#My webcomic has its own tumblr now!

[bogleech]

Also going to finally make a pinned post for all my stuff:

BOGLEECH - my tumblr blog is named after this website I created around 2002 and still update. Thousands of pages worth of content focusing on creature design as well as real biology. My review of the original Legend of Zelda monsters might be the most straightforward example of my articles. Links to some of the most popular content:

POKEMON REVIEW ARCHIVE: - I rate and review each and every single Pokemon, in Pokedex order, on its merits as a creature design. I also do so as someone whose favorite animals are all parasites.

DIGIMON REVIEW ARCHIVE - same, but more chaotic.

CREEPYPASTA COOKOFF ARCHIVE - for several years I hosted a yearly writing contest before it grew too big for me to keep up with. There are over a thousand user submitted horror, fantasy, sci fi and surrealist stories here emphasizing unconventional, original ideas you seldom see from the "creepypasta" community!

The original "MORTASHEEN" Monster Archive - since the early 2000's I've created and illustrated more than 800 creatures and counting for my own monster-catching world, now set for release as a tabletop RPG setting.

AWFUL HOSPITAL: SERIOUSLY THE WORST EVER (page one): an interactive comedy-horror-sci-fi webcomic I started in 2014 about a medical facility that could maybe be better.

Some of my other internet stuff:

PATREON - constant work makes my patreon updates inconsistent, but the content backlog goes back years with a huge amount of exclusive art and writing. I try to put up new exclusive stuff whenever I can.

ETSY - I design all sorts of original enamel pins like these, plus I sell zero-maintenance terrarium plants (just leave them in a jar!), original books and other things!

COLOR THE ABYSS (available on the above etsy!) - a 30 page educational deep sea coloring book! Includes a few famous favorites like giant isopods and hagfish, but mostly focuses on less popular, often much weirder animals.

UNBELIEVABLE BUGS - also regularly restocked in the etsy store, 30 of the strangest and most surprising arthropods most people have likely never heard of, illustrated by myself and @revretch, written for even the youngest kids to understand (but will likely teach you something new at any age)

My Itch.io and Ko-fi - both sell digital versions of my books, including some creepypasta collections and my first novel, "Return of the Living," about a world of entirely ghosts suddenly dealing with the appearance of ghost-hunting monsters.

TWITCH CHANNEL - I now try to stream something at least monthly, sometimes weekly when possible, from horror games to books and art.

YOUTUBE CHANNEL - archives my twitch streams and other little things.

INSTAGRAM - look at pictures of my huge weird collection of toys and Halloween collectibles

BLUESKY - I'm going to put mainly just updates to my stuff on here. SEE ALSO:

HUMANS-B-GONE - a science fiction animated series by my partner @revretch, about a world of kaiju-size, technologically advanced insects and arachnids to whom vertebrates like us are just pesky little "gubs." Also has a tumblr account @humansbgone FINALLY, HERE'S MY GUIDE AND RESOURCE TO MAKING YOUR OWN INTERNET WEBSITE IN A FEW MINUTES WITH NO KNOWLEDGE OF CODING

[retellingthehobbit]

Tolkien Webcomic Recommendations!

I know people here follow me for my webcomic adaptation of the Hobbit. So I thought I’d share recommendations for my favorite similar Tolkien comic projects, in case people are looking for other Tolkien webcomics to read! :D

My recs will be mainly Tolkien comics that adapt portions of the original books, just with their own unique spin on them.

1. Sam and Frodo Comics, by Molly Knox Ostertag

Ostertag is probably the most well known artist on this list! She is a professional graphic novel artist who does gorgeous adaptations of scenes from Lord of the Rings, read through a queer lens, in order to tell the story of Frodo and Sam’s love for each other. This is mixed in with comics based on her own Tolkien-inspired writing. I’m focusing on comics in this rec list, but I’ll add that Ostertag has also written a lot of engaging prose fanfic with illustrations.

“Sam and Frodo Comics”

“In All the Ways There Were” (illustrated prose fanfic adaptation)

2.Lord of the Rings Book Canon Comics, by @yambits

Yambits does beautiful adaptations of scenes from the original lord of the rings books that do not appear in the New Line Cinema films, hewing very close to the original prose, and focusing on the love between Frodo and Sam. I especially love the way they depict the magical temptation of the Ring.

“Ithilien,” an adaptation of Frodo & Sam’s encounter with Faramir

“In the Lair,” an adaptation of Sam & Frodo journeying together into Shelob’s lair

“The Tower,” an adaptation of Sam journeying to the tower of Cirith Ungol to rescue Frodo

“Escape from the Tower,” an adaptation of Sam and Frodo leaving Cirith Ungol to journey into Mordor

The Ringbearers, a comic about the One Ring reflecting on the resilience of hobbits

3. Sansukh the Webcomic, by @fishfingersandscarves and @determamfidd

Sansukh is a well-loved Bagginshield fanfiction that is now getting a webcomic adaptation co-created by the original author. The premise is that after his death, Thorin Oakenshield is not able to speak to his surviving loved ones, but can influence them in subtle ways; he uses this power to help inspire Gimli to join the Fellowship of the Ring and protect Bilbo’s nephew. From there the fic becomes an “adaptation” of Lord of the Rings, retelling the trilogy through its new lens until the very end.

This is a bit of an outlier on this list because it’s an adaptation of a fanfic that’s an adaptation of the books, rather than an adaptation of the book. However, if you’re into the Hobbit fandom/Bagginshield, I recommend checking it out! It’s also one of the few comics on this list that is currently updating. :)

@sansukhcomic (tumblr blog)

Chapter one

Original fanfic the comic is based on

4. The Ainulindalae from the Silmarillion, by Evan Palmer Comics

People who know me, know that I’m *usually* not a big Silmarillion person. However!

Comic artist Evan Palmer did a gorgeous adaptation of the Ainulindale. This section of the Silmarillion describes the elven myth of creation, the ancient years where the world was created through a divine magical song. Palmer’s Fantasia-inspired expressive watercolor art really helps bring this section of the story to life!

Full comic

5.The 1989 Hobbit Comic adaptation, by Chuck Dixon and David T Wenzel

This is another outlier because it’s a physical comic book, rather than a webcomic- and unlike all the other recs this is an “official” adaptation produced by an actual publishing company rather than a zero-budget work made by an indie creator working alone/with a partner. I’m unsure if it can be found online.

It’s an adaptation of the Hobbit that hews extremely close to the original book, making practically no changes at all. It has very gorgeous watercolor illustrations! ( It’s been a big inspiration for me on my own little comic adaptation of the hobbit shsjd.) This is also the only comic on the list I’ll offer critique of, because it’s the only one made by an actual company with a budget— so I’ll say that because of page limits imposed on the comic many of the pages can feel overcrowded with prose, and emotional beats/comedy beats sometimes aren’t given the time to properly land. At times it feels less like a comic adaptation and more like reading the original prose of the Hobbit accompanied by some very beautiful illustrations. But if that’s what you’re into it’s great!

It’s a fun well-illustrated read that I recommend. I’m not sure where people can find copies; I stumbled across it in my library, so they’re definitely still around.

If anyone has additional tolkien comic recommendations,especially ones that can be found easily online, feel free to add them to this list! : D

[whisper-court]

WHISPER COURT, my new webcomic/graphic novel, is releasing NOW on Tumblr, Webtoon, and Tapastic!

The Whisper Court Ghost Sanctuary has been a training ground for new paranormal investigators for over a hundred years. Each and every home is haunted by its own spirit, both helpful and vengeful.

All except for one.

Finch forms suddenly and unexpectedly within this unhaunted house. They have no memories of who they were before they appeared, something that catches the attention of the other Ghosts within the Sanctuary.

