#100 Random Character Development Questions

[flawseer]

Became curious based on a Smaugust piece: What are your thoughts on everyone's favorite royal suck-up, Pike? (also ofc compliments to your writing and art)

Surprise, I am still kicking. And thus my Sisyphean quest to answer all the questions in my inbox continues.

I like Pike. I used to think moderately favorably of him, but pondering this question and then drawing a bunch of pictures of and about him made me realize that, yeah, I am rather fond of him. He is funny and cute in the same way a small, yappy dog is.

I remember once talking to my partner about Pike and I asked: "Do you think the JMA staff has to deal with Pike constantly trying to sleep in the hallway in front of Anemone's room?" Only to then realize, upon re-reading the books, that this actually happens in canon. I was thrilled.

Most of the time when people ask me what I think of a character, they want to hear what my take on them is, so I'll get into that.

Background

I don't think a lot is known about Pike's life, outside him having been assigned as Anemone's (questionably) covert bodyguard. He is one of those background characters that fill out the student roster at JMA but don't get a lot of development, though he is one of the more lucky ones as he gets comparatively more lines and scenes than, say, Barracuda, or Garnet.

We don't ever hear about his home life or familial situation, but I think he comes from a common military family. Not a particularly prestigious one, but rather one of middling significance. I imagine one of his ancestors--like his great grandmother--once made it to captain and ever since the whole family has prided themselves on their military legacy and loyalty to the Seawing throne, even though nobody else really knows who they are.

Pike's parents are both bottom rung palace guards; trusted enough to be stationed vaguely near the seat of government over a remote outpost, but nothing more. As is tradition in their family, they signed up as soon as they were old enough to hold a trident. Pike was expected to follow in their footsteps, and so did the same. He is naturally eager to please, doesn't ask many questions, and knows how to follow orders, so he took to this life relatively well.

One thing immediately apparent when observing Pike is that he is very blunt, headstrong, and reckless. He is prone to self-injury and mishaps, routinely making a tail end of himself during exercises. One day, I imagine, he was out in the courtyard, practicing his combat maneuvers, when he somehow managed to trap himself underneath a training dummy in a humiliating way. Unbeknownst to him, the Queen and Princess were walking past a window overlooking this scene, and the latter happened to spot him.

Princess Anemone, starved for normal social contact due to being permanently leashed to her overbearing mother, immediately took a liking to the clumsy guard and wished to take Pike into her service. The Queen though, hated the idea. Anything she couldn't control with 100% certainty was not to be let near her only living daughter. She didn't even let her own sons approach the Princess for this very reason. So she refused.

But Anemone, sensing an opportunity to finally snatch a tiny mote of control over her own life, didn't relent. She would never overtly defy her mother, but pushed back against her in the most passively aggressive way she could muster. She WOULD have this one thing that was hers, no matter how many times she had to sigh wistfully or forget to eat.

Coral meanwhile still disliked the idea, but after some pondering figured this could work to her advantage. Granting her daughter this favor would make her grateful, and thus easier to keep in check. It was not like the boy would be able to do anything undesirable since she would always be there to watch anyway. And if he ever displeased her, a random guard was easier to dispose of without turning heads, than if she let Anemone play with one of her brothers.

So eventually, she acquiesced, and extracted Pike from the palace guard to assign him to her daughter's protection.

The news hit Pike's family like lightning. Suddenly, after decades of being nobodies with delusions of grandeur, the whole palace was paying genuine attention to them, and the new recruit who, overnight, got assigned to be the Princess' personal retainer. Pike's parents took him aside and impressed on him how important of a task this was. If he did his job well and kept the Princess content and safe, not only would the current Queen think favorably of all of them, but Anemone would remember his service and reward him once she took the throne herself. For his sake and theirs, this was an opportunity not to be squandered.

And thus, Pike shouldered this great responsibility suddenly thrust onto his wings and embraced being Anemone's personal servant and protector. Pushed forward by his sense of honor and loyalty, a desire not to disappoint his family, and the knowledge that, if he were to fail and lose the only heir, Queen Coral would surely kill him.

Day-to-day life

Pike takes his duty very seriously, both out of loyalty to his liege, and because of how much is at stake for him personally. I picture him getting up during the small hours each morning and beginning his daily exercise routine, to stay in shape for his job. His roommate Flame often wakes up to him noisily doing squats in the middle of the sleeping cave and yells at him. "Am I cursed to be tormented by a diminutive idiot Seawing wherever I go!??!" Pike is lucky that his other roommate, Bigtail, is a heavy sleeper. Otherwise the training session would likely be cut short, with Pike tied to the ceiling lamp.

After wrecking Flame's sleep, Pike usually seeks out Anemone and attempts to stay near her at all times. Initially this caused friction between him and the teachers, as he would often skip his own classes to attend Anemone's. He only stopped doing this when Tsunami made it clear skipping classes would get him sent home, and thus away from Anemone permanently.

As they spent time at the Academy, the Princess began to get better and better at giving Pike the slip whenever she got fed up with his overprotectiveness. He freaks out whenever she vanishes, which is often. To help manage his stress, the JMA staff make him attend regular seminars on inner peace and meditation hosted by Fatespeaker. He is not very good at it, but enjoys the exercises that involve listening to running water.

He began to mellow out for a bit after initial growing pains, until the History cave incident occurred. The bombing shook him back into the bodyguard mindset and he began sleeping in the hallway outside of Anemone's sleeping cave. It weirds out Ostrich whenever she has to climb over him. Attempts to get him to stop this have been unfruitful. The current policy seems to be to let him do this until things calm down and he stops on his own.

Anything else

I believe Pike may have a thing for Rainwings. He is generally hyper-aggressive and rude towards everyone he talks to, with two notable exceptions. One of them is Anemone, whom he is sworn to serve and keep safe. The other is Tamarin, whom he is uncharacteristically kind to. My personal impression is that he may have a bit of a crush on her, but keeps himself from pursuing it as to not upset Anemone.

To my knowledge, Pike never really interacts with Turtle. That is a shame, because I would like to know how they would get along. Pike may be greatly disappointed at Turtle's general un-regal-ness, but still begrudgingly respect him out of obligation. I can picture a scene where he berates Turtle for his demeanor, only for someone else to chime in with an affirmative "Yeah Turtle, you suck", upon which Pike turns around and starts ripping into them about disrespecting Seawing royalty.

Concerningly, Pike's future is very uncertain. He is actually in grave danger right now. If Queen Coral ever finds out that he allowed a murderous, seawing-hating ancient wizard to abduct Anemone, she will have some opinions on that. If Coral has one consistent character trait, it is homicidal vengefulness against anyone who fails to protect her children, regardless of circumstance, regardless even if the perpetrator IS one of her children. That means there is a very real chance she will recall Pike from Jade Mountain and try to tear him apart.

I don't think Anemone would allow this to happen, mind you. She has been privy to her mother dragging poor sods out to the plaza to rip their teeth out, enough to recognize the signs of it coming. If she suspected Pike's life was in danger, I believe she would prevent him from leaving.

For now though, he remains at Jade Mountain, doing the best he can with the responsibility he was dealt, acting as Princess Anemone's retainer. It is a difficult, stressful, at times thankless job, but he would not have it any other way.

"Honor, and duty."

[solgsts]

squid game season 3 was a waste of incredible characters, talent and plot.

my take on whatever just happened because i can’t keep it in LMAO:

the lack of screen time for gihun and inho was genuinely one of the worst things they could have done; gihun doesn’t know that inho and junho are brothers, inhos backstory, how inho was in the same position as him etc. gihun asked no questions when he had the opportunity, which is so out of character and takes away from the plot completely.

the amount of mischaracterisation. of course, i’m just saying this as a fan, but what they did with daeho made absolutely no sense in general, or for him as a character. while on the topic of daeho, it made no sense for gihun to hunt him down and murder him with his bare hands. gihun’s character has always been against violence, always putting his morals first but fighting back when needed. the attack was so incredibly out of character and unneeded. further, myunggi’s character was completely misconstrued (to clarify, i am anything BUT a myunggi glazer i’ve disliked that ho since s2😭). yes, he was an asshole, but he clearly did not kill just for fun. he made his care for junhee evident throughout s2 and even the beginning of s3, so why the fuck did they decide to take his smaller traits of valuing money and violence so far and make him go batshit crazy? it makes very little sense.

junhee and her baby. why, WHY was the baby the main character? the women were all killed off as soon as possible, the baby was prioritised over the mother; the misogyny isn’t even hidden anymore. gihun was barely even the main character. at this point, it honestly feels like squidgame was to encourage the increase of south korean birthrates????😭

the finalists. why were they a bunch of randoms? there were so many well built characters; hyunju, daeho, namgyu, who could’ve provided a much more in depth and intense fight (like namgyu v minsu) with ACTUAL BACKGROUND. these characters were people none of us cared about, because they were not developed whatsoever!!!!! player 100 somehow made it all the way through by being a man and a cunt, hyunju deserved better.

hwang brothers. “Hyung… why?!” that’s fucking it. that’s IT. junho acquired a fucking baby and some new yaoi but didn’t even get to talk to his brother after searching for so long? their relationship didn’t get developed at all this season and it just feels so out of place.

noeul’s storyline. i like her, and i believe she could’ve been a good character, so why did they introduce a side plot that has absolutely NO relevance to anything else? like yeah, it was cute, he got out and saved his daughter, but WHY DID IT HAPPEN??? THERE IS NO EXPLANATION OR BUILDING ON IT!!!

the queer baiting media.

thank you if you read my rant. 💗

+++ namgyu was honestly funny as fuck (though i feel like he was mischaracterised a bit too), but WHYYYY was his death so bleak and just BRUSHED OFF like that💔💔💔

[directdogman]

Hi, I hope you're having a decent day! I'm sorry if this is an invasive set of questions - feel free not to answer - but do you still actively like DSaF as your own creation, or is it more of a "it was fun while it lasted but i outgrew it and it's for the best to leave it behind" kind of project? Do you ever regret making the games? If you knew they would get so popular, is there anything you would have changed about them? Is there anywhere I could read more of your writing.

