maplesamurai

[maplesamurai]

Shoutout to Sticks the Badger from Sonic Boom being canon to the main Sonic universe but this version of her character only appearing in Mario & Sonic at the Rio Olympic Games (2016), a single Japanese-exclusive webcomic, and getting a cameo mention in Sonic Frontiers. Apparently she was slated to appear in Sonic IDW but it just didn't work out. So now while she canonically exists, there's basically no canon record of her doing anything or appearing anywhere. Lmao

[maplesamurai]

[maplesamurai]

Oh please. Please, fate. Let this egg crack.

[maplesamurai]

Minotaur, Alone

The first time you bite, you're just a baby.

Mama smiles and tells you not to do it again.

You don't know you have a bull's head, not yet.

You know Mama loves you, she nurses you, and she feeds you the best grass.

The second time you bite, it's because you're scared.

You haven't bitten anyone in years. Mama taught you better, but

there's a strange man in the room, and he says he knows Mama.

Nobody has ever looked at you the way he is looking at you.

It scares you. He is holding a ring in his hand.

You are alone with the monster. Nobody is coming to help you.

Nobody listens when, screaming, snorting, you tell them he hurt you.

They carry you away, their hands hurting your arms and your legs.

Mama is crying. The man is smiling. You will never forget his face.

You have never seen Mama cry before. You call out to her, worried, but

she backs away. You bit the man, she screams.

Nobody notices the bloody ring in your nose. It hurts it hurts it hurts

and it's dark in here.

It's so dark in here and you're cold and you miss Mama.

You walk and you walk. You scream and you cry. Nobody comes for you.

You will never get out of this place.

The third time you bite is because you have to.

The rats are biting. You don't want to hurt them, but

they're hurting you, just like the man hurt you. And

you are cold and tired and lonely and hungry and you miss Mama even though she was mean and you're hungry and

you take a bite.

They don't taste like grass.

They taste worse.

Light. Flame. A torch in the darkness. You feel hope again, for the first time.

Maybe Mama isn't mad anymore, but

he's here again. The man with the bandage around his hand and you can still taste his blood and you can't take off the ring in your nose.

The man sneers. Do you understand me, you stupid animal? he says. You will never get out of here, he says. Built by a genius, he says.

You back away. You're scared. Nobody taught you to fight back.

The next time the man comes, you smell him first. You know by now that you are an animal.

He smells like strong drink. He is crying.

My son, my son, my son, he says. Dead, dead, dead.

His eyes blaze. Why are you alive? he says.

You don't know why.

Mama is never going to visit you here,

is she?

This is the last time the man comes, but you don't know it yet.

He is wearing fine clothing, he looks so beautiful. You remember Mama showing you pictures, telling you you could dress that fine one day.

Your father is a king, she said. You wonder if you will ever meet him.

The man brings a torch, and guards. You know of guards. They brought you here.

There are people with them. Seven and seven. They smell like flowers and oils and sweat and fear and piss and shit.

You back away from the jabbing spears.

Come on, the man roars. You're a beast, he says. Bite them, bite them, bite them, he says.

You can't run far enough away. They hurt you and hurt you while the children watch.

A woman steps forward. Stop, she says. Leave him alone, she says.

A blade catches your nose. The pain is red. Everything is red.

Afterwards, you realize you're holding the woman. She is bleeding from so many bites.

You are alone with the monster.

It will never leave.

You think they have forgotten you. You hope. You are wrong.

There are different guards this time. But still seven and seven.

You are quick this time. Dead and dead, while the guards are still running away.

The rats come to gnaw on them, and the grubs, too. You eat those. It is better than eating the dead.

Seven and seven. Again and again.

The only thing that will save you is prayer, but

nobody ever taught you how to pray.

Seven and seven. One smells different. He smells like flowers and love and no fear and no piss and no shit.

You watch him and he watches you. He is fiddling with a ball that smells like your sister.

You forgot you had a sister.

The guards don't wait. They run. Seven and seven all chained together rattle and fall.

The man is quick. He gets back up.

You come close. Nobody ever taught you the word "friend," but

his hands are around your neck. You are scared, but

you don't bite him. You don't bite him you don't bite him you don't bite him. Maybe this is what a friend does.

I am not an animal, you say. Please take this ring out of my nose, you say.

You look into his eyes. He is crying. I have to, he says. I have to, I have to, I have to, he says.

You need air, you need air, you need air.

I know, you say. There is a monster here, you say. I will help you get rid of him, you say.

I was alone with the monster, you say. You are here to rescue me, you say.

[maplesamurai]

The description is more of a formality this time.

If you claim to like catgirls, here ya go! Wanderers and cheerful explorers, they're curious as can be and generous with anything except information about thier homeland. It's called Murraseth. Don't worry about it. They've got natural luck, they're great at...pouncing...Yeah lets not act like you don't know what this is. Did you know that cat penises have little dull barbs made of the same material as fingernails? Probably. We used to have them too, most mammals still do.

