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catching up on more Aquaman comics – Rebirth this time. What can I say, the long recent arc has been Atlantis politics stuff- these comics work best when doing the GoT high fantasy control of the kingdom stories. And for most of the issues it’s been Sejic and then Federici as artist -two different styles but both have been absolutely gorgeous. But now issue 34 switches over to another artist whose style is more Sale/old school with flat colors and more cartoon stylized and just…ugly.

Here’s the amount of downgrade. Went from this

and this

to this:

And these examples are just me picking vaguely similar panels showing the current villain.

Like, the main artists and colorists for Aquaman Rebirth until this Underworld/Arthur Dethroned Arc was not something I got excited for (I tend to think of it the generic in-house comic book art style). See Briones:

(and thus why Sejic was such a delight and relief). And I can deal with comic art that don’t like up to a point, but probably because I wasn’t reading these American comics as a child and teen, so the general conventional look doesn’t appeal to me.

At least the writer has been the same throughout these arcs

…I feel like I’m the only one on my dash that, of the Dianne Wynne Jones books that I’ve read, I really disliked the Chrestomanci books and found them boring and lacking, enough that it soured me on her as an author. Not that I really care for her plotting and stories, outside of the Howl books, Dalemark Quartet, and the first Darklord of Derkholm. Her stories are the definition of hit-or-miss, mixed bag for me, but the Chrestomanci stories are emphatically a hard miss.

oh-mother-of-darkness:

Cass sat on the rafters while Dick and Tim chattered beneath her. They hadn’t noticed her come in, so she sat by herself, swinging her boots back and forth in the emptiness, following along. Dick sat on a fraying couch while Tim bounced around him, telling a story about chasing a gunman by the docks. He paced around the room and ducked behind the furniture to demonstrate, laughing the entire time. 

There were words too, of course. Cass could hear them just fine, even if she didn’t recognize them. She tried closing her eyes, listening carefully, but Tim talked too fast, and there were too many words, and she could hear him moving around, anyway: across the room, behind the couch, springing over it to mime surprising the gunman. The movement alone told her everything she needed to know. 

It was… Cass didn’t know the word to describe it, but it felt like being lost in the alleyways that spanned the city, turning the same corners over and over again without moving any further. It was black and heavy, and it made her body ache. 

Dick didn’t laugh like that with her. No one did. No one sat with her or leaned towards her or even brushed by her in tight spaces. Tim’s eyes followed her around rooms, and Cass knew it wasn’t malicious. She moved too silently, and she startled him often. It didn’t happen if he knew where she was. 

Still. He didn’t watch the others. It didn’t matter that Bruce was quiet too. 

Keep reading

5,6,18 :)

5: Do you think stories can change lives? Is there a story that has changed yours?

Yes, not to be facetious, but that’s the point of stories. Human behavior and all that. Now personally, I can’t say any single life-changing one in particular, no pithy anecdote, but a cripplingly shy introverted girl constantly moving around, difficult to make friends, with family that to call them stressful would be an understatement and some undiagnosed mental something or other of my own – the escape and distraction that well-loved stories have saved my life and my sanity time and again. Example- waiting to hear the whereabouts of my suicidal sister (she had checked herself into a clinic without telling anyone, this story has a happy ending) in the middle of the night, so I turned to my Kindle to re-read one of the Ring of Fire books to take my mind off my powerlessness. 

6: What’s your biggest pet peeve when it comes to writing?

When I’m reading fics, spelling and grammar typos- especially the homophones- if they get too numerous to the point that I can’t ignore them, then that’s a pet peeve. And not indenting a new paragraph for a new speaker of dialogue. That’s a definite pet peeve, to have two direct quotations spoken dialogue from two characters and having them in the same paragraph. Bad characterization or plot is more fundamentally structural than the word ‘peeve’ suggests.

Referring to a character solely by hair color and a suffux like -ette. The blonde. brunette, pinkette, greenette. I hate that. If they include a noun and thus the hair color is just an adjective, it doesn’t bug me, but any time someone is addressed in noun form via hair color, I hate it.

18: Are you a ‘neatly designed outline’ writer or a ‘fuck it i’ll figure it out as i go’ writer?

…a little of both but more the second? For some of my original stories, especially back in high school and college, the outlines would be plotted to each individual interlude. I often write scenes out of order, or plan ahead some key points and thus have to improvise how the plot and characters get from point a to point c or point f. Writing shorter one-shots means I’m often writing as I go.

