#director's commentary

[dyke-parade]

phm director's commentary on the hug scene AUTISTIC ROCKY CONFIRMED!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[dogzcats]

pride & prejudice (2005)

joe wright director's commentary

2/x

[mwright30313326]

"Beauty in the Darkness" Chaggie Animatic : Director's Commentary

This is my favorite Hazbin Hotel video of mine, so I thought it would be fun to do a "director's commentary" thing for it on its one year birthday.

full video here: https://youtu.be/q4NPky2ELuQ

Beauty in the Darkness is actually the first video idea I ever had for this show after I learned 1) what the premise was and 2) who Charlie’s VA was. I could write about every single frame but instead I picked my five favorite scenes and wrote a little director’s commentary thing on them. 

Obligatory note: NOT a gender swap or Lucifer with leg extensions, just Charlie with short hair. It is a very personal brain rot to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Favorite Scenes and Commentary

1) “There is beauty in the darkness / there is so much love in death” / confessions

I have a few ideas of the dialogue in this scene, but everything I tried to write never did the ideas justice. I suppose it’ll have to wait for the canon flashback that might come. 

Charlie remembers Vaggie’s reaction to her demon claw differently than what happened. I imagine she agonized over it on the walk home and ended up in a little spiral about freaking out her best friend. Charlie wants so badly for Vaggie to feel comfortable and safe around her, so Vaggie's flinch away from her demonic claws would be the ultimate manifestation of her own fears. Vaggie pulls her out of a spiral by simply taking her hands and stating she’s not afraid of her (adding to herself, if anything you should be afraid of me).

It felt important for me to have Vaggie reach for Charlie and confess first. Especially after Charlie gets stuck in her head about Vaggie’s reaction to her sharper edges. On a wider scale, Vaggie would be the one with the most hangups about their relationship and overcoming those would be a huge character moment for her! Meanwhile Charlie has been into her since at least day one but is so dead-set on keeping her comfortable she suppresses it until Vaggie makes the first move. She’s chivalrous like that.

A detail about this scene that I especially love is Charlie retracts her claws when Vaggie fits their hands together. It’s a small gesture but it speaks volumes towards her care for Vaggie.  The absolute last thing she wants to do is cause her harm, even if the harm is just a graze of overlong claws!

The difference between their hands drives me crazy. My biggest priorities for that scene were 1) portraying their body language and 2) portraying their canon compliant hand difference bc my biggest regret of Only Us was that I did not do that.

It was also tricky from an art perspective, as hands are the bane of most artists’ existence.  It wouldn’t be an animatic by me without one (1) closeup on a hand interaction though, so I powered through.

2) “There is mercy in the monster underneath his fiery breath” Sinner rescue / Monster hands

This line in particular describes very well one reason (of many) why Vaggie loves Charlie. 

The song and visuals assembled better than any group of Avengers for this scene, and I love it so much. I rewatch it at least once a day.  Half the views on this video are probably just me rewinding over and over to see Charlie’s claw transform back to a hand.

With my short hair Charlie design when she uses her powers fire flares up out of her hair like how her long hair would usually flare out in canon. It makes her a lot more dangerous in a fight and is a great help in toasting marshmallows.

This entire verse was originally focused on Vaggie and Charlie rescuing the same kid Vaggie lost her eye over.  The point of this sequence in the song was “Vaggie sees there is goodness in hell *besides* Charlie.” I changed the whole thing to this montage of Vaggie seeing random sinners being friends/family/etc (being people!!) which is better proof of Charlie’s POV than them saving someone she already saved.

I didn’t intend for this particular bit to be an “oh no she’s hot” moment

Facing a powerful demon, her Exorcist instincts kick in to grab her weapon. It’s jarring how easily they come back to her after a year of rest and recovery. She has to consciously pull herself out of that headspace before she can appreciate Charlie’s actions.

