Treating myself to some food with my ship (newly nicknamed BedrockBloom). You’ll have to get used to that, comes with the package 😌
As for you all, you can get yourself a commission in this style on my Ko-Fi page (https://ko-fi.com/reuska/commissions), newly with a Full BG ad-on because I got better in backgrounds and most importantly, I started to enjoy them ♥
There’s a lot I could say about this piece, from the gorgeous shading to the calming color palette, but I think my favorite part of this piece has to be how you can practically “hear” the conversation between Zhongli and Hette just by their expressions and body language. Hette’s cheeky smile and hand movements, probably talking about some new research discovery or something she’s excited to share, paired with Zhongli’s attentive but relaxed gaze, clearly listening and processing everything, but really is happy just to be spending some quality time with her when it comes down to it, gives the whole piece a really nice cozy feel.
Also love the little slime and the utterly blank void expression he got there, it’s kinda cute in a way. Like he doesn’t care at all about what is happening in his surroundings at all but seems pretty contented regardless just being taken for a light stroll with Hette. If you could look inside his head for a second, I think it would look like: “Glub glub, master taking me for walkies. Glub glub, me accepts this.”
Y’all seriously gonna bring up the weird gay covers and not talk about the massive over-the-top bara/bear bait in “Werewolves Don’t Got to Summer Camp?” For shame Tumblr.
Here’s a quick game for y’all, take a guess at where this character introduction excerpt came from?
A. A gay erotica novel
B. A book written for ten year-olds
No seriously, this isn’t photoshop or a shitpost, that’s actually how Mr. Jenkins is so...lovingly described. I swear somebody should straight up just plagiarize this whole paragraph for a fic and then wait and see how long it takes for some commenter to point out that it was stolen from a kids book.
But wait, there’s more! For those unaware, The Bailey Kids books also had a few illustrations sprinkled in between chapters. Let’s check some of them out!
Boy the artist really went into detail there huh?
Uhhh, Mr Jenkins? Why are you looking at me like that when you’re eating a spider for no reason?
OK, this is a kids books, surely that must be the limit to how weirdly sexually charged the pictures can be-OH MY GOOOOOOO
I can’t emphasize this enough, the text isn’t edited. That’s literally how Mr. Jenkins was described eating the undercooked raw hamburger meat in the story, cause we really, really needed to know that that tongue really do be lappin’ them juices up thoroughly. Also what was supposed to be a hamburger in the story looks more like a hotdog in the picture for no discernable reason aside from the artist going “Fuck it, horny-on-main time.”
That moment when you grow up and realize that Mr. Jenkins was actually just your local friendly neighborhood bear that decided to pursue a side job of taking care of the kids at Summer Camp after he retired from the military. Good for him!
Most of the pics were shamelessly stolen from Twitter. Link is right here: https://twitter.com/thatsajellyfish/status/1170381396239474689
Writing a novel when you imagine all you stories in film format is hard because there’s really no written equivalent of “lens flare” or “slow motion montage backed by Gregorian choir”
You can get the same effect of a lens flare with close-detail descriptions, combined with breaks to new paragraphs.
Your slow-motion montage backed by a Gregorian choir can be done with a few technques that all involve repetition.
First is epizeuxis, the repeating of a word for emphasis.
Example:
Falling. Falling. Falling. There was nothing to keep Marie from plunging into the rolling river below. She could only hope for a miracle now, that she would come out alive somehow despite a twenty-foot drop into five-foot-deep water.
Then there’s anaphora, where you write a number of phrases with the same words at the beginning.
There were still mages out there living in terror of shining steel armor emblazoned with the Sword of Mercy.
There were still mages out there being forced by desperation into the clutches of demons.
There were mages out there being threatened with Tranquility as punishment for their disobedience, and the threats were being made good upon.
Mages who had attempted to flee, but knew nothing of the outside world and were forced to return to their prison out of need for sustenance and shelter.
Mages who only desired to find the families they were torn from.
Mages who only wanted to see the sun.
This kind of repetition effectively slows the pace of your writing and puts the focus on that small scene. That’s where you get your slow pan. The same repetition also has a subtle musicality to it depending on the words you use. That’s where you get the same vibe as you might get from a Gregorian choir.
