We all love the Darth Vader that currently exists. The character constructed over six movies and endless expanded universe material. But I honestly prefer the Darth Vader that stepped onto the screen in 1977: the browbeaten Heavy, the unrepentant betrayer, the punished tool.

This Vader’s position within the Empire was a punishment in every way: an unnatural, purely technological regime wielding him as a blunt tool, ordering him around, insulting him, keeping him at the mercy of short-sighted, arrogant, materialistic men. His willingness to lead his fellow paladins to slaughter has consigned him to a painful and humiliating half-life in a suit of armor built of Imperial technology and on the leash of Grand Moff Tarkin, forced to endure relentless disdain for him and disregard for his faith. Star Wars kind of diluted its technology-vs-spirituality theme as the movies went on and as the Force was revealed to have a “dark side”, but that idea we see in the first movie is really the context where Vader works the best: a sad shell totally quashed by all the Empire’s technological terrors, a twisted cyborg irony. The Empire does not in the slightest regard him as the terrifying sorcerer-lord that the Sith have become in Star Wars lore. He’s just another weapon.

When Vader turned out in the following film to be a badass subservient to no man, it kind of undermined his fall. That freedom to act makes his fate less of a punishment. And when the Emperor turned out to be an ancient sorcerer instead of a politician, it kind of undermined the Empire’s allegory as a whole. When the Empire is run by an evil wizard-king playing it like a pawn in a thousand-year manichaean struggle, instead of frighteningly normal old white fascists, it becomes a less impactful story to tell; we can easily dismiss it as something that can’t happen here.

The signs were always there

“You tell me there is someone in the labyrinth.”

“There is.”

“Could I meet him?”

“You would not get along.”

“Oh, why not? I just want someone to play with.”

“He is a hungry creature. He eats people.”

“Why?”

“Because he is a monster. He has the body of an enormous man and the face of a bull.”

“Bulls eat grass, not meat.”

“This one eats men. That is all he has ever eaten. Rather, that is all he has ever been fed.”

“That is a sad way to live.”

“It is. But that is what our benefactor decrees, and I am at his mercy.”

“You? What did you do?”

“You know I built the labyrinth. It is the creature’s prison. Every boy and girl from our homeland who has died in that place has me to thank. Even then, I have done far worse than that.”

“I think the king is to blame.”

“Speak carefully when you besmirch him. Call him our benefactor, or when a cleverer guard listens, the bull father.”

“Bull father? You could not mean…”

“The thing in the maze, yes, is his son. And for this too I am to blame, I who crafted the means for his wife’s accursed tryst.”

“How could such a thing happen? People do not give birth to monsters.”

“The father was insolent and refused to give the gods their due. Asterion is a punishment.”

“A child cannot be a punishment.”

“No, my boy, I think he can.”

There should be more books that have chapter titles, and then a little summary of the chapter below them. You don't have to be boring with them, or spoil the whole chapter by telling what happens - you could make it vague, like a prophecy of something you know is going to happen, but you don't know how, or with what results.

Having one-sentence summaries like "Chapter 12 - where the Queen's hound makes a fatal mistake" and you're like oh shit does this refer to the queen's actual hunting dog, or the guy that's mockingly called her lapdog? "Chapter 24 - where justice finds a thief, and a thief finds justice" and you're like ooooh shit the cute little pickpocket is going to get caught, and then it turns out that shit, she does get caught, but by someone who actually agrees that she's right to steal to help feed her family, and gets her help instead, which is justice.

You already know what's going to happen, but not how.

See, this is an excellent example of prompt-enterers not really getting why people like art.

You say “we’d have a lot more random lore,” as if the point of Goncharov was magnitude. Nor was it even creating a believable fake movie, as “photorealistic fake frames” would allow.

Goncharov was funny and fascinating because it existed solely through second-hand description. Fanart, memes, thinkpieces, shipping, discourse, all of it spawned from thin air, and all of it valuable because of the spontaneity of making shit up — no outside influences required, just our memory of what Scorsese films are like and what we thought would be funny to see a Scorsese film depict. Every aspect was wholly organic, birthed entirely from the collected minds of a bunch of like-minded people goofing off. A beautiful democratic project. A product of unfiltered culture, untouched by corporate or even individual vision.

Sure, Goncharov didn’t really resemble a Scorsese film at all, but hey, neither does that “screenshot”.

