#//As of this post I have not completed the Remake and therefore will not be using any of the canon plot points from that game

[anderswelten]

Suspicious offerings

You may remember that I said in one of my past blog posts how important it is to inform yourself about methods for hacking etc. - obviously not, because I want to teach you how to cheat, but knowledge will always be the key and your trump card to prevent yourself from scammers.

Today, I stumpled over a suspicious offering. From time to time I check classifieds, because sometimes you can be lucky and dig out a little treasure. However, this time I found an offering of a used Pokemon Diamond card. In the description it was highlighted that a rare Pokemon is on the card, an Arceus which was only distributed in Japan and it was not „traded via a module“. To proof that the mentioned Arceus is on the card, some photos were shown. I‘m attaching them for you. Please take a minute and look for hints, why this Arceus might be suspicious:

Ok, you may have already an impression what is going on here. Let me summarise everything what seems wrong here:

Arceus was redeemed/received in January 2021. Pokemon Diamond is a Generation 4 game. All distributions took place around 2010 - to be fair, the redemption date is the date of the DS system, therefore 2021 is not completely impossible, but at least very strange and let‘s say „uncommon“

Every event Pokémon is a fateful encounter which is „Schicksalshafte Begegnung“ in German. This phrase is completely missing.

This Arceus was caught in a Master Ball - event Pokemon are usually (not all!) carried in a Cherish Ball

This Arceus is level 80, but all Arceus distributed in Generation 4 were level 100.

The OT and TID seem to be custom, I‘m pretty sure that this is the OT and the TID of the trainer himself - or rather the trainer who caught it.

There was only one Arceus distributed in Japan - the Cinema Arceus - and its data are different from this one (OT, TID, level, Poke Ball, …)

Now, we can guess what it is or where it was obtained. Actually, I do believe that this Arceus itself was not transfered with the help of any kind of module. And I‘m aware of two possibilities: it is either an Azure Flute Arceus or an Arceus obtained over the Void glitch - which is basically the Azure Flute Arceus as well. That this Arceus is really an Azure Flute Arceus can be confirmed by the find spot: „Halle d. Beginns“ which is „Hall of Origin“ in English.

You may have already heard about the Azure Flute Arceus - it is the Arceus from Pokemon Brilliant Diamand & Shining Perl (BDSP) which all shiny hunters are after it, because shiny Arceus became accessible. And you also know that BDSP are the remakes of Pokemon Diamond & Perl, so it seems logical that the Azure Flute was also accessible in the original games, right? Unfortunately not.

The Azure Flute was meant to be distributed through an event in Japan, but it never happened. That the Azure Flute item was programmed into the game, it was already known, but after several years it was finally confirmed by Junichi Masuda that they have decided to not distribute the Azure Flute. So, literally, any Azure Flute Arceus from Generation 4 is somehow hacked, because the Wonder Card and the item have to be injected in your game, otherwise the in-game event would not be triggered. But even if no external module was used to inject the necessary things, a glitch has to be used. And just for those who are curious: you will not be able to port up this Arceus to a higher generation. Pokemon Bank will not accept it at the latest.

Here is the point what bothers me the most in this context:

The guy who offers this Pokemon Diamond card with a hacked Pokemon is advertising that it is a rare Pokemon.

Additionally, he is rising the price of this card, because of its „more value“ due to the „rare Pokemon“

If you are not that deep into the topics of event Pokemon, you may not have noticed it

It is the same like last time: it is absolutely fine if you do hacks and glitches just for yourself, but it is an absolute No-Go if you are trying to trade or sell it without telling its correct origin - whether consciously or unconsciously does not matter.

I‘m currently thinking about reporting this offer, but I have just little hopes, because this is such a niche - and most people care more about if the game itself is real of fake.

I can only recommend: keep continue to inform yourself and be suspicious every time and everywhere. And sadly, this was an easy case…

[centrally-unplanned]

To share another thought on the Folding Ideas video I Don't Know James Rolfe from my last post, while I enjoyed it a ton I do think its core "meta" element fails to reach the heights it could. It is never made that explicit so I am making a subjective read here, but essentially while most of the content of the video is textually about James Rolfe, there are dozens of moments where Dan performs actions that mimic or parallel James, culminating in his own parodic angry video game review as the finale. The idea is something of a "there but for the grace of god I go" point, that perhaps all youtubers, and Dan specifically, are too close for comfort to Rolfe's reality of limited creative options and a hostile fanbase clinging to the past .

But I can't really say for sure! Because he is very adverse to making this concrete enough for the audience.

At times the visual parallels are incredibly direct. There is one moment, where Dan is explaining the real skill and craft of being an internet clown on demand, where he mimics Rolfe's style of rant to explain it while projected AVGN videos that were looping in the background flash over his own body:

And it really works, the meaning shines through; it is a moment you can see back through time where the idea for this shot was, spiritually, the impetus for the film, that this idea must have come to him and he built the essay around making it happen.

Other visual parallels are less explicit; when the parody sequence starts, Dan - who has built a 1/12th scale recreation of the Rolfe's "video game basement" aka studio set in order to "understand" him like normal people do - represents himself in that room via a tiny hand puppet

Which is cute if, like probably most people, know him as the guy who makes videos about NFTs or Qanon. But close to a decade ago, when he was first making ~20 minute media analysis takes, he represented himself on screen with a wooden puppet like this:

It is even like the same color, I am confident this is intentional, it is saying "yeah this could have been an alt version of me; I was not so far from this".

All these symbols function to make the emotional impact; but an emotional impact in service of...what? So in the essay he discusses the film Wavelength, a 1967 avant garde film that is almost entirely composed of filming the side of a room with minimal camera movement while actions occur around it. It is a movie that never gives you a meaning, and therefore you must project meaning into it, bring yourself to the table. That makes sense for Wavelength, and the aggressive cinematography of I Don't Know James Rolfe - which is stellar to be clear - is making the film out to be sort of its own personal Wavelength for YouTube.

But then we go back to that text, which is over an hour of Dan directly talking to the camera about a real person. It is incredibly concrete and detailed, with explicit points being made over and over. And through what those explicit points reveal... I don't think Dan Olsen is like James Rolfe! Does he have an hostile fanbase trapped in nostalgia? Do people acuse him of being cucked by his bitch wife? He has evolved as a filmmaker, intensely so, he does things completely differently than Rolfe does and completely differently from how he himself used to. He doesn't have a shitty biography that self-outs his own creative narcissism, he isn't obsessed with remaking his own childhood films - I am pretty sure as a kid he had never heard of NFTs, they didn't really exist! The final line of the film is "maybe you aren't a filmmaker either" - but idk, Dan, I kinda think you are! If documentarians can be filmmakers you have to qualify.

Now I'm not a fool, I understand that the film could be suggesting these are differences of degrees and not kind; that Dan is equally "trapped in the room" making vlogs for the net, just with more outward trappings of success. But, in the ruthless specificity and detail of his treatment of Rolfe...this film cannot be Wavelength. I am not capable of forging my own meaning from the pieces, he connected way too many of them. This is the trap of avant-garde; you are tempted to help the audience, but once you try to answer some of the questions, it forces the hand of the rest, they all have to fit into that schema. And the film is just too coy with Dan's own parallel life for me to figure the schema out. I make my guesses and I lack confidence in them, they feel "contradicted" by the text.

More detail would have been the easier path; less detail and more symbolic expression would have been the harder path. But right now the balance is just a bit too out of whack for it to come fully together.

[sout999]

adhd talk

the third truly unsung project alongside my film and dissertation was the weird amount of targeted effort i had to put into Completing Anything Big As A Neurodivergent Person Whose Brain Is A Crazy Off The Rails Train Staffed and Patronised Entirely By Multiple Exact Copies Of The Squirrel From Ice Age

which is a description like 99/100 people reading this can relate to, but i think a sentiment i see less often and therefore feel kind of stupid and stubborn and lonesome about is "adhd is innate but is also exasperated by hectic lifestyle/modern instant gratification machines so if i fix my habits around those i can cure myself forever". which is silly and wrong but also i feel abit disconnected from adhd social media culture and cant cope just relating to it (which is all it seems to be sometimes) but learning to harness or tame it to do the things that are really important to me

i felt really cringe tbh having to look up youtube videos of HARVARD STUDENT REVEALS PRO STUDY TRICK and then narrowing it down to specifically adhd-focused study videos and keeping a planner and setting aside specific time to study studying and practising anti-academic meltdown journaling techniques and reading fucking atomic habits but i really didn't want to contribute to my abhorrent academic record following me all through undergrad. in fact i wish i had done this sooner but i was not self aware enough to consider the fact

probably the best change i made was severely cutting down or being mindful of social media time, i don't backread my tl anymore and have more moments of awareness when i find myself dumbly scrolling and realize i dont want to be doing this, and then wondering what i actually Do want to be doing. i keep a book nearby to read, and have also swapped a lot of social media time to sketching-off-pinterest time. reading about the psychology behind social media apps is also super interesting, although i always feel like a paranoid wacko conspiracy theorist talking about it. stuff like how negativity and judgemental behaviour is good for engagement (and therefore ad revenue), and how if all posts on your tl were interesting you wouldn't be as addicted to social media as you are, therefore microblogging employs a slot machine/gacha system where you "roll" for posts by logging on and hope to get a good one. it's a little full on but the more i think of it as a revolting and evil machine the more incentive i have to do something else with my time ^q^

