's not a lot of stories about Vietnamese disapora, so that's included in the cauldron lol

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

@keii4ii what's your comic? I wanna check it out(edited)

keii4ii

@Eightfish (Puppeteer) It's https://heartofkeol.com/

(I get extremely nervous whenever I know someone is checking out my comic for the first time )

DanitheCarutor

To answer @eli [a winged tale] question. I'm delving into stuff like mental illnesses and disorders, medical illnesses, abuse, trauma and later on, self-care. The comic itself is slow and character centric, I guess you can say it's like a character study. The story can be really depressing depending on who is reading, and it has some softcore horror bits sprinkled in. I'm kind of a nerd for mental health, sad stuff and everything medical so I figured I may as well make a story embellishing those interests. In short it's a sad, character driven, psychological drama about two extremely flawed individuals. Not particularly exciting compared to all the other webcomics out there, but somebody has to make that one pretentious, psychological slice of life piece.

keii4ii

What compounds my issues is that my comic does have enough adventure elements for someone to mistake it for an underwhelming adventure story. "This is an adventure story but there's not enough adventure in it?" kinda thing.

@DanitheCarutor Character studies FTW!!! Yours has been on my 'gotta check this out' list for a long time now!

Tuyetnhi

Oooo

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I also am a fan of psychological stories

Especially if they're sad(edited)

Tuyetnhi

Kei idk why but I was reminded of .hack SIGN when u said that

"there's so much talking! where's the action?!?"

keii4ii

@Tuyetnhi That's actually not a terrible comparison -- though .hack//SIGN has other issues that my comic hopefully doesn't have XD

Tuyetnhi

I'm pretty sure it's miles better than that old anime lmao

DanitheCarutor

@keii4ii Pff I need to check out your comic too! I remember reading it at one point, but I don't remember what happened to make me lose track. From what little I remember I really liked it.

keii4ii

The thing with .hack//SIGN was it had a lot of promises of mystery that never went anywhere, within SIGN. I've heard those mysteries do go somewhere within the franchise, but you had to watch/read the entire franchise, which I wasn't going to do. I hope my comic will be a good read on its own, when finished.

Tuyetnhi

sadly, I was one of those suckers that went to consume the .hack games and mangas to get some context from SIGN in the late 2000's lmao

I hope the same as mine, despite being mostly saccharine and self-indulgent nature lmao

keii4ii

Self-indulgence is a strength of indie comics.

eli [a winged tale]

I love all the themes y’all explore! They’re so important

Tuyetnhi

I feel like I have a reason for everything when working on that comic but if that's what it boils down to, I'll take it lol

keii4ii

TBH I produce my best writing and art when I focus on pleasing myself.

Because if I'm trying to please others, I don't even know what they want, so I waste my energy panicking.

But when I'm creating for my inner reader, I can be self-critical in a productive manner!

Tuyetnhi

so true ya

RebelVampire

Hey guys. I kind of feel as this has deviated a smidgen too far from the topic, so maybe reel it in just a smidgen. XD(edited)

Desnik

so the nicest thing anyone's ever said about my comic is that they wanna read more :3

I kinda dread reader dropoffs so the will to see the whole story through fills me with joy

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #comic tea party #ctp #creator interview #comic creator interview #creator babble

[lynxgriffin]

Led Zeppelin was right all along

It’s my FINAL PIECE of KH3 commentary! That’s right, I’ve finished the game! Commentary for me finishing it is under the cut!

Okay guys, this is it

It’s time to finish this sucker

It’s time for all of my feelings to get curbstomped and then cracked in half over a knee

Turns out I’ve caught a cold so this might be tougher to do

But I’m still going to do it

AWAY. WE. GOOOOO

And after beating this gummi boss again…

Ahhh there he is at last

The old fart

…So weird that it’s not Leonard Nimoy though

Xehanort: Let’s just try out this whole apocalypse thing and see how it goes

It’s rainin’ Heartless, hallelujah

LMAO there isn’t even an enemy counter, it’s just:

ENEMIES. YES, ALL OF THEM. ALL THE TIME. FOREVER

And I just blew up ten million Heartless with a train, THIS IS THE SHINIEST APOCALYPSE EVER

Ohh, once again, hate that tunnel

IT’S A TRAP

At least Aqua didn’t fall for that

Oh dang he’s got No Name there

NOOOO SUNSHINE BOY

Oh well now that’s cheating

FUKYEAH GOOFY

Donald’s fukkin pissed

Did Donald just Megaflare this bitch

ArE yoU kiDDinG mE

Oh great, one of you again

Aqua: Never mind, that is way damn too many Heartless

HE SCREAM, AGAIN

SORA PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER WE’RE STILL EARLY IN FINAL BATTLE MODE

Well that was five different layers of OH SHIT

Oh hey back at that chess metaphor HI AGAIN YOUNG ERAQUS

Wait the hell kind of chess move was that

MEANWHILE, BACK ON THE SALT FLATS

ThE FINAL WORLD, HUH

Chirithy!!!!

Chirithy: So yeah you’ve kinda died a couple times previously just by being unconscious a lot

Sora: YEAH WELL time to get back to life

Sora: THERE’S PUZZLES IN HEAVEN, TOO??

THERE’S PUZZLES IN HEAVEN YUP, BETTER GET TO THAT

Ohhhh no the sparkly stars are KHUX Keykids, aren’t they :(((

Ugh it’s the little star soul stories that are getting to me :(

Sora bein’ a pal even to all the souls in heaven, gosh darn

OH SURE JUST KEEP THAT FROM THE AUDIENCE

OMG this soul is longing for his kismesis, what a nerd

“What a weird place” YEAH NO SHIT

Well it’s nice to see THESE Soras are having a great time

Perhaps this game was taking the idea of Sorabits a tad too literally

Also actually two quick questions here:

1) Why is Chirithy in heaven?

2) Sora were you instagramming from heaven??

Sora: So heaven’s been a trip and all but I’ve still got endgame to do, STAY COOL FUZZY FRIEND

Wait a bloop it sent him back in time too??

Insert 2001 Space Odyssey reference here

Oh now we’re in DIFFERENT heaven??

Okay yeah now I have no clue where we’re going from here

Man here I was expecting to fight all the Norts and instead it’s…Heartless…Grim Reaper

I’m starting to suspect this is not the real Jiminy

This is kind of a weird callback to KH1, innit

Yeah I was just wondering that myself

Oh hey Youngnort

See? Grim Reaper Heartless, I knew it

I gotta say that after Sora dying and going to KH heaven this is…kinda weirder coming afterwards

I’m kind of worried about where this is going

This is like Three Days of the Condor, I TRUST NO ONE

WE FINALLY GOT A TITLE CRAWL???

WHELP. ROUND TWO, I GUESS

Guys, let’s…let’s not do this again

You ever get a sense of deja vu

OHOHOHOOOOO THIS IS DIFFERENT

“WHO ARE YOU??” “I’M YOU BUT STRONGER”

Terra: I’ll kick every ass! I’ll kick your ass! I’LL KICK MY OWN ASS

Gad damn the bullshit never stops around here, does it

We’ve done this before but I DUN CARE since this is my favorite boss battle music

Meanwhile the Unreal Engine’s just huffing and puffing trying to keep up

:O!!! EPHEMER!!

WHATRE U DOIN IN A HEARTLESS TORNADO

And all the dead Keykids came to help!

Ohhhhhh myyyyyyyyy goooooooooooosh

HAHA SO THAT’S HOW THEY INTEGRATED THOSE PEOPLE THAT WON THE THING

Congrats Keykids, U ARE ATTACKS

That’s…that’s really sweet actually

That’s a whole lot of Unicornis and Vulpes in there

OMG I was so busy watching those names I didn’t even realize I was supposed to avoid dying

FINALLY CURAGA???

I dunno Lea that was already a pretty big bad

Aw darn they Norted Repliku

Or wait no Pastku?

Pastku you’re such a little shit

Lea: That wasn’t blundering! That was failing, WITH STYLE

HE LOOM

Unreal Engine: Please…help…I’m dying Squirtle

Oh hey FINALLY super powerful magic users like Yen Sid get involved!

And Moses parted the Heartless Sea

And hey finally got Starlight!

Well ain’t this a familiar setup

I miss Leonard Nimoy :(

Well I’m glad we get to save and shop before we all die horribly!

….Wait haven’t we all already died horribly??

FINALLY We get to fight some Norts!!

Took out Xigbar first

Yeah Xigbar I’m really not sure all that hoohah was worth it

Are we gonna do this for each one or do we have to pick and choose?

Oh well that takes care of Pastku so maybe not

SKIRT RIKU VS SKIRT RIKU

Oh that’s creepy actually

OH NO! Repliku :(((

Sora…you just gonna leave that…okay

So now we got some Neophytes to deal with

Well I was gonna go after Mar first but I guess Luxord is our opponent now

AW DAMN I hated this part from before!

Oh wait that wasn’t hard at all you just look behind those stupid cards

Luxord: Well it’s been fun, time to die

Why does everyone’s teeth look blue??

Really liking all these remixes of the old boss themes tho

Aaaaand down goes Mar

And what’s nice is partners have mostly worn down the last Nort present!

Larx is an asshole to the very end

Door puzzles ohhhh nooooooo

Well thank goodness we worked out that nonsense

Who to help first? REDHEAD SQUAD

If that’s Xion I’m going to be SO UPSET

At least we get to fight WITH Kairi even if not as her

Lea is SO ANGER

Ohhhhh BUUUUUURN

Oh well that ain’t good

XION NOOOOOOOOOO

Absolutely not, Xemnas!!

*throws hands in the air* OHHHHHHHH

HE KNOWS

Oh fuck you Xemnas HDU

Ohhhhh sheeeeeeet

THE BOY IS BACK

JUST STAB ME IN THE HEART WITH THE OTHER PROMISE, OKAY

Called out by Roxas daaaayum

Gah dammit not again! STOP DOING KAIRI DIRTY

GET READY FOR: TRIPLE KEYKIDS ASSKICKIN

Hot damn but it’s satisfying to beat the crap out of Saix with Sora, Roxas and Xion all at once while The Other Promise just blasts in the background

Lea: I’m not mad I’m just disappointed

Awww maaaaaan

OH GOSH SEASALT TRIO HUG

THEY’RE ALL TOGETHER AGAIN SOB SOB

Now to the Wayfinder family! Took out Vanyeetas first!

Sora: Hey WTF that’s my face you got

Yeah I gotta agree I don’t know which part of that was okay honestly

WHELP no time to think on it gotta take out Terranort

Since we got back Roxas and Xion can we finally get Terra back??

Sora: TERRA PLEASE STOP, IT’S TOO WEIRD

OHHHHHHH!! OH OH OH

That was metal as all hell

YAAAAAAY

WAYFINDER FAMILY IS HERE

Ohhhh gooooosh

Everyone’s together and I’m full of rainbows

MAN so we got…three Norts left, don’t we

Guess the only way out of this is up

What we’ve just been cloning No Name the whole time??

Okay, FOUR left, we gotta deal with Ansem, Xemnas and Youngnort first

Oh sheesh that was Youngnort dying, thought it was me for a second

Youngnort: Just one last piece of cryptic bullshit to leave you with! BYYYYEEEE

Aaaand that’s Ansem down

Ansem: Must…pontificate more…before…I die

Haha took out Xemnas with flying rocket punch nanobots

Xemnas: Regrets…I’ve had a few…

But then again, too few to mention?

Sora: Life is pain, Xemnas! Anyone who says otherwise is Norting you

Oh boy oh boy, all we have left now is…the old fart…

Oh this is gonna piss me off good, ain’t it

YUP, I’M PISSED

YOU DONE HER DIRTY AGAIN

Nomura do we need to sit you down as a group and learn you some things about NOT DOING THAT

That was…kind of a cool moment I guess?? BUT I’M STILL MAD

Oh shitcakes

The world to come is death from above I guess

Donald and Goofy just coming in like “Hey…what’d we miss?”

I’m honestly really glad they’re here tho, TRINITY ALLLLL THE WAY

The whole gang here together again IRONING OUT THE PLOT POINTS

Trophy here???

OH HEY WE’RE BACK HERE

A town of nothing but Norts

OH I forgot THESE WEIRDOS were in trailers somehow

The hell is happening anymore

An Organization so nice we fought ‘em twice!

The scary music is playing but I have no clue where to goooo

Well it took me five minutes just to find the dang guys before Thundaga finished them off

Oh really now!

ONE MORE TITLE CRAWL FOR Y’ALL

HE WAS AN ANGRY GOAT WHO SAW THE MOVIE INCEPTION ALL ALONG

SHEESH that was a nutty battle that took awhile

Well I think I won THAT battle anyway

Is this gonna be a THAT WASN’T EVEN MY FINAL FORM or what

More callbacks!

This is the fight that never eeeeends, yes it goes on and on my frieeeends

OH that was fuckin weird but COOL

I LOVE THE TRINITY

EVERYONE ELSE AGAIN TOO

HAHA OH DAMN

EVEN ERAQUS GETS TO REAPPEAR

Yaaay my favorite terrible dad

That look from Eraqus OMG

Babbeh Eraqus so cute

Now YOU get the goofy apocalypse weapon, Sora!

