Not only i don't feel like 23 but I also don't look this age. Forever babyface, people think I'm 15✋😞
I wanted to post some clear pages of The Deck later but why not do this today lol
The joy of living your own life when there are 8 separate lives depending on your wellbeing
In TDAU no one knows for sure if the clones die with their summoner but they suppose that's what happens. They never really talk about it because the topic itself is uncomfortable and awkward. Being the summoner in question, Fёdor can't really stop thinking about it.
Ignoring this question doesn't make it easier for anyone but they have no way to figure out the answer anyway.
The Black Peters - some short extra strories which didn't become full chapters but are worth telling. Slice-of-life shorts, missing scenes from the series and the previous chapters and matter of life and death - they're all here, in the Black Peter's Finale!
“I didn’t want it to turn out that way, Waru!” Felix blurted out. “I meant well, that’s all. If I had known this would happen, I would never have...”
I really want to thank all of you guys who was supporting me on this project. I didn't fully realised how actually big and important it was 'til I started working on the translation for AO3. I really appreciate the story resonated with and got loved by so many people, it's just heartwarming.
Sooo...
Fist of all, I know this chapter is a bit late and off schedule. I really got tired of writing at some point and really needed to have a rest, but now I'm good as new and ready to work again.
Stay tuned :^)
Hope to see y'all in my other projects!
"Go Fish!" is currently ongoing, and soon I will post my LoK project too.
I'm glad the series got its season 2! I also like the new direction the plot will probably take. When season 1 was introduced I expected to see how the clones try to adapt to the real world and stuff but instead they spent most of the time in their apartment. It felt kinda suffocating and limited for a concept like this, I really like the idea of them getting out and the possible consequences it can cause
I'm not usually the one to make theories with so little information. I have a few ideas based on the poster but I usually just keep it to myself and roll with whatever the show has to offer. I don't like setting expectations for what I'm about to watch.
I do have a few concerns regarding season 2 though:
The sheer number of characters. If the rumors are true, S2 will introduce the queens. It's very VERY cool, don't get me wrong, but with them the show will have 12-14 characters (including Fёdor and Joker). If it's going to have the same number of 10 min episodes (around 8-9), I have no idea how they will handle this many characters AND the Joker subplot with that little screentime on their hands
Giving those characters a room to grow. Or at least show themselves. S1 had a lot of good moments for some characters. For example, ep 7 with Waru. BUT
I think I've mentioned before how to me the show often prioritizes showing everyone on screen rather than focus on someone in particular. While the "clones get out of the apartment" plot allows more room both literally and metaphorically, I'm still worried they are going to cling to the "all the clones in one episode" thing. I really hope it won't be the case with how Kuromaku will probably go to uni for Fёdor and Spade will go to work. There's no way these won't be character centered episodes like cmon
There's very little time between the seasons. Season one ended just a year ago. They mentioned in the announcement post how S2 was not planned in advance. They also made Joker Presents which was also finished around 5 months ago. So my question is: where are they going to take the time to make an entire new season???
(A little bit of background to this point. I watched every episode of S1 on Okko - a streaming service where all the episodes were coming out a month before YouTube. Everything was great until the ep 9 which came out VERY unfinished. There was a scene without colors, a few animation errors here and there, but the worst part was an entire scene in Waru's house being completely missing. When I watched it I was left so SO confused because the missing scene was about Joker falling down into the house and finding the heart. I thought it was weird and inconsistent but ok and only later I learned from a friend that it was not, in fact, intended and the scene was added later. Also all the animation errors were fixed after the ep came out on YT. I also learned it from a friend later bc I didn't rewatch it myself. That didn't feel very good.)
My point is, I understand how hard it is to make animated shows. Ep 9 left a bad aftertaste bc of the whole fixing afterwards but I'm genuinely impressed how the studio finished this episode anyway. The way it was so unfinished on release left an impression of how it was definitely a lot of work and was probably made in a mad rush, so the fact they managed to make it regardless is amazing.
But if that's how they are going to work on S2, then I am VERY concerned for the production team, bc again, a year and a few months is a very limited time to make an entire season. Things like that tend to end with a horrible burn out...
