#I'll redo this post and fix it later :(

[whoslaurapalmer]

laura (1944) / laura by vera caspary -- waldo and laura meet

bonus deleted scene from the movie script, with a third interpretation of their meeting --

[gamebunny-advance]

Hoo hah...

Well, this project is probs gonna take me a *little* longer than a few days to finish since I have to redo an entire part, but I don't wanna tease y'all too long without sharing a little bit about it, so here's the latest bits I've finished.

Probs totally gives away what I'm doing now, but the real delight is in the final product, right?

Some tiny shorts, and a tiny mask. I wonder who they're for...

[seraphinitegames]

The Wayhaven Chronicles - Update 22/March/2024

So, I decided where Chapter One is going to end! It should leave people very excited for what’s to come in the rest of the book (and later demo releases), hehe! ;D

I think it does give a very good clue at what might be the source of the problem for the love interests and the MC throughout Book Four, too…

It’s gonna get exciting, guys! :D

Knowing where the demo is going to leave off, I also started looking back at the character creator. After actually playing through what I had a while back, I realized I really wasn’t so keen on what I do normally, and it really needs streamlining.

And I think (hopefully!) I have a plan for how to do that now.

I will try to see if I can get some screenshots or a video of it and post it up so you can get a hint of what it looks like after my redo so far, if my internet ever wants to play ball again!

With only one option per page being possible, I need to make sure people can get through the character creator as fast as possible so they can get playing! And I think putting in big descriptions of what each choice is or means is where some of the flow is coming from. Definitely need to scrap those.

Also realised what I was doing wrong in the previous ‘character creator’ screens for the personality/skill stats and why they weren’t high enough when you picked that they were, in fact, the highest! So, I’ve fixed that for this one, and I will do it for the other books when I can get the time to go back to my spruce up of the previous books too.

Obviously when Book Four releases people will be able to import their character—and I also had a thought on that as well!

With the villain romance being an option, I figure as a player I might already have a character I’ve played through past books with that would work, but I might already be on a romance path (the villain romance only being available on the non-romance ‘friend’ route) so can’t pursue the villain’s storyline.

So I’m thinking of adding in an option where you can modify an imported character with a few choices (such as romance choice). The game will play out as though the character has always had the new options though, so I need to make sure that’s clear. But it’s definitely something I think could work as an option for those that wanted it.

It was definitely a more code-focused week this week, which makes my brain a bit mushy, lol! So I’m very excited to dive back into writing, as well as get the first demo section ready to be sent to the editor and readers…the first time people apart from me will actually see the start of Book Four, hehe!

Hope you all have an incredible weekend! We'll be offline as usual, so I'll update you all again next week! <3

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Seems that "Revelator" is S6's "Chamaleon", breaking the base futher. Character bashing aside, I think it opens a can of worms on the lore. This new rule that "Miraculous LB" can't fix what is not damaged is weird.

What is "damage"? Is mind control included on "damage"? Or Volpina's illusions? And what about Oblivio's amnesia ray?

Revelator was the reason for Rena to learn that secret, so she created a new memory because of it. Mari and Adrien discovered each other beacause Oblivio, so they created new memories.

Why MLB erased those new memories on Oblivio, but it was necessary to use Miraculous Chat Noir to erase Alya's new memories on Revelator?

I mean, yeah, amnesia is kind of a damage, so it makes sense to recover their memories after the healing wave. But after this chapter? It doesn't makes sense that they lost their memories after being hit. (And the "intention is considered" excuse doesn't play here, because LB could have the "intention" to reverse what Alya discovered with her healing wave).

Sorry for the long ask, but you have defended the need of Chat Noir having a second power (and I love your ideas!) to balance with LB; so I'm curious about your opinion on that and its lore impact now that canon has finally made it real.

I've got another ask in the queue that addresses my thoughts on this in detail so I'll link to that for those who want a more detailed response. For this ask, I'll just answer the last part of your question:

you have defended the need of Chat Noir having a second power (and I love your ideas!) to balance with LB; so I'm curious about your opinion on that and its lore impact now that canon has finally made it real.

I stand by my statements on this, but I was never arguing that the bad lore should be addressed in canon. It's too late for that. The way the powers work are fundamental elements of the world's lore and you never want to change those in the mid-game or the end-game. You can maybe change them in the early-game, but even that's dicey. As I said in another post on redoing Chat Noir's powers:

This is just what I think canon should have done. I also don't think there's a way to make Adrien's assignment work in canon as it's way too late in the game to make the kind of changes Destruction's power set needs for it to feel like a good Force.

Miraculous Chat Noir is an excellent example of why it's too late in the game to fix the lore. Chat Noir now has the destructive wave power I always wanted him to have, but I genuinely have no clue how the power is supposed to work or what it means for Ladybug's cure. Has her cure been nerfed to no longer destroy things? I don't think so because Revelator implies that the cure can still undo physical damage which makes Chat Noir's new power seem largely useless. I'm not even sure if it can affect physical things. My best guess is that the power was only introduced so that Adrien can undo some big reveal later in the season since this show loves its magic undo buttons and they got rid of the time travel option so they needed to make up a new one.

Minor side note: I'm disappointed that they went with "Miraculous Chat Noir" for the name. I originally went with that, too, but decided to go with a pun in the final version since that's the better fit for Adrien's general theme. Miraculous Chat Noir isn't a bad name, but it's a weird one for canon to go with since that makes it sound like it's an exact equivalent to Miraculous Ladybug which can only be cast after a fight is done.

Is that what they're going with in canon? If so, then I hate that. It doesn't even make sense since Ladybug's ability is limited by her needing to sacrifice a lucky charm. Chat Noir doesn't have to sacrifice anything so this should be an ability that he can cast whenever he wants.

My stance has always been that this power should be a ranged version of cataclysm that Adrien can cast at any time. I wanted him to earn this new power after mastering cataclysm because the ranged version has so much more potential to go wrong. See the intent discussion for more details on that!

[phantomarine]

Hey what were you trying to say in your “it gets good at page 1001” post

Was it more of a comment directed at yourself ( self degradation), is it satire about perfectionism,

Is it supposed to be inspirational for Beginners webcomic creators, or we’re you just in a bad mood?

More of a warning against self-sabotage, because I see it so much. Sometimes it's tied to perfectionism, sometimes it's the opposite - people surrendering to imperfection when they don't really have to.

Creator chat incoming. I'll put it under the deelybob for anyone who wants to read it 👇

I've been in the webcomic sphere for several years now and I've seen so many people introduce their comic with 'I know it's very long and not easy to read, and I won't be going back and changing anything about what I've already made - but please critique it so I can make the rest of the pages better and attract a bigger audience from now on.'

And that's a hard thing to respond to. If a reader can't get through all those existing pages without being confused or bored, then how can they get to the good stuff that lies past them?

So much of gaining an audience is about actively making it easy to 'fall into' a work. Without that easy entry point, it's always going to be an uphill battle to build an audience, no matter how good the later chapters get. There are outliers, but most webcomics won't be those outliers, especially with thousands of them available nowadays. Some people love the grind, but most people will jump to a new tab and try to find something less frustrating.

And webcomic creation is particularly cursed by its very nature. Creators are hesitant to go back and edit pages, even once they've figured out more details about their craft or story structure. It's mostly because of the seeming permanence of it all - the art takes ages and the words feel unchangeable if even one other person has read them. To go back and edit is to publicly admit your failings, right? That's how it feels. What do you MEAN you didn't get it right the first time? You were supposed to do it live, and do it PERFECTLY!

But ideally it shouldn't be any different than prose writing, which is ALL ABOUT finding the story in those edits. And because your story is digital, you can go back and change things whenever you feel like it. A webcomic is fluid.

And if you're thinking 'I should just redraw my whole first chapter' - NO! Hell no, old art can be a part of the appeal! It's far more about finding little tricks to convey your story/characters more clearly. I have read some first chapters with janky art that made me fall completely in love with the story and cast. It's not about the art - as with all things comic-related, it's about conveyance.

Examples I've seen and some I've used myself: A single extra page with a meaningful interaction can solidify the theme of a character's arc. One additional 5-to-10-page scene can help add visual context for an offscreen event where there was none before. Adding a map can tell people where the characters currently are. Changing a character design can help if they get often confused with another character. Redoing your lettering to make it more legible is a huge one too.