More dad reconciliations sob

Oh gosh I’m so glad we get this before we end

ohhhh noooo

Oh no you know shit’s serious when you enter a blocked scene

DOES EVERYONE FINALLY GET TO GO HOME NOW

Man everything’s just so shiny now

A CHIRITHY FOUND A VEN

NEW OUTFITS FOR SEASALT GANG FINALLY

THE EXPANDED SEASALT GANG

YAAAY NAMINE BACK

LET HER LIVE HER LIFE NOW

MOTHAFOCKIN BEACH PARTY FOR EVERYONE YES

FOR REALLY EVERYONE FOR REAL??

Also dang sing us out Utada

*points and points* THAT? FINAL SHOT???

WHERE’S THE BOY

What did you do to my son Nomura

LOOK IF YOU’RE GONNA POP HIM OUT LIKE THAT I AT LEAST WANT TO BE VALIDATED FOR MY THEORIES

THE CREDITS ARE ROLLING AND THERE’S STILL THINGS I FEEL LIKE I’M MISSING

Also just interjecting here but damn that endgame was so long IT FELT LIKE A WHOLE ‘NOTHER GAME

And now the pretty march music with the Super Longer Credits—I CAN’T BELIEVE DRAKE BELL WAS YOUNG ERAQUS

*points* WHY IS FURRY SQUAD VOICED HERE??

Well if nothing else gonna get me a kickass OST out of this

HERE we go, post credits stuff

Here’s the Furry Squad!

LUXU WAS XIGBAR WELL OKAY

What fresh bullshit is thiiiiiiis

OH HEY WE’D ALMOST FORGOTTEN ABOUT THEM

Hey where is Ava

Oh fuuuuuck yoooou Luxugbar

Whaaaaaaaat

THE BOY

SHIBUYA????????????

*throws hands in the air* I GOT NOTHIN FOLKS

I GOT ABSOLUTELY NOTHIN

THE END PAGE!!!! SURE AS HELL IS WHAT THAT IS

OKAY SO LIKE

PLEASE, HELP ME OUT HERE, SECRET ENDING

IS THE NEXT GAME JUST GONNA STRAIGHT UP BE VERUM REX?

NOPE THERE IS NOTHING MORE THAT’S JUST IT

WELL THAT WAS

A WHOLE DAMN LOT WASN’T IT

Nomura I am in fact going to die and go to your house and haunt it and push all of your things off shelves like a cat

ALL OF THE THINGS

OFF OF. YOUR SHELVES.

Okay so overall I did really enjoy the game but also I’m just ????

?????????

??????

Like my reaction is pretty much just

LATER NERDS THIS HAS BEEN LYNX SUFFERS THROUGH KINGDOM HEARTS 3

I HOPE YOU HAD FUN CAUSE I DID

I think I’m gonna go lie down now

#kingdom hearts spoilers #kh3 spoilers #lynx plays kh3 #lynx suffers for your entertainment #??????????????

[lindsayruebens]

The Grand #5-10-30

Last fall, Kane and I had two Frontier flight vouchers burning a hole in our pockets.

Also that fall, we celebrated being together for a decade. And then I turned 30 in December. April is Kane’s 30th birthday. And May is our fifth wedding anniversary.

And, for the past five years, we had exclusively used our vacation days for traveling to see family during the holidays and weddings. We were not only ready to celebrate but extremely ready for a vacation, and ready to do it up big.

Enter what my social-media-eschewing husband has persistently referred to as the #5-10-30 trip (yes I know there are no hyphens in real hashtags, but here we are), and he did so persistently enough that I too eventually broke down and also called it The 5-10-30.

Direct Frontier flights from Philadelphia narrowed our options considerably, and we wanted to pick somewhere we’d never been, so Denver it was. My parents very generously offered to watch Russ in Pennsylvania for a week, and after lots of research and planning, that’s how the best vacation Kane and I have ever had, or shall I say, The #5-10-30 Trip, materialized.

We rented a 2019 Nissan Rogue and basically did a loop beginning and ending in Denver. I kept a detailed journal of the trip, but I’ll spare you the less-thrilling details and share the highlights:

Day 1: Afternoon/evening in Denver

(^Ready for takeoff to Denver!)

Great AirBnB cottage in the LoHi neighborhood. After meeting us, our host ran into her house to bring us her own nice bottle of tequila, limes and shot glasses to start off our trip on a celebratory note. Cheers!

Speaking of cheers, we recommend the Recess Beer Garden, where we watched Virginia win the national title.

Day 2: Denver/Colorado Springs

We kicked breakfast off at Bacon Social House with a flight of bacon. And because we’re corny, we gave serious thought to ranking the six bacon styles (French toast was my fav, barbecue was Kane’s). Scissors for sharing the slices were included.

Next up: Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. The red rock formations were breathtaking, and we’re glad we went to the visitor’s center for info on hiking trails. Great views of both Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak.

Another fantastic AirBnB in Old Colorado City, and delicious dinner — just say yes to the brisket grilled cheese and lamb sliders — outside at Cerberus Brewing Company while watching the sun set behind the Rockies.

Day 3: Colorado Springs

We spent much of this day in the earth.

First stop was Cave of the Winds. Holy cow, do the Lantern Tour if you can. Our self-described hippie tour-guide, John, thoroughly scared us before we even began, warning us of having to walk crouched low for a couple of minutes through under-4-foot-high tunnels, that we’d only be walking by the light of candle-lit lanterns (hence the name Lantern Tour) and that we were about to enter the supposedly most haunted caverns in North America. It’s not a tour for the faint of heart (nor the arthritic). Learned the history of the 19th-century pioneers who took ownership of the caves and held exotic parties in them, and of course there was a generous helping of spooky ghost stories.

(^Our only photo in the cave before the tour began-- not the kind of setting to take a selfie!)

Back in the sunlight, we had lunch at Ivywild School, an elementary school-turned community center/local business spot/brewery.

Dinner in downtown Colorado Springs at The Rabbit Hole, also underground. We did actually try rabbit with the Bunny Bites appetizer… a drier, leaner version of chicken nuggets.

Day 4: Cañon City/Nathrop

Spent the day at the Royal Gorge in Cañon City. The gondola ride across was slightly panic-inducing, but offered amazing views; informative short movie about the Gorge in onsite theater; then walks across America’s tallest suspension bridge. The gaps between some of the wooden planks of the floor allowed you to see all the way to the Arkansas River flowing below. YIKES. Of course Kane insisted we really feel “fully alive,” and so we were the only ones nutty enough to go back and forth several more times in the wind. Don’t worry, I felt super-alive, and thankfully, remained in such a state.

Spectacular mountain drive along Route 50 to Nathrop, where we checked in at the Mt. Princeton Hot Springs Resort. It’s in the San Isabel National Forest.

(^Serious room with a view.)

That evening we donned bathing suits in 30-something degree weather to recline in the hot springs of Chalk Creek. We laid our heads on rocks, stared at the stars and crescent moon overhead and enjoyed deep conversation that also included momentarily pretending we were contestants on The Bachelor, because it was such an over-the-top date, and I assured Kane I was most certainly there for the right reasons.

Day 5: Nathrop/Breckenridge

Hot springs again in the bright morning sunshine before driving to Breckenridge, which was a little insane with hairpin turns up and down mountains. We drove through Alma, North America’s highest incorporated town, and were relieved to make it to our AirBnB. Then: A scrumptious sushi lunch downtown at The Blue Fish and perusing the town’s many shops.

We called up the Lost Bus, owned and operated by the Broken Compass Brewing, which picks up people for free from downtown Breckenridge to its brewery site a few miles away. This was my favorite brewery of the trip! Fantastic craft beers and great local vibe.

Then we walked about half a mile down the road to Flight Club for food. It was an extremely local experience (complete with a guy glass-blowing pipes next to the bar!) and even featured a local battle-of-the-bands winner, Hollywood Farmers, who were actually quite talented.

(^My view from the bar. Just some casual glass-blowing, dudes.)

Day 6: Boulder

A crazy drive to Boulder on Route 70 with foggy snow showers. But we made it in one piece to Chautauqua Park and hiked around the Flatirons on the Enchanted Mesa Trail and loved it.

Lunched at Roxie’s Tacos, where they served amazing Mexican-Indian fusion in the lovely campus area of CU-Boulder, then drove to the Celestial Seasonings headquarters for a free tea tour and samples. A highlight was the peppermint room! Free aromatherapy.

Checked into a Courtyard Marriott and ate at Avery Brewing Company.

Day 7: Boulder/Denver

Amazing breakfast at Lucile’s in adorable downtown Boulder. Walked around Pearl Street Mall, where the tulip beds were in bloom. If I had to choose one of the places we visited to move, I’d pick Boulder!

Drove back to Denver and attended a beautiful Palm Sunday Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. Proceeded to a tour of the Molly Brown House. Loved learning her incredible story: a rags-to-riches miner’s wife, Titanic survivor, philanthropist, winner of French Legion of Honor… Google her if you have time!

On to Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey for a delightful distillery tour. We learned how it was made and aged and also how to properly drink whiskey. Not sure I’m a converted whiskey-drinker, but loved every minute of the tour.

We ended our trip where we began, in the LoHi neighborhood, at a fantastic Mediterranean tapas restaurant called El Five. We sat outside overlooking the Denver skyline and the Rockies before catching a red-eye home. It was the perfect way to punctuate a pretty near-perfect trip.

(^Dinner view. Until we meet again, Colorado!)

[oscopelabs]

Evil in the Mirror: John Carpenter’s Revealing ‘Prince of Darkness’ by Joshua Rothkopf

[Last year, Musings paid homage to Produced and Abandoned: The Best Films You’ve Never Seen, a review anthology from the National Society of Film Critics that championed studio orphans from the ‘70s and ‘80s. In the days before the Internet, young cinephiles like myself relied on reference books and anthologies to lead us to films we might not have discovered otherwise. Released in 1990, Produced and Abandoned was a foundational piece of work, introducing me to such wonders as Cutter’s Way, Lost in America, High Tide, Choose Me, Housekeeping, and Fat City. (You can find the full list of entries here.) Our first round of Produced and Abandoned essays included Angelica Jade Bastién on By the Sea, Mike D’Angelo on The Counselor, Judy Berman on Velvet Goldmine, and Keith Phipps on O.C. and Stiggs. Over the next four weeks, Musings will continue with another round of essays about tarnished gems, in the hope they’ll get a second look. Or, more likely, a first. —Scott Tobias, editor.]

It’s generally accepted that John Carpenter wasn’t a personal filmmaker—not personal in the way that Martin Scorsese, only five years his senior and Italianamerican from the start, was. Carpenter grew up movie-crazy in the ’50s and ’60s. He wanted to make Westerns exactly at the moment when that became an unrealistic career goal. His heroes were Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles and, above all, Howard Hawks. It’s been nourishing to listen to Amy Nicholson’s wonderful eight-part podcast Halloween Unmasked, still in progress, and to hear Carpenter—usually oblique in interviews—open up about his boyhood in the Jim Crow–era South. He mentions visiting an insane asylum during a college psych trip and locking eyes with a prisoner who spooked him. That may be the basis for killer Michael Myers but, by and large, this was a guy who wrote what he dreamed up, not what he knew.

That’s not to suggest Carpenter didn’t develop his own signature style. When he arrived in Los Angeles in 1968 to attend film school at USC, he reinvented himself, transforming from a Max Fischer–like creative wunderkind (he was a rock guitarist and high-school class president) into a laconic, bell-bottomed cowboy who listened more than he spoke. He was too cool for nerdy Dan O’Bannon, who worked with him on Dark Star. He was too cool for Hollywood itself, even after he’d succeeded there, rarely mingling socially and turning down projects like Top Gun and Fatal Attraction.

But the cool act was a bit of smokescreen. I once asked Carpenter about it, and he owned up to a private sense of pain in regard to his work. “I take every failure hard,” he told me in 2008, singling out the audience’s abandonment of The Thing, a remake of his favorite film (one that actually improves on its source). “The movie was hated. Even by science-fiction fans. They thought that I had betrayed some kind of trust, and the piling on was insane. Even the original movie's director, Christian Nyby, was dissing me.”

Carpenter would rebound from that 1982 commercial disaster—as well the indignity of getting sacked from Firestarter—by playing the game even better. He directed Jeff Bridges to a Best Actor nomination on Starman (that’s as rare as a unicorn for a sci-fi performance) and, just as things were turning golden, blew all his capital again on 1986’s Big Trouble in Little China, which was rushed and subsequently buried in the massive shadow of Aliens. “You try to make a studio picture your own, but in the end, it’s their film,” Carpenter said in our interview, the Kentucky rascal turned bitter. “And they’re going to get what they want. After that experience, I had to stop playing for the studios for a while and go independent again.”

This is the pivotal moment in Carpenter’s career, the one that fascinates me the most. It should fascinate more people, given what the filmmaker did. Divorced and with a two-year-old son, Carpenter is, at that point, 38 years old. He’s already feeling like a Hollywood burnout, with a decade of ups and downs to prove it. The solution was a pay cut, a big one: Prince of Darkness, financed through “supermensch” Shep Gordon and Alive Films and released in 1987, would be made for a grand total of $3 million, the first title in a multi-picture deal that guaranteed Carpenter complete creative control.

Scrappy but never chintzy, Prince of Darkness is the most lovable of movies. On the surface, it has all the cool minimalism a JC fan could ask for: elegant anamorphic compositions (Gary Kibbe’s muscular cinematography adds millions more in production value), a seesawing synth score, a one-location “siege” structure akin to the director’s Assault on Precinct 13 and The Thing. The movie also has Alice Cooper killing a grad student with a bicycle. It has a swirling canister of green Satanic goo in a church basement.