Finch must now attempt to gain a sense of identity before the month is over, or else they will cease to exist. All the while, more and more distractions pile up. Why is the Head Caretaker so interested in Finch? Why do they have no memory or past? Why do Ghosts keep disappearing from the neighborhood?

And why did all of this only start happening when Finch arrived?

The first 8 pages are all releasing here, today, throughout the day for our special release-day event! Follow this blog if you'd like to join us on our little journey together!

Want to support the comic? Support me over on Patreon!

Get pages early, as well as your name on Webtoon/Tapastic uploads!

You could also join the DISCORD (16+) for this and all my other projects to get notified when pages go up!)

Release Trailer - YouTube Version

[popxauh]

Hello hello! I come to introduce you to my oc, his name is Greg, he has certainly been created for years (approximately 9 years old, he is already turning 10-)

I won't tell much about his story, that will be with time, but I will tell you that it is based on his appearance and because some aspects are similar in Greg and RGB 🫂

and if you ask...yes, it is based on RGB from The property of hate, let me tell you a brief summary HAHAHAHA-

well basically I was browsing Tumblr looking for ideas to redesign Greg and I came across a fanart of this same character, RGB, I honestly liked the character design at first glance, so I used it without knowing at first where it came from... .well I ended up finding out a few months later that that same character was coming out of a webcomic, I wanted to give him a chance...now here they see me as a big fan HAHAHAHA

There are certainly several things that I liked about this same character, at first I wanted to copy the character as he is, but obviously over time I gave him his own things, his own personality, history, etc.

Of course some aspects of this character are similar to RGB, I don't deny that, there are things about this character that I loved and wanted to add, but he has his own things too!

(but as I said, it will be seen over time that drawings of this same one will be published along with its history, etc.)

Also, thanks for taking the time to read this far, I really appreciate it! 👤💐

AAAA SARAH JOLLEY I LOVE YOU 🫂💐🌟✨🌟😭

RGB character belongs to @modmad !

//Spanish ver.//

Hola hola! Vengo a presentarles a mi oc, su nombre es Greg, ciertamente tiene años de creado (aproximadamente 9 años, ya está cumpliendo 10-)

No contaré mucho sobre su historia, eso será con el tiempo, pero les diré que se basa en su apariencia y porque algunos aspectos son similares en Greg y RGB 🫂

y si preguntas…si, está basado en RGB de The property of hate, déjame decirte un breve resumen JAJAJAJA-

bueno básicamente estaba navegando por Tumblr buscando ideas para rediseñar a Greg y me encontré con un fanart de este mismo personaje, RGB, sinceramente me gustó el diseño del personaje a primera vista, así que lo usé sin saber al principio de dónde venía... .bueno me terminé enterando a los pocos meses que ese mismo personaje salía de un webcomic, quería darle una oportunidad...ahora aquí me ven como un gran fan JAJAJAJA

Ciertamente hay varias cosas que me gustaron de este mismo personaje, al principio quise copiar al personaje tal cual es, pero obviamente con el tiempo le fui dando cosas propias, su propia personalidad, historia, etc.

Por supuesto que algunos aspectos de este personaje son similares al RGB, no lo niego, hay cosas de este personaje que me encantaron y quería agregar, ¡pero él también tiene sus propias cosas!

(pero como dije, se verá con el tiempo que se publicarán dibujos de este mismo junto con su historia, etc.)

Además, gracias por tomarse el tiempo de leer hasta aquí, ¡realmente lo aprecio! 👤💐

AAAA SARAH JOLLEY TE AMO 🫂💐🌟✨🌟😭

El personaje de RGB pertenece a @modmad !

(ILOVEUARTT!!)

[heartfulselkie]

WIP Game

Thanks @coffeebanana and @rosie-b for the tag, and thank you @kasienda for coming up with this new game!

List the titles your top five priorities for WIP updates (link your fics for new readers!)

An upcoming scene, event, or detail in each fic that you're looking forward to writing

Bonus: make a poll for your followers to vote on which top 5 WIP they are most excited to see an update on!

Then tag 10 writer friends!

WIP TITLES

So I'm kind of cheating a bit with my choices here I guess since I have a lot of ideas but not so many actual active WiPs. So some of these aren't actually stuff that has been posted (or not posted in fic form) but they're all what my rodent brain is rotating right now.

Bell the Cat - Ladyblanc Knight AU. Enemies to Reluctant Allies to Lovers. Plenty of angst and trauma to be had in this one!

2. Sad Machine - Not currently available. I'm attempting aiming to have the fic more or less completed before I start posting. Futurist/Cyberpunk-type AU. No Miraculous but there's a dash of vigilantism and mysterious happenings to solve. And some questionable ethics (thanks Gabe).

3. Porceline Girl - Emonette and Badrien (post Paris Special) Oneshot that I'm hoping to finish soon. They're just angsty teens trying to figure out what is love how to be around each other.

4. Kaleidoscope - (not currently a posted fic so link leads to my tumblr tag) Kwami Swap AU with a dose of amnesia! Love Square is a mess in this with a Reunioned Ghostbug trying to solve all the problems. Adrien needs a coffee and a nap. Tikki needs a drink.

5. Citrus and Lavender - Enemies to Lovers AU with Chat Noir being deceived into being on Hawk Moth's side from the very beginning. The kids need therapy and Gabriel needs jail.

UPCOMING

There's is so much I'm looking forward to with Bell the Cat, but with the upcoming chapters I'm excited about introducing some more characters into this world! And of course all the Ladyblanc banter to be had!

2. This is my little pet project at the moment that I am slow roasting in the microwave. There are so many things that I am foaming at the mouth for that I want to just spit the fic out onto ao3 already but I'm trying to go slow with this one.

3. I'm just excited to feed myself more Toxigriffe, even if its in Adrinette form. I have so many ideas for these two but this oneshot is the closest to being finished. I'm excited to have it done (soon! hopefully!)!

4. Another one that's been slow roasting for a bit. I'll admit I'm still undecided with how I want to post this - do I go full fanfic on ao3 with it? Or a webcomic-style on tumblr? Perhaps a hybrid of both? I normally go with writing for longer stories, but this AU really got its interest and following through my random comics of it. It's exciting to think about my options as I could really challenge myself with it (even if opting for a more webcomic style is terrifying in its own way).

5. We're finally reaching the point in the story where Ladynoir are trying to transition from stalwart enemies to shy and unsure partners. All sides of the love square are standing on bambi legs right now as things are very new and scary - but at least they'll slowly learn they have each other to lean on!

I think most of my usual victims have been tagged already - so consider this an open invitation to anyone who wants to do it! I'm tagging you! Yes, you!

[nightshadehoney]

I never watched James Somerton's shitty Killing Stalking video because I was trying to be good to myself and avoid something that I knew would make me very angry. In fact, I never watched any of his stuff because the fact that he made a video like that was enough to discount any thing he ever had to say (also I heard about the Celluloid Closet plagiarism).

But man, is the James Somerton discourse bringing a lot of Killing Stalking-related feelings back up for me. Because I'm mad; I'm still so mad. There are a suprising amount of people on social media who are saying they never watched any of his stuff except for the Killing Stalking video. I'm annoyed not just to find out that the vid had that sort of reach and influence, but also because Somerton's unmasking hasn't seemed to make people reasses the validity of the kind of thing he was saying. People are just now being like "hmm I think this guy might have Issues With Women" but that doesn't warrant any reflection on what exactly the motivation is of people who complain about women enjoying a niche webcomic? Because I don't actually believe you're concerned about the influence of some obscure piece of media when you advertise its existence to your large audience many of whom had not heard of it and would never have heard of it but for your transparent outrage porn video. It's rage bait and the target was women that are perceived as straight. A big channel has publicized the fact that they excised a section that endorsed the opinions in this video from their own because they became aware of Somerton's plagiarism and dishonesty (presumably; if it was actually because they recognized his views were coming from a sexist place I would welcome a clarification). And you know, I don't think that's a good look actually. That you needed to be told he was a bad person and couldn't idependently put together that the misogynist man was saying misogynist things.