a harder thing to do was, in the late stages of the project, the real crunch time month, avoid everything that could become a huge hyperfixation, and then eventually even minor distractions or fixations. because i know if i got super obsessed with something i'd just be up posting about it or drawing fanart. i had to bar myself from persona 3 remake and elden ring dlc and all these other shiny new releases, and the mobile games i was playing... i look forward to catching up on them now. i took up reading books a lot more because unfortunately thats just not as exciting. in the last month of film work i stopped listening to music on my computer so i wouldnt get drawing or animation ideas to distract me from film work. as of writing this i havent listened to music in like 40 days guys 😱 at the same time i am the kind of person who needs background noise to work, so i have:

watched novum's four hour hereditary video essay three times

watched novum's seven hour midsomar video essay three times

watched that one five hour bojack horseman retrospective twice

listened to audiobooks of the Britney Spears biography, Jennette McCurdy biography, three Playboy Bunny biographies (i was on some sort of lady bopgraphy kick i guess), and a few fiction books

rewatched all of bojack horseman

started on House MD and got a few seasons in before i finished the project, amazingly the perfect show to look away from bc of all the medical stuff, how many lumbar punctures do you need to show like seriously

honorable mention to the learned skill of communication and being honest and picking your battles and killing your darlings which is a larger part of managing mental illness than i cared to admit but one of the hardest ones because it involved confronting things and making big painful drastic changes and then having to tell the faculty about them. sometimes i'd be stuck on a piece of animation work for weeks/months, then go back and change the underlying idea to one i'm actually passionate about, and do the animation work in one day using newly found magical hyperfocus passion power. it's crazy! but being able to be confident about taking those steps rather than keeping on with what you're "supposed" to do went a long way.

i very much look forward to listening to a music and playing some video games properly now and being pulverized like a small victorian child from the sheer amount of fun i'm having. i'd say it was all worth it and a fun experiment in channeling the magical humours of passion and boredom and i hope it will help me with future projects too. i Am super burnt out though x__ x thanks for reading and for all your support up until now!

[menlove]

you are absolutely right, I think half of it is also the fact that Paul is still alive and John is dead, so people are more comfortable with accepting John as queer

note that most of the things about John being queer came after John's death. before that it was all about John's and Yoko's realest love story

(this is abt a post i made and then deleted bc i decided ppl don't need to see my bitching FASDFASDF might remake it again if i get pressed enough who knows)

and god YEAH THAT TOO!!! which is also just homophobia bc there's this idea that it's "disrespectful" to think someone might be queer. like not even digging and speculation, which i can see where that might cross lines sometimes and be bad esp if you're bringing it to that person or trying to out them, but just this idea that like. it's a Bad Thing to think paul is queer while he's alive.

like no, it's just a neutral thing. the statements "paul mccartney is straight" and "paul mccartney is bisexual" are the exact same in the amount that they're presuming. but one is viewed as automatically more valid and respectful than the other. do you ever see ANYONE asking people saying he's straight to add a "might be" in there? no. because straight is the default and therefore claiming he's 100% straight no nuance is seen as repeating fact, even though it's just as much a speculation as saying he's bisexual.

whereas when someone is Dead? that's fine. you can speculate all day long about the sexuality of a dead person bc they aren't alive & therefore it's not disrespectful. very, very odd

and you're completely right about before his death everything being about the john & yoko love story. it's really only recently that people have started even remotely accepting that he was queer.

[traewilson]

So on Twitter, a post is going round of a lame fan fiction speculating the ending of Calvin & Hobbes. It's awful. It's completely out of character and tone with the story. It's basically Calvin giving Hobbes to his daughter. I don't really care to talk about it beyond the fact it exists, and commentary around it sparked Thoughts in my brain.

For those of you who don't know, the actual ending of the comic is intentionally open - they hop on their sled and go on another adventure. That's it. They are metaphorically frozen in time, and yet made perpetual, in this ending; there will always be more adventures. There is no ending - even as you grow up and stop being a child, childhood is always happening somewhere. It ends for us individually, but it marches on as a constant of human life. Calvin & Hobbes, the symbol of childhood that they are, shall remain as such long after those who were first raised on it when it was new have passed on.

The reason I'm here writing on this is I suddenly realized - this is a symptom of a wider societal swing in America. One which we've all seen but maybe not had pinned down. People who feel the compulsion, the URGE, to drag their childhood to their adulthood, and, because the people who want to do this tend to be miserable soulless people, they take that thing that gave them so much joy in their youth and rip out everything that made it so special to you as a kid, and make it as grey, realistic, and lifeless as you are.

This mindset is what leads to the live-action / hyper-realistic animation from Disney lately. Very Serious People want to watch The Lion King, but are embarrassed and ashamed of the film they loved as a kid. They still love it, but they need a "socially acceptable" way to watch it.

And that's where the "live action" remake comes in.

The advertising on this film brazenly declaring a CGI animated film as "live action" is the height of madness, until you remember - to call it animation is to call it "kid stuff." If they call it a CGI animated film, Very Serious People think of Minions.

They add Very Serious Nuance in the form of generational warfare between the hyenas and lions; in the form of Scar's desire for power being rooted in cucking Mufasa by claiming his wife Sarabi as his own. They make the animation Very Serious and, therefore, Realistic. So Realistic in fact that, really, to even call it """animation""" is an insult to what they're doing here.

(Even though animation is, obviously, objectively, what it is.)

The animals barely emote, showing less emotion than what even real animals can express, because emotional openness is, to these Very Serious People, bluntly:

C R I N G E.

So, they barely emote. The songs are still there, but they're almost all shambling putrid parodies of the original musical numbers. Favreau didn't even want half the songs to be in the movie; famously Be Prepared was a last-minute addition after mass public backlash - and it shows that it's a last-minute addition. It's barely even sung; more of a spoken word poetry thing than an actual song. Because I feel like either Jon Favreau, his executive overlords, or worse I SAY WORSE both treated the musical aspect of The Lion King as a necessary evil.

It's telling the only song they gassed up wasn't Elton John's new song at the end credits - it was Beyoncé's number, Spirit. A pop number awkwardly slapped on to a musical film apropos of nothing but Those Sales and That Sweet Academy Award for Best Original Song, Baby.

And of course, it worked; the film made over a billion dollars because the world is chock-full of Very Serious Adults who want to take their childhood with them into adulthood, but demand it grow up with them.

They want their childhood, but are embarrassed by that very desire.

We live, in short, in a teenaged society. A society that's matured only in body but not yet in mind.

This is, naturally, because so many of us are, ourselves, adults who only grew up in age.

Some grow wiser; some just get older - if I may paraphrase Paul Williams. And THAT'S the hell of it.

Moral of the story: stop being ashamed of the things you liked as a kid. You CAN take your childhood with you into your adulthood - in fact, it's good and healthy to (in moderation, I must stress; dont overcorrect.) You don't have to do this thing where you make these bumbling shambling homunculi of the things you loved, but without any of that cringeworthy "charm" or "color" or "fun". Learn to enjoy things on their own merits. Fuck realism in art - we have enough reality all around us to ignore, and no matter how hard you push realistic CGI, it'll be never be reality.

[not-poignant]

Are Sebastian and Alex going to learn about bdsm and safe practices/negotiation? Or do they keep fumbling around and doing what they're doing?

Hi anon,

People who learn about BDSM don't necessarily practice safe practices or negotiation.

And there are elements of negotiation in this story! It's not a black and white 'they're not doing this in a paint-by-numbers sort of way and therefore it doesn't count' situation, y'know?

They are two characters in their mid-20s who live in a tiny town, one of those characters is dyslexic to the point that he can barely read, and the other's method of doing things has worked for him all his life (or so he thinks), they don't have any reason/s to learn about BDSM, and it's not likely that either of them ever will.

That also doesn't mean that they can't enjoy their kinky sex life.

There has been a lot of discussion already, and there will be more and more going forwards. It might not be at the level most people want, but Sebastian has certainly obtained consent (more than once), offered and then insisted on debriefs and post-sex discussion, explained to Alex how to communicate if he hates something, and made it clear that what he likes is unusual and sadistic in nature. It's also clear that Alex likes being pushed, i.e. - not being forced to give consent in every circumstance when someone can take control and give him what he wants anyway. That's actually pretty common in some people with a child abuse background who become people pleasers.

If you want negotiation + safe practices at a certain level, you'd have to completely remake Alex's character into someone who can magically be a functional, communicative, healthy human being, and he's not that. Alex is getting better at communicating (that's how we go this far in the story in the first place), but if you expect this story to end on Alex being a perfect human who can do Instagram-level kink negotiation, then no, this isn't the story you want, anon.

If you look deeper and don't expect cookie cutter kinds of dialogue, there has been ongoing negotiation in the story since the early chapters. When Alex makes it clear through physical response and then verbal that he doesn't like yelling, Sebastian stops yelling. When Sebastian makes it clear that he has complicated feelings about hiring his ex-school bully as a cleaner, Alex makes it clear that he doesn't share those complicated feelings, especially in light of the pay rate. Sebastian consenting to Alex being his cleaner makes it clear that those terms are acceptable to him.

