#Talking shop

[thewrongshop]

wolf 359 is a show that poses many important questions such as “how much training do you REALLY need to go to space,” “is it still a war crime if you’re light-years away from the nearest living soul,” “how many times can you send one guy into the limitless void before he gets pissed enough to kill you about it,” “what if the ship of Theseus was a person,” “how many different ways can you kill someone without them dying,” and of course, “would that be fucked up or what”

[sclappin]

SHOP UPDATE!

The ill-advised Hamlet pins made about 5 or 6 years ago are currently on sale for $5.

I simply have too many of these things in my home. They have stayed with me, mostly unsold, through four separate moves. They're an awkward shape for storing in large quantities. Surely some of you must know a goth or an english major or a theater kid who thinks this is kind of funny.

For the love of god, please take these tiny Danish skeletons off my hands.

EDIT: SOLD OUT!

[yuri-is-online]

I'm asking this question because I find it an interesting topic. It relates to the criticism the Tokyo Debunker MC receives.

It's not just TD's MC—it's a common theme in otome and gacha games. Genderless MCs in games like *Obey Me!* and *Twisted Wonderland* face less criticism than female MCs. Even though the genderless MCs get some hate, it’s nowhere near the backlash female MCs receive. For instance, *Twisted Wonderland* had debates about a female MC being unsuitable for an all-boys school, despite the presence of monsters and robots. This debate ended with a female MC in the *Savanaclaw* manga.

Another example is *Tears of Themis*, where the female MC is well-received in my opinion due to her having a character. I am very happy that she isn’t a self insert and people seem to agree.

In contrast, female self-insert MCs like TD's MC and *Love and Deep Space*'s MC get a lot of hate for what seems like trivial reasons. TD's MC is often criticized for being ordinary, while LADS's MC, who is strong and brave, also faces backlash, with some claiming she's rude despite evidence to the contrary.

In conclusion.

woman mc in this day of age can’t have flaws now….wait no they can’t be prefect either! As then they are Mary sue! What do you mean that LI are grey sue as well? No that not true Leo having a backstory would justify his actions don’t you get it? What do you mean we should hold the male characters as same standard? Jin treating mc as a servant is her fault as she didn’t say no…..😐 

... so I have two lines of thought about this particular topic, it is something I have thought about for a while because I am working on my own game/games and pay a lot of attention to what people think.

It isn't personality people like it is competence

The love and deepspace MC and Rosa from tears of themis actually have very similar personalities. They are bad at/hate studying. They really love food. They both are sort of dorks and known for being kind. What people like about them isn't any of those things, what they like is that both of them are adult women who you can believe live on their own. They actually have skills related to their jobs, you can believe Rosa is a lawyer and that MC is a hunter, the love interests aren't the only competent people in the narrative. I think this can sort of relate to the target audience for both of these games being working women, but that's for a different post. Right now I really want to focus on that concept of competence: the two other otomes I really love and want to bring up are Amnesia: Memories and Hakuoki. The Amnesia MC makes a lot of really stupid decisions, but as the game title gives away she has amnesia. There is an underlying explanation for why she's a bit dim so I don't see too many complaints about her personality (outside of Toma's route but that is a different story) because you don't exactly expect her to be competent. The same goes for Hakuoki's MC whose name escapes me at the moment, she is the daughter of a doctor so she is never made out to be incompetent in medical matters, but she isn't the best fighter. And she doesn't need to be that's the male love interest's role in this particular story.

The problem with MCs like our dear Luna? I believe you said her default name is, in Tokyo Debunker is that we don't exactly have anything she is stated to be good at beyond boosting Stigmas. The various ikmen games get around this by giving their MCs a job, but we don't have that for Luna so we don't have anything to show some backbone or character so people read her as being a bit of a doormat. Like I have said numerous times before, I don't mind this and think that so long as they keep allowing us to see her thoughts this the writing will be good. A relatively easy fix to this could have been to make her someone who really loves music and constantly talks about it, she was going to a concert at the start of the game so that little bit of character would go a long way for her to be more of a human for people to project themselves onto. Generally speaking, when writing an MC, it is perfectly acceptable to give them certain personality traits and a history. But if you do that you need to make sure the narrative respects that interest and does not use it as an excuse to make the male lead look cooler.

Gender Neutral MCs

*sigh* so you bring up Twisted Wonderland and I uh... have some experience with that fandom! And I have observed the gender wars over Yuu with a weary heart. I genuinely could not care any less about how people identify or the type of o.c.s they make, but some people really really care and if I am honest I find that a bit disturbing. It honestly makes me sad to see fanfic, which used to be a really accepting space, fight over writing... well anything really. m/m blogs screaming about how they don't want fem aligned reading their things, f/f blogs screaming about men, the f/m fic writers feeling the need to defend themselves writing for a female reader- doesn't that exhaust you? Why do you care so much? I do not have the energy to care about people writing fanfic I am not interested in reading, is this because I am anemic or have I managed to be normal about one singular thing?