In the end, I just don't want people to be afraid of small edits. When I got feedback about the bad clarity of my own work, I knew it would take some time to fix those problems. It wasn't fun to think about or to do, but I'm glad I did it in the end - because it would have limited my audience tremendously. With just a bit of extra effort, I opened a door that wasn't there before, and it now leads more people even more easily to 'the good stuff.'

tl;dr You started your webcomic for a reason, and you're learning more things about its characters, story, and craft every day. Don't be afraid to go back to old pages and inject some of that wisdom through editing. Even a little can go a long way.

***Caveat: If your goal is to just create chaotically, with no goal of gaining an audience, you are a wild and free little thing, and I am in awe of you. This whole rant doesn't apply to you, and you are stronger than me.

[thelampisaflashlight]

Girls' Night

[A short blurb based on that girls' night chat post I made.]

"I'm gonna shape your brows," Cirrus says, studying Dew's face intently, licking her lips as she thinks, "other than that, I think maybe some eyeshadow?"

"Do what you gotta do." Dew shrugs, watching Cumulus and Aurora pick through the carefully curated outfits Mist has pulled from her closet in the mirror in front of him, "Not that one."

Aurora makes a disappointed noise and drops the short, demin mini skirt she was holding onto the bed, "But it's cute..."

"No, I agree with Dew," Cumulus hums, picking up a soft looking balloon skirt, "it's cold out, cute or not, we can't have our honeypot freezing his balls off."

"Been there, done that." Dew scoffs, sitting up straight when Cirrus takes hold of his face to start working on his eyebrows, "Tell me about the mark."

"He's the owner of a megachurch," Mist says, pulling a file out from under her pillow, "middle aged, married but looking if you catch my drift. Two kids from his marriage, a son and a daughter, and a couple 'little secrets' he's sending hush money to..."

"Funded by the parishioners?"

"One hundred percent!" Mist chirps amusedly, "The rest you can read yourself when Cirrus is done fixing that ugly mug of yours."

"If I didn't wanna risk losing one of these press ons, I'd get you for that." Dew says, emphasizing his point with a click of his manicured nails, then looks at them appraisingly, "I'm starting to think we should have gone with a nude shade, this red is, like, a lot..."

"That's the point-" Mist starts to say, but a knock at the door has her slipping the file back under her pillow and motioning for the others to stay still, "Who is it?"

"It's Rain."

A pause.

"Is Dew in there with you?"

Mist glances at Dew, who carefully slides out of his seat in front of the vanity and climbs into her wardrobe.

"No??" she does her best to sound offended as she opens her bedroom door, "It's girls' night, he'd stink up the room with his boy germs."

Cumulus, Cirrus, and Aurora wave from their newly assumed positions of the bed, sat around watching a video on Mist's laptop.

"Oh..." Rain pouts, "I haven't seen him all day, I'm worried."

"Aw, missing your boytoy?" Mist coos, pinching his cheek, "Pretty sure Frater Imperator stole him away to go over some documents in the archive room. Poor bastard is probably balls deep in some ancient tome transcribing some disturbed monk's ramblings."

"I do remember Copia muttering about having to redo some transcripts because of how Terzo fucked up the sorting system years ago..." Cumulus adds, and Cirrus nods in agreement.

"We have an archive room??" Aurora blinks, having genuinely not known this information before, "How have I not seen it??"

"Because it's the kind of place where if you so much as breathe wrong, someone jumps on you and accuses you of endangering hundreds of years old books." Mist says, "Only a handful of people have access, and as big of a dumbass as he is, Dew used to do archival photography and preservation work before he came here."

"Yeah, Dew's a big ol' nerd!" Cirrus laughs in the direction of the wardrobe, imagining the middle finger Dew is undoubtedly holding up behind closed doors.

"That would explain why he hasn't answered my texts..." Rain murmurs, taking his phone out of his pocket, "He gets really absorbed in that kind of stuff. Oh, I hope he remembered to eat..."

"Tell you what." Mist pats his shoulder, feeling a little bad on Dew's behalf for having to ghost his boyfriend for the sake of their mission, "If I see your man roaming the halls like a zombie later, I'll send him your way for make up cuddles and snacks."

"Would you?" Rain asks, sounding adorably hopeful, "I appreciate it!"

Another short moments of chitchat later, and Mist's door finally clicks shut, and Dew emerges from the wardrobe looking a little down about the mouth.

"I'll give it a minute and then I'll text him." Dew says, digging into the pocket of his sweatpants for his phone, "I couldn't message him while I was waxing..."

"You should send him a pic along with the text as an apology, like, 'Sorry I was so busy! Make it up to you ;)' and, boom!" Cumulus suggests, wiggling her fingers, but frowns when Dew frowns at his phone, "Aw, gumdrop, it's okay if you wanna dip and go see your boy..."

"No, it's just... I do feel bad, but I want to do this, too, and I just... I feel bad that I can't tell him what's going on." Dew rubs the back of his neck, "...Fuck it."

"Huh?"

Dew picks out a dress from the piles.

"I'm not gonna take a photo... I'm gonna make him an entire fucking album."

"Not in that you're not." Mist tuts, going through her closet again, "You need silk and lace, and a pearl necklace-"

"Mist!" Dew flusters.

"The actual kind, I think it'd pull the look together, plus, fish boy would appreciate the added details..."

"So is the plan to take the photos first and then go catch us a dirty preacher to steal his stolen relics or is this an after kind of deal?" Cirrus asks, "Because if it's an after thing, I can grab my polaroid camera and we can make it extra special for him with some physical photos."

"Can we skip the heist altogether and just take tasteful nudes of Dew? That sounds a lot more fun than robbing some crusty dude..." Aurora wonders aloud.

"No, duty calls as they say." Mist proclaims, hands on her hips, "Work first, play later, ya know."

"Aw."

[fern-the-fox]

--CRUMBS--

Sonic, pastry still in hand, steps through the grand doorway. He takes in the rows of pews, the vaulted ceilings, the candles, the mosaics, the smell of old stone. He’s dazzled, a kid in a museum with no supervision.

SONIC

Whoa… this place is nuts!

He wanders casually, then he sees a figure at the far end, silhouetted by stained glass. He squints. Takes a few confident steps forward, circling slightly for a better look.

SONIC

Hey, Shadow!-

He stops mid-step with a snirk.

SONIC (bursts out laughing)

Dude- pffft

What the hell are you wearing?!

Shadow turns around slowly, standing proud and high standing

SHADOW (growls)

You.

Sonic tilts his head, confused for a second

You did this.

SONIC

Me? What did i do?! I just got here, your the one playing dress up! Not too bad of a look king goth heh

SHADOW (crimsion eyes narrowing, his nose scrunches in distain)

Everything.

SONIC

This is Eggmans doing. Im just trying to get us home, see this storybook?

SHADOW

That book. This world. The pages. You’re the one thats been running around like a maniac tearing through it and now I’m stuck in this cursed role. Because of you!

SONIC

Again. I didnt do nothing!

But I'm trying to fix it!

SHADOW (steps forward, intense)

You broke our world.

SONIC

Im fixing it! See the book? i found this book in Amys castle. It's been collecting weird magical pages- (gets cut off mid explanation)

SHADOW

You found it, you opened it and now look where we are! Do you even understand what this place is doing to us? What you've unleashed by dragging that damn book everywhere?! Do you even know how to use it?!

How do you expect us to save us with it?

Walking slowly across the stage to express his point before turning sharply, deadly quiet with a humorless laugh

Do You think this is a joke?

SONIC (raises hands up playfully, banters)

Kinda hard not to when you're dressed like a vampire bride on their third divorce Shads.

SHADOW

Shut up.

SONIC

Make me~

SHADOW

You are insufferable. I still believe this is your fault, even partially because why else would anyone else be here.

Why am i here?

Shadow turns away, pacing, trying to regain control. Sonic watches, and for a second, there's actual sympathy.

SONIC (grins as the serious edge passes)

Whatever is going on, im going to fix it. This place seems to be all about roles and well, fairytale or not, im gonna be the hero in the end.

It still doesn't explain the dress, though.

SHADOW (sighs irritability)

Sonic.

SONIC (brings his hands up in surrender again)

Heh Alright, alright I'll help you burn it later. But maybe don't blame me for being the only one actually doing something about all this.

