#A part of me feels bad about the whole story aspect because I really haven’t given many crumbs regarding it yet

[jackobbit]

I was wondering if you were okay with people making fanfiction or fanart of your Working for E.V.I.L. au? With credit, of course.

Aw dude, if someone made that type of stuff I’d happy cry /pos

But yeah no, go for it!! And if y’all do make anything please tag me in it so I can see what you’ve made!! (And so I can print it out and staple it to my wall-)

Both fanfiction and fanart are allowed, and I can’t think of anything in particular I wouldn’t want people to depict or write about so ya’ll are free to do whatever! Even if it’s like, idk, x reader stuff or theories or story predictions, go wild!

[kosmicdream]

Hello. After drawing webcomics for 10 years and making about 10,000 pages of comics, here are some things i have learned/observed in that experience..

1) making comics does not get easier.. Not really

Making comics is a tedious and slow process and with so many different facets of the experience to learn - you’ll never run out of stuff to learn or weaknesses to work on. I’m not saying this to discourage but to just give the frank reality that it really takes a lifetime to understand. Be patient with yourself and try to set healthy expectations. 

2) Read your own comics after making them.

I don’t know if this is as important to other people as it is to me, but I do think that sometimes its easy to not re-read your own work and just go from your own memory of it, or maybe you’re tired of looking at it because of all the flaws. I don’t personally get sucked into the “rewrite/remake” cycle that I know is common with comics, as I sort of just accept things as they are, but re-reading my work does help me see where I have come from and where I need to go to next. I personally don’t like to lose sight of that, and I think re-reading helps ground me in the planning process of my work and gives me a better perspective on all aspects.

3) A lot of comic advice should be taken with a grain of salt, because its the person talking to themselves. (including this)

I see a lot of advice that never would have worked for me, or just simply wasn’t something I was ever going to follow. “Dont start with your big epic long stories”! Is a common one. I don’t think that’s bad advice exactly, but how many young artists are going to listen, especially if they’ve never told a story in the first place? Yes, the advice to start small and build yourself up with experience sounds great, I’m sure people do it, but if you’re an artist you’re probably not gonna be that responsible. And for me, when i tried to do this with eggshells, my house burnt down and i kinda gave up comics for a while because i lost a lot of work. 

Writing short stories is still something I struggle with, its just not easy for me. I have gotten better at it but i don’t think that makes me less of a comic artist because I haven’t gotten good at that particular format, or that I jump around on my projects. Is it more impressive to have more completed work under your belt, sure. But I also think that.. Idk.. what is the advice actually saying, because with that one it sort of feels (often times) as a warning that you’re setting yourself up for failure/embarrassment by attempting a comic like that. I don’t know how to tell you this, but comics are gonna be embarrassing no matter what you do and there’s no guarantee you’ll be more successful/not experience failure by avoiding your passions. Something to think about anyway. 

4) Don’t draw every leaf. Unless you really want to.

I’m the kind of comic artist that kind of doesn’t care about the art as much as the whole package of the comic. When i see a very impressively drawn panel/page, with laborious detail that is well drawn and maybe even colored ect.. That usually is kind of, I guess, a turn off for me as part of the reading experience. The thing is, when i encounter that, it usually signals to me that someone has poor planning skills for comics. It says to me that comic is probably not going to see its end or that artist is overworking themselves in an unnecessary way, that ends up concerning me about how they’re doing. Because i know how hard it is to draw comics. When an artist phones things in a bit, or has a limit on how much they work on a page, its a relief for me to see! because I understand they have healthier boundaries and expectations, and the art itself usually is less stiff too. This is all an overgeneralization, but I think with a lot of webcomic artists we are usually drawing a comic for the first time ever, so it makes sense we want to do our best and try as hard as possible - that just usually isn’t the smartest plan to put all the stock in the visual department. This also kinda frustrates me to see because most comics (professional or not) will also (generally) not reel the art in ever or make a more simple style. Generally I see it always trying to outdo itself, which leads to burn out. I personally only work about 1hr on each page i draw, that hasn’t changed in the 10 years I have been drawing comics, but i used to spend hundreds of hours drawing detailed lineart for eggshells and it didn’t even read well and i’d be disappointed with the results, feeling more lost with my goals than ever. PLEASe.. Just draw worse, its usually better looking in the end too. (because you wont have the experience to judge visual clarity until you’ve been drawing comics for a while imo..)

5) Don’t draw ahead, draw those inbetweenies.

“Inbetweenies” are the pages for the “boring” ones. They are also usually the most common KIND of page. Its the pages that are necessary, but “inbetween” the action. The impact moments in a scene, ect. You gotta draw them. They’re always gonna be there. They’re the pages where maybe, the character is walking somewhere, thinking, ect. The after impact from an action.. There’s a million examples, but hopefully you’ll understand what I mean when I say they’re both necessary pages/panels, sometimes so mundane/redundant, but also required for telling the story.. As a comic is a sequence of images. This is why, the previous advice is also important IMO- because if you really want to “draw every leaf” - maybe you should save that energy and effort for those impact moments that you want to impress the reader with.. And not for the inbetweenies, which are the foundational support, but also not the most important moments. If you conserve your energy a bit, the contrast OF that effort will also pop more. I personally find it funny when I put more effort into a page and end up tricking my readers into thinking I got better at drawing, when really i just have been able to draw better and only save it for moments like this instead of always.

Also, when I say don’t draw ahead.. I mean I draw each page at a time before going to the next one. I have no idea if this is an unusual practice or not, and I know a lot of people will draw their chapters/episodes/whatever in sections like sketch/ink/color/ect.. But I personally draw and finish page by page, unless its the thumb/sketch stage. Even then, i don’t go ahead much. I think that you can control flow/pacing better by doing chapters all at once of course, I see that as a benefit. But i also think that makes things very overwhelming and can also result in a lack of flexibility if something isn’t working. No matter HOW much planning you do- comics are always going to have an aspect of IMPROVISATION with the result you get in the end. There are way too many factors in play to be in complete control of all of them and always know the result of the reading experience. SO for me, this technique is easier and has been something that continues to get me to working effectively. Plus, rumiko takahashi said that’s what she does. And i think she has some of the best visual flow/compositions in comics. So that’s what I do.

I could write more personal advice or rules that i follow..but I think those are the ones I find are the most important to me anyway. Of course, comics are a strange medium and not everything that works for me will work for you. That’s all for now.. Bye bye…! 

Oh by the way, my comics are here: feastforaking.com nastyreddogs.com https://kosmic.itch.io/ Support me on patreon! https://www.patreon.com/kosmic

[taniahylian]

Tristes tropiques: The worst chapter in Reverse 1999

Alright, so I’ve wanted to talk about ch8 of the main story since I’ve finished it because it’s, imo, the worst drop in writing quality we’ve seen in the game so far. It has a lot of inconsistencies, things that aren’t explained or happen off-screen, and the emotional segments are rushed/not impactful enough, and about characters we’ve barely seen (excluding Anjo Nala, who is the best part of the chapter imo). Now, as you can see, this will be quite a negative take, so if you liked this chapter, please don’t let me ruin your fun lol. Also, it’ll have spoilers, so be warned.

Part 1: The representation.

Alright, had to get this out of the way first because it’s what everyone is talking about. The representation.

Is the representation bad? Yes. Really, really bad if we compare it with literally all other stories in the game. To put things in perspective, imagine if in the Notes of Shuori event nothing changed but they clamed this was Japan instead of China, yet characters still spoke in Chinese, had Chinese names, and many of the references were Chinese. That would have been outrageous, wouldn’t it? Well, that’s basically what happened here but with Brazil and other Latin American countries.

What they tried to do, basically, was dump all of Latin America (you, know a region that’s bigger and more diverse than Europe) into one singular “culture” and put this in fictional Sao Paulo. Why do I say that? Because many of the words they use for different things are in Spanish, and many characters speak in Spanish, have Spanish-sounding names, and reference things from other countries in Latin America. Also, one of the npcs, whose name I don’t care to remember, is literally a walking Mexican stereotype. To me what this says is that they didn’t do any research at all about Brazil (for those of you who don’t know, they speak Portuguese and are also far enough away from Mexico that these two cultures aren’t really comparable); enough that they couldn’t get even the language right, or even the geography or the Sao Paulo landscape, judging by what I’ve seen being said by Brazilian players.

Remember when they accurately portrayed the Secession building in Vienna? Or Jantar Mantar in Mor Pank? Or how they usually have characters speak small phrases in their native language, which is appropriate to the region and their character? Well, Bluepoch doesn’t, apparently.

Then there’s the whole “life here is hell, this is hopeless and everything here sucks” aspect of their portrayal of Sao Paulo (and their infamous tweet). This feels especially disrespectful when the story so far has always had quite a good amount of nuance. Vienna for example, having the contrast of being the “city of freedom”, yet having such a strict oppression of arcanists. Or San Francisco, having such a huge poverty and gang problem, yet still portraying the people living in these conditions as actual humans with hopes and dreams that they sometimes were able to accomplish.

And finally, to wrap up this representation thing… it feels disrespectful that the only Brazilian character we get is Mr. Duncan. Mainly because it seems he’s not really Mr. Duncan, but actually Mr. Karson. You know, an English man. I think they should’ve made Lopera Brazilian because so far having her be from Colombia adds nothing to the story, and if she was from Sao Paulo it’d make a lot more sense for her to be Vertin’s guide/translator in the city.

Okay, so that’s what we get from the representation in this chapter, which is pretty bad (haven’t read Anjo’s character story, which I’ve heard is better in this aspect, but that’s not actually part of ch8, so I excluded it). However, honestly I wouldn’t mind that much if the story had at least been good. So… let’s talk about that next, shall we?

Part 2: The story.

The good.

Okay, first let’s get the good things out of the way, because I don’t want to sit here and pretend that everything about this chapter was bad; that would be unfair and disingenuous.

I liked Lopera and Molly. They were interesting characters and have a lot of potential for the future of the story, which I really hope they deliver in future chapters.

I liked White Rum; she’s a funny character, and the concept of an Awakened pirate ship that has the skeletal hand of her former captain (Anne Bonnie, my favorite pirate of all time) is quite an interesting and unique idea, and I wish we got more characters like this. Also, I need to see her interact with Regulus lol.

I absolutely adored Anjo Nala. She’s the highlight of the story for me; an interesting, complex, and adorable character with a lot of potential for stories to tell, both about her past and her future. I really became attached to her over the course of this story, and I think they did a good job making you care for her… in this specific chapter. Don’t look back at versions 2.0 and 2.1 if you don’t want to get your fun ruined, because consistency is something they didn’t care about at all while writing this patch. And that brings us to…

The bad.

Buckle up my friends because what’s bad about this chapter is really, really, REALLY bad. Consistency is something they don’t believe in anymore, retcons are on the market, and setting up characters/settings/relationships is a thing of the past.