Vaggie sees Charlie flex her power for the very first time. She realizes Charlie uses her strength and fire to be a positive force in Hell, as opposed to other demons (and angels) who use their power as a weapon. This display would cement Vaggie’s loyalty to Charlie and strengthen her existing commitment to helping her.

3) “The Styx is drenched in hopelessness and swimming with despair” / Styx skull scene

Charlie takes her on little tours of the ring, including the surrounding mountains and the River Styx. She infodumps about the history of the cities and tries to make Vaggie feel at home here.

Vaggie finds the skull of a demon she destroyed on the banks of the River Styx. She remembers this kill out of thousands specifically since she chased them outside the city.

I loved the idea of Vaggie confronting her past aligning to the lines “drenched in hopelessness and swimming with despair.”  This bit used to be Vaggie holding her exorcist helmet, but I figured the skull would be a bit more interesting.  Instead of “Oh no I used to be an Exorcist,” now it’s more like, “This was a person.”  Which is a key for her character development going into the rest of the video.

The image for this scene was so present in my mind, and I managed to execute it super well.

There’s a cut version of this scene where Charlie asks, “Was that someone you knew?”  which sends Vaggie into a guilty spiral. However I couldn’t make it work around the song.

4) “Everything has such potential even you” / Crow’s Nest Notes

I fell in love with this line while working on this video. It’s exactly what Vaggie needed to hear after her fall, and it’s exactly what Charlie would say. She sees potential and good in everyone—it’s the basis of her hotel project after all—meanwhile Vaggie sees none of that, especially in herself. She would struggle to see the potential in a flightless angel, a mass murderer, and liar such as herself.

I love Erika Henningsen’s voice—I am a victim of the Mean Girls Musical to Hazbin pipeline

Canonically, Vaggie probably started living with Charlie immediately.  I headcanon that for some time after she recovered enough, Vaggie lived alone somewhere up high and isolated, such as the crow’s nest of a shipwreck outside the main city. Charlie would visit her every day after she settled there, so it really was only the illusion of moving out.

It was strategically a great place (defensible high ground) to hide out, and occasionally the wind would blow through Vaggie’s hair and would remind her of flying. 

When they build the hotel Charlie steals the pirate ship and attaches it to the outside so Vaggie has somewhere to go by herself as we see in Whatever It Takes.

5) “The great dog Cerberus” / Charlie’s puppies!!

In the fully animated version Charlie and Cerberus’ tails would wag in sync.

This scene plays with my headcanon that Charlie doesn’t have a lot of real friends besides her pets.

Charlie is 1000% a dog person, despite having only cats and dragons in canon. I can hear her call out to Cerberus, “My puppies!!!” in my head and I want it to be real.

My favorite part of this scene is Cerberus licking Vaggie's hair into weird shapes but she doesn't even try to fix it bc animation is hard she's so enamored watching Charlie. Cerberus's side eye is fully a reference to that "I know what you are" dog meme.

Vaggie thinks she’s the worst person ever all the time but having someone like her immediately (besides Charlie) is a nice moment for her.  Cerberus is a little wary of her but doesn’t try to attack her like he would a normal Exorcist. I imagine she’d have a lot of thoughts about that, and who she is post-fall in general, which would be nice to explore later.

That wraps up the commentary! I’m so proud of this video and how it turned out. The comment sections on Twtter and YT are some of my favorites ever.

Feel free to ask me other things about my videos because an ungodly amount of thought goes into them (yes even the stupid ones) and it's fun to talk about it.

full video here (again): https://youtu.be/q4NPky2ELuQ

[beguilingcorpse]

⭐ i would love to hear about your meme selection for alectopause the ninth (and if any got left on the cutting room floor)!