The comic ended years ago and the fandom has gone mostly quiet, but to this day people are still the peddling the"fujoshi/stupid teenage girls who don't know what's good for them are shipping these characters because they are too braindead to realize it's not a romance; it's a horror, two things I believe are mutually exclusive. I am smarter than all of these cringe degenerates" bullshit. It's in the comments of the hbomberguy video even; one comment was such a gross misrepresentation of the series that my friend needed to talk me down from getting into a pointless youtube comments argument (bless him) because these people are officially making me lose my marbles.

This narrative is full of shit, it's demonstrably not fucking true. You can go on the artist's twitter right now and its full of her retweeting shippy fanart of that pairing readers were apparently never intended to ship.

(I don't think Koogi knows or cares about James Somerton; she just reblogs the works of fans who tag her. This made me laugh though).

Now this is all speculation because he died decades before social media existed, but I think if Nabokov was alive today his twitter would not be full of Humbert Humbert x Dolores Haze fanart. And yet, I have unironically seen people compare shipping Sangwoo and Bum in Killing Stalking with the misreading of Lolita as a precocious sexual temptress more than once.

And this isn't me saying that Killing Stalking is the disgusting"pro-sexualized abuse" comic that tumblr purity police used to characterize it as either. One of these days I'm going to go truly bonkers and end up banging pots and pans on the street corner, yelling at random innocent passerbys about how stories about romantic and sexual relationships are not required to be Hallmark movies. You can make art about the negative, dark, and troubling parts of these feelings and relationships without creating a pat morality tale. You don't need to approach media analysis like your 7th grade teacher has assigned you an essay on explaining what a novel's "message" is.

Nobody, not the author and not the fans, genuinely thinks that Sangwoo and Bum have a healthy or aspirational relationship. This hypothetical person that does not understand the relationship is toxic doesn't exist. Because girls and women, even the ones having cringey fandom fun on tiktok or whatever, are not so stupid and naive that they are unware that breaking someone's legs and locking them in a muder basement is bad. The type of concern troll rhetoric Somerton employed in his video is directed near exclusively at women interested in men and there's a reason for this. Women are not responsible for abuse that men do to them; nobody is responsible for their partner abusing them. If I never saw people spit this bullshit again it would be too soon.

[beesmygod]

i only read tumblr once a day because i [try] to stay sane so only just caught up with the art discourse, which I do have some bits n shit I want to add: a bit fasile for one but, dont you as an artist have upkeep and resource needs to produce? even if its just like...computer, tablet and necessities to continue existence because art takes time to make, those are real, and cost money. "art" in an absolute sense can be made for free with minimal time through just thinking, but like, a webcomic that is a physical thing made of electronic patterns and hosted on a server, takes time and takes stuff. "Webcomics" isnt a free infinitely repeating resource, and you are more than a machine to create webcomic, and none of us are infinite as a resource! at worst, art hits public domain eventually. that said even from that place of survival in capitalistic society it DOES make sense to at least have free public facing art as PROMOTION even if its just idk downtime sketches, doodles, memes, fanart etc so like im not 100% disagreeing yknow, and I am not and artists cant be a paying consumer my/their own art, art has to exist for the self too, the self that isnt a "paying class", or i just start making marvel movies and then its time to find my cool wet hole in the dirt and express my creative individuality like im a mathmatician of statistical analysis of fluid dynamics.

now that im awake i was going to answer these point by point, but this kind of flies past my point that making art exclusively for those who pay is abysmal and treating your audience like they're thieves is a poisonous and off-putting response to one's perceived "loss of income" (which is not even theft because the item being "stolen" can be reproduced infinitely. im talking about like a digital image like a comic page and not a physical item where there's limited copies lol). people either want to pay you or they dont; you can't force people to pay you by making access to your work harder, worse, more inconvenient, and more degrading to your audience. you can't induce artificial scarcity and be a good person.

like yeah obviously art production takes money. that's why most artists work desk jobs instead of trying to make it a solo venture and just expecting the world around them to pick up their slack. i didn't come out of a lotus blossom with a tablet ready to go, i worked desk jobs from age 15-24 in order to have enough savings to cushion myself if need be and pay for base supplies. i use tablets and items gifted/sold to me at a steep discount by my friends. i lived really poor in order to have the life i wanted. and i really loved it lol. i still think of that time so fondly.

once the comic is produced and posted, it is free for my audience to look at and the reproduction costs of the finished image is 0 dollars. it can be copied and reposted freely without charge. it costs me basically nothing to host. the production costs are currently covered by patreon donations. if they were no longer covered by patreon donations i would get a desk job instead of making my choice to go into the financially unsuccessful field of the arts my audience's personal problem to solve. if i don't make things people want to buy, that's my problem and not my audience's.

yeah, it would suck to have to stop doing this because its no longer financially viable (it is really financially hard right now; the state of the world around us is not conductive to the patreon life), but i wasn't entitled to it anyway. i get to make art for a living bc i have an audience that permits me to. why would i start treating them like dogshit or lying about value of my work to squeeze extra money out of them after what they gifted me?

[dreamersingingroses]

Help Getting BL Manhwa Paljae Licensed

As per an initiative started on Reddit, I would like to ask you for help in regards to the potential licensing of the BL manhwa Paljae, Child of Winter.

I'm not kidding when I say this manhwa is a treat for the eyes.

With its Korean-inspired mythology and eery fantasy elements, Paljae is a beatiful story about a blind, powerful dosa (akin to a cultivator) who saves the life of a mysterious creature close to death that seems to be weakened by high temperatures and empowered by Winter season.

This is a mesmerizing manhwa both in artstyle and content. The exploration of human emotions, the blossoming of deep-rooted love and lifelong lessons are just the tip of this phenomenal story about two messed up beings finding companionship in each other.

I could sing praises about this story for hours and still it wouldn't be enough to express just how good it is. If this tiny summary has picked your interest, or if you're already acquainted with the story, please spare me five (5) more minutes!

See, as many of you know, the publishing house Seven Seas Entertainment opens a reader's survey every month to get suggestions from people about what their new licenses should be. From personal experience, I know getting a publisher's attention is hard (very much so), which means that this survey is a great opportunity to hopefully make them consider licensing this title.

As readers, we have the power to suggest what we're interested in buying, and we have to take this chance.

So without further ado, I propose we take this monthly surveys to get them to at least consider Paljae as a potential license.

A user on Reddit posted how you can help us by participating in the monthly surveys with instructions to do so: https://www.reddit.com/r/Paljae_ChildofWinter/s/KamfbYGn18

If you don't want to exit Tumblr right now, keep reading for my own summary of the post.

Whether you're familiar with Seven Seas or just want to give us a hand, if you're interested in reading Paljae, are already in love with it or just want to support the author, please consider taking Seven Seas Entertainment's monthly survey.

How can I help?

1. Once you click on the link, you'll be redirected to the FREE survey.

2. You will need to give them an email. This is only so they can make sure one person doesn't fill in multiple surveys. Your email won't be shared with their associates, and you won't be sent any emails either. I've been participating with other less wholesome suggestions for months, and it's alright.

3. You will have to answer a brief multiple-choice questionnaire about the formats you prefer to read manhwas, comics and the like.

4. Frequently, there will be a compulsory question about their new releases, so you may be prompted to choose the ones that pick your interest. Their covers and names will be included in a multiple-choice format, so have fun looking at them :)

5. There will be a question about which WEBTOON/WEBCOMIC you'd like to see licensed. This is where you can type Paljae, Child of Winter.