For more neat tricks (aka figures of rhetoric) like epizeuxis and anaphora, read THE ELEMENTS OF ELOQUENCE by Mark Forsyth. It’s both educational and delightful, not to mention overflowing with wry wit. Great book.
So true. It doesn’t have to be life or death. It has to be the stakes and how much you care. How much you’re emotionally invested. It could be the tiniest thing – she finally takes his hand – and your heart could break for them.
“Apollo 13″ is a great example because everyone who walked into the theater the day it opened already knew the ending. And you still get this enormous sense of relief when that first crackle comes over the radio. When Ed Harris sits down, you sink into your chair in relief.
Because the characters don’t know the ending. And we care about the characters. We’re experiencing what they’re experiencing vicariously, through them. That’s the catharsis of good storytelling.
And the people who made the movie understood that and they were all good at their jobs.
You create tension by getting your audience to care about the characters (which, honestly, doesn’t take all that much, as humans can form an emotional attachment to a Roomba [literally] and will). Once your audience is invested, you can create tension a million ways.
It’s entirely possible to tell a story with life and death stakes that’s full of tension, of course, but if you have to have life or death stakes or there won’t be any dramatic tension, you’re not doing your job as a storyteller.
Damn that costume detail is on point! I don’t even want to think about how long it must have took to have drawn all that. Ya gotta love Anime’s (or Chinese game in this case) obsession with giving their characters super elaborate detailed costumes lol.
The background and effects is really what makes the piece in my opinion, really adds a nice ethereal vibe to it. Otherworldly yet somehow inviting, a lot like Venti himself fittingly enough.
Great art as usual, I’m glad to see you back in the saddle buddy!
The most baffling part about this is how the character actively evolved worse art as the manga went along. The very beginning we have a pretty normal looking character, then she became a One Piece character before evolving into...that.
So we know for a fact that it’s not because the artist is bad. It’s because the artist actively wanted the character to look like this.
I've recently been griping a lot about how Player Service warps writing wrt Fire Emblem, but if you turn back the clock seven or eight years I was griping about how Player Service warps writing wrt Mass Effect.
So, if you imported a Renegade (evil/dark) run into ME2 from the first game, you have fewer side quests than a player who imported a Paragon (good/light) run.
This is because the Renegade options tend to involve either murdering people or alienating them with your cruelty.
So this is all a completely logical chain of cause and effect here; you killed this lady in the last game, so now she can't show up and give you the sequel sidequest.
And people didn't like this.
It was limiting player choice, it was punishing Renegade players, it was forcing a canon option. Renegade players should be able to access the same amount of content as Paragon players, they argued.
Now, these were relatively minor sidequests. It was noticeable when they were missing, but they weren't gamebreaking. It illustrates a problem of choice-based games neatly, though: the very fundamentals of the writing, the sheer basics of "make up a sidequest" are distorted by the gameplay need to make both options viable.
And that's just always always always gonna be a massive writing challenge with choice-based games. Some deal with it worse than others.
So you end up in this scenario where the player is genuinely arguing, "there should not be tangible consequences to my actions". They want to be able to kill the lady who gives the sidequest, but still get the sidequest.
And you run into this again and again and again with morality-based games especially, because in the name of player satisfaction both options must boil down to essentially the same solution. Both options need to be valid even when one is murdering children. And you can see how that results in a fandom that's...at best confused, at worst vicious and divided.
Player Service, unchecked, is a creeping rot that seeps into every aspect of making a game and poisons good writing.
Shit like this is exactly why I never expect spectacular writing from open world games with a morality system. The only exception I can think of from the top of my head is Undertale, (even though that technically doesn’t count cause it isn’t open world) mostly because the deep lack of satisfaction and unenjoyment of choosing the evil option is purposely baked into the narrative of the game itself.
I made these as a way to compile all the geographical vocabulary that I thought was useful and interesting for writers. Some descriptors share categories, and some are simplified, but for the most part everything is in its proper place. Not all the words are as useable as others, and some might take tricky wording to pull off, but I hope these prove useful to all you writers out there!
An Ironwood meta that just randomly popped into my head.