HIIIII EM i love this ask!!!! here's a quick and dirty tour:

this is VERY SPECIFICALLY structured after a line from an early episode of sword art online abridged. i could put the reference here but it is so minuscule of a joke that it really wouldn't scan. it was done for no one but myself. sao my beloathed but saoa my beloved

harrow's "let me explain - no, there is too much. let me sum up" is a line taken directly from the princess bride, both because it's a funny joke and because william goldman was a genius and it's a nifty little writing gag. gestures broadly to the audience. we don't have time to cover everything you've already seen. shit's happened. you understand. we're moving on

a paraphrase of this iconic and perennial classic:

kiriona calling the river "the ghost superhighway" is meant to evoke the early internet being termed "the information superhighway" (is the river just the ghost internet? vote now on your phones)

"parasite in chief in his idiot sacristy" is a reference to that chrisecc post about the queen, which i've been itching to use in reference to silas forever and ever (there's a version of it in my tlt fashion au too that i wrote like three years ago and which may never see the light of day)

i'm counting literary references as memes because they are, ultimately, memetic: pulling in a wrinkle in time felt obvious due to the canon nature of river travel reflecting the eponymous wrinkle. i read awit when i was like 12 and it changed me. i wanted to be a theoretical physicist for so long BECAUSE of that book (and hitchhiker's guide LOL)

i think i've put at least one shakespeare reference in every tlt fic i've written, but in my defense tamsyn has done the same with the books. 'hell is empty and all the devils are here' is so deliciously apt for colum that i couldn't not include it (it was almost the title of no exit before i decided on the sartre reference)

ianthe calling pal "that smug motherfucker" is after john turturro's delivery in severance. because i am hashtag #severed

ianthe quipping that she should survive "at least until chapter 26" is an in-joke for the aptn writers and organizers: the outline for the event mentioned ianthe specifically in the chapter 26 prompt, and one of the rules for the event warned against killing off major characters if they were supposed to show up later. @carys-the-ninth gave the specific example "no killing ianthe before chapter 26." if anyone was going to get meta with it, it was always going to be the character who called the people she doesn't give a shit about extras IN THE CANON TEXT. she's awful <3

those are most of the major ones! i don't think there were any left on the cutting room floor - most of the edits to this chapter were additive, since i worked on the outline for it very slowly over the course of a month and then sat down one saturday and wrote the whole thing in like an eight-hour session the day before the deadline lol. there just wasn't much to cut!

if this has intrigued you, you can read my chapter of alectopause the ninth here!

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

it does work as a standalone piece, but it is also the second part of a full novel-length fan-written exquisite-corpse-style fic, which you can read all of here

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

(ask me for 'director's commentary' about my fics!)

[blueclanmarkings]

Tell Me Tuesday

@chalkituptofate, thank you for the tag!!! It was comfortably Wednesday when I got it, so I went "I can pretend it's still Tuesday and do this".

I've kept the explanation @chalkituptofate added below:

If you have never played before: pick a scene/chapter/whatever from one of your fics and add any commentary you feel like. Why that line? How come this plot twist? What does the eyebrow waggle MEAN?!?! I want the dirt and I can only smash my face up against the glass of your stories so hard before I start to leave smudges.

Fucking director's commentary!!! I LOVE STUFF LIKE THIS. I love rambling about writing in general. 😭😭😭

Part of me was tempted to do chapter 1 of my book, because I shamelessly love chapter 1. But this is a fanfic-centered account, so I'll do chapter 5 of Fifty Sovereigns, a chapter I've dubbed something like "Bee loses her innocence". This got long, I had so much fun, and I hope you'll enjoy this too. ❤️

Huge boulders blocked the path ahead, forcing the caravan to a stop by a bridge. Annoyed, Bartrand waited for one of his hired crew to see if anything could be done. When he returned with a no, Bartrand turned bright red and punched the poor man. Beatrice vaguely heard it. The Deep Roads laid their claim on her attention, making it impossible to look elsewhere but everywhere. She’d read about these underground parts of Thedas. Knew they spread all over the continent, acting like a network between all the major dwarven cities.

Here I'm kind of half-assing a juxtaposition. On one hand, there's the seriousness of the situation and Bartrand being pissed. On the other is Beatrice's innocent wonder as she looks at architecture--she doesn't even see the commotion or really hear it.