6. Finally, if you want to participate in their monthly raffle and win a paperback they published during the year prior, just enter your email in the last section. This is voluntary and won't affect the consideration of your answers.

We Tumblerinas know that fandom makes impossible things come true, and wouldn't it be awesome if we could make this happen?

You can find the link for their monthly reader's survey in different places:

- At the end of their webpage, https://sevenseasentertainment.com/

It will look something like this:

- On Instagram, in their stories: https://www.instagram.com/sevenseasentertainment?igsh=MWpsZ2xuZ2xvdG8zaA==

It will look something like this:

- On Twitter/X/whatever (I know we don't talk 'bout X around here, but still), https://twitter.com/gomanga

The tweet will usually be posted the first week of every month.

- On the reddit post linked in this publication, https://www.reddit.com/r/Paljae_ChildofWinter/s/KamfbYGn18

[This user will update the link every month, so that you can access the newest version whenever you see this post.]

That being said, I am very thankful for your time and I hope you can spare a few minutes to make this a reality. Thank you very much!

[abimee]

like maybe this is just in passing cause i know ive done this before where i spent 2 years not drawing (this however was pre-internet) but i just woke up one day with no will to continue drawing and like. just thinking about how much i sacrificed from an early age for this only to still be at the starting line of this metaphorical race while everyone else has already gone home and turned off the field lights because the race is over

like i was always pushed to become an artist when i was younger by job recruiters, teachers, therapists, other artists, to the point where i gave up my dream of becoming a writer to pursue art, i gave up going to college or taking classes in highschool or doing anything else like picking up a sport or building another skill all because art was like the path laid out for me from a young age, because i had ''skill'' since i was so little and people encouraged anything from me than art

so like waking up one day to realize ive gotten nowhere with my art and that ive been just standing still in whats supposed to be a lap race just sort of sucked everything out from me.

I had so many dreams when i was younger like being a comic strip maker in the newspaper or having a webcomic on my own site, i remember looking up to so many popular tumblr artists and thinking one day ill be popular just like them, i wanted to be well known and to have merchandise and prints and zines and artbooks or i wanted to be in the papers or on posters or on the television and just. none of that really happened because i never got ''good enough'' for anything.

my skills are the same as they were when i was 13 and thinking of how cool its going to be when i become a ''big artist'', where i was going to be known and i was going to draw such cool art like the stuff i saw on the internet, but none of that really happened. and its not like i havent tried. it just all feels the same and so worthless

like what is there worth continuing to do this. this isnt even about popularity or fame but just about how it feels like ive been running in place all my life and that theres no way forward, and how much i threw away and gave up on and missed for my art. I sacrificed years of my life and the chance to do something for it thinking something would happen and now i just dont even know why i try anymore

ANYWHO

[alexanderwales]

The Current WIP List

Inspired by this post by @a-memory-a-distant-echo, this is a list of ongoing works-in-progress, where "in progress" I will define as "I have added at least one sentence in the last year as an indicator of actual mental load being used". This does not include worldbuilding or planning documents, which spring up like weeds. I am also including the ones that I get paid for via Patreon or publication deals or whatever.

Thresholder is my currently ongoing web serial, publishing two chapters a week (in theory ...). It's about a guy who travels between worlds and fights other people who travel between worlds, with each world being a relatively contained book. Currently about 750K words.

Doomsday Pivot! is, in theory, the follow-up to Thresholder, about a start-up that has to make a sudden change in plans when the end of the world gives everyone a character class. First book is rough draft complete but needs some responses to developmental editing, sitting at 104K words. (You can read a noncanonical first chapter here, which I had previously made public on my discord.)

Millennial Scarlet is a webcomic I write about a gig-economy demon hunter. Writing comics is awesome, mostly because I get to see my words come to life. In word count ... I'm not sure right now, but probably not all that much. In the middle of writing the fourth issue right now.

Glimwarden was a web serial that I abandoned, a black mark on my record. I intend to go back to it at some point, because it was my wife's favorite. You can read it up to the point where it was abandoned here. There are currently ~3 unreleased chapters, but most of the effort put into it has been rewriting it and bringing it up to snuff, as well as fixing some problems with it. Will get a relaunch at some point, probably, when I'm ready to commit to that. No idea on the word count.

Untitled Dance Magic story is probably a short story, currently ~5K words. It's based around a magic system where people do ballroom dance to create architecture, and is a somewhat traditional romance and/or coming of age story. I started writing it on a whim after a conversation with @etirabys at LessOnline, and hopefully they haven't started their own story, and hopefully if they have, hopefully their story doesn't overlap mine. I'll check before posting, hoping to get this one finished and out there.

Kensuke Fucks the World is an existentialist horror erotic novel, which I describe as being "like the Erogamer, but sad". Currently 75K words, and might never see the light of day. I think I can wrap it up in another 25K words, but I think it needs a lot of work.

Long Stairs will probably be novella length in its finished form, and will probably not be finished. It's an old story, which predates Worth the Candle by a few months, and is about a military fireteam making a routine delve into an endless shifting dungeon that the US military has already pulled a lot of magic out of. Medics with clerical healing, wands and firearms, high fantasy and military. There's unfortunately some stuff in there that I cannibalized for WtC that needs to be changed so it's not a repeat, but nothing structural, and there are a lot of plot beats that I enjoy in both the 15K words that are already written and what's in the notes. I did not put a bunch of work into this one, but it was one of those cases where I was reading through old stuff and got enough of a head of steam that it latched onto me again. (I also don't know enough about the military or how to write that kind of stuff, which is one of the reasons that this fic never got my full attention.)

The Lot is a story that's basically just "the backrooms, but with cars". It think it was inspired by a tumblr post, but probably won't be finished, since it's probably novella length. Currently 9K words, more a character study than it is about people stuck in an infinite parking lot and scrounging off what they can find in glove compartments.

Kitchen Sink is a bureauporn/bureaupunk novel about the agency created to deal with the rise of mutants circa 1977. Currently a mere 9K words, but the plan was for each successive part of the book to focus on another genre being discovered by the department, so you'd get a book with wizards, with vampires, with aliens, etc., mostly with a focus on how these are handled on an administrative level. No way I would ever be able to sell it, unfortunately.

Robot Team Isekai (not its real title) is about a van full of kids on their way to a robotics team meet that get transported to another world where their individual specialties grant them awesome abilities in a "your hyperfixation makes you perfectly adapted to the fantasy world" kind of way, but for five people with different hyperfixations. 2K words, probably will never see the light of day.

Full Meta vol. 2 is a novel about a group of high school students who get metafiction powers, so like ... one girl gets the ability to read the text of the novel they're in whenever someone is engaging in exposition, one guy can read the flashbacks, someone can read all the romance scenes or whatever, and they have a dysfunctional time dealing with each other through college and into adulthood. I fully recognize that calling it "Full Meta vol. 2" when no first volume exists is a gimmick title and would be confusing enough to immediately turn people away.

Dark Wizard of Donkerk was an old NaNo novel, but got halfway dev edited before my dev editor on that one flaked. I think it's a good story, just a matter of getting into the guts of it and making it great, but that takes time. 173K words, but this is old old. If you like rough, unpolished creative output, you can read it on my website.

Untitled Hermione/Draco fanfic is, uh ... I guess according to the logs was something that I put effort into in late 2023. I have read vanishingly little HP fanfic, and I'm sure there's a ton of this stuff, and that some of it is even good. This one doesn't adhere too much to canon or fanon, and is mostly about trying to write a realistic racist who falls in love with someone he's racist against. 14K words, I cannot believe I added anything to this recently, but apparently I have.