So I’ve been skimming over a lot of the observations on RWBY from @bionic-jedi and aside from the glurge of absolutely adorable Nuts ‘n Dolts stuff (Which I appreciate, I ship it now), the part that really got my attention was all the shit going down around Ironwood. I don’t watch the show anymore, not that I hated it or anything I just sorta lost interest in the show itself, decided it ultimately wasn’t really for me and mainly just enjoy it through fanart and shipping now, but from what I gathered from bionic-jedi’s Let’s Watch Ironwood sounds absolutely fascinating in all the ways that I don’t think was intentional by the CRWBY but is still pretty awesome that it’s there.
Forgive me if I get the details wrong since I haven’t kept up with the show and all my info is coming second hand from @bionic-jedi, but from I could gather Ironwood comes across as a man who:
- Is an experienced veteran fighter who individually is very badass with a proven tactical record on the battlefield
- Has the natural charisma to instill genuine loyalty and belief in his cause into his subordinates (To paraphrase Mass Effect 3 for a bit, you can pay a man to fight, you can pay him to charge up a hill, but no amount of money in the world will ever convince a man to believe in you), and does possess a genuine care for the troops under his command
- Will nonetheless still engage in abusive behavior if a subordinate is not performing in a way he believes is proper for their duty (Yeah I would consider forcibly hacking a sapient being to count as that)
- Carries around a very cool badass revolver as a signature weapon
- While brilliant tactically, possess horrible long term strategic assessment skills that if allowed to be acted upon could have/did end in disaster
You know what that sounds like? Ironwood is almost a perfect RWBY equivalent for George R. Patton (with maybe a bit of Bernard Montgomery thrown in).
Like, I think that the CRWBY may have accidentally written a scenario that asks “What if Patton was the Supreme Commander of the Western Front instead of Eisenhower?” And the results are an absolute clusterfuck unfolding in real time, but I feel I gotta clarify this.
Patton is one of America’s most celebrated and respected generals, and for good reason. Dude was a badass with a keen sense of armor tactics and mobile warfare that proved repeatedly that he could beat the Germans at their own game. His personal bravery could also never be called into question, having proven his mettle in direct combat during both the Hunt for Pancho Villa and WW1, as well as putting his own life in danger being very close to the front lines numerous times during WW2, one time even riding a tank into a German-occupied village to inspire his men. He also did genuinely care for the lives of his men, only ever seen openly weeping when mourning for the lives of his fallen soldiers, treating his wounded troops with the highest respect, and properly giving praise when they did a good job.
For all of Ironwood’s faults, his own mettle is certainly not into question given he suffered such grievous injuries that half his body is now cybernetics, and the man for sure knows how to fight and fight well, so that’s one similarity with Patton. He has also inspired real loyalty in Winter and the Ace Operatives, and in turn he does seem to actually care for them, and he had no real reason to give Yang a new prosthetic arm (and rather quickly fast tracking her an incredibly advanced one at that), so he’s not completely heartless or devoid of empathy.
However, Patton was a man focused on the tactical short term in lieu of long term strategic planning, and possessed with some horrendous character flaws that bit him in the ass on several occasions. One of them being the, even by the standards of the 40′s, deplorable manner in which he treated soldiers wracked with what we in the modern day would diagnose as PTSD. The man flat out did not believe PTSD was a real thing, thinking of it as cowardice and...you know what? I’m just gonna let the Wikipedia quotes say it all, I bolded some choice quotes for convenience:
Private Charles H. Kuhl, of L Company, U.S. 26th Infantry Regiment, reported to an aid station of C Company, 1st Medical Battalion, on 2 August 1943. Kuhl, who had been in the U.S. Army for eight months, had been attached to the 1st Infantry Division since 2 June 1943. He was diagnosed with "exhaustion," a diagnosis he had been given three times since the start of the campaign. From the aid station, he was evacuated to a medical company and given sodium amytal. Notes in his medical chart indicated "psychoneurosis anxiety state, moderately severe (soldier has been twice before in hospital within ten days. He can't take it at the front, evidently. He is repeatedly returned.)" Kuhl was transferred from the aid station to the 15th Evacuation Hospital near Nicosia for further evaluation.