My personal theory is that the commodification of fanfic and fandom has made people think there is something fundamentally wrong with properties that are marketed towards people who are not them. The reaction to Love and Deepspace not having a male MC option sort of cemented that for me, there is nothing wrong with wanting a game where you can be a man or non-binary and date anime boys. There is also nothing wrong with writing m/m fanfic for a property like lds, or wishing you could play as a man in it. I think there is a genuine market gap in good games for people who aren't fem aligned, but you do not get good games by harassing people or implying they suck for wanting games where you can play as a woman. You get that by financially supporting projects aimed at you! There is a blog I follow on here called @amaregamesdb. They post a bulletin of projects, both vn and if, with an emphasis on making people aware of projects that aren't simply otome (ie male love interests with a female protagonist.) I think the people who run it are also the people who coined the term "amare game" to use for games where the MC isn't necessarily female. They also ran a blog to help people like me learn how to code if/vns so I am very grateful for them, so please do give them your support.

I write for a gender neutral reader because I wanted to write interactive fiction and felt like I needed to practice doing so. I have continued to do because honestly? I really enjoy it. I love seeing how many different people identify with my writing and are moved by it. There are some projects I want to do in the future (original works, not fanfic) that I probably will lock the MC to female for, but I want to continue providing gn fic for people for as long as I write. And original projects too! I have two in particular I am working on behind the scenes. The solution to the problems like "what gender is yuu really," if you will permit me to preach for a second, is to not care. Yana said Yuu was meant to be you, and dear reader I don't actually know who you are! So you can be whoever it is you wish to be in your heart and I will make room for you to sit next to me. I'll even make tea (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

[bluecapsicum]

I've updated my Inprnt shop with all the new pastel and pencil illustrations I've been posting here!

There's a sale this week, and I've added my own artist sale to it.

Have a look if you're interested! Thank you for your support :)

[digitalduckie]

My car's battery is dead so 🎉

Either way it's the end of the year which is the perfect time to treat yourself or someone you love to something special!

I've discounted more stickers and marked all unframed original pieces down by 10%!

[Shop Here]

[craftaroni-and-cheese]

My first imomodoll!! he was a birthday present from my mom, he just came in today and I’m so enamored…..even though I knew he was going to be big i’m still just. In awe.

[aliveafterparadise]

my favorite versions of Michael are the ones where he shows you yes, he can absolutely exercise free will, just no, you won’t like it

[plushmayhem]

Progress talk thread

I like to take a lot of backups as I draw so we I can show off my widdle Lilly wips!! I'm drawing again that means I get to talk about drawing again yahoo

Lately when starting a drawing I've been trying to block out very rough thumbnails as seen above! I usually just start drawing like, the head, and trying to then figure out a body under neath and line by line it all ends up pretty similar to my past stuff because it's just not planned out! I don't know where the road is taking me!

So by starting out and trying to throw together the general pose with just a blown up light brush I'm coming up with much more interesting piece! I can figure out the general shape of the entire piece and then start working on top. No making a shoulder then drawing the hand over it and then erasing the shoulder and getting frustrated because it just doesn't look connected right because I didn't plan it out… where does this drawing end? where's the limits?? where am I going?? So my current workflow involves

Make the dimensions of the piece roughly (just throw a coloured rectangle down) -> very roughly block out the shape of the body within it

This also has the benefit of inspiring me to fill in the blanks with a pose I didn't initially expect! The body is reversed from my initial vague idea because seeing the blobs made me go OH IT'D BE COOL IF I DID IT WITH THE BODY FACING THIS DIRECTION ACTUALLY LET'S MAKE THAT WORK!! If you look at the initial you can kinda see it looks more like she's looking down at you with the raised arm being the one facing you.

Anyways after doing my personal Holiday pic the other day, I was like, it would be cool to do a small run of postcards to send to people yahoo!! I checked the sizes of postcards and none were even close! They all had like an extra inch on of extra space on the bottom whoops! I free style my rectangle sizes when planning an illustration and I guess they're closer to square than the ideal rectangle! Whoops!

So for this one after getting the initial sketch down I thought, hey how close is this to 5x7? AND LO AND BEHOLD IT WAS THE SAME ISSUE!!! So I took filling out the extra space as a challenge. I'm trying to be more dynamic with my art after all!

I spent time adjusting the piece in sai2 using the transform tool with it's perspective skewing on. I wiggled and rotated and pushed n pulled and you get what you see above. A much more dynamic piece filling out the canvas!

The thing that took the most time in this phase was getting the skirt to a shape I found acceptable.

Up next was moving towards making it a finished piece!

Thick lineart is something I've been deciding if I want to stick with or not but honestly it's my natural state! I love thick lineart!! I grew up on manga I wanna see some black lines!!! In the future I wanna go back to colouring lineart as well but for now I believe I need to lean into my natural tendencies for thick lines!

I threw down my lineart to a mostly acceptable state, and brainstormed ways to fill the empty space surrounding Lilly. I found there was just a lot of empty space in the bottom left and I didn't really solve that in the final, but that's ok. It's something I'm trying to be aware of as I actually attempt illustrations. I want to finish pieces right now, I'm not in a place where I can let perfectionism slow me down.

