Farscape fans will likely recognize the character and outfit; everyone else will probably be going "WTF", haha.
Happy birthday, Trish. :)
My long-time friend, fellow Farscape fan, and biggest supporter on Patreon is celebrating her birthday today! This is a cropped version of the birthday card I drew for her.
Farscape fans will likely recognize the character and outfit; everyone else will probably be going "WTF", haha. Happy birthday, Trish. :)
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I can't argue with that. We humans do have a weird way of distorting even the most important holidays into entertaining but unrecognizable shapes.
I originally planned to make the egg on which Harvey is standing a bit more like a traditional Easter egg, but then I decided I wanted to draw Moya, and then Moya turned out better than Harvey did and totally outshone the focal point of the picture, and I just kind of threw my hands up and said "Oh well; if Moya wants to turn out fabulous, she can go ahead and do that." On another note, since I'm posting this a couple days early, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is, there will be no blog post on Tuesday. The good news is, you got to see this a couple days early, and on the appropriate distorted holiday. I hope you enjoy the picture, and have a wonderful Easter! Also, if you want to see pictures like this sooner, please consider getting advance access to my completed art by supporting me on Patreon. After a long period of YouTube silence, I finally published another Farscape music video! John Crichton, meet the Uncharted Territories. Uncharted Territories, try not to kill John. Farscape visuals, meet Five Nights at Freddy's music. Now kiss. Support me on Patreon to get early access to videos like this, as well as exclusive access to sketches and works in progress! Do you like Farscape, humor and photo editing? Then I think you'll enjoy a recent addition to my site: a Farscape picture gallery. Back when I was more active in the Farscape community, I posted a lot of pictures - some captioned, some edited, some both. Recently, I thought, Why should those pictures disappear into the depths of Facebook and get lost? Why not feature them where people can easily find and enjoy them? So I dug them out of their scattered, buried homes in my image folders, herded them together, and put them on a page, along with comments and notes about their creation. If you want to see the whole gallery, click the button below to check it out! Sometimes, it's fun to speculate about what characters would be like if they got drunk. Especially the ones who you know would never compromise themselves like that in canon - leaving plenty of room for creative shenanigans when drowning their wits in fan works. I recently created a video for Scorpius from Farscape, exploring what would happen if his usually clever and calm personality ended up spinning on an alcohol-soaked emotional roller coaster. If you like Farscape and want a chuckle, take a few minutes to check it out: Sometimes, it's fun to imagine what a cast of characters would do or be in a scenario you've never seen them in. My siblings occasionally speculate on such topics as "how would the crew of Moya interact with the crew of Serenity?", or "how would the cast of this or that anime handle a zombie apocalypse?" I once wrote a blog post about how the characters from my own books would respond to being drunk. And after getting sucked into the crazy and wonderful world that is Homestuck - seriously, guys, read that thing! - I thought it would be fun to decide which Sburb class and aspect the cast of Farscape would have. Of course, it wouldn't do to simply draw a picture of it - I wanted this to be something everyone could enjoy, even if they didn't belong to the probably rather small niche of people who enjoy both Homestuck and Farscape. So I decided to make a cool wallpaper that everyone could appreciate regardless of their participation in the mixed fandom, and post it here for your enjoyment. If you're as much of a nerd as me, and actually want to know why Chiana is a Seer of Doom... first, please accept my high-five for being awesome. :D Secondly, here's my explanation for my choice of class and aspect (contains some spoilers for Farscape): The Seer class tends to be blessed with the gift of foresight. They see the future through their aspect, and use that knowledge to guide themselves and their team toward victory. When Chiana has a vision, it usually either: 1. Reveals a shipmate’s imminent doom, giving her a chance to prevent it 2. Gives her information that helps her to doom her opponents, or 3. Brings a form of doom on her, like the cruel punishment she suffered when she was caught using her vision to cheat at a game. Her visions themselves also “doomed” her original eyes by blinding them. That being the case, I thought Seer of Doom would be a fitting title for the mischievous young Nebari. Are you part of the Farscape + Homestuck fandom? Do you also enjoy speculating about scenarios and crossovers with your favorite stories and characters? I look forward to reading your comments. Once upon a time, there was a song and a story. The song was beautiful and evocative, but it made very