Does it sound like I’m being too harsh? Maybe, but it’s deserved, so idc.

Let’s start from the least bad, shall we? Anjo Nala’s hunger. In 2.0 and 2.1, as well as the first of Anjo’s monologues (the things you unlock after getting traces of a specific character), it’s implied that she can’t eat human food. Not that she doesn’t find it satisfactory, or that she doesn’t like it. It’s heavily implied she literally can’t eat it.

But then she steals some bread and Vertin gives her chocolate, and she eats both, so… what’s up with that? Also, they never really explain what her hunger is for. Was it really just normal human food? Or something else? In her trailer (which btw I wouldn’t consider it part of the main story because it’s a freaking trailer, but whatever) she “feeds on someone’s love” by using her tail. Okay, but then that person turns into a “walking corpse”. Does she have to do that every time she’s hungry? What happens if she doesn’t? Is human food substitute enough? The game never answers these questions, which is a mistake because this whole thing is a central part of Anjo’s character, as well as her turning from her bloodthirsty self to the Anjo we meet in this chapter.

And this brings us to my second issue… the inconsistency of Anjo’s character with the two events we had before this patch. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying anything she ever did was her fault since she was simply a slave following orders, and one thing that is consistent about her character is that she doesn’t like when people do give her orders. However, what really annoys me is how in 2.0 she was very bloodthirsty. Sure, she didn’t know J and his gang, and she had done these types of jobs before, but imo it would’ve been more consistent with the other patches if she was indifferent about killing them, rather than excited. 2.1 was slightly more consistent with ch8 when it comes to Anjo’s character, but it’s kind of implied it was all an act, and her “real” personality was that of 2.0.

Now, I’ve seen some ppl explain this as “well, in a wilderness interaction she says she acts however her master prefers her to”. Okay, but why put such important information in a freaking wilderness interaction and not in the main story??? You can’t even see those unless you have the character, and seeing as Anjo is limited, not everyone will have her. This is a fact.

Another problem I have with Anjo (this is the last, I promise) is that we’re not introduced to her again in ch8, which surely is a decision. Why? Because 2.0 and 2.1 aren’t part of the main story; they’re side events, which are time-limited and, at the moment, not available in-game. This is a problem because anyone who didn’t play those events for one reason or another will be very confused by Anjo Nala and how Vertin reacts to her. It would’ve been better if we were introduced to her from the pov of Lopera, for example, when she raided the Manus base and captured her. And then we could have Vertin run into her on the ship and explain to Sotheby (with a little more detail than what we got) that she actually met her before.

I’m just saying, this isn’t the first time we got a character in a main chapter that had been previously introduced only in an event (Marta/Bessmert), but in that case, if you missed the event, you could still fully enjoy the main chapter, because you wouldn’t even know that you were missing information. That’s not the case here.

And speaking of Urd… okay, let’s talk about how little sense it makes for the Foundation to want to find her in this chapter. In ch5 Vertin and her team found a suspicious radio that talked about a travel note about Aperion written by someone named “Urd”. In this case it makes sense for them to want to investigate, since the base Ms. Radio was in had things that belonged to the Manus, and they found some Manus followers there as well. Even after ch5 and everything that happened, it still makes sense for Vertin to want to keep looking for Urd because now she has the suspicion, based on what 6 said, that Urd is her mother.

However, although it makes sense for Vertin to want to find Urd, it doesn’t make sense for the freaking Foundation to want to find some random UTTU editor. Because that’s really all Urd is, isn’t she? She’s not the head of UTTU (that’d be Pandora), and the fact that she can traverse the storm, which is the only reason we’re given in ch8, is shared among all UTTU editors, as we learn from Barbara.

But even if we assume the Foundation wants to know how UTTU keeps its editors safe… first of all, why? We already have the equilibrium umbrellas, don’t we? We spent a whole chapter seeing their creation, and even saw ppl die for this cause. Why would they need yet another method for surviving the storm? If they instead suspected UTTU to be involved with the Manus somehow, and that’s how they’re traversing the storm, then at least give us that!

Furthermore, the Foundation already knew where she was! They were the ones who gave her the white marble chair with a button! If they just wanted to speak with her, surely a simply call would’ve sufficed? Why send Vertin?

And that’s another thing! Constantine knows Vertin’s mom, and I'm sure she’s not the only one in the Foundation who does, yet the Foundation tried to cover it up and tell Vertin that she doesn’t have a mother. Clearly they have some motivation for keeping it hidden, right? Then… why send Vertin specifically to search for Urd? Why not send some other random investigator, preferentially one with experience finding ppl? Why Vertin???

If Vertin had gone out of her own will, like in ch5, I’d have no problem with this, but no; the Foundation sent her this time. And I just can’t bring myself to understand why.

Maybe if Urd isn’t Vertin’s mom, that would explain this, but for now this makes no sense at all.

Next I want to talk about Lopera and Molly’s relationship. I said before that I truly liked their characters and their relationship, which is true, but… I wish it had been better stablished. Why? Because we had only had one, one single scene, of them together and the suddenly there was a grand betrayal and we’re supposed to feel bad for Lopera? Lmao.

If I felt slightly bad for Lopera it was because of the voice acting, the music and the art. I can assure you, not one single ounce of those feelings came from the actual story being told. It’s even worse when it comes to Igor because he barely exchanged words with Lopera, and all we know from their relationship comes from Lopera telling us “he’s better than my biological father”. And let’s not talk about Ptoleme. He literally only appeared to be a jerk for like five minutes and neither Molly nor Lopera seem to care much about him. How are we supposed to care about that entire family? They really don’t feel like a family at all (except for Lopera and Molly, but even then, it’s the bare minimum this chapter could do with this concept).

It would’ve been so much better if we had this whole chapter to stablish Lopera’s relationship with her adoptive family, with Zeno, the veterans and the Sao Paulo community, and then in the next chapter we could have the big betrayal be more impactful. But here? We barely spent any time with these characters!

And then we have the actual betrayal scene, which is… nonsensical. At best.

What happened in it? Molly arrived at the Colonel’s manor with her squad of Zeno soldiers and attacked the few Apostles Brotherhood ppl that remained, then says she’s glad that Lopera was able to rescue Dr. Dores and that they should all go back to the base. None of this is suspicious, imo, because Vertin had already told Lopera that she was going to call Zeno for reinforcements, specifically to assist with the rescue of Dr. Dores. It’s true that Molly hesitates a little when Lopera asks “what about the timekeeper?”, and that she dismisses Lopera’s concerns about evacuating Sao Paulo, but imo this shouldn’t be enough for Lopera to be so suspicious of her freaking sister. Also, why ask “who’s waiting for you in Tierra del Fuego”? Why would Lopera every think this was anything other than a mission from Zeno???

Sure, they didn’t tell her about it, but also she’s been gone from the base for a couple of days and she knows there’s been traitors and rebels. A lot could’ve changed in that time. Even if she didn’t want to leave because she got attached to Sao Paulo, I think it’s weird that she immediately was so confrontational about it, especially with her sister, who famously just follows their father’s orders without questions.

This could’ve worked if Lopera was already suspicious of her family beforehand, or maybe even of Zeno’s higher ups, or if Molly and her squad had just waltzed in without attacking the Manus or being attacked by them. But that’s not what happened. Also, if she really was suspicious, why not go back to the base and question Igor about this whole thing like Molly suggested? I don’t see why she immediately would think base=bad when her whole family and the army she’s part of is currently at the base.

Like, I get she already had trauma because of her biological father being a jerk, but that situation doesn’t seem to have anything to do with this one imo. All in all, what I’m saying is that the bad writing of this scene lessens the emotional impact.

And it’s not the only emotional scene that’s affected by the blatant bad writing in this chapter. No, that “honor” goes to the scene the trailer for this patch opens with; Anjo being ordered to kill Vertin by Ptoleme.

Okay, so as a refresher, Igor requests that his son, Ptoleme, is sent to the base because “he can only trust in his children because they always obey him”. Okay, so then what does Ptoleme do when ordered to bring back Kimberly, preferentially without a fuss? Of course, cause the biggest scene imaginable, which leads to Kimberly being freed.

Now, I wouldn’t be so harsh on him if his actions were reasonable but due to circumstances led to an unfavorable outcome for him, but that’s not what happened. Okay, he ordered Anjo to kill Vertin. Whatever, he’s a sadistic asshole, but this at least kinda makes sense. What makes no sense whatsoever is that he not only gave Vertin a gun because “he won’t shoot an unarmed civilian” (why does he care? Also ultimately he orders Anjo to kill her, so he wouldn’t have shot an unarmed civilian anyways), but also that he kept trying to make Vertin shoot Anjo.

Why? Just why? There was no reason for him to want Vertin to kill Anjo. None at all. And if what he wanted was to convince Anjo to kill Vertin… he can’t play both the “I’ll free you if you kill her” and the “Vertin, kill her, she’s a monster” cards at the same time. It makes him look like a pathetic moron with no sense of reality whatsoever, and in retrospective makes Igor look like a bigger idiot who doesn’t know his children at all. I think the reason they did this is because they wanted to replicate the infamous orange scene from ch2, but without all the logic, lore and emotional impact behind it, just hoping players would feel emotions by association.

And finally, we come to my biggest complain about this chapter: the retcon about how the storm works. Because yes, it is a retcon. Why do I say that? Mainly based on ch6.

In ch6 we learn that Heinrich, in 1912, left Vienna to study at Berlin. There, he met the Manus and joined them, surviving that storm, and subsequent ones, until time returned to 1913 and he went back to Vienna, reuniting with his old friends and telling them about the storm.

Now, how is this relevant? Well, from Heinrich’s story we learned two things; 1) you can indeed see again someone who was once reversed by the storm, but only if time ever goes back to that era, and 2) The fact that his friends recognized him and he recognized his friends, and his friends’ existence was consistent even though the storm had once reversed them. You see where I’m going with this, don’t you?

At the end of ch8, Vertin says “the storm doesn’t kill ppl, at least not physically”. Okay Vertin, did you have a lobotomy between chapters? The storm has never killed ppl; it’s just the end of an era, remember? It reverses time! It’s in the freaking name! The scariest part about the storm isn’t the storm itself, but the storm syndrome, which is when most casualties seem to happen. Sure, the storm sucked for Vertin because she kept traversing eras and losing the friends she made in them, but those friends remained anchored in their own time (perhaps with the exception of ppl who had already crossed the storm at least once, like The Ring and Isabella, but I digress).

My point is, that I really don’t like where this retcon is headed, but I do hope they somehow fix it in the future, either by making it clear that not everyone who gets reversed is reincarnated and there’s very strict conditions that should be met (like having knowledge about the storm, for example), or this hypothesis is wrong and the storm isn’t actually making ppl reincarnate.