When Alex tries to undervalue himself, Sebastian makes it clear that he's not comfortable paying someone less simply because they value themselves less. When Alex then takes that pay, it's a form of consent to Sebastian's attitudes. Their relationship has been an ongoing negotiation since the beginning, and that's how they've grown closer. If you're used to only looking for very obvious signs of negotiation, it might be easy to miss the non-verbal and subtle forms of negotiation that are happening.

For example, it might not seem like it, but Sebastian - many chapters ago now - talking about how he likes control in the bedroom and that turning Alex on long before they'd ever shared anything sexual together, is a form of communication. Alex learns he likes the idea of it without it ever been forced on him, and Sebastian wouldn't have that conversation with someone he didn't trust (for example, Alex in the beginning of the story). They had to have trust to have that conversation, Alex had to have trust to ask Sebastian questions about it in the oblique way he did, and they had to share a common comfortability have a conversation in that direction in the first place.

In A Stain that Won't Dissolve, these things don't look like a psychologist's version of: 'Okay, what do you want, and this is what I want, and here's where we meet in the middle' - a lot of life doesn't look like this (but if you want that, I've written that in Falling Falling Stars - it still has dubious consent though, lol). Both Alex and Sebastian have poor communication on their side, and it's a growth story for the two of them.

But no, I have no intention of Sebastian ever learning terms like 'subspace' or 'RACK' or anything like that. A lot of people in the world, especially prior to easy access to the internet, figured this stuff out on their own and many of them made it work even without the rigid or codified structures of the world of BDSM (and some of those people went on to invent the world of BDSM that we take for granted today).

It's the kinks that make you kinky, not the knowledge of an acronym or the world it engenders.

There's also no reason to think that Sebastian has access to a healthy education about BDSM there, it's not like Elliott was practicing much healthy BDSM in my other Stardew fic, The Wind that Cuts the Night, :D Elliott knew all about safe practices, negotiation, and BDSM, and chose to ignore a lot of the safe stuff over messing around more dangerously.

The fumbling around is the point, basically. Growing up is messy, and dubious consent is hot (for some of us), and there are many ways we communicate with the people around us, especially when it's two guys in a town the valourises machismo and stoicism over emotional openness, and one of those guys was beaten by his father over not being macho and strong enough which makes him exceptionally resistant to communicating clearly even about basic subjects and needs.

That's the part I actually really love about this story.

[fantasygerard2000]

Though, I am limiting the options as only these two because some people wanted a completely different movie. Like, I know it's supposed to be Disney's (the animation studio, not the whole dang company) centennial anniversary movie and therefore it should include the tropes it's known for like romances, obviously evil villains, animal sidekicks, etc. But, that only sets up way too high expectations than what the creators have intended. So, let's just remake Wish as any other movie Disney made without the pressure that it's their 100th anniversary movie.

For the "improvements" we gotta to stick on the ideas that are present and unused. Things like "making Magnifico the protagonist" is thrown out of the dungeon window because that would've been a completely different movie. The main fundamentals are taking down an oppressing monarch, magical being from space and achieving dreams and wishes.

But, "didn't you say in an early post to express creativity is to break out of its bounds", yes I did. However, like i said about making Magnifico the hero or have it be a romance are different to what the creators' intended story is. To remake Wish, you have to remake Wish. Not make a completely different movie. Like, still make it the same premise but with minor deets like Asha being a princess and sorceress in training or Star is a magical creature Magnifico secretly kept to harness its magic. Somewhat different story, but the same structure and themes.

If you have any ideas for alternative Wish story ideas, feel free to share them in the comments or reblog them.

[20dollarlolita]

An absurdly and unnecessarily over-the-top and thorough breakdown of using my embroidery machine for a cosplay piece.

Part 1) The piece:

Many iterations of Princess Zelda from the Legend of Zelda series has this tapestry front piece. I've looked for a technical name for this piece as well as extant examples of it from our history, and my research is indicating that it's just a fantasy piece and doesn't have a name.

So we're calling it an apron. IDK. "Heraldic apron," sounds fancy enough.

One of the things that's been a bitch through all cosplay of all time is custom textiles. Since the early days of cosplay, we've been looking for ways to handle this at home. Back when I got into cosplay and took it really seriously, Worbla hadn't been invented, there was no Friendly Plastic, Wonderflex had to be purchased in 15-yard lots, the Glowforge and home 3D printing was just a fantasy, and Cricut machines ran off cartridges and couldn't design from your computer. Also, when I was cosplaying seriously, I was a college student with no job and a $100/month allowance for food (which I spent on cosplay, mostly). We didn't do fancy shit. You know what we did?

We had fuckin' hand-traced and hand-cut stencils. Mother fuckin' freezer. Paper. Stencils. Now, this version of Zelda that 2009 Me is cosplaying up there does have a much simpler heraldic apron than Ocarina of Time Zelda does. However, since I've gotten access to embroidery machines, I've had this great need to remake this sort of concept with adult me's current budget and skill set.

Now, there's a few issues from the start about making this. The notable one is that the in-game textures for the apron do not completely line up with the official artwork. When you start looking at the 3DS remakes, they re-textured the apron, giving us yet a third canonical way that this thing might be laid out.

Obviously, the easiest thing to do is to get several references, and then to slap them next to each other and compare. I've got GIMP pulled up here, and have several versions here. I adjusted color levels until the pattern in the garment was as clear as I could make it. There's horizontal guide lines going across to divide the apron into sections. We'll call those sections thusly, top to bottom: Triforce, Eyeball, Bird, 8 Rectangles, and V.

***

This is going to be long and boring. I have my reasons for writing a long and boring post, but sadly, I'm not able to share them without becoming un-boring, thus defeating the purpose of this work.

***

I forgot to label them, so that reference image is, from left to right: N64 screenshot, 3DS screenshot, N64 character model, small inset at the bottom is 3DS, official artwork that was released alongside the N64 game, a heraldic tabard, some official rendering of the Hylian crest, and another 3DS screenshot.

Some are pretty self-explanatory, and some are more open to interpretation. Notably, let's take a look at the Bird section. The official artwork and the 3DS remake both distinctly have the Hylian Family Crest there. The N64 version has a very distinctly different bird thing.

So, I had to decide, which one do I put on my apron? I had to consider several things, but one of them was the process of how game textures from the N64 era were made. Textures for this game were very small image files, smaller than your 2009 cosplay.com forum avatar. The reference art would be made and then other people would be in charge of turning that art into a usable texture file, so there was artistic license involved in adapting that. This game was released before the Hylian crest had been used in multiple places across several games. Therefore, we can justify making the assumption that the texture artists didn't have an understanding of how important it was to keep this part the exact shape it was, and turned "stylized bird" into "stylized bird" in a way that would read clearly on screen at 45x100 pixels. We can assume this to be the case, because, when Grezzo did the 3DS remake, their texture artist used the Hylian crest instead of the OoT bird thing.

***

Sorry for all the embroidery stuff in the past few days. I've attracted the attention of a couple people online and embroidery seems to bore them, so we're doing that for a little bit until I stop being interesting.

,***

Cosplay has a spectrum of screen-accuracy to full-nonsense. In some things, you can do screen accuracy very well. Screen-Accurate Princess Leia from EpIV is pretty easy to make look good. Sometimes, you can do full nonsense pretty well, too. Princess Leia, but in if Star Wars was steampunk, also pretty easy to make look good.

Some things aren't as easy to make look good when you're doing screen-accurate. Sephiroth's hair in most of the Final Fantasy games stands up off his head by like 30% the height of his face. If you math that out, you have a wig with 5" antennas swooping up in the front. When you put that on a head, it looks silly. Do you want your Sephiroth to look silly? No? Then you need to do something about that hair.

My cosplay rule that I try to stick with is this: If you need to make a decision between what is "accurate" and what looks good, you pick what looks good. As long as the character reads as the character when you're done, it's better to look good than to be accurate.

And this is why, instead of just tracing any of these aprons in my embroidery software, I broke out a pen and drew the whole thing out.

Actually, I drew half of it out. The left half to be specific. I know that I'm going to mess with this later on my computer, and I know that I want the thing to be symmetrical, so let's save everyone (mostly me) some trouble and just do half of it.

Why was it important to me to draw it full size? Remember, that texture we're referencing is less than 100 pixel wide. The final piece is going to be full size, so there's a lot of things that just don't scale up easily. We're basically going from a texture the size of my thumb nail to something that has to be more high-def than 8K. This basically meant that I needed to redraw it from scratch to get that resolution. Lots of little details are going to have to be added, and I'm much better at adding them with a pen than I am just guessing while I'm digitizing the file to embroider.

So, I took it, pulled it into GIMP, and made some adjusting. I mirrored it so that I have both a left and a right side to work with. I changed the contrast so that I could see the lines better. I didn't like the Hylian crest that I drew so I just plopped the official SVG onto it and dragged it around until it fit.

And then, and this is kind of important, I cropped the image so that it's the exact proportions that I want the final thing to be. My whole design is in this file, and there's no outside image. This is important, because I'm going to use this as a template to trace in MySewnet, and the easiest way to get the background to behave properly is to pre-set it to the exact size you need in another program. Good thing this software isn't stupid absurdly expensive, or else the fact that you needed to do that would be really annoying.

The digitizing process:

Okay, so the first thing that I do is to make a custom hoop the size of the finished project. There's no way that I can actually stitch this out this big, because a 25" long hoop doesn't exist anywhere, but it's way easier to design all of it and then split it up than it is to design in pieces and then fit them together. I open the hoop in the digitizing software and load my template as the background.