It fluctuates a bit. These last couple of years, I've really just been sorta nostalgic for it. I've seen a lot of people discuss those games being a source of comfort during bad times in their lives, people talking about how much the characters mean to them and it's hard not to smile when you see that.

It's a funny thing for close friends of yours to see people WITH fanmade DSaF merch out in the wild, or to watch a random youtube video and being hit with a DSaF reference outta nowhere. It happens from time to time, even today. On a few occasions, I've even had a person reference my work to me in real life and not realize who they were talking to, believe it or not. It's really fun to play dumb and get someone to explain your work to you like you don't know what it is.

I certainly didn't think any of that would happen when I first made the series, or even during development. I think the normal assumption would be to look at DSaF as it exists now and assume its release was a peak for it, but believe it or not, the official discord only had 30 people in it shortly before 3 dropped! The archive listing of the series (reposted to a single page after the series ended) is now sitting at over 1.1 MILLION downloads.

People kinda assume the true heyday of something is when it's new, when it's fresh and novel. For instance, some people look back at when FNaF itself was new and see that time as its peak because it had a lot of internet cultural relevance as big new indie thing on the block. But, raw numbers don't lie. The series has been continually growing since its conception and that growth has similarly bled over to its fan projects. This explains why DSaF, despite not having a new series release in almost 6 years, seems to be inexplicably growing.

Just recently, I saw someone post footage of a scene from DSaF 2 on Twitter, which got over 16k likes. People praised its writing and largely celebrated the scene. The ironic thing about that particular scene is that I remembered being unsure if it was good or not, so I showed it off in one of the FNaF community hubs. The response was broadly lukewarm to negative. Now, it's held up as one of the best scenes in those games. That's kind of the point I'm trying to make, my thoughts on the series have certainly changed with everyone's else with years of hindsight.

Heh. I'm not sure if I've talked about this in a long time, but y'know, the very first scene I implemented in-game was actually the very first Phone Guy scene in DSaF 1, more or less exactly how it appears in-game today. This was before I'd even written the bulk of the game. I was pretty unfamiliar with visual novels as a whole, pretty unsure if something like this would be palatable to a fandom that was really just used to sit 'n' survive stuff that were far more gameplay than text. I mean, there wasn't any FNaF fangames really LIKE DSaF before that point. Closest was FNaFb, a jokey turn based RPG made in the same engine.

The engine I made the game in is also not exactly fit for VNs out of the box either, and I wasn't 100% sure the idea would actually work. But, the very first time I added the image of the prize corner, Phone Guy, the audio of that iconic cheesy stock track and booted up a test screen, I had a little moment where I said "Oh. I think I'm onto something interesting here." I kinda remembering instantly realizing in that single moment how much potential the idea had. Over 8 years later, I still remember that moment like it was yesterday.

I think lately, that's the sort of stuff I think of when I see people coming to me and asking about the series. Yes, it's really rough around the edges, yes, there's jokes that've aged poorly. But, it is a source of comfort for people and entertains tens of thousands of people each month. And that's gotta count for something, right?

[glitter-stained]

The thing about the Killing Joke as a comic, Barbara's disgusting fridging aside, isn't just that it's nasty because it's a comic centered around the Joker's character (which is always gonna be psychophobic since the moment they decided to make "madness" his defining trait) or that it establishes his backstory following a psychophobic trope (especially since that trope is questioned in the story). It's not even entirely about how it blatantly does the amalgam between madness, specifically psychosis, and being evil/doing villainous things.

No, The Killing Joke is vile because the whole fucking point of the book is blaming mentally ill people's weak/evil character for "succumbing" to mental illness.

Like seriously, what happens in TKJ? We learn about how the Joker was "made", and Joker decides to turn Gordon to the evil side by traumatizing him "that's what the One Bad Day" thing is about. So he does a bunch of bullshit, shoots Barbara, strips her naked, might or might not have raped her, and shoots a bunch of pictures of her in that situation, and then kidnaps Gordon, also strips him, and forces him to see huge projections of those pictures. Then Batman comes, and later there's a fight, where Batman tells the Joker that Gordon is fine actually and the Joker is wrong, it doesn't take one bad day to succumb to psychosis as a way to escape reality, there was just something inherently wrong with the Joker specifically that caused him to develop psychosis.

Behold:

"crawl under a rock with all the other slimy things when trouble hits..." (To be clear, this is in 100% response to Joker's statement that psychosis is the valid response to the random brutality of reality, an escape to it. It's not me over interpreting something about villainy, god I wish, the entire comic is about Joker arguing that psychosis is the correct adaptation to a fucked up reality.) Batman is directly calling anyone with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder or any other form of psychosis "a slimy thing crawling under a rock when trouble hits." And that's the lesson we're supposed to learn from that! The Joker is wrong! We good people of strong hearts and good minds are normal and good and can pat ourselves on the back for being so much better and more resilient than those nasty little crazy freaks (and the circus freaks, oh my god the circus freaks) who are so cowardly and weak-minded; but look how magnanimous we are! We're still gonna extend a hand to help them crazy freaks once we've established our moral superiority! Because we're good, upstanding cops, and our habit of arresting criminals and putting them in the nastiest fucking asylum which doubles as a horrible prison works! Because we're so good!

Seriously, what is up with that? In what world is the wrongness of this comic not fucking obvious to everyone? Is this really your Batman? Your childhood hero? This is the guy the narrative (and dc in general) tells us we're supposed to be rooting for? How have we normalized psychophobia to the point I regularly see people praising this comic or saying it would have been good had Barbara's fridging not ruined it? No, what happened to Barbara didn't ruin shit! What happened to Barbara is nothing but one more indicator of the worth and respect Alan Moore holds for women in his writing, and I genuinely don't find him any better than Jim Starlin with the way he likes to write sexual assault on women, but the comic was already ruined because its message was already fundamentally disgusting.

And the worst part is it fucking gets worse if you know anything about how schizophrenia (or other schizophreniform disorders) develops. I can't imagine what it's like, picking up this comic as a person with schizophrenia. The suicide risk associated with schizophrenia is high as fuck, and with the way our society stigmatises that disorder, it's no fucking wonder. Reading that kind of book, it feels like some people are actively working to get those figures higher actually. I wonder if Moore is aware of the damage his comic does, if he even fucking cares. I wonder how many people have talked themselves out of getting help because they were afraid of acknowledging their mental health issues and "being like the Joker", or knew they weren't like the joker and concluded they weren't mentally ill. I wonder if people with schizophrenia have read this comic, thought back to the one bad day that lead to them developing psychosis, and wondered what was so wrong with them that they couldn't handle reality the way normal people can. People with schizophrenia are so much more at risk of being verbally or physically assaulted by someone else than of attacking someone else and so much more likely to be verbally or physically assaulted than your average joe. I wonder how many people feel justified in that kind of violence because they see a person struggling with delusions, visibly interacting with a hallucination or saying incoherent, absurd stuff and thought they were heroically intervening to stop a "dangerous psychotic individual" from doing harm. I wonder how much of this perception is influenced by the most famous mentally ill character of all times. Worst fucking comic I've ever read. That story is rotten to the core.

Seriously, fuck the Killing Joke.

[crimsonkat59]

The Infinights

The pixelated RPG game Infinights, developed by Tales From the Stinky Dragon, garnered many positive reviews from fans of the developer’s past works and soon brought in new fans, many of whom had never played a game of such style. 

Infinights is a story-driven game where you play as four ‘Infinight Interns’ trying to find the Infinights (a group of notorious heroes), defeat a devious woman called Paralyte, and save the realm of Faeza. There are many loveable NPCs scattered throughout the five realms of Faeza, each unique to their homeland. And the music changes throughout the land, even during encounters! 

What many have found interesting about the game is that the player does not control a specific character. The four Interns move as a group and the walking order of the players changes according to their environment (for example, Mudd leads the group through his home city of the BuhBayou while Kyborg will lead when they’re in Evirwinter). In combat, each Intern and their enemies are given a specific order to which they can take a turn. This is one of the many cases where Infinights uses luck and randomization to achieve unique playthroughs. Often, conversations will have dialogue options that will either succeed or fail based on the program’s virtual ‘coin flip’ and the amount of damage any attack will do it based on a ‘dice roll’ of sorts. 

Infinights has been praised for its simple but beautiful graphics and its simple design. However, it has gained criticism as well. 

One main flaw many players see is how rigid the story is. There are not many chances for exploration and though conversations can change due to luck, things end up the same in the end. After some time, the developers released an update containing a second playing mode. This mode, entitled ‘The Past’ (changing the main story mode to ‘The Present’), lets the player play in a more open-world concept. And as the original Infinights. 