SHADOW (low and bitter but begrudgingly responds through gritted teeth)

"Then do it faster."

(Still tweaking this script here and there but heres more cake for yall. Hopefully once i get the stories in order, ill post here and on A03. It makes me really happy you guys like this stuff, makes me feel like doing more and branching my horizons.

Do you guys like this format? Im still trying to learn how to write like a novel like an actual fanwriter)

Very old and outdated concept, ill have to redo him one of these days

[shakingparadigm]

(Had to redo this post because I needed to fix some stuff in the drive!)

Here's the Google Drives for the TOP 3's frames! Every frame from ROUND 2-ROUND 5 in the highest quality I could manage. ROUND 1 and All-In have to be uploaded a little later since they're larger files.

As always, please tell me if anything is off and I'll try my best to fix it right away!

If the order gets messed up (it usually does, unfortunately), try playing around with the sort settings and then set it back to "sort by name". If you're on mobile, it's best to open the links in a browser and set it to Desktop Site.

[steviestits]

WIP Weekend

So this week went pretty well. Managed to update every day, Hopefully I can keep that up. -knocks on wood- Going to add alien breeder and snow queen back on the list, btw. And wasn't having fun with the boot camp fic, so replaced it with one where Stevie tried to sacrifice Eddie but it backfired and turned her a bit of a slut for Eddie. It makes sense in story.

Alien breeder, I have an ending, except I set the goal post further for myself since my mind didn't think part of what I planned was possible unless I moved the scene elsewhere, which complicated things... I think if I can get to the part right before the BIG ending then I can push myself the rest of the way.

Then snow queen, it's "done," I guess. But I don't like what I wrote for Steve's intro to the frost palace. I don't think it matches up with the later scenes, so I'm going to be redoing it, yet need a push to force myself to redo it, otherwise I'm going to continue to flounder on it. Maybe I'm too much of a perfectionist, but I just don't want to post something that I'm unhappy with, you know?

Anyway, you know the rules, but as a refresher, send in an emoji and I'll write three sentences then share those sentences here. You can send me as many as you want! There's no limit.

🛁 dystopia spa au

🐙 mad scientist mer au

😈 succubus pet au

🦇 urban legend

⚜️ Eddie’s new concubine

🍼 Babysitter Bimbo

🪄 Fae Mafia au

🗡️ Demon Cursed Stevie

💋 Fix-it fic aka s4 shouldn't have killed off bimbo Steve

��️ Steddie Big Bang

🛸Alien Breeder

❄️ Snow Queen

Alien Breeder Snippet (So you can see the mess I created for myself)

“Which apartment is ours?” Stevie asked.

“All of it. The whole building.”

“What!? Oh, shit, are you like one of those really rich space pirates? Are you more famous than I realized, Eds?”

“Sort of,” Eddie said with a laugh. “While my career has been very prolific, we have this because that’s how little of us are left. It might have looked like a lot out there, but the rest of the planet, the cities are empty with only some starting to be filled again. To pool our resources, everyone moved here in an attempt to bolster our numbers that way.”

Frowning, Stevie hadn’t realized the situation was that bad. No wonder why they needed so many humans.

“There are so many humans in storage. It feels like a waste just leaving them there, waiting for someone to claim them one day to make them mothers.”

“I mean, kind of, but not much we can do until more studs are born and come of age to claim a breeder. That’s, of course, if they want to pick a converted human as they’ve been mating more among the other offspring.”

“Then- Well...” Stevie bit her lip. “In Earth movies, sometimes when there’s a dystopia like this, they have um... I don’t know what they’d be called exactly. I guess, dedicated breeders?”

“Dedicated breeders?”

“Yeah, you strap them down and their only job is to pop out babies. You said that I’d have slower pregnancies from now on, but what if they didn’t? They could just pop out babies as fast as they can be grown in their wombs. And the babies can go to loving mothers, like me, who’ll raise them to help everything get back to the way it was. As long as the babies go to a mother who loves them, that’s all that matters, right?”

[myui-mo]

Hii! I'm also starting out on digital art but I have a big problem in doing lineart, would you please share us your wisdom of it if you will? 🙏 Thank you in advance!!

DIGITAL ART TIP #2 - Line art

Hoi!

Here are some tips on how I do my line art.

∘

STEP 1 - Using the stabilizer tool

The stabilizer or smoothing tool is an artist's best friend. It slows down your drawing speed, giving you more control and reducing shaky lines.

Almost every drawing program, whether free or paid, has this tool. You can search online to find out where it is in your program.

The left line was drawn without the stabilizer tool, while the right one was drawn with it. You can clearly see the difference.

Extra Tip: As an artist, I often redo lines multiple times, even when using the stabilizer. The undo button is extremely useful for achieving the best final result.

STEP 2 - Start drawing the first part of your line art

When I draw over my sketch, I usually keep the lines about the same size. It's just the first part, after all.

STEP 3 - Decide where the light is coming from in your drawing

Before you can start adding details to the line art, you need to decide where the light will be coming from for when you begin shading. In my case, the light is coming from above.

STEP 4 - Add line weight

Line art can look flat, but you can fix this by adding line weight. This means making some lines thicker where the shadows will be in your drawing.

In my case, I didn’t add line weight to the face because those parts will be colored black, so the line weight won’t be visible.

As you can see, the line art looks much more interesting now. It also helps when you start shading later.

∘

That's my tutorial! If you like the artwork in this, I'll soon be posting the finished work on my profile.

If you want to ask a question, or send in art for me to help you out with, here's a link to the original post!

Thank you!

[jestersuicide]

i was going to save this for the redo of Boris' over analysis but this bothers me to a stupid level so I HAVE to make a post about it now.

Ignoring the fact they're on a blue background for a joke I'll have a difficult time explaining, I want to talk about this guy's sharp teeth. I'm not gonna comment on how they look flat considering there are worse things in champions of meridell, but.....

You can see his tooth protrudes at the end of his smile. The second photo depicts it under his nose(?) This post will mainly focus on the first image though.

if we go off the very-totally-trustworthy-skeleton shown in the transparent paintbrush, you can see the teeth are just. A little confusing because of the lower jaw but we're focusing on the upper row anyways, which seems mostly intact for our analysis.

It only appears there's 5 teeth on one half of the upper jaw, so for the sake of this, we'll exclude the existence of any second premolars, second molars, and wisdom teeth.

Here's a very rough chart.

Now, while Boris' teeth are depicted as larger than the teeth seen here, the closest placement for his fang would actually be the molar, which is aaaaall the way back there!

this can be critiqued a bit but a more accurate depiction of a vampire would have the fangs either be the central incisors, lateral incisors, or the canines themselves. I'm a sucker for sharp canines so I tried to fix the placement near there.

Now here's the really fun part...

Count von Roo does not have this issue, albeit he is a real vampire in canon.

This should not change the fact Boris' fangs are his molars, as even fake vampire teeth don't make the molars sharper and longer (or, as far as I'm aware they don't.)

This isn't exclusively an older art issue either, more modern depictions of Boris show this trait.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it's absolutely ridiculous I'd make a post about this? Because I certainly do.

[zombeebunnie]

Trembling Essence:💙Choice adjustments + Exploration💙

Hi guys and welcome new followers! This update post might be a little short but here's how the game is going so far! Also I was very surprised at how well the endings guide was received so I'll keep that in mind in the future. :,]

Everything started off very slow again and didn't progress much up until a day or two ago. I was able to find the root of this issue so hopefully in the next few days things will return to normal! :]

I also want to talk a little bit deeper about the beginning of the game and what's to come of it.

Summary:

I want this section leading up to the cabin to give you an idea of your surroundings and give an introduction to Noah.