Digitizing from a technical viewpoint is really simple: you click points all around the area you want to make a shape, and then you hit "make this thing", and then it renders the thing. You can then give that thing a different kind of fill or line. Easy.

So instead, I'm going to go into the art part. Because yes, I've already drawn this whole template, but I haven't figured out how to fill each of those shapes. This isn't like a coloring book where I can just fill a shape with color. Embroidery means that I have to pick how exactly I fill all those areas.

First up, I have the legendary Golden Triumph Forks. The Magical Eating Utensils. I wasn't super sold on how this was rendered in the official art. We can vaguely see how, in the game art, it looks a little more like a red outline with corner flourishes, rather than what we got in the artwork. I probably should have looked up some historical flourishes from time periods in world history where technology matched the apparent technology of the world of the Legend of Zelda, but I just kind of picked a random frilly shape.

The Triforce is one of the most important symbols in Zelda, so I knew that I wanted it to be a bright shape. This meant that I wanted to fill the shape with stitches in such a way that none of the purple backing is showing through. In embroidery terms, this usually means either a full pattern fill, or an applique. I picked applique, because this is an easy shape to applique. I knew from the start that I was going to use metallic tissue lamé. Lamé's great for a lot of things, but it's weak and shows creases. To avoid that, I wanted to put in a fill stitch to support the fabric and prevent damage, as well as hiding any big creases. I picked a big and open motif fill that will still show a lot of the applique fabric.

Eyeball:

So this is, specifically, the Sheikah Eye. It's an important symbol in the series. The Sheikah stick this eye on pretty much everything. However, it's not a fancy, gaudy, ostentatious symbol.

I grabbed a motif line at random from the list of motif lines, and happened to like it. It's a very heavy stem stitch that goes over each stitch 4-6 times, making a big, raised area. To make sure the eye was visible, I filled in the iris, teardrop, and eyelashes. I picked an opaque spiral fill, because it's a circle and these general shapes are circles. A while back, I bought some metallic white "iris" thread, and thought that a subtly-iridescent white would fit nicely.

Those little eyelashes at the bottom that aren't there in the art? Well, there's there in the game render juuuuust a little bit, and also they fall into "if it looks better that way, it's the correct way" mentality.

The Hylian Crest.

Fuck this thing.

All you need to know about this is two things: 1) I just traced the SVG that I found on the Zelda wiki, and 2) I didn't plan on stitching it out with black outlining. That black outline is just there to confuse my software into doing what I want.

Since this is as important as the triforce, I knew I wanted to do it in silver lamé. That means all of this is an applique. Quick tip: if you're going to be breaking a design into smaller segments, don't do any applique so big that it has to be spread over two segments.

Ask me how I know.

I originally had this filled with the same chain stitch that I used on the Triforce, but it made things look very samey and very mushy. I later switched it to a triangle-shaped spaced fill. I selected the triangle as the correct shape by clicking every shape one at a time and seeing what they looked like. Since this was going to be a running stitch on a shiny applique background, the fine details don't really matter. You actually can't see them normally, which is why I had to change the color here.

The outline there is the same stem motif that I used in the Sheikah eye. I found that it's wide enough to cover an applique edge without having to look like a satin stitch.

Squares, Triangles, and the Face Thing.

I have no idea what that face thing is supposed to be and apparently neither did anyone else on the internet. Since it just kind of looked like a scribble, I just rendered it as a scribble. I used a satin column so that it could have line weight similar to a drawing with a paint brush, and the shiny satin line would look like wet ink. Also known as phoning it in.

The triangles are filled with a contour fill that just traces the edges of the shape. I left some space between the lines so that the purple background can show through. This gives is sort of an optical illusion of movement. The outside of this was originally that same stem motif line from before, but after I stitched it out, I realized ti was too heavy. The final version had the same motif, but smaller, and with fewer repeats of the stitch.

I'm so damn proud of those fucking gold boxes. Okay, so, let's look at the design. Why are there gold boxes? What do they do? What do they mean? Do they represent the eight dungenons in the original game? Nope, because there were nine dungeons in the original game. Are they the eight sages? No, because there's seven sages. Is it what happens when you average the number of dungeons and sages out? I don't know. Anyway, they looked stupid just being little gold boxes, so I gave them blunted corners. I did another contour fill because I wanted them to lie flat on the finished apron and not draw any attention to themselves. As for the little tail, folks, I discovered a technique and I'm FULLY READY to abuse the heck out of it. So, I traced the lines with a satin column, ready to try to mess with the spacing to see if it'd lie flat with enough work. I hit "convert to tapered motif" by complete accident, and it was kind of cool. So, then, I went through the various motif options, found some cool looking scrolls, hit "fit to line" and slapped those in there. And I think that the little tails being written in some weird language I can't understand is SO COOL. I love how this part looks and I will not be taking other opinions on it at this time.

The V.

I didn't like how either of them looked in the original, so I just kind of winged it. I was getting bored at this point so I took a pattern fill that was supposed to be linked chains, and then I twisted it around until I was the least bored I could be with it. Again, I went with the smaller stem stitching on the outside.

Those little tails on the circles there are also filled with the scroll as tapered motif thing. If you go for this, don't forget to run the "delete short stitches" filter or else there'll be like 1100 unnecessary tiny stitches in your motifs. Ask me how I know.

Now, we learn by making mistakes, and the best way to make mistakes is to just jump in and wing it. On the left, we have the first version of this that I tried. On the right, we have the second version, which is the one I'm going to use. I've made a couple of adjustments to the file since that final version, so if I make it again, that'll be just a hair better.

So, for starters: backing fabric. I liked the movement and texture on this subtle dot tonal better than a solid purple, so i used that for both my test and my final project. The main drawback with using a printed tonal instead of a dyed solid is that the back of the printed fabric is still white. On some things, specifically the area around the satin stitching on the ink face thing, you can see subtle white haloing where the stitching's displaced the background. I don't like it. No one else seemed to notice or care.

I knew that I'd be doing this in my endless repositionable hoop, but I hadn't taken into account that I'd be doing it in the endless hoop sideways. The endless hoop expects you to go from top to bottom, and my design goes left to right. This means that I have to fight the fabric around the clamp of the hoop. The endless hoop also doesn't hold things as tightly as a regular hoop does. Because of the way the fabric is moved through the hoop, a fusible or sticky stabilizer has to be applied to the fabric before, instead of being hooped with the fabric. All of this meant that I just didn't get the support that I needed on the first go around. You can see this in the way that the fabric has bunched up around the 8 boxes. For the first round, I used some fusible no-show mesh stabilizer. It wasn't wide enough, so I had to cut it in chunks and apply it sideways. For the second round, I used two layers of Power Mesh (same stuff but different brand) as well as a layer of light+tacky paperless sticky tear-away. I really hate that light+tacky stuff so ti's exciting to finally use it up.

My first trial was mostly to see if I could make the endless hoop work like I wanted it to. In this trial, I learned a lot of things. I kept the computer nearby to make changes as I noticed them. When I was done, I looked at what I'd made. I didn't like all the proportions in all of the design, so I dragged some stuff around in the file. This was when I realized that the heavy stem stitch motif everywhere was looking clunky, and reduced or removed it from several places. I changed the fill of the Hylian crest to the triangular fill. shout out to anyone from That One Anonymous Message Board who made it this far in this post to try to prove how deranged I am. You've got a lot of time on your hands, don't you? I completely changed all of the instructions to tell the computer how to do the applique on the Hylian crest (which I STILL got wrong), and added some aligment stitches to help with the applique process. This was when I changed the color of the outline in the software. Ideally, you should now be able to lay the applique down as one fabric, let the machine sew the whole thing, and then trim it. This is important, because that applique spreads out over two hoopings, so it's kind of a mess. The secret to making this work is for hooping #2 (eye and top half of crest) to stitch out the eye BEFORE the applique, so that the whole fabric can be placed over the completed eye. We learn.

Once it was all combined and digitized, it's important to render all the digitized elements as stitches, and then do a bit of cleaning up.

Notably, I really needed to take those tapered motifs and run the stitch optimizer program. The stitch optimizer's job is to remove stitches that are too short to stitch out nicely. When looking at the 3d views in the software, I can't tell which of the samples is the before and which is the after. If I zoom up really close in illustration mode, I can see it, but remember that this is like a 1" wide strip of stitching. The basic rule is that any time the software wants to remove 3300 stitches and you can't see the difference in the stitch-out, you REALLY WANTED to remove those 3300 stitches. That's not 3100 stitches from all over the design, BTW. That's just 3100 stitches from that one section.

I go over my test swatch, section by section, and make sure there's nothing that I forgot to put into the software. I also just delete every jump cut and then make the software add them all back in. The program that adds cuts automatically tends to be more judicious wit them than the digitizing program is when you make the design, so it's a way to make a design stitch out a lot smoother with just two clicks.

So, once all of that is done, we can just run the design splitter program. The design splitter says it has "intelligent splitting" settings, which is an absolute joke, but I use inteligent setting anyway. It's not necessarily any better at picking where to split than a straight line is, but our eyes are trained to see straight lines. The allegedly-intelligent splitting does at least split at random points, making it harder for your eyes to pick out what's a splice and what's a continuous line.

So, in addition to "intelligently" splitting the design apart, the program adds two color blocks to each split piece. One is before the stitches, and it's four stitches long. This just does one stitch at each corner of the design area.

