#I mean that's the whole point of the franchise

[wolfgang1097]

Spy Cherub vs. Spy Cherub

Colored version

Edited Monochrome version

What's up, folks? In honor of Valentine's Day, I've decided to create cupid, cherub esque versions of the spies with their trademark wide brim hats, and I gave them pastel colored wings (powder blue for White and mint green for Black) because why not. While there are so many cupid esque cherubs going around getting couples together for this occasion, these two cherubs in particular have not come out of the cold, unfortunately. Typical of these two, just absolutely typical. Either way, they're still frick'n adorable, even though I was the one who made this. Yes, I wish I could magically stick my hands in the picture and pick them both right up and tickle them. I'm sorry, but I cannot help it. I mean, I find both Black and White equally amusing, charming, and handsome despite their equally savage and demented tendencies towards each other for the most part. At the end of the day, they are such a riot. (I apologize if you can't see White's heart dagger nor Black's heart mine in the monochrome image). I hope y'all enjoy this and Happy Valentine's Day. Peace.

I do not claim ownership of any content. Spy vs. Spy belongs to the defunct MAD Magazine and the late, great Antonio Prohías.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

hello!! i just want to tell you that your art is so goddamn scrumptious, you are literally feeding my xmen brainrot and I find myself smiling when i see your art come across my feed. I love how you draw charles, pretty privilege and post (lets be fr he's serving every time)

i hope you always have fantastic brainrot and id kiss your blessed hands for giving us the gift of cherik and charles xavier, you are literally an icon

hope you have a great day ahead of you and more!! you deserve it !!

well i'ma absolutely have a wonderful mornin after readin this AWWWW thank you so so much !!!! i haven't been postin xmen long, so it's been really heartwarmin seein the warm reception to my work in the wonderful tags people have been leavin on my posts- and especially gettin to answer the lovely asks y'all've been sendin in (❁´ ▽ `❁) !! im glad people also like my goofy text posts and esp quotes from my brother he really has no right being so funny at the most random times

i hope to be xmen posting a while: ive got at least 60 years worth of stuff to look through and ongoing, so i dont imagine my interest'll wane anytime soon :]] !!

[jathun]

ngl I have such a love/hate relationship with the fate franchise

[the-physicality]

i do think, aside from mercury bias, if bg had been in all season she would have been all wnba, first or at least second. i think people undervalue her because of the rebounding but she is 1000% the worst officiated player in the league, on both sides of the court. so the fact that she's been able to have the performance that she had is incredible, and that she didn't get the acknowledgment really just underscores how much people take what she does for granted.

[heyclickadee]

Oooookay yeah I’m gonna just be obnoxious about the Tech lives thing now.

[sskk-manifesto]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH

[hobermallowed]

sad that mortal kombat used to have quality in their games and now it’s just 90% cash grabs.

[malewifehenrycooldown]

*banging pots and pans outside of Konami’s office as they’re making/publishing proper video games again* bring back bloody roar you COWARDS.

[turian]

it is possible that maybe the film related internship i did kind of ruined my desire to engage with anything remotely film industry adjacent like. yikes.

[strawberry-miiiiiiiiiiiilk]

sitting in my room for a half hour thinking about how if we lived in a better world Ada Wong would be the Ilsa Faust of Resident Evil (primarily in how she's introduced in Rogue Nation), with a dynamic to leon not unlike Fujiko Mine's and Lupin's in which they are both extremely competent and in situations in which they may have to work against and occasionally with each other on a mission, but ultimately are forced to stay apart and while they may be apart and even have different love interests from each other, ultimately still care deeply for one another. They are compelled to go after each other in part because it's so difficult and they are so often in circumstances in which they can't be with each other. The thrill of the chase and all that.

Ada being only tangentially related to the other character's stories because the world is simply larger than them and she has her own concerns and problems to deal with, and to have that be given any care or weight in a story, let alone focus. That she can be cunning and even manipulative but because she needs to and will still choose not to when the chips are down because she is genuinely caring--which I know none of that is new ground for her but I wish it was done in a more interesting way and *without leon at all*. She chooses to show mercy in a key point not because she's in love with that other character.