When I went on to redo this part some time around May I got carried away with wanting to add a bunch of adventurous endings. Even though I enjoyed doing this, I understood that it was too much and I was missing the mark I was aiming for. There were a couple of signs but what really made me realize this fully was working on the 'Endings guide'. I want the endings you get at this part to reflect what could possibly happen later on in the game and have symbolic meaning. There will be endings that just 'happen' but I do want to make sure I do that right. :]

With that being said, the start of the game will be reduced from 4 choices back down to 2. No spoilers but again, the pathing won't play out the same from the [Extended Demo] anymore. :]

Exploration:

Before:

After:

I managed to get some CG's done too! For the before and after, I did not like how it looked anymore and the dialog didn't match with what you were seeing on the screen. I wanted this part to look like an actual spooky path you were going down covered in fog. I also added a parallax effect here that really sets the mood! I do plan on fixing up the 'before' image just not right now. :]

This sort of sums up what all has been going on behind the scenes, super close to the cabin. Yay! I fixed up most of what my play testers recommended to me but there's some endings that still need to be seen. :]

If you like what I create, please consider supporting what I do on kofi! All donations and tips help tremendously while I continue to work on the game. Thank you to those that optionally bought the [Extended Demo] and the March 2023 demo on itch.io. :,]

Q&A / Ask box is open:

There's been a sudden influx of questions and I really appreciate it, I'll try and answer some of them when I get the chance! Some did have major spoilers being asked so I can't answer them. :,]

If you have any questions about Trembling Essence/Noah feel free to ask here or on itch.io please. This makes it easier for me to see and answer accordingly! I enjoy hearing from you guys!

This is all I have to share for right now but thank you everyone for the uplifting support and patience, I appreciate it! :]

[gamebunny-advance]

Let's Just Rip Off This Band-Aid (Kliff Doll Repaint)

I still haven't finished adding the fringe to his scarf, but at this point, I don't think y'all will actually care that much. It's a personal project anyway, so I'll just finish it on my own time. Right now, I want to be released from the shackles of this project.

Once again, my poor camera and lack of editing do him no favors (he's got a real bad case of jaundice in that first pic. I PROMISE he's not that yellow-orange IRL ;o;), but he is (mostly) done.

Well, he was (mostly) done like a week ago, but just yesterday I decided to redo a few things to try and "fix" what was really bothering me about him, so I really made recursive progress. That said, I do like him more now than I did a week ago, so I'm not mad about it.

A little backstory: Alongside Kun3h0, I've been working on him for the past month, so I've been pretty occupied with this project for a while. Now, I do wonder to myself why exactly I thought making this would be a good idea. All I can really say is that my impulsive tendencies drive me to do things against my better judgement.

But, I will still give y'all my documentation and thoughts on the process + more pictures.

(I'll talk a little more about it later, but for those of you that aren't going to go through the long-ass readmore, the Neon J. mask is a reference to an old comic I drew.)

(It's so old, I was still writing everything by hand~)

So, the "real" answer to "why" I made this is really as simple as "because I could." As I said in the Kun3h0 post, I've been wanting to repaint dolls for a long time, years even, so in the back of my mind, I'm always thinking of ways I could finally start one.

Well, recently I just finally put together the ideas and motivation I needed to start. And of course, that was with Kliff.

I don't remember *exactly* how I stumbled across everything, but I do recall looking at doll clothes online and stumbling across this trench coat (pictured with the other clothes for this project).

(I took this pic mostly because I thought I was going to take pics of every major step of the process, but that didn't end up happening).

I thought it was pretty darn close to Kliff's coat, and I got the horrible idea that, "I could def make a Kliff doll to go with this coat as long as I can repaint it."

I feel like usually people would think the other way around, but that is basically the truth of this project: I didn't find clothes to fit the doll, I made the doll to fit into the clothes. Because for me, customizing the doll wasn't really the intimidating part: it's making the clothes. I don't know how to use a sewing machine, and currently lack the patience to learn (and due to some personal trauma that I don't really want to get into), but I can hand-sew, so starting any project that involves it requires me to be willing to set aside a lot of energy for me to do it, which I don't often have.

But, if I could find ways to cut down on the sewing, then I'd be more willing to start. And somehow, I was able to find just about everything I would need for a potential Kliff doll without having to sew anything. In the end, I only sewed together one thing, and it's the one thing that isn't actually finished: the scarf.

So, I blame the trench coat for the entirety of this project: if I'd never seen it, I would have never made a Kliff doll. In fact, I got the clothes before I even had the doll.

Since I was brainstorming this project, one of the most important parts is of course the base doll, which was tricky. Male doll repaints are fairly uncommon, especially of older men, so there weren't a lot of resources or places to get inspiration for this project.

From what I found, most male (fashion) dolls were very youthful, and the ones that weren't usually took heavy modifications to achieve, which was out of the question. Kliff was supposed to be an "easy" project, so on top of not wanting to sew any clothes for him, I also didn't want to have to alter the doll that much to make it look like him. This was a lot to ask for without putting in any personal work, but in a way, this goal was supposed to keep me from actually starting this project: really this whole thing was supposed to just live in my head as a fantasy as most things do, but then I just stumbled into the right set of things, so I couldn't stop myself from going through with it.

The doll I landed on was a BTS Mattel doll. Now I've said before that I know basically nothing about BTS, and that is still true, but that's beside the point. In my research for finding a suitable doll to work with, I found out that a popular base were these BTS dolls. At first, I wasn't into it because I was still running into the "youthful face" problem that I was with other brands: most of them had pillowy lips and nice soft faces, but I did eventually find one that I thought was close enough: J-Hope.

(It's not the worst match up.)

I don't have pics of my doll before I started working on him, but it was pretty close to the stock photo. He has much thinner lips than the others, and a taller, more angular head shape that I thought would work best for Kliff. I did worry a bit that the nose wasn't "strong" enough to really be Kliff (and IMO, it wasn't XP), but it was the closest I found yet, so I decided to bite the bullet and get one, and if I had one, that meant I needed to start gathering everything I would need for this project.

So, no backing out now.

Now, actually acquiring this doll was a whole other song and dance, but here's the part that's important for how the process went:

Due to a miscommunication with the seller I eventually got him from, there was a delay with shipping, so I didn't actually get him until weeks after "officially" starting this project. In the meantime, the clothes and things for Kun3h0 (who I started as an impulse project within the impulse project) had already been gathered.

The original plan was that I was going to work on and subsequently post about Kliff first since he was a comparatively simpler project. All the things I was avoiding for Kliff: sewing clothes and making modifications to the doll, were all going to be incorporated into Kun3h0, so she was theorhetically going to take longer and be posted later, thus telling a small story of "starting simple, ending complex." But since I didn't have his doll, but didn't want to delay working on Kun3h0 just to wait on him, I started on her and repainting his clothes anyway.

So, I don't have any pics of the doll or his clothes from when I was working on them, unlike the sparse ones I had for Kun3h0, I only have pics from after he was finished.

But I'll still tell y'all what I can to at least preserve the story.

For starters, repainting this coat was probably the most time-consuming part of this process.

I really thought that it would take one or two days maximum to turn this coat bright yellow, but I think it actually took over a week. And I really should have known; the coat was a medium tone, and I know that yellow takes a while to build up on anything that isn't light. I lost count at some point, but I swear that thing has over 20 coats of paint on it. Mind you, the first 10 or so coats were watered down with the textile medium, which also contributed to how long it was taking for the coat to take color, but at some point I just got so frustrated that I stopped mixing in the medium and painting directly onto the coat to get the color to layer faster. This is a huge no-no for painting acrylics onto fabric, lest the paint crack from creasing the fabric, but I just couldn't be bothered anymore. I needed this thing to be dandelion yellow NOW or I was gonna lose it.

There were consequences for taking that shortcut, such as the paint cracking in high motion areas and the coat getting stiff, but it's not terrible. In the end, I accepted the trade-offs or else I might still be painting the coat. Perhaps one day I'll reverse engineer the pattern for the coat and make him a new one, but I wouldn't count on it. In retrospect, I wonder if I would have had an easier time if I had thought to bleach the coat first?

As you might notice, I contoured/shaded part of the coat in orange. That's something that I actually *just* added yesterday and added another couple of hours to the work time. It was just bothering me that the doll was essentially a giant slab of yellow, and was part of the reason I didn't like it very much. But I got inspired by this repaint to try contouring the coat to give it more depth.

(I also used this person's videos to modify the hands. He has one deidcated to just reshaping the BTS hands.)

In the end, I'm pretty happy with the results.

The rest of the clothes weren't as difficult to deal with.

The pants took the paint a lot better, likely due to being dark paint on a light surface. Since I used less paint, it's not as stiff as the coat and still go on very easily. Though, they are VERY high waisted, and I'm not sure if that's normal XP

The shoes are also painted (and slightly modified), though I had to paint them twice because the first time, the paint got stretched off when I tried to put them on the doll's feet: the shoes were just *slightly* too small for the feet of the doll, so they really get stretched to fit his feet, and his heels don't actually go in all the way XP.