The second block it adds is at the end. This block stitches a corner marker at each corner in the design. In this picture, the before line is green and the after line is red. I offset them by a little bit so that you can see what's going on, but they do happen directly on top of each other.

This is important, because you're trying to lay your design out so that every section of the split design lies perfectly next to the other ones. When you re-hoop your fabric, you can step through the first four stitches. If you've placed your fabric correctly, then those stitches should perfectly touch the markers that were sewn in the previous blocks. If they don't line up, you can just re-hoop over and over and over and over until it lines up.

In theory, you can line up an entire design just using these markers and the alignment stitches. You can just keep rehooping forever until it lines up. It's great. On the other hand, if your embroidery machine has literally ANY KIND of design placement setting onboard, that can help a whole lot. The astute observer will note that, on that picture way up at the top, that machine isn't my Topaz 50. That's because the T50 has some nice basic design positioning that will let you place within a certain range, but it won't let you tilt the design if you hooped it crooked. I did the first attempt at this on my Topaz, and it was fine, but there was a lot of re-hooping. So I might have taken this to work, to do this on the machine that's a step up from mine. (While I was there, I used a sit-down Bernina longarm to "hand"-baste the stabilizer on. That's not the intended use of the machine, but if you set stitch regulation to like 1 stitch per inch, and then you just pull the fabric straight through from the side, you get perfectly straight basting lines. If you're not feeling like dedicating an entire room in your house to having a free-motion machine just to baste straight lines, most mid-tier sewing machines have a fake hand-basting setting in them somewhere). Anyway, if you don't already have a bunch of hoops from HV, you can get that kind of positioning setup on Brother and Baby Lock for much less than the cost of the machine I was working on. If doing big multi-hoop projects like this is a priority for you, ask your salespeople about machines that make this really easy.

You now also have the great trade-off: the smaller the hoop, the tighter the design will hoop, and the less stabilizer you'll need. However, the bigger the hoop, the more you can shift the design around in the machine without hitting the edge. The tighter the hoop grabs, the less stabilizer you need, but the harder it is to shift the fabric that's already being held in the hoop to get it where you need it to go.

I handled this by just fucking throwing a shit ton of fucking stabilizer at it like there was no tomorrow. There's three layers on this bad boy.

You might be saying "Why didn't you just use a heavier cut-away?" and you'd be right, except for two things. 1) if I use two lighter layers, then I can trim the stabilizer away in layers, avoiding the stabilizer showing through and 2) my store didn't have any wide fusible cut-away in stock so

Anyway, here it is, time to make it into the actual apron. I'm very excited for this project. I'll probably break out the repositionable hoop again to do a border on the outside of the completed project, but I don't know for sure exactly what that'll look like.

[sandumilfshou]

hi! so i’ve been dipping my toe into final fantasy 7 content and im considering getting the game only ive heard mixed opinions about which one to get and as the only blog i follow that has some ffvii content i hope you don’t mind me asking for your opinion!

a lot of people are saying that you should play the original game before playing rebirth because you won’t understand some stuff in rebirth if you don’t but others say rebirth is a totally new-player friendly game. i’m open to getting and playing the og before playing rebirth but if i don’t have to i don’t necessarily want to

also this ask is gonna seem really silly if you haven’t played the original lol sorry but yeah! just an opinion that is not some random person on reddit would be nice. hope you have a nice day!

thanks for coming to me about it!!

its funny because ive never fully played through the entire original FF7, the style of it (sometimes an hour between save points) really put me off so i never completed it. if im being honest i got into FF7 by watching one of those no commentary playthroughs of FF7 remake before i moved in with my brother who has a PS5 so i could play it myself

(i also did this with crisis core, which is a prequel game which really helps you understand some events and people in rebirth)

i literally only know the entirety of the og ff7 plotline through what i have gathered via extensive fanfic reading!! the first few i read were set pre-game (so crisis core era) and i had NO idea who anyone was or what was happening, i just wanted sefikura content bc that ship is chefs kiss

so i picked up plot stuff via osmosis in fic, watched playthroughs of ff7 remake and crisis core, played ff7 remake fully, attempted crisis core and the og ff7 on my switch and didnt finish either, and at this point i know enough that i fully understood ff7 rebirth! (other than the weird multiverse thing which hurts my head but that is new content)

ff7 remake mostly aligns with the plot of the og ff7. rebirth starts to diverge quite a lot, though very similar plot beats happen, and you meet all the same characters. rebirth hits a lot harder if you know the original plotline, especially if you know crisis core and therefore know who zack is

sooooo.... i hope that helps????? basically if you dont want to play the og or watch a playthrough you can read some time travel fix it fics / longfics and that is usually a really good way to understand the original plotline lmao

and you can also watch advent children if you like, which is set post-ff7, but its not necessary to understanding remake or rebirth so far!

best of luck on your ff7 journey and godspeed

[jewwyfeesh]

Things that Gradually Drift Away - 2 (2024 ver)

Writer: Mitsuki

Characters: Kanzaki Souma, Otogari Adonis

Translated by: jewwyfeesh

Adonis: Hold on. I heard that you’re not supposed to capture the fireflies during ‘Firefly Appreciation’, Kanzaki.

2024 remake of the first ever tl posted here; im still having some technical difficulties so pictures will be few. happy reading!

[ ♪ ]

Season: Summer

Location: Yumenosaki Academy Library

Souma: Adonis-dono, I’ve completed the preparations for the ‘Firefly Appeciation’.

Adonis: Mm. The mosquitoes in Japan are much smaller and weaker than those in my hometown; therefore, I just need to protect you well, Kanzaki.

Souma: ‘Protect’… Adonis-dono, the both of us are of the same age, and we’re both male.

I do appreciate you accompanying me during training sessions, but I do wish that you refrain from addressing me with the tone of voice you’d use on ladies or children.

I will cut down all that hinders me with this sword.

But, back to the topic at hand. Adonis-dono’s physique is really admirable; in comparison, it seems like I still have a ways to go with my training.

Adonis: Apologies. I did not mean to look down on you, Kanzaki.

The way my body is cannot wholly be attributed to practice. The environment in which I grew up is different from yours.

There are some bug species which are more dangerous than a large animal. One must also take precautions against the diseases they spread, even if you won’t sustain the same kind of serious injuries if attacked by a large creature.

As afterwards, there is only increasing amounts of pain that would be hard to bear… One’s life might also be in danger.

Therefore, upon hearing Akehoshi mention Japan even has ‘Firefly Appreciation’, a… custom where you sit around appreciating insects, I was rather shocked.

Souma: Ohh, so that’s why Adonis-dono was so stunned back then.

Akehoshi-dono is right. ‘Firefly Appreciation’ is a custom that has existed since ancient times.

Legend has it that everyone would dress up in their yukata, and head down to the riverbanks where the fireflies gather to watch them. Some places even hold sacrificial ceremonies, or song and dance performances.

Though, I’m sorry – my knowledge of ‘Firefly Appreciation’ only extends to what I’ve gleaned from texts.

My family would be busy preparing for the festivities every Summer, but I’ve never found a good time to participate.

I do wish to appreciate the fireflies with batchmates who share a similar interest. However, Hasumi-dono and Kiryuu-dono from our Akatsuki have been very busy during the Summer holidays; I cannot trouble them with my whims.

Not to mention, rather than ‘batchmates’, I feel like it’s more appropriate to use the term ‘seniors’ on those two…?

All in all, I’m very happy to have been able to receive Adonis-dono’s invitation this time ‘round. Time waits for no one – let’s head out now! Let’s bring all of the fireflies home… ☆

Adonis: Hold on. I heard that you’re not supposed to capture the fireflies during ‘Firefly Appreciation’, Kanzaki.

Earlier on, Akehoshi drew a map for me, but I’m unable to understand it. Could you take a look?

Souma: A map hand-drawn by Akehoshi-dono? He’s a rather enthusiastic person. Gimme gimme ♪

Erm… Hm. Adonis-dono, this… is this really a ‘map’?

The lines are a mess, very much like a child’s doodle, and it’s hard to figure out what is where. Not to mention, ‘Firefly Appreciation’ isn’t written anywhere – the destination’s not even marked out.

Only a few waves are scribbled here, with a short “the treasure is here~☆” next to it. I don’t understand what this is supposed to mean.

Is this some sort of trap, Adonis-dono…?

Adonis: Akehoshi is lively; sometimes I find myself unable to understand him. But he told me that he definitely drew the area with the most fireflies.

Souma: Oho, is that so. Despite Akehoshi-dono’s slight eccentricities, he’s not a bad guy who would bully his classmates, nor do meaningless things.

That’s the only place with words, and even an arrow pointing at it. That’s the place Akehoshi-dono wants us to go.

With this hypothesis… Ah, so it confirms things. These squarish things… These should be representative of Yumenosaki Academy. I think Akehoshi-dono used them for the school’s infrastructure.

So these large triangles can only be the mountains near the school.

We’re probably supposed to go to one of the riverbanks on that mountain. As for the particular location… It’s halfway up facing West.

This map is one that needs to be understood backwards. First, we need to ascertain the destination, then find a path to said destination. It’s a map that only people who want to go see the fireflies would understand.

As expected of Akehoshi-dono! What an interesting idea, one that’s hard to puzzle out ♪

Adonis: Kanzaki. Are ‘fireflies’ extremely precious items? Is it because they can glow? Why did Akehoshi call them ‘treasures’?