And also that she has more personality. I dig the subdued nature of her in 4r and her subtle sarcasm but it's just crumbs. I want her to be silly on occasion and say dumb jokes because she's alone like in 2r. I want her to shed a bit of that seriousness when she's on the clock because she's confident in herself as a professional and again has no one to put up a façade to.

It's honestly kinda embarrassing reading this back as I realize most of what I'm writing is not only already present in the games but incredibly tropey in and of itself, and wouldn't improve the character much. Dear god I think too much of my view of the character has been marred by shallow fanworks depicting her. I think if anything it's a sign that:

I'm a shit writer and need to do way more than watch movies and gesture vaguely at them to come up w a decent story or character (that being said as much as I prefer Fallout as a film, I stand by my earlier statement of Ilsa Faust being the ideal spy woman as she's depicted in Rogue Nation as she has a distinct set of goals and needs that are complex and developed largely tangentially to the protagonist's, at least initially).

It's going to take a completely new approach to her character to get something remotely interesting and that takes advantage of her potential.

For as mired in tropes as she and every other character and story in Resident Evil is, Ada could be far more memorable and enjoyable if only there was more care and effort to giver at least some interests and goals (perhaps even...characterization) on her own other than being a sexy love interest and potentially traitorous (as so many femme fatales already are).

[lovebugism]

hi bug! Can I request you a ditzy or shy!reader where some girl flirts with Steve in front of her maybe at Family Video? Little angsty because she feels insicure of herself? Thank you🩷

ty for requesting!! — steve doesn't realize he's being flirted with because he's so in love with you (ditzy!fem!r, hurt/comfort, 1.6k)

You color in a scribbled heart with enough vigor to break the pink crayon in your hand.

Steve always hangs your drawings in his locker in the Family Video break room, so you tend to take your art pretty seriously. ‘Cause there’s absolutely nothing humorous about the two stick figures holding hands — each of them vaguely resembling the both of you — that you’re passionately scribbling behind the front counter.

He’d watch you work your magic on a piece of lined scrap paper if he could. He’s too busy tending to a regular now. Mia, he thinks, or maybe Maia. She rents movies every week, but according to the system, she doesn’t watch a single one of them. 

“Well, what do you recommend?” she questions with a smirk on her painted lips, leaning her elbows on the counter until her chest juts out.

Steve leans slowly backward and tries not to cough at the overwhelming scent of her fruity perfume. “Uh… I don’t know,” he answers with an unenthusiastic shrug. “I usually just watch whatever.”

The girl squints her dolled-up eyes. “You don’t have a favorite movie?” 

Steve ponders the question for a moment. ‘Cause he doesn’t have one, really. All his favorite films are your favorites because he spends the majority of movie nights watching you instead.

So, at a loss of how to answer, he tells her your first choice. “The Star Wars movies are pretty alright.”

“Do you have them here?” she wonders.

Steve nods and points her in the other direction. “Yeah. In the Sci-Fi section.”

“Can you show me?” the girl questions with a hopeful glint in her pale eyes. Everything about her sparkles with mischief, like a predator hunting for prey. Stealthy, like a ninja, Steve would’ve called the approach a couple years ago. Long before he found you.

He’s more into forthright proclamations of love these days — bubblegum pink lipstick stains pressed to his cheek and handmade pictures drawn in crayon.

But, for the sake of Keith totally reaming him for not helping a customer, Steve nods and rounds the front counter. “Uh. Yeah. Sure. Follow me,” he urges halfheartedly, sparing you a forlorn glance as he goes. You’re much too distracted to see it, though.

You’re too distracted to notice most things, really.

That’s why Robin’s angrier than you are about the whole thing. She exhales a big huff and stands across from you, peering over the tower of tapes there. “God, he’s so oblivious,” she groans.

Your hand freezes as you color in Steve’s vest. You glance up at her with wide eyes, heart sinking at the annoyed look on her freckled features. “Huh?”

“Steve. That girl’s been drooling over him for five minutes, and he hasn’t even realized.”

Your brows pinch. “What girl?”

“The one that’s hanging all over him,” Robin answers, nodding her head to the other side of the store. The girl in question lingers at Steve’s side, a little too close to be casual. She hangs on every word he says — which certainly can’t be a whole lot, considering he knows next to nothing about that Star Wars franchise.

“I thought she was just being nice,” you shrug.

