#ACTUAL GAME DEVS DO NOT INTERACT!!!1!!!!!

[insertdisc5]

🎮 HEY I WANNA MAKE A GAME! 🎮

Yeah I getcha. I was once like you. Pure and naive. Great news. I AM STILL PURE AND NAIVE, GAME DEV IS FUN! But where to start?

To start, here are a couple of entry level softwares you can use! source: I just made a game called In Stars and Time and people are asking me how to start making vidy gaems. Now, without further ado:

SOFTWARES AND ENGINES FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW HOW TO CODE!!!

Ren'py (and also a link to it if you click here do it): THE visual novel software. Comic artists, look no further ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It has great documentation! It has a bunch of plugins and UI stuff and assets for you to buy! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! (You'll just need to read the doc a bunch) You can also port your game to a BUNCH of consoles! ✨Cons: None really <3 Some games to look at: Doki Doki Literature Club, Bad End Theater, Butterfly Soup

Twine: Great for text-based games! GREAT FOR WRITERS WHO DONT WANNA DRAW!!!!!!!!! (but you can draw if you want) ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It's versatile! It has great documentation! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! (You'll just need to read the doc a bunch) ✨Cons: You can add pictures, but it's a pain. Some games to look at: The Uncle Who Works For Nintendo, Queers In love At The End of The World, Escape Velocity

Bitsy: Little topdown games! ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It's (somewhat) intuitive! It has great documentation! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! You can make everything in it, from text to sprites to code! Those games sure are small! ✨Cons: Those games sure are small. This is to make THE simplest game. Barely any animation for your sprites, can barely fit a line of text in there. But honestly, the restrictions are refreshing! Some games to look at: honestly I haven't played that many bitsy games because i am a fake gamer. The picture above is from Under A Star Called Sun though and that looks so pretty

RPGMaker: To make RPGs! LIKE ME!!!!! NOTE: I recommend getting the latest version if you can, but all have their pros and cons. You can get a better idea by looking at this post. ✨Pros: Literally everything you need to make an RPG. Has a tutorial inside the software itself that will teach you the basics. Pretty simple to understand, even if you have no coding experience! Also I made a post helping you out with RPGMaker right here! ✨Cons: Some stuff can be hard to figure out. Also, the latest version is expensive. Get it on sale! Some games to look at: Yume Nikki, Hylics, In Stars and Time (hehe. I made it)

engine.lol: collage worlds! it is relatively new so I don't know much about it, but it seems fascinating. picture is from Garden! NOTE: There's a bunch of smaller engines to find out there. Just yesterday I found out there's an Idle Game Maker made by the Cookie Clicker creator. Isn't life wonderful?

✨more advice under the cut. this is Long ok✨

ENGINES I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT AND THEY SEEM HARD BUT ALSO GIVE IT A TRY I GUESS!!!! :

Unity and Unreal: I don't know anything about those! That looks hard to learn! But indie devs use them! It seems expensive! Follow your dreams though! Don't ask me how!

GameMaker: Wuh I just don't know anything about it either! I just know it's now free if your game is non-commercial (aka, you're not selling it), and Undertale was made on it! It seems good! You probably need some coding experience though!!!

Godot: Man I know even less about this one. Heard good things though!

BUNCHA RANDOM ADVICE!!!!

-Make something small first! Try making simple: a character is in a room, and exits the room. The character can look around, decide to take an item with them, can leave, and maybe the door is locked and you have to find the key. Figuring out how to code something like that, whether it is as a fully text-based game or as an RPGMaker map, should be a good start to figure out how your software of choice works!

-After that, if you have an idea, try first to make the simplest version of that idea. For my timeloop RPG, my simplest version was two rooms: first room you can walk in, second room with the King, where a cutscene automatically plays and the battle starts, you immediately die, and loop back to the first room, with the text from this point on reflecting this change. I think I also added a loop counter. This helped me figure out the most important thing: Can This Game Be Made? After that, the rest is just fun stuff. So if you want to make a dating sim, try and figure out how to add choices, and how to have affection points go up and down depending on your choices! If you want to make a platformer, figure out how to make your character move and jump and how to create a simple level! If you just want to make a kinetic visual novel with no choices, figure out how to add text, and how to add portraits! You'll be surprised at how powerful you'll feel after having figured even those simple things out.

-If you have a programming problem or just get confused, never underestimate the power of asking Google! You most likely won't be the only person asking this question, and you will learn some useful tips! If you are powerful enough, you can even… Ask people??? On forums??? Not me though.

-Yeah I know you probably want to make Your Big Idea RIGHT NOW but please. Make a smaller prototype first. You need to get that experience. Trust me.

-If you are not a womanthing of many skills like me, you might realize you need help. Maybe you need an artist, or a programmer. So! Game jams on itch.io are a great way to get to work and meet other game devs that have different strengths! Or ask around! Maybe your artist friend secretly always wanted to draw for a game. Ask! Collaborate! Have fun!!!

I hope that was useful! If it was. Maybe. You'd like to buy me a coffee. Or maybe you could check out my comics and games. Or just my new critically acclaimed game In Stars and Time. If you want. Ok bye

[starcurtain]

Comparing Phaidei and Other Hoyo MLM Ships (Part 1)

I barely know how to begin, honestly, because I'm still so taken aback by the absolute Phaidei feast that was 3.1. But perhaps because we were so overfed by the patch, I was actually jarred a little out of the story itself--too busy turning over the broader ramifications of such blatant queer-coding of two male characters in a modern Hoyoverse game.

Of course, Hoyo isn't remotely new to queer-coding their characters (or to queer-baiting, either, gacha games gotta hustle at all times). They absolutely have a history of hinting at both WLW and MLM ships and of including fanservice between the player's MC and other playable characters regardless of gender. Strangely enough, due to the unique confluence of their target audiences' tastes, the Hoyoverse team has an active profit motive to create gay characters:

WLW ships are appealing to heterosexual male players.

MLM ships are appealing to heterosexual female players.

Simultaneously, WLW and MLM ships are appealing to queer players.

Heterosexual ships with characters other than the MC are unappealing to a large percentage of the game's playerbase, particularly to heterosexual male players who want to keep their waifus to themselves but also to female yumeshippers.

Hoyo's market is literally telling them that 1) male characters sell better when they're ship-baited with other male characters, and 2) players don't actually want heterosexual ships between playable characters if the MC isn't involved. (Hell, look at Firefly--players hate romances with the MC too lol!)

But at the same time as the market is telling the devs to keep making queer characters, Hoyoverse also faces immense social pressure to avoid including actual queer content.

Let me hold off on the political and legal consequences of including gay characters in Chinese media for just a second, and look at the situation from the perspective of Hoyo's target audiences first:

Take this data with a grain of salt though; I'm not sure where they got their numbers.

First, Hoyoverse games are increasingly global and surprisingly popular in conservative/religious countries such as Russia, Malaysia, and the UAE. The western world as a whole is shifting increasingly right on LGBT+ issues. For the games to be marketed well across the globe, they've got to avoid challenging the morals of these highly varied audiences. (Perhaps this is why past Hoyoverse titles seemed more open to LGBT+ content than present Hoyoverse games do; a broader audience actually means more restrictions on content.)

Second, even though conservative heterosexual male players are actually surprisingly fine with MLM ship tease, that only applies so long as it stays at the level of "I can pretend I don't see it." As long as anti-LGBT+ players can write off any MLM content as "just close friends," the dev team can get away with frankly shocking amounts of queer interaction between male characters. (I'm sorry to any straight male fans reading this [could there possibly be any?], but half of y'all could win gold medals if mental gymnastics were a sport. The lengths I have seen some male Genshin players go to try to explain away Haikaveh are honestly awe-inspiring. 😂) However, the boundary must be respected. The moment a male character's queerness exceeds subtext and becomes text, when even mental gymnastics cannot come up with a heterosexual explanation, and the plausible deniability goes out the window, it is no longer acceptable to anti-LGBT+ players, and they will be "turned off" from pulling that male character en masse. In essence, the market is telling the devs: 1) Huge amounts of queer-coding = a-okay, but 2) Actual canon queer content = that's gayyyy, no wayyyy.

And third, the obvious: China's stance on LGBT+ people is weirdly stricter in media than it is in "real" life. It is not illegal to be gay in China but it is illegal to be gay in a video game in China. Restrictions on media portrayals of gayness are significantly more strict than restrictions on actually being gay (which is interesting cognitive dissonance for those from outside the country, but that's an essay for another day). Hoyoverse legally cannot show characters engaged in any explicitly queer behaviors--at least that can't be explained away.

Furthermore, the rules apply very differently for male and female characters. WLW content gets way more of a pass from the censors. Bronya and Seele can blush at each other, but Alhaitham and Kaveh cannot. You would never see "Rondo Across Countless Kalpas" happening with male Hoyoverse characters. The censors literally would not allow it, strictly because Chinese standards for portrayals of men are different--and more strict!--than standards for portraying women. Legally, there are strong and serious limitations on what Hoyo can do with their male characters.

Summing all of this up, in trying to create their male characters and content, Hoyoverse is actually fighting a battle of conflicting pressures: Male characters sell better when they are queer-coded, but their interactions can never rise to the level of being canonically gay.

Everything must exist in the realm of implication.

(Yes, I can hear you: "Can you please get to Phaidei already?" 😂)

All of this foreword was to lay a foundation for the actual point I want to make about Phaidei: Because Hoyoverse can only queer-code and not actually queer their male characters, they have (in their modern games), fallen into a sort of pattern with their MLM ship bait. Certain plots and personalities keeps reappearing again and again. They've developed a sort of short-hand set of traits to give to their male characters--the Hoyoverse "queer-coded MLM starter pack" if you will lol.

While not every popular MLM ship in Hoyo's games has the same traits (obviously not), certain elements seem central to creating the delicate necessary gray area between "They're just baiting fangirls" and "The devs intended these two characters to be canonically gay but just couldn't state that textually."

And yet... And yet...

You're not imagining things: Phaidei is actually different.

To demonstrate just how different though, I wanted to take the time to compare Phaidei with other popular Hoyoverse MLM ships, looking at both the similarities (the patterns that Hoyo relies on to reliably queer-code their characters) and the noticeable differences (where Hoyo pushed their own boundaries in surprising ways).

Unfortunately, in the interest of full transparency, my own Hoyoverse experience is limited, so I can only use examples from Star Rail and Genshin Impact. I just haven't played HI3 or ZZZ, so I don't feel comfortable trying to use examples from those games, although I think there may be many ships that fall into similar patterns in those games as well. (Maybe some people can share in the comments?)

Anyway, let's start with similarities:

1. A Pair of Equals

The number one "rule" for popular Hoyoverse queer-coded MLM ships is that the two characters must be evenly matched. This isn't to say they have to have identical levels of physical strength (although that is also often the case); instead, the audience needs to perceive them as being on equal footing in some way. They must either be intellectual equals (Alhaitham and Kaveh), political equals (Ratio and Aventurine; Neuvillette and Wriothesley), equal in social standing (Tighnari and Cyno), or, yes, actually physically equal their capability for going toe-to-toe against each other (Blade and Dan Heng; possibly Zhongli and Childe; for those who ship it, Diluc and Kaeya).

For modern Hoyo games, queer-coded MLM ships with noticeable discrepancies in power dynamics are particularly rare; possibly the only one that comes to mind is Ayato/Thoma (though this is mitigated by the game deliberately telling us that Ayato treats Thoma like family, rather than like a servant). And I think this actually says a lot about the devs' thought process: They are deliberately avoiding scenarios in which one male character seems capable of "preying" on another, where the queer-coding could accidentally be perceived as sexual perversion due to a discrepancy in power dynamics.

They're intentionally averting the "depraved homosexual" trope by--sometimes literally--spelling out for the players that both male characters in their queer-coded MLM ships perceive each other as, and are interested in each other as, equals.

We see this explicitly with Ratio and Aventurine in Star Rail:

And Alhaitham and Kaveh in Genshin:

Even Blade and Dan Heng are likened to "a pair" of identical objects:

So of course, Phainon and Mydei push this to an extreme. Phainon describes himself and Mydei as "friends and foes," and the game goes out of it way to reiterate over and over that they are perfect equals. Although they compete in everything they do, there is never a clear victor; their score card is constantly balancing out because they match each other's skill and power perfectly.