Souma: Oh. I don’t think it’s because they can ‘glow’… Fireflies are a common sighting in the Summer, and there’s a lot of other creatures that can glow too…

Our ‘Marine Bio Club’ Buchou-dono has also raised quite a few glowing fishes ♪

Speaking of which, I remember overhearing the seniors in my family talking about some legends related to the ‘fireflies’. Various ‘firefly appreciation’ performances across Japan also portray this.

I can’t say they’re bad legends per se, but… No matter how you twist it, they don’t really have any correlation to ‘treasures’ whatsoever.

Adonis: ……?

Souma: Adonis-dono, let’s just wait and see. Maybe later we’ll understand what Akehoshi-dono meant.

If I were to tell you now, I might affect your train of thought. There are some things that you should figure out for yourself instead of asking me all the time.

All in all, let’s not stand here talking mindlessly; we should set out as soon as possible. The day is no longer young after all.

[ ☆ ]

← Chapter 1 | Story Masterlist | Chapter 3 →

[cloud-data]

an objective analysis of ship content in ff7 remake!

i am a long time fan of ff7 and with rebirth rolling around the corner and ff7 fans all over the internet getting into arguments, i decided it would be a fun project to look at "shipping" content and make a judgement on which of the three most contentious ff7 ships has the most """"support""" in the current remake material!

a little background about this project: i was curious to see if there was an objective way to determine which ships of the 3 that are most commonly debated as canon (CloTi, Zerith, and Clerith) have the most content, as someone who is not aligned with any one ship. i didn't include other popular ships like AerTi and Zakkura because, as far as i know, the content for those ships is not commonly disputed! these ships, as well as the ships i did include in this post, are valid in their own right therefore this feels like a good time to explain that this is not a project meant to challenge the validity of any one ship! this is simply a thought experiment, by me, to see if there was a way that someone could objective determine which ship had the most irrefutable official content. whether you find that to be compelling enough to call one or more of these ships "canon" is not a judgement i can make. ultimately, there's no way to be completely objective. determining one scene as romantic and another as not romantic is not a purely scientific process. but i will outline the process that i used below!

how did i determine what media was included

not all ff7 content was included here. i decided to go with media i thought was representative of the remake continuity. the reason for this was to avoid doubling up on the same events, and also to be more in line with the new content, which is considered separate from the old content. i did not include the ultimania because despite this post proving the contrary, i do have a life, and going through all the ultimania plus their various translations sounded exhausting.

ff7 remake and intermission -- obviously, this was included as the central piece of media in the new continuity

crisis core -- having been recently remastered, this was included; i also felt that having been remastered spoke to its overall importance to the new content

advent children -- the developers of ff7 have noted that advent children is a piece of the new compilation as well, so it was included

trace of two pasts and picturing the past -- these two novellas told from tifa and aerith's perspective are the most recent additions to the ff7 remake franchise and were included

additionally, i included all four trailers for ff7 rebirth because of personal and fandom interest!

what scenes were included

to be as objective as possible, i looked at multiple sources to make judgements on what could be included "shipping content" for each ship. this meant browsing social media, for the most part. this way, i was not relying solely on whether or not i interpreted scenes as romantic.

initially, a tally across all 4 works yielded the following content/scene count (shown on the first graph above!):

CloTi: 54

Clerith: 35

Zerith: 30

to get this count, all scenes were included regardless of 1) whether they were interpreted for multiple ships, and 2) whether they were optional. this is simply a total of all scenes across all content.

how i narrowed it down

for the sake of maintaining objectivity, i made a few adjustments to the first tally. not all scenes could be considered objectively ship content, even with the benchmarks i was using. so additional rules were put in place and scenes were taken out if they met the following conditions:

optional: all optional scenes were removed. neither tifa nor aerith's resolution was included in the final count. the train sequence with tifa and cloud was also removed.

one-sided: this one hurt my heart a little.... but for the sake of objectivity, any scenes that were one-sided on tifa and aerith's part were removed. you might be wondering "why not cloud"? and the simple answer is because the love triangle debate about canon is centered around him. regarding Zerith, i removed scenes that were one-sided on zack's part using the same logic. i want to be clear that in no way am i criticizing any of these characters for having one-sided or unreciprocated ship scenes, nor am i of the mindset that cloud's affection has more or less value than anyone else's. this was just the best way to achieve an objective result and answer the question i posed.

multiple interpretations: scenes that can be interpreted as being for multiple of the included ships were not included for either ship. a notable example would be: cloud and aerith's scene in the park which can be counted as both Clerith and Zerith content. another example would be leslie's flower necklace, which is often attributed to both Clerith and CloTi.

the final tally

after eliminating those scenes, the new number of scenes for each ship was as follows (shown on the second graph above!):

CloTi: 33

Clerith: 22

Zerith: 19

as you can see by comparing the graphs, the results did not change much.

conclusion: based on the metric of current total romantic scenes together across the current remake ff7 compilation, CloTi has the majority of content at 44.6%, followed by Clerith with 29.7% and Zerith with 25.7%.

what does this mean? basically nothing -- a ship having the most content is not necessarily an indication of "who ends up with who". like real life, fictional romantic is dynamic and rarely ever linear. a couple that has many scenes together in the first half of a movie might not see each other for 40 minutes of run time toward the end. realistically, the same could be said here. at the same time, what is shown above could very well indicate the tone of the story moving forward -- there is no way to predict where the plot will go!

but i had fun looking into this from an objective pov and i hope you found this interesting, if not thought-provoking!

final thoughts

maths and numbers and whatnot is a fun little interest of mine, as is ff7! i am open to adding to this work (for example, calculating totals for each work individually, comparing them, etc.) if there's enough interest :)

additionally, i am opening my ask box for questions and comments! think i may have missed something? let me know!!!

[icharchivist]

f///f 7 new trailer related salt i'm so sorry for that but bear with me

also will include spoilers to the 1997 game.

god it sucks, the Re//birth trailer looks so nice graphicwise but i keep thinking back to the plot stuff they showed and. I guess i really can't accept the fact the "remake" is actually a stealth sequel and i really don't vibe with what they're doing with it it's making me so sad.

with the first part i was already on the fence not really liking the idea, the main thing is like. I think we're losing all the subtility of the original in some way which is kinda baffling that 25 years later i find it so. vulgar?

I had this pet peeve already with the way they utilized Sephiroth in the first part, considering he just keeps popping up / have a boss battle despite it being the one part of the OG where Sephiroth /doesn't/ appear and is just mentioned a lot, which is meant to build up to him. And ofc the choice is rooted on how they couldn't leave Sephiroth out of the game while he's soo popular (tho it's also the same reason they showed Zack and i'm still so mad at that), and so they rooted the whole "stealth sequel" around him, with Sephiroth not being the one of the main timeline but of the post-AC timeline. Like. Guh whatever.

But that was the intention they were going with anyway, considering the stealth sequel aspect of it, and all in all, it's in character for Sephiroth to do that. I just hate that they called the game a remake and then put Sequel Sephiroth in it.

But the Re///birth trailer kinda hammered in stuff i was on the fence about and i'm hhhh.

I hate that Tifa says aloud in the trailer, even to Aerith, that she doesn't remember Cloud being there during the Nibelheim Incident.

The subtle build up to her uncertainty in the OG were so good, it gets genuinely so unsettling to see that she /is/ hiding something from Cloud but you don't really get what it is, especially while the game was building up something was wrong with Cloud and we had no clue what it was exactly.

The remake already kinda was already far less subtle about Cloud's deal already and just, downright spoiled it with that ending anyway (i hate it i'm sorry😭 take it from Zack Fangirl #1 i absolutely hate how they showed him in the game)

But god i hate it, i hate how it's just genuinely telling you exactly what's up in some way.

bc the confrontation with Sephiroth in the OG is so fucking good. Sephiroth gaslighting Cloud into telling him he doesn't actually exist, that he's just Sephiroth's clone and it's why Sephiroth can manipulate him so well, that he wasn't there during the Nibelheim incident, and him turning to Tifa for support and you realize that *this* is what Tifa's weird behavior has been building up to: that she can't actually reassure Cloud with remembering the reality Sephiroth is making *both* of them doubt at that moment.

Like in the OG it builds almost like this moment of fooling the player into thinking Sephiroth is right the same way it fools Cloud. What the OG does so well is that it gaslights you the same way it gaslights Cloud. And it does it by removing one of THE Pilar of your certainty. Because you trust that Tifa is the One Person who won't lie to you, who was there from the start, who's always been there for Cloud. And sure you don't get why something is wrong with her most of the game but therefore this moment hits so hard.

Honestly i feel like we're losing the actual impact of the gaslighting plotline anyway completely with how much we already revealed about Cloud's past in the remake (they shouldn't have showed Zack they shouldn't have showed Zack i'm SO mad). And perhaps i'm just mad because one of the big reason i imprinted so much on ff7 when i did, and why it became such a formative part of my life, is how much i identified and related to that specific plotline to start with.

Instead in the trailer they also have Sephiroth tell you Jenova can change appearance and replace people in your life and then he tells Cloud "you saw me kill [Tifa] so how can you believe she's the real her?" and i find it. so fucking vulgar.