Technically by the criteria set out, I should count all seven of the NaNo test chapters I wrote. Of those, the only ones that have retained any brain space are "The Inevitable Return of Nathaniel Greene" and "Dungeon Core".

There are a few more that are technically outside the arbitrary time limit of one year, but I'm going to include them because I have thought about them in the last year (and will not include the ones that I have not thought about).

Of Witches and Wizards is what I thought was a romance but was told does not fit the apparently pretty exacting mold of a "romance novel". It's about a widowed witch whose two sons have left for college and a wizard who travels the world writing about places for a travel guide. They fall in love. Tons of worldbuilding stuff as they visit different cities and see the breadth and beauty of magic in the world. 15K words right now, was going to be a nice and slender novel.

Eager Readers in Your Area was a short story I wrote a year and a half ago. The WIP is a novel-length version of that about ... art, artists, AI art, dealing with people online, and a bunch of other stuff. I wrote an outline I thought was quite good, but if the short story is the first chapter, then I want an equally good and tight second chapter, and that's hard to do.

Slaver Slayer (not final title) was about a slave who assassinates a high-ranking member of the kingdom and through an oversight gets a magical artifact that might possibly let her kill her way through the monarchy in an attempt to end the institution of slavery. The other protagonist is a detective who's grappling with his complicity in the system and is trying to stop her. Made it to 13K words. Another one of those that was outlined to be a nice tight novel.

[genericpuff]

Hey quick question.

How do you know if you should make a webcomic? I have this story idea that’s been floating around in the back of my head that I think could work well for a comic series. But the problem is I’m mainly used to writing screenplays and more traditional writing.

What I’m saying is, how can I tell if making a webcomic is worth it or if I should stick in my comfort zone?

I mean, there's no definitive right answer when it comes to "knowing" if you should make a webcomic. It really just comes down to you. Do you really like the medium? Do you feel your story has to be told within that medium to achieve its goals?

Same thing goes for whether or not it's "worth it", it really comes down to how you define that. For some people, simply posting their comics online to a few readers each week is worth it. For others, if it doesn't get into print or publishing or whatever have you, it might not be quite so justifiable to keep up with. Neither is better or worse than the other, both reasons are valid because it ultimately comes down to what we as individuals are trying to accomplish and what we define as "worth it" on a personal level.

I actually live on both sides of the spectrum right now because with Rekindled, posting it on Tumblr and getting all the great feedback and company through the audience it's gained makes it worth it. But that worth was defined by my expectations going in - I wasn't making Rekindled for money (legally I can't), I wasn't making it to get an Originals deal or anything of the sort, I was just making it because I found myself deadset on going through with it after months of it living in my head rent free, and so what I've gotten out of it as a result is very much worth it, all I was really looking for was maybe some other readers who would enjoy reading a transformative 'foe fiction' from a former LO fan and I've found those readers in spades simply due to the demand.

Time Gate, on the other hand, was something that I wanted for years to be a 'successful' project, defined more by actual tangible growth and gain. Because I came up with it as a kid, for a long time it was my "magnum opus" project, the thing that I wanted to see get turned into books and an anime and a video game and all those sorts of things as 'proof' of how good it was. Of course, I know now years later that those expectations were WAY too high and it resulted in me feeling incredibly depressed over it for ages. It made it hard to work on and even though I did have some readers, I didn't see it as "worth it" because my expectations were a lot higher than that of Rekindled's going in. But that was simply a matter of experience at that point, because I had been making original comics for so long, when I went into Rekindled I knew a lot more what I was capable of, what I wasn't capable of, and what boundaries I was willing to put down for myself. Even still, I do still want to return to Time Gate some day and when I do, I want to still treat it like a series I want to get off the ground as an actual published piece of work - it's just that this time around, I actually know how to make those steps and be proactive in my approach (and I know where to keep my expectations) which is certainly a perspective and skillset I didn't have when I was 15 LMAO

I will say, realistically speaking, it is a lot harder to pursue webcomics as a writer, because the reality of this medium is that most people who go into it are artists who learn how to write to make a webcomic, not the other way around. Unless you're willing to learn how to draw - which is a whole other skillset that requires years of work and patience - you're likely going to have to seek someone to collaborate with and - I cannot stress this enough - it's not going to be someone you simply find on reddit who's willing to work for free. Again, many of us as artists went into webcomics with a project already in mind, so most artists are already working on their own passion projects, trying to convince someone else to work on yours is just not realistic or fair. I'm fortunate enough to have @banshriek along for the production of Rekindled and even then I still pay for their contributions out of pocket, they're as invested in an LO rewrite project as I am (and thus they're given a lot of room to make suggestions in both the set designs and the writing), and I still had to carry the first 20ish episodes on my own before they joined along, i.e. I would still be making Rekindled if they weren't onboard, but having them is a massive help that's taken the comic to a whole other level in its artistic production.

But that doesn't mean it's hopeless! There's a lot of interest right now in webnovels and writing comic scripts is still a completely viable way to get into the comics industry if you're really interested in doing so (fun fact: before I was making comics, I wrote fanfiction! This is probably not shocking to hear all things considered LMAO) There's a reason Webtoons owns Wattpad now, webnovels are a no-brainer when it comes to adaptations to visual mediums, and webcomics have become part of that environment by extension. So at the very least, if you want to get your story out there, there are loads of ways to do it that don't require you to make a comic - but if you really want to make one, there are ways to get into that industry through writing in other ways such as pitching scripts to comic publishers and/or going indie with webnovels. Ultimately, if many of us webcomic creators stopped drawing our works, we'd still be coming up with stories to write, because that's what's really at the heart of these sorts of projects. So even if you can't get into comics right away due to lack of visual artistry, that doesn't mean it's off the table forever ( ´ ∀ `)ノ～ ♡

Sorry, that was a lot of rambling but I hope it helps ! Remember to keep your goals and expectations manageable, and most of all, write lots! You'll be doing it anyways regardless of whether or not you get into comics, so whatever value you see in getting into comics is up to you to determine! You don't have to know right away, it might be something you'll find along the way or have to adjust as you get more experience, but don't stop yourself from getting creative and messing around until you find out what works! You won't know if it was worth leaving your comfort zone until you try it <3

Good luck! (•̀ᴗ•́)و

[mothpile]

mes's webcomic recommendations

do YOU like webcomics or want to read some ? here are some i think are good NO im not gonna put my own here even if i think its good. -_-

starting with . i Think these ones are popular and well known..?

Paranatural - A story about paranormal ghosts and stuff. It's a real fun time, and the story is really good. The author's art progression is really impressive, truly skilled with paneling and such. It does eventually shift into a webnovel format with drawings as the author couldn't keep up with doing pages like before, and the quality of goodness of the story stays strong 👍👍

Tiger, Tiger - Story about the importance of sea sponges. Also a fun time, sea faring adventure about, again, sea sponges and how important they are nothing else OK? promise. (liar) PHENOMENAL artwork, very pretty to look at.... 👍👍

The Property of Hate - I need to reread it because i forgetted a lot but its such a cool looking comic and sooo interesting OK?! i swear. It's about a kid being a hero.

Vainglorious - a fun comic about a dragon facing Hubris Consequences. The main trio is real fun, the world is cool, all in all fun comic okie !!

Sakana - Slice-of-life comic about some folks working at a fish stall in a fish market. Real fun. Been on hiatus for four years, but is gonna make a comeback soon (author is working on building up buffer pages And then... ! ) But yeah! real fun.

Witchy - ... one i have to reread, it's been on hiatus since forever as the author was working on another comic (thatllbe out... in a while?), though i assume when that's done they'll come back to this...? Anyhow, I remember it being a very gripping story, and beautifully drawn... Also it's about witches. if. you . couldnt tell by the.. title...

NOW, onto ones that ... i dont Think are super well known ... ?