Despite those concerns, I'm actually very hopeful about the new season! I tend to be very critical about a lot of things but I also always try to find joy in everything. These are just my thoughts on the upcoming season since there's not that much to discuss yet. Real glad the series is going strong bc I genuinely like it and want it to success.
So yeah, I'm waiting for August :)
oof that was a long one. i'm not putting it under the main tag bc im still shy to express my opinions in public like that
I made this because I noticed a pattern in my hairstyle design - most of the characters I draw have their hair tucked behind their ears. An illusion of shorter hair lol. That's probably how they look like right after waking up
I used their TDAU designs since I only draw those.
Fёdor's hair isn't actually short. Bro didn't have a haircut in a while.
Also, if Kuro lets his hair loose, he will look more like Brolly than anyone else which I think is kinda funny. I remember specifically making his and Felix's hairstyles very different.
Waru's hair is a complete mess, it's long enough to cover both of his eyes without glasses.
Gabriel doesn't look too different, just a bit messier.
Oh and Felix's hair is very puffy. If he straightens it, it would probably be even longer.
Spade and Dante are not on the team cuz you won't ever catch them going to the hair salon (for different reasons). Romeo's hair is already styled the way he wants, he doesn't need a hairdresser
So I watched the new Backrooms movie. Buckle up, it's going to be a long one. I'm going to yap about my specific interests AGAIN.
First thing first, I liked it. It hits this very specific interest of mine for movies that i can only describe as "experimental". It wasn't scary at all, it wasn't even tense to me BUT I really liked it anyway. I'm still figuring out what it was about with all the psychological themes and metaphors so I'm not going to talk about the plot much. Instead, I want to talk about the camera work in this film because omg it's so cool???
So, you know how usually in movies when characters talk to each other it often looks like this? Everyone has their own side on the screen so the viewer won't get lost and the movie would get more dynamic.
Well, i don't remember a single shot like this in Backrooms. Instead, when it's time to talk tete-a-tete, it looks like THIS
Yeah. See how the characters are both right in the middle of the screen? While watching it, I immediately noticed how everything is centered in this movie. Like, even if the characters don't look directly into the camera, they are still exactly in the middle most of the time. if we divide the screen into 3 parts, you can see it even more clearly (I'm going to use little funny drawings made from memory since I can't have screenshots)
One particular scene mirrors this ⬆️ dialogue much later in the movie and looks like this. What I like about it so much is not only it mirrors a scene from the beginning, it also mirrors itself.
And it's not just about dialogues! As far as I noticed, almost every scene places the characters in the middle of the screen one way or another. Sometimes it doesn't even let them leave this central part of the screen. There was this really cool shot of Mary going through the rooms and, while moving closer to the camera and clearly not standing in one place, she never actually left the doorway. And when she passes the doorway, she still stays in the middle of the screen until the shot changes. Talk about being trapped huh?
Even when you think the scene won't have a character in the centre, you're WRONG, because seconds later someone comes in and takes the said central space like in this scene with Mary and Phil near the end of the movie:
An even more interesting case of symmetry appears right at the end of the movie, when Mary starts disassociating. It's another case of the dialogue with characters right in the middle of the screen but this time even the background is centered - it's divided into 2 even halves horizontally.
I'm not going to speculate about deeper meanings of this composition choice otherwise this post will never end. One thing for sure, it heavily supports the idea and the feeling of being trapped, which is one of the main points of the original Backrooms story. The characters are not free from the start, even before they get into those weird liminal spaces. They're stuck and can't get out, and they stay like this until the end.
Speaking of liminal spaces. When the movie is not focused on keeping the characters in the middle, it shoves them far on the side, leaving a big open space on the rest of the screen. It's done often in the yellow rooms location, but it's also often used in Clark's furniture shop. It leaves an uncomfortable amount of space in the frame. Those big ass furniture shops are already creepy as hell due to the sheer amount of open space and the movie emphasizes it whenever it gets a chance. I mean, it's a movie about liminal spaces after all.
That's all I can remember for now. I just got home from the movie theater and all the frames are drawn from memory while it's still fresh.