But there are even hints in the game that this isn't just happening naturally, but also by choice: Even when one of them triumphs over the other, they both backtrack and insist on getting on equal standing again. Whether you win or lose the "competition" in Kremnos in 3.0, the outcome is the same:

Phainon and Mydei perceive each other as perfectly matched (in strength, right, right...) and are actively working to keep it that way.

The game also goes out of its way to insist that Mydei and Phainon aren't just equals in terms of strength but also in social standing. It theoretically should be impossible to match Mydei's place on the social ladder--he's the literal crown prince of an entire nation of world-renowned conquerors. Even Aglaea is not a queen; we see her on screen being forced to contend with Okhema's Council who are fighting her for power. There technically isn't anyone in Amphoreus (at least that we've met so far) who should be able to stand on equal political or administrative footing to Mydei.

Except, of course, for Phainon, who supersedes all others by virtue of being the literal prodigal son, the "Chosen One."

The game insists on putting this in our faces over and over again: Mydei may be a king in the making, but Phainon is the "Deliverer." They are equally matched in terms of authority.

The game even goes out of its way to tell us they're perfect mirrors in personality too:

Hoyo, in the kitchen cooking up another gay ship: LISTEN GUYS, they're equals, do you understand me? A MATCHING SET.

But also...

2. Diametrically Opposed

It isn't enough for the queer-coded men to be each other's perfect equals. They also have to be opposites, typically in terms of their personalities. This is the pattern that repeats itself most consistently across Hoyoverse MLM ships with strong textual support: the two men may be equal, but they're also nothing alike. (At least on the surface.)

Alhaitham and Kaveh's entire plot hinges on their directly opposing personalities and morals, representing the clash between rationality and sensibility. Dan Feng was reserved and cool-tempered, while Yingxing was "arrogant" and brash. Hell, Xingqiu and Chongyun are "refined and clever" versus "forthright and trusting." I actually think Zhongli and Childe, despite being the most popular Hoyoverse ship in the western fandom, have very little canonical support, yet they still fit this pattern, with Zhongli as the refined gentleman to Tartaglia's blood knight tendencies.

We know how Ratio sees himself and Aventurine:

Hoyo really said "Opposites attract" and ran with it for every single MLM ship they ever teased.

And there's a logical reason for this. Making the two male characters dead opposites actually slightly decreases people's ability to argue that they're "just friends"--if they have next to nothing in common, they're not usually bonding over mutual hobbies or basing their connection on shared similarities. It becomes harder to portray two male characters as "bros who just get along great" when they're deliberately written with opposing tastes and personalities. (Real friends can sometimes be dead opposites, obviously, but most friendships are built on mutual interests rather than opposing ones, while romantic relationships hilariously have the "opposites attract" stereotype.)

There's no reason to shove polar opposites together again and again except to watch the sparks fly.

Even Hoyo's male characters' color schemes are often perfectly opposite. Plenty of people have figured out if you palette swap Alhaitham and Kaveh, Dan Heng and Blade, and Ratio and Aventurine, you end up with the same colors. Ayato and Thoma match the pattern here too ("red and blue gays" is a well-known trope).

But once again, the devs pulled out ALL the stops for Phaidei:

They're red versus blue. They're sun and moon. They're outgoing versus introverted. They're a king and a peasant (if we believe what Phainon's telling us about Aedes Elysiae). They're the "outsider" and the "golden boy." One fights with strength and the other with technique, brains versus brawn (actually they're both kind of idiots though, so take this one lightly lol).

However, what I think is most interesting about Hoyo's pairs of MLM opposites that is that the devs deliberately subvert expectations by assigning the opposing traits to the "unexpected" character. In both Haikaveh and Ratiorine, it's the rational scholar who is more overtly caring and attuned to their partner's feelings. In Renheng, it's the kind-hearted Yingxing who is consumed by anger, while the aloof, expressionless Dan Heng's voice trembles in wonder at the mere mention of Yingxing's name.

For Phainon and Mydei, this inversion of opposite traits occurs with their personalities specifically. People expected Mydei to be a gruff, hot-headed, battle-hungry berserker with a sarcastic or arrogant personality at best.

Instead, Mydei is an extremely thoughtful person, who struggles with his fate not because of what will happen to himself but because of a desire to bring the greatest good to the greatest number of his people. He's a respectful, gentle (when he needs to be), and even sentimental young man who continues to hold on to love for those who have long passed away. He's reserved around strangers but generous and warm to his companions, and struggles to express himself but has a clear desire to be considerate of others.

We also know he's deeply aware of and emotionally affected by the racism his people are experiencing in Okhema; one NPC in Okhema reports how Mydei, despite being new to Okhema himself, stood up to the very council still plaguing Aglaea in order to protect his people:

Despite having difficulties expressing his own thoughts, he even scolds Phainon for approaching their farewell with a nonchalant expression--Mydei doesn't reject emotions or shy away from becoming close with people he cares for.

Instead, it's Phainon who actually struggles to be honest. While he might connect easily with others on the surface, seeming outgoing and kind-hearted, he is actually a much more private person, one who is reluctant to show his true feelings and dismissive of questions about his past and identity. As opposed to Mydei's desire to avoid Nikador's power, Phainon is (despite his doubts) eager to prove himself, spurned on by the pressure of the prophecy telling him he needs to achieve greatness. We're told that he craved the power of strife specifically, while Mydei summarily wishes to reject it.

It's Phainon who frequently has to be reined in by others--he was ready to kill Oronyx for delaying his rescue of Mydei--and Phainon who fails to let go of his hatred and desire for revenge, causing him to fail Nikador's trial, which Mydei easily clears.

By inverting the traits of the characters, creating designs which visually oppose each other while assigning the actual opposing personality traits to the "mismatched" character, the devs hammer home an implicit message: These two characters complete each other. They fill in each other's gaps. What you expected to find in one of these men, you will instead find in the other. What they wish to be, they will be drawn to in each other.

(Frequently bought together, do not separate!)

3. The Distance is Artificial

Okay, so if they're so obviously written as a "pair," being perfect equals and perfect opposites, how are they just "queer-coded" and not explicitly queer? How is Hoyo keeping up the illusion of the characters not being an obvious couple when they're literally written to complete each other?

Hoyo has one major tool in their arsenal to do this: Prickly personalities.

With the exception of Renheng, which I'll get to in a second, Hoyo has a favorite method for enforcing the rule of plausible deniability, the idea that "Nooo, we promise, they're not in love; they don't even like each other, see??"--and that's giving one of the characters an intractable personality.

This can manifest, like Alhaitham and Kaveh, as constant bickering, where the pair's main method of communication is to devolve into petty arguments or sarcastic quips.

Fans who support the ship can view this as an "old married couple" dynamic; but for those who do not support the ship and choose to insist that Hoyo isn't actually queer-coding their male characters, they can lean on these arguments as "proof" that the characters don't actually love each other.

A similar pattern was recently repeated with Sethos/Wanderer, with Wanderer's prickly personality being used to keep Sethos at bay.

By placing the characters at odds with each other through bickering, Hoyo introduces just enough doubt to make the "They're only friends/roommates, we promise" argument hold some water. This allows them to get--quite honestly--a lot of queer content past the censors and past homophobic audiences too.

We see them repeat this trope with Aventurine and Ratio in Star Rail, introducing the two characters as initially "at odds" with each other and trying to pass it off as Ratio despising Aventurine.

Even after revealing that they were plotting together, the game insists on introducing some lingering doubts, suggesting that Aventurine fears Ratio would actually betray him.

This creates the necessary "gray area," the gap that Hoyo can use to hide in--no, Aventurine doesn't trust Ratio at all, see? Maybe they don't even like each other? Who knows! The doubt doesn't exist because the story particularly needs it, but simply so that Hoyo has a shield to hide behind if people begin to question how close the two male characters are.

Even in comedic material, Hoyo intentionally keeps this "necessary distance" in order to allow themselves wiggle room. Is Ratio an enamored tsundere who can't spit his real feelings out, or does he actually think Aventurine is illogical, mediocre, and ridiculous? Was the "Keeping Up With Star Rail" video an example of Hoyo deliberately baiting by making Ratio flustered over Aventurine "on air," or is he being Aventurine's biggest hater in this clip?

It's just questionable enough that those players who hate MLM to interpret it as the latter, and provides just enough doubt to help Hoyo slip queer-coding under the radar. Those who want to see it will see, while it's written just vaguely enough that those who don't want to see it will not see it.

(That's the point Owlbert, that's the point.)

When in doubt, and when stuck with a pair of characters who aren't likely to bicker with words, Hoyo sometimes has to progress to the next level: making them actual enemies.

What's better for creating plausible deniability than one of them trying to kill the other? (They definitely were not fooling around in a past life. We promise.) In an ironic twist with Renheng in particular, the fandom seems to have somehow come to the (mistaken) consensus that Dan Feng and Yingxing were "confirmed canon" (truly, I see this stated everywhere; we love when reading comprehension fails in the right direction for once lol), leaving only Dan Heng/Blade as being of questionable "canonicity." However, this still works as far as Hoyo is concerned, because only Dan Heng and Blade are left on screen.

By insisting on their present inability to reconcile, Blade and Dan Heng are able to introduce just enough doubt into the equation to offset even significant ship tease for Dan Feng/Yingxing.

Enemies to lovers 150k+ slow burn, please look forward to it.

Okay, but back to Phaidei. At first, it seems like Phaidei is going to follow this pattern to a T: When Phainon first introduces Trailblazer to Mydei, the two seem to be at odds, bickering over how Mydei is choosing to confront the enemy. Mydei even calls Phainon out for an unintentionally insensitive statement (when Phainon demands to know why Mydei isn't "protecting the citizens," Mydei asks "Who are you implying is not a citizen here?" i.e., "Are you saying because I'm Kremnoan I don't count as a citizen?" You can see Phainon practically bite his tongue to take back his words.)

Also known as: Mydei experiences a microaggression.

Mydei's very first line directly to the Trailblazer is to insult Phainon's hospitality, and we know they definitely have plenty of silly insults to lob at each other while competing.

But this is actually where we see the first deviation from the pattern for Phaidei. Although there's a few cursory lines throughout their early dialogue, that's all there ever is--just cursory attempts at suggesting the two bicker and don't get along.

Within one scene, the "tension" present in their first meeting entirely devolves into purely playful banter, and it is clear by the time we finish 3.0 that Phainon and Mydei are actually very close and get along well, with virtually none of Haikaveh's biting comments, Blade and Dan Heng's violence, or Aventurine and Ratio's questions of loyalty. Phainon and Mydei took one look at the rest of Hoyoverse's MLM ships and said "How about we skip that will they-won't they?" lol.

But I'm not quite ready to talk about the places where Phaidei departs from the normal pattern yet, so I'll leave this point by just saying that Hoyo did start Phaidei on the same path as a majority of their other MLM ships, making a vague attempt at using their rivalry to suggest they wouldn't get along--thereby allowing for the alternative interpretation to quiet the haters (and the censors).

4. The (Physical) Distance is Non-Existent

Okay, but if Hoyo uses personalities to inject just enough distance into their queer-coded pairings to avoid crossing any boundaries, then what do they do to tantalize the audience, to make it seem like the characters might actually like each other?

They use body language!

First, just to reiterate a basic video game design principle: All animations and character placements have to be programmed by someone, and that means that all animations and the physical locations of characters in scenes are intentional. Nothing happens in cutscenes by accident.

Designers are constantly making a series of choices any time they have to put together a cutscene, and one of the key choices they have to make is how to express each character through their movements and their positions relative to other characters. (I've talked before, for example, about how Aventurine frequently turns his back on people, forcing their eyes to follow him throughout his cutscenes, taking physical control of the reactions of people around him.)

Hoyoverse games have somewhat standardized scene layouts for conversation cutscenes, with characters typically being placed at different distances from each other depending on their relationships. A majority of conversations happen from a generally cordial conversational distance, which means that any time characters cross this gap and close the distance, the dev team is intentionally sending the players a message.