[maplesamurai]

Some of my Goblin Week art from previous years!

[maplesamurai]

I'm sorry it's probably not the kind of interesting you expected but

[maplesamurai]

In light of recent events, let’s not forget that H. Bomberguy is responsible for driving a formerly-beloved transphobic TV writer into a downward spiral that cost him his career and his family… all by playing Donkey Kong.

[maplesamurai]

I posted it on my other account but here , have a version with a little extra!

[maplesamurai]

As someone who follows a lot of webcomics, including some very long running ones, I'm suddenly curious: have you any thoughts on the decline and fall of Sinfest?

I was there when Sinfest went off the rails, and it's kind of hilarious because it didn't go at all the way most folks assume it did. A lot of people have only seen the comic's early days and what it's doing this week and conclude it must have been a straight line from the former to the latter – which honestly isn't a bad guess! – but it actually went through a milquetoast liberal feminist phase somewhere in the middle, if you can believe it.

The trouble is, the comic's author had this whole Grand Philosopher of the Internet shtick going, and this was back when just having a regularly updating website made you kind of a big deal, so they were accustomed to being treated as an authority on whatever subject they saw fit to shoot their mouth off about. However, when the comic took a turn from edgy T&A pop culture parody to didactic feminist allegory, practically no one was prepared to take it seriously; the comic's established readership was broadly unreceptive, and whatever new readership the comic was trying to court found the idea of suddenly treating the Calvin-and-Hobbes-with-tiddies guy as an authority on the topic of feminism laughable.

Of course, I said practically no one. There was, in fact, one notable group who were perfectly willing to kiss the Calvin-and-Hobbes-with-tiddies guy's ass. I'm sure you can guess who.

(To be 100% clear, I'm not saying "oh, Sinfest's author was forced to go down the transphobic radfem pipeline because we nasty leftists were mean to them". They're a colossally entitled twerp who voluntarily got in bed with fascists because couldn't deal with not being taken seriously as an authority figure, and they made their own choices. I'm just remarking on the particulars of that trajectory!)

[maplesamurai]

luka 🌺

↳  commission for bosseIots on twt!

[maplesamurai]

If tarrifs just increase prices for the importer, what's the point of them?

To encourage domestic production and jobs. Trump has no plans to actually do that and he thinks imposing tarrifs on countries will man their economy will suffer as a result.

But since American companies keep importing anyway and just increase prices as a result, it won't hurt them all that much.

Tarrifs are from a time when increasing prices on goods was something people didn't do lightly. But since the pandemic, companies are more and more comfortable price-gouging people.

Trump over-estimates not only what private companies will do, but exactly how much their business is needed by people.

[maplesamurai]

OP of Tweet: "SU and RWBY's reputations were ruined by YouTubers I disagree with!"

Reply 1: "Yeah! Fuck Lily Orchard!"

Reply 2: "Wait, who ruined RWBY's reputation?"

*The replies can't decide if it was Jello, Hbomber, or another YouTuber.*

This just tells me that both SU and RWBY have a lot to be critiqued about, you were just that ironic to be named whenever it came to SU.

Fandoms of terrible shows always want a scapegoat for people disliking them. They can't accept the idea that people can watch the show they're unhealthily obsessed with and come away not liking it.

Fandom's always been like this, it's just been compounded by Gen Z being hyper-aggro. RWBY and SU in particular have weirdly culty fanbases on top of that.

[maplesamurai]

Why do the Qunari look so bad in Veilguard?

Consequences of being a playable race. Every race has to pull from the same face models because the time spent making customizable sliders for one race is extreme. Doing entirely unique models for all of them would be impossible.

The Qunari in Exodus were very rugged, wrinkled and creased. They looked miles apart from the humans.

The tradeoff was they only had about four or five faces between them.

Inquisition had the same problem. The Qunari look worse because they have to pull from the same assets as the humans. And there's strong pressure to make them "sexy" in a rigidly conventional sense.

The same thing happened to Tieflings in D&D. Originally they were extremely varied in design, and also quite odd looking. As D&D became more and more mainstream, Tieflings were redesigned to be "Sexy Demon Succubus People."

So fantasy races that previously looked unique end up with neoteny up the ass.

In RPGs that have unique racial faces, like WoW, they also decidedly don't have customizable sliders. You choose from pre-established faces. This is not an accident.

Veilguard just happened to suffer from the usual 9th gen Uncanny Valley problem that's effected every game.

[maplesamurai]

"Clarified that gorgons can’t eat rocks." is one of my favorite entries in the Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy changelog.

[maplesamurai]

"Clarified that gorgons can’t eat rocks." is one of my favorite entries in the Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy changelog.

[maplesamurai]

going back to my comfort subject: assigning pokemon teams to comic characters i like