EcopportunityX - An interactive stick figure limited color palette comic about a facility where bad shit has happened ! uhoh! What the hell happened here! Follow the protagonist on their journey of learning what happened, and escaping the facility. Also, space pinball and ball pit beast is there. 👍👍👍

Eye in the Sky - And it only feels right to bring it up as well, but this is a fancomic of ecopportunityX ! ... Contains eox spoilers, so perhaps read the original first! This one features original characters and takes place a bit before eox, it's nice ok i like it :]

Gold Scissors - One of my all time favourites TBH. The art is nice, I love the story, the world is so cool i love it a lot... do yourself a favor and read it...

Midnight Connection - Finished! by the author of Gold Scissors, it's a short comic that takes place in the same universe, you can get through it in one sitting!! sniffles.

Brainchild - Comic about girl seeing weeeeeird stuff. Ghosts?! who knows. Tis a cool one OK read it...

Fairmeadow - "i hate being on the hippee comune they are always telling me Peace and Love on planet earth , orc lady, Peace and Love, and they do not leave me alone" - true real 100% words said. you can read it and youll see. Very pretty looking, ...

Holly & Macy and Everyone Else - comic about two teens learning about HOMOSEXUALITY and being a witch and its a very sweet .. i like it ok? it's also on tumblr @/ hollymacycomic

Falling to Far - i thiiink? its kinda just getting started, its about two star kids that just arrived to the planet of Far, and they are just checking how things are here rn. okie! its nice ITS ON TUMBLR! my fellow tumblr-hosted webcomicers lets gooooo

Daisy in DREAMLAND - ........ not a .. webcomic. Tis more a webnovel, i believe. It has pictures. Very cool looking guys, love the style, someone drench this cat in a bucket of water.

Needleminder - because fuck it we put webnovels here too I GUESS. it has pictures sometimes. haven't caught up with it recently tho BUT it's Very interesting and gets weird with it in cool ways...

Star Impact - comic about boxing! fighting! and people have gloves that give them a gimmick power tis pretty fuckin cool!

Kitty Corner - Comic about someone who sees ghosts. this ones kiiinda just getting started i think..? put its been promising so far, i like it ANOTHER TUMBLRHOSTED WEBCOMIC LETS GO BABY!

PISS HOLE - The greatest comic ever drawn with a broken trackpad.

Going Home - a comicabout a kid who has t *red dot appears on forehead* *sweats**starts to go get the link to the comic* *snipers pull the t

[pocketbelt]

Steam Next Fest, October 2024

Would've done this on the blog like the last one but now there's a broken login screen (despite being logged in) that locks me out of image uploads specifically, so, fuck it, tumblr it is from now on I guess.

The haul was mixed, this time, just 23 or so games. The algorithm was against me most likely and seemed to prefer showing me rogueslop and barely coherent UE Asset Store piles roughly shoved into the shape of a game. I also, perhaps, was more judging this time, as I'm currently minimising what I pick up as I play through all the Yakuzas and try to winnow down my backlog (it's 174 or so through Steam alone, and that's not counting shit on the wishlist (79), though over half of that isn't out).

The lows were quite low but the highs were quite high.

The Book of Buja

Developer & Publisher: I.J. White Release: TBC

I like to note where devs come from just to highlight how widespread and diverse the gaming scene is these days. In this case, the developer is a solo independent from America.

The Book of Buja plays like a 2D Zelda, and by this demo it's shaping up to be a pretty good one. Jury's out on if you get equippable items but there are ones that augment what you do, such as the boots that let you jump over 1-tile gaps in the demo, which help keep things simple, and the little optional puzzles in caves for extra hearts are decently clever given how simple the moveset to work with is.

It feels pretty good to play, you can jab fairly fast (though enemies have post-hit invuln which is a little annoying), movement is very orderly and the grid-based environment (though not your movement) helps keep combat and moving smooth and quick. The music's pretty good, the story set-up is rather intriguing and I really like the takes on sprite art and animation here, it hits on the dichotomy of NES games like Ninja Gaiden with their very elaborate cutscene sprite art versus the simplified in-game ones. A promising little game, this.

Break Wolf

Developer & Publisher: RE Atelier Release: Q4 2024

By their site, RE Atelier hail from Korea. I am of the age and sort that seeing Break Wolf's visuals triggered that scene from Ratatouille in me, where the critic flashes back to his childhood, and for me that flashback was to my childhood and early teenager hood where games and animations and comics with this sort aesthetic (all white and black, with some key colours for emphasis here and there) were not infrequent on Newgrounds or among webcomics and stuff. How fitting it is, then, that Break Wolf is an RPG Maker 2003 game, with the pleasing crunchy sound effects and resolution that implies.

Supports modern Xbox controllers flawlessly though, there's no fucking excuse for others.

Break Wolf delighted me; it's about some criminal super-evil org trying to make combat mutants out of people via Genetic Science, the place is all clinical and industrial but slathered with blood, there's frequent gore, the overt obvious antagonist is pointlessly edgy, your partner is a big titted medic girl drawing from more than a few 90s/00s anime heroines whose names are lost to me but whose faces I know and there's a romance with her with sex scenes, the works. This is a very particular kind of aesthetic that is now, in its own way, retro, and discovering Break Wolf was a treat.

It helps that it's both pretty good and knows exactly what it's about. Combat is simple and real fast, it mechanics are neat (healing is limited by "Protein Points" from feeding the healer girl meat, invariably depicted as steaks, lying around; your attacks grow stronger as the fight goes on but so does a Contamination meter that triggers damage-over-time, etc), the art and animation are delightful. This dev has quite a few such RPG Maker 2k3 games on Steam, and I may well crack into another to see what's up.

Some of its mechanical ideas are particularly interesting (there's a Lives system, where hitting 0 HP fills you back up but you lose a life, which has interesting implications for how the game may go), and hell, it's just well executed all-round, considering its engine limits. It handles full-screening, resolution, controller support and more better than much more elaborate games on modern engines in these Steam Fests do!

CONERU -DIMENSION GIRL-

Developers: HIKE Inc, Eallin Japan Co.Ltd Publisher: HIKE Inc Release: 2025

HIKE Inc and Eallin Japan hail from, surprisingly, Japan.

I've been following the original artist for a few years now on Twitter, having stumbled across their account (though they've spiralled out into a few now for various 3DCG creations), and it's surreal seeing them go from posting stills and little animations about their OCs to developing a whole game and having various other ventures as well. That's happened a few times on there, I've seen artists go from regular posts to being serialised and syndicated a few times.

Coneru is a 2D side-scrolling platformer that actually has some Kirby vibes about it (I have not played a Kirby game since Triple Deluxe, before you start), in that you don't absorb enemies but your powers cycle around as you find stuff and choose to swap up. It feels pretty good to play, though it's crying out for its dash to be useable in mid-air. It's very vibrant and detailed with the carefree and slightly madcap style of this little world the artist's made, and besides progressing by beating enemies, your goal is also to find things like manga volumes in the level to share with Coneru, the titular dimension girl, who's stuck inside your robot frame. The loading screen subtitle is "2D action date" and there's a lot of little dialogue choices in conversations with Coneru when you find stuff, it's precious.

Speaking of, she's always sitting there in the bottom left, making sounds or saying stuff and reacting to taking damage or finding things. It's precious, we've been long overdue seeing the modern revival of having Doomguy's face on the UI in Doom.

There's some interesting systems, like Coneru's support projectile changing to some new random thing, from a big shuriken to a comedy JPEG of a moon that fills most of the screen to big lollipop, or checkpoints that you can use her power to drop lightning on and change your 'stat spread', trading HP for attack power and such. The map is big and sprawling but it didn't exactly give off Metroidvania vibes, it's just big open platformer game screens.