“She was flirting with your boyfriend,” Robin corrects in a monotone. “It was disgusting. I’m pretty sure her flirt got all over my pants.”

You look back at the two across the room. Steve tenses when the pretty redhead presses her chest against his arm. For the sake of not making things totally awkward, he forces himself not to shrink away. What had seemed virtually innocuous to you now makes your stomach ache. 

“She’s so pretty…” you observe quietly to yourself. 

Robin only scoffs. “Yeah. If you’re into girls like that.”

You don’t know exactly what she means, but it makes you lean slightly forward in interest anyway. “Do you think… Do you think Steve’s into girls like that?”

“No,” Robin answers, features twisted like it’s obvious. “He’s into girls like you.”

For the first time ever, you find that slightly hard to believe. Why would Steve ever pick you over someone like her? The way she smiles is pretty. The way she laughs is pretty. Even the way she talks is pretty.

And what do you have? A couple of stupid crayon portraits?

A strange feeling sears your chest when Steve and the pretty girl walk back to the counter. He must’ve told her a joke or something ‘cause she tips back her head to laugh loudly in response. Jealous tears sting your eyes accordingly. You take your art and your box of dull crayons and scurry off to the break room.

“I can help you check out!” Robin offers, suddenly very chipper. 

The redhead’s face twists. “Oh. I thought that—”

“Steve’s needed in the breakroom, actually,” Robin tells her when the stranger’s pleading eyes flit to the boy beside her. “I can handle it from here.”

“Wait— What’s in the breakroom?” he wonders obliviously.

“Your girlfriend, dingus.”

Steve blinks once. The sudden lack of your presence makes his chest ache. He stalks off to find you without another word.

The redhead, Mia or Maia or whatever, doesn’t bother to disguise the shock painting her dainty features. “Girlfriend?” she echoes, quiet with disbelief.

Robin nods and takes the tapes from her hands, knowing she’s only renting them ‘cause she thought Steve liked them. The scanner beeps as she rings them up. “Yeah. He’s kinda in love with her, turns out. It’s disgusting.”

The conversation fades the further Steve gets down the hall. He opens the door to the back room with a grating squeak. The rusted hinges screech again in protest when he swings it shut behind him. He finds you slouched over the table, vehemently scribbling with vibrantly colored crayons.

He can’t help but smile at the sight of you. “Whatcha doin’?” he lilts in place of a greeting, sliding back a chair to sit across from you.

“Nothin’…” you mutter distantly.

Steve folds his arms over the tabletop and rests his chin on top of them. It bobs with every word. “Why’d you leave me, huh?”

You shrug with a faint I don’t know type of sound.

“Can I see what you’re drawing, at least?” 

He grins and reaches for you without thinking — because you always let him see. Needless to say, when flinch suddenly away from him, it scares him far more than it should. You scramble to cover the paper with your arms like you’re doing something wrong. 

“No,” you answer in a mousy voice.

A chuckle spills from Steve’s mouth. “What? Why? You always show me.”

“It’s stupid…”

“It’s not stupid! I love when you draw stuff for me,” the boy insists with a lopsided smile, distantly surprised by your sheepishness. The pretty pink grin slips from his mouth at the crestfallen glint in your eye. He softens without thinking. “What’s wrong? What happened? Did— Did Robin say something?”

“No.” 

“Then what?”

You avert your eyes from his prying ones, feeling half-suffocated beneath his honeyed gaze. You start to color again with an absentminded hand, if only to have something else to look at. “You’re just…” you trail off, shifting uncomfortably in your chair. “You’re too pretty.”

He laughs before he means to. “What?”

“You’re pretty, and I don’t like that other people get to look at you,” you confess quietly, coloring in Steve’s hair with the ‘deep golden’ crayon. “It’s not fair— No one else should think you’re as beautiful as I do. I don’t like that.”

Steve props his chin on his palm and hides his grin behind his fingers. He reaches for your busy hand with his free one to get your attention. “Well, you know what?” he starts when your eyes flit up to his. “You’re the only one I want looking at me. So what everyone else thinks doesn’t really matter.”

“It is when they’re drooling all over you,” you answer with a scrunched nose.

Steve can’t help but scoff out a laugh. Those words have Robin Buckley written all over them. 