One reason I especially don’t like this new reincarnation thing is that… Mr. Duncan isn’t Mr. Karson. Let’s not lie to ourselves. He looks nothing like Mr. Karson (and I wish the game would stop gaslighting me), doesn’t act like Mr. Karson, doesn’t speak like Mr. Karson, and doesn’t even have the same nationality as him! The only things that are similar about them is that they’re both old war veterans who once had a dog and now have a soft spot for young ladies. And if this is the approach they’ll use to bring back characters in the future… thanks, but I’d rather they stayed reversed.

Think about it! Will they next say that Anjo is Schneider? They look similar enough (more similar than Duncan and Karson, that’s for sure!), both were antagonists that joined the manus for reasons beyond their control, both had a fight with Vertin in which they almost got killed, and both have a snake bracelet on their left arm. Surely that’s enough to say they’re one and the same, according to this logic!

My point is that using such simple similarities, they can literally invent any new character they want and then say “this is actually this other character, who was once reversed by the storm”, regardless of if they’re actually similar at all, and I don’t think that people who wanted them to bring back Schneider or Marian, or Mr. Karson, or 888, or literally anyone, wanted them to be brought back like this.

But that’s enough of me ranting lol. What do you think? Did you like this chapter? What are your main complains about it?

To be clear I’m not saying we should stop playing the game or anything like that; from what I’ve heard the next event is actually good, and I have faith Bluepoch will listen to the players and make sure ch9 is better than whatever ch8 was, but it’s precisely this why it is important for us, as players, to speak out when we don’t like something so that Bluepoch knows they can’t get away with such blatant drops in quality.

Now, if you somehow made it to the end, thanks for reading!

[marengogo]

It is a very very very basic and simple thing, you're a worldwide celebrity, you got the INFLUENCE, you saw someone with with your name (shipper name to be exact but okay..)and want to post a video, you click on that account to check if the said acct is someone who's problematic for example a Zionist, god forbid a r*pist or anything else and then you post it on your story. As simple as that. In taehyung's case he wouldn't even have to scroll down through the page to see it's problematic cause the initial posts are enough. The work would have been done in 3sec max.

He was irresponsible and holding him accountable for that is not accusing him of doing some crime. They're human and can make mistakes and if we accept that they're capable of making mistakes idt it's making anyone bad. There's no need of big explanation for this.

He said the "n" word on his live but he didn't do anything wrong, he wore a durag on his live but yeah he didn't know about it, he was irresponsible for making a mistake which gave antis bigger platform to hate on his member but yes he's he's got no time for it. y'alls ability to keep defending every single thing the boys do is something else. The only thing people said is he should have been more careful but nahhh we're hating him just for saying this, we're making big deal out of nothing, we're his antis for saying that damn. I would have said the exact same words as "He should have been more careful with these things" if my bias was in place of taehyung.

QUICK NOTICE: I am still VERY MUCH in my not announced Not-Really-Answering-Asks era, (Colosseum is closed and all that stuff you know…) THAT BEING SAID, some of the asks I have been receiving [due to yesterday’s “ARMY debacle”] happen to serve themselves as perfect scenarios for me to point out some aspects of me that I really would want to make VERY CLEAR & UNDERSTOOD.

Hi Anon,

So, you believe all of this to be a very very very basic and simple thing, right?If that is the case why are you here? I obviously don’t think the same way you do, but I’m not even asking you to. Own up to what you believe and roll it, why justifying yourself? you are not on trial. The only thing people said is he should have been more careful but nahhh we're hating him just for saying this, we're making big deal out of nothing, we're his antis for saying that damn. Do you feel like you are making a big deal? Are you an anti? If the answer to both questions is no, then why you stressing bro?

You see, I haven’t formed the habit of just considering everything in a very very very basic and simple way I clearly was absent that day particularly when I see underlying problems. So then, if I see a problem, I try to get to the root of it and see what can be done. Reason why when Tae said the n-word, I addressed the issue accordingly:

By the way, I also emailed BigHit about it

And let me tell you right away, I ain’t finna weight a singer mouthing the n-word while singing, in the same way I would weight a singer that came to me, called me the n-word and told me to die. Sorry, I’m not wired like that and let me make this abundantly clear for future Anons:

I will ALWAYS consider motive, circumstance, chance and any other factor surrounding an incident/accident upon casting ANY KIND of judgement, be it the most complicated case in history or the “simplest” hiccup ever. ALWAYS, because I strive to always treat people the same way I would want to be treated. I refuse to live in a white and black world, that's the whole point of this blog. BUT I also match energy, so be warned 😗✌🏾.

So actually you can really miss me with the whole He was irresponsible and holding him accountable for that is not accusing him of doing some crime like it would be so great if people knew how to take a step back and properly assess situations. If you went to a court of law wanting to sue Tae for “reposting a picture of himself from a random IG post” how do you think that will hold up in court?

I mean, besides the fact that just scrolling down someone’s page will not always tell you exactly who they are at a first glance, I mean I know I don’t have 60 million followers but when I get some gifs or pics from the internet, to use on whatsapp, I never check the source, I probably should uh? Seems like everyone does … sorry I’m late to the party! how is Tae reposting a story which, once again, has a picture of himself, the same as endorsing what the person is doing on their page? 

Did Tae ask people to follow said account?

Did Tae compliment the account holder, or its content?

Did Tae ask said account to be a shipper account?

The fact that ARMY felt obliged to follow said account is on ARMY and ARMY SOLELY.

Like, I dunno, if you go to a page and you see that its content is questionable, are you not gonna flag it? But that's just me.

It is not Taehyung's responsibility to make sure that people have and use common sense. The fact that the Tannies are now having to be responsible for rectifying some ARMY’s failed education which should have been provided to them by at least parents/guardians and/or teachers is very mind boggling to me. Because, on this occasion, what exactly are you holding Tae accountable for? Sure, he has influence but he is not Charles Manson FFS. The whole “he could have liked a Zionist page, r***ist, etc” was a complete after-thought brought about as a way to talk back to the fact that the actual issue that caused this whole debacle is SHIPPING, but we ain’t ready to tackle that just yet. Cause where was this energy when JK actually started following all those random ass accounts on TikTok? Naah, you really can miss me with that.

Actually, I have a wish for this fandom. My wish is for this fandom to be able to have balanced responses to issues, without creating issues upon issues upon issues … One day this fandom will learn to also use words in an unnecessarily provocative way, which hey, I’m cool, I can be your punching bag all day, I don’t assimilate so whatever, but that bird app … boooiii, people get triggered AF! … for example where you wrote y'alls ability to keep defending every single thing the boys do is something else why you grouping me there bro? Something like “some of y'alls ability to keep defending every single thing the boys do is something” little things like that help fostering amicable conversations, because you are not an anti so no need to retaliate if you don’t relate. Right?

Anyways, all that to say that I disagree, but we ain’t gotta agree so, all cool. If you feel that what you doing is right, then you keep doing you, ayte? Thanks for stopping by!

Always respectfully yours,

Marengo.

PS - sorry for the lack of gifs, I’m feeling a bit under the weather and it takes me forever to make my own gifs and I am trying to keep a rectangular gif aesthetic, most of all gifs in the internet are a bit squary I don’t think that is a word but whateve’s.

[no1ryomafan]

now it’s time for no reason at 2 fucking am for me to give my opinions about every mega man series ✨ (again this is my opinion and also my time to expose how much of a fake fucking fan I am in some regards) imma go in chronological release order to my memory.

Classic: I don’t hate it but I’m the only person who doesn’t feel strongly about it. I just can’t get invested into not only the gameplay but any of the robot masters besides a select few-I’m sorry I just don’t see the appeal-I do like the significant characters like rock, roll, blues and bass obviously, and learning about what influenced mega man as a whole made me appreciate it a little more but I don’t advise it as the series people should get into or like they don’t need to play every single game cause it suffers the most from being samey. (Really just play 11, but I also say this as the only classic game I actually finished 💀) Liked the Archie comics though and wish it continued… Tempo was neat.

X: Mixed feelings galore oh booooy. X and Zero shaped me to be the person who I was for ALL the wrong reasons- I still ship XZero I’ll just never admit to it cause if it’s a overrated pair and the fans can be bad, I just love the most basic fucking yaoi pairs. I like a lot of the other characters like Vile, Axl, Iris-for little she gets-etc. Besides that the X series has been tainted for me cause MAN it has the worst fandom out of the series. I’m sorry X fans are so fucking vicious and I don’t know why, I sometimes wonder if you guys like your own series even if I get it’s super flawed. X discussion can get so annoyed at points especially with the crowd of “oh the games after X5 suck so I don’t count them as canon” (yes people like that fucking exist. Ignoring how X6 CHANGE THE SCOPE OF HOW MMZ1 CAME TO BE) X is definitely that series of “interesting ideas but bad execution” wish MHX got to continue cause the first game had potential to fix the story. Also I never beat a single game but I keep telling myself I’ll beat X1 or X4…

Legends: The only series I haven’t played whatsoever BUT I did watch the cutscenes so I’m up to speed on the lore. Really find the lore cool and the characters are charming, it’s just a series that’s hard to talk about cause it’s all “WHERES MEGA MAN LEGENDS 3” and man I get being salty about that sequel being canned and I wish it happened too but can we talk about the actual series… Also Roll Caskett best Roll don’t @ me.

Battle Network: Okay controversial time this is the Mega Man series I give the least fucks about and it’s gonna shock you when you guys see how I feel about Star Force. Idk why but this series just- doesn’t appeal to me. I want to give it a chance, before the LC even came out I got BN5DS but I didn’t like liberation missions so never got passed the first one, and I still never got the LC and heck is the only LC I didn’t get because I’m sorry no matter HOW much you tell me BN good the pricing is not worth it. I couldn’t be bothered to get into the anime or manga too. Idk just mega man but ai seems like a cool idea and I don’t mind it being a rpg it’s cool mega man changed what it was yet still retained its appeal but BN doesn’t do it for me. It might just be because of the designs and characterization honestly.

Zero: Another mixed bag but NOWHERE near as bad as MMX, and this one I did finish! I like a lot aspects of Zero the story telling and the refinements to the gameplay but the reason I can’t be super invested is when people consider it the best part of the franchise when all of the games have a glaring flaw. I love Z1, it’s unironically my favorite but it’s also the most flawed entry, Z2 is overhated but you can also tell this game was rushed, which it was, Z3 is considered the best and it’s good but I think it’s overhyped to shit-X4 has the same issue tbh-it makes good changes but it’s level design threw me off even if it’s more fixed than Z2 and *sigh* Z4 was a necessary ending narratively but I FUCKING HATE EVERYTHING ELSE ABOUT IT. (Don’t make me talk about Z4, very few things make me mad like that game- it only gets some points for making me cry at the ending even when I knew what was going to happen though) Also the fandom opinions about the story aspect of this game makes me not trust anyone LOL. Zero is better written here then mmx and Ciel doesn’t deserve hate don’t @ me! Anyways my favorite asshole here is Harpiua. Basic pick but I just wanna put him in a jar and shake him.

