Can We Just Guillotine The Bastard Already?

I've been thinking a lot about the like moral frame work that Malevolent sets out because I don't know, what else am I going to do with my braincells.

Interestingly, and fittingly, it's very much a coming together of one ideal from Arthur and one ideal from John which both together make up the central part of the story.

From Arthur we get the precept of having to own your past. To John in episode 14 he says "You are the King. You don’t get to deny that because you’re choosing to change. Own it. Grow, change, be better, but own your mistakes." This seems to be the same rule he holds himself to with Faroe, or perhaps he holds onto thia ideal because of what happened with Faroe.

On the other hand, John brings to the table the idea that anyone can be redeemed. As early as episode 3 he says "I have to hope that any creature can be redeemed." This is before John knows who or what he is, but faced with the possibility of what he might be he wants to believe that he's capable of changing. This idea continues to carry through the Dreamlands arc after he learns he's the King in Yellow, but I think it's become most evident again in episode 26 when he conforts Arthur about Faust. The King has not won. If John can seek redemption after everything he's done, than certainly Arthur, a human forced to those extremes under intense stress and trauma, can be.

But... The ideal that Malevolent sets out isn't either one of these things, it's the combination of both. You cannot forget your past mistakes. You have to live with them. But you can be redeemed from them. No matter what mistakes lie in your past you can move forward and become a better person. You carry those things with you, but you are not restrained by them.

Yay! I finally get to post this!

This is a thing I did for a friend of mine @lavendertoonz, for a secret santa OC drawing exchange between us and a bunch of our friends. Their OC is Isabelle, I don't know much about her but she is very pretty, her creator is an amazing human being and I had a lot of fun making this.

Words cannot express how much fun it was seeing what everyone came up with and the joy radiating from our receivers, very much hope to do this again next year and would absolutely reccomend doing it with your art friends if you can.

So anyways, Merry Christmas! Hope you liked Lav <3

redraw of a few assorted Malevlent Doodles I found luking ominously in the margins of my notebooks

A PSA from my D&D Characters in light of the recent election.

I don't live in America, but like so many others we are feeling the ramifications of what happened and how much the right's hate has emboldened facsism and hate across the world.

I can't do much alone and I don't intend to, but hopefully myself and my art can help you find just a bit of hope. Enough, at least, to take care of yourselves and eachother, and enough to find the strength to keep fighting for a brighter future.

Please remember that in a system that wants you gone, caring for yourself and eachother is a form of rebellion they will never be able to take away from us.

We will survive this.

Always reblog tips for writing good representation.

Tips on writing sign language

Disclaimers: while I have been learning ASL (American Sign Language, I am not yet fluent. Also, I am not deaf. Both of these things being said, I have been learning ASL for nearly a year and I’ve been doing independant research about the language itself and the Deaf community. What I’ve listed below are things that I have learned from my own personal experience signing, what I’ve learned in my ASL class, and what I’ve learned from my independant research.

1) When you write signed dialogue, use quotation marks and everything else you would use for any other type of dialogue. Yes, I know they didn’t do that in the Magnus Chase series, but many Deaf readers were made uncomfortable at the choice to depict sign language as not speech. Establish early on that the character signs and then use tags such as “xe signed,” or “hir motions were snappy with irritation.”

2) Without facial expressions, someone’s signs are going to be almost meaningless. All of the grammar is in the face, as are some descriptors. For example, if you can’t see a character’s face, and you’re only looking at their hands, the signs would be the same for the statement “Xe doesn’t have dogs.” and the question “Does xe have dogs?” 

3) There is no such thing as fluent lipreading. The best lipreaders in the world can only understand about 70% of what’s being said, and factors such as darkness, the presence of mustaches, lack of context, and a bunch of other common things can easily lower that ability. If someone’s lipreading, they’re taking little pieces of what they can lipread, and stitching together context and other details to get a general picture of what’s going on, but there’s still always going to be holes.

4) If you’re writing a character who can’t hear, know the difference between deaf (lowercase d) and Deaf (uppercase D). The medical term for not being able to hear anything is deaf. People who use their deafness as part of their identity are referred to, and refer to themselves as Deaf. They are part of the Deaf community.

(more tips below cut)

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The way most autism literature describes "literal interpretation" is often not at all similar to how I experience it. Teenage me even thought I couldn't be autistic because I've always been able to learn metaphors easily.

In fact, I love wordplay of all kinds. Teenage me was fascinated to learn all the types of figurative language there are in poetry and literature.

But paperwork and questionnaires are hard, because there's so much they don't state clearly. Or they don't leave room for enough nuance.

"List all the jobs you've had, with start and end dates." What if I don't remember the exact day or month? Is the year enough?

"Have you been suffering from blurred vision?" Well, if I take off my glasses the whole world is blurred, but I'm fairly sure that's not what the intake form at the optometrist is asking.

Or the infamous (and infuriatingly stereotypical) "Would you rather go to a library or a party?" What sort of party? Where? Who's there? I work at a library. Am I currently at the library for work or pleasure? Does it have a good collection?

It's not common figures of speech that confound me. It's ambiguity, in situations that aren't supposed to be ambiguous.

After much deliberation and manic procrastinating I now present my official list of favourite charcter archetypes:

Character who does objectively good things and is on the side of good but is still an objectively terrible person

Gruff loner parent who adopts other characters and care about them deeply in their own way and it's really heartwarmingly obvious but they will never actually say it

Absolutely feral rough and tumble fighter who is misunderstood as a troublemaker, gets mad when their friends are hurt and will sacrifice themselves at the drop of a hat but would never admit it

At some point had big protagonist energy but all their friends are dead or gone and are just trying their hardest after getting in over their head but still wanting to do good in the world

Gods who literally couldn't give two shits about your problems and what humans these days are up to

Someone who has escaped a terrible situation and hated the person they were when they were in said situation and is trying to be better but has terrible self-worth and succumbs to the power of friendship™ and a well written recovery arc

Prick "I know more than you" academics who are snarky and absolute smug little shits especially to the antagonists but have a heart of gold

Antagonist that everyone but the person they "work for" knows is the one who's really in charge

Character who can and will easily kill you in 101 ways with their bare hands but will feel bad about it afterwards (bonus points if PTSD and their personality is absolute baby) That one shapeshifter who's just here to have fun, cause some chaos and prank everyone

That one shapeshifter who can transform into one (1) thing and that one thing is an absolutely fucking terrifying beast of some kind when they go Apeshit

Flirty pretty femme boy or girl who probably doesn't care about gender at all so long as they get to look fabulous and tease people they think are cute

A group of 'orphans' who findfamily in each other (feat. Intimidating but objectively good parent who has unofficially adopted everyone, older sibling child trying to take care of everyone, the chaotic dumbass, the innocent bean, the one who's having none of their bullshit, etc.)

Amnesiacs who are just trying to move on with their lives and turn over a new leaf and are honestly terrified of finding out the truth of who they were in the past

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

Some badly photographed watercolour paintings I did in 2020 to cope with Quarantine.

Poster for a Screenwriting course :)

(I'll update this with the Logline in a bit, just gotta sleep first -_- )