Yeah makes sense for AC!Sephiroth to aim specifically in having Cloud doubting the people he loves, since he knows this is Cloud's strength. But, aside from the fact we're changing the dynamic between Cloud and Sephiroth already (by completely losing how slowly Sephiroth saw Cloud as a threat, since now he knows Cloud is HIS nemesis), I just think it fucking sucks and doesn't have the actual punch the original had.

Sephiroth managed to control Cloud body and soul, he almost pushed him to kill the people he loved, he pushed him to trigger the apocalypse, he made him doubt he was an actual person, Sephiroth made Cloud his by wrapping his vision of reality, by abusing of the way Cloud couldn't trust his own memories. Trying to isolate him from his friends by having doubted them just feel like a massive downgrade to me.

Like yeah makes sense that post AC Sephiroth wouldn't use the same manipulation tactics. But that might also be why it shouldn't have been a timeline fuckery to start with.

Also i find the expositionary line extremely clunky, i don't remember the Jenova reveal to have come *this* soon in the timeline but whatever, it's a trailer anyway.

And anyway i've seen people kinda joke about it with like "what if they kill Tifa instead of Aerith this time" and i'm genuinely so jaded it genuinely makes me angry. Aerith's Death had so many layers, in plot and thematic and were so intrically linked to who she is as a person. Tifa dying would just be the shock value people have wrongfully claimed Aerith's death was all along all those years. And if they're genuinely doing that like. making us doubt if Tifa is going to survive to try to have us buy into the (already very cruel imo) "will Aerith survive?", i just find it absolutely lame.

I wanted to like those games. I've been waiting for them since 2015, it was all i ever talked about.

But between the remake bait and switch and the various decisions they're taking, it's just making me sad.

And even just taking the game as a sequel instead of a remake doesn't work on me because i find it rather rude. Like the complains about "why would fans want a fully remade game when they can just replay the original" (because people don't play 1997 games and because it's kinda sad that the rest of the saga has elaborate graphisms and not this one), with having enemies from the remake being "keepers of the canon" and how now it's all about "the future isn't set in stone"

it kinda kills me because i never pinned f//f7 to be a story about fate. f//f15 is, in a way, and would totally earn having a twist on "this is not set in stone, we can change things".

but f///f7 is so much about grief, about nature, about accepting that things went wrong, that horrors happen but you have to carry on, you can't rewrite it. Cloud has tried rewritting his life and it didn't end well, he had to accept what happened to him. And instead we get a game that is all "actually you can rewrite what tragedies are about to happen". it just. sighs.

man i'm sad that i'm this sad about it.

i'll finish playing the remake and sure i'll play re//birth, on every other aspect it seems nice.

But man. this excitement from years ago just turned into pure dread and i'm absolutely not excited about the game, and it really makes me sad.

[red9]

I have a lot of thoughts about Luis I've yet to post on here. So below will be a rambling of headcanons I want to put out to the world. I know Luis’ backstory has changed in the new game, so chances are I will come back and update these thoughts next week when I get my hands on the game. One thing with my interpretation though is that he will be a mix of the old and new game. ( Below there are some spoilers from what I’ve learned from leaks under the cut so a warning ahead of time. )

A big part of Luis that I wanted to touch on was his struggle with Las Plagas. In the original game, we get little to no information as to what exactly he did within his time serving Los Illuminados and experimenting with it. It’s stated he’s a researcher, but not much else. It’s always implied he helps create the various monsters Leon fights in the game, but never outright stated apart from his wiki. It’s clear throughout his notes scattered after his death that he was in the testing chambers in the original game, but it becomes more clear within the remake.

During the remake Luis himself states that the laboratory that the machine used to remove plagas is in his personal lab. For me this clearly shows that throughout his years as a researcher for Los Illuminados, his role was clearly to infect and study the reactions the human body would have after long term exposure. This is probably also due to his prior employment under Umbrella ( which is new lore in the remake, ) probably working in a similar field of injecting human hosts with whatever parasites / viruses and studying the results.

I’m not sure if it’s stated in the remake, but for my own personal interpretation I will be keeping some aspects and relationships of Luis’ the same. One of those being the relationship between both he and Saddler. After the viral outbreak in RE2, Umbrella was inevitably shut down, leaving Luis to have to find work elsewhere. It was during that time he was hired by Saddler, and began work under Los Illuminados to continue his studies and began research with las plagas.

Timeline wise he worked for Osmund for years, and became one of his most trusted assistants. During that time, though it’s never stated, I fully believe Saddler began to inject Luis with Las Plagas as well. Sort of a test of loyalty, something to keep him on a leash. And in all reality? There are view scientists within the realm of Resident Evil who don’t eventually give in and test on themselves- Luis included. Why through curiosity, and pressure under Osmund, he began regular injections, and eventually feeling the negative side effects because of it.

Be it through mind control via the lord, intense headaches and the like, Luis began the research and development of removing and exterminating the plagas to try and save himself and escape. That testing started with other villagers with much trial and error, creating suppressants and eventually the extraction process via the chair. However, by the time he was able to find a solution, he was far beyond being able to be saved. Hence why he knew that if the parasite were to grow too big, it would latch onto the host, and killing it would therefore kill the host as well. Not just from watching experiments on others, but from his own personal experience. Why Luis would take regular doses to suppress his own growth, and why, he himself in a desperate attempt has gone under the chair, almost killing himself in the process. Luis has also been a regular smoker as well, but after cutting off from Saddler and those injections regularly give him, it was his way of coping with those withdrawals. That and there’s that part of him that hopes with every cigarette he might be killing the thing inside him.

In knowing he can’t completely rid himself of it, he settles for regular injections to keep the parasite in him at its weakest possible state, hoping that through Ada he could be saved. Most likely he would end up working under Wesker, but what he wants more than anything is to just be free and drop off the radar from everything. It’s why he’s desperate for an out, because the longer he’s there, the more Saddler becomes aware of just how weak the plagas is inside him.

During the events of the old game I believe this was why he was able to track down Luis within the castle. He can still see through his eyes via the hive mind of the plagas ( however weak that connection might be, ) and sense him when he's close enough. Not to mention within the old game it’s clear why Luis would die, pierced in the chest, but during the events of the new game it’s Krauser who stabs him once- and it’s enough to do him in. Both of these deaths share one thing in common: they are straight through the center of his chest. Piercing vital organs is one thing, but especially dying to the hands of Krauser, I can easily see it as him also stabbing the plagas within Luis, being another reason he dies.

Another random little thing with the plagas, it’s sort of representational being located in the center of his chest. Close to the heart / the center of his body in a way symbolizing faith, religion, etc. Ironic for him who deems himself a scientist, one who, despite having some religious influence in his younger years, always questioned the existence of god. The plagas for him was something real, tangible, and something very much to believe in. This belief, faith, religion, this thing people worship becomes attached to him and he can’t get rid of it and inevitably is something that also is the reason he dies. I'll eventually elaborate further on his years under Saddler, following along with the cult and his realization that what he's doing is wrong later on down the line.

Anyway yeah that’s basically it. Luis being infected and having no way to fix it? It just makes sense to me. No matter what his outcome he would always been doomed in the end. That’s all!

[sukimas]

i think the nintendo switch had a bunch of really revolutionary and awesome games in the first two years after its release and after that it's basically been spinning its wheels

the only game i've been excited about on this system since early 2020 was engage; i was excited about acnh but that was disappointing. nothing on this damned system has fulfilled its promises since kirby star allies and three houses and even those have major flaws

i'm a pretty strong kirby fan and i'm just incredibly mad about the forgotten land after the RTDL remaster; it has basically no platforming, the puzzles are all gimmicks (i did not have any difficulty with a single puzzle room) and the boss fights are the only thing that makes the game interesting; which is completely destroyed by the ability upgrade system.

speaking of the ability upgrades, none of them really do anything new. they just make the original better, with a couple exceptions (gigant sword's guard, etc.) there's no reason to use the original versions. therefore, there are low numbers of abilities.

meanwhile the rtdl remake added sand and mecha, two really interesting abilities that play well into the game environments, and magolor mode, which is full of content AND very fun to play.

scarlet and violet also have this big open world, but they don't do anything interesting with it. why does legends arceus have a more interesting way to engage with wild pokemon. who cares about how finished it is or isn't, why are there no puzzles or gameplay challenges? who cares about fucking multiplayer raids? backwards longjumping on your box legend is the only interesting gameplay element.

i don't care about fucking exploring a world if there's nothing interesting to do in it!

why is the only thing a video game wants to do on the nintendo switch post-2020 just "have a neat story"?

why is FUCKING FIRE EMBLEM ENGAGE the only GAME on this GAME CONSOLE in the past year by a first-party developer?

intelligent systems constantly shits the bed and god knows fire emblem fans hate fire emblem. how do you manage to make less interesting games than they do?

i hate how every game nowadays is a walking simulator with a story attached.

[monkeyfish2021]

Fun to join, so why not! Wall of text incoming and links on the bottom! 🤩

1. I made a decision to try killing a popular character in a story, even though many readers might be put off by it and not want to continue reading. It made it interesting to see how the other characters were affected by it, and continue their own growth or deterioration because of it. Would I do it again? Yes. Yes I would.

2. I’ve been working on 8 different stories this year; multi chapters, stand-alones, and WIPs that have yet to see the light of day.