Again, I really liked the movie. I'm a big fan of both analogue horror and liminal spaces, but I'm not a big fan of how specific and huge the Backrooms lore got with it's floors system. The movie is fairly simple and I like how it leans more into the original Backrooms story with disassociation and mindgames. I wouldn't even call it a horror, it's a thriller at best.
The camera work in this film caught my attention immediately. I absolutely loved how eerie it made the movie feel. The only other movie I can remember that did similar thing with centering everything was Neon Demon (I really like it because of how unnerving and full of hidden meanings it is, but be careful - it's very grotesque).
Thank you for reading all that. I don't often make post about first impressions but I really couldn't help myself with this one as it scratched a very specific set of interests of mine. Idk if everything I said is very obvious, maybe it is, but I still wanted to talk about it. Also tried my best to avoid spoilers since the movie is still in theaters.
Meet Natalia and her little son Sasha!
In The Deck AU Natasha is the queens' summoner who got her magic cards from the Old Fortuneteller 2 years prior to Fёdor. She was given 5 of them - 4 queens and the Red joker - because Natalia desperately needed help and the old woman pitied her. You can learn more about Natasha's life and how she got the cards in the new fanfic for TDAU:
"Go Fish!" by @therealmagicdog
Important lore and info under the cut⬇️⬇️⬇️
"Go Fish!" and the queens' storyline in TDAU in general is the TRMD's domain. Originally we both agreed that Fёdor won't have the queens' cards but we had different ideas of where these actually end up being. I had my own concept but when TRMD introduced Natasha to me I dropped everything and immediately made it canon to the AU because I just liked it so much. Important note: despite officially being canon to the AU, this storyline wont's appear in the TDAU comic. It's a spin-off sorts.
A little bit of lore:
As I mentioned earlier, Natalia got her cards 2 years prior to Fёdor and in a very small number - it's only 5 cards. It seemed weird to her but she didn't pay much attention to it. After all, she got them for free so no complains.
On the other hand, Fёdor was really puzzled as to why his deck lacked a few cards. He didn't even notice that at first. At some point he almost lost his mind trying to find the cards he wasn't given in the first place - he thought he lost them. Eventually, he and other clones agreed that those 5 cards were missing from the start. They couldn't go and ask the Fortuneteller anyway.
A very important note: Natalia is not the Red joker! As for Joker (or Yevgeny, or Jenya, or Jo as we call him), he is also not a clone - he's a separate card being with what basically counts as admin rights. Natasha, while not being the owner of the entire deck, could summon her clones only because she had Joker's card.
So yeah, Joker is living with Natalia and the queens so he won't appear in TDAU comic. At the same time, Fёdor got his role as the Black joker since he has this specific card and the rest of the deck.
I totally forgot to post this on tumblr oh my god???
I made this art for the collab where we would give girls from Verona actual jobs. Meet Pandora! I got the journalist job and created her specifically for this collab. She is confident, determined, chatty and really nosy. Girl absolutely loves her job
I love how her design turned our and I also really liked being a part of that collab. Concepts and some sketches under the cut⬇️
I still have her concept art yesss! I really like her design, the one with hair down too. I also tried to fit as many heart shapes into this design as I possibly could without overdoing it, see how many you can find lol
Before designing Pandora I imagined and sketched a bunch of random designs for Veronian girls. I tried to catch different personalities and moods with those. God I love drawing women 😭🙏
This is a very rare occasion of me making some kind of fanart for LoK as I usually don't do this
have you ever drawn/watched/thought about Criminart ?
I did watch it years ago and it never really interested me. After receiving this ask I went and rewatched Criminart to see if maybe my preferences changed or something but nope. Still not for me
Idk I just don't vibe with it I guess. The concept is fun and I like what fans make with those characters but I doubt i will draw or talk about them anytime soon
You already told you have a softspot for all the jacks but then what is you favorite duo from 13 cards?