Like, no one mistook what this was about, right?

Heterosexual jumpscare in my queer post; I'm sorry, I was just too tired to find a video with Lumine lol.

Repeating for good measure: Unless it is with a male playable main character (where the presence of the female main character is what lends the deniability), Hoyo legally cannot show their male characters engaging in physical contact that could be construed as romantic. Male characters can't hold hands; they can't even really hug unless it's "caught you as you fell after battle" (props to Dan Heng for being the only male character in Star Rail to get a "hug" with Jing Yuan lol.) There's a boundary that Hoyo male characters do not cross, and that's almost universally the realm of physical touch.

But Hoyo can place their queer-coded male characters into scenarios of physical closeness that they don't typically show among other characters.

Alhaitham and Kaveh's table says hello.

So does Tighnari and Cyno's single tent from this same quest; Cyno's Story 2, truly the quest that kept on giving.

Aventurine, a character who traditionally keeps half a room's distance between himself and the people he's talking to, suddenly doesn't seem to mind closing the distance with Ratio:

And even Renheng, the eternal enemies, are depicted as crossing physical boundaries, explicitly "getting in each other's faces." Yes it's a battle, but also, I've seen yaoi with less domineering poses lol.

You might think these lightcone examples are a stretch, but seriously: Go look at all the lightcones in the game. Does a single heterosexual couple have a lightcone where they are in each other's space in this manner? No, because physical closeness is actually a tool Hoyo is consistently using to queer-code. (Well, there would probably be more heterosexual closeness too if the incels weren't so weird...)

Anyway, when I saw the devs might be heading the direction of baiting Phaidei, I fully expected that we would see them side-by-side more consistently and with less of a gap between them than between other characters. But I wasn't remotely ready for the degree to which Hoyo would take that.

Here is an example of Phaidei exhibiting the "normal" Star Rail conversational distance:

Andddd... here's where they spend the other 90% of their scenes together:

The unnecessarily large distance between them and the Trailblazer gets me every time. Like they are not leaving room for Jesus Kephale.

Even when they aren't standing practically on top of each other, the devs deliberately choose camera angles that frame them both in the cutscene at the same time, which is relatively rare for Star Rail (not unheard of, but usually the camera will just go for the "first person POV" when two people are speaking, allowing for a close up of the speaking character). Instead of back-and-forth close ups, many of Mydei and Phainon's conversations are framed from a "behind-the-shoulder" angle, to catch them both in the frame. This creates the illusion that they're standing closer together than they are, and also reinforces a sense of intimacy in their conversations--the camera (and thus the player) becomes an "outsider" while their bodies turn toward each other.

Again, Hoyoverse is under pressure to avoid showing physical contact between male characters that could be construed romantically. They can't show Mydei and Phainon tangoing like Black Swan and Acheron. When it comes to queer-coding male characters, they have to use the tools available to them, and their primary tool for visually signifying the possibility of romantic closeness is physical closeness.

The camera is telling you that Mydei and Phainon are close.

Anyway, just one more point I wanted to make before moving on to discussing how Phaidei completely crushed the mold for Hoyoverse queer-coding, but...

5. Oh God, We're Turning Into Your Parents

Listen, I'm a reasonable person. I can fully accept that I play games with LGBT+ goggles on at all times. Despite being fantastically aroace myself, I love yaoi. I love yuri. I even like plenty of straight ships. I'm a fangirl first, academic second, so believe me when I say that I understand how skeptics might view some of the points above. "You're just fangirling. Being equals and opposites doesn't automatically imply romance. The devs might have intended close friendship, not a relationship." This counter-argument is valid!

So I want to end with one more point which I think is actually the lynch pin to proving that Hoyoverse isn't "accidentally" making their male characters come across as queer. Hoyo's queer-coding for certain ships is very intentional and even sometimes very overt. In a few cases prior to Phaidei, they were already skirting the upper limits of plausible deniability, and I think the modern ship that previously pushed the boundary the most is Haikaveh.

You can say what you want about other Hoyo MLM ships and their lack of canon textual support (I love you ZhongChi, even if the devs actually hate you lol), but I believe people who unironically say "The devs are not baiting Alhaitham and Kaveh as a ship" are so media illiterate that it's actually embarrassing to share air with them. Whether you think the devs are just doing it to cash in on yaoi fangirls or because they actually want to depict gay characters, it is indisputable at this point that Alhaitham and Kaveh have in-game ship tease. They just do, and one of the most obvious and unmistakable instances of this is when Kaveh's hangout paralleled Kaveh's relationship with Alhaitham to the heterosexual marriage between Kaveh's mother and father.

To draw a direct connection between Kaveh's father and Alhaitham, who is repeatedly described as not being able to understand Kaveh's artistic sensibilities and idealistic world view but nevertheless chooses to stay by Kaveh's side through his many troubles, while simultaneously reinforcing the idea that Kaveh is his mother's spitting image, both physically and emotionally, can really not be interpreted in any other way.

Hoyoverse took a queer relationship and made a one-for-one analogy to a heterosexual relationship--Alhaitham and Kaveh are a direct reflection of Kaveh's very married parents.

This isn't something that can happen on accident. This is deliberate and unmistakable queer-coding.

Which makes it absolutely wild that it happened twice.

I've posted already about the obvious parallels between Mydei's parents and Phaidei, and I'm actually almost out of room for new images here, so I can't post the images again, but I hardly need to at this point: Mydei's parents met when Gorgo challenged Eurypon at the Kremnos Festival. They fought for ten rounds, determined that they were (what do you know) perfect equals, and Eurypon proposed on the spot. Eurypon is explicitly described as a swordmaster, while Gorgo used a spear.

Later, the game repeatedly (and in various separate instances), emphasizes that Mydei and Phainon's first meeting consisted of a duel lasting ten days and ten nights, where neither of them could secure the victory, proving them to also be each other's perfect equals. Phainon's role as Okhema's swordmaster is emphasized, while Mydei wields a spear just like his mother when killing his father and after taking on Nikador's divinity.

Then there's... everything that came after. Eurypon betrayed Gorgo, effectively stabbing her in the back, and took her life. The foreshadowing that Phainon will do this exact same thing to Mydei is unmissable.

Phainon has even expressed an explicit desire to take part in the same competition where Mydei's father crowned the winner his wife:

In the (very limited) Kremnoan dictionary, I'm pretty sure this is how you say "I'm down to fuck."

Just as in the case with Haikaveh, there is no way that this parallel could have occurred by accident. The devs did not go out of their way to give us entire flashbacks of Gorgo and Eurypon's meeting and downfall for no reason. You're supposed to see the one-for-one connection between Mydei's very heterosexual, married parents and Phainon and Mydei's relationship.

Simultaneously, the devs also parallel their MLM ships to heterosexual relations by incorporating shades of domesticity normally reserved for "traditional" male-female relationships into their MLM ships--including levels of domesticity that heterosexual ships in Genshin and Star Rail usually don't rise to. One of Genshin's most popular MLM ships shares a single-family home and has a chore chart. Thoma is Ayato's housekeeper. Tighnari and Cyno are just flat-out joint raising a child. Jiaoqiu cooks and Moze cleans. Yingxing and Dan Feng accidentally(?) made a baby.

And Phainon and Mydei aren't any exception. They live an apocalyptic world that is constantly calling them away to battle, but the devs went out of their way to tell us Mydei is an extremely good cook who prepares everyone's food and deliberately ruins Phainon's when he's annoying, which is definitely old married couple behavior lol. Mydei is framed repeatedly as being good with children, not just in the distant fatherly way but in the "plays house" and follows-along-after-unaccompanied-kids-like-a-mother-hen way. Yet when Mydei has to leave, taking the classic "I'm going off to war" ancient Greek exit, he doesn't depart without leaving Phainon his people--with the camera panning specifically to the little Kremnoans. Phainon got the kids in the divorce. D; The tragic domesticity is already off the charts, and then they hit you the second punch when Mydei's last question (just one or two lines later) confirms that it was Phainon who got the ring for him. Hoyo couldn't actually have given us a more heavy-handed "parting husband and wife" parallel if someone held them at gunpoint. That whole thing was some Odyssey level bullshit. I see you devs, I see you.

You might be tempted to say that is just heteronormativity, which it could be, but I actually think it serves a very specific place in Hoyo's queer-coding repertoire. In comparing gay relationships to heterosexual marriages, the devs effectively "legitimize" their queer characters, suggesting that the relationships between gay male characters are no less real or valid than those between men and women. In demonstrating that male characters can achieve stable and healthy domestic lives with each other, the devs reiterate that players are not supposed to notice a difference between gay and heterosexual relationships.

There isn't any clearer way for Hoyoverse to legally say "We want you to think of these two men as romantic partners" than to say "Wow, isn't it interesting that their relationship is identical to a married couple's." It's on purpose; at this point, you really can't say the queer-coding isn't deliberate without looking like you can't read, and if it was intentional when Haikaveh paralleled Kaveh's parents, then it was doubly so the second time Hoyoverse pulled this trick to parallel Phaidei to Mydei's parents.

PHEW! Okay, I finally made it through the foundational traits for Hoyoverse MLM ship-bait and where Phaidei fits in with those. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk! 😂

But... the whole reason I started this post was actually because I wanted to talk about differences between Phaidei and other Hoyoverse MLM ships, and particularly how bold Hoyo actually was in 3.1, pushing the envelop to an extreme degree to ship-tease Phainon and Mydei.

So, since the post was way, way too long, I've spit the rest of my point off into a second post.

Check out Part 2 over here. ->

[duplicityvn]

devtalk #1 11/10 ::

Hey, I've been recently made aware of a... I don't know what to say so I'll just put, "controversial" update of one of the games in this community.

First off, I want to say kudos to @/fantasia-kitt for biting the bullet and putting some actual real dark shit into the game. This is what's been missing from the community.

Personally, I think these devblogs and interactions between community and developer have watered down yandere stories and have promoted an almost unhealthy look towards what a yandere actually is.

It also has caused several people to develop an unhealthy sense of relationships, thinking that you're only loved or capable of showing love if you do extremely toxic things as a "Look what I'll do for you, don't you understand?"

This isn't to say that I think devblogs should be removed, or we should stop dev-community interactions all together. No, this is just me saying, "Hey, guys. These characters are meant to be dark, are meant to be evil, they're morally reprehensible and irredeemable. Remember that."

When you get into dark content, you have to be prepared for dark fucking content, okay?

Onto my second point of this post.

Do I think there should have been clearer warnings in the game before some of this stuff happened? Yes and no. I think FK's warnings are appropriate and clearly stated.

I also think that following a similar format to Boyfriend to Death, where there is a content warning/trigger list for each separate character would help in expectations for these incidents. People get attached to characters, it's a thing that happens. If you asked me several months ago, I would have a different opinion. As it stands, I now have comfort characters of my own.

Do I think anything is wrong with TKATB or FK? No, absolutely not. FK is entitled to create whatever story they want to, however dark they want to. I appreciate that they're bringing this into the community and it's a little inspiring and motivating if I'm being honest.

Anyway, this is just my own personal thoughts and ramblings on this matter. I am but a tiny dev with a tiny following that wanted to make a post about this in general. In the future, I will personally be making a trigger/content warning list for each character before such content is released to avoid this happening. I will also be implementing it into the game itself so it's very in your face about what Duplicity: Revival contains.

You have your own responsibility to listen to and heed warnings that developers list for their games. If ***any*** of that content on those warnings are an issue for you, then don't interact with the game. At all.

I think that's all I had to say about this. I'll add more if I think of anything.

Take care of yourself, bunnies. <3

-Cin

[gibor-zolel]

Avery; the not so chill plant enthusiast

Well I am late as per usual but here it is;

This post will mainly be analyzing Avery's character but I will also be going over who I think Avery is the comparison and contrast to (it's "Wayne")

This is over 2,000 words with screenshots so I'm putting it under a read more. Enjoy :)

When we first see Avery they are portrayed as more of a minor character or someone that can easily be overlooked despite being one of the main love interests. Now part of this is because supposedly there's going to be 7 episodes and we're only on 4 but I believe the devs intentionally made the majority of Avery interactions up to the player's decision to include them and speak to them.