3. I’ve learned that I develop ideas much better when brainstorming them with a friend! 🥰

4. Since all I’ve written is Final Fantasy 7 fics, I’d have to say that FF7 Remake is the media that has inspired me the most.

5. I wrote exclusively for Final Fantasy 7 😂

6. Tifa/Reno is the ship nearest and dearest to my heart now and for always ❤️ However, during Whumptober I tried to include other rarepairs that I love, including Tifa/Leslie, Tifa/Zack and Tifa/Sonon!

7. Reno is a constant source of fascination and a muse for exploring different states of anguish, angst and hurt 😂 He therefore also needs some love sometimes.

8. I did not write for a new fandom this year, nor did I visit ships I haven’t previously written for.

9. I think that completing Momentary Bliss this year is what meant the most to me. It’s been three years in the making, and it was such bittersweet relief posting the epilogue 🥰

10. The fic it made me the happiest to work on must have been, ironically, the Whumptober prompts! Giving myself a challenge with a restricted word count per chapter of 100 words was so much fun, and it made me able to finish all 31 prompts, both due to my enthusiasm and each chapter not taking too long to complete!

11. Most satisfying to complete is again Momentary Bliss. Just in terms of completing something I worked on for so long, it was very rewarding!

12. I had a really hard time focusing around the time of Zifafest, so I was only able to finish one of the three prompts I wanted to, and I realize I find it really difficult to write Zack. Maybe that will change once Rebirth comes out 😅

13. Whumptober was the easiest to write 😂 I guess I could also say that parts of a series I’m working on that is not yet published can also classify as partly easy, due to it just being FUN!

14. Shortest: The epitome of a perfect package (2,448 words), and longest, at completion this year: Momentary Bliss (114,594 words) 😱

15. I guess my Fic Rec of mine from this year would have to be either Momentary Bliss or Whumptober, with my new longfic Safehouse a close second (third?😂).

16. Sad to say I don’t have a particular song or playlist to listen to while I write, although I listen to a lot of soundtrack music generally in the background. Hans Zimmer is a regular go-to.

17. Go-to writing snacks: A cup of Earl Grey tea, and something I can keep picking at, like Cheez Doodles or M&Ms. Maybe a couple of biscuits.

18. ALL OF THEM ARE HARD TO TITLE! Titles are the freakin bane of my existence. But if I have to choose one? The epitome of a perfect package.

19. Literally can’t choose, I’m not very good with great opening lines. Feels like I need a paragraph to set the scene.

20. “Ignoring the guilty ache in his chest telling him they were doomed, he held her tightly.” maybe. From the Whumptober 2023 drabbles.

21. Favourite piece of dialogue might be Reno’s conversation with Aurora di Salvo in Safehouse. Not gonna copy the whole thing in here 😂

22. An excerpt from one of my favourite scenes from 2023:

As he’s squatting low and trying to catch his breath, bullets are still hitting the car, and voices of encouragement and frustration spur the shooter on to continue.

Shrieks and shouting can vaguely be heard from the end of the street, and when he peeks that way, Reno sees people running away from the alleyway. The shooter across the street jumps out of the window and aims his gun Reno’s way as soon as his feet hit the ground.

What would Rude do in this situation? Fuck, Reno wants to bounce ideas off him, that’s how they work best: A terrible idea from Reno that Rude makes less so. Rude would probably lay low in this situation, get out while they could, reassess with Tseng and potentially move in on the mob together.

But Rude… They shot him. He wouldn’t get to be the reasonable voice in Reno’s head ever again. How the fuck would he avoid making mistakes now? Trusting himself? No, fuck that.

They couldn’t get away with this. Fuck this stakeout, fuck this being surveillance only, fuck the mob, fuck them and their fucking capo; they killed Rude and they would not get away with it.

A red haze falls around him and he unclasps his electric mag-rod, extending it with an effortless flick of his wrist. The electricity crackles satisfyingly with the push of a button, and the comforting feeling of the handle serves as an anchor to his new mission.

Reno takes a deep breath and feels a rage-filled calm come over him.

For Rude.

Then he runs.

23. Final version of a sentence or paragraph I struggled with:

Fear chokes him. What will he do if he can’t keep the shadows at bay this way? He must convince her otherwise.

It was really hard for me to properly convey anxiety and fear with the limited word count I had left of my drabble for the Alleyway prompt, and I had some help from @bouncymouse to make it convey more of the feeling I was going for! ❤️

24. Something that surprised me while working on a fic… Maybe having an epiphany about a plot point later in the story that would work really well (yet to be written or published)?

25. I use Notion to write, my phone notes to write down ideas during the day, and Google Docs to format before I publish to Ao3!

26. The most satisfying writing moment for me this year might be when I really got into the groove with Safehouse, and wrote down the first draft to 4-5 chapters in a very short amount of time (for me). The energy that comes from a new idea that just needs to come alive is really exciting!

27. I did not do anything special to celebrate completing a fic…. 😅

28. Recharging between fics for me is just about taking a break to refocus my head onto the new idea, or to find a new idea if I have nothing already thought up.

29. No one mentioned, no one forgotten! But as a whole, the beautiful people in the ReTi server and Tifa’s Harem who are supportive, enthusiastic and generally amazing to be able to communicate and cooperate with! ❤️

30. In 2024, I want to continue Safehouse, and get one of the WIP series I’m already working on published! If I have time to join another event, I’d like to try to do that too! 🤩

Thanks for reading!

Here are the fics mentioned:

- Momentary Bliss

- Safehouse

- Whumptober 2023

- The epitome of a perfect package (for Zifafest)

fic writer asks

What’s something new that you tried in a fic this year? How did it turn out and would you do it again?

How many fics did you work on this year? (They don’t have to be finished or published!)

What’s something you learned about yourself as a writer?

What piece of media inspired you the most?

What fandom(s) did you write for this year?

What ship(s) captured your heart?

What character(s) captured your heart?

Did you write for a new fandom or ship this year?

What fic meant the most to you to write?

What fic made you feel the happiest to work on?

What fic was the most satisfying to finish writing?

What fic was the most difficult to write? Did you finish it?

What fic was the easiest to write?

What were your shortest and longest fics this year?

Rec a fic you wrote or posted in 2023

What were you go-to writing songs?

What were your go-to writing snacks?

What was the hardest fic to title?

Share your favorite opening line

Share your favorite ending line

Share your favorite piece of dialogue

Share an excerpt from your favorite scene

Share the final version of a sentence or paragraph you struggled with. What about it was challenging? Are you happy with how it turned out?

What's something that surprised you while you were working on a fic? Did it change the story?

What did you use to write? (e.g. writing programs, paper & pen, etc.)

If you had to choose one, what was THE most satisfying writing moment of your year?

Did you do anything special to celebrate finishing a fic?

How did you recharge between fics?

If this were an awards show, who would you thank?

What’s something that you want to write in 2024?

[frutigeraerosims]

i made a sim inspired by mana-sama, and i was quite happy with my work, i thought i did a good job and i had fun. i take him into the game to take some photos and... he doesn't really look good. i have no idea what happened. this was my first time playing the sims 3 in a while so maybe my graphics card stopped being recognized or something? i'll need to look into this more. but here he is, regardless. on a horse and in sunlit tides. i wish i was this sim right now!

i'm thinking of starting a legacy challenge. i have never done such a challenge before since i normally play premade sims. but it's such a common experience, i think i better try it.

the question is where it would be set and what i would do. i like to have certain themes for my playthroughs, for which features are focused on, where it is set, what sims are played, etc. for the legacy, at least the first gen, i would quite like to do an island paradise theme. i was thinking maybe island + horses, but maybe that's too much.

the issue is, i have actually played in isla paradiso before and, despite using ellacharmed fixed world and probably every fix that exists, i had a bad experience. it was laggy and i suffered through bugs that completely ruined the experience, particularly with scuba diving. this was really disappointing because i loved the scuba diving when it worked properly, it reminded me of the wonderful game "endless ocean: blue world".

therefore, if i tried this, i would definitely want to use a small custom world. but, ideally, a small custom world with dive spots and uncharted islands. i really want the isla paradiso experience, just in a more compact world that hopefully runs better. and it has to be tropical, of course!

i heard of a sunlit tides remake (or possibly 2 of them, unclear) that includes IP features. this sounds great since sunlit tides is said to be the smoothest running EA world. however, NO trace of these remains on the internet that i can find.

i'm going to keep looking for the perfect world for the legacy and hopefully i can find one. just so i remember, it needs dive spots, uncharted islands, and rabbit holes (or at least room to place them).

then we come to the issue of sims. the reason why i don't usually play my own sims is because i have a hard time feeling connected to them the way i can connect to the premades. with premades, it feels more like they weren't just plopped into existence. but legacy challenge, i guess you're supposed to make your own sim, right? so maybe i'll play my new guy i made that looks like mana-sama. but he doesn't really seem like the sort who would go scuba diving and live on a houseboat, does he? so maybe i'm back to square one and i need to try and create a new founder.

another aspect of this issue is which sims would populate the town (if i use an unpopulated world). i won't just let the game generate townies, i can't stand them. but this isn't a big issue, i'll just look for cc-free sims online and plop them down. it can be hard to find families and not just single sims, though.

in essence, i think trying out a legacy challenge would be a good way to get back into the sims after not playing it for a while. i just need to iron out all these issues.

this is my first blog post. i know no one's gonna read it, but that's fine. i just like the idea of having an online blog so i'll have one.