Camp set, Hawke climbed onto a flat rock and spoke again. “We’re looking for a path around the cave-in. We don’t know how long it’ll take to find a way around, nor what we’ll run into. Scouts deemed the side paths too dangerous to map. Assume they were right.” A shudder rippled beneath Beatrice’s skin. She’d finally get to turn all that precious time practicing into something useful. “Keep your weapons at the ready and your eyes open,” Hawke continued, ever grim. “We need every man—and woman—alive if we’re to make it through this.”

As we'll see a lot in the beginning, I'm continuing the trend and really focusing on Beatrice's innocence naivety. Hawke is trying to make a point of how dangerous this will be rather grandiosely (who the fuck gets up on a rock, lol--oh wait, Shepard did that in the Suicide Mission, didn't she). And Bee just "yay, finally! 😃"

Still, she felt out of place in it. That might’ve been due to the cape. And the fact she decided to wear it. But when she saw herself in the mirror at the armory, Sting and quiver secured in place, she couldn’t stop smiling. No coherent thought other than ‘yes’ came. This was right. This was what she was meant to be.

Three things here:

Her armor is based on the unupgraded Prowler armor from DA:I.

She chooses to wear the cape; a soft "hero" moment, if you wanna call it that.

Despite being unaware of how dangerous things are about to become, she feels right wearing armor. She's eager to prove herself.

“And if they start getting close, use the Chameleon’s Breath.” He grabbed her forearm when she rolled her eyes, drawing her gaze back to him. “I’m serious, kid. You do not want them closing in on you. One wrong move, and you’ll catch the taint.” Ever since she’d met Varric three days ago, he’d done nothing but tell her how dangerous this was. That included their entire descent to the Deep Roads. A whole day underground listening to horror stories about darkspawn. Darkspawn were dangerous. She got it. He didn’t have to be so serious about it now. “Better keep my hands steady so they don’t slip, then,” she deadpanned. Varric stared at her. The corners of his mouth ticked upward and he bit down hard on his cheek to not let his grin spread. Beatrice lifted a brow. A huff left him. “Maker’s balls, kid,” he muttered.

This is the last moment we see Bee's innocence and naivety in full force. Varric keeps telling her to stay safe. She's almost child-like in her reply, which is fitting--she's a sheltered nineteen-year-old. So what does she do? She makes a taint joke. And that's 100% because I can't stay serious whenever it gets mentioned with gravitas. All I can see is the taint.

From here, things pivot hard.

They were remarkably human. Uncomfortably so. Nothing like what she’d read in her books. Even the Chantry had it all wrong.

I skipped her describing what darkspawn look like. This moment matters, because it shows her being frozen in time--they're not what she expected. It also shows her humanizing them. They're not the monsters she's read about, which is half-right, half-naive. But she gets her head back in the game here:

One hurlock managed to stray from the group. It bolted past Anders, knocking him aside as he rushed past. Once Beatrice saw it was heading toward Varric and that there was no time to stay frozen, her instincts took over. She pulled the bowstring back and snapped her bow toward it, aiming for its head. There was no time to think. She loosed and the arrow buried deep at a diagonal angle— —right in its throat.

I originally forgot to write WHERE this hurlock was heading which is so dumb because it's very important. She snaps out of her frozen moment once she sees Varric's in danger, and that matters.

I also isolated her hitting it in the throat and I did that for a reason. I'm not gonna go into the nitty-gritty of throat shots, but if you're curious, try shooting an NPC in RDR2 in the throat and see what happens. In short, it takes time for the person to die, it's messy, you see their panic, and there's a lot of gurgling as they choke on their own blood. Huh. I guess I went into the nitty-gritty of it after all. I wanted her to miss hitting it in the head because it's plausible she'd do that. It also gives her something to think about later.