ZX: YIPPPPPIE- Sorry that was the sound of me getting excited about my favorite entry of the series. I love this game- so much it’s unreal. Everything about it I fucking adore. Art style, characters, music, gameplay, THE LORE even if it’s something they didn’t expand on enough I still love the setting of ZX. Biometals are such a cool concept that I can’t be mad at the idea of X and Zero being rocks unlike other people, there’s so much potential with them. I will always be sad ZXC never happened but the games we got are so replayable to me and I go on a monthly replay- yes I have a problem LOL. I don’t really have a favorite between them- I def get why people prefer the first game but advent isn’t that bad you guys just suck. Favorite character is hard I love everyone. (I’m kidding, it’s Prometheus. But I do like everyone)

Star Force: So remember how I said my opinions on this would confuse you about why I don’t care for BN? Yeah it’s because I’m the one mega man fan who isn’t a coward and also fucking ADORES this series LOL. I understand it’s a huge diversion from mega man and BN at least still uses some characters but I think star force not having AU characters is why I like it more- and also I’m biased for aliens LOL. Omega-Xis one of the best characters in this series and you guys fucking sleep on him, love the general cast too though. Star Force 1 is also a game that means a lot to me, the story touch me and made me cry like Z4. Honestly I’d like it more then ZX if it weren’t for the fact I don’t fuck with the gameplay too hard cause I never replayed it and story wise it really peaked at 1. I don’t think star force 2 is as bad as everyone saids but I get why people don’t like it, star force 3 has the X4/Z3 problem: good but still has plenty of flaws. There’s a lot of changes 3 made I didn’t like and while the story was decent there was some missed potential. The ending was really nice though but after how some aspects of 3 turned out I couldn’t give a shit if star force 4 happens, if I’m being honest it’s the one canceled game I’m glad didn’t happen cause I think it could’ve actually ruined the series. (Sorry I don’t fuck with the geo being bad plot, it sounded like ass) Also yes if you ask I DO own all the games physically cause I’m fucking insane lol.

So given like- 3 of series I really finished I can’t really rank them but I just wanted to yap and give my opinion. Maybe one day I’ll try battle network or beat a x game…

[kitsaystransrights]

Okay I’m starting a new series on here called “I just finished this game” where I gush about a game I just finished.

Anyway, if you’re a fan of musicals, visual novels, or Greek mythology, you NEED to play Stray Gods.

If you haven’t heard of it before, Stray Gods is a visual novel with branching story routes, but it has the twist of also being a musical! Many of the game’s major choices take place in the songs themselves, and the songs will actually changed based on your decisions! Each song has numerous different permutations based on around 3-5 choices in each one. I recommend checking out Challenging a Queen, one of the early game songs that’s relatively light on spoilers, to see how some of the choices really add some spice to the game and weave through the songs.

The game’s story just follows Grace, a 20-something girl who witnesses the death of Calliope, the Last Muse, and to make matters worse, she has inherited her powers and role. The Chorus, leaders of the remaining Greek gods (known as Idols), give Grace one week to prove her innocence before she is executed, and the line of Calliope is gone forever.

Accompanying her on this journey are a variety of gods, monsters, and her mortal (strictly platonic… strictly) roommate, Freddie. The cast of Stray Gods is easily its best aspect, full of lovable and complex characters, leaving you laughing a lot, sobbing sometimes, and sometimes not knowing who to trust. And when it’s backed up by a fantastic voice cast, and nearly every character getting their own song if not multiple, I’d be astounded if you managed to get through the game without getting attached to SOMEONE lol.

(For the record, my favorite characters are Freddie, Persephone, and Aphrodite hehe)

And of course, what’s a musical without its music? The soundtrack of Stray Gods is absolutely incredible, even beyond the incredible amount of work and dedication it took to integrate so many variations of all the songs in the game. Lots of variety with the genre, sometimes even changing in the middle of a song! If I haaad to pick a few favorites, I suppose it’d be The Ritual, Look Into Me, and If Only. I’m a sucker for the emotional songs, but Look Into Me is suuuuuch a banger, it feels so threatening and I LOVE it.

OKAY now I’m gonna gush about my favorite parts of the story and get all spoilery so if you don’t want to be spoiled, DON’T KEEP READING! Go play the game yourself! Iirc it’s on all current platforms. Enjoy :)

So HOLY SHIT APHRODITE’S SONG HIT ME LIKE A BRICK??? I love the moral dilemma her whole cycle of rebirth puts you in, deciding whether to honor her wishes and let her die again or to convince her to find peace in life rather than trying to forget. I tried SO HARD to save her without forcing her and she ended up passing on anyways.

Persephone’s character is also SOOOO well done here, the reinterpretation of her story where she kills Hades is a fantastic direction to take her character. She ended up being my main investigative partner for the game and I did NOT regret it. I almost ended up romancing her, and I definitely will on my next playthrough, but I didn’t this time because of…

Freddie!!! Freddie absolutely rules and is my favorite character in the whole game. Mortal Greek mythology nerd who is super gay and wears a cool hat, how could I NOT love her??? My heart was completely torn to shreds when she died, and even though I knew she had to be able to come back somehow because you could romance her, the fury it raised in me made me blaze through the last four hours of the game and finish it in one sitting XD.

And JEEZ the way they let you bring her back is so well done. It’s not outright good or bad, it’s complex! Freddie and Grace are both traumatized by her death and resurrection, and the fact that you went against Freddie’s wishes and passed the line of Calliope onto her just makes it even more interesting from a storytelling perspective. It’s part of what makes If Only one of my favorite songs in the game. And of course, I’m a sucker for stories of unrequited love like Freddie’s is for Grace and now I’m gonna feel so guilty romancing anyone else 😭. Freddie is so relatable istg.

Anyways uuuuuh that’s all I have to say, maybe I’ll do a full review on my YouTube? Thanks for checking this post out tho! Okay bye :)

[etherealnoir]

Yessss to everything you said about Found. Because Old!Sir totally treats Gabby like a lover. Not even a girlfriend but an ex wife he was with for a year and then never got over lmao. It’s obvious the show wanted to be some reverse cat and mouse game but they shot themselves in the foot by making Gabby a teen the first time around because going there now is kinda gross. Idk I feel like the show thinks they’ve absolved themselves by making Sir (also this nickname? lmaoooo) all puritanical but they absolutely haven’t because the way MPG looks at Shanola alone is insane. Like Sir needed a cig after the whole ‘tell me you love me’ scene and they’re trying to say it’s platonic? Please. Playing in our faces lmao. Like I don’t even like the idea of them being together because dark romance isn’t my thing but like you I’m not blind. At this point I wish they’d lean into their effed up dynamic and just go with it because this week’s episode was the most interesting by far. I like the missing persons aspect find but the weirdness between Gabby and Sir is what makes it stand apart from other procedurals for better or for worse 🤷🏾‍♀️

I'm not sure why they chose to go that route by making her a teenager. Not that it would make it any better if she were an adult instead, because kidnapping is kidnapping regardless of the age of the victim. I wonder what exactly would change about the storyline if Gabi was in her twenties instead? I feel like the impact on her character would be the same.

These are the times when I ESPECIALLY feel like they started with the "kidnapper was kidnapped" plot and then built everything else around that, even if it doesn't really make sense. Could the characters have been aged up/down to better match the casting? I know they cast Shanola first, so it's not like they didn't have a frame of reference.

I go back and forth on how I feel about it all. I obviously don't ship Sir and Gabi. Aside from the obvious, I also genuinely don't like Sir as a person. I think his character is fascinating and I'm curious to know why he is the way he is. But if Gabi took a baseball bat to his dome I wouldn't blame her or feel bad about it.

The story they're trying to tell on paper would be more effective if MPG wasn't...MPG lol. Because I 100% feel like Shanola is playing the character the way she's supposed to be played in this scenario. But recasting him now wouldn't work. Because he plays the character WELL. But, again, it feels like they're telling us one thing and showing us something else lol

I can only suspend my belief but so much.

The weird part is that it feels like the people behind the scenes are playing up the vagueness of their dynamic on purpose. If it were straightforward without any room for confusion, there wouldn't be multiple people interpreting it in vastly different ways. And we wouldn't have some of the people who worked on the show liking tweets about how Sir is hot or whatever.

I said it on Tik Tok, but I don't think Sir is sexually attracted to her at all. I think he just feels like he has ownership over her because he feels that essentially "made her" who she is. And, on some level, she believes that too. Even though she hates him and what he did.

[frances-kafka]

A big thing I run into with discourse around “The End of Eternity” is that modern readers miss a big point of the narrative and just are not going to stick out enough of the story to see how Asimov resolves it. We’re in the era of “any portrayal of a structure equals condoning it.” People don’t grasp that a particular structure is Objectively Bad unless that is pointed out early on. There is a real anxiety about not knowing who you are supposed to root for.

I feel like this ambiguity was a bigger preference for readers of lots of 90s work; you can’t really portray moral grayness now. I do not feel TEOE is a “gray” work - the author’s moral stance eventually becomes clear regarding the primary bureaucratic structure of the setting. However - the main character doesn’t really begin to question that structure until halfway through the book or later. And if you don’t stick out Andrew Harlan’s development (this is actually a very richly worldbuilt setting for its length and you will experience quite a bit of immersion into the Eternals before Harlan begins to question what he’s been taught all of his life) then it’s easy to make assumptions about the work.

I think this is hard for people who grew up with YA and haven’t engaged harder work, especially in sci fi, to engage with.

also the book has a lot to say about gender segregation in society and toxic masculinity but you have to stick the book out for that. Asimov didn’t just give you that on the first page. And if you’re the type of reader who has been primed to not empathize with *men’s* experience of that thing or with complicated, kinda fucked up male characters then you may not find Harlan relatable.

TEOE is easily one of Asimov’s most adaptable works, and Hollywood has been leaving money on the table for a long time, and Ridley Scott was going to adapt it but it got stuck in development hell at one point. At this point it probably won’t be made, as that was (well?) over a decade ago. An adaptation would probably leave out the parts that are the most problematic to modern viewers/readers. It would probably remove all the weird gender politics from the Eternals and make some of the Eternals women. (Understandably so; some of the assumptions about why women most often can’t be Eternals, are based in a cultural context of women’s lives in 1955, vs men’s; there was a far greater likelihood of a 1950s man leaving no descendants, than of a woman.)

unfortunately, if it did that, to me - it would sanitize away what’s actually one of the most interesting aspects of the book. I’m fascinated by what it has to say about gender, because to me, there is a way this book hits different if you can contextualize Harlan and the Eternals in terms of a strict gender-segregated society that strictly limits one’s understanding of and contact with the opposite sex so that every possible interaction between the sexes is tremendously fraught and full of tension.