He's still capable of standing on his own, but I try not to remove the shoes, so I can avoid having them crack again.

In my "initial clothes" pic, I put down a different shirt than the one he's wearing. The original plan was to repaint the shirt black, but my work space is very limited, so I couldn't really repaint three pieces of clothes at once without significantly risking that I would stain other things. In the end, after getting scarred by how long it was taking for the coat to take color, I decided to just give him one of the black shirts that came with the coat. This does make him somewhat inaccurate since the current shirt has flowers/plants on it, but I'm gonna say that they make up for the lack of flowers on his scarf. Maybe someday I'll make him a new shirt from an old sock or something, but for now, I don't think it's a bad look.

Other clothing of note is the scarf, but since it's not technically finished I didn't take any close pics of it. It's actually made of an old headband of mine that I just cut and painted to look like his scarf.

Originally, I had actually glued on ribbon to it for the stripes, which took a couple days for the drying, but because I couldn't flatten out the scarf to easily glue the ribbon, it turned into a mess and bulked it out too much: since the scale of the doll is already small, I really needed to keep the fabrics thin. This was especially important for the scarf since it was going to wrap around his neck: if it were any thicker, it was going to practically eat up his face, which it still does, just less so.

Speaking of face...

When I finally got the doll in the mail, I started working on him right away, so I don't have any "before" pics of the doll.

After I did the usual "wiping off the face and pulling out his hair," I started with repainting the entire body and head.

Despite Kliff being ambigously "WHITE 🫵," Kliff isn't as pale as the original doll. I'd say even the stock picture I posted above has more warmth than the actual doll did. So, I got the base to be "coral" all over, dusted him in light orange chalk pastels for contouring, and most of his details are outlined in shades of burgandy. I didn't take any nude pics of this doll, but he is countoured all over his body and you can rest easy knowing I gave him some nips XP. But maybe someday I'll show y'all doll!Kliff's washboard abs XP.

TBH, I did want to detail some tattoos and some body hair too, but I just didn't trust myself to do either of those well with the tools I have (my brushes aren't thin enough, and my hand not steady enough for those kind of intricate details). Maybe someday I'll at least get his tattoos in (and after I've actually designed them XP), but we'll see. I don't plan on having the doll in short sleeved clothes very often, so details like that are the least of my concerns.

TBH, I was pretty proud of how the face paint originally went on. I really took my time to make sure it went down flat. It really was beautifully smooth~

But disaster struck.

I had painted the head while it was still separated from the body, and when it finally came time to reunite them, the paint on the head cracked and peeled when I shoved it back on. And, foolish fool that I am, instead of accepting my losses and starting over from a perfectly clean head, I just peeled the lose ends and repainted the exposed parts, which of course made the paint uneven. I somewhat justified this with the idea that most of it would be covered by other details, but in retrospect, I really should have just started over properly.

But, after that ordeal was over with, it was time to actually work on the face.

I can't clearly remember if I worked on Kun3h0 or Kliff's face first. I think I worked on them simultaneously because it took me a LONG time to actually get the courage to work on Kun3h0's face.

I thought I did a decent job on Kun3h0 since I really only had the 1 eye to repaint (the hidden eye is painted, but it's basically just a void with no details), and it was a bigger "canvas", so it was easier to paint. Besides having 2 eyes that I would need to make nearly identical, they were also a lot smaller, so it took a lot longer to paint them in a way that satisfied me (and since it's not easy to "redo" acrylic paint, his eyes lost a lot of smoothness too).

Again, I don't have any "before" pics, so it won't be easy for me to convey my troubles about it, but I do want to say that I think Kliff with a closed mouth is very cursed.

:I

He just looks like he's itching to say something heinous and that is no different for the doll.

It was so difficult for me both match his expression on a face that wasn't *completely* his and still look like him. Although I chose this doll because he most resembled Kliff, he was never gonna be a perfect likeness of him, but despite knowing this, it still bothered me that the face was still just very "young" looking.

Granted, I don't think the original Kliff looks *that* old either (if I didn't know any better, I would assume he was in his 30s, not his 50s, especially compared to other characters around the same age), but still not as *smooth* as the doll is (even with my paint mishaps).

If you can believe it, the face actually used be worse. I don't have pics of it, but like the coat, I actually repainted his face yesterday to again try and fix what was making me dislike it before. I think the problem is that I didn't outline the eyes as much as the final one (like, I don't think I lined his undereye at all), so he was lacking depth. The mouth was also a little more off. Instead of being like "<--->" it was more like "|-|"

(A rough illustration of what I'm trying to describe.)

So, while it's still not perfect, I do like him more today than I did a week ago.

I think the only things left to talk about are his accessories, starting with his wig:

I'm not actually a big fan of the color. When I started this project, I wanted to try and make him as accurate as possible, and the original Kliff design has a very "cherry jolly rancher" hair color.

However, how I draw him and how he appears in Encore Edition gives his hair a more red-orange tone which isn't as intense. In the end, I opted for accuracy towards his first design since that's the one I was technically most familiar with and wanted to replicate, but in retrospect, I should have realized that I was never gonna be able to seperate my personal quirks from this personal project, so I should have gone with a color that was more accurate to how I interpret him. (I dunno if I would have gone as far as to give him triangular eyes, but one of my biggest takeaways from this project has been that I should have just allowed this to be "my take" on the character instead of trying to be "accurate," meeting in the middle, and satisfying neither condition.)

I don't think I really got across how much I HATED brushing out yarn for the wigs when I posted Kun3h0. It was just such a tedidus process, from brushing it out, to straightening it, to gluing it down. It was such a mess. I'm still finding loose wisps of yarn hair floating around my home since I made them.

Since I had more than had my fill from making Kun3h0's wig, I once again started taking shortcuts when it came to Kliff: I really should have made more wefts for him. I figured since his hair was (compartively) shorter, that I wouldn't need to make as many, but in the end his wig turned out both too thin and too thick.

Since his hair is so messy, I didn't follow any kind of guide for his hair like I did Kun3h0. I basically just glued around the perimeter of the cap, horizontally on the inside, and made sure it would fold over in the front.

Part of the problem is that I made the wefts too thick: instead of just gluing down what could actually touch the surface of the work area, I wound up gluing layers on top of each other, so the wefts would be like a mm thick when they should have been less than half of that. So, I barely got enough coverage for the scalp, and the parts that I did get down are very thick. I think it makes his head look bigger than it should which kinda adds to the uncanniness of him.

I did try to style it as close to canon as possible, but there are some things that just aren't (easily) possible in certain mediums, and Kliff's wild hair is one of them.

In retrospect, I probably should have just sculpted his hair with clay or something: it probably would have been more accurate, but I don't have much confidence in my sculpting ability, and again, I didn't want to modify the doll that much, so I stuck with the yarn.

I might suck it up and try and make him a new wig, I still have a LOT of red yarn left over, so maybe I can make him some new styles too. But the tedium of going through with it makes it very unlikely that I'll follow through~

(The wig from other angles.)

Since the beard is made from the same yarn, I'll lightly talk about that. There aren't too many resources about bearded dolls, but I've seen people root it, glue it, and even just paint it if they weren't supposed to be thick. In the end I used this repaint for reference (suggestive content warning) and glued it on.

The scarf covers most of it, but I think it turned out okay. I need to add just a *little* more to his left cheek, but otherwise I feel like I was successful.

Next, it's usually hidden due to all the crap that's on his head, but I did give him an earring.

I didn't think about it until way too late in the process, and I tried to poke a hole through his ear so he could actually wear it. However, when I tried to do so, I almost ruined his head paint a second time. Saying, "fuck that," I decided to just glue it on.

If I had been more brave with modifying this doll, I might have just resculpted his ears entirely, because, being based on a real life human being, the doll's ears don't flare out that much, so they're easily covered by other things.

His glasses are just a piece of painted plastic that hold to his face using some plastic cord. They fit well while his wig is off, but putting them on with everything else is a goddamn nightmare.

Since his ears are so small, and his hair is so short, there's nothing for the glasses to "grab" onto without the cord, but the cord is too short to fit around the wig once it's on, but I can't make the cord longer to sit over the wig, because the glasses need to go over the headband, and it's a pain in the ass trying to layer everything like that.