“Last I heard, Rob was giving that girl what for, so… you don’t have to worry about that anymore,” he tells you, both to soothe the misplaced jealousy and to make you smile. He thinks it only half works. “Can I tell you a secret?”

You perk up at that. Steve grins and leans in close like he’s about to confess something serious. His dark eyes twinkle with mischief. 

“I’m so stupid in love with you that I forget other girls exist sometimes,” he murmurs in true secret-spilling fashion. “And when they’re… drooling all over me? I don’t even see it. ‘Cause all I’m thinking about is how I have my own girl back home. And that I’d much rather have her drooling on me.”

“…Am I the girl?” you press in a tiny voice, just to be sure.

“Yes, baby, I’m talking about you,” Steve chuckles. “You should know that— You’rethe one drooling on my pillow every morning.”

Your nose scrunches sheepishly. “You’ve said that word too many times… It doesn’t sound real anymore.”

“What’s that called again?”

“Semantic satiation,” you answer without missing a beat.

“Well, now I’m gonna tell you I love you ’til you’re semantically satiated,” the boy teases with a knowing squint in his eyes. “‘Cause I love you.”

“Steve.”

“I love you.”

“Stop,” you say, sterner now, though your gaze still glimmers with something soft. Your eyes follow his form when he rises from the table, shifting the short distance to sit in the chair closest to you. “Steve, stop—”

“I love you,” he repeats, anyway, taking you into his arms and smacking a dramatic kiss to your warm cheek. Between each innocuous peck, he mumbles, “I love you— I love you— I love you—”

Steve doesn’t stop kissing you until he hears you giggling again. The pretty sound brightens the dull breakroom. And all he can think about is what a lucky schmuck he is. To get to kiss you and make you laugh forever.

[catastrophic-crow]

day 1 patch baybee! ...and day 3 and day 8 and day 9 and day 17 and day 26 and day 29 and day 54 and day 55 and day 63 and day 82 and day 85 and—

no offense but it´s kind of baffling how the video game industries has gotten t othe point where its acceptable to release games pretty much unfinished

[sprintingowl]

Deadball

Deadball Second Edition is a platinum bestseller on DrivethruRPG. This means it's in the top 2% of all products on the site. Its back cover has an endorsement from Sports Illustrated Kids.

It's also not an rpg I'd heard about until I discovered all of these facts one after another.

I was raised in a profoundly anti-sports household. My father would say stuff like "sports is for people who can't think" and "there's no point in exercising, everything in your body goes away eventually." So I didn't learn really any of the rules of the more popular American sports until I was in my mid twenties, and I've been to two ballgames in my life. I appreciate the enthusiasm that people have for sports, but it's in the same way that I appreciate anyone talking about their specific fandom.

One of the things that struck me reading Deadball was its sense of reverence for the sport. Its language isn't flowery. It's plain and technical and smart. But its love for baseball radiates off of the pages. Not like a blind adoration. But like when a dog sits with you on the porch.

For folks familiar with indie rpgs, there's a tone throughout the book that feels OSR. Deadball doesn't claim to be a precise simulation or a baseball wargame or anything like that---instead it lays out a bunch of rules and then encourages you to treat them like a recipe, adjusting to your taste. And it does this *while* being a detailed simulation that skirts the line of wargaming, which is an extremely OSR thing to do.

For folks not familiar with baseball, Deadball starts off assuming you know nothing and it explains the core rules of the sport before trying to pin dice and mechanics onto anything. It also explains baseball notation (which I was not able to decipher) and it uses this notation to track a play-by-play report of each game. Following this is an example of play and---in a move I think more rpgs should steal from---it has you play out a few rounds of this example of play. Again, this is all before it's really had a section explaining its rules.

In terms of characters and stats, Deadball is a detailed game. You can play modern or early 1900s baseball, and players can be of any gender on the same team, so there's a sort of alt history flavor to the whole experience, but there's also an intricate dice roll for every at bat and a full list of complex baseball feats that any character can have alongside their normal baseball stats. Plus there's a full table for oddities (things not normally covered by the rules of baseball, such as a raccoon straying onto the field and attacking a pitcher,) and a whole fatigue system for pitchers that contributes a strong sense of momentum to the game.

Deadball is also as much about franchises as it is about individual games, and you can also scout players, trade players, track injuries, track aging, appoint managers of different temperaments, rest pitchers in between games, etc.