There is a whole analysis of this book that’s possible if you have read authors like, say, Chaim Potok, and or are in general familiar with the gender mores of ultra-orthodox Jewish culture, or some other kind of equally regimented and gender-segregated culture.

Harlan doesn’t react to being attracted to a woman in a manner of a contemporary man who has grown up in *our* world. He hasn’t been taught to manage his emotions in any other way besides the most strict suppression, and is overwhelmed by them the first time he feels them. He was taken away from his family young and has only ever known this all-male world that has raised him.

There’s also a queer reading that’s possible, if you read it in a certain light, though Asimov would likely not have intended this. Andrew Harlan is basically a non-asexual hetero man in a world where that’s Bad, and basically the plot is that he’s going to be straight and do crimes.

the book doesn’t at any point get rapey, though Harlan’s emotional landscape would be alien to modern readers. Some things he seems to experience and express seem to be from the point of view of a man who has never been allowed to actually gain any kind of emotional maturity about relationships, and it’s actually a best case scenario in that regard.

a common complaint about the book is that Noys Lambent (love interest) is basically a human McGuffin with no real character development of her own but this actually comes off better considering Harlan as a somewhat unreliable narrator who doesn’t see the world beyond his own introspection. (This is easily one of Asimov’s very most introspective and personal works, compared to the tone in his other writing.) And basically the common complaint is that she’s Just A Pretty Face.

well… once again, people critiquing the book didn’t stick it out.

I really suspect modern readers require the “tells” a lot earlier in a book and a moral dilemma or surprise twist characterization can be missed when the thing takes too long to build.

[quibbs126]

So I remembered this one concept I made some years ago and I just wanted to sketch and talk about it

I talked about how maybe I needed a design overhaul, but since I’m not really sure how to do that, I went back to @droolingdemon imitation for now. Or at least, semi that. I wouldn’t say it looks…anything like their work

I had a lot of fun with the rough sketching of this group (Callous was a bit difficult though with his demon form), but realized I need to also do sketches of them that were nicer, which I had less fun with. Don’t think it turned out too bad though, I just need to figure out how to do sketch lines in this style, since I instead just do straight line art. Though maybe it’s also because I’m always looking at the reference image (the smaller screen of the entire picture thing). I don’t think I used that back when I first did the imitation style

I definitely messed up Callous’s hands in the bottom left though. I wasn’t really thinking about them tbh

But anyways, how about I talk about the characters here?

You know, I think I’m gonna try and be more concise with my points on the plot. I feel like with these things I ramble too much and it starts to become a bit incoherent

Okay, so basically this takes place in a world where humans summon demons from their realm via magic scrolls as basically servants. Our main human character, Pawky, summons a demon from a newly appeared scroll, this being our main demon character Callous, to help her with a quest by being her bodyguard, and that’s pretty much how the plot gets going

I don’t think I ever actually decided what quest she’s actually going on or what they’re doing. I haven’t worked on this for a very long time and a lot of the plot points that might have been there are lost on me. The things I do remember are vaguely how the demon thing works and Callous’s backstory. Mostly since I think those are the things I actually thought about

But I do know the two become friends by the end

So I’ve drawn Callous before, a long time ago, but I’ve never drawn Pawky, which was basically what I was trying to do here

Here’s the original drawing

I like how their designs look in the end though, at least the final pic (bottom right). Need to work on Callous’s demon form though

Okay so first up, origins. Of the story I mean

So basically this thing was inspired by this one au I saw back in my Dragon Ball days (so junior year high school) of basically a monster au, in which witch Bulma summons demon Vegeta for reasons I don’t remember. I don’t remember if it was part of a larger au or this was its own thing, since they did have a full on monster au too. Basically I just took the concept and made it original. Though I did later take out the romance aspect as I changed Callous. But the inspiration may be seen somewhat in their hair

Anyways, so let’s start with the whole demon summoning thing and how it works

Basically how it works is that demons get summoned with scrolls that end up magically appearing in the human world, and with summoning, demons can enter it

There’s different “levels” of demons depending on their power, with the low level ones being your common enemies like slimes and skeletons, stuff like that. They’re generally summoned in groups for proper effectiveness. Then there’s the middle group, which are usually part of a species, but are more powerful than the common enemies, things like manticores and such, but aren’t powerful enough to stand on their own. Then there’s the high level demons, who are so powerful they get their own personal scrolls

Callous is a high level demon

Now granted, the levels are a spectrum, there’s a big difference between the weakest member of the middle level and the strongest, while there likely isn’t as much between that weakest member and the strongest member of the low level. But there is a separation somewhere. Callous technically lies somewhere on the lower end of his spectrum

Demon scrolls usually pop up in the human realm once a demon is old enough or powerful enough, with Callous being the former

Now as for demon summoning, you can’t just do it willy nilly, it takes practice and training, sort of like alchemy in Full Metal Alchemist. And the higher level a demon, the more difficult they are to summon. But when summoned correctly, a demon will appear and the two strike a bargain, the human asking for them to do something, and the demon having to carry that out so that they can return to the demon realm. Though technically speaking it’s not really a bargain, the demons don’t have much say in what they have to do. And while the demon is summoned, they basically have to cater to the summoner’s wishes

If the imbalance of power seems unfair, yeah. I think the lore is that demons and humans fought a war that the humans ultimately (somehow) won, and this is the demons’ punishment for it

One big thing with demon summoning is that if someone of too little experience and power tries to summon a far more powerful demon, they run a very high risk of dying in the process, if not certain risk. And if a summoner dies while summoning a demon, then demons are ultimately left in a loophole where they can go about the demon realm with no limitations, which generally isn’t good. There are people who hunt down those rogue demons, but generally speaking to prevent these sorts of things, there are strict regulations and laws when it comes to distributing demon scrolls, to minimize the risk of this happening. Pawky is someone of a high enough experience that she can summon someone like Callous no problem

Also I’m just remembering, I think there may have been a character who was a Goku stand-in in this story, who’s one of these demon hunters. He’s a very friendly guy, but he has an absolute hatred of demons for one reason or another, and this puts him in conflict with Callous, who is a demon. He might not know Callous’s true nature due to him using a human disguise

I don’t remember why he’s using a human disguise, just that he is

Anyways so I think I’ve just about covered the world building, let’s finally get in to the characters, starting with Pawky

So I don’t have much to say on Pawky, mostly because I don’t remember much about her, if I even wrote stuff about her. She’s spunky and sassy, and she’s good at summoning demons. Also she’s an adult at least in her 20s. I don’t…really have much, that’s about it

As for Callous, he has a lot more going on

So Callous is a manticore, which is a mid level demon class, but he was able to rise up to a high level status on his own. Not only that but he was originally to be of a relatively high ranking in his own race (which is why he has horns like he does). As such he’s very prideful of his abilities and doesn’t take too kindly to being stooped to something as demeaning as being some human’s bodyguard

Now I’m sure you may notice that he’s got something weird about his back, and also that he doesn’t have wings (I know not all manticores have wings, but plenty do, including here). Well he originally did have wings, and quite nice ones that that. But at a young age, the manticore group he was part of was basically exterminated by another, much more powerful demon, with him as the only survivor, and he had his wings ripped off by this other demon, who takes body parts of other demons and basically just attaches them to their own body, becoming this patchwork demon. The copious amount of scars on Callous’s back in the original are from him scratching his own back because of the pain he feels about what happened and to cover up that he ever had wings in the first place, as he sees him losing them as incredibly shameful

Yeah, don’t know why I have him a backstory like that. But that patchwork demon is still out there, with Callous’s old wings, and Callous has a chip on his shoulder from the incident. That demon would probably show up sometime later in the story

Another thing to note is how in his human form, I called out in the sketch that he’s supposed to be small and skinny, which is also supposed to be demonstrated in the bottom right pic, to which Pawky is confused by his non threatening appearance. He’s also supposed to look like a teenager in this form. This is because when a demon goes into a human form, it’s essentially them if they were humans. So what this amounts to for Callous is that despite his appearance in demon form, in comparison to other manticores, he is pretty tiny, and in manticore years only a teenager. His small size is because he was malnourished and had his growth stunted after the extermination of his people. However it might take Pawky some time to realize the reason why Callous looks the way he does in human form

So in reality Callous is actually a tiny 16 year old with a lot of trauma, and ego to compensate

Now let’s talk about Callous’s abilities. Generally he’s just got great strength and sharp fangs and claws, but he also has natural poison/acid that comes from his mouth and stinger.

…Thought I’d have more to say on that front but no. But one thing I have is that he’s a carnivore, and while he’d love to eat human flesh, they usually aren’t fighting enough people to do so, so he just settles for large animals he finds, and he uses the acid in his mouth to essentially melt his prey while tearing an eating it. He’s an incredibly messy and loud eater. Pawky finds his way of eating absolutely disgusting and so makes him eat somewhere where she can’t see and generally hear him

And I think that finally about covers it

I realize now I don’t actually have a title for this. Hmm, was there a name for it? …I don’t remember, nor can I really think of one, other than like, Summoners, but that’s lame. I’m not good with title

But yeah, I hope you enjoyed this

[bvannn]

Weekly Update January 26, 2024

I am still very sick. I just took my second increased dose of the medicine, hoping it will help. Whatever stomach issue I was having a bit ago appears to have returned as well, or it could be more side effects from the surgery. Or something else. I don’t know. I tried fasting on Wednesday and felt physically better but also guilty, and I don’t want to keep doing it because I know it’s dangerous. I’m still a healthy weight for my height so I can probably get away with doing it like, once a week, but I don’t want to accidentally lose too much weight either because I’m already a 22 year old adult who buys clothes in the kids section I don’t need to be any smaller. I’ll figure it out, I’m trying to focus what I am eating on fruits and nuts, hoping it’ll detox me a bit.

I did a couple drawings this week. Kinda. The one I posted was actually sketched back before the surgery I just hadn’t digitized it yet. I only posted the one drawing because I want to hold on to the other for a bit because it’s part of that epithet prompt set I made. I’m fully not expecting to do every one of those prompts, but I figured hey since I missed a few I can do a batch of the missed prompts and release them at once. I sketched the one for this week and planned on finishing it on Wednesday but I got sick again. Once I’m feeling better I’ll try to focus more on drawings. I think I gotta scrap the big animation project I was working on due to circumstances beyond my control, which sucks but theoretically I can try other animation things too. I’ve been sitting on an idea for a short Detective Conan animation, maybe I’ll do that. Or maybe I’ll stay sick. Idk. I kinda want to figure out how I would animate Shaun, since he’s a ghost so I’d have to deal with both transparency and glow effects, plus certain aspects of his design that were meant to be more flowy, like his shirt-tail-thing. I could poke after effects again but it seems a lot more tedious than I had hoped.