Critics, by and large, were unkind. In a representative review from the New York Times, Vincent Canby called it “surprisingly cheesy,” singling out first-time screenwriter Martin Quatermass for particular scorn (he “overloads the dialogue with scientific references and is stingy with the surprises”), not realizing that this was a pseudonym for Carpenter himself. Would it have mattered? Released days before Halloween, Prince got clobbered by the gig Carpenter turned down, Fatal Attraction, still surging in its sixth weekend.

But below the surface—and still a matter for wider appreciation—is the film that Carpenter dug himself out of his psychic hellhole to make: his most personal horror movie, starring a version of himself. Prince of Darkness is about watching and waiting. In a way, it’s a romantic view of the auteur’s own time at school. It’s a movie about the evil that stares out of the mirror (i.e., yourself). Like all of his films, it arrived under the possessive title John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness. In my mind, that apostrophe is actually a contraction: John Carpenter Is Prince of Darkness. And Prince of Darkness is him.

First, let’s understand what $3 million means in 1987. To compare it to some other movies of the same period, Blue Velvet’s budget is twice as large. Hannah and Her Sisters, largely shot in Mia Farrow’s apartment, was funded at $6.4 million. When Scorsese decided to go indie and make his audacious The Last Temptation of Christ, he had a $7 million allowance—and that’s for robes and sandals. Carpenter, on the other hand, would be doing practical special effects in camera. He’d be doing a movie with gore and supernatural nuttiness. In a now-quaint New York Times article from April 1987 titled “Independents Making It Big” (“The major studios have abandoned small, serious, risky films, the kind that often win prizes”), Merchant Ivory’s Oscar-winning A Room With A View gets prime positioning with a big photograph; that one has a $3 million budget, roughly. (Not coincidentally, Carpenter’s financiers, Alive Films, are name-checked in the piece as the producers of Alan Rudolph’s Trouble in Mind.)

Coming off Big Trouble in Little China’s estimated $20 million budget (it was probably more), Carpenter would be making a radical shift. But he agreed to Alive’s terms. He’d return to doing things fast and smart, to distilling his vision down to its cleanest, clearest grammar, to getting it done in 30 days (Halloween was shot in 20, over four weeks in May 1978). Even if you disregard the whole of Prince of Darkness’s content—and we won’t be doing that—Carpenter’s desire to work in total artistic freedom is breathtaking. He will do what it takes to move forward.

A little plot: In Prince of Darkness, scientists, theologians and academics plunge into a dilapidated church where they power up their equipment and study a mysterious genie in a bottle: an “anti-god.” The scenario has some of the pseudo-tech fizz of Poltergeist or, in a lighter vein, the Harold Ramis scenes in Ghostbusters. It’s not meant to hold up under scrutiny. Carpenter, who says he was reading books about quantum uncertainty at the time (maybe not the most comforting bedside material given his professional predicament), gives pages of chewy dialogue to the twin father figures of his oeuvre: Donald Pleasence, returning from Halloween and Escape from New York, plays an unnamed, worried priest; and Big Trouble’s wizened Victor Wong appears as an esteemed professor of metaphysical causality.

If the movie has a conventional hero (it doesn’t), it’s Brian, a student who splits the difference between creepy and generically handsome. He’s played by Jameson Parker, then a TV star on Simon & Simon. Or at least I think it’s Jameson Parker. Unlike his more famous San Diego private detective, Brian sports a robust, porn-star-worthy moustache. It makes him look swarthy, mysterious—a little like the lanky John Carpenter himself, who shoots these early scenes in classrooms and hallways at his alma mater, USC. “I spent many happy years at SC as a film student,” Carpenter says on Shout! Factory’s collector’s Blu-ray. “I really enjoyed myself. I learned everything about how to make movies there.”

Watching Prince of Darkness is as close as we’ll come to seeing the director’s formative years re-enacted, memoir-style. In getting back to basics, Carpenter decided to do it literally. Brian sits in class listening; he has a bit of a Laurie Strode moment looking out the window, distracted. Who is he? He’s a young scientist observing evil, almost flirting with it. He spies on a pretty girl in the courtyard (Lisa Blount). She’s got a boyfriend and it irks him, wordlessly. Later, Brian will woo her to bed and use some hard-core Howard Hawks dialogue on her: “Who was he? The one that gave you such a high opinion of men?” he says, straight out of Lauren Bacall’s playbook in To Have and Have Not. It works. She kisses him.

The movie isn’t all wish-fulfillment. In fact, it’s charming how fully the Carpenter surrogate recedes into the team; Brian isn’t even a factor in the final showdown. Maybe his job is to watch other people vanquish evil. That would make sense, since it’s his creator’s comfort zone. In the meantime, the offscreen Carpenter is building some of his grossest sequences, spraying unsuspecting people in the mouth with streams of ectoplasm (à la Rob Bottin’s landmark FX in The Thing), mounting parallel action and deploying beetles, maggots and ants where necessary.

Prince of Darkness has one moment that’s proven unforgettable, transcending even the horror genre. It’s an eerie transmission, the voice slowed down and distorted: “This is not a dream…not a dream…” DJ Shadow samples it a few times on his groundbreaking debut, 1996’s Endtroducing. (The voice is actually Carpenter’s, impossible not to notice once you’ve been made aware of it.) He’s supposed to be a future dude reaching backward in time—“from the year one, nine, nine, nine”—maybe to prevent a biblical apocalypse. All we see is a jittery handheld shot of a silhouetted robed figure slowly emerging from the church, the ominous end-of-the-world smoke gathering.

The economy of the shot is beautiful, Carpenter achieving the texture of a half-remembered nightmare using only a capture-video-off-a-TV-screen trick. (It’s very Inland Empire—and come to think of it, that basement cylinder of swirling green evil is a lot like the glass box from the first episode of the rebooted Twin Peaks: The Return.) So in a situation where Carpenter is facing his most prohibitive spending limits, he’s actually expanding his craft. Prince of Darkness signals his own creative rehabilitation after turning his heel on the studios. Or, to quote the film’s poster: “It is evil. It is real. It is awakening.”

What does it mean that Carpenter’s big payoff involves a mirror? These Cocteau-like shots were some of the most dangerous to pull off. One of them involved plunging a prosthetic hand into highly toxic liquid mercury (a substance the crew had to drain from their hydraulic cranes just to make the gag work). Then, to capture the action on the “other side” of the mirror, poor Lisa Blount had to swim submerged in a darkened swimming pool while an underwater camera shot upward at the glimmering surface. I include these technical details not only to express awe at Carpenter’s commitment (along with that of his collaborators), but also to stress the obvious: The mirror climax was really important to him. The movie’s final seconds are the whole of Prince of Darkness’s reflexivity in a single cut: Brian, woken from a double dream, approaches his bedroom mirror. We see from the perspective of the glass. He touches that porn ’stache tentatively, then reaches out. Cut to black.

It’s not easy to touch that mirror—to walk away from everything you’ve labored to achieve over years, to a place where it’s just you and your talent and what you can do. To me, that’s what Prince of Darkness expresses, subtly. Creatively, the experiment worked: It led directly to Carpenter’s 1988 stealth masterpiece They Live, his most confident political statement and a kindred project in its use of real L.A. locations. That film’s critical reputation has already been defended at large. But maybe it’s time to rally behind the moment slightly earlier, when the director had to rediscover who he was, and what he wanted—and when he found a way to turn everything around.

#john carpenter #halloween #prince of darkness #the thing #they live #horror film #produced and abandoned #demon #big trouble in little china #assault on precinct 13 #joshua rothkopf #oscilloscope laboratories #o-scope labs #film writing #musings

[quranreadalong]

SO YOU AFFLICTED THE PEOPLE OF YOUR HOMETOWN WITH A FAMINE BECAUSE THEY ARE DISBELIEVERS

We’ve talked a lot about the Medina days in history lessons, but the Mecca days have been left fairly blank beyond that one history lesson in surah 6 and some tidbits along the way. There is a simple reason for this: far more was written about the Medina days in reputable sources. Mohammed lived as a Muslim in Mecca from 610 to 622 AD, and there was animosity between Mohammed’s camp in Medina and the Quraysh of Mecca all the way through 630 AD. That’s a long time! But the reliable information that we have on what exactly was occurring in Mecca during those 20 years is really skimpy.

Of course, we know the general outline, with the Quran itself as the most important source--how the majority of people in Mecca not only didn’t take to Mohammed’s “message” but thought he was a bit nutty and irritating, and all the drama that unfolded as a result of that. We know a bit about what happened towards the end of this time period, with the Treaty of Hudaibiyya and the conquest of Mecca. But we just don’t have a serious record of everything that happened in between, and most of what Muslims are taught about Mecca in this era relies mostly or entirely on weak traditions.

None of this is really surprising when you think about the numbers involved here. The vast majority of Meccans were not Muslim when Mohammed and his followers left for Medina. Those who stayed and later “embraced Islam” only after the conquest of Mecca (and subsequent hunting of polytheists) years later would naturally have been reluctant to talk about the years they spent in opposition to “Allah’s apostle”. Those who were Muslims at the time and migrated from Mecca to Medina with Mohammed numbered fewer than 200 even by the most optimistic accounts, and not all of them survived long enough to tell the tale. Compare that to the thousands of men that Mohammed led to conquer the city within a decade. Islam was born in Mecca, but it didn’t go from Local Man Becomes Cult Leader to Local Man Becomes Warlord until Medina.

So in addition to a dearth of material to work with, we ultimately have a dearth of potential original sources. Of those who narrated a thousand or more ahadith, in fact, the only two who were present in Mecca at any point during that era (Aisha and Mohammed’s cousin Abdallah ibn al-Abbas) were both very small children at the time of the migration to Medina. As such, trying to piece together exactly what went on in Mecca takes some work and some willing suspension of disbelief. This applies to not only Mohammed’s days in Mecca, but also to what happened in Mecca before Mohammed conquered it. Today we will look at a very good example of this problem.

In the last section, we were talking about this hadith from Bukhari, which is repeated in several sahih ahadith:

We were with `Abdullah and he said, "When the Prophet (ﷺ) saw the refusal of the people to accept Islam he said, "O Allah! Send (famine) years on them for (seven years) like the seven years (of famine during the time) of (Prophet) Joseph." So famine overtook them for one year and destroyed every kind of life to such an extent that the people started eating hides, carcasses and rotten dead animals. Whenever one of them looked towards the sky, he would (imagine himself to) see smoke because of hunger. So Abu Sufyan went to the Prophet (ﷺ) and said, "O Muhammad! You order people to obey Allah and to keep good relations with kith and kin. No doubt the people of your tribe are dying, so please pray to Allah for them." So [Mohammed recites part of surah 44 about how Allah will take them in a “mighty grasp”]. Ibn Mas`ud added, [that] happened in the battle of Badr

After that, Mohammed recites an ayah from surah 44, in which he says that the Meccans would just return to disbelief and would be destroyed by Allah, which is interpreted as a reference to the Battle of Badr. Other ahadith on this subject have some alternate dialogue--in this one Mohammed curses “Mudar”, which was an enormous tribal confederation including the Quraysh--but the general idea is the same.

That famine is assumed to be what Mohammed is talking about in 23:76, where he tells the Meccans that Allah has already punished them for their disbelief, as a warning. Well, fair enough, right? Here’s the issue: this is supposed to be a Meccan surah. And there is no record of such a catastrophic famine befalling Mecca before Mohammed left the city in 622 AD. It could have happened, I guess, but there’s nothing said of it in any reputable source, and one would assume that A) if such a famine had happened, a hell of a lot more people would’ve converted to Islam and followed Mohammed, and B) it would have been mentioned in the ahadith by people who suffered through it. But there isn’t any mention of this event anywhere. In fact, it’s really hard to tell when this apparent famine happened at all!

Let’s look at some sketchy stories that pinpoint the supposed famine in Mohammed’s Mecca days. Here is one from the guy mentioned in the Bukhari hadith. Abdullah ibn Masud is mentioned in another sahih hadith which says:

One day I went to Ibn Mas`ud who said, "When Quraish delayed in embracing Islam, the Prophet (ﷺ) [said:] I invoked Allah to curse them, so they were afflicted with a (famine) year because of which many of them died and they ate the carcasses ... Asbath added on the authority of Mansur, "Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) prayed for them and it rained heavily for seven days. So the people complained of the excessive rain. The Prophet (ﷺ) said, 'O Allah! (Let it rain) around us and not on us.' So the clouds dispersed over his head and it rained over the surroundings."

This and all of the other sahih ahadith concerning this topic stem from the same three narrators: Mansour, Masruq, and Abu al-Duha; they mention Ibn Masud as the ultimate source of this knowledge.

Reader, it is my opinion that one of these people is lying.

There is no record of any such famine in Mecca before the migration to Medina, nor is there any trace of this supposed famine from any chain of narration not involving the people named above. If Mohammed created and ended a drought on demand, I’d guess that he’d have won more than a couple hundred converts in 12+ years in Mecca. After all, one of the Meccans’ persistent criticisms of Mohammed, as the Quran itself states, was that he could not perform miracles. In fact, the account of Mohammed sending rain to relieve a drought, the people getting soaked and complaining, then the rainclouds being pushed out in a circle above is extremely similar to another mythical account... about this happening in Medina, which does not involve the Quraysh at all. It seems like that myth got transformed a bit and then backdated to the Mecca days, and that’s how the first hadith came to be.