So, I have to put the glasses in place first, TAPE the cord to his scalp so they don't move, put on the wig, then put on the headband. It's really such a hassle, but I don't think I can truly convey the annoyance of having to do it all without showing you. So, unless I absolutely have to, I'm never taking any of those things off him again.

I think the last things are the headband, mask, and tablet.

The headband is just a spare scrunchy that I have. I don't have one in the *exact* same color as the real one, so I went with the closest one I had, which was this teal color.

I didn't feel comfortable repainting one since it's essentially an elastic band, I don't think the paint, even with the textitle medium, would be able to hold up to all the stretching I have to do to even get it on his head.

If I happen to find a white one somewhere in my stash, then I might try dyeing it using water and acrylic paints to see if I can get it green, but for now, I think this works. A little thick, but it works.

The tablet is just a piece of foam painted with paint markers and the mask is a piece of cardboard. I wasn't planning on really recreating any scenes with this doll, but since I remembered that comic, and thought it would be easy enough to make, I went ahead and made it as an in-joke to myself.

Honestly, I think it's the most charming piece of the entire ensemble. Plus, he can wear it without me having undo/redo any of his other head accessories, so it's easy to make him wear it whenever.

My final comments about the doll itself are that he's fucking huge. I should have taken a pic of him next to Kun3h0, but he is too tall to even fit on my display shelf without sitting.

(Please ignore any mess you might see in the reflection. This is just one of the only flat pieces of furniture he can stand on without me standing on something to take a pic.)

Despite my interests, I don't actually collect dolls (I'm more into figures and plushies), so I wasn't expecting him to be so big. In fact, Kun3h0, who would be considered a small to medium doll in collector's spaces, was also bigger than I thought she'd be, so you can imagine my surprise when I got my hands on him.

So... I don't really know where I can put him. He obviously can't live in front of my TV, but beyond being too big for my shelf, he also doesn't fit in with any of my other collectibles. And I'll be honest, the contrast of him "clearly not belonging" among my more "kawaii" items was a motivator in starting this project, I live for the gap moe after all, but in practice he really just sticks out like a sore thumb. (This is also why his first pics are in a slightly different location without many props. I just couldn't put together anything from my collection or find a spot among my things to take a good thematic pic with. The magazines/CDs he's with are from my dad's collection.)

I do have space at higher elevations in my room, but it's kinda off putting to have him staring down my room, looking like he's plotting something (my space is too small to ignore it). So I dunno what I'm gonna do with him. I did have plans to make him some... cuter outfits so he wouldn't stick out as much, but that requires sewing, and I'm kinda worn out from this project.

In conclusion, despite my troubles with this project, I'm not entirely displeased with the results. At the very least, it was an experience, and one that I might even be willing to do a third time 👀...?

But for now, I'd like to rest and maybe go back to drawing again. I feel like I haven't drawn anything "real" for a while now. We're inching closer and closer to the next follower milestone (4 digit number BA-BY!), so I'd like to at least get back to being good enough to sketch some stuff for y'all soon~

[muchinternalscreaming]

A Not Particularly Comprehensive Recount of my experience painting me first digital art piece

Created an ao3 account to gift writers fanart, Created a tumblr account to gift writers fanart,

Turns out this trend ✨️has yet to end✨️

Delved into the world of digital art to - once again - make fanart and gift it to writers.

Also I am making this post to procastinate on WIPs and coursework.

This piece of fanart was inspired by a throw away line (the one about Sam in a suit, Danny in dress) in the lovely fic :

Also available on tumblr @jaewritesfic , though the ao3 link is the one that updates

I: The Beginning, A Sketch.

Ignore the figure on the left, the half-done (quarter-done?) Figure on the right is the subject of interest.

II: Lineart

Hell yeah, you can correct any anatomical mistakes on a totally anatomically correct body (eraser, my beloved).

III: Colouring (My Beloathed)

Ew.

Had to take a few hours away from this puece to recover from the psychic damage, watched approximately 2.5 colouring tutorials, absorbed 0% of the information shared, then proceeded under the modus operandi ✨️fuck around, find out✨️. Anddddddd

It paid off :D!!

But value-wise, the it was v boring. (fixed it l8ter)

IV: Details are the Devils

Pain. Also involved way too many layers (is what I thought at this stage, only to exceed that amount by over 50% 15 mins later) (gave up labelling and my memory is somewhat akin to swiss cheese so for the duration of this journey I worshipped the visibility button)

Anyway, time to fix the boring range of values, simply by mighting the light lighter and the shadows more shadow-y (very technical, such jargon, i know. Plz don't use this as a guide for digital art, I only knew about 0.37% of what I was doing at any time)

not enough shadow, kind of boring. Also need to clean up the areas where the paint overlapped the lineart but that is a problem for future me.

Better!! (At least to me) Also, would probably have to redo the hair b/c it is def stylistically different from the rest of the piece (I did not do that for one very good reason; 'M lazy :) )

If I decide to go w/ this version, I'll probably have to put some shadow on his teeth.

V: Conclusion

What did I learn? Colouring takes way too long (even excluding the time spent procastinating on it), I am sticking to simple colouring for the nxt few pieces. (The full art piece will b posted with those)

[transtrucy]

fostering, adopting, and red tape and the pieces of youth

for the past year and a half (yikes) i've been slowly working on red tape and the pieces of youth, a marriage of convenience au where phoenix and miles get married to adopt trucy

the first "arc" of the fic is about phoenix (and later miles) fostering trucy and then adopting her. however, just as the game handwaves a lot about her adoption, i also changed, ignored, and left some things out for the sake of storytelling

in part, this is because i didn't do as much research as i should have before starting this fic. if i were to do an edit of it, i would probably change the order of events and conversations significantly. but for fanfic, everything i post except zine pieces are first drafts, because i know i'll lose motivation and never finish if i go back and start doing significant edits

therefore, i'm leaving the fic as is, but this post is meant to explain some choices i made or things that i just straight up ignored to make this a viable au. i want to respect the actual realities of fostering and adoption that this story does not always reflect

anything i say in this post is based on california rules and fostering and adoption advice for that state. i am not involving japan in it legally, however my approach to most ace attorney things is 'if it's wrong it's because we're in japanifornia, where i can make everything up'

as this post is very long, you can read it here on google docs. you can use the outline feature to navigate to different sections of the document! the entire post is also available under the read more below

disclaimer: i am not a social worker and i have never personally been involved in the foster care system or an adoption, though i have friends who were adopted and some experience with families who were trying to adopt out of the foster system. everything in this post is based on research that i've done. i have done very little research on adoption in japan, and this document (and the fic) will reflect that

this post may be edited as i think of more things, if anyone asks me anything that feels important to add, or if anything new comes up in the fic!

the most important thing to remember for this au is that the adoption and fostering timelines are significantly sped up. this will be explained further below!

an additional disclaimer is that if i were to redo this entire fic, i would likely get at least one if not two sensitivity readers familiar with adoption for the first arc, ideally someone who has been adopted (specifically the foster -> adoption that occurs in the story) and someone who works in adoption and social work. however, if i do write anything that is too wildly incorrect or offensive, please let me know and i'll be more than happy to fix it as best i can. thank you for understanding the limitations of my own research as well as the limits of this story!

background: trucy's canon adoption

this is mentioned in the notes of at least one chapter, but in the games, trucy's adoption is incredibly quick and easy. not knowing much about japanese adoption other than it can be difficult, this could be an intentional choice of the writers. regardless, when looking at it as a real life situation, we immediately run into lots of issues

which is why i typically don't. it doesn't actually make sense for phoenix to be fostering trucy at the beginning of red tape, but as she appears to be staying with phoenix in canon before adoption, i kept that in the story, because i couldn't come up with a way to have her around and participating in the scheme if something more realistic happened

in real life, trucy would never have been placed with phoenix, even temporarily. she would've been placed with an emergency foster parent until social services sorted some things out with her case

as i mentioned in an author's note, in canon and my canonverse fics, i just pretend that zak left signed adoption papers in phoenix's possession before disappearing, which phoenix found after the trial. while this would still likely involve an investigation considering phoenix was his lawyer before disappearing, it gives me a little bit to work with

because canon is so vague and loose on trucy's adoption, where it's treated like all that matters is trucy agreeing to it, it leaves a lot of space for exploration. so here we are!