What’s loved about The Past is that it allows the player to see more into the life of the characters the game is entitled after. There were complaints that, for being titular characters and the game’s main quest, the Infinights did not have a strong role in the story, especially Grislee and Elleve. The Past changes this, giving each Infinight more lines and a more fleshed out character. 

Of course, the open-world style is appreciated as well. There’s a fully interactable map to navigate through and many new locations within each city to explore. New shops, new NPCs, new quests. And while The Past has a few scripted adventures and quests, the easiest way to explore the world is to travel to one city and simply walk around. More quests become available as the Infinights become more renowned throughout Faeza, with more people also willing to aid their adventures. 

The Past also created thought. As the main villain of the main story, Paralyte, is seen in this mode as just another Infinight. She is primarily called ‘Luce’, which is her real name, and is visually different. Many have joked that she looks ‘healthier’ in The Past as her skin is less pale. What many notice is that there’s no green infinity sign carved into her armor in The Past, but she instead wears an armband with the Infinight’s logo on it. (Just like Spectril!) 

Throughout the story, Luce and the others get along very well. Her voice is still ‘honeyed yet haunting’, but her interactions with the Infinights are full of smiles and jokes. Luce cracks a few herself, leaving the threats to the enemies encountered in combat. 

This mode, even when played to 100%, does not address exactly why Luce left the Infinights. Theories have been made through dialogue left throughout both modes of the game, but there has been no official response from the developers. Tales From the Stinky Dragon often prides itself on adding a bit of mystery to their games, with some questions getting answered while others are left up to the fans. 

The newest mystery they’ve unveiled is Grotethe, another RPG game in the works. Through released screenshots, it’s clear that the game uses the same base as Infinights. The combat and dialogue systems are the same, along with the game’s basic premise. However, one question that has been raised is how the story modes work. Will Grotethe have only a story-driven mode, only open-world, or will it include both? None of the released content points to any of these options. 

On a similar note, it is also clear that Grotethe takes is set in an entirely different place. The technology and locations (and even the appearance of one of the main characters!) that can be seen in different screenshots are causing speculation amongst fans. People wonder whether the two games are related or not and, if they are, how? No voice clips for any of the characters have been released yet, but fans hope that the voices of the main characters will aid them in this quest for answers. 

Until then, everyone continues to enjoy the stunning game that is Infinights. 

This project, with all visual details compiled on one Adobe Illustrator document entitled 'rot' because I failed to spell 'rpg' started on Tuesday, January 14th. Through various sessions of various lengths and occasional mouse usage, it has finally been completed. I now hate rectangles and squares. 

Various parts of the artwork should be recognizable to other games of a similar style. When I went looking for sprite bases when this project first started, I landed on a base sprite for Omori. I have never played Omori. Along with that, the way the combat screen looks is taken from Deltarune (which I have played) and the shop screen has influences from it. 

And it should be known that most things made in this work I had a trace (with pixels) from a random internet image. That dragon was NOT freehand, nor was that train, the map and pretty much everything from the shop screen (though, the shopkeeper whose name I cannot remember was drawn from a sketch I made). All text except title text (Infinights, Grotethe, Tales From the Stinky Dragon) is actual type, only the title text I drew (with a reference).

My school shouldn’t have allowed me to have an Adobe account or a teacher/class to teach me graphic design. I am using it for evil.

Sprite sheet:

The state my school computer's desktop was left in. Just because I think it's funny.

[rationalnerd62]

As someone who has spent a year and half watching C1/C2/C3, is now finally caught up, and as a result is finally allowing myself to look at fandom reactions to episodes... Boy, critical role discourse is weird.

People will spend days arguing about who's evil and who isn't, which decisions made sense and which ones did not, whether the plot point is solid or not, what's the consequences of that fake action in that fake world, who's a psychopath and who isn't, which group is better than the other, etc etc etc.

Meanwhile I'm there enjoying every single episode of that show. For ten years, this group of friends has met every week to roll some dice. They've created characters that made them laugh, and cry, and smile, and frown, and shout, in excitement, fury, terror and joy. Through them, they've lived adventures, drama, tension, trauma, in a sandbox world they'll never put a foot in. They've created wonders in Exandria, then destroyed them just to see what would happen (shout out to Emon and the Chroma Conclave arc 🎉).

Their world had mystical artifacts, so they created lost civilisations to justify both their existence and rarity. It had Gods, so they gave them backstories and myths, to make this world feel real. They understood that history in itself is flawed, so the knowledge of the past is changing. Each campaign, they went on bigger questions, bigger challenges. From very early on, Campaign 3 has been questioning the status quo between Gods and Mortals, and what we know of the deities has evolved as a result. Why should I care, really, whether Bell's Hells are right or not to challenge the Gods. It's obviously a storyline that Matt and the rest of the cast were curious to explore, so they're doing it. Maybe it'll work out great, maybe it won't, they don't know, and that's fine. After all, what is the point of a sandbox world if you cannot push a few red buttons.

And of course, not every plot point or decision is going to be resilient to scrutiny. It's an improvised ttrpg game, with 100+ episodes per campaign, and we're almost at 500h in length for C3. Yesterday, in my ttrpg, I forgot who my new vice purveyor was, after I overindulged a few months ago (... It's a Blade in the Dark thing). Last week, I invented a drag persona for my character because I was trying to find a distraction and I panicked. Ttrpg are soooo random, mate. Even with professional players like the Critical Role folks, it stays a ttrpg. Things get forgotten. Some things get developed and others don't get the time to. Discussions happen, and sometimes they happen again six months later because maybe characters have changed or maybe not. It's not a scripted TV show, where things can be planned in advance and you know the characters will stick to the script. Inconsistencies will happen, and that's fine.

(Contrary to my ttrpg though, the CR folks are absolutely mind-blowing improv actors and watching them every week stays absolutely thrilling to me. Some of the things you all have apparently fought a long time about are some of my favorite moments, in any of the campaigns. See swordgate, a masterpiece of dramatic improv and bonkers choices. Those players are *not here* to stay safe, they want to feel the highest highs and the lowest lows and I am there for it 🥺.)

[secretly-historic]

IF YOU OR A LOVED ONE ARE SAPPHIC AND WERE PERSONALLY VICTIMIZED BY THE CW’S THE 100 SEASON 3 IN 2016 PLEASE READ

i know i have very few followers so i am tagging this to hell amd back and it would mean the world to me if people could spread this!!

did you get into this random sci fi show as an impressionable sapphic or then-sapphic-identifying teen? did you find your fandom community online in places like tumblr? were you a Way Too Online Clexa shipper? do you have vivid memory of one fateful night in March of 2016 where your little baby heart was sent to the moon and then stomped on within an entire fifteen minute window? did you then turn on your phone to watch an entire community imploding in real time?

i am a current history grad student in Washington, DC, and i recently was notified of an interdisciplinary panel opportunity in which i’d be able to turn one of my quasi-intellectual passions into something Big and Academic and possibly Influential To The Field. the theme of the conference is change; how our historical subjects understood it, dealt with it, lived through it, etc. or, it can be anything that might have some big observation to how we deal with change ourselves as academics

my proposal is still in the baby stages, but i want to use this particular moment in pop culture in two ways: first, obviously, is as a case study of a really revolutionary moment in queer representation. we had a sci fi show with, after a few season one growing pains, really complex and kind of amazing female character writing and an element of queerness that defied tropes by being strangely post-structuralist, only for that to come crashing down in one horrid writing decision. the overnight turn in the fan-creator relationship was something so severe and shocking to me, even at 14.

second, if we wanna get all discipline-jargony about it, studying it from a historical angle at some kind (yes i know it was only nine years ago bear with me here) could lead to some really important things about how we do social history in a digital age. i find that most “digital history” conversation tends to be about digitizing sources for access or distribution, but we are very much at a point where our sources are being /created/ in digital and online spaces, and there’s simply not the same level of comfort or readily available knowledge of how to navigate through an internet-created archive.

if you read this far, thank you. at this point, i’m simply trying to find people who experienced this moment firsthand like i did. i’m still trying to develop specific sets of questions to survey, possibly to workshop some research methodology with an “oral” historical source base. if you are interested in being somehow part of this source base, please reach out to me ASAP! i cannot promise that anything substantial will come out of it within the next few weeks (a girl has to get through my own finals and my students’ finals first), but it’ll at least give me a list of people to reach out to when the time comes<3

if you read to the end, thank you. here’s a cat pic as a reward. his name is winston

[narklos]

Half-Lore #3: 66 HL Facts!

Make your 'counting to three' jokes in the tags please. Back with another instalment, this is one I've been looking forward to! 66 random facts spanning the entire Half-Life franchise (bc I couldn't fit 100 in one post due to numbered list character limits...) If you have any suggestions for other instalments of Half-Lore, please let me know.

Have a peep under the cut, and enjoy!

Gordon can speak, as confirmed in a series of letters that were included in HL1's box. They mention that L.M and him had a telephone call prior to Gordon's arrival.

Speaking of L.M, he was the original administrator for Black Mesa. L.M was the G-Man, though his full name is never revealed.

Barney and Breen were both meant to appear in Half-Life: Alyx, but were cut due to a hard reset on the game's development.

Gordon is apparently very clumsy. Eli jokes about it in a series of cut voicelines.

