Laundry comic

Almost 2 months ago, I was falling asleep while thinking about Necrofloranomicon, which is something that I do sometimes because it's such a sweet fic, and an idea came into my head about Bucky going to visit his dead cat for the first time after escaping Pierce, and *immediately* I had several comic panels visualized. So I contacted leveragehunters and asked if I could do something with the idea, and she said yes. And then it was 6 weeks of work, etc. But once summer started, I was able to actually get the comic drafted and posted! It is here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25175065/

Anyways, I'd posted it on a Thursday afternoon, and then!!! on Sunday!!!! Leveragehunters posted a coda to Necrofloranomicon!!! As a gift work to me?!!!! It... it is the best coda ever. Like, I reread it at least 3 times in the first day alone, and the end always brings me to tears. I'm such a sucker for a Bucky who is slowly starting to build a life and friendships... Anyway! Fandom is awesome!

Also, as an added fun bit, I inked the first half of the comic while chatting with fandom friends on Zoom. It worked surprisingly well -- it was lots of fun to actually catch up with folks whom I haven't talked to in a long time, and being able to talk by speaking (instead of text chat) meant that I could keep drawing, too! I think I'm going to make this a regular Tuesday night thing. If no one shows up, I still get to draw for 2 hours, which is a Total Win. (BTW, if any of you are interested in popping in for the Zoom Stream, just drop a note and I'll tell you the deets)

Anyways, I made a process post about the comic here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/process-post-for-39177241 (It's patreon but the post is public), where I compare the draft with the finished panels, and which includes a video for the inking of page 2, which I'm embedding here for funzies:

Watch on YouTube

Witcher and The Untamed

Summer is when I look for shows to watch while drawing, and even though I have less time to draw this summer than I'd hoped, I am still managing a couple hours a week. So, since half of my Cap fandom friends seems to have migrated to the Witcher and the other half to The Untamed, I decided to give both of them a shot.

The Witcher is only 8 episodes, so I started with that. At first, I was like "destiny, ew", and tbh, I was bored by Ciri's third of the story (felt a lot like medieval misery tourism). But Geralt definitely grew on me as a character -- I love his sense of duty, his kindness in spite of everything, and how world-weary he is. Also, I absolutely *love* his relationship with Jaskier *and* his relationship with Yennefer. Jaskier is a nice foil for Geralt in so many ways, but also his loyalty and persistence and dedication to his craft are all very admirable things that link the two together. And Geralt/Yen! Oh wow the smoldering glances, the way they just seem to understand each other at first meeting -- it's like they've both built up very similar armor to travel through the world, and so they can just see right past that and find the person underneath. But at the same time, that's too much intensity and vulnerability, so it's a sometimes food, like cookies. (Wow that analogy got away from me -- I was going for something about being burnt by the sun, but I guess I had cookies on the brain.) Anyways, yes. Very much behind these ships. I was also impressed that the show had a *lot* of interesting women, and an ample # of POC (no whitewashing of medieval Europe!!) Tissaia and Fringilla and Yennefer and Calanthe are all power players, and each flawed in interesting ways. Anyways, despite my dislike of DESTINY!!!!! stuff, the character stuff is really solid, and the world, if a bit on the grimdark side (please stop trying to emulate GoT by having absolute massacre during wartime, you gotta leave people around to actually maintain economic activity), still has some cool monsters and a nice dose of diversity.

I don't particularly have time to do new fandom stuff rn, but definitely won't say no to fic recs. :)



The Untamed is much longer, at 50 episodes. I've found that watching it on Youtube is pretty rad because I can have both Chinese and English subtitles on. I can read the Chinese subtitles as needed (I'm someone who grew up with same language subtitling, and basically I can't watch something unless I can turn on the subtitles -- it just makes things soooo much easier), and if I want to know what fandom is going to call something, I can see what the English subtitles say. (Like, 云深不知处 is apparently Cloud Recesses...?) I'm on episode 11 or 12, and I've also gone ahead and read episode summaries* for the rest of the show, so I've got a general sense of how the rest of it will go. Thus far, I'm... not sure why it's so popular? Like, it's obviously crazy popular in China -- one of the construction machines during the 6-day hospital build was called 蓝忘机, and also the main characters' names and locations are actual words in my Chinese input. Like, I can type weiwuxian and there it is: 魏无羡. Boom. Plus they made an anime of the story before the TV show. So. Obviously A THING. But thus far it just seems like a pretty standard wuxia story? There's some scheming and politicking. The main character is a good guy who gets cast as a bad guy due to ::waves hand:: Events. (like 笑傲江湖 or 神雕侠侣) Things that the older generation does causes trouble for the younger generation. (天龙八部, for example). There's a macguffin that grants ultimate power. (倚天屠龙记 anyone?) There's a lot of "what proper gentlemen should do" stuff, which you *know* is going to be gently questioned, but not ultimately upended (no son of a peasant is going to end up being the ruler of all Jianghu by scratching his butt and wielding a pitchfork.) Like, even something like 侠客行 or 鹿鼎记 deconstructs the genre a bit, but thus far, it's pretty squarely middle-of-the-road. All the men are handsome and well-educated. The Wen sons are cartoonishly evil. There aren't even good 女侠 type main character -- 温情 is mostly a doctor, 虞夫人 is the petty mom, and 江厌离 is the big sister who doesn't really fight. I think part of the problem for me, is that the bad guys aren't particularly exciting? Like, Alexander Pierce is an interesting antagonist. 温晁 and 薛洋 just seem generically evil-for-evils' sake. 苏涉 could have been an interesting look at how the major families treat outsider disciples, but I'm guessing it won't be. I guess 金光瑶 is somewhat interesting, but ultimately he just seems ... petty? And why can't a prostitute's son make it to the top through non-evil, non-incestuous means? One could argue that the difference between 金光瑶 and 魏无羡 is really just that one was born of a prostitute and the other came from a "good family", and therefore got treated differently in these houses that claim to be "honorable" and "cultured," but of course 金光瑶 is going to be weak-willed and petty and selfish, and 魏无羡 is going to be honorable and kind and self-sacrificial.

Anyway, I'm definitely enjoying the relationship dynamics between Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng. Lan Wangji is hilarious, it must have been so much fun to write his dialogue and be like "how do I say this in 3 syllables or less?" And just as Jaskier is a good foil for Geralt, Wei Wuxian is a good foil for Lan Wangji -- they're both very principled people, but show it so differently. Jiang Cheng is just hilarious in his bullheaded-ness. Maybe I need to jump ahead. I'm at the end of episode 11, and I think what comes next is a few episodes of the good guys being tortured by the bad guys ("And then the Fire Nation attacked"), which is the sort of stuff that leaves me wondering why I want to care about all these royalty. What is the Wen family doing to maintain the allegiances of ... anyone, really? What was their original claim to being 仙督? Are their peasants happier? Is their martial art better than anyone else's? Are there just more of them? Where is the fucking Emperor? Or even a governor? I'm pretty sure 不夜天 is breaking, like, 100 zoning codes. (Yes, I know it's 仙侠, which is on the opposite end of my preferred wuxia type, but still.)

Anyways, I'd like to understand what people find so exciting about The Untamed.



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* Yes, I always spoil myself on the plot of whatever I'm watching -- it allows me to enjoy the show more. The best way I've found to explain this to people who are appalled is that it's like watching a movie for the 2nd time -- knowing the broad strokes of what's going to happen lets me enjoy the details more.