I did review over comic stuff this week too, although I haven’t made any progress since I really started getting the surgery after effects. I like how it’s flowing for the most part, but I’m probably going to have to do second drafts of a few pages. Kinda sucks that everything feels so rushed, since I want to fit the whole introductory chapter into ~32 pages, which I’m totally able to do but I have to hold off on some little dialogue exposition conversations that I think people would like. Any story with ghosts is going to have people wanting to fully understand how the ghosts physically work, especially when it becomes relevant, but some of that can be put off until later because character moments are more important. Whatever, I can always keep going.

I feel super bad about not being able to do anything but I’m still so screwed up. I want to take another stab at music, and maybe I will, but I need to sit upright to play piano which screws with my stomach, and in order to pick out VSTs I want on a song I need to be able to have a midi that resembles what the final will sound like and I need to be in the headspace to listen to music without going into sensory overload. I’m pretty sure all of this is sleep related, I have the weekend to hopefully catch up on sleep, but I need to do some homework as well. And I need to stop waking up in the middle of the night. I’m afraid to double dose on sleep medicine because even though I know it’s safe after 6 or so hours, I don’t want to be reliant on sleep medicine because that’s how Michael Jackson died. Might have to wait for my surgery bs to subside before I can try to detox though.

I don’t know what to do with myself right now. I feel awful, I feel like my insides are rotting, but I know they’re not since I’m not in pain from it (or at least not enough pain to really believe that). Plus surgeon looked at me before I moved back to Uni and seemed really impressed with how quickly I was healing. Even though I probably disobeyed her ‘don’t lift more than 20 pounds’ rule. Like a lot. I did feel better this week than I did last, so I’m hoping I can bounce back pretty quick. I’ll give it another week or two before I ask my primary if I need another medicine. I’m hesitant right now because both she and the surgeon seemed to agree beforehand that I wouldn’t, and I want to trust them. I don’t know. Time providing I’ll try to do more drawings this week.

[manicpixiess]

Book wrap-up!! I’ve been on an RF Kuang *spree* this week; I finished Babel and Yellowface, and am halfway through The Poppy War! I love love love how her stories are so compelling and addictively well-written; you simply cannot put the book down, even if nothing particularly thrilling is happening! 

Babel: Solid 3.5 stars out of 5. I’m not a student of either linguistics or history, so I was absolutely fascinated by the mini-lectures on etymology, and the concept of magic being harnessed from meaning lost in translation was one of the coolest premises I’ve ever come across in a book. The author’s world-building drew more on real historical events rather than attempts at reinventing history with silver magic at its core, which I honestly didn’t have a problem with (though a lot of other readers did!). This story worked perfectly well as low-fantasy for me. The historical aspects seemed well-researched, and the themes of violence, revolution and colonialism were explored in an impactful and creative (if not particularly subtle!) way. 

So why, you might ask, was it not a five star read? For me, it was the characters that did it. Robin and Letty are the only characters with any sort of, well, 3D-ness to them! The rest served only as a neat summary (a translation, if you will, and not a very good one) of the ideas, politics and culture of entire countries, or flat out caricatures, all created with the sole intent of making sure the reader Gets the point, which is that Racism is Bad. 

Ramy was a particularly disappointing character for me, because his is a story I would’ve loved to read- an Indian brought up in British-occupied India, sent to England to study. His character was instead reduced to quips and political opinions that are expressed in a jarringly modern way, with zero insight into how his culture and experiences as an Indian Muslim shaped these thoughts! We get only a brief interlude where Ramy’s history is explained in a single page, perhaps to make up for the abysmal lack of characterisation throughout the rest of the book. How hard would it have been to have these experiences be something he talks about, has feelings about, is affected by in noticeable ways?! The whole thing felt so impersonal. 

Ramy is the only POC character in the story with a surviving family (that he loves dearly and writes to!), yet these two facets of his experience (being a student at Oxford, and being brought up in India with family there) are entirely separate except when the author needs to drive a point home. I moved away from home for college- and I haven’t met a single person there who hasn’t experienced the move in a way that is fundamentally influenced by where they’re from (I’m from Bangalore, and I find the way that my uni’s city shuts down after like 10pm weird! I love the tree-lined roads, because they remind me of home! I miss my family! And these two cities are quite similar, and in the same country. I’d have wayy more to say if I’d been shipped to a new continent.) 

Victoire was the same- a single page explaining her backstory, and no characterisation besides her actions toward the end. It is hardly believable that Ramy and Victoire are so desperate to save their homes, their cultures, the parts of themselves that they have to fight to keep- without their connections to these things ever appearing organically. I suppose it just goes to show that representation is tricky business! What I wanted from Ramy’s story might not be what every South Asian wants, and his character was not written to be the main focus of the book. I still love that RF Kuang wrote a character that I can see bits of myself in!

I absolutely would recommend the book. It’s incredibly creative and beautifully written, and explores really important themes.

Yellowface: 3.5 out of 5 again! I’m still unsure if this book was intended as a serious critique of the publishing industry, or even an exploration of the question of who gets to tell which stories. Athena’s complicated relationship with the people whose stories she told (especially the whole diaspora versus resident divide on writing about a country’s history, and her family’s reaction to her books) is something I would’ve liked to see more of, but like that one tumblr post said- critique what the book did, not what it didn’t! June Hayward is incredibly hateable, and given how chronically online I am, I was nodding my head sagely the whole time she was getting put in her place on twitter. It’s an easy, compelling read but it definitely gives you something to think about.

[gothprentiss]

i watched near-universally acclaimed movie silence of the lambs after reading the book (acclaimed to me, and probably in general but that doesn’t matter.) which was really not the way to experience it. like, okay, “book better than the movie” is rarely actually true— often what i assume this means is “movie not the book, which is bad, because i am a fan of book,” or even “movie doesn’t look how i thought book looked,” or maybe “book doesn’t really translate to movie because literature and film have frequently different ways of making meaning so stuff didn’t hit the same”… you get my point. and largely the case with silence of the lambs is the third— in adapting the story a lot of quite separate parts of the narrative get mixed into a single scene, which is of course not uncommon but not always good when done; and also thomas harris is a phenomenal writer of the mind in ways that are very difficult to do cinematographically. in film you typically need the body to perform and signify the sorts of things harris is writing, and he’s writing them in ways which are really divorced from the body, so.

and also i took UNBELIEVABLY huge issue with the direction jodie foster got. truly the whole thing feels like Strong Female Character discourse in a nutshell: thomas harris set out to write a strong female character (explicitly those words) and i think one aspect of that is that clarice starling has got a white-knuckled grip on herself. so after the initial interview with lecter in the hospital, when she’s smarting from getting cum flung at her and also riding the bizarre high of very nearly getting her way through it, she sits in her car fuming and thinking about it. there’s this great line in the book about how she sits there breathing until enough condensation forms inside the windows that she’s got a bit of privacy. that’s, for me, one of the most incredible parts of how harris writes— his description of it is that he didn’t see himself as fully understanding starling, and that often works as moments of privacy for her, where we only see her as others do, or see her obscured. anyway in the movie as you may recall she sits in her car and cries. i will not bother with being like there is nothing wrong with women showing vulnerability. there is obviously something wrong with this.

and one thing i think about often as well is that— i don’t remember where it’s from, but there was an interview with anthony hopkins (i think) and jodie foster where hopkins is saying something about that shot in the opening sequence with diminutive trainee agent starling stepping into an elevator full of older, taller, senior men, and how well it illustrates her position as a woman in a man’s world. and like, sure. sure! it’s efficient! it also occludes a far more interesting moment of gender and positional alterity in the book, which is when starling is at the county morgue in west virginia with crawford and in a room full of men crowding the scene who haven’t spared her more than a second of thought, and leans on the memory of her mother’s presence— and then all of a sudden we’re in jack crawford’s perspective, and he’s hearing her speak with a pronounced southern accent, and thinking of her as a woman in a lineage of rural women who cared for the dead. which is interesting because, on one hand, the book is presenting that very straight; on the other, it’s not presenting that specifically as a position she’s assuming for herself (contextually, you might think she’s putting on her best southern mom voice). there’s also a quite interesting thing going on in the book that i think is just not visually as possible, which is the way that starling is so rarely engaging with the various negotiations with and perceptions of gender happening around her. for example, when chilton first meets her at the hospital he’s immediately like “oh the fbi has girls now? wanna girl with me to dinner, miss fbi agent?” and she’s so dog with a bone about her assignment that she sort of bounces off it, and only once he’s clearly not trying to help her does she think she could have gone about it a different way. being a woman and being a poor southerner are two aspects of her identity that she’s tried to evacuate of meaning (i.e., keep from working against her)— this makes her less able and willing to use them, and it makes this moment of crawford perceiving her so much more interesting, because it’s both of these things at once, and in conjunction.

fundamentally i think the book has a particular way of looking at clarice which is highly tied to perspective and interpretation in a very different way than demme’s movie is. the book makes no bones about starling being very effective— she’s absolutely in over her head, and highly unqualified, but she’s got a really fascinating mix of extreme self-control and instinctive impulsiveness, which almost always makes her brash. whereas the movie is trying to look more directly at her, and in so doing is assuming her grip on herself isn’t as good as it is— it takes these moments where she speaks out before thinking and generalizes them. she trembles when she’d be still, cries when she’d be quiet and thoughtful in anger. i DO think there’s something very insulting about misreading a book that deft and respectful in its treatment of her.

[bellmo15-blog]

The Internet. It's Not Fun.

This isn’t going to be a happy post. In fact, this is a vent post about something I’ve wanted to get of my chest for a while now. The internet.

I’m going to be honest, outside of chatting with friends, these past two weeks I’ve been coming onto my computer to browse the internet, or I guess rather social media, less and less. Twitter I’ve been trying to stay off the most only really logging onto that site to either check my DM’s since at the time of me writing this I’m getting a commission worked on for me by someone on Twitter or to like something someone sent to me on Discord but never really scrolling thought my feed, Youtube I’m only using for guides for games or to listen to music that’s not on Spotify, the only sites I haven’t changed how I use recently have been Newgrouds, DeviantArt, Furafinity and Tumbler for catching up on art by artists I follow. Then it's usually straight to hopping of and playing some video games or doing whatever I need to in real life and not coming back on for a long while, sometimes not even until the next day. I mean I still occasionally make posts to Twitter but never scroll though it.

And there is kind of a reason why I’ve been feeling less and less motivated to browse the internet as much as I use to. Because I REALLY do not have the best opinion on this platform and I feel like I’ve made that pretty obvious in the past. And this isn’t me saying “Oh, the internet use to be good in my day but now it’s awful” like I have some rose tinted glasses on or anything. No no, I am fully aware that the internet has always been a bit of a hellhole of toxicity and negativity. I mean if people genuinely believing that Wind Waker was the worst Zelda game before it even came out all because of the cartoony art style doesn’t show that then the shit Jake Loyd and Ahmed Best had to put up with after Phantom Menace came out in theatres will.