Patton arrived at the hospital the same day, accompanied by a number of medical officers, as part of his tour of the U.S. II Corps troops. He spoke to some patients in the hospital, commending the physically wounded. He then approached Kuhl, who did not appear to be physically injured. Kuhl was sitting slouched on a stool midway through a tent ward filled with injured soldiers. When Patton asked Kuhl where he was hurt, Kuhl reportedly shrugged and replied that he was "nervous" rather than wounded, adding, "I guess I can't take it." Patton "immediately flared up,” slapped Kuhl across the chin with his gloves, then grabbed him by the collar and dragged him to the tent entrance. He shoved him out of the tent with a kick to his backside. Yelling "Don't admit this son of a bitch," Patton demanded that Kuhl be sent back to the front, adding, "You hear me, you gutless bastard? You're going back to the front."
Corpsmen picked up Kuhl and brought him to a ward tent, where it was discovered he had a temperature of 102.2 °F (39.0 °C); and was later diagnosed with malarial parasites. Speaking later of the incident, Kuhl noted "at the time it happened, [Patton] was pretty well worn out ... I think he was suffering a little battle fatigue himself." Kuhl wrote to his parents about the incident, but asked them to "just forget about it." That night, Patton recorded the incident in his diary: "[I met] the only errant coward I have ever seen in this Army. Companies should deal with such men, and if they shirk their duty, they should be tried for cowardice and shot."
Private Paul G. Bennett, 21, of C Battery, U.S. 17th Field Artillery Regiment, was a four-year veteran of the U.S. Army, and had served in the division since March 1943. Records show he had no medical history until 6 August 1943, when a friend was wounded in combat. According to a report, he "could not sleep and was nervous." Bennett was brought to the 93rd Evacuation Hospital. In addition to having a fever, he exhibited symptoms of dehydration, including fatigue, confusion, and listlessness. His request to return to his unit was turned down by medical officers. A medical officer describing Bennett's condition
And yet another incident like this:
Private Paul G. Bennett, 21, of C Battery, U.S. 17th Field Artillery Regiment, was a four-year veteran of the U.S. Army, and had served in the division since March 1943. Records show he had no medical history until 6 August 1943, when a friend was wounded in combat. According to a report, he "could not sleep and was nervous." Bennett was brought to the 93rd Evacuation Hospital. In addition to having a fever, he exhibited symptoms of dehydration, including fatigue, confusion, and listlessness. His request to return to his unit was turned down by medical officers. A medical officer describing Bennett's condition
The shells going over him bothered him. The next day he was worried about his buddy and became more nervous. He was sent down to the rear echelon by a battery aid man and there the medical aid man gave him some tranquilizers that made him sleep, but still he was nervous and disturbed. On the next day the medical officer ordered him to be evacuated, although the boy begged not to be evacuated because he did not want to leave his unit.
On 10 August, Patton entered the receiving tent of the hospital, speaking to the injured there. Patton approached Bennett, who was huddled and shivering, and asked what the trouble was. "It's my nerves," Bennett responded. "I can't stand the shelling anymore." Patton reportedly became enraged at him, slapping him across the face. He began yelling: "Your nerves, hell, you are just a goddamned coward. Shut up that goddamned crying. I won't have these brave men who have been shot at seeing this yellow bastard sitting here crying." Patton then reportedly slapped Bennett again, knocking his helmet liner off, and ordered the receiving officer, Major Charles B. Etter, not to admit him. Patton then threatened Bennett, "You're going back to the front lines and you may get shot and killed, but you're going to fight. If you don't, I'll stand you up against a wall and have a firing squad kill you on purpose. In fact, I ought to shoot you myself, you goddamned whimpering coward." Upon saying this, Patton pulled out his pistol threateningly, prompting the hospital's commander, Colonel Donald E. Currier, to physically separate the two. Patton left the tent, yelling to medical officers to send Bennett back to the front lines.
As he toured the remainder of the hospital, Patton continued discussing Bennett's condition with Currier. Patton stated, "I can't help it, it makes my blood boil to think of a yellow bastard being babied," and "I won't have those cowardly bastards hanging around our hospitals. We'll probably have to shoot them some time anyway, or we'll raise a breed of morons."
There were serious cries for Patton to get sacked after theses incidents, his reputation and job only saved because Eisenhower knew his tactical command abilities were simply too valuable to give up and so was only temporarily relieved of duty instead. Point I’m trying to make here is that while Patton could definitely hold sympathy and understanding for his men, it was contingent on them acting in a way he believed was properly honoring their duty. If they erred from his ideals of a how a proper soldier behaved, he could lapse into some seriously abusive behavior disturbingly quickly.