emergency foster parent note: emergency foster parents are a temporary housing solution when a child needs to be placed immediately. the placement is usually done very quickly (sometimes within hours) opposed to standard foster placements. in california, these placements can last from one to fifteen days while a more permanent solution is sorted out

phoenix as a temporary foster parent

as of right now, this hasn't been officially stated in the fic, but the reason that phoenix was able to act as a temporary foster parent for trucy was because he was already a registered foster parent for pearl.

as has been mentioned, maya is pearl's legal guardian in the story, but i imagined phoenix also got approved not only as a possible backup, but because maya does not officially live in the city, and there are specific rules when foster kids stay with other people. maya does have full custody of pearl at this point in time, so that is no longer a concern for them, but this was something they did early on to be safe

(see the end of this post for a little more about pearl!)

phoenix's apartment

i did want to briefly touch on phoenix's living situation, as i do kind of breeze past it. phoenix is approved as a foster parent with a one bedroom apartment.

in real life, i don't think this would ever happen, for trucy or possibly pearl. in california, foster children can only share a bedroom with up to one other child and the child cannot share a bedroom with their foster parent if they're above the age of two

since they move into miles' home very quickly, and any information we have on phoenix's apartment / his and trucy's living situation in canon is pretty limited, i decided not to linger on this aspect too much

why also miles?

if phoenix could adopt trucy in canon, why can't he in this au?

first off, for clarity: in california and therefore this story you can adopt or foster as a single parent. i've seen at least two people mention this somewhere in relation to this story, phoenix would have been able to adopt trucy as a single person, but there are other elements involved

the main issue would likely be his finances, as he is out of a job and does not currently have a stable income. while there is not an income requirement in california for fostering, you do need a stable and verified income, as well as the ability to meet all financial needs. at the beginning of this story, phoenix is very unemployed. this is where miles comes in, as someone with both a stable income and family money from the von karmas, something that hasn't been too touched upon in the story yet. while phoenix begins as a currently a temporary foster parent for trucy, for him to continue fostering her long term (and then adopting her), he would need more stable income than he currently has, and job hunting is an issue for him moving forward, and even in the canon of aa4 we can see he has a lot of smaller piano jobs

in addition, adoption itself can be expensive. how much it really costs depends on a lot of factors, such as age of the child, if you're adopting from foster care, and fees from any agencies. adoption from fostering seems to be cheaper, but with what we know about phoenix's financial situation, it may be something he would be unable to do on his own, while it's likely much easier for miles

bringing miles into the picture provides a lot of stability that phoenix himself doesn't have in his life. at this point in canon, his reputation is also significantly better than phoenix's current one. while presenting forged evidence, which could have been considered a felony, and getting disbarred probably wouldn't disqualify phoenix from being eligible as a foster parent, they also don't look great. miles having a house is a bonus that phoenix didn't consider

fostering speedrun

as i said earlier, many of the changes made for this au were speeding up the timeline, which is absolutely the case in regards to trucy being placed with phoenix, miles getting approved as a foster parent at all, and trucy also being placed with miles

from some research i've done and anecdotes online, becoming a foster parent can take a couple months, averaging about five to six months in california. obviously, that wasn't going to work here, so i fast tracked it severely

foster parent approval timeline and other line skips

in california, it can usually take around two to four weeks to be approved as a foster parent. this doesn't take into account everything else required before receiving a placement. one of the ways i rushed this is addressed in the story: miles is very well known, has a lot of legal contacts, and has a lot of money. and he does acknowledge, especially in terms of himself and von karma, that this is something that could be taken advantage of

in real life, i don't think you can necessarily skip through things like that. there are rules and timelines in place for reasons, and while i'm sure people have manipulated the system before, in this instance it's meant to reflect how von karma basically just walked off with a dead man's child without anyone stopping him. one thing miles has to deal with in the first arc of this fic is his own trauma, as much as he might not realize it, surrounding his own situation in childhood and how it reappears when phoenix does things like suddenly announce he's adopting a child he just met

sidebar for miles' relationship to the von karmas: since canon is pretty murky about what, legally, miles' relationship to manfred von karma is, i also stayed vague in this au. if you're interested, you can check this section of miles' wikipedia page, where it discusses how his relationship to the von karmas is contradicted in different parts of canon. additionally, there's the bonus complexity of many people having the headcanon of miles leaving the country with the von karmas, which is something that may be mentioned in this au. in california (and many states) you need to request authorization before traveling abroad with a foster child, however these are short term trips, not a move. moving countries, and even states usually, will result in the foster child being placed with a new family this is why i haven't put a name to miles' relationship to manfred. while i probably see it more as a fostering situation until miles aged out of the system as i can't really imagine manfred offering to adopt him, that's just not compatible with them living in germany. therefore, in the fic itself it will simply stay vague

education for fostering

i almost completely glossed over this in the fic, so it was extra important to me that i mention here, that many states including california have a level of training or education required before you can be officially approved as a foster parent or before you can have children placed with you. in california there is an orientation, an application, pre-approval training, and then cpr and first aid training. in addition, as mentioned there is a background check, a psychosocial assessment, and a home safety inspection

when i mentioned that sasha, trucy's social worker, gave miles a lot of packets, i'm condensing a lot of that into print outs, which is vastly diminishing what parents actually learn. about 20 hours of training are needed between pre-approval and pre-placement, which does not include the first aid, assessments, or inspections. in part, because of who miles is, some of this was skipped or minimized, other aspects, like his background check, were faster because he works for the prosecutor's office and information was more easily available.

school as a foster child

to be honest, i could not find the clearest guidelines for how soon after being placed with a foster parent a child needs to be enrolled in school. i didn’t really address this for most of the fic, because the reality is trucy probably would need to be in school after the few weeks between the start of the fic and miles and phoenix getting married. there are (possibly) a few wrenches in how fast this could happen, which is why i let it take longer than it may realistically: 

in this au, trucy is homeschooled by the troupe and therefore hasn’t been enrolled in a school before, meaning she has no records and has done no testing to place her. she would be placed with her age group, but this could still potentially cause delays combined with

in this au, trucy isn’t actually a citizen of japanifornia. where is she a citizen of? couldn’t tell you. but since in this au, the troupe is constantly on the move, i decided to slow things down a little in the school enrollment department, it would make sense that legally, her permanent address is in another state

now would this slow down enrollment for multiple weeks? i can’t really tell you that. but that’s the internal logic for this delay 

rules for fostering

since this isn't a huge part of the fic, i'm just going to touch on this briefly, but whether or not trucy would be able to stay with miles overnight without phoenix before he's approved as a foster parent for her kind of seem to depend

i've read some anecdotes and stories where their foster parents needed approval for sleepovers with friends, while i've also read online that background checks on the friends' parents aren't necessary. i think, unless someone tells me otherwise, it is a little dependent on the situation

regardless, in terms of phoenix going back and forth about this, this is in part on me realizing it may not be the best idea for trucy to stay with miles after i had already written and posted it

ultimately, i think this is a situation where he probably would need to check with sasha. but given that phoenix is pretty frazzled and overwhelmed in this part of the story (and definitely overtired), i think a little slip up and then a panic is justified

adoption timeframe

like the fostering section, the timeline for adoption is deeply unrealistic, for a couple of reasons

the first is that you can't instantly adopt from fostering in most states, including california. in california, it could take between six months to a year to adopt from fostering. in this time, there is an adoption assessment that needs to be both completed and approved, and time frame may depend on how busy various agencies are

while it's not going to be instant in the story, it is a little handwaved about the time it does take, since it's not interesting for us to hang around in this in between period for several chapters, but it's also another situation where miles' job and money are doing a little more work

another important timeline issue that other people may have already picked up on, is that you can't adopt right after getting married. and maybe that's to avoid something like this nonsense

generally, you have to wait about two years after marriage before adoption, though you can begin the process before that because it does take so long.

for this regard, which i think i did know before and just forgot about until i was doing further research, i just completely dropped it. japanifornia is corrupt six ways to sunday, and both trucy's adoption and miles' situation with von karma are incredibly quick. with this two year rule in place, this entire au is basically invalid, and i was more interested in telling this story than sticking to this specific rule, and therefore it doesn't exist in japanifornia

abandonment and adoption

[to be added. for now, you can read this source!]