For fans of specific athletes, Deadball includes rules for creating players, for playing in different eras, for adapting historical greats into one massively achronological superteam, and for playing through two different campaigns---one in a 2020s that wasn't and one in the 1910s.

There's also thankfully a simplified single roll you can use to abstract an entire game, allowing you to speed through seasons and potentially take a franchise far into the future. Finances and concession sales and things like that aren't tracked, but Deadball has already had a few expansions and a second edition, so this might be its next frontier.

Overall, my takeaway from Deadball is that it's a heck of a game. It's a remarkably detailed single or multiplayer simulation that I think might work really well for play-by-post (you could get a few friends to form a league and have a whole discord about it,) and it could certainly be used to generate some Blaseball if you start tweaking the rules as you play and never stop.

It's also an interesting read from a purely rpg design perspective. Deadball recognizes that its rules have the potential to be a little overbearing and so it puts in lots of little checks against that. It also keeps its more complex systems from sprawling out of control by trying to pack as much information as possible into a single dice roll.

For someone like me who has zero background in baseball, I don't think I'd properly play Deadball unless I had a bunch of friends who were into it and I could ride along with that enthusiasm. However as a designer I like the book a lot, and I'm putting it on my shelf of rpgs that have been formative for me, alongside Into The Odd, Monsterhearts, Mausritter, and Transit.

[project-sekai-facts]

I'm just gonna leave this here because I feel like I should say something. Mizuki is trans, I still agree with the stuff I said a month ago. Did they say it in the story? No. Were they ever going to say it in the story? Well it seemed like I was but they just pulled the most insane 4 year queerbait.

Did people warn me? Yes, and I probably should've listened more, but from a writer's perspective what happened in Ena5 is very stupid so I had a little bit more hope for clpl. Confining any sort of actual coming out scene to a card story and fading to black over the actual reveal is honestly just cruel. Not to mention that Mizuki's bio is probably locked as "gender: ?".

Mizuki is still a trans character and trans representation, though the lack of actual confirmation really sours her story. Especially since the only indirect confirmation of her identity as a woman comes from student a talking to Ena about Mizuki (the whole Ena is a "normal girl" thing). Having Mizuki being robbed of her chance to come out by transphobes, and never resolving this so her bullies are left as the only credible source of her gender is atrocious. Mizuki being outed was a crucial plot point, to never resolve just leaves a bad taste.

It's still a glaring issue that clpl is trying to play both sides here. Which has always been an issue with things like white day and other marketing featuring Mizuki and the boys together. It's just gross that they're still trying to do it now, cutting off the actual reveal of Mizuki's secret and having the characters say "Mizuki is Mizuki", something that's often used by people who want to deny any trans reading, and a new area conversation about Mizuki's voice. Remember that old area convo about Mizuki having a lower voice. It gets referenced in a new one.

The reveal of the secret itself, transness aside, is comedically bad. Project SEKAI's writing isn't exactly amazing by any means, it's pretty basic in the grand scheme of writing, but this is worse than a lot of their other worst offenders. Building up to this big reveal of a secret that is incredibly important to one character's development, only for it not to actually be revealed, and probably never mentioned again, is ridiculous. It feels like a last minute change to ensure mass appeal but I don't know if it was. If it was, they still failed because some fans are dissatisfied that they never got told what it was, regardless of what they think it was.

And no, it's not corporate meddling. Probably. From colopale, maybe, from Sega, honestly probably not. Sega has other franchises and games with queer and specifically trans characters so it's not like Mizuki would be harmful to their brand image. If anyone interfered it was other staff at colopale.

Anyway, I'm not quitting the game and I'll still be running this blog for the time being. Not saying you have to continue playing and I totally understand people who are dropping the game over this. If anyone wants to add their thoughts to this post or send an ask freel free to.

[kdinjenzen]

(minor totk spoilers ahead)

So my favorite thing to see if folks who never played a Zelda game before Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom really focusing on THESE outfits:

I mean, for a million reasons, yeah I love these outfits.

But because of BotW and TotK being a lot of folks (much like OoT was) first Zelda game, people have a weird sense of "this is the first time they did anything like this" OR that "All Links Are Like This".

Neither of which is true.