“Don’t look at it right now,” Varric said. “Look at me.” Her eyes flicked to his. “You all right, kid?” he asked. She finally blinked, and gave a shaky nod. “Y-yeah.” “Good. There’re more coming. Get ready.”

Varric. 🥹 No wonder she likes him. He grounds her. He's her anchor, friend, the one she gets along with; no wonder they become friends and he's half-adopted her already.

That shaky "yeah" is her 100% lying, by the way. She's not all right. But what choice does she have? They're in danger and will continue to be in danger until they get out of the Deep Roads.

Each time, it became a little easier to kill and loot. That scared her the most.

Mmmmm, tasty stuff right here. Nock, aim, loose + gathering her arrows are starting to become routine, which means it's also starting to become easier. And yeah, when you're taking lives, I can imagine it becoming easier is a scarier thought than killing. Because does that mean she's losing her humanity, she probably wonders. And I'd argue the opposite to be true.

A quiet nod from her was all he got back. Because her mind was elsewhere. Or nowhere. She preferred nowhere. The flames licked the air. She watched them almost catch on her wool socks, but she balanced it just out of reach every time. Her entire focus lay there, watching and repeating the same act of hovering her sock as close as it could get to the fire without it catching. It was better this way. If she didn’t think about the gurgling or the sound that came when she ripped the arrow out, it wasn’t re—

They've camped in the chamber they fought the ogre now, and we see shock and PTSD take the reins. The word I've cut off is "real". Mmm, deep stuff, guys. Deep stuff.

This long section is probably one of my favorites in this chapter:

All sounds faded into the background again and became nothing more than a murmur somewhere far away. Once again, her focus narrowed on the task at hand, and the rag going up and down Sting’s limbs. Wipe. Wipe. Wipe. The bow never got any cleaner. As she moved to the grip, something raised bumped beneath her thumb. Frowning, she turned the bow in her hands and inspected it. What was that? It was a greyish little thing. Faintly curved. She picked at it with her fingers until it fell into her palm. It looked just like— Her stomach twisted violently. The gurgling. Splutter. Hissing. You think this is still fun and games, don’t you? Her shaking hand curled around bone shrapnel, her jaw clenching so hard her teeth threatened to crack. Mark my words, Beatrice. The real world will cure you of this nonsense faster than my lectures ever could. He’s right. Beatrice closed her eyes hard. A deep breath in through her nose. An even slower breath through her mouth. Sound came back slowly—Varric was talking about something she couldn’t yet comprehend, but he was smiling and that was enough to refocus. She forced herself to toss the bone fragment into the fire, and let her eyes drop to the beautiful piece of equipment in his hands.

While she's busy trying to distract herself with a grounding motion to not think about what she just experienced, finding that bone fragment wedged into her bow brings it all back. And then... I jump into some mindfucky stuff. Those two first internal thoughts are her father. He says this in chapter 1. That last one... heh. I have a plan. But it needs to be noted because it's an important moment. It also kicks off me doing into deep-deep third person POV, something I rarely do these days.

She gave him a lopsided smile. “Because being shot by it probably stings.” A rumbling laugh came out of Varric; he even slapped her arm. Anders snorted, Fenris shook his head, and Hawke’s shoulders shook a little. Beatrice’s shoulders sank as she laughed with them. If something so stupid could bring a smile to their faces, she’d make sure to do it more often. They’re laughing at you. What? Her laughter slowed at the thought, so unbidden. They weren’t laughing at her. Was the name silly? Sure. But that was exactly why they were laughing. It was silly, not her. Are you sure? She checked. And—fair. Hawke and Fenris had already moved on to something else, their faces like stone again. They exchanged some looks between them, knowing and soft. Like they were in on a joke she wasn’t privy to. But… No, they weren’t making fun of her. They were Broody One and Broody Two—they had lots in common. Of course they stopped laughing first. She bet they rationed their laughter throughout the year.

