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John really just wandered into a liminal space and never came out huh

Cartoony TAZ doodles as I figure out drawing them again. Magnus and Merle loosely based off the GN designs!

Merle Highchurch to the IPRE when questioned about John

Merle to John

Turns out the light of creation the Hunger was chasing...was just John chasing the metaphorical light of Merle...

John being so full of hopelessness and despair and being consumed by the hunger, a metaphorical representation of depression, and meeting the character who sees light in everything, Merle, and the line from Merle "Choose joy." And John still winding up escaping the hunger and getting a peaceful ending on the beach "where everything is always changing." Merle is consistently the most positive character and the heart of the series. I'd even say he's the glue of the IPRE, and proof of this is him being the first to defend Lucretia and protect her during the reveal and Taako's outburst.

In this essay I will

This is a spell on a list for bards and all I can say is "Johann roasts the hunger to death"

Here's some miscellaneous doodles of specific TAZ scenes since I'm still thinking of TAZ animated.

Sorry this took a while but the line-art was difficult! I could go on about how John, The Hunger, and Merle’s speeches are a good metaphor for beating depression but I think the podcast does well enough. This is such a good scene and it helped me a lot.

[ID: A drawing of Merle Highchurch and John from The Adventure Zone in an embrace. John is a tall man with pale skin and dark hair that seems to be graying. He is dressed in a black suit with multi-colored luminescent stripes. His arms are wrapped around Merle and his expression is that of surprise, as if he hasn’t felt something such as passion in years. Merle is a stout dwarf with dark skin, an eyepatch with a lightning strike, and a wooden arm. He has curly gray hair tied back and flowers adorned in his hair and beard. He has on a green outfit and poofy yellow pants. The hunger is wrapped around them, the blackness forming into hands as it pulls John into it. Multiple red Eyes are all set on the two of them as they try to drag Merle from his arms. Multi-colored flecks float around them, as if the bodies themselves are disintegrating. John’s face is cracking, revealing more rainbow flecks. His face has black liquid flowing out of it as well, in the form of tear marks.]

Happy TAZ anniversary 2! So, it’s the second TAZ anniversary and I drew a piece for each of the boys! I’m gonna open up a little bit below. The image ID is LONG so this time I put it under the cut as well.

Bell-Bottoms dad?  Bell-Bottoms dad.

I finally have a design for John...I put the stripe colors in order as they appear but I imagine them constantly shifting and changing hues. Merle really does have the best taste for eldritch abominations, doesn’t he?

[ID: A full body drawing of John Hunger from The Adventure Zone, who is leaning over and smugging with his hands on his hips. He has a skeletal figure, and is a man with pale skin and dark hair. He has dark openings on his face, taking the shape of scars and revealing flecks of orange, green, blue, and yellow of the gem black opal. He has on a striped tuxedo, with the top having the same color stripes, and bell bottoms. He has black tap shoes on. John also has a big wacky green tie and a blue undershirt that is pulled from underneath to go over his tuxedo sleeves. His shadowed silhouette is directly behind him, revealing the eyes of the hunger. END ID.]

Y'all we even going to talk about what a master of storytelling Griffin McElroy is? So much in TAZ had to be retconned and switched around for the storyline to be both cohesive and flow smoothly. The boys had their character backstories and details written out and Griffin had to figure out how to fill in the blanks...The entire IPRE story had only been added around The Crystal Kingdom, where Griffin began to plot forward and implant the story's foreshadowing. The cosmoscope, the planes, the voidfish duet, Lucas theorizing about Fisher Junior, Barry recognizing Lup' s umbrella....Taako's story in particular had to be switched around a lot for the twin plot to work out, and he even surprised his brother Justin by saying he had a forgotten twin sister and Taako had been betrayed by his old friend, Sazed. When Griffin had Lucas mention that black glass could lead to another plane and that Phandolin had been reduced to black circular glass and we didn't even blink an eye. When Griffin told Clint there was no way Merle's kids were in their 60s and were probably under 12 and we all just accepted it. Just. The more you think of it the more you realize just how much Griffin had to make work with the timeline and the hunger story and I'm just. So. Impressed by his masterful skill with writing.

Honestly Lucas Miller and Lucretia and the relationship between Merle/John Hunger are some of the best representations of depression out there. "I choose joy." How fucking raw and empowering is that line.