This does not mean that the famine itself is purely mythical. It is mentioned by plenty of other narrators--just not the part about Mohammed performing a miracle to both invoke it and stop it, then placing it pre-Badr. I am now going to show, in obnoxious detail, why this detail was almost certainly false and early Islamic myth-making, and why the real famine, if it happened, instead occurred while Mohammed was in Medina.

There are plenty of other famines mentioned in Islamic histories and the sira we’ve been reading, but none that properly fit the timeline here. Ibn Ishaq, for example, references a famine that led to the young Ali coming to live with his older cousin Mohammed and his wife Khadijah:

God showed His favor and goodwill towards him (Ali) when a grievous famine overtook Quraysh. Abu Talib (Ali's father, Mohammed's uncle) had a large family, and the prophet approached his (other) uncle al-Abbas, who was one of the richest of Banu Hashim (their clan) ... the apostle took [in] Ali and kept him with him and al-Abbas took (Ali's brother) Jaafar.

But this was before Mohammed’s prophet days. So that one doesn’t work as a punishment for disbelievers. And anyway it’s unclear whether the people in Mecca were dying of hunger here--the implication is more like Abu Talib in particular was suffering because he didn’t have enough money to feed his large family. That was possibly because fewer people were coming to Mecca for the hajj, and Abu Talib made money catering to pilgrims. And Ibn Ishaq mentions no other “grievous famine”.

Some modern-day scholars instead try to connect the mysterious famine with a “boycott” of Mohammed’s clan, the Banu Hashim, mentioned in some history books, though it is not referenced in any strong ahadith. At some point, these books say, the Quraysh got so pissed off at Mohammed that they agreed to stop trading and marrying with his clan, even though most of his clan wasn’t Muslim at the time. The boycott was not very effective because people went around it and quietly traded with them anyway, then two or three years later the boycotters gave up. Even the sketchy sources describing this event have been drastically dramatized in modern times, implying it was a boycott of all Muslims (it wasn’t) and that it resulted in people dying (it didn’t). The actual sources that mention this never say this “boycott” starved anyone, let alone that it killed people. And at any rate, even if you do connect the Meccan famine to the supposed failed “boycott”, there’s still no mention of the supposed retaliatory famine in this era in any history books!

There is no other famine mentioned anywhere between 610 and 622 AD that we can even semi-plausibly connect with the famine. So we’re gonna have to ignore the belief that this was from the Mecca days if we want to make this work. The first hadith has to contain mythical details--a hadith being sahih does not necessarily mean that it is a true recollection of events, but simply that the statement probably does ultimately trace back to the alleged source (see examples of mythical sahih ahadith here or here). So let’s expand the timeline a bit. Al-Wahidi records a version of the story that does imply it was from the Medina days:

When Thumamah ibn Athal al-Hanafi (a powerful tribal chief) was brought to the Messenger of Allah, Allah bless him and give him peace, as a prisoner and the latter embraced Islam, he set him free. Thumamah returned to al-Yamamah (Najd region) and prevented the people of Mecca from getting any provisions from al-Yamamah. Allah, exalted is He, sent upon Quraysh years of scarcity until they were forced to eat animal hair mixed with blood. Abu Sufyan went to see the Messenger of Allah, Allah bless him and give him peace, and said: ‘I beseech you by Allah and our ties of kinship; do you not claim that you have been sent a mercy unto the worlds’. He said: ‘Indeed!’ Abu Sufyan said: ‘But you have killed fathers with the sword and children with hunger’

So, okay, here we have a clearer story: the “famine” is caused less by natural causes and more by a blockade of goods that results in starvation, courtesy of this powerful tribal leader from the Najd region east of Mecca and Medina. Allah’s “divine punishment” comes in because the guy doing the blockading is a Muslim. Ibn Ishaq relates the incident in which Thumamah here was captured:

The apostle's cavalry went out and captured a man of the Banu Hanifa not knowing who he was ... The apostle went to him and urged him to accept Islam .. When they let him go he went as far as al-Baqi, where he purified himself and then returned and paid homage to the prophet

If you remember from way back in surah 9, the early Muslims did engage in some raiding and attacks before Badr, most of which involved them trying to attack a caravan; they succeeded in the Nakhla raid, which resulted in a Meccan trader being killed during a supposedly “sacred month”, prompting the Quraysh to put together a defense force for the next caravan. The Muslims at the time did not have the numbers to raid all the way into the Najd region, though, and there’s no record of them having done so in 623-early 624 AD. So... if we want this story to work within the timeline, we have to assume that Thumamah was captured in some small, otherwise unmentioned raid when he was just hanging out in the Hijaz region for some reason. Again, it’s possible. But it seems very unlikely. And based on where this incident is listed in Ibn Ishaq’s work, this happened long after Badr, anyway, closer to 630 AD. Another dead end...

If we assume that the famine really did happen and is not just some early Islamic myth-making, going by the sources available to us, we’re gonna have to ignore 1) the belief that this ayah is from Mecca, and 2) Ibn Masud’s alleged interpretation of the ayah, mentioned in the hadith, as referring to Badr. We gotta put the famine post-Badr. No other timeline makes sense. In this case, the famine would be a warning whereas the outright conquest of Mecca and subsequent elimination of polytheism would be the true punishment, I guess. Basically a variant of the standard Allah Will Destroy You Like Past Disbelievers thing.

This paper records some other opinions of scholars and tafsir authors, which do gel with the al-Wahidi account as long as we assume this is happening after Badr:

al-Thalabi in his Tafsir: the [Quraysh] suffered hunger for seven years and the Arab tribes cut off their food supplies according to the order to the prophet. ... [Abu Sufyan] asked the Prophet to invoke God for them, which the Prophet indeed did. Then the prophet permitted to carry food to them while they were still unbelievers

This 11th century account expands the famine so it lasts the full seven years, whereas the Bukhari hadith says Mohammed asked for a seven year famine but only got one year. It also says that Mohammed graciously stopped the famine upon Abu Sufyan’s request and relieved the starving Meccans. This last part, where Mohammed saves the Meccans from hunger, seems to have sprung up in the works of the Arabic grammarian al-Farra but is not found in any reputable ahadith. But still, keep it in mind for later. The tidbit about the famine lasting seven years is not found in earlier stories and seems fabricated, but the core idea--that the famine was caused by some Arab tribe blockading Mecca--at least does fit with the Thumamah story.

So the best vague approximation for what the famine really was and when it really occurred (if ever) is that it was a blockade of Mecca carried out on Mohammed’s orders at some point between 625 and 630, which is when Mecca was conquered. That at least gives us a better starting point than “idk it happened at some point somehow”.

There is more evidence for putting the famine in the later end of that period (~628) than the earlier end, simply due to Abu Sufyan’s presence in the hadith--his visit to Medina just before Mohammed conquered Mecca, in which he tried to resolve the situation peacefully, is the only time he’s mentioned as actually visiting the city in reputable sources. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that there was some otherwise unmentioned visit. This will let us look at some alleged incidents that put the famine closer to 625.

Al-Wahidi mentions one other incident involving Abu Sufyan visiting Medina, this time at some point after the Battle of Uhud.

After the fighting at Uhud, [Abu Sufyan etc] travelled to Medina and stayed as guests at ‘Abd Allah ibn Ubayy’s (Medinan leader called one of the “munafiqun”). The Prophet ... had allowed them to come to speak with him with his assurance of protection. ... They said to the Prophet ... “Reject the mention of our idols al-Lat, al-‘Uzza and Manat and say that they have benefit and the power of intercession for those who worship them, and we will leave you alone with your Lord!” Their words hurt the Prophet

This incident isn’t mentioned by any of the sahih ahadith, but it apparently stems from around the 8th century (allegedly from Muqatil), so at least it’s a pretty early tradition. According to this, at some point after Uhud, Abu Sufyan stopped by Medina and asked Mohammed to just keep the names of their goddesses out of his mouth and say that they could respond to prayers. Mohammed and Umar rejected this and the delegation went back to Mecca. The story seems to imply that it wasn’t right after Uhud, because it implies that the Muslims weren’t in a very subservient position here, so maybe it was after the later non-battle at Badr or else the siege of Medina. That would be 626 or 627. If you remember from surah 9′s history lessons, one of the reasons why Abu Sufyan refused to fight at Badr that year is because it was a drought year. A drought coupled with a blockade would have produced some seriously awful results. Maybe we’re on to something here? Could this be the visit in which Abu Sufyan pleaded for relief?

Some traditions, again not found in any sahih ahadith but still worth mentioning, imply that in the period between the failed siege of Medina and the conquest of Mecca, Abu Sufyan began to reconsider his strategy and tried to appease Mohammed by accepting gifts from him and sending Medina gifts in return. The paper quotes the scholar Ibn Asakir (1100s AD), citing a tradition supposedly going back to Mohammed’s follower Ikrimah:

[Abu Sufyan] sent to the prophet weapons and other things which the prophet accepted. Then the prophet sent him [dates] and Abu Sufyan sent him in return hides.

Similar traditions suggest that Mohammed sent food to the people of Mecca in general, which is like that account from al-Farra mentioned above.

So, hey, we maybe got something going on here. The general idea would be that at some point between 626 and 627 AD, Mohammed told one of his followers to blockade the eastern routes to Mecca, depriving them of crucial food supplies in a drought year. In addition, Mohammed ordered his followers to raid their allies and some related clans (the other “Mudar” clans), depriving the Quraysh of outside help. After the collapse of the siege of Medina and the defeat of the Jews and various Ghatafan clans, the Quraysh were isolated and, apparently, starving.

Within a year of that happening, Abu Sufyan recognized the inevitable and interceded with Mohammed to ask for relief, at which point Mohammed sent supplies to Mecca, establishing his control over the city in advance of the Treaty of Hudaibiyya and subsequent conquest of Mecca. Despite the fall of the city, Abu Sufyan would ultimately be rewarded for his subservience, as his family was taken into Mohammed’s inner circle and his son and grandson would both go on to be caliphs. Yaaaay mystery solved!!

...

HOWEVER.

As this other paper points out, this all relies upon sticking different traditions together. The one where Abu Sufyan visits Medina to ask Mohammed to stop talking shit about their goddesses doesn’t mention any famine. Even if the Thumamah story is true, it seems like the effects of the famine weren’t disastrous by the time of the supposed “after Uhud” visit. I mean, that seems like a pretty damn crucial piece of information to leave out. So while, yeah, it’s possible, again, it relies on highly tenuous readings of already shaky traditions. Let’s take one more swing at this riddle and try to place the famine in the latest years possible--closer to the time of the conquest of Mecca itself. After the Treaty of Hudaibiyya, in the years 628-630 AD. Maybe “Allah” only gave Mohammed one year of famine instead of seven because Mohammed would be in control of the city not long after that year. A sahih hadith mentions the following incident of a guy from Mecca leaving for Medina in this period.

Abu Basir a man from the Quraish (who was a Muslim), came to [Medina]. And [the Quraysh] sent (two men) to look for him; so [Mohammed] handed him over to the two men. They took him away ... and alighted to eat some dates which they had, Abu Basir said to one of the men: ... I think this sword of yours is a fine one; the other drew the sword and said: Yes I have tried it. Abu Basir said: Let me look at it. He let [Abu Basir] have it and [Abu Basir] struck him till he died, whereupon the other fled and came to Medina, and running entered the mosque. ... He said (to Mohammed): I swear by Allah that my Companion has been killed, and I’m as good as dead. Abu Basir then arrived and said: Allah has fulfilled your covenant. You returned me to them, but Allah saved me from them. The Prophet (ﷺ) said: Woe to his mother, stirrer up of war! ... When [Abu Basir] heard that he knew that [Mohammed] would send him back to them, so he went out and came to the seashore. Abu Jandal escaped and joined Abu Basir till a band of them collected. 

So this guy, Abu Basir, is sent back to Mecca as per the conditions of the treaty (Mohammed sent the men back at first but kept the women, even though the treaty itself made no such distinction). But on the way back Abu Basir stabs one of the guys escorting him and chases after the other one, who runs back to Medina and tells Mohammed what happened. Mohammed is irritated and says that Abu Basir now really has to go back, because he’s just killed a guy for no reason. Instead of returning to Mecca, Abu Basir instead joins up with this Abu Jandal fellow--a runaway from Mecca who had secretly converted before the Battle of Badr and had switched sides during the battle along with his brother, much to the chagrin of the Quraysh. After the battle, he was dragged home and imprisoned for his betrayal, but he later made his way to Medina. Mohammed said had to go back, mentioned in another sahih hadith.

Abu Basir and Abu Jandal, along with various other Muslims, set up a “band”, as the hadith says. Hey...... haven’t we heard of these guys before somewhere?

Oh yeah! They were in this hadith from surah 9!