I can’t be the only one that sees some parallels between this and Ironwood hacking Penny am I? A man who cares for his troops but as soon as Penny acted in a way he deemed to be out of line, immediately sought to violate her autonomy and rights as a sapient being to force her back into line and back into his ideals of how a proper soldier should behave. Perhaps he wasn’t as violently physically aggressive about it as Patton, but arguably what Ironwood did was ethically much worse than slapping the shit out of and threatening people.
Patton also wasn’t the type to worry about the long term consequences of his actions. Before he died in a car accident shortly after WW2 he was unceremoniously sacked from his job after making one too many aggressive comments towards the Soviet Union, potentially nudging towards a potential Operation Unthinkable, and carelessly allowing former Nazis back into political power. Both of these were unthinkably horrible for obvious reasons.
There is one key difference between Patton and Ironwood however. Eisenhower was keenly aware of Patton’s potential shortcomings and he was kept on a leash and out of the highest levers of power, thus preventing him from ever being in a position where his worst traits would allow him to truly fuck up. Ironwood however I feel got Peter Principle’d hardcore and was promoted way above his level of competence (Always a risk for men who gain a reputation as “fightin’ generals”, see: John Bell Hood), where his positive qualities of personal physical bravery, combat skill and tactical leadership is wasted and his worst qualities of hyper-focus on short sighted tactical victories over long term strategic goals, paranoia and distrust leading to an excessive need for control, and moral cowardice are allowed to flourish.
And we see the consequences of it. He may have started with solid pragmatic ideas, but his insanely one-track minded obsession with short term strategic goals like making sure he has control over the Winter Maiden is costing him big long term strategically by burning bridges with potentially valuable allies and isolating himself and his command. Valuable time and resources that could have been spent coordinating forces against Salem wasted on various shenanigans involving Penny, RWBY and JN_R. Especially devastating given that Atlas is the only industrialized military power worth a damn in this world and isn’t reliant on mostly independent and unorganized Hunters and Huntresses (individually skilled but too few in number and takes far too long to train each one to reliably stop a Grimm invasion), and he’s just wasting the resources of the world power best able to hold the line against the Grimm.
Next part is a bit of a non-sequitur and really long so I put it in between the dotted lines if y’all ain’t interested and want to skip on over to the relevant Ironwood parts.
Getting a feel for the strategic situation in Atlas, I get a strong sense that what Atlas needs more than anything else right now is a Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower the the exact man needed to lead the Western allies, and I can’t see anyone else doing as realistically as good a job as he did, this is a hill I’ll die on. It wouldn’t look like it at first, the man had never once commanded a unit in battle (a fact that made many of his “actually seen combat” rivals bitter), and his softer, more easy going disposition would seem at odds with the alpha-male take charge image cultivated by men like Patton and Montgomery that would be stereotypically expected of a general, much less a Supreme Commander.
However, that calm exterior hid a man with a sharp eye on the necessary strategic goals needed for victory, expert resource and personnel management skills, the humility to listen to his subordinates and admit his own mistakes, and most importantly, both the smooth negotiating skills and the iron will necessary to deal with larger than life figures.
The western allies were made up of many different nations and factions and filled to the brim with what I would call (to put it lightly) strong personalities. This was an organization that involved:
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Winston Churchill
- Charles De Gaulle
- Bernard Montgomery
- The aforementioned Patton
- Occasional dealings with Stalin even
All of them larger than life personalities, all of them strong willed and possessed of their own ideas of how to win the war as well as their own political/personal motives, and all of them vying for dominance in the strategic decision making of the Western Allies. It was like herding a clowder of cats, but all the cats had frggin tanks and bombs. Eisenhower actually managed to cut through the bullshit and resist all the arm twisting and actually got all the different countries, armies and leaders together to act upon a united plan. He did this while still being able to control his subordinates worst impulses and (mostly) was able to resist the shitty plans put up and embrace the good ones (for the most part, Montgomery did manage to convince him to approve of Operation Market Garden, and it was the last major German victory of the war mostly due to Monty’s mishandling). Tactical battle ability was largely irrelevant for Eisenhower’s role, and his ability to see the big picture clearly and being able to maneuver through the internal politics meant everything to his success as a Supreme Commander.