Depending on how you play the game; you may only see Avery as a passerby when you visit the diner or the general store. You don't actually have to invite them anywhere; it's up to us to make Avery feel included and wanted in the story unfolding.

The first thing we learn about Avery is that they're working for their aunt because they had "issues" with their family about their education. I don't believe it's ever expanded upon but I'm eager to learn more hopefully in episode 5.

Avery the supportive but left out "friend"

Avery also does their best to hype up and encourage the people around them. Such as in episode 1 when you go to the diner with Stella and Avery tells Stella not to downplay her success. On the wiki it states that Avery dislikes it when friends devalue themselves. The problem is that this type of friendship seems to be a one way street at times. We never see Stella or Kaneeka or Oscar or whoever invite Avery to places or put in the same level of effort of trying to connect that Avery does. Avery is extremely observant to people they see as their friends; such as when Avery not only notices that Gretchen is gone but also that Stella isn't her usual self.

Avery is nonjudgmental and tries their best to be empathic and sort of a mediator for the group such as pointing out to Kaneeka that the mines are obviously failing and Tabby clearly isn't some coal baron or when Avery directly calls the animal in the video a mountain lion despite knowing how Stella's refuses to accept any evidence contrary to her worldview.

When you go to the diner in episode 2 and question if Avery will even believe such a wild story, they say this;

I do think Avery can be a bit nosy at times but this isn't a malicious urge to get dirt on other people but rather a desire to be a part of someone's life and fill the loneliness in their heart.

Avery feels like a new character on a show that's already been running for 5 seasons. People are nice but you're not part of the OG cast ya know?

If you have Keen Eye you can say that Stella has talked up Avery's party and you don't think she would have done that if she didn't feel that Avery is a part of the town. So some of this isolation may be in their head.

Now personally, I do think Stella and Kaneeka often leave Avery out of things but I think this isn't because they don't like Avery but rather they're too caught up in their own business and inner worlds to take a step back and notice how Avery feels. However; there is also truth in acknowledging that loneliness can sometimes just be you overthinking things or situations in your head and I think Avery tends to do this.

Avery's boredom clashing with their empathy

A particularly interesting clash of traits in Avery is that they're empathic but also crave excitement so much that it can be borderline insensitive at times. After telling your story of what happened last night; Avery expresses remorse about Gretchen or Duke but then follows it up quickly with "how exciting"

This follows into episode 3 when you visit Avery and say "I've enjoyed the challenge"

Avery is someone who appears cool and collected but craves excitement and chaos. They seem to enjoy playing Nancy Drew to an extant too as they're always willing to help fill you in on any information they hear and they comment on being in the loop due to working at the diner. They're like a reverse Shaggy from scooby doo!

But Avery does pull back when you comment on it being wrong for us to feel excited.

"I wouldn't hate it"

This makes me think that in an upcoming chapter, Avery is going to come face to face with a dangerous situation and is either going to regret it or fully embrace it and endanger themselves or possibly others. There are several times Avery can "joke" about being okay with a ditchling putting an egg in them. I'm praying this doesn't foreshadow Avery being eaten alive...

The lonely drifting musician with too many plants

We learn that Avery's obsession with plants started when they bought a pothos to make their apartment feel less lonely and empty. Then they got a bunch more until it turned in a jungle. They joined a plant community online, both as a way to become more knowledgeable about their plants but also a way to connect with others.

When you ask if they have a favorite; Avery tells you their favorite plant is the dragon scale alocasia, which was a plant that someone from the online community gave them. Life got busy so they don't talk anymore but Avery still sees the plant as a way to remember that someone thinks of them.

Plus the leaves look like big puffy cartoons.

We learn that Avery is also a musician that plays synths, but started with the bass because it "called to them". On the Scarlet Hollow wiki it states that "Avery's love language is sharing plant cuttings with others. However for something more serious, they write songs for them."

Which is super cute and while Avery obviously loves plants; I think their ultimate passion is music as they state that music is their joy and they'd rather juggle having a job and playing on sound cloud than music becoming their livelihood.

Avery uses music as a way to express their emotions, connect with others, and carry on folk traditions.

Despite this; they have plans to move on. They state they don't want to work at the diner forever but also aren't sure what else to do or where else to go. They like to be on the move and meet new people and exciting situations.

What's strange is that it appears Avery is unhappy yet when you ask if they're unhappy; they say that this is actually the happiest they've ever been. Which implies that pre Scarlet Hollow they were even more lonely and lost in life. I think Avery desires a friend that they can be more vulnerable and open around.

Once again Avery is very perceptive and points out that Stella has walls up and Kaneeka is too busy with the store and family drama. They're also the first person to point out that something is strange about Sybil and will later on just straight up ask her if she's a witch.

Avery's potentially dangerous friendship with Julius?

Avery ended up forming a bond with one of the Holler's more prickly residents; Julius Tremaine. Julius apparently overheard Avery mentioning to aunt Winnie that they needed a bench for the garden and lo and behold a bench appeared the next day. I think Avery really appreciated that someone went out of their way to do something for them.

Avery explains that they and Julius now talk a lot more and that Julius got them a new frame for one of the beds recently. I get the impression that out of all the residents of Scarlet Hollow, that Avery has a soft spot for Julius in particular.

When you point out that Julius hasn't been in the diner; they express concern and say that they'll start getting worried if he doesn't show up tomorrow and states that no one else checks up on him. I don't think people outside of Winnie and Julius check up on Avery either.

The reason this friendship concerns me is I believe the next "choice" will be on the Tremaine farm and it'll involve Avery getting hurt or killed by one of Julius's traps or perhaps even getting attacked by one of the ditchlings. Sybil says that ditchlings don't attack humans but it's important to remember she also says she's never heard of this many before. The ditchlings may start off killing the small, weaker creatures and then begin killing people once the animals are gone.

Again there are weirdly a lot of dialogue options for Avery talking about being incubated or possibly killed by some otherworldly being. I've heard theories that the giant pumpkin may even be alive or have some kind of creature living in it. Makes me wonder if there's going to be a little shop of horrors homage....

Avery and "Wayne"

It's explained later to us that the ghost haunting Oscar and Rosalina's house chooses it's victims based on how well they fit the characters in the "play". It's obvious these aren't perfect cast choices but it's making due with what it has. It chooses Stella for The Lover because she and Tabitha were in a situationship, it oddly chooses Rosalina to play the mother protecting her child, Kaneeka to play the Witch, Oscar to play the dad and......if you invite Avery, you'll get an exclusive scene where Avery is playing a character called "The Entity"

Now I'm not going to go full theory mode into why I think the spirit possessing Wayne is the Entity but there's several hints to this such as possessed Avery's eyes opening when speaking and then relaxing while silent. Similar to how Wayne's eyes glow when talking and then fade out when quiet. There's more hints but I don't want to derail this post.

Rather let's discuss why Charlie choose Avery.

Firstly it appears this "Entity" is listening in on other people's conversations and is quite observant. It even knows that Eddie is pregnant. Avery is observant by working at the diner and overhearing conversations while Wayne is.....well he's a stalker. Standing in the background and listening in on our conversations and has been implied to be with for all our lives.

So it has Avery's observant nature but what else? Well if you have Street Smarts and Powerful Build in episode 1 you can explore the estate. In it you find someone with glowing yellow eyes who slinks back into the darkness after you almost catch them playing the piano. Assuming this is "Wayne"; that would mean he also is found of music.

Both Avery and Wayne desire connection and are loyal to those they care about. Avery seems to desire a close knit group of people but is friendly to everyone in town and is eager to help others even if they don't know them; while Wayne is obsessively focused on one individual (us) and is honestly quite nasty to other people or completely ignores them.

Avery and Wayne are also more in the background at times. With Avery needing to be included or else they'll end up as a stranger that hangs around other people and Wayne literally hiding in the background.

Avery calls their relationship with Sybil more of a business relationship and we know that Wayne has been hanging around Sybil's tea room and that Sybil has been helping him with....something.

Both Avery and Wayne appear cool and collected at first glance but there are moments which show us their hidden emotions. With Avery this is their desire for danger and excitement brimming beneath the surface while for Wayne there seems to be an underlying anger and possibly even hatred he's hiding from us. Dustin mentions there's a "human" in the estate who's eyes are always watching and hateful. I'm 90% sure this is Wayne.

I think the "compare and contrast" between Avery and Wayne is that Avery is an example of a positive loving friend who wants to make connections but is often feeling left out and lonely so they try their best to make sure no one else feels that way.

Meanwhile Wayne is an example of a toxic obsessive person who crosses boundaries and is hostile to anyone he deems a threat to the person he "cares" about. I get the impression that Wayne is jealous of our connection with the other characters in the story too and wants to show us that we don't need anyone but him.

Also a quick tidbit but I think "Wayne" is nonbinary like Avery but we refer to him using masculine pronouns because the spirit is possessing a man's body.

But that's all I have for now! I'll be making my Kaneeka and Reese post next so stay tuned!

[nokillbananashelter]

THE NEXT ZELDA

Things I Think The Devs Are Thinking About

This is going to be a series of posts digesting what Zelda has done/is doing recently, namely, with EOW, TOTK, BOTW (& AOC/AOI) and how that relates to the fandom and their responses to reception of these games and where the devs have clearly shown interest with their whims. I was originally going to post this as one thing, but we don’t need to be that insufferable and I’m still formulating some thoughts on the other ones. And please remember- This is speculation!

PART 1: DUO PROTAGONISTS

I think we are at the point where dual protagonist structure is on the doorstep. Echoes of Wisdom was almost that already and they seem very keen on addressing giving Zelda space to be the protagonist. It would be absolutely incredible to have this open format where you are either journeying through as Zelda in one part and Link in another, or you are actually united and have to figure out how Zelda or Link’s toolset fit into the puzzle in front of you.

It’s been a minute since we’ve had a narrator companion. Zelda has already been in that role so I think this time they have the opportunity to simply just have her be… a voiced protagonist. I’m not saying she needs to have a voice actress this time (she probably will) but it would be interesting to have dialogue happening in a more tangible light. Link DOES talk in BOTW/TOTK, but also….Imagine how they could play up the characteristic of being kind of quiet. Maybe link does not interact with NPC’s in the same way that Zelda would. Maybe he says things that are a little more simple, functional, and Zelda does a lot more negotiation and investigation. Imagine the comedy, drama, and development that can happen by having link reserving his words more and Zelda speaking very freely and openly.

Idk, I think they are trialing the interest of zelda with the voice memories too- do players have interest in Zelda lore dropping on us, as we explore the world? I think the answer to that is a resounding yes. Imagine as you’re exploring as Zelda, or with Zelda, and it gives you the option to let her lore drop if you wanna hear it. It’s not forced on you, it’s not required, it doesn’t stop you from doing what you’re doing. It’s there to engage in if you want. I think people would want that & the new totk content is probably gonna be wanted in the base game next time.

And I also think they already kind of trialed this in the BEGINNING of TOTK too. Link is there to make the path safe for Zelda so she can interpret ruins and offer context for what you’re going through. I think my only complaint about that beginning section was how she ripped attention away from moving forward to demand the player pay attention to what she was doing. It was necessary as an opening act in a video game where you wouldn’t necessarily know to not skip past that, but in a more sustained capacity, the ability to skip over it would be right in the heart of how they’ve been developing these games- and I think a lot of players would appreciate that.

Further on teamwork, EOW’s last dungeon felt like a prototype for swap-between puzzles. I honestly really liked it. And while I didn’t really like sword mode for EOW, a game starring both Zelda and Link has a lot of potential for that kind of switching dynamic to work out really cool and feels like a fertile ground for creating challenge and interesting puzzles. I genuinely wanted more puzzles where Link & Zelda got split from each other in a room and had to independently figure out how to solve it. That fucking owned, even though it was only like three rooms.