That's kind of what Coneru reminds me of most; SNES era platformers and games in general, when things were often more madcap and there was more willingness to put work into something purely aesthetic to make your game stand out. That doesn't happen as much in this age of Youtube videogame design essays, "Game Design Schools", the complete and total fear of all forms of friction or things not purely and rigidly functional (in developers and more than a chunk of players alike), and Unreal Engine 5 games struggling to display basic images without hideous smearing, ghosting and tearing. It really should, though, I am long tired of "proper", "good" game design in favour of actually good games.

Shine on, you crazy diamond.

Crystal Breaker

Developer & Publisher: TERARIN GAMES Release: 27th November 2024

TERARIN GAMES hail from Japan.

Crystal Breaker rather perfectly encapsulates the zen experience of shmups, I think, at least if you came to the genre from console and arcade shmups and not Touhou. You fly a spaceship through screens of enemies arriving in patterns, you hold down the Fire button always, shit is exploding all the time, a pleasant lady's voice says words followed by "BONUS" for everything you do or don't run into, shoot, kill or dodge, and a fucking great music track is just blaring away all the while. When you're done the screen floods with rolling number totals and yells about score as a girl smiles at you.

All it needs is the ever-present howling hum of DDR cabinets and wails of other players and it'd perfectly summarise an ideal arcade experience. As it is, it's ideal for just lost in and playing some good ass pure shmup time. Interestingly, getting hit doesn't kill you, it just inflicts a score penalty (that likely grows worse as you get hit more, see that x next to my damage count up there), emphasising this is all about min-maxing score more than anything.

I will happily partake, myself, at some point.

PLUG IT IN

Developer & Publisher: unSAME Release: 2024

uNSAME Studio hail from America.

This is a delightfully charming little puzzle game with lovely vibes about fitting plugs into sockets. You can rotate the plugs to suit your needs and don't have to give one shit about wires (which annoys the fussy part of me), you just have to make sure all sockets get filled and that each plug can sit in the socket it's going to.

The nuances from weird shapes, orientations of the sockets themselves (the three-prong ones up there, for example, may be rotated so the bottom prong is to the right or left, for example), and tricks like being able to fit two-prong plugs in three-prong sockets as long as the holes and prongs line up offer quite a bit of variety, and the potential for a lot of trickery. The soft visuals and delightful music make it a great thing to just zone out in. The sort of thing I put a podcast on in the background and just work at like a rubix cube or something.

Rogue's Hexagon

fuck this level, man Developer & Publisher: Aaron Ziganek Release: 2024

If I found the right guy, Aaron Ziganek hails from Austria.

Rogue's Hexagon first deserves applause for being a game with Rogue in the title that isn't a roguelike/roguelite ("rogueslop" as I'm increasingly fond of calling them).

It's a puzzle game about sneaking your little rogue to a golden coin and then to the level exit without being killed by the guards, using throwing knives with various types of power found in the level to dispatch guards or make quick escapes.

This one has some real good aesthetic vibes going on; there's no text past the title, no explanations or dialogue or anything, just an opening set of levels to display the basics to you and leaving the rest to your discovery, interpretation and figuring. With the moody lighting and good sound-scape, it's got a real atmosphere.

It's also a bastard: many levels have optional goals shown through symbols on tokens next to the clear one (a waving racing flag). Rogue's Hexagon takes the daring path of explicitly making these not always align with each other, usually requiring multiple playthroughs of a level for each clear condition, instead of trying to find the one solution that threads them all (though that can be done for some). For example, a level whose optional goal requires killing all enemies with poison (doable only by the provided poison throwing knife), but there's also a second goal of not using any knives.

That level comes after the above, Level 11, whose optional goals are, by my understanding, Clear In 11 Moves/Don't Be Seen/Don't Backtrack, and trying to do all three of those will drive you mad. It may very well be possible, but I couldn't fucking figure it out. Hell, I still don't know how to do it without being seen.

It's a real good'un, looking forward to it.

=================================

We now come to our second tier of games, those I liked but was not enraptured to write a lot about or specifically highlight. I liked them all, some a fair bit, but they may have issues or just weren't as pleasing as the prior set.

Cyclopean: A Lovecraft-inspired dungeon crawler hearkening back to the Old Ones, by which I mean the rightful and real old ones, Ultima and Wizardry. Rad, I am tickled by such games, but this is still very early days. It's a game jam project slowly expanding, so worth a revisit down the line when it's more fully formed.

Knights In Tight Spaces: I played Fights In Tight Spaces in one of the first Steam Fests years ago, and never got around to it. It was cool as hell with a smart idea, using its card-based turn-based combat to emulate choreographing a secret agent's fights with terrorists and ninjas. This is that but with a fantasy theme, and new mechanics like magic attacks and control of multiple party members. It's just as rad.

Little Big Adventure: Twinsen's Quest: A loving remake of the 1990s French adventure game, which I never played but have heard often of. You can tell by the art style, honestly, it's neat to see the visual throughline in French art like this through to stuff like Ubisoft's Beyond Good & Evil. It's rather charming but the demo is rather glitchy, the game releases soon so I hope this is just an older show demo.

Nivoz Running Canned: A third-person shooter that bucks standard control schemes for a curious one where you have to turn with LB+RB/L1+R1, and can't aim directly, being dependent on homing attacks or moving your little roomba buddy near enemies to make a direct shot at. It's got a lot of curious ideas, has hilarious comedy jazz and silly cutscene animations, and is a bit of a buggy mess but the character and charm show through. I champion it, the standardisation of control schemes for a lot of things is useful in many ways but has drained the excitement out of a lot of games. Nivoz Running Canned has immense "strange Dreamcast/PS2 game you found on a rack one day" energy, and makes me long for the days of unique control schemes like the pre-PW/5 Metal Gear Solids.

Senseless: A step platformer emulating (fairly well!) the visuals and display and general capabilities of a ZX Spectrum game, with obvious fudging for resolution, better controls and smoothness. Deeply charming little thing, but its map doesn't work for controllers so I eventually got lost and called it. But I'll definitely come back for it; not too much more to say!

Reach to Tsukuyomi: A simple but decently slick 2D platformer with nice controls, good game feel and cute sprite art. It has a better grip on hitboxes and the reach your attacks should have in a 2D game than the two Soulslike boss-rush games I played and didn't feel a buzz from, though it is a pure classic platformer. I'm delighted by it, I'll be back.

======================

And now, finally, a curio and some data follow-up:

This is Chimera Capsule, an auto-battler with (not real money driven) gacha for units that either generate resources or go clear dungeons. Super Auto Pets with other types of idle games built into it, basically. Art looks pretty neat, doesn't it? What makes it a curiosity?

Well, it's that it doesn't exactly look like that, it looks like this:

It's a multi-window game! The different chunks of idler game are given their own small windows (480x256 pixels) and just ping a notif when they're done or have something needing attention. I'm not the most fussed on idle games (I prefer idol games), but games that use multiple windows like this are quite rare indeed. The idea is you can multi-task more easily by separating them up.

There's just one problem.

You get to see how the sausage is made a little here, but can you grasp the problem? Perhaps you will when I note that this isn't even the full size of my screen, nor anywhere near its full resolution.

On my big fucking TV and shiny 1440p Windows resolution, these windows that can't be resized are unusably small. It's kind of tragic, but it highlights a recurring thing, particularly of quite a few games this Steam Next Fest; a lot of them have absolutely tiny forced resolutions and window sizes, or at least start with them, and more than a few struggle with fullscreening; Book of Buja isn't fullscreen, it's a maximised window, for example.

Is it me? Is everyone just on 13-17 inch laptop screens that only sometimes go over 1080p, am I the freak? Or is getting games to full-screen actually a remarkably tricky task?