A writing/reading ask meme!

silvertalonwriteblr:

1: Do you/would you like to write professionally?

2: Which author has influenced you the most?

3: Any guilty pleasures (books/fics)?

4: What’s better (or the least bad): character over plot or plot over character?

5: Do you think stories can change lives? Is there a story that has changed yours?

6: What’s your biggest pet peeve when it comes to writing?

7: Do you listen to music while you write/read?

8: Favorite quotes?

9: If you could wish for a new book from any author, who would it be?

10: What’s your favorite trope?

11: What’s your (least) favorite overused trope?

12: Which trope would you absolutely abolish?

13: Are there any tropes you’re embarrassed for enjoying?

14: Do you have a go-to AU?

15: What kind of character do you wish you saw portrayed more often?

16: What’s more frustrating: plotholes or OOC characters?

17: What’s more draining: writing smut, fluff or angst?

18: Are you a ‘neatly designed outline’ writer or a ‘fuck it i’ll figure it out as i go’ writer?

19: Do you think major character deaths are ever necessary?

20: If you could ‘unkill’ any character from any story, who would it be?

21: Would you like to write an alternative ending for any of your favorite shows/books/etc?

22: Are you more likely to be the person who starts reading a 100k slow burn fic at midnight or the person who starts writing a drabble at 4 a.m.?

pick just one:

23: fluff or angst?

24: fantasy or sci-fi?

25: fake dating AU or inpromptu babysitting AU?

26: road trip AU or high school AU?

27: coffee shop AU or florist AU?

28: stuck in an elevator AU or camping gone bad AU?

29: 20s AU or 50s AU?

30: high school AU from a fantasy/sci-fi story or fantasy/sci fi AU from a realistic story?

31: mythological creature AU or superhero AU?

32: meet cute or meet ugly?

Going back and reading the Throne of Atlantis arc and Aquaman run from 2011. I’d seen the animated version but knew that Orm wasn’t the straight/only villain in the original comics, but seeing panels of his speech to Arthur for the last couple days where he confesses how much he loved his half-brother and just wanted them together on the same side convinced me to hunt down the full arc. And ouch. It was already tugging the heartstrings (the main difference between the two versions is that in the comics, a former adviser is the one to manipulate the attack that causes the war as a way to force Arthur to oust his brother and take the crown he doesn’t want) – but then the chapter ending on Orm locked away in prison and begging to talk with his brother (and looking so very young and hurt and betrayed when Arthur allows him to be arrested) – yeah, this is the woobie Loki shit of a million fanfics and I hope the hints are that we’re getting some of those mixed nuance feelings in the live-action movie. Also wondering if the live-action movie will bring in any of the plotlines about how Mera was sent to Atlantis as a double agent to assassinate Aquaman. I know a YA novel is coming out soon that focuses on that. But, yeah, every time the Aquaman books focus on the underwater political and family intrigue, I’m more interested than the outsider-esque team or the special forces marines. Or the meta narrative highlighting and debunking the ‘Aquaman is Useless Meme’. Nah, give me all this soap opera sibling drama and we mutually accidentally murdered each other’s fathers and thus locked in a revenge cycle stuff. Oh, and where’s the AU where Queen Atlanta successfully escaped Atlantis to return back to the surface world to reunite with Thomas Curry and Arthur, only this time dragging alone a twelve-year-old Orm? Especially with the Mera: Queen of Atlantis mini-series showing an Orm than adapted to enjoy a new life with humans and how many times Mera plays the part of a proverbial Nala looking for Simba. (Add in Mera’s twin sister for more comedy gold. and where is the Aquaman cast watches the The Little Mermaid? That has to be a fan comic somewhere…)

leggywillow:

janiedean:

arya stark, the westerosi equivalent of a gen z kid, in a casual conversation: yeah, i saw brienne beat the hound. what a mood. we stan a queen. wig = snatched. she just yeeted him off that cliff.

jon, a frustrated millennial who is coping with the fact that his sense of nihilism has been matched: what does that mean

davos, a baby boomer, who is trying to connect with the Youth: it means that brienne of tarth has Big Dick Energy, your grace

I would give all my money, my retirement fund, my health insurance, my home, to read this instead of the actual GoT books.