It also defines and reinforces their skillsets a little bit more. Narratively speaking, Link is not credited for all of the creative adventuring you do that often, despite you showing a lot of wit and creativity and wizardry as link. He’s credited as a swordsman most often, and Zelda is the priestess. It makes sense for her to have the wacky powers and being more oriented towards creative wizardry and sleuthing and for him to be a audacious Fliptastic acrobatic fighter. Obviously, they are also defining Zelda as being insanely capable in combat, as we see in EOW & soon AOI. Combat = Link and Puzzle = zelda do not need to be mutually exclusive to each other- they both can be forces of nature and creativity and wit. But I think it gives them a lot of space to be defined and complement their skill sets in navigating solving puzzles and doing combat. Dungeon items can be made to be more Linky or more Zelday. Link could get a hookshot, Zelda could get a superpower. It just makes sense to me. I would love it if Zelda retain some of her summoning power from EOW, and Link retained a lot of his cool adventuring gear. They both can be capable in every aspect of gameplay, but one is tinted more magically and the other is tinted more adventurously.

And although the Sages in TOTK are sloppy implementations, they are 100% a trial of what it feels like to have people follow you around, and how you may possibly interact with them to engage with their abilities. I think there’s a lot of successes and failures learned from the way that they were implemented. A second pass on reactive companions could work out in a really cool way, and it’s not like there aren’t 1 million other examples in other games that worked better that they can learn from. They’re thinking about this and I don’t think they’re done with it!

i know a lot of people probably wouldn’t like this, but the notion of having to look out for both characters & make sure that they can complete their task while you do yours is fascinating to me. Imagine you can even choose which character you want to use in a fight or troubling situation. When you’re link, you gotta keep the baddies away from Zelda, disarm bosses through their various phases, and deal the finishing blow. When Zelda, you gotta maintain and complete seals/spells, keep baddies away from link, and change the shape of the battlefield in your favor. You may even have players that end up preferring one or the other in the challenges that come from being one or the other. It could make the game more accessible in that way. Imagine sometimes you get separated, and have to find the other one and break them out of a situation. This is something that could happen in particular story beat points, or be a consequence/complication of exploration that entice you to solve puzzles or explore areas you may otherwise miss or skip over.

And Imagine how dual protags opens up the possibilities for co-op! I would love an open world Zelda, where my partner can just drop in and drop out however we please. Imagine one of you exploring one end of the map while the other explores the other end. It would be so insane if that flexibility was a primary feature of the next Zelda. I wouldn’t even mind if the game was relatively conservative structurally if that was the primary gimmick. I really think it’s worth exploring.

And this isn’t even to mention four swords and what they may have learned from that experiment.

Genuinely, I think this duo protagonist concept is eminent. Out of all the things that are going to happen next, this one feels like the idea they are coming around to most. It could please a lot of people and it could be done in a way that doesn’t require you to sacrifice Link’s or Zelda’s importance in the story, or even your capacity to play the whole game as just one of them if you really wished that.

[riding-the-sunset-bird]

Another day, another post dissecting Our Life's code! This time we'll be going over how Our Life decides whether your Cove will be Studious, Sporty, or somewhere in the middle!

If you've already seen my post on how the game decides where Cove is on the spectrum between warm and cold, then most of this will feel extremely familiar, but you don't need to check that post to understand this one! I'll be going over everything exactly the same.

According to GB Patch, getting a sporty or studious Cove is primarily based on what you do with him activity-wise.

Part of it is what Cove literally ends up doing in the events. There are multiple times where he can do something more physical or do something more low key. Another part is a somewhat meta “the player is creating their reality” type of deal. For example, if the player makes it clear that their MC is the sporty one around, that would have to mean Cove isn’t the sporty one. So even without interacting with Cove directly you’d rack up a lot studious points for him because your choices are describing a world where Cove isn’t that into sports. That’s not to say it’s impossible for the MC and Cove to both be into sports. Describing your MC specifically as the one into sports is excluding Cove from being super into sports, but he doesn’t have to be excluded. The most straightforward way to get a sporty Cove is to just really focus on it. Whenever there’s something that could possibly make him more interested in bookish things, lean away from that. And whenever there’s a way to encourage him to like or do physical stuff, do it. So, for example, don’t accept just being a silver medalist in Grown-up, don’t say that the MC is a faster runner than Cove when trying to get away from Shiloh, do ask him question that lead to him talking about outdoorsy activities he does, etc.

Calling it "points" is very accurate because it's very much a points system. Whenever you do certain actions with/say certain things to Cove, the game will add a "point" to either Cove being studious or Cove being sporty (in extremely rare cases, it will add two instead of even subtract one).

(also, shockingly, reading the book with Cove in Sleepover actually has zero effect on Cove being Studious/Sporty; I even had to read through the script to confirm and the only reasoning I can imagine is because it's related to getting a CG and the devs wouldn't want players who want the CG to feel forced into making Cove more studious just to get it)

The tutorial of the game also vaguely details the studious to sporty spectrum:

[Cove']s interests fall along a sporty-mixed-studious spectrum. It works similarly to the personality one. When he's young, Cove has a variety of interests. As time goes on that can stay the same, begin to focus on more athletic/outdoorsy activities, or become more interested in academic/indoorsy ways to spend time.

And, if you've ever been in the Cove Creator, you'd know that there are five "states" that Cove can be in when it comes to his interests, with one state being between Studious and Mixed while another is between Mixed and Sporty. However, as far as I can tell, the game will never actually check for these two states, meaning that Cove is either Studious, Mixed, or Sporty, without any sort of Studious-Mixed or Mixed-Sporty at all.

In terms of the first check of the game - after the end of Step 1, of course - the game will examine the points you've gathered and decide where on the spectrum Cove is. If you have more Studious points, then the game will look only at how many points you've gathered there and vice versa with Sporty points. If you have an equal amount of Studious and Sporty points, then there will be a sort of "coin flip" to determine which points the game will check (this actually happened to me once where I had to go back on a save and got a Sporty Cove instead of a Studious one even though I'd done nothing different, simply because I'd accumulated an equal amount of sporty and studious points with Cove).

The remaining points in the other category are thrown away, and if you don't have enough sporty/studious points (depending on what you had more of or what the game chose in the "coin toss"), then you get a Mixed Cove.

Interestingly enough, the game is actually uneven in how it calculates a "fully Studious" or "fully Sporty" Cove. If you have six or more points in Studiousness, then you get a "fully Studious" Cove, but the game only asks for five of more in Sportiness to give you a "fully Sporty" Cove. This means that you could have five points in both Studiousness and Sportiness, which would give you a "fully Sporty" Cove if the coin flip picked Sportiness, but if the coin flip picks Studiousness, you'll only get a "Studious-Mixed" Cove.

As stated above though, the Studious-Mixed and Mixed-Sporty states don't really exist and serve as Studious and Sporty respectively anyway. In the grand scheme of things, it won't matter, but I digress.

Keeping that in mind, the game only cares if you have three or more points in either Studiousness or Sportiness. If you have three or more Studious points, you get a Studious Cove, and if you have three or more Sporty points, you get a Sporty Cove (and a coin toss if you're equal in both to decide whether he's Studious or Sporty). If you do not have enough points in either, you get a Mixed Cove. A Mixed Cove is most likely if you either play through Step 1 without playing any moments or avoid leaning Cove towards anything Studious/Sporty at all.

Cove's personality and appearance are also unrelated to whether he's Studious or Sporty, excluding moments where a multiple choice option might affect multiple values at once (but this is coincidence rather than direct correlation and, yes, I'll mention them when they come). Cove will also still do things like go surfing in Wave even if he's Studious, it's just that he'll be an awkward surfer instead of a graceful one (no comment if he's Mixed).

In terms of things that affect the player directly, the gummy bear toss in the Step 2 DLC moment Birthday is one of the biggest things that come to mind, as you'll lose if Cove isn't sporty and your MC hasn't been given any "sporty points" of their own (since this post isn't about the MC, I'll keep it brief and just say that the game keeps track of your own athletic ability during Step 2, such as if you tell Kyra that you like to swim). If that matters to you, you can opt for a sporty Cove and save yourself the trouble as there's no Studious equivalent of the gummy bear toss.

As for all of the moments in Step 1 where you have a chance to influence Cove's Studiousness/Sportiness, here they are!

Step 1 - Prologue

When Cove and the MC try to flee from Shiloh (if the MC agrees to go along with Cove):

He was fast, but you knew you could outrun him if you had to. [sporty +1]

He was not that fast, you knew you could outrun him if you had to. [studious +1]

He was not that fast, but neither were you. [studious +1]

At that speed, you weren't sure if you could go fast enough to reach him. [sporty +1]

Shopping

When Cove is staring down absentmindedly at the sand:

"Are you looking for snails?" [sporty +1]

"Are you looking for shells?" [studious +1]

"What is it?" [studious +1]

"You didn't feel the need to ask why." [sporty +1]

When Cove goes back to not saying anything on the beach:

You didn't either. [sporty +1]

"What did you want to go to the shops for?" [studious +1]

"What do you usually do on the beach?" [sporty +1]

Grown Up

When Lizzie tells Cove and the MC that they won silver in the pretend Olympics:

"Silver sucks. I don't want silver." [sporty +1]

"I'm okay with that." [studious +1]

"Hey, we can do better than silver!" [sporty +1]

"Silver's not bad. Nice." [studious +1]

You stayed silent. [no change]

Long Day

When Lizzie asks the MC if they're a chicken who doesn't want to ding-dong-ditch the mean grandparents:

"Yeah. Cluck-cluck." [studious +1]

You'd rather just avoid them. [studious +1]

You thought they deserved worse. [no change]

"I'll do it." [no change]

When the MC gets to decide what they see in the clouds:

You saw a dolphin. [studious +1] {note that this will give Cove the dark blue short-sleeved shirt}

You saw a car. [sporty +1] {note that this will give Cove the red salamander sleeveless shirt}

You saw an alpaca. [sporty +1] {note that this will give Cove the dark blue short-sleeved shirt}

You saw a smiley face. [sporty +1] {note that this will give Cove the red salamander sleeveless shirt}

You saw cloud shapes. [studious +1]

Sandcastle

[NONE]

Fireflies

When the MC notices Cove lagging behind the group while en route to poppy hill:

"Are you not gonna come?" [no change] {but will give Cove cold +1}

You tugged him along. [sporty +1] {note that this will give Cove cold +1 on Indifferent and warm +1 on Fond/Crush}

You walked with him. [no change] {but will give Cove cold +1}

You waved at him to hurry. [no change] {but will give Cove warm +1}

You ran off. [no change]

When Cove fails to catch a firefly after the MC catches one:

You encouraged him to try again. [sporty +1] {note that this will give Cove warm +1}

You told him about the firefly you had. [studious +1] {note that this will give Cove cold +1}

You made a joke about what happened. [studious +1]

You did your own things. [sporty +1]

Library

When the MC chooses to go with Cove rather than participate in the quiz:

[sporty +1] {note that this will give Cove cold +1}

When the MC and Cove are about to be interrupted in their game of hide-and-seek (dependent on how good the MC has been at the game; answers marked with a * are the correct ones):

1st round of hide-and-seek

Next to a Peter Pan poster.

*Beside the fairy tale display.

*Behind the solar system model.

2nd round of hide-and-seek

By the fire awareness station.

Near the stuffed animals.

*Under the giant piece of fruit.

By the outlaw poster.

*In the fantasy section.

Near the toddler books.

3rd round of hide-and-seek

*In all the old Christmas stuff.

Next to the kid detective poster.

*Behind the Willy Wonka statues.