The most important thing to take away from any Zelda game (and the franchise as a whole) is that every single Link is SO different than any other Link.

Which is why, personally, I think that anyone who says "Link is so gender" is beyond accurate because each Link is very gender in VERY different ways.

Case in point, Twilight Princess Link:

This Link is also very GENDER, but it's so opposite of the "Very Gender!!" that BotW/TotK Link has.

AND THEN... to go completely in the "using Link as a dress up doll for the first time" aspect... they made a WHOLE GAME where the point was "grind in dungeons and get outfits" ... it was called Tri-Force Heroes and the stars are THESE LITTLE BELOVED GENDER GREMLINS:

And like... the outfits here are... WILD:

ZELDA'S DRESS, A CAT SUIT WITH A DEEP V CUT, SEVERAL MAGICAL DRESSES, A CHEER LEADER OUTFIT, A SUIT MADE OF A CACTUS, A SUIT MADE OF BOMBS, ETC ETC ETC. So yeah like... each Link is very different on the gender scale in a lot of ways and it's fun to see how wildly different but still very GENDER they all are.

[avithenaftali]

October 28, 2022, 7:11 P.M.

For whatever reason I enjoy thinking about Diana Wynne Jones' writing as a whole and picking out unexpected or resonant trends. For example, some things that comes up often is:

She'll fabricate a world (right down to its cosmology), fill it with memorable characters, set one or two short novels in it... and then never touch it again. On to the next one. Rinse and repeat for her entire career.

The concept of multiple/parallel universes appear half a dozen times in different novels/sequences, but always in completely different ways. The multiple worlds of Chrestomanci function very, very differently from the multiple worlds of The Homeward Bounders, which themselves function so different from the Ayewards/Naywards of Deep Secret, or the walls between the worlds in Dark Lord of Derkholm. More importantly, all these approaches to multiverse explicitly contradict each other. There is no larger DWJ multiverse; there is no way to coherently combine any of them, much less all of them. I love her for this. Every book is its own project. Franchising be damned.

With one exception (which is the Dalemark quartet, oddly enough), none of these worlds are sealed-off secondary worlds. Our own Earth appears in all of them, though usually from the 'wrong' end of the telescope. Meaning, it's stuff like reading Charmed Life and assuming you're reading a magical secondary world fantasy for most of the book... up until the point when Janet is pulled into the story due to Gwendolyn's spell. The reader instantly understands that Janet is from our own world, from the 1970s when the book was written. She never makes it home, either. She never sees her parents again. She's a supporting character who becomes permanently stuck in the world of Chrestomanci, as a casualty of Gwendolyn's spells.

It is interesting, though, how there are almost no sealed-off secondary worlds in DWJ's oeuvre.

There are lots of neat things to say about how DWJ did this, and why she'd do it, and the implications in the storytelling. But tonight I'm thinking mostly about how it can be a moment, narratively, that makes you halt and have to recontextualize all these things you thought you knew (or were assuming) about the nature of the story.

In Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed, Urras is obviously the metaphorical capitalistic stand-in planet for our own Earth... up until a moment right near the end, where we realize our own Earth exists in this novel too and is an ecological wasteland due to unchecked climate change.

Urras may be the distorted-mirror, uber-capitalist version of our own world. But it's also a planet with a functional ecosystem. It's a planet where society is careful about maintaining that ecosystem. We're not going to be Urras, says Le Guin. We'll be lucky if we become Urras. To become Urras means we wised up in time to not go extinct.

And suddenly, little subtle moments in the worldbuilding around both Anarres and Urras—their shared attention to their own ecology—come into a different light. All because our own, devastated Earth turns out to be present in the novel too.

And in Howl's Moving Castle, Howl is a magician who fits into the fairy tale landscape of Ingary as naturally as anyone else—until the chapter when he has to go home to retrieve a lost spell, and you realize home is in another world, aka home is our world, aka Howl is fucking Welsh and found his way into Ingary by pure accident. And Ben Sullivan, Ingary's missing royal magician, is no native of Ingary either.

To Sophie, it just means that both magicians travelled to Ingary from the same enigmatic foreign land, which is as strange to her as any spell.

To us readers, it means "oh my god he's Welsh too? Just how much is Wales secretly connected to Ingary? Next thing you'll tell me Ben Sullivan's a rugby player as well—"