Abu Jandal bin Suhail got himself released from them (i.e. infidels) and joined Abu Basir. So, whenever a man from Quraish embraced Islam he would follow Abu Basir till they formed a strong group. By Allah, whenever they heard about a caravan of Quraish heading towards Sham, they stopped it and attacked and killed them (i.e. infidels) and took their properties. The people of Quraish sent a message to the Prophet (ﷺ) requesting him for the Sake of Allah and Kith and kin to send for (i.e. Abu Basir and his companions) promising that whoever (amongst them) came to the Prophet (ﷺ) would be secure. So the Prophet (ﷺ) sent for them (i.e. Abu Basir's companions) and [Allah] revealed the following Divine Verses: "... After He made you the victorious over them. ... the unbelievers had pride and haughtiness, in their hearts ... the pride and haughtiness of the time of ignorance." (48.24-26) And their pride and haughtiness was that they did not confess (write in the treaty) that he (i.e. Muhammad) was the Prophet of Allah and refused to write: "In the Name of Allah, the most Beneficent, the Most Merciful," 

So the “band” in question was a band of murdererous converts from among the Quraysh who attacked every Qurayshi caravan along the Syria route they could get their hands on, killed the traders, and stole all their goods. During the “truce”. The Meccans--presumably including Abu Sufyan--asked Mohammed “for the sake of Kith and kin” (his family/clan) if uhhh hey could you maybe stop your people from attacking us please we kind of have a treaty with you bro lol?? But in response Mohammed blamed them for refusing to recognize him as a prophet in the treaty (remember that debacle?).

Now hold the fuck up. Here we really do seem to have something. There was a drought going on--starting around 626 and continuing at least until the time of the Tabouk expedition, as we’ve already talked about--and here we have a sahih hadith telling us that the Meccans were also being deprived of their trade, not just from the east as in the other story, but also from the north--from their absolute most vital route. And, as the paper I linked above mentions, the scholar Ibn Hajar connects this incident to a time in which:

(Quraysh) sent Abu Sufyan b. Harb to the apostle of Allah to ask him and to plead with him to summon Abu Jandal and the people who were with him.

...Abu Sufyan went to Mohammed in person during the “treaty” era, which would be 628 or 629! And this ties into the earlier explanations about the stories supposedly set a couple years earlier in 626/627--because Abu Sufyan’s visit here still led to Mohammed relieving the Meccans of the blockade, as long as the Quraysh agreed to ignore the one part of the treaty that was actually beneficial to them, which they did:

They (i.e., Quraysh) said: 'anyone who sets out from us to you may stay with you lawfully, and there is nothing objectionable in it'

So it all ultimately fits together!

TO SUM UP A VERY LONG READ: If we assume the famine did happen, the most logical way to put together the story is this. Mohammed first started blockading Mecca from the lands of the Najd in the east, courtesy of Thumamah. Gradually the allies of the Quraysh were defeated or made to submit to Mohammed, from Bedouin clans to the Jews of Medina. There was a drought going on, and times were tough but not unbearable, because the Meccans still had their other trading routes to rely upon. But years later, after the Quraysh’s strength had collapsed and the treaty had been signed, the people of Mecca still “persisted in their unbelief”. And so a band of Muslims began to blockade them from the north with Mohammed’s support. Mecca was cut off from vital trade routes in two directions, and a famine began. After a year or so of misery, Abu Sufyan realized that defeat was inevitable, and began taking steps to effectively surrender to Mohammed, including begging him to stop the blockade in exchange for getting rid of a pro-Quraysh stipulation in the Treaty of Hudaibiyya. Mohammed agreed to this and the condition of the people in Mecca improved once he sent them supplies, but by now they knew that they lived and died on Mohammed’s whim, and it was only a short time before he took over the city itself.

To me this timeline is really the only one possible, given the evidence. The Bukhari hadith is almost certainly mythical, and based on a myth that puts this incident in a totally different era at that. When it comes to the surah we’ve been reading, some parts of it, perhaps including 23:76, appear to be from the Medina era instead of the Mecca days. And the punishment-famine referenced in the various ahadith we’ve read is likelier to be this famine, caused by a combination of drought and blockades prior to the conquest of Mecca, than any other supposed famine.

So there you have it. I think that is the single clearest explanation for that ayah, and several related others that we will later come across. In addition to raids, ambushes, forced conversions, massacres, sieges, mass enslavements, rapes, feudalism schemes, and ethnic cleansing, evidently Mohammed was not adverse to using hunger as a weapon. Nobody ever said that establishing a theocratic empire was a cute process fam!!

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#historylesson #surah 23 #quranreadalong #al muminun

[the-nwah-embassy]

The Daedra as schoolmates

Azura: The ultimate mom friend, to the point of total annoyance. Always nagging you about doing homework and paying attention in school. Perfect grades, perfect attendance, and has no time for frivolities like relationships. Although she’s extraordinarily pretty and caring in a maternal way, she’s also extremely terrifying when angered. You’ve seen her rip apart lives piece by piece in a calculating and cruel manner because someone bumped her in the hallway and didn’t say “Excuse me”, and then blame their lack of manners for their suffering.

Sheogorath: The random and uncomfortably loud class clown. He spends more time laughing at his own jokes than he does anything else. While occasionally entertaining, he’s also very unpredictable. He once knocked a kid out because he said “Oh yeah, I’ve heard that one before” to one of his jokes. He was also suspended for a month for putting a cherry bomb in the principals desk, which caused a minor fire in the office and caused a school-wide evacuation. Because of his crazy antics, he doesn’t have many friends, and the friends he does have are just as nutty as he is. 

Namira: The girl with a greasy mop of hair who smells like mildew and body odor. You’re not entirely sure she even owns a shower. People avoid her in the halls, but she doesn’t seem to mind because she’s too busy picking her teeth with her fingernails and smelling it. During lunch, you can usually find her swirling all her food into a disgusting slop and putting it in people’s faces, or behind the school building picking up bugs playing with them. She usually wears the same two or three outfits every day, with the exception of her gym clothes, which you know for a fact haven’t been washed all year. 

Hircine: The kid who is constantly wearing camo for no apparent reason at all. Camo jackets, camo hats, he even has camo interior in his ridiculous truck. Like literally all camo, all the time, for no reason. He’s the kid who goes hunting every single weekend and brags about the giant deer antlers hung up in his living room that his dad killed a few years ago. Needless to say, he’s president of the archery club and an NRA fanatic. He’s always bringing his own lunch to school, which looks eerily similar to a pile of freshly cut meat. You’re fairly certain he has a collection of animal skulls and organs hidden away in his closet ‘for trophy purposes.’

Boethiah: The infamous two-faced backstabber. She acts sweet and kind to your face and then talks shit about you to her ‘friends’ when you walk away, and the same thing over again when they walk away. However, whenever you confront her, she somehow always convinces you that it never happened, or maybe you heard wrong, or perhaps the other people were lying. She always comes out looking innocent. And Divines forbid you date someone who she takes a liking to, because you’ll find yourself with a nasty breakup on your hands and shortly after, her on their arm. At least for a few weeks until she gets bored. Then she’ll come to you and say how sorry she is, and that she genuinely thought it was true love and how she never should have betrayed your friendship for him. And when you forgive her, and you always do, she’ll walk away smirking, planning her next bitch move.

Peryite: This kid is always sick. Seriously, it’s always something with this guy. He spends more time out of class than he does in it, which you can’t say you’re not grateful for, because he’s also disgusting. He constantly sneezes without covering his mouth, and in the direction of other people. He sniffles all the time which sounds more more like snoring, and it makes everyone gag. You’d feel bad for him, but you know he does it on purpose. He’s also weirdly obsessed with learning about plagues. At first, you thought it was because he was so sickly and might be worried about himself, but now you’re not so sure. 

Mephala: The school rumor spreader. You have no idea how, but this girl knows everyone and their business, and she has no shame twisting it to her pleasure. She’s ended relationships, friendships, and even scholarships. Somehow her tangled whispers find their way all over the school halls. For whatever reason, her word is taken as law, and she’s an authority on everyone else’s business. Maybe it’s because she’s cute, or maybe it’s because her skirts are a little too short, but whatever the reason, she has a way of convincing everyone else that her word is infallible. Most people try to make themselves invisible to her, but everyone finds their way into her web of lies eventually.

Mehrunes Dagon: Mehrunes is the quarterback of the school football team, but contrary to cliche, he’s very disliked, to say the least. Even the rest of the team can’t stand him because of his anger issues. While he has experience and ambition, he’s just an absolute jerk for no reason at all. Even the coach knows there’s something up with him, but won’t take him off the team because he’s so good at what he does. He’s fairly well known as a bully and an all around asshole throughout the school. Divine’s help if the school loses a game, because when they do, he ends up smashing in lockers and breaking sinks in the locker room. Seriously, this guy needs to be locked up because he can cause some real damage, and you have a sneaking suspicion he’ll be in jail less than a week after his 18th birthday.

Meridia: Meridia is the class president and voted most likely to succeed. She’s the perfect school princess who always does what she’s supposed to, and makes sure that others do too. You know that outfit you love that is just a tiny bit out of dress code? She’s the one that comes up and says “You know, that outfit doesn’t meet the dress requirements!” a little too loudly in front of a teacher, and then smiles and flounces off. She’s constantly making pointless, boring speeches at the school assemblies and deludes herself into thinking people she doesn’t know legitimately care about her plans for after college. The teachers roll their eyes when she’s around, and even the principal is tired of this chick. 

Jyggalag: This dude is OCD as hell. He arrives at school every day at exactly the same time, sharpens every single pencil he owns so they are the exact same length, and reorganizes his notes before class. Every. Single. Day. Every notebook he owns is color coded and even page numbered so that he could make an index, and his handwriting looks like a typewriter wrote it. He’s been hall monitor for like two years now even though the limit is 3 months. He also absolutely detests Sheogorath, so much so that a rumor is going around that he switched schools just to get away from him. 

Vaermina: Mean. Just mean. No rhyme, no reason, just mean. She never says a word to anyone, but everyone has a horror story involving this chick. New to the school? She’ll welcome you by tripping you in the hall. Have a new crush that you think is going to ask you out? Don’t worry, she’ll help you by making sure you sit in water in the class you share with them and don’t notice it until it’s too late. Having a bad day? That’s good, cause she’s going to make it worse, and she’ll enjoy every second of it. For real, this girl is a real nightmare. 

Nocturnal: The school goth girl. You’re entirely certain she doesn’t own any clothes that aren’t black, and she’s always got her headphones in listening to bands you’re fairly certain you’ve never even heard of. No one ever sees her arrive or leave the school, and no one can ever find her unless she’s attending a class. No one really even knows her name, even the teachers. She doesn’t have any friends, but she does have a weird occult following that obsesses over her. She doesn’t seem to notice or care. Strangely, things constantly seem to go missing when she’s around, but it couldn’t possibly be her because she hasn’t moved from her seat all period... Has she?

Hermaeus Mora: Ah, this guy. The know-it-all. Why does he even bother attending? He already knows everything. The teachers hate him because he’s constantly showing them up. His most used phrase is “Well, actually.” You know that kid who is constantly yelling out answers in class without being asked? Yep, that’s him. When he’s not in the library hoarding books like a dragon, you’ll find him stalking various students around the school who intrigue him, and referring to them as his “subjects.” You have a sneaking suspicion that he’s the one that has been using the lab supplies without permission and also the reason behind why the school banned animal dissection in science class. 

Malacath: This dude could use some help, like a therapy session or maybe a hug. He’s rude for no reason, but only because he assumes you’ll be rude to him first. He’s constantly trying to prove how tough he is by getting into fights over, well, everything. He and his group of friends are exclusive and reclusive, angrily calling themselves ‘misfits’ unironically, and will only accept you if they think you’re as outcasted as they are. The rest of the school either shuns or ignores them, so it’s understandable. Rumor has it that disputes in the group are settled via wrestling match in the parking lot after dark. 

Sanguine: The walking leather jacket. Girls fawn over this dude, and all the guys want to be like him. He comes to school late on a motorcycle smelling like cigarettes and drinks vodka out of a sprite bottle in history class. Don’t worry, he’s always down to share. He is the walking embodiment of “Screw you mom and dad, my band is definitely going to get big!” He’s sort of friends with everyone, and he can’t walk down a hallway without being a part of at least 8 or 9 separate conversations. Teachers can’t stand him, mainly because if he’s even a minute late to a class, he says ‘fuck it’ and hangs out on the bleachers until lunch, and he’s always late. His yearbook quote was “Life is too short for school, so screw it and drink it down and party it up.” He also has his own ‘bachelor pad’ and wants to move to New York and play guitar in the street after graduation.

Molag Bal: So, you know that guy that you’re absolutely terrified will shoot up the school one day? Yeah, that’s this guy. This guy is angry as all hell, and you swear he can literally smell weakness. If he ends up making it through school without ending up in jail, you’re fairly certain he’s going to become a serial killer. He just terrifies everyone. The people who have tried to get on his good side (you know, just in case) ended up making things worse, and they won’t talk about why or what happened. Chances are, he has a manifesto saved on his computer. He has this weird thing with Boethiah and you don’t know whether they dated or what, but those two really don’t like each other. Or they just really need to tension bang. 

Clavicus Vile: You know, you’re not sure this guy even goes here. He’s always hanging out in the parking lot with his dog that they don’t allow in the school. He calls himself ‘the hookup’  and seems pretty cool at first. He offers to get you discount cigarettes, beer, drugs, whatever you need for cheap. However, it’s probably better not to trust him. Maybe it’s just a feeling, or maybe it’s the fact that your friend said the weed he bought from him tasted funny and gave him a panic attack, or maybe it’s because the beer he brought to a house party once tasted strangely like the swill that bars throw out after closing. Either way, you don’t trust the guy. He’s just trying way too hard to get you to trust him. He tried to offer you a cigarette the other day, but why was the tobacco white and fuzzy?