little sense. It was like a pretty tossed salad made of randomly tossed words. The story was also beautiful, stirring and complex. But there were many incarnations of it, many of which had never come into being. One day, a tragic incarnation of the story poked its head into the room of an artist and said, "I could be something real and wonderful, if you paired me with that song. "I could make the tossed-salad lyrics make sense, and the song could give shape to the untold story that is me." So I brought the song and the story together into the cathedral of Windows Movie Maker, and through repeated clicks of an editing mouse, they said their vows and were wed. Then they joined in the holy union of the "save video" feature, and soon thereafter, a new music video was born into the world of the internet for you to enjoy. So enjoy it. Over a year ago, I made one of the best music videos I've ever created. Magia is an awesome song, from the best anime I've ever watched, and it fit remarkably well with my favorite fictional character from my favorite sci-fi show. Needless to say, I was excited when it was complete. I uploaded it to YouTube, painstakingly added captions to translate the Japanese lyrics, and grinned as I hit "Publish"... Only to watch in horror as Sony instantly blocked the video worldwide. Can you guess who is NOT among my favorite companies? Disappointed, I moved on to other projects, fitting video clips to music from less territorial companies. For over a year, my Magia video sat neglected in my computer, inaccessible to anyone but me. Then, it finally occurred to me: there are several altered versions of Magia sitting unmolested on YouTube, so why not make my own? It was worth a shot. A few minutes in Audacity, and a few more in Movie Maker, and voila - a slightly higher-pitched version of my video was ready to be uploaded. Then came the real test: would Sony allow a video that included a pitch-adjusted version of their carefully guarded song? I uploaded it and added the captions again, silently praying that my work wouldn't once again be wasted, and wishing that I could know one way or the other before I went to the trouble of adding captions. I could have just published it caption-free, I guess, but I'd hate for my subscribers' first impression of the video to be a fruitless battle with the caption button. I published the video, held my breath, and... SUCCESS! Magia is published, and as far as I can tell, it hasn't been blocked anywhere! :D I can't wait to hear what you think of it. This is one of my favorite creations, and I'm happy to finally be able to share it with you. Some characters exist to be loved and rooted for. Others exist to present a challenge for the protagonists to overcome. And then there are the ones who aren't influential enough to drive the plot, so they can't be major villains... but they're just too obnoxious for you to cheer for them, so they'd make terrible main protagonists. They're side characters who make you want to smack them with every move they make... and yet, you love watching them, because their universe obligingly smacks them for you. Jool and Rygel from Farscape, Sawyer from Lost, Anton from Catgirl Roommate... all of these are great examples of characters who -at least at first - seem to exist largely for the story to crap on them for our enjoyment. And I have to admit, I do enjoy it, because whether through whining, obnoxiousness, picking on my favorite characters, or blatant amoral selfishness, they've made themselves a prime target for poetic justice, and the story delivers. Some of them manage to grow out of the box in which they originate. They stop whining (or whine less), make friends with the former victims of their bullying, or maybe show a noble streak that can't help but sneak through the selfishness now and then. Or they find ways to be so entertaining or oddly endearing that they become likable despite their bad traits, even if those traits are still dominant. I'm looking at you, Dominar Rygel. But even if they redeem themselves somewhat, I still tend to smile a bit when their latest moment of misbehavior backfires on them. Especially when a character like that finds his way into one of my own stories. Readers, meet Anton. Anton, try not to insult the readers. A few days ago, the latest addition to the Catgirl Roommate cast invited himself into Sam's house without warning or consent, came swanning through the kitchen, and made himself at home. Fortunately for Sam, Anton was less sneaky than his fellow side character, Jack, and I was ready for him. As the obnoxious, cocky, perverted young college student went swaggering through Sam's house, a hilarious series of booby traps lay waiting in the plot, and Sam's long history of coping with this bull in his china shop was avenged by the inevitable results of a jerk encountering a catgirl. I thoroughly enjoyed writing it, and I think you'll enjoy reading it just as much. If you'd like to get the book for a steep discount, you can pre-order your copy on this page. In the meantime, I'd love to hear from you. Do you know a character who tends to bring comical justice down on themselves? What's the funniest (non-spoilery) thing their story has done to punish them for being