Prior to his appointment at Black Mesa, Gordon was stationed at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

Russell's complaint about being told to apply a year later after his interview at Black Mesa is a real-life hiring process that Valve uses.

Marc Laidlaw mentioned that the baby photo in Gordon's locker is probably a nephew, making Gordon an uncle!

Bullsquids have a 'hungry' mode. If they find a dead headcrab, and they're in hungry mode, they'll eat it. Otherwise, they'll play a sniffing animation and walk away.

In HL2, you can bonk NPCs on the head during a cutscene to make them teleport. This is because the game thinks that the character is trapped by a physics prop, and will teleport them to the next segment in the cutscene to free them.

On Kleiner's clipboard during his first cutscene, what he's saying about the HEV suit is actually written on the paper word-for-word.

Barney has a girlfriend called Lauren, and a picture of her in his locker. The woman in question was a real-life girlfriend of one of the devs.

In one of the OP4 skyboxes, a dev has written the note "Hack hack hack all day long. Hack hack hack while I sing this song."

The mysterious artefact Alyx brings back to Black Mesa East is the head of a Cremator, which was a cut enemy.

HL2 was originally meant to take place in New York.

Headcrabs don't turn Gordon into a zombie because he apparently never lets them get close to his face.

Colette gets a kick out of violence.

Gordon was employee of the month when the Resonance Cascade happened.

A special rebel outpost along Route Kanal will start playing ambient windchimes if you hang around long enough.

Breen was meant to wear a pair of glasses, but Marc Laidlaw went against it, citing that they made Breen look 'vaguely homosexual'.

Russell was originally meant to be Laszlo, the finest mind of his generation. His computer's password is actually 'Laszlo' too!

There are props clipping through Russell's ceiling intentionally- objects will phase through each other during portal storms, the likes of which ravage City 17.

The Citadel wasn't built on Earth, per se- it was teleported in chunk by chunk like the world's biggest IKEA assembly.

G-Man cannot understand the Vort's language, and the Vorts use by-words when discussing him and the Advisors to avoid detection.

Combine Advisors cannot breathe Earth's atmosphere, hence the breathing apparatus they wear.

There was meant to be a fourth day of HL2's plot, but it was shortened to three. Players would have fought through a museum.

Eli lost his leg to a bullsquid when he was helping Kleiner into City 17.

Kleiner and Barney were meant to die in a bus crash in HL2's opening sequence. Marc Laidlaw wrote a short story discussing their deaths in rather graphic detail.

In Decay, there was a cut sequence where players witnessed Gordon getting killed if they didn't scare away the soldiers in time.

Despite 20 years having passed in reality, only around two weeks have passed for Gordon due to being in stasis.

For HLA, developers scanned in a $10,000 Nordstrom suit to use for G-Man's textures.

Level designer David Casali, who has worked on every single mainline HL game, was too tall for a lot of the levels in HLA's Vault sequence. This lead to a lot of upside-down sections being cut for accessibility.

G-Man was meant to be an unwilling prisoner in the Vault, as revealed in a storyboard in The Final Hours.

The Nihilanth is inspired by Gabe Newell's fears of fatherhood, as he'd just had his son at the time.

Nothing is native to Xen. Every alien animal present on Xen is running away from The Combine's invasion of their homeworlds.

During Opposing Force, players can find a gear and a valve inside of a cardboard box- a very clear nod to Gearbox and Valve!

Barney's model changes subtly from HL2 to Episode 1- he's shown more dishevelled, with his hair unkempt and a series of cuts on his cheeks.

G-Man's face is hidden in the Xenian crystal at Black Mesa East.

Alyx was found by the G-Man, sitting beside her dead mother and clutching her mother's wedding ring.

Child labour was meant to appear, with models and animations of the children working in Cremator factories made. This, understandably, were cut, and the lack of children explained away with the suppression field.

G-Man's crow friend is nicknamed 'Crowley'.

During the tactical map section of Surface Tension, you don't have to use the drone strike to destroy the doors leading to the next level- you can actually break it with a fully-charged Tau Cannon shot.

Typing 'haiku' in the game's console will generate a random haiku for you.

Imprisoning the G-Man in HLA was referred to as putting 'God in a Box' by developers.

HL2 on PC and HL2 on Xbox 360 sound wildly different! Due to advanced sound chips, developers were able to push the audio of HL2 to be more immersive and sound more realistic than on PC.

Grigori's shotgun is called Annabelle.

A model of Eli naked exists. This was meant to be used in the section we see him in the Combine pods.

An illustration of G-Man holding a gun to his head can be found on the back of a sign in HLA.

Similarly, in the Index HLA home environment, his eyes are used as part of an advertisement for 'vision enhancement'.

You can find a minifigure of the Scout in HLA.

The textures for some of HLA's cans actually use a recoloured metal effect from HL1's orange poster.

Grigori has cut crosses into the backs of his hands.

Inside G-Man's briefcase is pencils, ID, paper, and a gun.

The shadowy woman in HLA is called Hahn/The Contractor, and according to Erik Wolpaw, they 'have plans' for her.

A cut enemy called Mr. Friendly was meant to literally SA the player and knock Gordon's glasses off, blurring the screen. Apparently, the idea was to play on a gamer's subconscious (or conscious...) homophobia and make them freak out. This enemy was actually designed by a teenager, and was predictably scrapped.

Early advertisements for HL1 featured babies and children with lambdas replacing their eyes.

HL1 is intended to be an allegory for fighting your own inner hopelessness.

Valve's offices have a wall built to resemble the moving walls of the Citadel.

G-Man has had a total of 11 different models throughout HL's history.

Breaking the army crates in the Dreamcast port of HL1 will reveal copies of Sonic Adventure inside.

Gordon is from Seattle, Washington.

HL2 was delayed a lot during its development. At the time, many swore never to buy from Valve again due to their broken promises.

HL2's E3 demonstrations were staged.

Colette was employed by G-Man, but Gina died.

During a Reddit AMA, a dev responded that we shouldn't keep making Gordon feel bad about his outdated hairstyle choices, when asked about where his ponytail went.

A metrocop's hideaway can be found in the level after the zoo in HLA. Due to the amount of conspiracy theory paraphanelia, the room is theorised to be Barney's.

The act of covering your mouth to stop the fumes of Xenian flora from affecting you in HLA was implemented after playtesters instictively covered their mouths when sprayed.

Thanks for reading to the bottom! Here's some top notch BREENWAVE for you.

[horny-marbles]

hi kim it’s me tiv on the art account 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

question for ya as the #1 ej fan (my bad if you’ve answered this before) what are your thoughts on how he sees? like is your ej blind? thermal vision? or does he just like see normally bc fuck it demon logic

OMG heyyy tiv teehee, the crossover lol. also ME??? i need to screenshot this and frame it tbh. OK CUE RANT SORRY IN ADVANCE I CANT BE NORMAL AND CASUAL ABOUT EJ

dude so imma be 100% real, i don't like applying random ass demon logic to jack because it takes away from that liiitle element of humanity and relatability i guess. to me, he's an unfortunate dude that was robbed of his life and has to survive somehow, still demonic don't get me wrong, but he's not some eldritch bloodthirsty underlord that lurks at your window ready to get your ass. and it's lowkey a lazy way to excuse tropes and nsfw details tbh—which is fine btw, it's not that deep and everyone's allowed to have their own thoughts obviously!! but i just like my characters to feel as visceral as they can in their respective universes lol

so, imo he's completely blind. doesn't even perceive light or shadow, much less color or shape, because i mean... the peepers were scooped out and if there were any optical nerves somehow alive after that, they were completely fried when he had tar poured in them bitches.

ignoring the post i made about him somehow growing an extra dick (because it makes no actual realistic sense and im just horny lol), i think there's only so much a mutation can really do to heal him, i guess? i hc his transformation to have been a super slow and fucking horrid process, super biologically driven and actually somewhat realistic (because i HATEEEEE JWKSPQKDKDNS FUCKING HATE THE "and he woke up... and now he's magically a demon... and he had no recollection of disemboweling an entire cult..." shut the fuck up like actually), so i think the body just didn't find enough healthy nerve endings to help regenerate his eyes and it just compensated by enhancing his other senses.

now as for how he gets around, a combination of smell, hearing and some crazy ass environmental/spacial awareness—feeling the presence of objects around him once he's close enough and feeling his own positioning in space if that makes sense. plus some other more animal traits like a very well developed sense of direction, feeling changes in air pressure (like before a storm, or the difference between outside vs inside) idk if that even makes sense lol IT MAKES SENSE IN MY HEAD!!

i feel like at the beginning, for a long while, he constantly tripped and walked nose first into trees and walls (literally why i hc him with a crooked nose lmfao) and just... a mess. accidentally walking into the highway and becoming an urban legend around town aside from already being a red notice lol. because it must've been real fucking confusing to go from sight to this insanely overwhelming hyper-sensitivity to everything else, right?

...also if i sometimes write something about him looking at anything no i don't ❤️

[v1olent-l1ttle-th1ng]

Weekly Empyrean/Onyx Storm Theories Week 6: Zihnal’s Gifts

The first time I read Onyx Storm, I was like ok these gifts have to mean something, like RY would never do something that random. Then RY confirmed in an interview that each gift, did in fact, have a purpose.