#Daedra #Elder Scrolls #THE DAEDRA #AS CLASSMAAAATES! #Sorry i got bored #tag yourself im nocturnal #sorry for the long post

[themyskira]

Amazons Attack! - part 3

The story so far: Wonder Woman got a day job doing more or less the same thing she does in her regular job, except in disguise. Circe kidnapped “Diana Prince’s” sexual harasser partner, Tom Tresser, for reasons. Wonder Woman saved him, but was then arrested by the Department of Metahuman Affairs, who located her via a tracking device in a uniform that Tom was blatantly not wearing at any point in the story.

Now Wondy is being held to ransom in a secret bunker, her release contingent on her handing over the schematics to the Amazons’ Purple Death Ray -- a secret she has no access to nor any way of acquiring, as Themyscira is out of reach to all -- and Circe is preparing to resurrect Hippolyta, who doesn’t deserve this shit.

Part 3: Wonder Woman #8 -- Jodi Picoult (writer) and Terry Dodson (artist)

Diana’s still imprisoned in a high-tech cell in some DOMA sub-basement, while her two assigned guards gossip about her.

“Check her out — the chick’s freakin’ nuts!” says Guard #1. Diana is not doing anything particularly nutty. In fact, she’s not doing anything. She’s just sitting in the cell and looking depressed, as one might be after being wrongfully imprisoned, tortured and held to ransom for a WMD. To Guard #1, this is apparently evidence that she thinks she’s better than everyone else.

“She just wants to be free, man,” says Guard #2, and is it just me or do they sound like they’re talking about an agitated whale in a too-small enclosure?

Guard #1 responds with an incoherent ramble about how nobody in society is free, and we’ve all gotta work to pay the damn bills and go home to our wives every damn night, so “that crazy broad” had just better come to terms with the fact that she’s no better than the rest of us. Guard #1 clearly has some issues of his own to work through.

In Themyscira, Circe has exhumed Hippolyta’s corpse and resurrected her. All the Amazons are shocked and confused, despite the fact that they all saw Circe arrive at Hippolyta’s grave last issue and obliquely announce that she was going to restore Polly to life. So basically the rest of that last issue’s encounter went like…

Circe tells the Amazons that Diana has been imprisoned by the US government.

The audience is informed that, for this performance of “Amazons Attack!”, the role of Hippolyta will be played by a bloodthirsty, irrational man-hating harpy.

“It is always the same with the world of Man. What they don’t understand, they fear. And what they fear, the try to tame. To them, my daughter is the enemy… and enemies must be crushed. If it is war that they want… it’s war they will get.”

More clumsy wording here: When Polly says “enemies must be crushed”, she’s clearly referring to the Americans. But the previous sentence identifies Diana as “the [Americans’] enemy”, making it… kinda sound like she’s saying Diana must be crushed.

Tom, for some reason, has decided to return to the wannabe villains bar from last issue — this time to have a drink and complain to the bartender about how shit his partner is. Diana isn’t answering his phone calls, and Tom complains that “she probably can’t figure out how”.

How did they even pitch this guy as Diana’s new love interest? ‘He’s a complainy misogynist, she’s Wonder Woman in disguise! Together, they fight crime!’

Tom is called back into work. Even though the Department of Metahuman Affairs has plenty of perfectly serviceable offices and meeting rooms, he meets Steel in a deserted parking lot under the cover of darkness, as though he’s bloody Deep Throat or something. He’s even wearing sunglasses. In the middle of the night.

Steel tells him that the Wonder Woman case is closed, it’s out of DOMA’s hands, and the reason Tom hasn’t been able to contact his partner is that she’s been reassigned. Which, btw, so has Tom. He’s expected in Maine tomorrow.

Despite Tom’s well-evidenced lack of basic deductive skills, he manages to peg that something a little weird is going on here. Some particularly overwrought dialogue ensues.

Tom: I feel something yanking on my puppet strings, that’s all. Steel: Puppet strings? Ha— what does that feel like? Tom: Hard to say… Like an angel having its wings torn off. Steel: You’re no angel, Tom. Tom: People change.

Throughout this two-page scene, Tom delivers a voiceover in narration boxes. There’s no good reason that this should be here. It’s an abrupt and slightly jarring inclusion — the only narration boxes up till this point have been Diana’s — and the only narrative function it serves is to cover for the shortcomings of Picoult’s scripting by outright stating Tom’s motivations and feelings towards Diana.

They call me Nemesis. As I’ve recently been reminded, my name means ‘enemy’… […] but in naming Wonder Woman the ‘enemy’, they’ve crossed the line. To me, Wonder Woman’s synonymous with everything good about this cruddy world. She saved me, and I’m just one of many. And as for my own name… I’m about to live up to it.

Basically, Tom believes Wondy is synonymous with all that is good, and this is the driving factor that leads him to turn on his boss and colleagues and side with a supposed enemy of the state.

This seems like a good time for a quick review of Tom’s complete history of interactions with and conversations about Wonder Woman up to this point.

Complained about missing a chance to see Wonder Woman in the flesh because “I bet she looked hot”

Bought a Wonder Woman action figure to masturbate to give to his possibly-fictional “niece”

Acknowledged that Wonder Woman was a hero, but that it didn’t matter whether she’d done anything wrong because “it’s our job” to arrest her

Upon meeting Wonder Woman, peppered her with wildly inappropriate, objectifying remarks, including describing his sex dreams about her, speculating on what it would be like to fuck her in mid-air and asking her about her sex life

Told Wonder Woman he wished he could work with her instead of his shitty partner, who is secretly Wonder Woman

Throughout the first two issues, Tom treats Wondy primarily as an object of lust. There’s a recognition of the good she does, but he’s more interested in her banging body than anything else. The one compliment he does pay her is an unwitting insult, because it’s tied to his largely irrational hatred of her alter ego. He loves the sexual fantasy of Wonder Woman, but can’t stand the bespectacled, pant-suit-wearing Diana Prince (especially when she dares bark out orders).

So this deep admiration for Wondy as a force for good in an ugly world — this belief that will drive all of his actions in this story going forward — has come completely out of the blue. It’s introduced only in the precise moment when Tom first decides to act on it. That is shitty, shitty writing.

Circe drops into Diana’s cell for a quick ‘you’re not so different, you and I’.

“You just don’t see how similar we are. Humans are afraid of us. We’re outsiders — we’re powerful women — and what we fight for is hidden beneath the blood on our hands.”

So, you fight for… your… hands? Your skin? Your… fingernails…? What—

Okay, no, I think what she’s trying to say is that people don’t see the lives Diana’s saved, only the bodies she’s left in her wake. Which, dude. Come on. You’re an evil sorceress who’s razed entire kingdoms and turns people into animals for funsies, but Diana snaps one measly neck and suddenly you’re calling her Lady Macbeth?

(yes, really.)

Circe says they’re both fighting for what they love. Then she immediately contradicts herself and says that only she is fighting for what she loves -- no matter what it takes -- whereas Diana is only fighting for good out of a sense of general obligation to be good.

Diana says that there is such thing as Right and Wrong, and that these things are distinct and immovable concepts, and that on its own makes me want to set this whole damn comic on fire, but then Circe takes it upon herself to give Diana a primer in moral relativism. Circe. Fucking Circe has a more thoughtful and nuanced understanding of ethics and morality in this book than Wonder Woman, what the flipping friggity fuck.

Circe says that it was once considered moral to own slaves, and “what’s considered right today could be wrong tomorrow”; Diana is skeptical.

Circe ends, as incomprehensibly as she began, by declaring that “love and murder are the only things that matter. They’re what it means to be human”, and therefore she will always be more human than Diana.

Tom uses his vaguely-defined master-of-disguise technology to impersonate Sarge Steel and break Diana out of her cell. She doesn’t trust him, since the last time the last time she saw him he was being congratulated for helping to apprehend Wonder Woman. Despite the fact that these congratulations were accompanied by a look of shock on Tom’s face and the revelation that he’d been tracked without his knowledge through a locator chip in a uniform he was not currently wearing -- something Diana also witnessed.

But, see, she has to be mad at him, because otherwise we couldn’t get that good old stock standard ‘here’s your lasso - ask me anything’/‘nah, I guess I’ll just trust you instead’ scene.

Armed DOMA agents arrive on the scene, and Diana does what we’ve all been wanting to do since Tom Tresser first stepped into this comic.

Diana: Tom, listen… Tom: You don’t have to say it… I know you must really love me right now. [Diana decks him]

It’s a fakeout, of course, so that when she escapes with him in tow, he looks like a hostage rather than a willing accomplice.

Speaking of escape — Diana’s free of her cell, but she’s still a good hundred feet beneath the earth in a secure bunker, with hundreds of DOMA agents between her and the exit. Fighting her way out of this one’s going to be a real—

—oh.

Or she could just punch her way through a hundred feet of solid rock, I guess.

Meanwhile:

The Amazons throw spears and shoot flaming arrows at things, and the biggest military force in the world pisses its pants at this terrifying display of Bronze Age weaponry. Nothing in the extensive training and experience of these elite fighting men and women has ever equipped them to deal with the horrors of women with pointy sticks!

“We’re no match for their firepower! We need help down here!”

Steel calls in the JLA and Circe swans around gloating because, gasp, the two of them are working together.

Diana’s reached the sewers. Tom has come to and, naturally, he’s found something to complain about — namely, the fact that she punched him.

Diana’s costume is pretty ripped up, so she asks Tom if he has a sewing kit. Because even though she’s just been illegally imprisoned, tortured and held to ransom by somebody claiming to answer to the President of the United States — somebody who, even now, is sending dozens of agents out after her — modesty is her first priority. Really.

All Tom has is some epoxy adhesive. Diana, evidently deciding that the risk of severely burning herself is preferable to the risk of exposing some skin, decides to use the epoxy to mend her costume while she’s still wearing it. But first, she asks Tom to close his eyes.

We’ve all seen some version of this scene before. You know what happens next.

Diana: Your eyes are closed, right? Tom: Uh… right. Clearly you Amazons have a lot to be insecure about aesthetically. Diana: It’s not a matter of insecurity… It’s a matter of… decency. Tom: [ogling her] I’ll tell you what’s decent. That birthmark on your— Diana: You’re a pig, you know that?! Tom: Well, you, coincidentally, are a pain in the same place you’ve got that birthmark!

Gee, I’m glad Tom Tresser thinks Wonder Woman is the lone bastion of goodness in the world. I’d hate to see how he’d treat a woman he didn’t respect so highly.

The argument is interrupted by an explosion, which of course results in Diana throwing Tom out of the way and…

A second ago they were having an argument sparked by Tom yet again disrespecting her personal boundaries and treating her like a sex object, and now suddenly she’s super turned on. Wonderful.

They decide to investigate the explosion. Flying out of the sewers, they find the city on fire and the Lincoln Memorial in ruins. And standing at the centre of the rubble is, of course, Hippolyta.

#when shamazons attack #comics talk

[survivor-kuwait]

ROP

In preparation for Final Tribal Council, the final 3 reflect on those who have fallen...

Matt:

I can’t say I know much about Brandon, but I can say it’s pretty fucked up that a Sagittarius was the first elimination in a Zodiac themed game

Madison:

We didn’t really play together, but you’re a sweetheart and I’m sure if I knew you I’d believe you were robbed too soon!

Maynor:

I’m not sure if I got a message from you or not. I wanted to get to know you but Warzone twist was very nerve wracking twist.

Matt:

Willow! My Solomon Islands friend/betrayer. I was very excited by the prospect of getting the chance to reconnect with Willow and I was so bummed we only spent one Oasis together. At first I was worried that maybe she would think I was out for revenge, but I have only good blood with Willow and I absolutely wish her so much luck in Montenegro.

Madison:

MY NORTH CAROLINA KWEEN! I was SO sad to see you voted out. You were so kind to me, and I really appreciate the time we did get to spend together!

Maynor:

You were very nice. And we worked together in warzone for a vote or two. I was hoping that we could have worked together in this game.

Matt:

This game definitely would have gone a lot differently if we didn’t get Nehe out when we did. I genuinely enjoyed getting to know Nehe even though I already had the preconceived notion that he would be a schemer. Also, by far the best Tik Tok that anyone made was Nehe’s solo piece. It was so *Chef’s Kiss*

Madison:

Oml Nehe! I’m so sorry we blindsided you so hard but it had to be done and I think you know that. But I love you you crackedt legend.

Maynor:

oh Nehe. You were a blast to talk to. Game wise I never really knew where your head was at. At our first tribal you lied to me and voted Renee. Would love to talk to you though and get to know you more.

Matt:

I’m sorry I never got the chance to meet Taylor, because I will always have a good impression of someone with Gillian as their avi.

Madison:

Didn’t really communicate with you too much, and I think this warzone I wasn’t present for, but I’m sure you’re lovely!

Maynor:

You were someone I could have see  playing this game with. I still feel like maybe there was a way to save you but everyone seemed set on you.

Matt:

Jacob was a sweetheart, we share a lot of similar tastes in games and music and I definitely could have seen myself working more closely with Jacob if things didn’t go down the way they did. Nothing was more pure than trying and failing to explain moon phases with Kait to Jacob because I realized about halfway through I didn’t know nearly enough about them either.

Madison:

MY FELLOW CANCER CRUSTACEAN CWEEN. I love you..so much. You had to fall so I could sprint to where I am now I suppose, and I hope I represent our emotional mess of a sign well here at the end. I miss u.