whiny/annoying/a jerk? I look forward to reading and laughing at your comments. Let's start with the non-spoilers. In case everyone in my physical and digital vicinity hasn't noticed yet, I'm a BIG fan of Farscape's Scorpius. To me, his very presence in a story automatically makes it better, and I'm always happy to see more of him. That being the case, the idea of an entire canonical comic book series centered on him, with inner dialogue, details about his past, and abundant Scorpius screen time, seemed like a dream come true. And the comics themselves nearly WERE a dream come true. Sure, the art in the first four was crap, with the facial expressions often indistinguishable amid the slipshod mess of shades and planes that was the art style, but the subsequent ones captured the characters beautifully. Also, this picture exists: The battle of wits between Scorpius and his new mental sparring partners was fascinating to watch. His devious side is in fine form, executing off-the-cuff bluffs and political maneuvers with the agility of an Olympic gymnast. But he's finally met his match in the calculating, technologically advanced Kkore, and before he knows it, he's in WAY over his head - as Farscape characters usually are. His daring nature, resilience, and ability to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat even when he's alone and without resources, are as impressive as always. And I loved the relationship between him and his new pet. All in all, the comics would have been perfect if it weren't for one little thing... or should I say, one big, huge, HORRIFYING problem that completely ruined the entire series for me. And that problem was... Scorpius wasn't Scorpius. His abilities and skill set were there, but his core motivations and personality weren't. It was like half his soul had disappeared, and the resulting empty space had been possessed by the combined spirits of Starscream and Light Yagami. OK, so I know the comics are canon. The writers can make the characters be whatever they want them to be, and I can't do anything about it. But I just can't see comic-book Scorpius as the 'real' Scorpius because... ...in my not so humble opinion, NO story that involves the phrase "Scorpius assists in a genocide against the Sebacean race" has any place in Farscape's canon. Now, maybe you're going to say that looking out for himself at the expense of everyone else is Scorpius' M.O., and that he was only ever using the Sebaceans to get his revenge. To explore that, I'm going to refer to Incubator, the episode in which Scorpius' backstory and motives are first explored. In Incubator, as in the comics, we see a young Scorpius being horribly abused by his violent caretaker, Tauza. What he goes through is enough to leave anyone vengeful and messed up in the head, but it's his conversation with Captain Molayne that casts doubt on the comics' portrayal of him. When the captain finds out about Scorpius' quest for the truth about his parents, he asks if the intention behind his search is "so you can find out who you are?" To which Scorpius replies, "To find out... who I should be." Which is to say, he didn't already know. His motivations were not yet set, whereas in the comics, they showed his vengeful streak as having been established before he ever escaped from the Scarrans. When Tauza recaptured him, and asked him why he'd rejected the Scarrans, his answer wasn't "because you tortured me and did your best to convince me that I was weak and inferior". It was "you lied about my parents" - a motivation entirely ignored by the comics. And when she tortured him for information, he laughed at her for her failure. But when she showed him the video of Rylani being raped, THAT was what left him weeping on the floor. When she told him that the Scarrans intended to wipe out the Sebacean race because they were useless as "breeding stock", he struggled to breathe. He laughed in the midst of his own suffering, but was devastated by the suffering of people he'd never even met, and the prospect of the further destruction that could await them in the future. That isn't the only time when he showed that he cared about Sebacean lives. In Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, when the Command Carrier was imploding around him, he didn't pull a Javio and try to evacuate right away. Instead, he fought his way through the flaming wreckage to find a working comms station, so he could sound the evacuation (just in case the PKs hadn't already figured out that it was time to leave), and then hauled Braca's apparently evacuation-incapable ass out of the room. He performed a similar act of Braca-saving when his favorite lieutenant got shot during the Peacekeeper Wars, despite the fact that the rescue required him to walk out of cover and into the line of fire, where he could have been shot in his unarmored face. When Drillic sent a pilot into a wormhole prematurely, and the pilot died, he was punished for wasting a Sebacean life carelessly. And in Season of Death, Scorpius could have allowed Kobrin, who was chomping at the bit to challenge Crais to a space race, to do so right away, thus diverting Talyn's search for them and decreasing the likelihood that they'd be found and killed. Instead, he