So let’s dive into them:

-Violet’s compass. I feel like this one is pretty obvious, and I know a ton of people agree. The compass is “broken” and “doesn’t point anywhere near north” because it’s gonna come into play when she’s trying to find Xaden. There are SO MANY references about direction throughout Onyx Storm. It’s mentioned all the time that ‘so and so is heading East’, ‘we’re travelling north’ and “every bone in my body says to fly south”. I feel like these little hints all just foreshadow into how important the compass is going to be in finding Xaden in book 4. Plus, when Xaden walks out into the hall with Lewellen after arguing with Calldyr, Violet says, “his gaze jumps to mine like a compass pulled north.” That’s pretty compelling evidence if I do say so myself.

-Xaden’s empty box. I think this signifies him losing his soul. The box is empty just like his soul is. It’s also not lost on me that Violet comments, “the glass box from Zehyllna is on his nightstand, and the emerald-hilted Blade of Aretia is resting within. It’s missing a single stone near the top”. This is obviously the blade the gem came from in Violet’s wedding ring (I have whole theory about how I think Violet’s emerald wedding ring contains the last part of Xaden’s soul, but that’s a theory for another time). It’s like the box is holding that last little part of his soul that’s still him.

-Garrick’s rusty bucket. I’m not one 100% sure on this one but I think this could be more foreshadowing that Garrick is the one who turns. He’s given “a rusted steel bucket”, which could coincide with the whole ‘not feeling like he is enough’ theme that Rebecca told us to pay attention to.

-Mira’s wine. To me, this is foreshadowing for the almost death Mira suffers from Theophanie. The red wine represents Mira’s spilt blood when Theophanie slits her throat.

-Ridoc’s kisses. This might be slightly controversial, but even after RY’s admission of how much she enjoys writing Ridoc, what a fun time she had writing him in Onyx Storm and how she’s excited for his future development, I still don’t think he’s safe. I mean she killed off Liam because he was a ‘perfect character’ so just because she loves Ridoc and is excited to expand him, I still think he’s one of the ones who is going to die. This being said, I think the kisses he gets represents ‘the kiss of death’ further foreshadowing him dying. At this point, other than Violet, Xaden, or any of their dragons, I think Ridoc’s death is the one that would get me the most.

-Dain’s slap. I, again, have seen similar thoughts elsewhere, but I think Dain’s slap gave him more power. Sloane says “someone like you shouldn’t have this much power” to him when she’s siphoning his power to Brennan to mend Mira, and I think he got it from Zihnal. I also think his new power is going to be instrumental in helping Violet recover the memories that Imogen erased.

-Aaric’s fractured hand mirror. We learn at the very end of Onyx Storm that Aaric is a precog. I think the mirror definitely foreshadows this. Mirrors are used all the time to depict desires, future wishes, etc, so I think it definitely applies to that. The fact that it’s broken however, is questionable. Typically, a broken mirror is associated with bad luck. Aaric mentions that “I will fight in this war, most likely die” when they’re on Hedotis. I think by this point we’re fairly certain he’s already manifested his signet. So, I think he’s outrightly telling us he’ll die. And the broken mirror is another way to foreshadow that.

-Cat’s ruby necklace. According to one of the epigraphs in Onyx Storm, fliers are given a gem when they graduate. It states that “it should always be worn close to the heart, but if you have not mastered your control, it will only amplify your downfall.” It’s what they go get from Anca, what King Courtlyn of Deverelli requests they bring him, the Amelian Citrine gem of one of the first fliers. I’m not sure what this means exactly, but I do think it has to do with Cat and the amount of power she holds in Poromiel. There are also several other instances throughout all 3 books where certain people are mentioned to have rubies. Violet wins a dagger “with a pretty ruby in the hilt” in one of her first challenges in Fourth Wing. The Duchess of Morraine is said to wear “a giant ruby” AND Theophanie is described to have a “ruby hilted sword” as well. Again, not totally sure how they all tie together, but I do NOT think it’s coincidental.

-Maren’s 2 tunics. We know that Maren has twin brothers, so the fact that she gets 2 tunics makes me think it symbolizes her being a protector over her brothers. Perhaps Zinhal gifted her with luck, that if her brothers wear the tunics he will watch over them for her while she is away.

-Broccoli (Drake’s gift). I’m fairly certain Broccoli was thrown in there as a little bit of a relief character, but I also think he forges the bond between Mira and Drake.

-Trager’s death. While I felt bad for Cat, Trager wasn’t a super important character, or one we were all that emotionally attached to. To me, Trager had to die so that the squad would fly to the tiny island and find Andarna’s kind. It was a sacrifice for the greater good.

Anyways, those are more of my thoughts!

[umbramemeblog]

Diavolo and/or Doppio headcanons if you have ‘em?

Oh, how i wished you told me this off anon so i could go yipee friendship!

Clears throat. Headcanons. Good or bad, they're mine now!

• Diavolo made Doppio carry a nonworking phone to appear normal when they were calling. The whole reason that he uses random objects as phones in vento aureo is because his broke before getting in the taxi

• He may be silly at times, but he's not stupid (although he's used to perceiving himself that way and may even take it as a fact, its just the self-deprecation) (plus...headaches and spacing out frequently don't help with that)

• Speaking of, he also perceives himself as having really bad luck. Mostly, so he's not surprised when bad things happen but that also means he's overjoyed when good things do (and vento aureo really just shows the worst week of his life, huh!)

• On the topic of personality, he's a bitch for praise. That's non-negotiable, is one of the few joys in his life. He's also not ashamed to ask for when he feels like he deserves it.

• i used to headcanon him as touch averse by anyone

but this changed, especially thinking a bit about that scene where he helps bruno. So i guess not, unless it's someone he doesn't know/is being too pushy with him.

• despite their body being in his 30's he still thinks/perceives himself to be a young adult, in his 20's or something. Admittedly, 100% self indulgent headcanon territory that he regresses to even younger sometimes, But it doesn't mean he's not bodily an adult even in those times. System 101 stuff...

• He has a general idea of how his childhood and teenager days were, but doesnt remember much about it. just general flashes because his memory from that time is like swiss cheese, full of holes. (Gee, i wonder why!!!) things he vaguely remembers includes: growing up by the beach and being forced to attend church. Also he doesn't hold the emotion attached to those memories. Diavolo does.

• Diavolo and doppios headspace is also not very well developed. It's mostly endless dark, very abstract void, full of sensations and feelings more than anything. Doppio isn't aware it's a headspace (thinks of it as a dream) and Diavolo doesn't care enough about changing it (except for adding a throne to sit on). If they do happen to be together on headspace, it's a very rare occurrence.

• OVERRALL i think the boss is really kind too. Vento Aureo has him at his worst, but there was a reason that passione grew so big initially. It is of my headcanon that hes really charming and charismatic to others not only in voice, but even trough text, to the point that multiple characters are willing to work and kill themselves for him (Periccolo, Carne(?) Doppio) even without having ever met the guy in question.

• and i really like the contrast of Doppio being impulsive and brash, braving through whenever he feels afraid (more of a fuck it we ball situation) while Diavolo puts up a façade of being able to endure everything but values well thought decisions to secure his safety. THEYRE WALKING CONTRADICTIONS i love it. Shoechoe puts it way better:

Honorary mentions of people who shaped up my headcanon/perception on them: i loved reading @shoechoe analysis on diavolo and doppio so at least some of it must have absorbed into my headcanons (though its a shame they have me blocked, sorry i ship diadop 😔) all the wonderful art/writing by @mister13eyond and fics by @monsterkissed (although, I'm still in the middle of the process of reading most of them, they hurt so good you have to pause the middle to catch your breath. Great for enjoyers of fictional characters suffering, in many ways)

[eldritch-elrics]

one of the most interesting things about the silent hill 2 remake to me is the sort of... cascading effect that its particular brand of realism has on the entire experience, especially when it comes to james's characterization.

i'll try to explain concisely what i mean.

both 2001's SH2 and 2024's SH2 have what you could call a realistic artstyle. between the two games, this is achieved in very different ways. the original game uses realistic textures, proportions, animations, and especially lighting. this is what gives the fmv cutscenes their uncanny feel - the low resolution means that we focus not on the details, but whether the overall shape and lighting of the scenes feels consistent with reality.

the 2024 remake, meanwhile, follows in the tradition of recent AAA releases by upping the detail. silent hill, as a location, feels more real than ever. now, you can debate about what this does or doesn't add to the game - is an important part of the character of silent hill the eerie, empty, and unreal atmosphere it gains from the limitations of the ps2? that's a valid question. but being a 2024 AAA release, and one that clearly has a lot of effort put into it, the remake goes for realism by adding a whole lot of stuff.

now you have a game that is full of stuff. objects. clutter. this creates a problem. in the original silent hill games, important objects are not indicated with any kind of ui. instead, they're highlighted with particular colors, textures, lighting, etc. the remake does this too - but it also adds a little nondiegetic indicator when you're standing next to something you can interact with:

for a game with this artstyle, this is 100% a necessity. sure, some objects (especially stuff with uniform designs, like ammo or health items) stand out regardless. but for other things... it just isn't always clear!

imagine the game without these indicators. you would probably be able to find most of the important objects. but you'd need to spend way, way more time searching through rooms full of clutter in order to pick out the stuff that's necessary to progress. this is how the original game works! and it works in that game because the levels are smaller, and there is less random crap. but it would just be so tedious to do in the remake.