Final Tally

the MC won zero rounds (Cove will say "I'm doing good.") [sporty +1]

the MC won one round (Cove will say "I'm doing good.") [studious +1] [sporty +1]

the MC won two rounds (Cove will say "I can still win.") [studious +1]

the MC won all three rounds (Cove will say "I need to do good in at least one round.") [studious +1]

If the MC chose to go do the quiz instead:

[studious +1] {note that this will give Cove warm +1}

Ghost

[NONE]

Barbecue

When the MC is racing the other kids to catch the girl with the squirt gun (if the MC chose to go play with the kids in the first place):

You outran them easily. [studious +1]

You outran them with effort. [sporty +1]

You weren't as fast as them because they were speedy. [sporty +1]

You weren't as fast as them because you just weren't fast. [studious +1]

You moved to the side to let them pass; you didn't wanna win this race. [no change]

When Mr. Holden comments on his interests:

"Those are things Cove likes." [sporty +1]

"Wow. It's a good thing you live by the beach." [studious +1]

You stayed quiet. [no change]

Runaway

[NONE]

Sleepover

[NONE]

Step 1 - Ending

When Cove tries to skip a rock across the water (if the MC chose to stay with him):

You were impressed over how far he got it to go. It sailed way out into the sea. [sporty +2] [studious -1]

It was a good toss. That was pretty neat. [sporty +1]

It wasn't a long throw. But he didn't care to try for that. [studious +1]

The rock sunk kind of... like a rock and fell back down almost right after he tossed it. [studious +2] [sporty -1]

And that's all of them! A few surprises are in there, but it's mostly straightforward in either prompting Cove to talk about outdoor/active things he does or choosing options that imply he's particularly good/fast (whether compared to the MC or in general). Particularly tricky are the ones that might change Cove's appearance/personality when you didn't intend for that to happen and are trying not to use the Cove Creator to get the Cove you want.

Still, it's definitely easier to gauge than Cove's appearance or personality, so whether you wanted this for a guide or just for the data, I hope you enjoyed! :D

[allieebobo]

Monsoon Games: Roadmap

I'll continue to tweak this rough roadmap according to the responses I get from the google form, but here's the plan (ideal-case) for the next 1-2 years!

If you haven't filled out the form yet, please do, as answers would be super valuable in helping me better gauge, prioritize, and budget my next steps as well as tweak the pricing for the tiers!

Phase 1: Now till end-2025

Full-time urban planner

Part-time game dev.

Likely to be mostly solo-work and choice-script based

Phase 2: Beginning 2026 till end 2026

Part/Full-time game dev

Likely to involve / bring in an artist/coder, depending on eventual decision on game format (ren'py, Godot or choicescript)

Phase 3: Beginning 2027

Launch phase 2 game

Re-evaluate what to do next, likely back to my full-time job, but to KIV this based on what happens in Phase 2

Details below the cut!

Again, if you have comments, suggestions, preferences, do leave a message or email (allieebobo@gmail.com). If you're interested to collaborate, or to find out about what games I'm thinking of, click here.

Phase 1a

Timeframe: now till end 2025

Scope: Keep rolling out choicescript updates for CT:OS and Merry Crisis. This will form the base of content for ko-fi/patreon (with subscribers continuing to get early-releases until these games are complete).

Phase 1b 

Timeframe: start sometime 2nd half of 2025, run concurrently till end 2025)

Scope: Write a choicescript 'concept demo' for 2 new games I've been haunted by over the past couple of years. (I'll release more info on this if I think they're viable). Whether or not they become more complex games, I'll at least have the choicescript demo. 

Phase 1c 

Timeframe: optional, but to start as soon as funding is obtained

Scope: Depending on interest, I want to consider doing a port to ren'py for Merry Crisis (or CT:OS, but likely MC) for a more visual-style game. This would involve either hiring a coder to help with the port, or doing it myself. More importantly, will need to commission art for this.

_____

Monthly-subscriptions for both Phase 1a and 1b would include the following tiers: 

$3/month (existing): Just to support me :) 

$6/month (existing): Early-access links to CT:OS and Merry Crisis

$9/month (new tier): Same as above + Early-content (e.g. lore, character snippets & art, non-interactive stories, dev logs) for new game(s)

$12/month (might not go for this tier, but including just as a concept): Same as above + Expanded early-content (e.g. interactive choice-script based demo access)

Phase 2a

Timeframe: Beginning 2026, probably 6-9 months or more depending on scope

Scope: With CT:OS and Merry Crisis completed, I hope to then turn my sights to converting the choicescript demo created in phase 1b into actual complete games. This could either take the form of: 

A full choicescript game

A full ren'py (visual) game

A full Godot (2D) game

About 2-3 months into Phase 2a, I will also have enough content to launch a kickstarter, which would hopefully bring new backers on board and funds to speed-up production of the game(s). For folks who prefer supporting once-off instead, they'll also come in at this stage :) 

Phase 2b: 

Timeframe: Probably 6-9 months into 2026

Scope: Once there's a playable beta version of the game, I'll then do testing with subscribers and other beta-testers, and do de-bugging.

_____

Monthly-subscriptions for both Phase 2a and 2b would include the following tiers: 

$4/month: Just to support me :) 

$8/month: Subscriber-only content for all new games in development (e.g. character snippets & art, dev logs)

$12/month: Same as above + Little interactive patches/expansion packs for CT:OS and Merry Crisis 

$16/month: Same as above + Expanded early-content for all new games (e.g. non-interactive stories, scene peaks/teasers, interactive twine or choicescript based playable content, access to beta version of the game when ready in phase 2b)

Kickstarter tiers: 

$12 once-off for a specific project (a selection of content from the pool of characer snippets & art, dev-logs that $8/month subscribers get) 

$25 once-off for a specific project (same as above + a selection of content from the pool of expanded early-content) 

$35 once-off for a specific project (same as above + special perks e.g. ability to design a character or item or request chapter) 

Phase 3

Timeframe: Start of 2027 onwards 

Scope: When at least 1 game is launched, hopefully by start of 2027, I'll re-evaluate and see what to set my sights on next! This probably also means going back to full-time urban planning :)

[atamascolily]

So was anyone going to tell me they put the "Prologue in Heaven" sequence at the beginning of Magia Exedra (though after the CGI remake of the Homura vs. Walpurgisnacht battle from episode 1 and the Exedra OP) or did I just have to watch the video myself? Definitely did not have that on my bingo card.

The runes say "Magia Exedra" and the central logo is a star (aka the Memspark macguffins, which I cannot say with a straight face) and the moth/astrolabe wings of Infinite Iroha. So she's definitely involved in this somehow.

The lighthouse and a new mandala, because of all the cosmic worldbuilding symbolism. And then they do the projector thing, just like the beginning of the anime, before the frame narrative kicks in.

I keep seeing lots of speculation about Namae's true identity, but the whole point of the character is that she's literally a blank slate onto which the players can project themselves as well as taking on the forms of established characters to fight the battle sequences. The whole "you can find your true identity" thing is a great premise, but as soon as it's realized, the story ends (or at least has to find something else to do), so I don't expect resolution any time soon since presumably the game is going to go on for as long as possible.

Also, because the character is so nondescript, I have a hard time caring about this particular plot point, so to be honest, I'm fine with leaving it a mystery.

This guy, on the other hand...

Can you tell me what the hell your deal is, then? Who is your god? What master do you serve? ... No? Didn't think so.

Green Kyubey has a great personality, which is important because Namae has very little to work off of, so he's got to do all the heavy lifting in this partnership. He's literally an emotional support Incubator, which I find hilarious. I've seen theorizing that the lack of rings = ability to feel emotions, and while the sample size is limited (Kyubey, Mokyuu/Little Kyubey from Magia Record, and now this one), it certainly sounds plausible.

Green Kyubey's dialogue also implies he was created specifically for his current job as guardian of the lighthouse (by whom? Well, probably Madokami and Infinite Iroha), so I don't think there's going to be a dark plot twist where he turns out to be evil, actually. I mean, that could be a lot of fun, but I don't think that's where the game devs are going with it--the whole point of Magia Record was to make a lighter and softer version of Madoka Magica and go on indefinitely, and I think Exedra is going to continue with that. I also don't think he's secretly a character we already know, but they pulled that twist in Magia Record, so who knows.

Narratively, Green Kyubey's function is to guide and instruct the player, so while I'm very curious what his deal is, I suspect that backstory is also unlikely to be addressed for a while as the game seems hell-bent on recreating every single major Madoka Magica storyline in the franchise in CGI cut scenes/visual novel remakes.

Thus far, all of the stuff I've watched so far outside of the Namae-Green Kyubey interactions has been pretty derivative. Even the "Prologue in Heaven" segment above comes off as copying something that already existed rather than organic or as a homage. I mean, I'd love to be wrong, but given the game's fundamental premise is "revisiting the memories/experiences of every story we've already done", I'm not holding my breath.

I also suspect that while WnK's plot will inevitably get an event/level in Exedra, I don't think the two are connected much in terms of story outside of that. The two works serve two fundamentally different purposes, and Exedra's is to be a perpetual story machine and go on forever. I also don't think the creators would drop any hints/spoilers for WnK's plot by putting them in the backstory/premise of Exedra. But I guess we'll see.

Suffice to say, there's no shortage of material, but my primary interest is in the new stuff, so until we get to some original content, I'll probably tune out. But the image of the lighthouse in the void speaks to me on a deep emotional level and I would love to know more about it.

It's such a great image! Fingers crossed they do something interesting with it!

[inksandpensblog]

Some of you probably know by now that I think a lot about how the presentation of a story affects how it's perceived by its audience.

Pressure has a LOT of lore that the player character's POV only gives us a very narrow window into; both because some of that lore just hasn't been implemented into the game proper yet, and because the method of gameplay progression is such that our ability to interact with that lore is strictly regulated.

Sebastian's character is actually a great example of how this approach affects the audience's perception of the story.

If you were to present me with an academic breakdown of who the characters in this story are, what they've done, what they've been through, etc., all my modern storytelling sensibilities would tell me that Sebastian is the character I should be rooting for. Sentenced to death under a false conviction, trafficked to a mad science lab where his body was mutated against his will, forced to work for his captors for years, and then kept in the dark about his innocence just so they wouldn't have to face that they'd fucked up? Plus, as vengeful as he is, all he really wants is to escape? That resonates with people.

However, it's almost impossible for players to get any of this information about Sebastian on their first playthrough of the game, if they're getting the story through the game alone.

Most players meet him first as a trio of glowing blue eyes in the dark, that appear when they die to explain what killed them; meaning that most players will get a sense of his attitude long before they even find out what he looks like. And his attitude is…let's say abrasive XD

But even when players do encounter him during a run, once they find his shop about 1/3 of the way through gameplay progression, and discover that his personal info is literally for sale to read, most players still won't be able to on their first playthrough; because it's the most expensive item in his shop, and chances are high that a new player hasn't collected enough in-game currency to buy it…but also because it technically has no bearing on gameplay progression, so whatever currency the player does have would be better spent on health items and light sources and batteries.

In fact, the only thing you really need from Sebastian's shop as far as gameplay progression is the keycard for the next door on the map, which he lets you take for free…meaning that if you by some good fortune happen to have a code-breacher on you at the time you can actually skip his shop encounter entirely XD and I just find it fascinating that the devs have made it technically possible to beat the game without learning anything about one of its story's most influential characters.

Most people won't skip his shop though, because Sebastian is pretty much the only interactive entity in the game with a baseline hostility level that hovers around "neutral" and only rises to active hostility when provoked, rather than being actively hostile all the time, and this makes him interesting to engage with. Plus, he's functionally a shopkeeper, and shops in videogames are designed to be appealing in a functional and mechanical sense, as hostile encounters usually can't happen in them and they provide a way for players to obtain resources. Even players who find Sebastian's attitude vexing will usually express relief upon reaching his shop.

This is a long-winded way of saying that many players will form a pretty solid impression of Sebastian as a personality before ever getting a chance to learn his backstory, because the means through which the player can engage with his character in-game are extremely limited.

Sebastian's interactions with the player are a very small part of his story overall, and if you want to learn anything more about him besides how he reacts when purposely aggravated then you have to actually stop engaging with him and seek that information elsewhere.

Even once you do buy his personal info, you can't actually read it until your run ends. Until you read his personal info, you won't know that he himself is the experimental subject Z-13 whose designation appears on the red-lit screens you'll occasionally find as you progress, chronicling the timeline of the site lockdown from before you arrived and declaring him the culprit. Unless you encounter p.AI.nter in person, you won't learn the steps Sebastian has taken to indirectly hinder your progression towards your main objective.

There's a lot about Sebastian that the player just…never gets the opportunity to learn, during normal gameplay, because the player's POV is so limited.

And that's just in a gameplay sense.