Maynor:

I hope one time we are able to play a game  and work together. I really want to get to know you more, we dont really talk a lot during these games. So lets talk hopefully you want to.

Matt:

Adrian my Aquarius pal, sorry I had sacrifice you to the Survivor Gods when I heard people were targeting sign partners. We absolutely slayed the sign partner stage of the game, not going to any Warzones and it certainly was in no small part thanks to Adrian.

Madison:

I was truly really sad to see you go. you always brought such a good energy to every conversation we had, and I love that so much. BUT OUR SEASON IS GONNA BE SO GOOD EVERYONE APPLY TO OUR SEASON!

Maynor:

ugh. You were gone too soon. We worked together with Nehe vote and then taken out couple rounds later. I wished we could have worked together more. You were awesome and really nice.

Matt:

Stevie and I chatted a whole bunch when we got the chance and I can’t think of a bad thing to say about him, although I can apologize that I never answered the message he sent me after he got eliminated saying “How’s it going?”. It was going good but I didn’t wanna cheat. I’ll answer it soon I promise.

Madison:

YOU’RE SO SWEET OML. I just miss talking to you.

Maynor:

I didnt get to talk to you much in this game. We were kinda not in many warzones together. But your awesome.

Matt:

I think I inherited Chloe’s cockroach energy after she was eliminated. Truly everyone was constantly throwing Chloe’s name out there and I was NEVA happy about it, and I was even sadder about voting her out. Chloe and I had a very underrated and secret friendship and we voted together about every time until she was eliminated. I literally hope she’s finally feeling better because she was so sick and sleepy for the whole game and people didn’t get the chance to know her like I did.  

Madison:

The odds were truly stacked against us women and I was NOT a feminist player bc I vote for you..several times. Also really sad that we bonded right before you left. but you have bomb taste in music and I’d truly love to talk to you after the season is over.

Maynor:

We never got to talk much. There were a few times we did but it was mostly just hi and then convo died. He seemed really nice.

Matt:

Although I only know Matt B as the reason I still have to use my last initial in my confessionals, I have heard from everyone else that Matt B is a great guy. I hope that if I do win, nobody is disappointed to find out that it was me and not you.

Madison:

we didn’t interact too much honestly! would love to chat after the season, but unfortunately I don’t have a ton to reference right now!

Maynor:

I was extremely sad when I found out you were voted off. You didnt deserve that. I think you were one of the few people from first impressions that I wanted to work with. I really wanted to play this game with you after you co-hosted me. It was nice getting to know you during the first warzone.

Matt:

Renee was the vote that started it all for me. My very first Warzone that really taught me how much of a fucking warzone it actually was. I felt bad about betraying Renee, but it absolutely kick started the relationship I had with Maynor and Madison because we bonded over missing her and were really pulling for her to come back from Lagoon.

Madison:

my actual fucking queen oh my GOD. your vote was the ONLY one I didn’t know what was happening. I had no idea you were leaving and it honestly broke my heart.

Maynor:

My heart. RENEE playing with you in the beginning of this game was so awesome. Talking and us planning on making it to the end. I would have gone to the end with you. I was rooting for you to come back. But I was happy to meet you and I hope we can continue to talk after. ❤️

Matt:

Stephen was a super nice guy, and I always appreciate the Aussies who are playing on an entirely different sleep schedule than the rest of us.

Madison:

I feel..SO BAD FHJSJDJS. I’ve robbed you from so many games and I SWEAR IT’S NOT PERSONAL! I truly love you as a person! we just ALWAYS end up on opposite sides. you also terrify me though bc you’re SUCH a good player. I always have to have an open eye on you, and I really respect that. you’re a gem, never change.

Maynor:

ooo Stephen  this vote was sad but it was everyone saying your name. In this game we talked but it was as good communication like our other game. You know you mean a lot to me because we been through a game n you hosting me.

Matt:

Trace and I played Maluku together like 100 years ago and when I look back at the games we played then and the games we played now I’m very proud of the growth. I had some very nice genuine conversations with Trace about relationships and life and Survivor and I never thought that back in Maluku when I was dumb and petty that I would end up saying I found a friend in Trace. I’m sorry our Queer Eye alliance fell apart almost immediately but I realized he was such a big threat.

Madison:

Trace omg. I loved playing with you and working together while we did! Our alliance was SO cute. I’m sorry if you hold me voting you against me, but you scared me so much, and I feel like our games would’ve inevitably ended before FTC if we’d both stayed in the game. But I have so much respect for you as a player and a person. queer eye til we die.

Maynor:

I was working with you in this game and I was glad to have met you. You were like a very scary player to me for some reason. Your vote off was the start of the game really starting to be more strategic.

Matt:

Corey was one of my favorite people to talk to in the game because I felt like we could literally gab about absolutely anything. We bonded almost immediately at the very first Oasis, and had emotional motion sickness ™ ever since then. It was a sad day when I had to do Corey in the revote after that nutty partner tribal and even sadder when I found out he wasn’t coming back. Genuinely to this day Madison and I talk about how Corey would have hands down won the game if it was judged on music taste alone.

Madison:

my FATHER/SON. voting you out made me legitimately cry! I LOVED working with you and you were truly my ride or die until there was nothing I could do. trying to save you that night is probably one of my worst moves this game but I don’t regret it for a second. I love you so much and I’m so glad we got to play together again and be the cutest alliance..ever. queer eye til we die.

Maynor:

Your vote off was one of the sad ones. You coming to me to try and save you was really heartbreaking. I wanted to save you but during that time there was an alliance and wanted to be in good terms  with them until there was a time for a move. Also timmy and I were really nervous we were getting votes. Im sorry  ❤️ stay in contact. I went to lush andnit was amazing.

Matt:

Thomas went out in a blaze of glory and it was a lot of fun to watch. Anyone that Kait vouches for so vehemently is good in my book. “Fuck you Timmy” is our “Fuck you Brad Culpepper”.

Madison:

THOMAS U SWEETIE! I feel like I’ve said this a lot but there are truly so many kind, genuine people in this cast and I’m so grateful to have been a part of this season with all of you. you made me mad nervous in this game because I never quite knew what you were doing, and we weren’t close, but I felt like we were pretty chill until your vote. you may disagree ofc, but that’s how I see it! I can’t wait to talk after this season omg.

Maynor:

i really liked talking to you and you were an awesome person. I want to get to know you more so lets talk after the game. That twist was kinda an oof one. Im sorry that was how you went. Hopefully we can play another game together.

Matt:

KAIT is honestly the LOML. I absolutely would have gone to the final 3 with Kait even though I probably would have lost. I’m just excited to finally be able to play Smash and Pokemon Sword and Shield with the Paradise Hotel alliance. Besides doing the Logic Puzzle with Kait and having the WRONG clues, having to let Kait go was the hardest thing I had to do in the game but at the same time it really catapulted me to play the rest of the season without the comfort of having someone I trusted so implicitly.

Madison:

love. of. my. fucking. life. there are 2 people I made a conscious choice to not vote for despite knowing I’d be in the minority, and you’re one of them. I knew you were going and that there was nothing I could do without risking my game, and you knew that too, but we had each other’s backs from day 1 and I’m so so so glad I got to play with you. you’re also just a fucking dope person. I just wanna be ur friend after this no matter what you’re so fun.

Maynor:

You were super nice. We mainly talked in our alliance chat. You were a threat in my eyes because you were really tight with Owen. I really want to talk more as well after the game.

Matt:

Owen was the other ⅓ of the Paradise Hotel alliance and my Chicago friend and I think was the only person besides Chips who everyone agreed would absolutely win in a Final 3. I should’ve been mad that Owen sunk ⅔ of the advantages that I had original hit, but I knew they were with someone I could trust.

Madison:

WE FINALLY GOT TO WORK TOGETHER! you’re the other person I consciously didn’t vote for despite knowing you were going. I knew you had to leave when you did for me to slip through the cracks to get to where I am now, and no one would’ve let you make it to the end, but I’m so grateful for our alliance and for you as a person and that emily wasn’t here to fuck us up!

Maynor:

ily. You were one of the people I talked to the most in this game. It was really hard to write down your name twice. I realized and so did everyone else that you were a huge threat in this game and if we didnt take the opportunity to take you out, you were would have been winning this game. Lets continue talking after this game because I really miss talking to you.

Matt:

Ian and I were both great pals and bitter rivals. There was a point after the double idol play at the partner tribal where the two of us really aired all of our differences and talked about how we could move forward in the game with a mutual respect for each other and a mutual love of writing graphic novels, and naturally it came down to another tiebreaker between us, and I enjoyed every moment of it.

Madison:

literally the happiest we got to play together again. we were never QUITE on the same page, but never QUITE on different ones either. you’re so intelligent and that..scares me!

Maynor:

I loved talking to you as well. Me you and corey talking about how we all loved each diff starter. It was very difficult to right down your name but you were also a big person that could have won this game if they reached the end. We also need to stay in contact after the season. ❤️

Matt:

Cullan is like 18 years old and I was absolutely terrified of him as a player. We got along fairly well in the beginning and it was a shame that we ended up at odds with one another in the game.  I told Madison I chose to vote Cullan over Chips because I was afraid she was gonna self vote at Live Tribal, but truly I knew the only way for me to advance was to get rid of the guy I knew was a threat with advantages, challenges, AND jury votes.

Madison:

omg you’re so nice. I’m so glad we got to play together, and although it had to happen, I was sad to see you go. (Im running out of time typing my ROP’s but I hope you know I love you)

Maynor:

you were soo nice and very precious. We had a working relationship with each other but towards the end or some votes I couldnt let you in on which felt really bad. You are an awesome person and I hope we can talk more after the game.

Matt:

I started out very wary of Timmy during that isolation twist and after the Owen/Kait blindside, and especially when we had an actual polite disagreement about voting Owen out instead of Ian, but Timmy really came through for me in voting for Ian instead of me and I ended up actually really bummed that we cut him at final six. He was an undeniably good player.

Madison:

TIMMY. WE DID IT. sort of? we talked more than we have in any other game I think? and we actually worked together on some votes! also I’m gonna say that me flipping the vote onto you was claiming my IOU for not voting against you during the Corey round.

Maynor:

❤️❤️❤️❤️ i was sooooo sad when you went home. Like i didnt talk to anyone that night because i was so heartbroken. You were my longest ride or die in this game and im sad we didnt get to make it to the end together. You know i love you and your the best person and im glad i have had the honor to play 3 games now with you. We gotteb way closer since my first org were we first meet. And i hope our friendship growers more.

Matt:

Sweet sweet Chips. Thank you for sharing pictures and stories of your actually adorable baby Calvin, and even more so for saving me at the Ian vote. I like Chips and trusted him so much that I was willing to take the risk of bringing him to Final 4, and even Final 3, but eventually I had to take off the rose colored glasses and realize that everyone liked Chips way too much.

Madison:

that first boot to FTC character development could NOT happen and I know you know that, but I’m so impressed by the game you played and I hope you are too. you crushed it. I can’t wait for our best duo award.

Maynor:

i am happy that I got to meet you. I was sad when you left in the beginning. We also had a working relationship together but never a solid thing. Im was glad to talk with you about baking and I will let u know when i try to make the tie dye cookies. You are very nice and just plan great.

Matt:

Going against Devon in that tiebreaker was very poetic, because we truly made for a great pair of “frenemies”. I admire Devon’s resilience and the way he sticks to his own guns, and the fact that a man over 10 years older than me slayed me in a balance challenge was pretty hardcore.

Madison:

oh..my gosh. our alliance was a ROLLERCOASTER! like we were chill during the warzone phase, and then we weren’t, and then we really pulled it through at the end for BOTH OF US. you really turned the tables for your game after losing Ian, and I’m really impressed. I really hope we can talk after this season because I love you as a person.

Maynor: 

i dont know where to begin. We gotten really close since the merge started. It was never easy writing your name down and I wish I could have taken you to the f3 but in my eyes you were a threat based on your relationships with the jury. It may be a mess because Matt might win but the fire was like the best chance to give it a fair shot between you two. I hope you understand the game move. But we need to stay in contact after the game. 

#survivorstarzone #notice

[comicteaparty]

December 28th, 2019-January 3rd, 2020 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from December 28th, 2019 to January 3rd, 2020.  The chat focused on the following question: 

What’s a real-world experience you’ve had that you’ve written into your story?

carcarchu

There's one part in my comic where the main character's roommate uses food to console the main character when she is sad which is an actual thing that my roommate did for me when i was sad xD

kayotics

I’d say most of my main characters are based off of my own real world experience. The most notable thing that’s a real world experience would be Rosemary’s parentage. I also come from a single parent family, so that specific dynamic is directly pulled from my own life.

keii4ii

The themes and such in HoK are reflections of my own experiences and feelings. Feeling left out, betrayed, generally not cared about. Being socially/culturally clueless. But those are broad things. I don't think there's anything ultra specific that mirrors my experience exactly. There was one specific line that I've said (to myself), that the main character was going to say. That scene got heavily revised, though, and the line is no longer in the comic. I like to think of that as the result of my character(s) getting developed. i.e. They're their own persons; they're more than just projections of my own sadness.

Nutty (Court of Roses)

I agree about life experiences, but to be specific, the whole Bardic Festival in Court of Roses was based off my experiences of Warped Tour!