Despite all the negativity and drama I’ve seen over the decades I’ve used this platform, I’ve always tried my best to ignore it and do my own thing. Note that I said tried! Because sadly, that has gotten harder and harder for me to do because it feels like the internet has just become even more negative and hostile than it already was. And that negativity can sometimes rub of on me and some of my posts. Which then bleeds into how I’m feeling in my own personal life which isn’t helped by how bad my year has been so far. It’s even gotten to the point where I’ll sometimes delete certain status posts after a few hours, maybe even minuets, because I worry I’m making things even worse which then that negativity rubs off on other people and I don’t want to be doing that because I’ve always tried to spread positivity, either through my commissions, jokes, memes or just generally trying to be a good person.

In fact, for a few years I have even wanted to just up and quit the internet entirely because I couldn’t stand some of the worse aspects of this place but always stop myself for a few reasons. As someone who’s made some really great friends thought this platform leaving it would be a terrible idea because I’d basically be abandoning the only good and real friends I’ve ever managed to make in my life. As someone who uses this platform to commission artists to turn my ideas into art leaving would also be a terrible idea because aside from just not really having the patience to learn how to do art myself there wouldn’t be a whole lot of options for making those ideas of mine a reality and my motivation to write actual stories still isn't there anymore. That’s not even counting how the internet has become such a key part of our day to day lives weather we like to admit it or not from online shopping and movies and shows exclusive to streaming sites.

So no, I’m not leaving the internet. Tempting as it would be I’m not going though with it nor will I ever for the reasons I just listed especially the friends part. However, as I mentioned before I've been coming onto the internet less and less recently and I likely will continue to be trying to not spend as much time on it as I use to only really using it to chat with friends, browse art or shop for things online because with all the reasons I’m going to get into soon paired with how hell my years been so far causing my emotional state to plummet and be inconsistent somedays, I’m sorry but I’m at my limit! I don’t know how much more of this I can really take. I have grown so many issues with this platform over the years it’s amazing I’ve braved though it for this long!

1: Sharing your opinion about anything just isn’t worth it most of the time. I mean this is one of the most obvious reasons as to why the internet sucks right? You’ll either get people being absolute party poopers or questioning how you could even like something in question if you talk positively about something or get fanboys treating you like you’re the next Hitler or wanting to dig up any dirt on you they can if you say a negative opinion. And this is under the assumption that your being reasonable and level-headed with your opinions because this issue goes the other way two! There are people who are so extreme in their opinions that even just seeing someone thinking the opposite of them even if they aren’t being dicks about it get’s them so triggered they have to be rude towards them. Oh, and let’s not forget the people who share opinions they don’t even really mean and only say them just to get attention.

I have had a handful of bad experiences in the past when it came to sharing my opinions believe me! I’ve openly admitted that I had fun with Pokemon Sword and Shield and that if I was personally having fun with a game then that’s all that mattered to me which resulted in someone with an extreme hate boner for modern Pokemon and I do mean REALLY extreme telling me that I was the reason we will “never get another good Pokemon game again.” I opened up that I didn’t really like Spec Ops The Line and gave legitimate reasons as to why and wasn't being a dick about it only to be told that me not liking it was a “me problem.” I’ve even had random extreme Anti Bronies back in the day calling me cancer and telling me to kill myself when I use to use mainly pony based PFP’s on YouTube even if I never say anything relating to MLP in the first place. Just simply having those PFP’s made me a target! I’m even scared of admitting which of the three modern consoles I personally prefer playing on the most even though I feel like it’s obvious which one I do prefer at this point because I know if I do I’m going to get a bunch of detractors calling me a shill or fanboy or whatever.

2: The amount of miss information that gets spread on here and the amount of people who are so willing to believe it and not do any actual research on the topic is actually concerning and it’s another one of those issues that’s been a thing for years now with it only getting worse and worse. I mean at the start of this year alone there was a rumour that God of War 1 and 2 were getting remade. Where did this rumour come from? Good question! Because the source for these rumours were literally NOTHING! Yet despite the baseless rumours people were still talking about it as if it was actually going to happen and it went on for several days until people just stopped talking about it entirely. Literally the only reason I could think of as to why this rumour was getting spread was because of the Valhalla DLC for Ragnarock which had a bunch of returning enemies, music and even locations from the Greek saga.

One of my favourite examples of miss information getting spread that people believed as true was the infamous Solo posters without guns drama. Back in 2018 leading up to the release of Solo A Star Wars Story there were some variants of the posters making their way online that showed the characters without guns. And because this is the Star Wars fanbase we are talking about of course they reacted to it in the worst possible way claiming that guns were going to be removed from the film entirely and that this was some kind of anti gun message that Disney were trying to push… Only for it to come out a few days later that these specific posters were exclusive to Brazil and Brazil only and is mainly a result of how differently movies can be marketed depending on the region!

Pair that with the number of fake leaks and rumours that circulate that despite being obvious at this point that anyone can make a leak people still believe anyway and then get super upset about it when something comes out and those leaks end up not being true even though it’s their own fault for getting there hopes up on a leak! (Looking at you Smash Bros fanbase.)

3: I touched on this a little before but why is everyone so overly negative and angry about everything!? Because it feels like no one can be calm or level-headed about anything anymore. You always got to make a big deal about everything now! And look, there are thing going on in the world that are worth making a big deal about and I’m not saying we shouldn’t be calling attention to those. Wars, corruption, unfair work environments, actors and animators not being paid enough for there work and corporations doing shady and greedy business practises. That sort of stuff is worth making a big deal out of because that stuff does matter. Where my issue lies is when people do this to movies, video games, shows or just fiction in general. Mainly media that people don’t like. And it’s fine to not like certain media. There are games, movies and shows I’ve played and seen that I haven't liked and probaply won't even if I give them another try just as much as there is media I love and adore. But usually if I do, when I’m asked about it I’ll just say I don’t like it and even explain why if I have to and just move on. I won’t make a big deal about it or drag out any sort of drama for several days because that’s what get’s me the most clicks and ad revenue on YouTube or because it’s the “cool thing” to hate on something. (Looking at you Anti Bronies.)

Not to mention how obsessed with hyperbole everyone is now! You can’t just say “Oh, I didn’t like this particular thing. It wasn’t for me personally” anymore. You got to ramp it up! You got to say stuff like “WORST MOVIE EVER!” or “THIS SHOW IS SHIT!!!” or “GAMING IS DEAD” or “CINIMA IS DEAD” or “THIS THING RUINED THE FRANCHSIE!!!” I’m not even fucking joking when I say that if I had a dollar for every time someone pulled the “it ruined the franchise” card just because they didn’t like a certain entry in a series, I’d be able to buy a yacht. I hear “IT RUINED THE FRANCHSIE” and “IT RUINED MY CHILDHOOD” so much and every time I do I groan and roll my eyes. Thing is, this sort of thing would actually be funny if it was mostly being played up as a joke or for satire but no, most of the people who use hyperbole like this do genuinely mean this. I mean I wasn’t the biggest fan of the 2022 Saint’s Row reboot either, I think there’s A LOT about that game that could have been handled a lot better especially the writing, but I’m not going say it “ruined the franchise” especially when I can still load up those original games and still have the same enjoyment of them now as I did back then.

I get it. Negativity sells and any publicity is good publicity and all that. That’s not even just a saying either, that’s actually been proven. Prior to their removal from the site entirely dislikes on YouTube videos still technically counted as likes and leaving negative comments on a video was usually enough to get that video trending. Plus, you’re more likely to get engagement on a video or post if your being negative about something over being positive. People do this sort of stuff for a reason, because negativity sells and that’s my issue! The algorithm prefers pushing people who are negative about everything, and the loudest voices are usually the angriest! Which leads to people making a carer of being negative.

Even if the shit they are complaining about is so petty and so not worth making a big deal out. ESPECIALLY if the stuff they do complain about makes them come off as bigots! I mean we got people who were getting upset over Starfields character customizer for daring to have pronouns in it! We got people being upset because Splatoon 3 Side Order confirmed that Acht was Non Binary. We even got people trying to convince everyone that Vivian in remake for Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door was "retconed into being trans" even though she was ALWAYS trans in the original Japanese version of the Gamecube release of Thousand Year Door and this remake was a more faithful translation of that original version compared to the international Gamecube release!

4: Even if you’ve never met anyone like this personally chances are you know about at least one example of someone who’s life has been ruined because of the internet. From harassment to death threats to doxing to people just being generally really wired and creepy to others, something about the internet just invites people to being awful to each other.

Take for example what happened to Erica Lindbeak last year. You might not know her by name, but you likely do know the characters she’s played. For me personally I know her from her roles as Futaba from Persona 5 and Loona from Helluva Boss. Well, last year she spoke about her dislike of AI generated covers of songs using her voice and even asked for some of those videos to be taken down because of how uncomfortable she was with them. And what happened in response? People were telling her to get over it and that she was “ruining people’s fun” and just being big bullies to her to the point where she couldn’t take it anymore and had to close her social media account. And I’m sorry but if the real voice actor of a character expresses discomfort with there voice being cloned like this without there permission or consent and they ask you to take something down you respect their wishes! Especially when we live in an age where corporations are seriously considering use AI to cut costs and avoid paying anyone! Double so when AI cloning of dead voice actors is possible which is not something I’m fine with the idea of!

And I know I already made fun of this particular fanbase earlier but I’m sorry, the amount of people who have worked on Star Wars project that got their lives ruined because of Star Wars fans, good god! Jake Loyd; got bullied so much that he want’s nothing to do with Star Wars anymore. Ahmed Best; once tried taking his own life because of the harassment he got for simply playing Jar Jar Binks. Daisy Ridley; was driven off social media because of harassment. Kelly Marie Tran; not only had to also close her social media account because of harassment but had to check herself into therapy as well. George Lucas; openly admitted that he didn’t want to make these movies anymore because it wasn’t fun anymore! I could go on about other examples especially with recent examples like with how people were treating some of the actors of Kenobi and The Acolyte but I’d be here all day if I did. And people wonder why the phrase “No one hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans” is a thing.

And let’s not forget how Sakurai was getting harassment over Waluigi not being playing in Smash Ultimate or over what other characters he did or didn’t add, Pokemon fans harassing Masuda on a post he made celebrating someone’s wedding day and the team that worked on the Definitive Edition of the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy apparently got bullied and harassed just because of how it turned out. I’m sorry, but no mater what issues you have with a piece of media you do NOT go out of your way to ruin the lives of the people involved in it. They are people just as much as you or I.