Because when you really think about it in a narrative sense, we're playing from the POV of what're basically clone troopers: a seemingly endless swarm of indistinguishable low-effort bad guys who only exist to give the main character something to fight before the next boss.

That's who we are, in the game, that's the position we have: we're set in fundamental opposition to Sebastian, and the very structure of the game keeps us from changing that. There's only one way forward.

And it's so intriguing, to me, what this does for how the story is perceived.

[lxrd-ren]

ALRIGHT

PART #2 OF NICO MASTERMIND THEORY

https://www.tumblr.com/lxrd-ren/763859465077456896/nico-mastermind-theory-hear-me-out?source=share

^ Refer to part 1

Now

MonoTV + Nico Likeness

Already listed a lot of these in the last post but I found more somehow

Never thought I'd be comparing colours for theories again, let alone shades of red, but here we are once again

So, in some of MonoTV's sprites it's got red claws, so I thought, kinda reminds me of Nicos red eyes

The colour on Nicos default sprite does make it seem like a stretch, but fortunately, the dev released the sprites of the cast without any shadows or similar things added to the colours (bottom right of image), and you start to see how the reds do seem to look pretty similar; the colour on the wheels are also quite close in hue

Also noted down how the little dent on MonoTV's right antenna thingy may be reminiscent of Nicos little tuff in-between their own cat-like hair, but I may just be reaching

MonoTV Being Made For Nico

Also concerning MonoTV, in the last post I mentioned how MonoTV might've been made for or with Nico in mind

Now, take into account how Nico literally feels better being around things that remind them of cats, and MonoTV basicly being a cat really makes it seem like it was built specifically for them

Think of it like Semiotics, like Veronika mentioned at one point funny enough. Nico feels better being around things that remind them of cats, so MonoTV is built to resemble a cat so Nico feels better around them

Or, Nico could've just asked for MonoTV to be like a cat, cause, y'know...

Cat-THEMED things they like specifically, not cats surprisingly

Narrative Things

(And yes the birthdays might be significant)

^ Straight from the Dev

Their birthday might fit into two narrative things:

1) The whole narrative of Teruko and David being swapped with the protagonist / antagonist role, I know I saw a post mention Greek mythology and fate with those fighting against fate (David + Xander) being the heroes in this story and those who accept fate being the (I guess) villains (Teruko), for lack of a better word

Normally the one who started the killing game is the villain, but if the roles really are swapped, then the masterminds birthday being on Hero's day lines up perfectly

2) If the killing game was started out of revenge for Mai, Nico could consider themselves to be Mai's 'hero' of sorts; doing her justice after death in a way

Speaking of narratives..

Rose + Nico Friendship + Parallels

Yep, I wanna talk about these two

First off, they both seem to be significant; atleast to each other. Nico doesn't seem to interact with many people, and Hu seems to be the only other one they actually choose to speak to. Aswell with Rose sleeping so often, we don't really see her hang out with people, let alone a specific one. But, the time she spent with Nico in the boutique was brought up again. Sure it was because of Nico stealing the turpentine, but the fact that it was their friendship and the broken trust that came with it that was also touched upon makes me think that we might be getting more out of this duo besides how Nico got the turpentine

Now that's established, I'll talk about they could parallel each other (and how they do so more if Nico is indeed the mm)

I believe they parallel each other in relation to memory; specifically, how much you know

With Rose's photographic memory, she is at one end with knowing a lot, and is even suffering with so much knowledge

With Nico, I believe they are at the other end with not knowing anything

Not sure if I mentioned this in the last post, but I believe that if Nico is indeed the mastermind, then they are not even aware of it themselves; and this time, I got things to back it up YIPPEE

Nico Is Unaware

(Thank you to @1moreff-creator for the masterpost that the image above came from)

So, this makes a lot more sense if a big part of Nico is indeed how they are not aware they are the mastermind. I could see this being relevant in the last chapter when they are confronted

'Dude wtf why did you start the killing game'

'I don't remember. No matter how much I think, I don't know.'

Etc, etc..

Revisiting the Mai statements also adds to this

Nico: Everyone confided in her.

Now, we know they are connected to both Mai and whichever cast member the sentence is assigned to. However, I saw someone (probably @demodraws0606) talk about the possibility that some of them are connected to the character in a different way. And that way is that whatever the statements say, the opposite is true for the character

What this means for Nico exactly?

Well

The opposite of this would probably be to withhold information from someone. Could be referencing everyone at the XF-TURE company or any potential traitors purposefully not telling Nico they are the mastermind, especially if they went out of their way to prevent them from knowing this

Could explain why MonoTV keeps insisting they are not a cat; just another attempt to keep Nico from the truth. Afterall, Nico is heavily associated with cats. But ofcourse, MonoTV is incompetent so its attempt is not the best. Furthermore, although MonoTV doesn't know who the mastermind is, they may have just been programmed to, idk, 'Don't bring up the cat thing whatsoever, and if it's pointed out, deny deny deny.' Lest the very cat-like mastermind gets discovered. I mean, even Arei's drawing of Nico includes cat ears; not hard to put two and two together. Mf even smells like cat

From Last Post:

(Thanks to @takesometimetoreflect for commenting)

Now, they mentioned several things that add onto this

First,

1) They are consistently placed last / next to MonoTV

Both in the heading and cast list, they are dead last. I don't think this would be significant if not for the fact they are like the only one who this applies to

Whilst the default sprites are on display, I'll talk about the next point

2) Nico is the only one to have their default sprite looking away and not in front of them

Again, hella suspicious purely based on the fact that they are the only one to do this

(Also I checked; David's new default sprite is also facing the front like everyone else's)

And finally..

3) Their secret quote is the only one to be a question

Similar thing, they are again the odd one out

(Their secret quote is: Why should I own up to the mistakes that someone else made?)

Nico if you keep this up you gonna be as suspicious as Whit

Extra:

Just something else I noticed

Again from the masterpost, the first thing that appears is the above sentence. Only thing I wanna point out is with nicknames, only two scenarios come to mind. First is how Hu's nickname used to be Julia, but no one really uses it as a nickname. Only time someone even refers to her using the name is David, and at the time the fucker (/aff) is mocking her

Only other time is how during the introductions, for some reason, Nico calls Teruko 'Teru' as a nickname. Its never brought up again, and I found it quite strange given that Nico has never called anyone else by a nickname

I mean the statement is basicly saying to not call anyone by a nickname, except the protagonist (aka, Teruko)

If that moment is not what that statement is referring to, then I'll eat my none-existant hat

[urlknight]

Hi there, Love your work! I'm also doing stuff in Unreal and it feels like it's rarer to find other indie devs using it. I love how clean all your UI feels, and UI is something I seem to really struggle with.

Do you have any recommendations for workflows / tips / sources etc for getting better at UI?

Also I'd love to know more about the material / shader workflow for your latest post if you have more information anywhere.

Thanks :)

Hello there! Thank you!! I hope you don't mind me answering publicly as I feel like some people might be interested in the answer!

I really appreciate your UI (User Interface for those not knowing the acronym) compliment as it's something I've spent a long time working on and specializing in, in my career as a software engineer. UI/UX often goes completely unacknowledged or taken for granted even though it takes a lot of time and hard work to create and develop. In the engineering world I frequently had to advocate for and explain user experiences to those who didn't have as deep of an appreciation for UI or a very sophisticated understanding of why a good, visually appealing user experience makes, or on the flip side, can break everything. I think it's a very challenging, overwhelming topic to grasp and communicate, but just by being interested in it you're already way ahead!

There's a lot going on with UI. From visuals to knowing common design elements to successfully conveying a story to the user to implementation to testing to designing for accessibility to animation and I probably didn't cover everything with that run-on sentence. There's frontend engineers out there whose role is solely to maintain and improve UI component libraries for companies. And that's without throwing games, whose UIs are all uniquely visually tailored to their experiences, into the mix... I could keep going on about this honestly, but I'll get to what I think you can do personally! 1. Learn about common design patterns. What's a toast? What's pagination? What's a card? Little things like that. These apply to all software UI/UX, including video games- and knowing these off the top of your head will make it so much easier for you to invent your own UI designs and patterns.

2. Study the UI in the everyday applications you interact with. Step through menus and think about how you got from point A to point B. Take a moment to think about the why someone put a button where they did. Study the UI in your favorite video games, too! Take a lot of notes on what you think works really well and what you think doesn't. And also there's online resources that are great for inspiration. I personally spend a lot of time on the Game UI Database. - https://dribbble.com/ - https://www.gameuidatabase.com/ 3. Don't be afraid to start with basic sketches or even just simply representing everything with grey boxes. All my UI starts out as really crappy sketches on paper, or tablet sketches on top of screenshots. Visualize your ideas and then keep iterating on them until you've got something. For example, I went from this:

To this. (And come to think of it I might actually still want to make those cooler looking buttons in my sketch) 4. Break everything out into pieces and individual components. A good UI is made up of building blocks that you can reuse all over the place. That's how it stays consistent and also saves you a lot of stress when you need to go in and update components. Instead of a million different looking UI pieces, you just have to update the one! These individual components will make up your very own UI Component Library, which will be the standardized design system and source of reusable components for your project. This also applies to your visual elements that don't do anything (like I personally have a whole mini library of diamond and star shapes that I reuse everywhere).

For reference, here's a breakdown I made of my Inventory UI. On the right, I've labeled most of the individual components, and you might be able to see how I'm reusing them over and over again in multiple places.

5. Spend some time listening to designers talk, maybe befriend some designers! Many of them have an unique, interesting view of the world and how we interact with it even beyond just software. Their perspectives will inform yours.

6. Test your UI on users whenever you can. Get feedback from others. This is the best way for you to see what works and what doesn't. As game devs we spend so much time with our games it's easy for us to lose sight of the full picture.

7. Be patient and don't give up. Continue to be open to expanding your knowledge. These UI skills take time to develop. I personally am still learning even after like 10 years of doing it. Coming up with the visual elements is very challenging for me and I spend a lot of time rearranging things in photoshop before I actually start coding anything at all in Unreal.

Whew, that was a lot, but I hope that gives you some thoughts and a place to start!

I don't have any posts out there about Blender/Unreal shader workflows right now, but I'll consider making another post sometime soonish. I appreciate you asking and you're welcome! :)

[omg-ame-chan]

ok i played tokyo debunker all day here is a quick (not really) review

first off gameplay is for the most part non-existent. you do fight against monsters but the entire thing is in autoplay and you can skip the whole thing by pressing a single button

there is a rhythm game part every like 10 battles or so though which made me happy. even if the songs are all public domain ones. and it's extremely offbeat. and there's tap registration issues.

ok next why does tokyo debunker use ai art in it. genuinely embarrassing.

went on a 4 year hiatus to "elevate the quality of the game to further meet your expectations and be able to face elevating competition in the gaming industry" only for the game to release and not even have the effort put in to hire actual artists... ITS SO DISAPPOINTING what was the point of that hiatus if you aren't even gonna try. they should've released the original game they had at this point

ai art is used in all the backgrounds of the visual novel section and some of the interactable items like the images for the quiz you do during the prologue. The manga style and card art don't use it at all it seems though

and once you realize it you cannot unsee it and it completely ruins everything

seems like all the budget went towards the voice actors because the game has no original soundtrack either. everything is remixed classical music.

not to mention the game is super cash grabby. it's a zigzagame game so it's to be expected but still. stuff like having to pay more than a 10 pull just to be able to change your icon from the default one is actually insane. also 1% SSR rate and pity is at 500 pulls and it doesn't even guarantee a character card it could be a warding card please end it all!!!

also the devs are blocking everyone who criticizes the game on twitter. lol. lmao.

despite all that the story is interesting and i really like the characters especially these 2 guys i love the "medic who definitely shouldn't be a medic because they are Extremely Off and have committed medical malpractice atleast 10 times" type of characters they are always my favorite

damn you "bad gacha game that makes me have to resort to watching youtube videos of the story because i don't wanna support monetarily it in any possible way and go through the pain it brings by actually playing it".... you have won once again

[manzaza]

perirep with airpods promoting mY WHOLE REVIEW OF THE NEW WISH SOUNDTRACK BECAUSE OHHHHH MY GOD IT GOES SO SO SO HARD (under cut feel free to listen here (also on apple music + yt do in fact give it a listen please yay) !!)

theme song (all the singing songs)

— although i can never truly let go of the og the new theme song will always be a bop

— so upbeat, so happy !!!

new yorkity york

— hazel’s va is such an amazing singer PLEASE if there’s a season 2 give them a musical episode there are not enough musicl numbers

party possum’s friendship song

— better than the chuck e cheese one i heard in the theater earlier lollllllll

— the live band version ate i liked the difference

— unhinged version was so fun the nickelodeon drummer ate up

lovely love song

— still haven’t watched this episode (i was shopping when it aired oops)

— hazel was so silly idk what happens i just remember cupid being there (idk if he was in this at the end that might’ve been hazel’s dad)

i love fries

— HAZEL’S VA SLAYING AGAIN !!!!!