(it can be from your au or also the show)
Also love your comic so much <3
Oh boy, that's probably gonna be a LONG one so i'll chop it here
My biggest pet peeve with the 13C series is how it prioritises showing every single character on screen within one episode (some more and some less) over focusing on something or someone specific from time to time. While it's nice to see all of them every episode imo this comes at a cost of not having time to actually develop and show anything significant about the characters or their relationship. I mean, that's as much as you can do in a 10 min ep. We were given some cool canon duos like Spade and Brolly, for example, but I never truly engaged with it until I started developing it outside the show. And it wouldn't be a problem to me if it wasn't the case for every single character dynamic in the series
In TDAU I focus a lot on characters' relationship bc that's what I like to write about. Relationship with other people and personal issues. I'm basically developing and changing dynamics I was already given by the show. So i will mostly talk about the AU versions yep
For instance, I really like Waru and Felix duo, as you might have noticed. In TDAU they have this really weird, borderline toxic kind of friendship where they hang out with each other all the time and genuinely have fun until some minor issue happens and BOOM. They are fighting again. And after cooling off they hang out together again as if nothing happened. They both have VERY difficult personalities and are like that kind of siblings who are constantly at each other's throats. They can have fun together but never actually apologize for hurting each other. I can basically describe this duo with one picture but instead of a single occurrence it's a neverending cycle
[The sign says "Friendship"]
I also really like Felix and Brolly. They were listed as best friends on wiki for forever but I never actually saw them uhhh being that? In the series they were shown spending time together but like, that's it. In TDAU I made them bffs because I saw potential in this duo. Again, Felix is a VERY difficult person to be around and needs someone to help him with his inner demons and Brolly has like, infinite patience. BUT their friendship only works if Brolly grows a spine. These two have the potential to be either in a very very unhealthy friendship OR both change for the better. I once made a small sketch trying to portray their TDAU dynamic, i think I will leave it here
Thanks to @therealmagicdog I'm now a proud "Gabriel and Waru are best friends" fan. They are so silly, I was genuinely surprised how good they work together. Waru does a lot of masking and projecting due to his personal issues and Gabriel just. Doesn't buy any of his bullshit??? Bro sees right through him and that's scares Waru A LOT. Gabriel is as simple as a brick and that's what makes him so complicated and intimidating for people who, like Waru, are used to do lots of mental gymnastics. These two are really funny together, take a small sketch I made a while ago
In TDAU the jacks are like a wacky little friend group but kings are more independent and often just spend time on their own. It's harder to put a finger on a specific duo with them but I think I like Spade and Kuromaku as those friends with rivalry going on. They both are responsible and initiative and a little overly serious (mind you, they all are 19 at best). In TDAU they can rely on each other but they're both also stupidly stubborn and have different visions regarding some subjects. God forbid they pull you into their disputes, you're NEVER getting out of those. No sketch for these two you haven't seen yet sorry
The last duo that holds a special place in my AU is Spade and Fёdor. I've already made a few posts about them and you've already seen them interact in the comic. Their difficult relationship is a very important part of my comic and basically a starting point to the plot. It's all about topics of responsibility and freedom, and, most importantly, the perception of others. I will dive deeper into those topics later in the comic so I won't be saying too much here. BUT I want you to know that they didn't hate each other prior to the Prologue and actually were really close to being on friendly terms. Key word is were.
These are the duos I have something to say about but I enjoy ANY dynamic in general! It's always fun to think how the characters would interact with each other so in a sense every duo is my favorite. Those above are my AU's pillars thought.
Also yes, there is no romantic kinds of duos because I'm not really into ships. This fandom has a ton of great shipping content and I can enjoy some good romance occasionally but I'm not a shipper like at all. That's why there will be no romance in TDAU and The Deck comic yeah
Thank you, Anon, A LOT for this ask it was really fun to write about this specific topic! I'm a professional yapper so I hope it wasn't too much lol
Also tried to go back to my normal artstyle which resulted in Felix looking really nice but quite uuuh unusual. That's what you get for juggling with artstyles i guess
(don't mind my ocs they're here for emotional support)
romaincrisis
jbbartram-illu
titsay
blakekathryn
2087
areudirty
turnnoffyourmind
dailybridgerton
jacobvanloon