She's talking about Sting--her bow--and why she named it Sting. Everyone laughs and then... mindfucky mindfuckery comes back. She ends up arguing with herself... or DOES SHE??? DUN DUN DUUUUN.

Also? @mimitz0-o caught it on her first read so I'll confirm it here: Hawke and Fenris are 100% flirting here. Bee just... misunderstands.

Why couldn’t she also take a watch? She was perfectly capable of watching. If she’d learned anything today, it was that darkspawn weren’t subtle. If anything, it was an easy job. So why didn’t Hawke want to include her, and seemed to think she was better suited to rest? They don’t trust you. Beatrice’s stomach tightened. Finally—a thought that made sense. It’d been no more than two days. He’d known the others way longer, though she didn’t know how long. Why should they trust her? Besides, she’d frozen today. Varric needed to pull her back into the fight. She’d never set foot in the Deep Roads before yesterday. So, fine. Perhaps they didn’t trust her. Yet. Her eyes slid shut. Tomorrow, she’d give them a reason to.

I guess it's pretty fucking clear already, but in case it isn't: Hawke didn't assign her to keep watch that night. And this time, she indulges and agrees with the thought because it makes all the sense in the world. It hurts, it sullens her mood, but she also doesn't lose her, uh... yeah, of course English fails me right now. Not optimism but pågangsmot which makes no sense to most, if not all of y'all because it's Norwegian. No, Google Translate, "entry fee" is not the translation of pågangsmot. Ok, I put it in a sentence and "drive" is probably closer to what I mean. She's still driven to prove herself to the guys and to herself. Sure.

Okay but can we make this a weekly thing or something??? Because this was so fun. I do these roleplaying things with myself where I'm like "what if I was a director and did commentary" or "what if I was being interviewed" quite often, so this was right up my alley.

I wanna tag @capnmarvl @mimitz0-o @frankiesoup @garfbin @dotflacfile @toboe-roll @ale-tie @thychesters and probably a bunch more, so if you wanna do this and don't give a fuck it's not Tuesday, feel free. ❤️

[ddarker-dreams]

Hiii just wanted to say that yan anaxa fic was v tasty and u captured his special kind of crazy swag so well (also the fic itself reads v smoothly)!!

If you dont mind could u explain the way u went about it (up to u how in-depth) like i know hes not particularly difficult to see doing weird yan shit cos hes a weird guy but idk the v candid shyness at the mention of his loneliness, the denial of the divine being a key driving force to his character but willingly offering to beg/bow the reader and many others but im rambling GRAHHHH EITHER WAY UR A V SKILLED AUTHOR AND IM GRATEFUL I GET TO READ UR WORK

Have a lovely day!! <33

there's nothing i love more than an excuse to dive into the behind the scenes of a fic 👁👁 even short stories have lots of time and thought poured into them!

this excerpt from the 'as i've written — amphoreus' saga of heroes' left a strong impression on me. (unrelated, but has anyone noticed how anaxa's character card is reminiscent of the major arcana's hanged man? how fitting...) whenever i write a character for the first time, one of my first goals is identifying what makes them distinct. i try building their characterization around that.

for anaxa, this narrowed down to:

his heretical tendencies in a relatively god-fearing society

willingness to engage/debate ideas he disagrees with

history in alchemy

how he 'leans into' the theatrical rather than being a stern, distant intellectual

a tendency to never give outright answers, instead helping others arrive at conclusions for themselves through well-timed comments and guidance (e.g. castorice's story arc)

with these as my guiding principles, i felt more comfortable characterizing him. honestly there's still a lot of guesswork and pruning along the way. i toned down his condescension because it didn't feel right. i write a lot of condescending characters (looking at you, chrollo, gojo and geto), so i have to be careful to not let that seep into characters it doesn't work with 😭

another few notes regarding his characterization:

i tried leaning into his desire to cultivate knowledge in his pupils. since the start of the story is ambiguous about what exactly anaxa has done, i wanted his questions to put you, the Actual reader, in the MC's shoes by having you piece together wtf is going on. once the MC reveals his 'crimes' it's then up to you to determine how much of this (or if there's anything else) anaxa is guilty of.