adding an interaction indicator doesn't so much create a clear boundary between "important" and "not important" - plenty of the stuff you can interact with in the remake is random stuff like posters that add nothing but worldbuilding detail, or drawers that don't actually contain anything - but it does create a clear boundary between "things the developers meant for you to focus on" and "things the developers meant as background details." this cannot help but change the entire experience of the game. in the original game, anything has the potential to be interacted with - you don't know whether you can or not until you've walked up to it (and made sure you've walked up to it at the right angle...) and pressed the button. this makes you consider your surroundings in a different way! it makes you search differently! it makes you more aware! it also adds more mystery - it makes the world feel that much more complicated, because there is so much stuff you could be missing!

one detail of the original game that i was very sad not to see in the remake is the abundance of commentary that james has on a bunch of the objects around him. and they could have added at least some of this! just a couple dozen more voice lines! but a lot of it is, well:

it is usually not particularly profound commentary. but it encompasses far more than the sorts of things to which the remake adds an interaction indicator, and i assume that is at least one reason (apart from its general characterization of james as taciturn) why the remake does away with it entirely. because there is such a black and white distinction between "interactable" and "non-interactable," they can't justify adding that little symbol to every potentially interesting thing in a game full of interesting clutter. why would gamers want to be told to focus on something, only for james to tell them right back that it's not worthy of his focus?

now, these objects things may not be important or noteworthy. but what makes them interesting - and what makes me as a player want to interact with every possible thing i can, just so see if it has associated dialogue - is that james tells you that they aren't important or noteworthy, and this tells us a lot about james. it makes us feel like we're seeing the game through his eyes, not the eyes of the developers who are putting in the buttons telling us what to focus on. instead, james is deciding what is "not a particularly special photograph," what is "...just a regular stage," and what is a collection of bottles so mesmerizing that he feels compelled to expatiate on his alcohol problems.*

*this is a particularly interesting example, because it's a completely missable detail from the original game that, as far as i'm aware, isn't in the remake's version of heaven's night. and yet... the remake references it! the scene in the remake where james refuses to drink the glass maria offers him in heaven's night reads completely differently whether you know this detail or not!

it's also possible that the lack of random commentary from james - the more substantial stuff, that is, not just "i don't need toilet paper right now" - is a deliberate choice on the part of the remake dev team to get rid of something that they saw as only in the game because the design decisions of the original silent hill games necessitated it. maybe they thought that the only reason for james to have that much commentary at all was because the game needed to give players feedback as a little reward for exploring around - a type of exploring that the remake does not incentivize. maybe they thought that a more "true" version of james would not say anything at all when faced with an object he had no strong feelings about. (especially as opposed to a protagonist like heather, for whose characterization this object-commentary is vital.)

but the thing is... even the presence of the less substantial commentary adds substance to james's characterization! it tells us what he's interested in, what motivates him or doesn't, what reminds him he needs to get a move on (shows us his one track mind - his drive towards his quest!), and what he's noticing but deliberately not thinking about (for example, sexually charged imagery). and it's so interesting that, very likely, this design decision is in part a consequence of an entirely different decision that was made because "that just how AAA games are" !

so, in short, the cascading effect is:

realism -> more detail -> harder to see what objects are important so devs need to add ui elements to point out what you can interact with -> you're not going around and interacting with everything you see -> james doesn't do random commentary on unimportant stuff -> changes how his characterization feels

[homestuckreplay]

Webcomics at Day 100 #10: The Order of the Stick

Pages read: 9/25/2003 – 4/4/2006 (books 1&2; 301 full page strips)

Reason for selection: D&D is really important to nerd culture (and online culture since 3e), and this is probably the most popular and longrunning D&D webcomic, to this day loved, followed and theorized on by a large fanbase.

Current status: Ongoing with no set schedule, averaging twice monthly updates. Creator Rich Burlew says the current book will be the last, but fans predict the arc will not end until 2031 or later.

Content warnings: frequent misogyny, sexualization of female characters, equating sex and gender, occasional transphobia, sexual humor, occasional jokes about sexual assault and harassment, one joke about slavery, extreme amounts of cartoon violence

Overall thoughts:

I am definitely the target audience for Order of the Stick. As a long time D&D player who also enjoys hearing about games I didn’t play in and likes webcomics as a medium, it’s not surprising that I fell in love with this very quickly, because I’m the exact type of person it’s being written for. As such, it’s hard to analyze whether it’s easy for non-D&D players to get into.

D&D references appear in the majority of strips, typically to 3.5e – the edition released shortly before the comic’s debut, which almost entirely dictates the characters’ abilities and the rules of the world they live in. Most references are still relevant to more recent editions, and the comic riffs on random encounters, initiative order, attacks of opportunity, momentary in-game retcons after remembering an extra feature or skill bonus after the fact, timeskips during travel, rogues stealing from party members leading to intraparty conflict, the ‘all PCs have dead parents’ backstory stereotype, and especially alignment.

The entirety of book two, ‘No Cure for the Paladin Blues’ (so named because it features a paladin dressed in blue), explores alignment in more depth than the occasional jokes surrounding the other topics. Roy, an honorable leader who has sworn an oath but isn’t a paladin by class, and Miko, who is a true paladin and follows her order’s rules to the letter, come to blows over the meaning of ‘good’ and ‘lawful’, whether intent or outcome determine a person’s alignment, and what it means to live in a world where alignment is objective, codified, and detectable. These are ideas that later D&D editions will also question, but not as efficiently as secondary character Celia, a sylph defense lawyer, does in a literal courtroom scene in comic 282.

The D&D references range from these blatant ones, to the more subtle. To zoom in on a moment I loved, strip 214 features a moment where Miko – a party ally, who would be controlled by the DM in a real game – goes against the party’s planned stealth ambush and barges into an ogre camp to confront the leader. This would be really bad D&D etiquette in most games, as a DM would be taking agency away from the players, not allowing them to even attempt a plan they’d worked hard on. But it works well as comic writing, because it characterizes Miko and sets up a new three-way conflict between her, the party, and the ogres.

Establishing characterization is much easier with D&D ability scores and spell lists to lean back on, but Burlew has never made official character sheets for the party to allow the story to come first. Instead, Burlew uses common player character archetypes – a respectable human fighter/party leader avenging his father, a Scottish dwarf cleric who likes ale and can’t roll stealth, an androgynous elf mage who prefers learning about the limits of arcane potential to social interaction, an annoying, pretty, constantly singing and talking when he shouldn’t bard (who surprised me by being dumb instead of horny), a treasure-obsessed crackshot rogue, and a chaos gremlin. XP and level up mechanics provide an easy, in universe reason for characters developing new powers.

I found most characters quickly likeable, except for the chaos gremlin – halfling ranger Belkar is the party’s evil member, generally played for comic relief. However, as the overarching plot is introduced as early as strip 13, and other characters are given two dimensions and ethical beliefs within the first hundred strips, Belkar’s being loved by the party of relatively decent people despite his selfish, violent and amoral actions (stated outright in strip 285) feels out of place and unearned to me. His misogyny and sexual harassment of female characters, also played for laughs, really contributes to this – it’s hard to overlook, especially as it’s reflected by the author.

Burlew falls into common pitfalls when writing female characters – for example, a woman only being taken seriously when she is competent and can out-perform the men, a man needing to experience being treated like a woman in order to respect one, and regularly referring to women as ‘bitches’, ‘whores’, and ‘chicks’. In 2015, Burlew said that he has few regrets about his early work, but that they include ‘[u]nintentional sexism and/or insensitivity to gender issues. Doing my best to fix it going forward.’ This acknowledgement is important to my decision to keep reading.

[Note on next paragraph, added later: I have now been informed that Vaarsuvius is canonically genderqueer, confirmed later in the comic! huge win for representation and on Burlew incorporating reader feedback & thanks to the anon who let me know!!]

Against all odds, the wizard of unspecified gender Vaarsuvius is actually written fairly well. The ambiguity is often treated as a joke, and minor characters will sometimes assume their gender one way or the other – but the other main characters don’t know and are okay with not knowing. They’re respectful and don’t question it when Vaarsuvius doesn’t use the gendered dungeon toilets, and while Vaarsuvius shares a room with female party member Haley at inns while the men all share a second room, strip 225 makes it clear that this is because Haley and V are good friends, not because they share a gender. (As a sidenote, Haley and V’s sweet and unlikely friendship is my favorite dynamic in the comic).

Artistically, the characters are drawn as stick figures (as represented by the comic’s title) with clean lines and bright colors in strips that are typically one A4 page. The first OOTS book was printed in February 2005, with further books released after each major story arc, so Burlew has written the bulk of this comic knowing that it will be collected in print. Likely, this influences the decision to mostly stick to the A4 style, and rarely include oddly shaped strips, animation, hyperlinks, hover text, or other web-specific elements. Important story beats and milestones do see extra-long strips, with the 200th strip covering a long-foreshadowed battle four times as long as a regular strip – with white space indicating the page breaks. Strips may play with panel order while keeping the A4 format, such as comic 242, which uses arrows to indicate that panels should be read vertically, not horizontally.

Character designs are extremely recognizable from the first strip, and the art style gets slowly more complex – while the stick figures remain, backgrounds grow more detailed and shading is introduced over time. With the early strips, the art in print books is (allegedly) an improvement over the web versions, an incentive to buy print copies when the full archive is available for free online.