Now, the other point, about data. Last SNF I went a bit crazy while amassing a particularly huge pile of games; I also counted and recorded the names of every individual roguelike that Steam showed me around the other games. Any game that was visibly a roguelike, or described itself as such, or used the tags for "roguelike" or "roguelite" got counted.

This isn't an indicator of quality or anything of the sort, just a count. At the last SNF, hot on the heels of the Summer Games Fest 'E3' presentation streams where various organisations assemble lineups of trailers to present, there was a bit of a debate on Twitter about how prevalent roguelikes are and whether people are "right" to be tired of them or whatever. I simply wanted to demonstrate that regardless of what you thought, there are so many of these fucking things that you absolutely can't blame someone for being sick of them.

I did the same thing again, deciding to cut off my search for actual demos when I got to 100. I then decided to push one more "page" (when you scroll to the bottom of the big list of games on the SNF page on Steam and hit "show more"; there are 50-52 a page, thereabouts, or were for me). For my trouble I got 2 more games and 14 more roguelikes.

I decided to be fair and also count some other kinds; namely, Metroidvanias, Soulslikes, and "cozy" games (if they used "relaxing", "wholesome", "cozy" or "chill" as a descriptor/tag/in the name), as those are also big trends in indie games at the moment. I used the same criteria; if it was in the description, tags, name or if I could visibly clock it as such from its screenshots and rollover trailer, not from going into each and every individual game's page. This is the "from the back of a galloping horse" test, basically.

To the 114 roguelikes, I got shown 5 Metroidvanias, 20 Soulslikes and 24 wholesome games.

Here is the new list.

Now yes, this is dependent on what the algorithm throws up; there's way more than 5 Metroidvanias this fest, Steam reports 67 with the tag in the SNF pool:

I have played a fair amount (~18 hours) of Rabbit and Steel this year, one of the very few roguelikes I actually like, so that's tilted the algorithm at least a bit. How much is debatable; recent time in Warhammer 40K Darktide (~15 hours), Dokapon Kingdom (~8) and Baldur's Gate 3 (5 in the last fortnight, ~43 tops), or the ~180 hours of Helldivers 2 from earlier in the year don't seem to be tipping the scales much any which way despite the overlaps shared (turn-based combat, gore, multiplayer, RPG). Also, Steam's algorithms aren't the sharpest around and aren't always the best informed - it tells me to wishlist things I have wishlisted or that I might be interested in games I've bought and played, sometimes.

But it's indicative, I think, of how these things truly do outnumber any other sort of game and how yes, it is undeniably fair and right (it would be anyway, but if by chance you were feeling indignant about it) to be sick of how often they come up. I think Steam's algos generally favour things selling well or being popular, only occasionally deferring to relevance to preference and so on, so perhaps that causes an upswell in this genre being recommended so often and in such numbers.

Pair that with show-runners for things like Summer Games Fest obviously biasing towards them and also vying for DLC or expac announcements for existing popular ones like Dead Cells, and over-exposure isn't just guaranteed, it's plainly observable. The showrunners for those streams are awful tastemakers and also often don't know how to run a show so they'll bunch them together or pair up very similar ones, which just makes things worse.

In my June 2024 post, I also noted that many of them are using a practice of getting lovingly animated nice-looking trailers that then cut to a game that looks nothing at all like the animated segment except in like character design, and it's like everything in the industry is trying to make people sick of these things and resent them and whoever makes them.

And just to drive the point home, let me answer the important question you probably have about the pair of roguelike lists I made: no, there isn't a single game shared between them. The roguelike lists are both 100% unique end-to-end, meaning across two Steam Fests I saw about 70~ things I was interested in, to 251 unique roguelikes.

There are too many of these fucking things, and they shouldn't be centred or staged anywhere near as fucking much as they are. And these are just the ones that I saw, myself.

You don't even know the half of it.

The next Steam Fest should be in February 2025, a frantic time. I hope for a better harvest then, and I don't know if I'll continue my tracking and accounting of the rogueslop plague, but we'll see what my mood is then. These posts will all be on here from now on because I can't be fucked with more platform-hopping and fussing about features and themes and so on. Tumblr's a blogging platform, or claims to be, it'll have to do.

See you then, if I can be fucked to do it.

[lurinym]

hi!! I'm a weird turquoise creature from the pacific northwest and I spend all my time immersed in various creative projects. I have many ideas for larger story-based works in the future, which I hope you'll get to see!

my neocities site has links to all my things: https://lurinym.neocities.org/

things I've made that you can see now:

(new!) the first few pages of a webcomic - read here!

or look through its tag: spontaneity's end

a lot of character paintings - browse my art tag, or see my instagram

(my most popular post on tumblr: bug girl)

a few instrumental songs on soundcloud (some more bonus tracks available on my site here)

a small demo platform shooter game called "LR beta" - itch.io download

things I'm planning for 2024:

an experimental webcomic to launch fairly soon! - launched!

some kind of animation project, later this year

a big update to LR beta maybe? been messing with adding dialogue, story and sound!

I also take art commissions! here's my commission form & info

how I use tumblr: primarily for posting my work, with some reblogs of art I like, friends' art, and the occasional silly post I resonate with. I don't post that often because I like to keep my blog relatively focused! this is my main social media platform! I also occasionally post my art on insta and bluesky (my bsky profile). I love getting interaction, so feel free to throw anything in my ask box, comments or DMs! <3

tags I use consistently: #my art, #my ocs (each oc has their own tag) #art inspo #ask

thanks for checking out my blog!! :D

[vanitaandking]

We are sharing the webcomic Vanita and the Demon King on its official website AND here on Tumblr! (Webtoons version is coming soon).

The first bundle of pages will be posted almost daily until updates catch up with the official site.

-

By the way, my other trans comic, The Legend of Jamie Roberts, has volume 2 on Crowdfundr now. You should back it if you like genderqueer pirates and dragons and slapdick adventure. IT HAS 2 DAYS LEFT.

-

Vanita is a trans girl who has struck out to live on her own. However, during a morning jog, she comes across the Demon King - a being who was thought to have disappeared over 1000 years ago! Upon seeing how thrashed he is, Vanita takes the beaten Demon King home to crash on her couch. Thus begins this story of trans feelings, religious revisionism, and challenging assumptions about others who are different.

(official website) (artist's website)

[raw-fruit]

The Official Raw!Fruit Blog and R!F general info!!

Author, Creator, and Artist: @yui94

a special shoutout to my friend @curlybraceactual for helping me with the comic !!

a fake qna abt raw!fruit and this blog down below!!

what is Raw!Fruit?

Raw!Fruit is a gorey, campy, magical girl webcomic i created! it follows Tsuвет Meся (Tsuvet Meya), a young woman who has to deal with being college student AND an archangel, after being gifted a mysterious sword by her grandpa.

where to read?

there are 3 places where you can read r!f !!

-on this very blog!

-on pixiv! however, this will require an account !!

-on my patreon! where for $10 a month you can get early access to each page, as well as some extra stuff!!

how to read?

raw!fruit is entirely in english and read from left to right. raw!fruit is my first webcomic, so some pages (especially earlier ones) may be a bit hard to follow due to inexperience. raw!fruit chapters tend to be pretty long and their releases are split in half. if its confusing, imagine each chapter as its own mini arc or volume!

how to access each page is another discussion! because tumblr only allows 10 photos per post, each post will have 4-8 pages, depends depends. each post will be tagged with its respective chapter part, and what characters appear in said post to make searching for specific pages easier.

what else will this blog be used for?

alongside the comic itself, this blog will reblog official art and updates posted on my main art blog @yui94 as well as answer any questions sent my way! (and maybe... hopefully... reblog fancontent as well?? >w< )

andd........ thats it i think! this post may have to be edited in the future, but for now its fine!!