So there, those are all the reasons as to why I hate the internet and have no shame in wanting to spend less and less time on it recently. It has nothing to do with people still sending me random friend requests or RP requests or me being tired of any over used memes or phrases although quite frankly I could still probably count those as minor reasons if I wanted to. Again, I’m not going to leave this platform or anything given the friends I’ve made and how I have to use it as a necessity at this point for certain things but with how close to my breaking point I am I feel like trying to limit myself on how much time I spend on here outside of talking with friends and shopping is going to be for the better. Anyway, I’m sorry for such a downer post but I really can’t keep this to myself anymore. If I can end this with something positive though, I hope anyone who actually bothered reading this has a better year than I've had so far...

[crystalelemental]

Alright, I beat the first boss...thing.  Pretty sure that fight is scripted.  The game is generally fun, though I feel like...let me organize this a bit.

When I heard about the game, it was of course referenced as sort of the Pokemon But Not style.  You collect your little beasties, level them up, teach them new moves, and do your whole whatever.  The approach, however, was described as being more tactical.  I am early, that could still be the case.  But.

I am not a huge fan of AP systems broadly.  I’m just not a huge fan of the concept of “save up the AP by doing nothing for a bit then fire off the big attacks.”  The “doing nothing” being a basic attack is at least something, but I feel like this decision just drags out encounters.  My Sirenade has an AoE attack that can pretty reliably clear opponents, but I can’t use it until a turn has passed because of the AP system.  Which is never great when you’re coming in feeling jaded about it after only half an hour playing.

That said, it does simplify opening turns as buff turns.  1AP buff actions perfectly set you up for the 3AP big attacks, which at least a nice even flow.  I imagine it grows more complex as you go, but it’s not too bad.

Where it gets a bit irritating is the recording process.  This was another aspect that sold me: yeah, if you’re recording, you can’t knock out the thing you’re catching by accident like in Pokemon!  Which is nice.  You know, except for the part where the only reliable means of achieving a guaranteed recording thus far has been knocking them to 0HP, and that I imagine harder enemy encounters will absolutely not have a 100% capture rate at 0HP.  And at 0HP, they will run from you.  Which, frankly, seems worse?  This is pre-emptive though, I haven’t directly run into this.  I thought I did with the fire dog, but it turned out to have a slight bit of HP left.

Type matchups are interesting.  I was able to identify one, in that Wind is strong against Fire.  Apparently, the result is that it lowers the offenses of the Fire type because it blows away the flames, in addition to the damage boost?  I had heard about the more complex interactive effects of type matchup, but so far this is the only one I know.  I’ve found Beast, Fire, Poison, Plastic, and Wind types, and so far only have one.  In part I think it’s because I’m hesitant to swap things around too much.  I don’t have a great reason for this, it shares EXP with your whole party, and damage is high enough that it’s honestly a good idea to switch around.  I’m just like this.

You have an extra human party member that controls a second beast at the same time, and I imagine there will be a big focus on combination attacks in the near future.  There’s also fusion.  Which is a neat angle, and seems hilariously overpowered at present.  I’ll have to mess with that one going forward.

Another thing I haven’t done yet is adjust stats.  Your human characters have stats that influence the effectiveness of your beast forms, and you can train your human character’s stats to augment the beast’s.  Which is a pretty neat idea.  I’m interested in where that goes.

The last big difference I can think of is limited healing items.  They only let you have five HP restoring items, and one revive at a time.  You can only have five of each type of status healing item.  But at the same time, you can only swap your party around while resting, which means you can’t just trade out a weakened party for one at full strength.  I kinda like the adjustments, I just wish it didn’t auto-send new recorded beasts to your storage and at least offered to swap them with something in the party first.

As for story and tone, it’s...fine.  I don’t have any particularly strong feelings about anything going on.  The only thing I don’t really like so far is the tendency for a lot of descriptions to be a little...I don’t know the word I want to use here.  They’ll often talk about things as seeming friend except for [circumstance], which is basically all the time.  Or how they’re cute until they decide to [inane action] at something, which is anything and everything.  Like just the repetitive use of certain phrases of tone that seem a bit...weird to me?  I’ll be honest, my gut wants to call it banter, but I’m not sure if that’s the right word.  Maybe the vibe will come to me later.

I’ll keep playing, but we have some friends coming in for the long weekend so progress may be slow.  I’ll update when things happen.

Oh, and I picked the sheep.  The candy devil’s not bad, but it’s not as cute as the sheep.

...actually I lied one more thing.  The monster designs are so far solidly fine.  I hate none of them, but I love none of them.  Nothing has solidly won me over yet on that front.

[greenjokwe-blog]

Pyre - Finished 20/02/2023

Going back through my Supergiant game journey after putting it on hold for a year and a half, playing through them all in order has been a very interesting experience for me. They’re a studio who both haven’t released any bad games and not only have improved more and more over time, but with the massive success of Hades warranting their first direct sequel, it’s very fun putting all of their other games in context to that without having played the game for myself. Pyre in a lot of ways is technically more impressive than both of their previous games, although for me in terms of favourites I’d probably put it in the exact middle right now.

Firstly, the structure is completely different this time. While it does keep a lot (maybe even most) of the studio’s staples, some aspects are much favoured over others, such as the more narrator-style of storytelling being changed for it’s more multi-choice, choose your own adventure story, hell most of the game is basically a visual novel! While I loved the old story presentation, seeing how perfectly it was executed in Transistor, I’m happy to see them strive for new ideas, and this game definitely shows the heights of the new formula at certain points.

First off, I must talk about the best part about this game - the characters. The cast is easily the best Supergiant has ever done, there will be at least a couple of characters you’ll be invested in their character arcs throughout, and wanna stick out from them. Which is when the game reveals its biggest secret and greatest strength; its understanding of character progression and levelling with player investment, leading to some reveals that hit the player like a brick.

Although that being said, once the game first drops its biggest ball about four hours in, the rest of the game never really seems to hit quite as hard, which is fine because it still has its moments that shine very bright, but considering that when this released it was the studios longest game, and that a lot of that is bogged down by large dialogue of lore dumps, the game really shined only as bright to me with the characters I liked and the choices I made. Towards the game’s end the game suffers the most, but also created this unique feeling of melancholy I definitely appreciated and is befitting of Supergiant's body of work as a whole.

But uh yeah, rest is as you expect. Beautiful art, wonderful soundtrack, the gameplay... even more unbalanced and exploitable than usual. I definitely still do like it, and I think that’s due to my love of sports RPGs sparked by Inazuma Eleven, but it definitely suffers from character playstyles that aren’t great or synergize very well with other party compositions, trivializing a lot of encounters or making some character styles suffer when the game forces you to use them. Still, at its best, it’s incredibly involving and exciting, with incredibly tight controls and decision-making play.

So yeah, Pyre isn’t without its flaws, but I’d still say it’s a very good game. Honestly, I’m just really glad to see them try something new, and if Hades uses the character dialogue presentation of story (which from what I’ve seen of what Hades story is) and improves on it as much as Transistor did with Bastion’s roots, I think I’ll definitely love that game as well. But considering it’s longer than the length of every Supergiant game up to this point combined, I’m not in a rush. I’d still recommend this, the most slept-on Supergiant game that’s definitely worth checking out.

[ghosts-and-blue-sweaters]

@kanerallels YES YES OKAY I WILL RAMBLE!!! Spoilers below!

IT WAS VERY VERY GOOD!!! Oh my gosh. It was really neat seeing Leeli get more chapters :D Janner’s lovely and Such an amazing character, but I often found myself wishing there’d be more chapters from other character’s point-of-views 😅 So having a bunch of Leeli chapters was rather nice!! She’s so freakin adorable oh my goodness. So pure and lovely 😭

I wasn’t too sure about the book during the first part. It took me a while to get into it 😅

HOWEVER. ONCE I REACHED PART TWO? WITH SARA AND ARTHAM AND GAMMON?? OH. MY GOSH. GUYS. GUYS. GUYS. THAT WAS BY FAR MY FAVORITE PART OF THE BOOK, PROBABLY MY FAVORITE (OR ONE OF MY FAVORITE) PARTS OF THE WHOLE SERIES, AAAAAAAAAAH

Sara & Artham quickly become one of my favorite duo’s, they’re just… 😭 They help each other!! They take care of each other!! They protect each other!! They’ve got such a special bond, truly truly. I become Obsessed in record time and started writing Sara & Artham fics before I even finished the book XD

I honestly would so 100% read an entire novel about Artham and Gammon. Like. They’re an awesome duo!!! They work well together, and the way they interact is so fun. I think a YA/adult novel about them could work so so good 😭 Andrew Peterson please I’m begging.

Clovenfast was definitely one of the more unique aspects of The Wingfeather Saga :0 I wasn’t sure what I thought about it at first, but now I think it’s pretty cool!!

Gnag 😭😭 I wasn’t expecting his story to be so sad :’0 I gotta admit, I was a little worried that he’d have a typical “fully evil 100% bad no redemption” story, so the fact that he did get redemption, even a little bit, was a welcome surprise! He just needed someone to love him 😭

PODO!!! Gosh, his death fit the story so well and was a great end to his character, but… Podo :’0 ajsfajsgajgsjafsjsf I really didn’t grieve his death at all because I thought he wasn’t actually dead and would come back later 😭 So when I realized he fully died… I don’t know, at that point I couldn’t really grieve? 😅 Because I’d already kinda known about it for a bit? ansgahsgahfsjafshsfahsfjsfs

ARTHAM AND ARUNDELLE I- GASP. THEY KISSED!!! THEY FOUND EACH OTHER AGAIN!!! THEY STILL HAVE SO MUCH LOVE FOR EACH OTHER!!! THEY KISSED!!! That made me so happy, just… aaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!! They’re gonna have a happy ending together :’D

Janner!!! I kinda knew something was gonna happen to him because of tumblr posts I’d seen, but man. I wasn’t expecting That.

I see the ending as happy and sad. Definitely very open! I think there’s lots of room for Andrew Peterson to continue the series if he wants to, while also tying up enough loose strings for it to still be a good ending.

The one thing that kinda frustrated me a bit was how Artham was handled at the end :’) He’s been such an important character with such an important, heartbreaking, complex story, and I feel like he was… very much cast aside at the end. I didn’t find it to be very satisfying. I just wish he’d had a few more chapters, a few more details on what exactly happened with him. He really just showed up at the end and explained what happened with a few terribly short lines, and like… no!!! I would like to actually read about what happened with Artham!!! Because goshdarn, his story is amazing, and I really wish more time & attention had been dedicated to it.

But other than that, it was a great ending! The Wingfeather Saga is a really good series, and I’m so glad I got into it :D It’s been so fun!! I haven’t been this invested in a book series… ever. It’s been a very interesting experience!!

@kanerallels @whittingsonder @saltedcaramelchaos

I just finished the last Wingfeather Saga book.

Oh my gosh.