kept the Moyans at bay until evading detection became impossible, and only then did he send the pilot out, when the Carrier was close enough to give him a fighting chance. Long explanation short, while his own suffering may have contributed to his desire for revenge against the Scarrans, he seemed much more upset about the suffering and death of Sebaceans. So when the comics portrayed his desire for revenge as springing purely from his own childhood abuse, and Scorpius himself as not caring about Sebaceans to the point where he'd assist in their destruction in order to increase his political power and save his own skin, it rang completely false. ![]() What's that you say? He loves his mother more than himself, and his wish to eradicate the Scarrans came from an understandable desire to prevent them from wiping out whole species? Naw. Let's make him a self-centered, petty jackass who thinks genocide is an appropriate response to childhood abuse instead. Now, speaking of political power, that was also problematic. In the comics, he was obsessed with power and control. He couldn't cope with being an underling; he wanted to be on top of the food chain. Not as a means to the end of stopping the genocidal Scarrans, but as an end in and of themselves. In fact, he wanted it so badly that he assisted a violent race in their quest to take over the galaxy... which is exactly what he spent the entire on-screen series trying to prevent! So much for "I don't want power, I want revenge". Which is weird, because they actually showed the exact scene where he said that as a flashback in the comics... and then proceeded to ignore it by making Scorpius fixate on his own autonomy and political power above all loyalty, morality and self-preservation, and even above his cherished revenge. I mean, sure, he got his revenge to a certain degree - by securing the Scarrans' surrender - but when the Kkore decided to go easier on the Scarrans than on the Sebaeans, Scorpius was OK with that. What the actual frell? It was like they decided to keep all the stuff that made him a badass antagonist, but completely get rid of everything that justified his ruthless use of his formidable skills. But do you know what the worst part is?It would have been easy... SO FRELLING EASY... to keep him in-character. The fascinating battle of wits could have stayed intact. The displays of badass bravery didn't have to be rewritten. They would barely have even had to change the plot. ALL they would have had to do was to have his ascent through the Kkore's ranks be motivated primarily by a desire to discover their weakness and destroy them, instead of being motivated by a desire for power, self-preservation and an utterly un-Scorpius-like admiration for a genocidal race. Sure, the Kkore are "elegant, powerful and rational", as he put it - but the Scarrans could also be elegant, they were more powerful than the Sebaceans with whom Scorpius once sided, and they were sometimes more rational than High Command. But he didn't side with the Scarrans, even when his deception of Staleek gave him the opportunity to do so. Instead, he joined the losing side in order to resist them. Not because they abused him as a kid, but because they lied about his parents, let his mom and the other test subjects die, and threatened his mother's species. All in all, while the character in the comics was a fascinating villain protagonist, he just wasn't Scorpius. He was the boldness, intelligence, vengefulness and resilience of Scorpius, the self-centered arrogance of Light Yagami, and the power-hungry case of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder that was Starscream, all rolled into a single psychological mutant. One that, compared to the selfless anti-genocide crusader I came to know and love in the on-screen series, could pretty much be summed up by a Jack Sparrow quote: So, bottom line: are the comics worth reading? If you're the type who sees Scorpius as an evil, self-centered villain, and you prefer him that way, go ahead. You'll LOVE these comics. But if you, like me, find his selfless love for the Sebacean race to be one of the most endearing aspects of him, and you were impressed by the way he could go through hezmana and come out of it still capable of caring about people who would never care about him in return, then watching his body walk around with half of his soul missing will probably be about as enjoyable as receiving half a kitten for Christmas. As for me, the day when I consider this portrayal of him to be canon will be the day when John uses a wormhole to blow up Earth, and everyone thinks it's normal. Which is a real pity, because some of his maneuvers were truly brilliant, the hints at the coming plotline were tantalizing, and the relationship between Scorpius and his pet lizard John was absolutely made of cute. Now it's your turn. Did you read the Scorpius comics?
Did you think they were in-character, or did they bother you, too? I look forward to reading your comments. |
AuthorStephanie is the author of My Fugitive, Voice of a Silent Fugitive, Heroic Lies, and Catgirl Roommate, as well as the artist behind the Undertale webcomic Just Cause. Categories
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