Cronaj

My comic(s) also heavily reference my real life. In WotP, the main similarities are in one of the protagonists' neglect and emotional abuse from his father, and then later, how another character essentially takes up the role of father for him. Also, two of my main characters, Agatha and Maret, are basically a combination of my two younger sisters and I. Mostly their relationship, but Maret (the little sister) actually looks a lot like my youngest sister. In Silent Nocturne, which I am working on scripting and designing characters for, the real-life references are a lot heavier. Part of it has to do with a similar setting, but the two main characters are also directly inspired by my experiences. On one hand, we have Mae, who is from a working-class family and struggles to get by with working multiple jobs, most of which are retail. And her brother's serious autoimmune disease that is really hard to treat, which results in insurance company battles to get his meds. And on the other hand, we have David, a violinist and composer struggling with the woes of having a creative mind. Depression, self-doubt, caffeine dependency, lack of motivation, etc. He also has a neglectful father, and his general outlook on the world is mirrored with my own.

sssfrs

I draw a lot of the emotional elements of my story (Joe Is Dead) from the sudden death of my grandfather a couple years back. Every character in the story processes the death of Joe in a slightly different way and are drawn from the different thoughts and feelings I have had around the topic of death.

All the scenes with sailing & discussion of sailing in the comic is also built on my own experience with sailing over many years and the maritime culture of Boston where I grew up.

khkddn

The high school my main characters go to is a direct rip off of the one I went to. The uniforms are exactly the same and so are the aesthetics and the silly rules :p

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

In a very broad sense, a lot of the strongest emotional bits of Phantomarine are directly drawn from emotions I felt during a health scare many years ago. Almost every main character is affected by similar circumstances, and each of them deals with that ensuing set of emotions very differently. The immediate and unexpected loss of power/control; the fear of permanent change; the possibility of disfigurement; potential societal stigma; a sudden, crippling awareness of mortality - but more than anything, the embracing of a “new normal” that can still be awesome and fulfilling. I never intended for the emotional beats to be drawn from my own experience, but heck, that’s that strongest set of emotions I’ve ever felt - it makes total sense. And for the surface level stuff, lots of memories of boats and ocean related stuff - paddleboarding, beaches, summer festivals, tropical vacations, seeing marine animals in the wild - just to name a few. That sort of imagery is still strong in my head. So colorful and mysterious!

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I’d say I draw quite a lot from my own experiences, especially because I use my comics as vessels to work through my PTSD. But most of of how I use my own experiences it isn’t very ‘visible’, because it’s usually through how characters are processing their traumas. The only instance where I can really draw a direct parallel from my own life to a scene in a comic would be during this segment in Children of Shadow (CW: blood and gore): https://www.flowerlarkstudios.com/comic/chapter-8-take-my-hand/page-08-08/ When faced with a giant monster roaring in his face, Anor has a deer-in-the-headlights moment where he’s completely frozen in shock. I once had a similar (though much less dire) incident where I was face to face with a very hungry, very angry wild bear who was roaring loudly at me from only a few feet away. I completely shut down and was unable to move until the bear decided my trash can looked much tastier than I did.

Tuyetnhi

I guess the same for me about having my characters as somewhat of a reflection or influenced from my life. Especially Cara and Richie, the main duo for my comic. Cara's is a culmination of my background being Mixed-Vietnamese and the struggle having to deal with that, and Richie is a mash up of my mother's likes in a man with amped up fantastical elements from my favorite shoujo mangas lmao. There's one scene particular between Cara and her friend that was basically a conversation I had about dating years back, though I didn't admit anything at the moment. Also when Cara's parents had set up a date for her was also something I witnessed between my sister and a guy we knew years ago. My mother and his mother were trying to get them wed but it failed lmao. Not sure why it stood out to me, but it's something I remember being....scared about. And added that element in the story lol.

the fear being arranged into a date when you're not full into it really hits home.

snuffysam

In terms the characters - most of them are either based off myself or people I know. Like, Taci is based off a friend of mine who is consistently confident about wrong information. In terms of the story events - no, but that would be wild, huh? Occasionally a line will be based off something one of my friends said though. For instance - a show we were watching once had a villain that we knew going in would have a redemption arc. And each time the villain got beaten, one of my friends would shout “oh, he’s good now!”. This was referenced on this page: http://sgkdr.webcomic.ws/comics/540, where King Zebugu claims that he’s already had his redemption arc.

Respheal

I always thought Galebound's plot and characters were pretty removed from my own life, but sometimes looking back I'm just like......yeeeeeaaaaaaaah Like one of my most vivid memories growing up was getting into a heated argument with my mom about how I didn't want to go to church and she yelled at me that it was the devil keeping me out, to which I yelled back "Why can't I make my own decisions?" So uh. That sort of experience is where the Obligation comes from. That and the anxiety growing up in a semi-religious household brings, particularly when that religion makes a big deal out of subservience :V And then more recently, it's hitting me that Conan's relationship with his dad mirrors my own in ways. I always thought I was closer to my mom growing up, but in truth, while I spent more time with my mom, the positive experiences were more often with my dad. A few years back, my dad said some thing that hurt, and for a couple years I thought I hated him when really it was just hurt and betrayal, and we're sorta just reconciling now. Which is kind of what Conan's dealing with, although he doesn't know it yet. His dad leaving hurt, and sometimes that hurt can feel a lot like hate.

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #comic tea party #ctp #creator interview #comic creator interview #creator babble

[billydisagrees]

36 Dates and Counting.

Just under three years ago I found myself freshly out of a long term relationship that culminated in a broken engagement. It was new territory for me. I had never imagined myself the marrying type but there I was, ring returned and entirely lost, newly saddled with the nauseating task of “getting back out there”. I wasn’t reckless or  anything, I waited a few months before I felt even remotely prepared to test the waters. I quickly learned that a few months wasn’t going to cut it for me as far as emotional preparedness but more on that later. As I plunged back into a world of meet ups, hook ups, break ups, and chill sesh’s(a real human said that out loud to my face) I decided to try to learn something about these men. I wondered what kind of lengths I’d go to find some compatibility and common ground.

I have made a lot of mistakes and I have done a few things well. In any case, this is not intended as advice for anyone. I am not an authority on dating and I’ve come to believe that no one really is. No one way works for anybody and today, 36 dates and counting, I’m still at square one. I don’t know any more about the kind of man I want or need to make a long term relationship work because my feelings on that topic are still evolving. What I have become more of an expert on is myself. I’m starting to listen to myself and my instincts more as I wade through a sometimes great, always scary and occasionally truly disgusting pool of gentlemen.

I doubt my experience is unique. I hope it isn’t actually. I’d be mortified to find out that this kind of bullshit was specific to me. I’m writing this because I think it’s relatable and weird. Some of it is funny, some sad and all of it true. I had the idea early on in this adventure to write a little bit about each date as I went. Each man will be referred to only by their date number. I’m not doing this to take away any humanity, it’s just a way to hopefully avoid any hurt feelings with facebook sleuthing. Plus, I’d like to continue dating without any guy with internet access thinking his vulnerable moments would be made into public entertainment. It is 36 dates, not 36 men. That’s not any slut shaming shade, I promise. If someone hits 36 dudes in under 3 years I would be nothing but jealous and impressed. I just don’t move at that speed yet, but I’m working on it. Not every date or every guy will be discussed. Just a few I think are noteworthy. Let’s meet our dream team.

#8

The Man who Knew Too Much

My very favorite place to take a date is Le Bistro Montage. It’s under the Morrison Bridge in the industrial district and it is home to about a dozen different ways to eat macaroni and cheese. They have an extensive wine list, cool music and ridiculously flattering lighting. I have only recently noticed those last few things because when I go there I am almost always in it for the mac. If you have not tried it, stop reading this and go do that. Their mac is better than anything I could ever hope to write. This story will be here when you’re full.

Welcome back. I had arranged for #8 to meet me at seven. He and I met on Tinder. We had been trading witty quips and quotes from Arrested Development for about two weeks and it felt good to set up the date. It seemed like the natural next step for us and I have found that isn’t always how the first date feels. Eight dates in though, I was still naive to the idea that I would suffer through dates that seemed simply obligatory.

When he showed up I was stunned by how handsome he was in person. He looked great in pictures and after surgically dissecting his social media platforms I thought I had a pretty good idea of how it would feel to see him in the flesh. Turns out, I undershot it. I was nervous. Sweat immediately tickled my lower back and my perpetually rosy cheeks flushed to sleigh guiding brightness. He hugged me casually. I remember thinking it felt like a hug from someone you hadn’t spoken to in a while and didn’t really miss.

We sat and ordered drinks. I ordered my standard well vodka soda and he asked for a glass of merlot while pronouncing the name in a weird and completely over the top French accent. Not buying it the server politely said “Oh, that one is actually from Spain”. He not having the service industry background I do, didn’t realize that this was the only way for our sweet server to express that he was being a fucking idiot. Without blinking, he responded, “I didn’t ask where it was from, I’d just like you to bring me a glass of it please.”

It was over. At exactly that minute it stopped being a date entirely. It became an exercise in observation and manners. I was curious to see what someone with so little respect for this stranger who was just doing her job would go on to say. How would he act after that embarrassing display of pride? I was also terrified of being rude and leaving all together. I silently decided to finish dinner and make sure that poor girl got a tip to for not stabbing him with his salad fork.

#8 began telling me the illustrious tale of his wild life. He worked in HR for a tech company in Portland and had recently relocated from Minnesota. This is one of the most unglamorous set ups I could imagine but he explained it to me like he’d been roughing it through the wilderness relying on nothing but instinct and a well worn copy of Slaughterhouse Five. He was an amature beat poet, not a self described amature mind you, that is a label I am rightfully assigning but I’m pretty sure he thought of himself as Kerouac resurrected. He was entirely “over” Portland’s art scene though. He’d been in town a handful of months and could already tell that the pacific northwest was just pretending to be heady and forward.

“Oh it’s no better than anywhere else. I think it’s hysterical how proud the locals are of all the ‘progressive entertainment’ here.It’s honestly a joke.”

Honestly was his preface to every other sentence. If I had been playing a drinking game where I took a shot every time he said it I would have been in a blackout before the appetizer showed up.(I can not give you one good reason why I didn’t go that route, hindsight’s 20/20 am I right?)

“I’m just worried that the only place I’ll be happy is New York, or maybe Rome, even.” he sighed wistfully while staring at his Spanish wine with French ambition. I had to look down for what felt like days after he said that to prevent him from seeing the “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!” look that was blazing in my eyes. When I finally returned to his face he was still earnestly committed to what he thought was the most profound thing he’d ever said. He was so lost in the wonder of his own beautiful words that I’m pretty sure I could have taken a shit on his plate without him noticing.

I paid the check shortly after and left an obscene tip for our server with a note that said “I’m so sorry about him. He’s a stranger with whom I will never have sex”. We walked outside and found a beautiful evening in Portland. Before I could make an excuse to hurry home he took my hand and said we couldn’t possibly miss the chance to take a walk on a night like this. He was the last person I wanted to be on a romantic stroll with but the pretty night sky and his very pretty face weakened my resolve. As we started out in a blessing of silence I began to bargain with myself in my head. He was so handsome! It didn’t have to be a relationship, maybe he could just be like a nice one time deal. Maybe he was nervous at dinner and that could explain why after an hour and forty-five minutes he’d asked me just two questions, one of which was “Do you ever see yourself getting serious about your fitness goals?”(I had mentioned no such goals...at all)

All hope that we’d turned a corner was erased when his mouth started up again. I stoically listened and nodded appropriately through another half an hour of his musings on art and film. When I asked about his favorite movie he responded by saying, “Well my favorite film is The Dreamers, by Bertolucci.” Not only did he emphasize the word film like he was adjusting the way a toddler had just said it, he listed the director’s name like he’d authored a book. This is not inherently gross but I promise if you had been there you’d have wanted to push him in front of a bus as much as I did.

In what I can only imagine was a moment of weakness for him he asked what my favorite film was. Without hesitation I said “Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps.” He was confused for a second, then recognition crossed his perfectly symmetrical face and he was just below horrified. It was not my favorite movie but I watched it enough as a kid to reenact a few lines for him. I wanted for a moment to shove his smarm and smug into his own face. He did what I think was his best to act amused and started to mention his early start for the next day.

I thought about not taking the hint and forcing this guy to witness my low brow interests. I pictured his face after hearing how many string cheese wrappers I had in my bathroom wastebasket. Ultimately I decided it was in both our best interests to part ways. He thanked me for dinner and said he’d text me in the morning. I turned to leave when he grabbed my hand and pulled me into a soft and near motionless kiss. I didn’t close my eyes and I watched as he simply laid his lips on mine and basically took a micro nap. I backed away and said, “Okay, Goodbye.”

On the way home I thought I had done a bad job of showing up for myself. This guy was as arrogant and condescending as they come and I had done almost nothing in the way of putting him in his place. I began listing all the things I wished I’d told him in my head when it occurred to me that I was just really disappointed. It was hard to realize that this handsome, educated guy had basically used me as a way to hear his voice for a couple hours. He’d kissed me even though everything about my body language said I wasn’t into it just because he felt like he should be able to. I allowed myself to just be sad that a guy who I was excited about ended up being an asshole. It was the first time I found out firsthand that you can chat with someone for a long time and feel like you have chemistry and a clear picture of them but you really have no concept for how they’re going to treat you in person. Or how they’ll treat your waiter, which I think was more telling about what kind of man he was than anything else.

#36dates gaydating gay single gayfunny