Part of the joy of Goncharov was knowing that every detail was invented by someone on tumblr having some fun. Everything one post said was either that author’s imagination or could be traced back to its originator. Like a folktale of old, born around campfires and shared through word of mouth, it churned around and synthesized into an incoherent mess of a story. It tells us everything about the people who created it.

The problem with generated images is that no one created them. So they tell us nothing.

i'm so glad goncharov happened when it did, right before prolific public use of AI. that was pure honest gaslighting straight from the heart. real human whimsicality and trickery thru blood sweat and tears. we were a family. and we all gonched, together. you cant replicate that with any machine.

Launching my first art blogs with a small comic based on the amazing words of Ursula K. Le Guin!

Random worldbuilding tidbit I think people should use more: ICE HARVESTING

Before refrigeration, the only way to keep food cold was to bring in ice from elsewhere, making it an absolutely thriving trade, especially in the 19th century when insulation and ships had improved enough to transport it far away. Blocks of it would be shipped in, brought down from mountains, or harvested from local waters in winter and stored in icehouses for distribution in spring, summer, and autumn.

In your pre-modern worlds, where do people get their ice? Wizards able to freeze water might have a job selling it during the warm seasons. Gathering ice was also a winter task for many farmers, so consider incorporating that into your characters’ daily lives. If there’s no way to get ice — in regions that don’t freeze in the winter or are too far away from the poles for easy trade, or in worlds without insulation technology — how do people preserve their food?

And don’t think I forgot about science fiction, because space ice miners are a concept that’s been stuck in my head for YEARS. Asteroids colonies, space stations, terraforming projects, arid planets, and other settlements with little to no natural water will all require a reliable supply thereof. And if your setting has nuclear fusion or hydrogen fuel, more water is always appreciated for electrolysis. The great thing is that ice is pretty abundant in space. From pioneering terraformers cracking the poles of Mars to frontier Oort-hoppers wrangling comets at the outer reaches of the solar system to interstellar operations stripping planets of their rings and stars of their asteroid belts, there’s room for ice mining in every space setting.

Aside from worldbuilding, the profession itself would make for some excellent stories, no matter what setting. Ice cutting is a dangerous job, wherein the very ground you stand on is liable to break up and plunge you into freezing doom if your cuts are not precise. It would be no simpler in space, contending with all the perils of zero-G. Backgrounds could be diverse, from farmers simply providing for their own families to fully professional ice harvesters and sellers.

If nothing else, it’ll provide an excuse to reference the best song from Frozen.

Zuko was a kind child, uninterested in fighting, everything his father despised as weak. When Ozai scars and banishes him he is forced to become his father’s model, a cruel warrior, to be taken back. The change this trauma brings about is frightening.

If Zuko fights back then he is already a warrior, already willing to fight even his family, which is exactly what Ozai wanted from him. The effect of his trauma is lessened — when banished, the live-action Zuko merely becomes meaner rather than fundamentally twisted.

Sorry, but having Zuko actually fight back against Ozai during their Agni Kai is just wrong. He was a child, only 13 at the time, afraid to fight his own father and was mutilated as punishment, because Ozai saw Zuko's begging and unwillingness to fight as unforgiveable weakness.

The Angi Kai isn't meant to be a showcase of Zuko's fighting potential (that's what the Zhao fight is for), but to show the utter cruelty of Ozai.

What is the obsession that Avatar live-action adaptations have with making Zhao stab the damn fish

If natla taught me one thing it’s that people apparently thought the moon and ocean spirits taking such vulnerable forms was a plot hole to be filled rather than. The plot of the whole show

medieval backstreet boys: you are… my friar

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Have you read/watched Nimona? If so, thoughts?

The kind of emotional gutpunch I can't bear to watch without ample preparation. The first ten minutes are the hard part for me - it's always a wrench for me to get through a "good-hearted character is cruelly framed" plotline, so I really appreciate how quickly they get that out of the way and how Nimona immediately brightens the mood when she shows up.