if you're curious, i made it a rule for none of anaxa's dialogue to contain outright lies. he's still being shady tho

when darling says, “You must be lonely, professor" we see a change in his behavior because that hit a little too close to home. he actually finds disclosing that he enjoys darling's company more embarrassing than his verbose declarations toward the end of the story. it's just a little too intimate, hence his rush to move on by bombarding darling with his unhinged nonsense.

i hope this is what you were looking for ,, thank you so much for your kind words and interest in my writing!!!

[princesssarisa]

It's funny that when you listen to the director's commentary on the DVD of The Slipper and the Rose, director Bryan Forbes keeps talking about "the pantomime version of Cinderella" when he wants to describe the more familiar tale to highlight how his movie is different.

As a British man born in the 1920s, the Christmas pantos of Cinderella that are performed every year in the UK would have been the main adaptations of Cinderella he grew up with.

Of course if an American, and/or a person born more recently, were to compare what they thought was the most "familiar" Cinderella to their own adaptation, they would almost certainly cite the Disney version, and maybe the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical too.

[minas-linkverse]

Director's commentary: Guard at the gates Full update <-

I established in my analysis of the update "Tipping" that Legend and Ravio are showing the first signs of getting along in these updates, but just like in that update: Ravio is the punching bag again.

This is for a bigger purpose, even if I did highly enjoy drawing his petty suffering. (Sorry, Rav.) That purpose being Hilda! She gets very little screentime in this arc, but is also vital for the story. So I did my best to squeeze AS Much preparation for her appearance as I could. Of course any ALBW fan reading the comic knows that going to Lorule Castle means Hilda will be there, but I don't want to rely just on people's prior knowledge of the franchise.

So! I set up the banishment as a way to establish Ravio and her connection better, the fact she seemed to overreact to Ravio vanishing for a little bit, and very importantly: That Ravio is even more determined to go see her learning this. This way we already have some idea of their possible dynamic long before Hilda appears in the comic.

It also makes her actual appearance more exciting! Cause the viewer has been waiting for it! It's what she deserves 💛

Anyway, to focus on the comic itself!

Azzy! Also known as "Thief Girl" in game. It felt wrong for her not to have a name, so I slipped one in there. I like to think that Link is the one who suggested hiring her as a guard for the castle. She was likely one of the first people besides the triforce gang to open her heart to the idea of positive change in Lorule.

Also she had some sass in game so I had to keep it in. She may be doing honest work now but she ein't a bore.

Azzy was going to let them in regardless of Ravio not being on the list, she just wanted to see what'd happen if she messed around a bit. It's entertainin'.

...Another reason she was going to let Ravio in regardless, is that Azzy cares about Hilda quite a lot and could tell that her banishing Ravio was probably not a choice she made in her right mind. She was hoping that Ravio would go in and fix the situation where she couldn't.

Although Ravio reassures Azzy, the last few panels of the update are purposefully a major tonal shift from earlier.

We're at the castle, it's time to face Hilda, and Ravio is nervous. The goofy tone hasn't just been to give the reader a breather, it's an example of Ravio distracting himself of what's ahead. He can't do that anymore, as in the next update Hilda makes her appearance.

It's meant to be kind of a parallel to the game too. Ravio's been gone for unknown reasons, Hilda's spiraling, and he's gathering courage he didn't know he had to face her and hopefully make everything okay. Altho, even without that context it should be an interesting scene... I tried, at least!

Finally there's what Ravio says: "I'll make sure of it." This is foreshadowing to the dynamic that Hilda and Ravio are shown to have in the next update: Codepdency. The two may be incredibly close, but they've also been the only people they've been able to rely on for far too long. Ravio truly in this moment believes it's his duty to make Hilda feel better, and that he is the only one who can.

Also Leg is there. Doing Leg things.