Weekly Update - 246 - 11/25/24

"This world is a wasteland where nothing can grow.
If it weren't for you I'd be here all alone."

He's fine.

Anyway, the end of Arcane Season 2 dropped this weekend and gods. Just gods. I need to gush about it a little. Spoilers free, because seriously, Arcane is worth your time, and going in blind for the first watch makes the second and third watches even better.

I had high expectations following Season 1. I didn't expect Season 2 to be quite AS good, but I still expected it to be excellent. Season 1 was my "10/10, I've seen nothing better in my decades of life" experience. I was expecting Season 2 to be more like a 9/10. I feel like they delivered a 9.5 out of 10 though. Not as good as Season 1, but still surpassing my expectations. Part of that might have been because I didn't know what to expect. Arcane exists in a universe that blends technology and magic, but it's also kind of one of those squishy vaguely-defined universes that blends a lot of different genres where literally anything can be. So if undead pirates began pouring out of the ocean lead by a mermaid lich, like, it would have required a dramatic shift in tone and theme, but it wouldn't be outside the realm of plausibility. (Minor spoilers I guess, but the show... um... DOESN'T go the route with the zombie pirates. Shucks. Maybe next time.)

But they delivered, and they set the stage and they set the tone, and made their theme for the second season clear from the very start. I still wasn't sure where it was all heading after the first six episodes, but the final three just really nailed it. It was the sort of ending that left me thinking about it all night and well into this morning, one that I expect I'll be thinking about for days to come still.

Which, you know, I should do that stuff. Because I want to break it apart and figure out what techniques I can learn from this finely-crafted thing for the purposes of improving my own storytelling.

Anyway.

Comic this week? There's a lot of art I need to do for it. It'll be hard to get it done by Friday. So... I'm gonna say tentatively no, but I'll post it if I somehow manage to get it done.

Drawing: Page 214, Bonus art. People were talking on Discord about a Max body pillow? I think I want to try and draw that.

Playing: Rimworld again. I need my ridiculously over-modded post-apocalypse colony builder fix.