Most characters speak in white speech bubbles with black text, but there are exceptions – core villain Xykon the lich has black speech bubbles with white text, creatures of pure light have yellow speech bubbles, sylpha and ghosts have blue, and a bastion of lawful good order has red. Lowered opacity speech bubbles with dashed outlines indicate whispering, and (in a more questionable choice) bold lower case speech indicates a character has low intelligence. The different colors are effective at making characters from other planes feel truly alien, and the importance of the speech bubbles reflects the wordiness of the comic – the text is small, speech bubbles are often paragraphs, and even zoomed into 150% I ended up with a bad screen headache after a couple hours’ reading, which makes an archive binge much harder.

OOTS has a reputation for beginning as humorous and becoming more serious and story driven in its third and fourth books. I haven’t reached those yet so can’t compare, but I already find that while jokes are frequent, the story takes precedence when necessary – and like other comics I’ve read, even Burlew seems surprised at how quickly the strip becomes something beyond its original intentions, letting a character say ‘Wow. That’s a lot more planning than I thought this strip had’ as early as strip 60. However, he also says that having the characters leave the dungeon and take on a bigger quest in strip 122 was partly because he ‘was leaving a lot of good jokes on the table by never having them go to town or on a wilderness adventure’, so the ‘plot driven’ and ‘joke focused’ drives are coexisting then. I’m really excited to see how the tone and story develop over the next thousand strips. :D

Relevance to Homestuck:

As best I can tell, there’s no official connection, though there is fanbase overlap. I’ve said before that Homestuck is a precursor to actual play podcasts, and plan to write more about that someday. In its case, Andrew Hussie clearly acts as DM with the command-submitting readers acting as players; D&D mechanics aren’t used, but the dynamic is spot on.

In Order of the Stick, the characters referencing movies, modern slang, current events and 21st century professions is extremely reminiscent of real D&D play, as this sort of humor is common to both regular D&D groups and actual play shows like Acquisitions Incorporated and The Adventure Zone. A pair of lawyers sent by ‘the spooky wizard who lives by the coast’ are introduced in strip 32 and become recurring characters, a reference to Wizards of the Coast, the real world company who owns D&D. The same is true of characters mentioning exposition, sidequests, plotlines, character mirrors, and other concepts that D&D players know about, and therefore put into their characters’ mouths in games.

OOTS characters feel like they have players and the strip captures the experience of the gaming table really well, but readers don’t have much influence, and Burlew is taking on all roles. This is true even when they contradict, like in strip 21, where the character’s actions of killing a chimera go against the DM’s plans to have him be a recurring villain.

Like Homestuck, OOTS begins as a fairly small scale story – taking place in a single dungeon – but expands within a couple of years to include threats not just to the world, but to the very fabric of reality. In a couple of very minor parallels, both feature the dunce cap (HS 746/OOTS 14), the 8 ball (HS 804/OOTS 127), and a plot important meteor (HS 196/OOTS 134). Meteors seem like a surprisingly common feature of webcomics, actually, and I wonder if this was a big part of 2000s culture that I don’t remember. OOTS has a minor character, Banjo the Clown God of Puppets, who appears in several strips including 80 (regular Banjo) and 85 (as the eldritch Banjulhu). His mysterious and unsettling appearances are reminiscent of Lil Cal, and his tentacles of Rose’s eldritch doll. I could also discuss Kickstarters here but I think I’ll save that for a few years down the line.

Scholar Gabriel Romaguera wrote his master’s thesis and part of his PhD thesis on Order of the Stick. I’ve read his master’s thesis in full and really enjoyed his analysis, which is far more comprehensive than my own (though as a sidenote, I do genuinely hope to write a master’s thesis on Homestuck someday). He’s only one scholar, but a lot of his analysis links up with the limited Homestuck analysis I’ve read. Romaguera discusses serial vs archival reading, web vs print versions, and whether the OOTS books can be considered a webcomic.

‘Some of the material is only relevant when read within twenty four hours of the original publication... Readers are supposed to wait for new installments, read them, go over to the forums, reread them to make sure th+at no detail was left unnoticed, speculate what would happen, and continue to wait until the new issue is published and then the cycle continues. This process makes for a deeper connection to the narrative and to the characters as years go by.’ (Romaguera, p.138)

This argument is presented uncritically and unproductively, just as it has been by many Homestuck analysts. While it’s technically true for any serial work, it becomes more true when participation in an active fan community of theorizers, proofreaders, lorekeepers and fanwork producers is seen as critical to understanding the work. From some time browsing the forums, this is definitely true of both OOTS and Homestuck moreso than other webcomics. (It’s also the attitude that made my lab scientist brain go ‘okay, cool theory, but have you tested that experimentally?’) Romaguera goes on to say that ongoing webcomics could be taught in classrooms when teaching students about serial narratives as ‘[t]he serial reading experience is often taught in hindsight and with nostalgia that suggests that current readers have missed out on the original text as it was intended to be read.’ (p.151) I agree and I love this idea more than words can say.

‘This effectively makes OOTS an ongoing trans-media narrative, wherein some parts of the narrative are exclusive to one medium, and some parts are exclusive to the another one [sic]. Readers go through the process of piecing these parts together to make this third text and thus fully attain the narrative. Still, this practice only goes on until Burlew publishes the final book and all of the narrative is collected in one authoritative text.’ (Romaguera, p.139-40)

In most webcomics (including Homestuck), print editions are supplementary, collector’s content. With OOTS, it seems like both the author and fans give the print editions a lot of importance. Once OOTS is no longer serialized, it does seem likely that the print editions, which include entire books of bonus material not found online, will be seen as fully definitive. Similarly, I would call The Unofficial Homestuck Collection the definitive edition of Homestuck, due to its functional flash player, wealth of supplemental content, and options for reading spoiler free. Ultimately, both these works have transcended their original websites in a way few webcomics have.

Continue reading? I think this is my favorite webcomic I’ve read for this subproject so far. I usually would’ve read 2009 strips for a comparison, but didn’t, because I want to experience the story linearly without spoilers. I could get totally obsessed with this. I want to make D&D character sheets for the beta kids.

[raspberryhell]

YOU. YOU WOUND ME WITH YOUR RQG ANIMATICS /POS

Are you still in the fandom?

hey! sorry its taken me we few weeks to answer this, but thank you! I am glad that even years later, those videos are still as effective as I hoped they would be as I was making them haha

and uh, as for the question, I want to answer honestly about why I stopped posting art here the last few years and what I plan to do from here on out...

the main thing I want to express is that, for the last few years, I've found it hard to be in ANY fandom simply bc I am too busy with stuff irl to keep up with most fandoms outside of my lil friend circles. It might've been obvious from how I was posting about wrapping up my degree in 2022 and how around that time I stopped posting my art online, but I really just got caught up with writing my final thesis, graduating, working full time, living on my own, and a whole buncha other personal things that meant that I had very very very little time for my hobbies.

I also work in education, and in my area, full-time education jobs are few and far between. I currently work 2 part-time jobs, but at some point I was working 4................ I am lucky I only had to do that for like half a year, but I was working so much I was literally catching up on sleep during lunch breaks in my car and when I WAS home I was just floundering in bed because I was so tired. Things are better now though, just saying to illustrate how dire things were at one point lol

And even with that small amount free of time I had, I uhhh played a lot of splatoon 3 at first instead lol. I later modded my 3DS (two of them actually after the first broke) and thats where a large amount of my free time went for a while. I was still drawing but it was definitely much much less often than I was used to while I was still a college student. In all honesty, for like a year or so my drawing skills straight up deteriorated from lack of use.

Eventually I started bookbinding in my free time, which then lead me to an interest in fountain pens. It was with this new hobby I picked up last year that I finally felt ready to return to drawing again. It was kinda of scary when I used my digital art tablet for the first time in forever and everything felt strange and uncomfortable to use again. I could barely draw a simple head shot, much less full body character art, so I spent a lot of time just drawing patterns and shapes over and over again until the character-drawing-flow came back to me.

So for like the last half year I've been drawing again! It has been a lot of OCs that I have been developing in my head for a while, but also some random fan art of whatever it is I was playing/reading/watching at the time.

I never got around to posting what little art I was making bc 1) I thought none of it was good enough to be my "come back" idk why I feel like the first thing I post here again has to be mind-blowingly good, but its something thats kept me back for no reason. 2) I felt bad for like a year for dropping off making RQG art so hard that I felt like I would be judged a little on if my "come back" was or wasn't RQG-related. Like some other artist friends kept making RQG art and thats cool, but others were moving on to other things which was cool too, and I felt a little like I had to make a "choice" on which way I was going to "go" 3) I just in general am less "online" than I was as a college student. I'm no longer on top of fandom memes and art trends which might just be me growing from being a teen to being an adult but it also makes me less enthusiastic to "participate in fandom" on the daily.

Also sometimes it feels too shallow or silly to be spending my time on making fan art (early-onset-midife-crisis feelings of 'oh god what even do I want to do with my life im 26 now, over a quarter of a way to 100, which not everyone lives to, so am I really going to be spending more of my limited life time just chasing after attention from the relentless depression-inducing content-farm that is social media?') But that's just one side of my brain and the other says 'shut up it doesnt have to be like that lol'. So I'm trying to interact with "fandom" in ways that avoid large social media interaction.

my main way to "participate in fandom" lately is just to scroll here on tumblr, talk to a few friends over discord, and sometimes make random forum/wiki accounts in places where my interests lie and make conversation/contributions there. So the last few months I've been contemplating HOW to get back on the horse of sharing art again. At first I thought bluesky was the answer, and I made an account there and posted a few things, but I haven't actually been vibing well with the site. Me leaving twitter felt impossible just a few years ago, but bluesky feels like twitter2 which doesn't interest me at all now.