pit stop for car seats

though this doesn't have to do with adoption or fostering, since a few people were curious about why trucy and pearl would need car seats, i thought i'd explain here. specifically, they'd both be using a booster seat, possibly a high-back one.

while car seats are partially about age and bone density, they're also about height and weight, because the seat belt works best if worn correctly—which is dependent on height.

in the trilogy, pearl is 4'1". we don’t have baby trucy’s height, but in aa4, trucy is only 4'11". general best practice is to use a booster seat until the child is 4'9"

if you have adjustable seat belts (or buy ones you add to the car) this is less of an issue so long as they sit on the correct place on the body, but for this age car/booster seats are relatively standard still

even if use was just by age, 8-9 years old appears to be the low end of the spectrum for stopping their use (8-12 was what i saw in research)

trucy and pearl using a booster seat would be the safest for them, especially when miles' concern is about his inability to be a good parent and properly care for trucy

mini pearl section

pearl's experience with fostering and current guardian has been mentioned throughout the fic, but i wanted to also discuss it here since it's not a primary focus.

after morgan is arrested, pearl would have been placed into emergency foster care. like previously mentioned, phoenix gets approved as an emergency foster parent for pearl, but maya becomes pearl's guardian. often, kin placements are preferred and prioritized in fostering situations, which maya mentions in a conversation with miles

she also says that if it hadn't been her, someone in the village would've helped. this is mostly inspired by the idea that kurain village seems pretty insular with its residents and while they're never mentioned, i wouldn't be surprised if other members are related to the feys

one complex issue within fostering is cultural identity of foster children. while it's not my place to discuss this, i can say some foster care programs and agencies do prioritize placing children with families of similar cultural and racial or ethnic backgrounds. if you're interested in learning more, there has been research done about important of children's culture within foster care, and this is one reason kin placements can sometimes be preferred. this is also why maya says pearl would be placed with someone in the village—this isn't something she necessarily knows for sure but a hope she had if she wasn't approved

i would also be remiss if i didn't mention the indian child welfare act (icwa) here. while i did not consciously mean to reference this law, i think it is something i almost undoubtedly was pulling from subconsciously when thinking about maya and pearl. to be clear: i do not intend to seriously compare kurain village or spirit channeling to the indigenous people of the united states or why the iwca was created and the hard work done to enact it. however, when speaking about characters being placed in families outside of their cultures and kin, especially with kurain being a village with a culture and traditions that we don't see practiced by characters outside of spirit channelers, i think it would be wrong of me if i didn't acknowledge this law and why it and nicwa are so important. even if i did not intend to reference it, it almost certainly impacted my writing of this conversation with miles

while maya doesn't have to worry as much about pearl being taken away at this point, there are options for this and i'm not sure yet (since this is not a priority in the fic) which would be best for them: she could foster, adopt or be pearl's guardian. we've already discussed fostering extensively, so i won't cover that here

one thing of note is that maya doesn't appear to have a stable income, in part because her job is with kurain village. when she turned 18, she would be able to adopt pearl via kinship adoption, a process that can be much simpler than adoption outside the family. additionally, as mentioned previously adoption can be expensive, though costs can be reduced if the adopter is low-income. unlike miles, maya doesn't have the same strings to pull. (timeline may be clarified in future chapters!)

here, i should note that while kinship adoption requires consent from biological parents, since morgan has a felony conviction, she would be unfit as a parent, and maya would be able to have pearl freed from morgan's custody (for more details, this is called ffpcc in california)

if maya was just pearl's legal guardian, this is a non-permanent guardianship that would end when pearl turns 18 or if the court terminates the guardianship. this does seem like a faster option than the other two

this is the area i have done the least amount of research, so i don't have the clearest path (but if i got anything wildly wrong defintiely elt me know!) there are (if i have my timelines right) about two years between morgan first being arrested and this fic, which is, if you're not phoenix and miles, a normal amount of time to be sorting custody situations out. so i think we can give maya the slack she needs to learn all of this from scratch

conclusion

adoption and fostering are both complex and time consuming processes, and i am not doing them justice within this fic. thank you so much for suspending your disbelief, but as always, i want to show a lot of respect for the people who actually have lived experience with fostering, adoption, or any of the other mentioned topics here

while fanfic is fun, i do wish i had done a little more research before diving into this fic, even if i had to entirely disregard that two year waiting period after marriage before adopting

why wasn’t japan’s adoption system considered?

i wanted to take a second to explain in a little more detail why i didn’t do more research into adoption in japan and use that as inspiration in this fic—because it was more specific than just being more familiar with usamerican adoption and fostering laws (if not by much) 

i honestly had a really difficult time finding resources about adopting in japan as japanese citizens, as opposed to either foreigners who had moved to japan and were looking to adopt (who admittedly, may have become citizens) or foreigners who were looking to adopt a child from japan

likely, these resources just aren’t available in english. which makes sense, but does make research for this pretty difficult. from what i can glean, the concept of this au is even less plausible if we’re considering japanese adoption laws and guidelines

if you’re interested, i did look at these two articles in my brief research into adoption in japan, “how to foster and adopt a child in japan” and international social service japan’s page for prosepctive adoptive parents (the issj page has a lot of similar information to what was in this document) 

ultimately, i just didn’t have enough information on adopting within japan to feel comfortable using anything i read to inspire how trucy’s adoption was written for this fic, and some things i did find (like couples needing to be married for three years) were things i was already disregarding in terms of california. so i hope this explanation makes sense!

that's all for now! if you have any questions about this post, have any corrections, or have something you think is important for me to change, please let me know!

if you haven't, you can read red tape and the pieces of youth here on ao3. thank you for reading!

[thatonecrookedsmile]

You know, one thing I don't like when I digitally color sketches is that the colors end up looking a little desaturated because of the paper. It doesn't look bad, I guess, but I have to eventually find a way to "fix" it eventually.

Anyway, today marks 6 years since BATIM Chapter 4 was released. Damn. I know I say something similar every time I recognize the passage of time, but it's hard to believe that it's been more than half a decade since this chapter came out. Time passes, I get older, it's crazy! And I wanted to do something to celebrate. I've never been able to do anything to celebrate this chapter's anniversary since 2019. Which is a shame because "Colossal Wonders" is my favorite chapter in BATIM. Some of my favorite moments from this game are in this chapter.

And every year I try to do something to celebrate the anniversary, but I never manage to do it and it sucks! And as usual, what I really wanted to do this year didn't end up happening. I'll probably do it at some point later, but there was no way I could execute the idea I had in mind in such a short amount of time. But I still wanted to post something today, so something small will have to do.

In this case, oh hey! It's Bertie and Lacie! In recent times I've been going back to old designs of mine of the human cast of the Bendy universe, and since CH4's anniversary was coming up, I thought it would be good to update my designs for both Bertrum and Lacie. It's been so long since I last drew them, so it's about time. I liked the general idea of the last versions of them that I did in the past, so I tried to keep those ideas still, in a way, but at the same time giving them new life. Lacie falls more in this case, tbh. Bert still maintains some of the previous idea, but I had to change a few details. He still looks good, tho.

I originally wanted to put Jack Fain here too, because,by all accounts, Jack Fain only came into existence with the release of CH4 and the remasters of the other chapters. As much as you can put him on CH2's anniversary,he, at the end of the day, was only introduced on April 30, 2018. Problem is, I didn't like the drawing I made of him. I don't know, it wasn't that good in my opinion. And I didn't want to redo the drawing again (this would be my third attempt) and I wouldn't have enough time to redo his part. So today we'll just have Bernie and Lacie. Sorry Jack. Maybe next time, when I show my CH2 cast designs in one place.

Once again, happy anniversary to Chapter 4! This is my favorite chapter of the game to date. It includes some of my favorites from the story, it has several surprises that caught me the first time I saw the chapter, it brought new updates to previous chapters that added things that I still like to this day (and this goes especially for CH2) And overall, it's a pretty cool chapter me thinks. 👍

That one day we can hear more from Bertrum and Lacie again.🙏 (Especially Lacie. Seriously, don't you guys think it's wild that Lacie is the only one of the human cast of BATIM who hasn't appeared in practically anything since the first game. Like, yeah, she's mentioned in the Handbook, but other than that, she's not mentioned in nothing else after, whether in games or books. I think about this from time to time. Truly one of the Bendy characters of all time)