Overall, truly one of the best examples of how a creator can use their personal grief and rage at injustice as a medium to sculpt a story. The narrative manages to feel deeply authentic to a real emotional journey while still feeling completely contained within the story. I'm not entirely sure how to put this, but sometimes when a writer gets allegorical with their experiences, it can feel like the story gets put on pause so the characters can turn out to the audience and speak in the author's voice about their thoughts on the subject - a pretty clumsy way to communicate a message. Nimona does not do that. Instead, the many real-world parallels to bigotry, propaganda, queerphobia, church corruption, xenophobia, and regressive policies driven by terror of change feel like they arise naturally from the setting within the story rather than being imposed on it from the outside, which is extremely quality writing and characterization. Nimona's story is so clearly informed by ND Stevenson's life and gender journey, but Nimona herself feels like her own person who is messy and grieving and putting up walls and self-destructing and still - still - a fundamentally joyful, gleeful person who absolutely loves being alive when she isn't being brutally beaten down for the crime of existing inconveniently.

Also, it's a comparatively minor thing, but I really like how, like with She-Ra, Nimona creates a world that is passively non-homophobic, with gay relationships front and center and evidently regarded as completely fine and not worth commenting on - which, to me at least, made both stories remarkably relaxing and comfortable to immerse myself in, because I wasn't being randomly jumpscared by reminders of real-world hate - but it still uses allegory to address the real-world roots of homophobia in the form of xenophobia, correlated injustices like classism, and the monster-ification of The Other. So it can clearly state "hating people for how they exist is Always Fucked And Wrong" without having to dunk the queer audience in the icebath of "hey remember how people in the real world think you personally should be dead?" Again, not sure I'm phrasing this super clearly, but it's a balance ND Stevenson consistently strikes with his work, and I really love how he does it.

Animation's gorgeous, voicework is consistently top-shelf, love the aesthetic of Cyberpunk Arthuriana. Wins across the board.

i actually dont give a shit if hamas did everything and worse that israel accuses them of it still doesn't justify killing 30000 random civilians

Art happens when the fear of never having done it becomes greater than the fear of getting it wrong

writing a series is so scary idk how ppl do it

Videogames I wish were real #97

A roguelike game that takes place in the world's biggest library, which has been overrun by monsters, where you play as a librarian determined to save it. You venture inside the library armed with your weapon of choice and two messenger bags you plan to fill with whatever books you can rescue.

After you clear the monsters in a particular section of the library, such as the Poetry section, you'll unlock a permanent buff that will last for the remaining of that run. For example: clearing the Travel section will help you map areas faster, and also unlock the bookworm railway system that will allow you to move more easily between certain parts of the library.

Besides section buffs, you'll also be able to learn all kinds of useful attacks and skills by finding specific books in the shelves, reading them and carrying them in your messenger bags. The more books you carry, the stronger your character will be, and the abilities each book will grant you will be on theme with the book, it's literary genre or one of its tropes: carrying with you a bestiary will allow you to quickly identify the weak points of monsters you've met before, a book with an enemies to lovers trope will allow you to turn a monster into a temporary ally that will fight alongside you, a botany book in your bag will let you gather medicinal herbs growing in the library, and carrying a potions book will allow you to prepare healing potions (more effective than just herbs), etc.

Not everyone believes the library can be saved, which is why during your expeditions your mission is not only to kill monsters, but also to rescue books and bring them to the new library. Since getting books out is one of your main priorities, starting your runs with your satchels nearly full of books that grant you useful abilities won't be very efficient, so you'll need to decide how many books you want to bring back with you to the library during each run.

Fighting monsters is dangerous, and sometimes you get hurt, but also, sometimes books get hurt, which why after some runs you might need to stop by your workshop to repair any damaged books. The hides of certain monsters are very sturdy, so using them to rebind books will make them more durable.

There is no respawning in this game. If your librarian dies inside the library, the next librarian that ventures inside might eventually find their body. If you're close to death and you have a particular book from the Travel section in your bags, you'll be able to use it to summon a bookwork that will take you quickly and safely back to the entrance with whatever books are currently in your bag.

You love your library, and you are determined to save it, armed with the greatest weapon in the world: knowledge (and a sword), even if it's one book at a time.

"I should warn you, Boy-Who-Has-A-Name-I-Once-Loved, that not a speck of that love remains. Not a jot. Not a whisper. One hundred years of captivity has drained every last drop of that love from me, and I am cured forever."

-"How to Break a Dragon's Heart" by Cressida Cowell

===

I've been reading the OG How To Train Your Dragon books and oh boy does it wreck you. I took some artistic liberties in drawing him. I think he'd do well with whiskers like a catfish and great fin-like spines.

If motorcycles were sapient they’d have virginity culture but for the taking of human life