Some friends showed me this site called SheezyArt lately, which I really like as a place to simply post art and leave, so that will be where I try to keep a bulk of it for now. Over the next few weeks I am going to be posting my backlog of random drawings from the last few years, aka all new art that's not been posted anywhere before (RQG, professor layton, higurashi, dangan ronpa, and adventure time art are all on the list, fandom-wise). Once I am all caught up there, I will consider posting them individually on tumblr here (or maybe on a new art dump side account? I'm still considering my options there)

What I really want is to focus more of my creative energy on original projects rather than fanart and stuff (not knocking it at all, just feeling a change in what I capital w Want out of my art and my life), though I will probably still be making more of it out of habit. But hopefully my stuff is interesting to those who have followed me so far for fan art!

To that end, I started coding a Neocities website that I think I am finally ready to share after working on and off on it for nearly a year now. Both this site and my Sheezyart are sort of being soft-launched with this post, I will make a more nice-looking one later, but for now, those who are interested in my art enough to read this far get the privilege to know about it early haha

RaspberryHell at SheezyArt & Raspberryhell.neocities.org

anyways, theres your reward for reaching out and asking me this question and for anyone else who is still bothering to read this lol

tdlr: I was busy for like 3 years but I made a website and a sheezyart account and that's how I will be in "fandom" for now (on top of my regular tumblr scrolling) so I can post art and tell yall about things on my mind. :)

[reflectingiridescent]

Hi! A, K, O, P, S (or T, since you said you had more in the prev ask!) for the fandom ask meme? ^^ really love reading your thoughts about leverage by the way!!

Aww, thank you so much! I'm glad someone's into reading them. Here's the list of questions!

A. Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

Current hyperfixations? Cool! Okay so we'll do / for romantic, & for platonic, and "and" for "something in-between".

Sophie/Nate

Sophie/Tara

Sophie/Nate with Sophie/Tara

Sophie and Parker

Sophie and Eliot (look they hooked up pre-team okay)

Sophie & Hardison

Breanna and Sophie and Parker and Eliot

Hardison/Parker/Eliot

Sophie/Harry (I was normal about this until The Swipe Right Job, I swear)

Sophie's really just a little black dress of the Leverage fandom. And then:

Raffi/Seven (this is from Star Trek)

Leliana and Morrigan (Dragon Age)

Agatha/Rio (Agatha All Along)

I thought that wasn't a lot, but it's kind of a lot. Hmm.

K. What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?

Favorite Arc: Sophie

Best Development Arc: Parker

I don't know if I'll ever see an arc done better than Parker's. Seven of Nine and Leliana come close, but no, it's Parker. Hands down. Seven and Parker share some similar archetypes tbh.

O. Choose a song at random. Which ship or character does it remind you of?

Ok, Spotify gave me Reneé Rapp's "Leave Me Alone", which is 100%....a Tara song.

P. Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas).

Fantasy AU? I have had this idea for a while where Sophie and Tara are enchantresses. Tara is a seer kind of like her character in The Future Job, and Sophie is a fairy godmother who has never bound herself to a charge because fairy godmothers are very powerful, but once you bind yourself, you have to serve that child and only that child for the rest of your days, and she doesn't like being tied down like that!

Also it's not a world that's good to magic users, because people hate what they don't understand, etc. So both women have a lot of constraints on their magic and have their magic used for royalty in power until they run away and turn to crime to live.

Anyway, in an og series s2 kind of turn of events, she ends up binding herself to Hardison, Parker, and Eliot in a move that saves the day but also is a completely new form of magic, because there's no precedent for linking yourself to 3 people instead of 1. Also they're adults so like, what does that even mean for a fairy godmother? But also, it's a third option take that does kind of save everyone. And the story goes from there.

Eliot's a mercenary for hire until he meets the team, Parker's a smuggler, and Hardison's an artificer.

Nate goes and tries to become immortal for Sophie so she doesn't have to watch him grow old, and Nate may or may not succeed. It's a good time all around.

S. Show us an example of your personal headcanon (prompts optional but encouraged)/T. Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending? 

Tara Cole is Seven of Nine's ancestor (this is low-hanging fruit because it's the same actor)

Tara and Sophie had a mutually beneficial, sometimes physical friendly relationship until after s2. That's when they became real friends.

Parker was going through burnout at the beginning of Leverage: Redemption that was not caused by but definitely exacerbated by Nate's death. He was really important to her. Helping Sophie helped her.

OG series Sophie? Incapable of pulling off the White Rabbit. Post-s2 Redemption Sophie? Capable of pulling off the White Rabbit, but it's going to wound her in a way it doesn't Parker.

I mean I can't claim this one because so many other people have it too, but even though being a Doctor Who fan is not really Sophie's brand, she absolutely is one, and I'm pretty sure the justification for that one was "there's no way she grows up in the UK , has that appetite for story, and doesn't like the show". And I'm pretty sure this becomes a bonding thing for her and Hardison (and Parker!) later on.

Sophie has worked in a perfume shop. She was also one of those tour guides who try to get you to hire them off the street to show you around various monuments.

Sophie and Parker are very cuddly in private, and the answer for when that starts is "earlier than you think it does".

I also have Leverage rising sign headcanons and a whole novel of reasoning for why I think that is, but to be as succinct as possible:

It's a terrible idea to assign characters sun signs because the show may always give them a birthday

It's a great idea to assign characters rising signs because it's much rarer for the show to give them a birth time

In traditional astrology, the rising sign is more important anyway because it tells you which planet steers your chart or "rules" you

The original 5 are all Mercury-ruled. Mercury is the planet of tricksters and thieves. And in traditional astrology, it is the only planet that does not automatically align with day or night. It can shift, which is right on theme for bad guys who make the best good guys. Also no one's going to know what this means, but it's the only planet said to exalt itself which is also so nicely on-theme for them.

Being Mercury-ruled means you're either a Gemini or Virgo rising. I'm actually leaning towards Virgo for all 5 for specific reasons. But I also entertain Sophie and Hardison being Gemini risings, but I think it's most likely that all five are Virgo risings.

This doesn't mean that they're all the same - it just means that you'd look to everyone's individual Mercury for more information about their chart. The Mercury could be in any sign.

Rising Signs for the Others

Tara is Mars-ruled. So Scorpio (Mars rules Scorpio, traditionally) or Aries. Leaning towards Scorpio.

Breanna: Leo. Ruled by the Sun.

Harry: I'm still thinking about it.

Ok I have more (not about astrology, I swear), but I need to stop again.

[deadhands69]

hi jade!! i haven’t popped by in ages omg how are you?!

alsoo #4 for the writing ask game!

Hi Sydney!! I'm doing great, how have you been? How's life??

4: pick an alternate setting you would want to put either the main cast of your work or [specific characters] in— zombie apocalypse, medieval fantasy, regency era, office hijinks, etc. describe what it would look like and/or write 100+ words in this universe.

This is such a fun question! I absolutely love dropping characters into specific scenarios and AUs.

Hmmm I think dropping the League of Villains onto a deserted island would be interesting.

Shigaraki is fine until his switch dies and he has to find some other form of entertainment. I could see him taking up some weird made up hobby like collecting a specific shape of rock or something. He'd deny that he's losing it until he's amassed a huge pile of perfectly round flat rocks, looks at it, then walks away and never mentions it again.

He seems like he'd know a lot about really random things too which would be useful. Everyone is tying to find water and he just randomly knows how to build a distiller or something.

Dabi would do better than most people would initially think, he's an outdoor kid and I will die on that hill. After spending his childhood in the mountains to train then much of his life living outside, he'd build a great shelter. His quirk would be great for this situation as well.

He'd struggle with the sand on his wounds and running out of staples though.

Toga would get bored fast, there's no one to have a crush on. It's just the league and ewwww (her words.) She would bounce between all of the introverts, making them socialize for a little bit.

She'd probably find a way to make some really cool clothes out of random plants parts too.

You can't tell me Compress doesn't have a whole ass house or something on one of those marbles. I'm sure he could live on whatever is in his pockets for a while. He also seems like he'd get bored or bother the introverts too much.

He'd definitely put on a theater show for everyone with some of Twice's doubles.

Twice's quirk could be really useful! Only if he remembers how to make useful things though. I'm sure he could at least make blankets, tarps, pots/pans, etc. Unfortunately, I could see him going the most crazy being stuck on an island. He'd make a double of himself for company and get really paranoid.

Magne feels like she wouldn't get stuck in this situation. Idk why, she just seems too rational to put herself in a scenario where this could happen.

If she does, she ends up building a nice little shack, covers her needs quickly, then spends the time leisurely sitting outside of her beach house and watching everything.

Spinner would be so anxious at first but he'd pull it together and end up taking on all of the gardening or something. It starts with the small task of collecting seeds because that feels important and ends in a 10 acre farm with well a developed irrigation system.

His quirk would be nice for getting food out of tall trees as well.

Thanks again for asking! Question/prompt from this list: writing questions