If Eisenhower or an Eisenhower-esque figure was in charge of Atlas during this latest season, you’d probably get a drastically different turn of events. An Eisenhower would not be so quick to drastic action as Ironwood was. An Eisenhower would probably sit down with their subordinates, hear out all their arguments for why or why shouldn’t a specific action be taken, then calmly consider their actions. An Eisenhower would probably then say “Working with an enemy agent to hack into the Winter Maiden is a dumb idea” and proceed to create plans on how to coordinate all available forces in Remnant to best fend off Salem.
Atlas as a whole doesn’t really strike me as the type of organization that would raise an Eisenhower though. Militaries are always offshoots of the cultures that create them, and I don’t believe it to be a coincidence that a Supreme Commander like Eisenhower would be American. The country was literally founded on democratic ideals and it was enshrined very early into its history that the military would always be subordinate to the civilian government. This precedent makes it necessary that anyone that rises high enough in the military must be able to respect a strong civilian presence and be able to work with both internal and external politics. Any general that rises high enough must be half-general half-politician by necessity (there’s a reason why former military often do have successful political careers after retiring from service, including the aforementioned Eisenhower who eventually became the 34th President of the United States).
Atlas just doesn’t strike me as having that same sort of cultural framework. If anything the Atlas military strikes me as having a cultural framework closer to WW2 Germany where tactical efficiency and high tech weaponry/tools is prized above all else, often at the cost of long term strategic goal setting. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan never set realistic goals for themselves and predictably got steamrolled eventually. Occasionally you’ll get an online thread asking “What if Germany/Japan had smart top leadership during WW2?” But that’s a trick question. A WW2 Germany/Japan with sensible leadership...just isn’t WW2 Germany/Japan at all, it was intrinsic to the identity and character of those nations in that time period. Similarly, I just don’t see an Atlas military that sees a potential Eisenhower in their ranks and thinks to promote them to High Command as opposed to just shuffling them off as an aide to some random officer and never consider them for higher promotion. An organization that prizes short term tactical victory over long term strategic goals just isn’t the type of organization to do that.
Thing is though, I think just from what I gathered, Ironwood just shot up to be my favorite RWBY character because of how frigging fascinatingly horrible he is. He’s not an entirely awful person (at least not at first), but his own paranoia and fear combined with his habit of confusing short term tactical advantage with long term strategic goals leads him down the path of utterly despicable actions while convincing himself that it’s all for the greater good. All while being an idiot and wasting the legitimate game-changer resources of having an actual army when everyone else is still dicking around with hunters and huntresses as their only defense.
Smart money is he’s gonna die, it seems to be where he’s heading. If CRWBY’s writing staff has some serious cajones however, it’d be really cool if they pulled a Catra on him and see how low they can make him sink before making him hit rock bottom, realize his mistakes and force him to work hard for a redemption arc. I dunno, maybe I’m giving him too much slack but I actually do feel for him a little bit. The dude was clearly an alright guy that had the world fall down on him and just wasn’t suited for the massive responsibility that circumstances forced on his shoulders. He’s still a soldier that genuinely wants to protect Atlas, he’s just too short sighted to see how his actions just aren’t what Atlas is gonna need in the long term. Maybe a harsh talking to by Glinda would do him some good (I still ship IronWitch don’t @ me). I dunno, I just think that a redemption arc would be a lot harder to write than just killing him off, and thus would be that much more satisfying to see it pulled off right like what Noelle Stevenson did with Catra’s character in She-Ra.
I am not done with DoD content yet, although this one was sooo hard to finish. After getting many amazing b-day pics with my ships, my own motivation to finish the one I was working on at the time dropped almost to zero. I would just lie down and stare at gift pics and feel blessed.
But I cannot start new stuff before finishing the previous one and I DO have new stuff in mind so here is some more sugar and petals ♥
Aside from the excellent coloring and draftsmanship as always, I really have to appreciate how much the petals add a sense of space and three dimensionality to the piece. It’s such a ridiculously simple trick but the piece would look so much flatter if the petals didn’t give the viewer a subconscious sense of where each figure, whether they be the main focus characters or the greyish blob background people, are in relation to each other. It’s always that subtle attention to detail that really separate the good artists from the great ones, and why you’re one of my favorite artist follows. Nicely done friend!