— banger song so real live laugh love fries

— cosmo + wanda contributed yay let them sing

time loops

— addiction,,,,, brainrot even,,,,,,,,,

— cosmo and wanda singing yayyy !!!

— the actual little yay at the end was so silly got a good chuckle

proud of my son — dubstep remix

— this was actually the funniest thing to watch i had this episode pulled up in a panera’s and i was just staring at it like “bro just took over the world for THIS”

— dev is ten so it does make sense

— almost

a new wish (yay background music !!)

— i love all the jazz in the ost just soooo so good

— reminds me of a sam and max kinda intro

— listening to this + the rest just makes me want a video game for ANW so so bad it would genuinely be so much fun to play (will genuinely plot out a tumblr post for this idea)

fly hazel

— banger warmup vibes in the intro

— love how some of the insteuments give like a fly-feeling gimmick (cause she’s a fly)

— little intro chord at the very end eats up

teacher’s pal

— might be one of my fav tracks

— nickeloxeon pianist and saxophonist are eating uppp

— 1:15 was so good

— nickelodeon symphony when

fearless

— somewhat out of place but still fits in with the show vibes

— very lurking

— fnaf 3 am jumpscare (idk i see more poppy playtime in this despite never watching or knowing anything about poppy playtime

— very cheerful kinda scary at the end (yay jasmine!!!)

wellingston hotel

— i rlly like hotel music play this at a marriott hotel NOW

— still haven’t seen this episode (i’m dying to watch it i need to see winn’s introoooo)

— sudden rich person music change

— love you nickelodeon saxophonist !!!!

dev dimmadome

— classic dev intro

— 0:54 is so cruel just label this project h whyyyyyyyy

— just sheer pain in the middle but then they remebered at the end “oh yeah he’s ten”

— it gets so intense at 1:30 broooooo

fairy heist

— i love spy music

— little dev-ness in the middle with the certain gimmick in his track (i might be crazy for this one but idk the “waeahwow” reminded me of something from his track + i think this was in the breaking into school scene idk)

prime meridian love

— literal anime ost

— eats with the dramatic intro

— it faintly reminds me of an ok ko track but just slightly at the beginning of some of the melodies idk might be crazy for this one too

peri and irep

— no way.

— actually no way.

— ship interacts once and they get their own song.

— the twist at the beginning of the track was so hype like the beat is just constantly at odds during this song (and because i’m just like that i have the track times put down too when they swap)

— to not make this any longer the noticeable parts after their intros are like 0:50–1:02 is peri-sounding and then 1:03–1:18 is irep-sounding and from then on their themes are always at a clash with more differences spotted at the end

— will say i love irep’s part at 0:32 and 1:03 that’s so funnnn ahh

— the little villainous laugh at like 1:50 was silly

— the little theme at 3:00 ahhh !!!!!

— might be another fav……. yeah def another fav my airbuds says so

viozalea

— feels so medieval at first and i love it

— quick just like viozalea’s appearance (rip)

rattlleconda

— fire western theme

— still in character with the show the beat was firee

— the soft violin gahhh sheer joy

— intense pressure put on at the end ate

love and games

— rock paper scissors core

— me when rock paper scissors

— wait i actually never watched the valentines episode

— uhhhhhhh second half might be rock paper scissors

— BANGS

— love u Nickelodeon drummer

battle of wands (FINALE)

— shut up this is too glorious of a melody

— ok intense

— oh might’ve just hit one million wishes idk how this song is following the episode

— the chaos in the rhythm eats

— littlt theme at 2:30 aghhhh won

— peri lying dead right after again idk how the episode paces through songs i can spot little scenes here and there

— banged

— little clock beat ahh the happiness

— can’t even tell what happened but good finale

OVERALL i really enjoyed the soundtrack i love how it tries and takes you through the course of the episode and it’s so so fun!! almost feels like video game music sometimes which is so so good for them like YES drop a new wish video game it would be so good !!!!

[anzuhan]

Anzu, what actually is the neptunia series all about? What genres are the games? What makes them so fun? I'm sort of curious about what you think

the whole series is a parody of the things happening in the game industry, the main console wars and the types of players most commonly associated with those consoles... all in all, it's all a very big parody of everything surrounding the gaming space. the main girls are all personifications of consoles, and there's also a lot of prominence in several companies(/game devs) personified as cute anime girls as well, mostly based on the kinds of games they have. The first og main 3 games are a bit less lighthearted as the remakes or everything else the series has to offer, anzu prefers the rebirth ones because 1) theyre more accessible 2) theyre better in terms of gameplay 3) a bit of bias that it has the tsunako artstyle anzu most prefers.. some parts were rewritten so it's sad we have some parts lost in them, but all and all they're good... this is also again just anzu bias, anzu loves series that do not take themselves seriously and are all about the fun, and the characters and world building around this series is all just that, so anzu just thinks it's a great fun experience 🙏 besides this, there's also all sorts of side games now that go into more genres.. the originals/rebirth remakes have a very unique gameplay to them, it's a sort of off/grid trpg if you will, but it's also in between that and a traditional jrpg... the side series have a lot of arpgs which is anzu's favorite genre so anzu loves them a lot, but there's also more going off of the main series mechanics like vs sega hard girls one.. or also just a simple as 2d rpg with super neptunia rpg...

anzu just thinks it's a very well rounded series with a bit for everyone in it, the designs are great all around, it's written very fun and silly, and still the main selling point (to anzu) is how great it is to read the way the characters are written and interact with each other (´ω｀*)

[fanganfessions]

Seeing the confessions on this blog reminds me why I stopped interacting with the DR fandom years ago.

I am not so gently putting my hands on y'alls faces, and look directly into your eyes. This is the "fictional characters will kill each other, yes even your favs, yes even if they're interesting, yes even if their whole story hasn't been told yet" game series. You know what you're getting into.

If you're mad at the devs of a (FREE TO PLAY BTW) fangan for killing your favs, especially if their death makes sense narratively and isn't done maliciously, and even more so if there's still more to the murdered character and they're still relevant in a way, please play another genre of videogames and leave the devs alone holy shit.

Also, some of you need to realize that these are fictional characters. in a killing game. No, neither the devs nor the fans of the killer or the victim deserve any harassment for not caring about your pookie enough or whatever. They're just characters. Yeah, you can get attached to a character, but also again. They Are Characters. In A Killing Game. Some of you are acting like some devs or fans violently killed an actual real life person and spit on their corpse while you watched. Instead of, y'know, the devs creating a story and the fans liking the product.

It's exhausting to watch, especially when you like to analyse media and even criticise it, and you want to talk to other people about it, but every single comment and/or piece of criticism you see is just "I'm mad they killed a character I liked in chapter 1 >:(" or "um, they used a trope another story also used once (y'know, like every story ever?) and didn't subvert everything they could've subverted, because they were too focused on making a good story, instead of just being completely contrarian. So it's bad". Like c'mon.

Also, reminding people that every single dev of a fangan is doing this for free, as a passion project. Game development (and voice acting, story telling, etc) takes a lot of time and effort. If you don't like their product, simply ignore it and play something else. Be nice to the devs. Unlike your favorite characters, they are real people with real feelings.

.

[ichinose-kazuma]

Wait I think I've seen that fuckass Ichinose card in a reddit post

Here's the link: https://www.reddit.com/r/TribeNine/comments/1jtgtw2/power_harassment_lebenstrieb_stories/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=1

oooooooooooooooooo?

Thank yyou I am now going to combust. I am not going to spontaneously combust. Leaving an Ichinose-shaped crater in Poland forever. I am going to claim several lives in doing so . The entire area will be lost. Wish I could now go start punching the table in despair without my mother a few meters away judging me

Not my complete thoughts since today's a pretty sleepy day for me but anyway,

I know of some people who upon reading that a fictional character had a cold would. Nevermind

This sounds like something that I would actually write about him. Like straight up. Veneration: the T9 devs agree I am more-or-less objectively correct about the character of Ichinose Kazuma

googling what dorayaki is in order to engage with his interests. Ohh that looks fine. I would put that in my mouth. Dunno if I would like it. But I would be partial to trying it

Ichinose lightweight lore. Idk what "not good at drinking" would mean in exact specifics though I am also not very. Good at drink stuff. What the hells a martini or nalewka or goldwasser, all smells the same (bad), real men pour half a glass worth of isopropyl alcohol in their bath so the skin pores will absorb it and we fucking don't like it, but we know we have to.

hehe he likes dessert <3

wait I just remembered. That one scene where he yells at his useless goon for forgetting his drink. Did his tolerance like, got better or was he enduring through the torments in order to appear Cool or what

"how incredibly rigid and incompetent can you be, only knowing how to follow the rules?! (did not actually say it out loud before giving up)" in the context of the things he actually says in the main game is. hm

once again gonna google castella. looks spongy is that one of those sponge-structured thingies I heard people talk about

I am on Ichinose's side on this one actually you can persecute me all you want. What's wrong with a castella. Perhaps it was indeed the boss' fault for not being clear enough with him about him needing to apparently buy the Debbie Wingham's Runway Cake as a souvenir in order to maintain company respectability or whatever. Also he might be an unreliable narrator with saying that his boss proceeded to verbally insult him multiple times afterwards, he also might not. If he wasn't then that's Bad and Mean. And he should have killed them. Idk how it is in Japan never been there but itssaa ffuckinh souvernir..... .....

Ichinose's strong as fuck for going that long without realizing he has a cold. I would have toppled over on the ground pathetically as soon as I started getting the mildest congestion symptoms

Ichinose and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. I'm having a blast meanwhile. His pain my gain

I lied I actually do feel bad for him even more. We are both suffering fuck our stupid baka lives truly

I am engaging with every single media wrong because no matter what if you give a specific set of traits to a villain I would straight up refuse to hate them for anything and just feel bad for them. Like not even in an acceptable way but moreso like I wish you got help so you didn't kill those approximately 104 people. Another torturous case of me seeing too much of myself in fictional villains only. The way he thinks is so reminiscient of my own mind, some of the dialogue in this one sounds like something that I would think on the semi-daily, but never show because of my masking and knowing that playing nice with people is so much more important; I don't really like interacting with others anymore, because of how much the longer they talk to me like we're equals or something the more I hate them and cuss them out in my head, without even listening to what they're saying at all, forever angry at the entire world for not realizing how much insignificant it is compared to me and it's just Some Guy giving me the directions to the bathroom the whole time. Ichinose Kazuma can be something that is so personal to the average Ichinose-Kazuma (with a dash) (it's this blog). Granted I am exaggerating a little bit but in order to understand my absolute and thorough obsession with Ichinose you gotta know that we are very similiar little things.

Ichinose Kazuma I am cupping your face in my hands I could have taught you how to normalmode instead of whatever the hell you're doing.

Wait actually nevermind, not gonna say that masking is the requirement or the best option for bettering your life, sorry bout that. Instead Ichinose Kazuma I am cupping your face in my hands this time even stronger, I could have taught you how to get healthy and sustainable sources or supply and hype yourself up without casualties and also you can tell me about whatever the hell happened in your childhood I promise I'm as good as a licensed therapist and wouldn't just say "damn that sucks" but if I hypothetically would then maybe you'd feel better anyway or something. Just throwing offers there. I could be your narcissism mentor boy I mean they I mean robot .