Unreasonably Hard Lines
Hey, would you like to make your own website about Paranatural? Do you need images for a textpost? Do you just want to relive the memories without dedicating 2-3 weeks to a re-read? I have got you covered!
Behold Mouse's semi-random assortment of funny jokes, good art, ship moments, and unbelievably hard bars, capped by yours truly. I did a reread of the comic specifically looking to get my facts straight for an essay I want to write, so the images I took are slightly geared toward finding evidence for that paper... but I also just capped a lot of my favorite moments, too. Where I have additional thoughts I have put them in the hovertext, just as with the comic.
I capped them, I'm hosting them, but it's sure not my art. Feel free to grab anything you like from this page but always link back to paranatural.net!
Venus has only appeared in one scene (though their presense has been felt in others) but their one scene had me just enraptured. I absolutely adore the design, though 'concept' might be a better word for Venus' constantly shifting apperance. One of Paranatural's strengths are the incredible designs of the spirit characters, who often have two or three or four integrated visual concepts at once (standout examples are Cryptide and Lucifer). But Venus Guytrap just smacked me from the first page; I was rapt waiting for every update during this scene (for more than one reason). I love Venus' pink, rosy, gentle, ever-changing, subtly threatening world.
These panels are all from the same hour of the same day. I'm just proving a point here.
Lucifer makes plenty of valid critisisms about Rick. He is certainly not always wrong. That's what makes this interesting moment of hypocrisy stand out to me.
Rick clearly respects Lucifer a lot. Compare how he treats his boss with outright hostility and how he nearly begs for Lucifer's attention and approval while Lucifer replies only with insults and critisisms and tell me which one Rick respects. Compare that to how Rick in return is treated by Lucifer.
Lucifer has been in Rick's head since he was 13 and for half his life—this situation continued because, I think, the only thing worse would be not respecting Lucifer and being stuck in the same situation with him anyway. Rick has to get along with Lucifer... imagine if he didn't.
The way Lucifer talks about respect and then goes behind his back... If you don't want to see it as actual disdain, you have to see it as sheer dissapointment. The best light in which I can see this treatment is that Lucifer is desperately trying to keep some hope for Richard alive, is purposefully tending his guttering affection for his pupil, and is trying to keep his utter conviction that Rick is a failure to himself because despite everything, he doesn't want to hurt that idiot kid any more... and he needs his body to keep the Shadow in pirson.
I don't think Lucifer is malicious in his interactions with Rick in the sense that he seeks to destroy him. I think he is ill-meaning in a more subtle, neglectful way; he had lost all hope in Rick but will continue to let Rick think the fire isn't out in their relationship because it serves him, like being forced to still live with someone you've fallen out of love with because of the cost of housing. Rick can handle romantic trouble; as he's proven with June, he may not handle another parental figure thinking he's not worth sticking around for, again, very well.