Currently my layers are (face) and (lineart) I throw down some flat colours, a light layer above and for once I tried a shade layer too! It might of been a multiply layer. It was probably was. Anyways this is what I was happy with before moving forward with refining it. I'm currently going with more focus on like, backlighting/rimlighting because it's easier to make it work with my no context existing in da void illustrations haha.

To refine it, right now, I'm playing around with mainly using one layer. So I slammed together my layers other than the face (I made that mistake with my previous piece and that's how we ended up with the eyebrow incident. I wasn't going to put myself in a place where I had to erase an eyebrow again) and started sculpting!

I think sculpting is the best way to describe it, really. It's a lot of slamming down chunky lines, and since the lineart is on the same layer, I'm constantly pushing colours out and finding the ideal shape of both it and the lineart. It helps me push my shapes even farther and let the colours take priority when they need to. Instead of them being separate things I worry about they're all just one big piece!

I was a bit worried about merging the plaid pattern down as well, but I did my best to get the skirt in a place I wasn't going to adjust much after the merge. That was the biggest priority of the previous step really.

It's a lot of fun! I recommend people try it! Try sculpting your lineart a bit!

I added the necklace accessory after since I knew trying to fit it in earlier would also be a pain in the ass haha. I'm not a one layer purist! I'm just having fun!

The background, I went in with no idea for a bg. So this is what we get. I think it works fine for this piece, it's a vtuber attacking you with big fluffy bear claws with no context other than that they are a bear and they're going to fucking get you. Red fits, Lilly has a very orange/red hued design and it's an aggressive attack so the mood works. I could of even gone harder and made it look a bit more splattery but I wasn't sure if I was going to fill up the bottom left space or not.

Looking back maybe I could fit in her name on a cool blood splatter there but I am not a graphic design major my brain is growing slowly in this department thank you

Also fluffy claw gloves usually have much less defined fingers but I couldn't make mitts look good with my initial plans so I stuck with my initial idea!!! Thank u.

Anyways follow Lilly [Twitch]

[paxcallow]

Do you think you could tell us about your The Sight ocs? I met them from your t-word art and they seem soooo cute

OH FUCK YEAH! what do you wanna know about 'em??? there are a LOT of main characters in the sight (like uhhh ten or so in the central cast which is pretty big compared to most of my universes) but you probably just know about rose and dirk!

Dirconius Talwar and Rosemary Valdis are 14 year old Seers who begin their story on opposite sides of a conflict they admittedly don't care that much about once they start getting closer.

the conflict is over an incredibly powerful artifact called The Book of Dircon. (<- did you know? part of dirk's name is in this) dirk is recruited by an unnamed team composed of Eleanora Eldottir, Xander Schmittlot and Vicky Chang, whose mission is to find and protect the Book from a fractured group named The Sight, (<- did you know? this is the title of the series) who seek to destroy it because despite the fact that it's enabled seers and spirits to interact and coexist and has changed the world for the better in several ways, it's apparently too powerful to exist.

rose is a member of the sight, and has been fairly dedicated to the cause until meeting dirk, who is actually very lovely <3 after getting own'd a couple times. they're friendly enemies for a while, and as they slowly grow annoyed by their respective teams' baggage/incompetence, and MOSTLY just want to spend more time together...

they decide to work together to find the Book of Dircon on their own before the full moon of december, the Cold Moon, a time when the layers of physical and spiritual reality are the least separated and the Book will be the strongest, but the most vulnerable to destruction.

... and... it's kind of hard to fully talk about the sight without spoilers because there's a pretty big... event like a quarter(?) through the whole story that changes everyone's dynamics at once. i've danced around it a lot on this blog but fuck it i wanna talk about it.

BIG SPOILERS follow for something that won't be released for probably a long time.

at the end of the first season, on the cold moon itself, dirk and rose find the Book. after going through so much together, dirk has earned rose's trust, and she decides to let dirk take it back to nora.

the reason the Book of Dircon is so powerful- so powerful the Sight wants to destroy it- is that anything writ in its pages becomes reality.

and more than just keeping it safe, nora has very badly been wanting to use it.

secretly, this entire time, nora has believed that dirk is the reincarnation of a very powerful spirit, and that by splitting open his soul, the spirit will reawaken and bring the world into an era of peace and harmony.

when he brings her the Book on that night, when the barrier between human and spirit is at its thinnest, she takes it as a sign.

what nora does to dirk on the cold moon is supernaturally tantamount to One Of The Worst Fucking Things You Can Possibly Do To Another Person. especially a child.

and it almost kills him. but gwen friede, the leader of the sight and a woman who has seemed like Bad News, Super Bad, Really Grimdark Mean Lady No Compassion for the entire first season, saves him in the nick of time and wallops the shit out of nora before escaping without the Book, but with a shocked dirk.

and dirk is in shock, and basically everyone is really, for the first half of the second season. the sight has to reckon with the fact that they have not been much of a team at all and their dysfunction lost them the Book of Dircon and almost caused Something Catastrophic to happen.

in the first season, dirk is a kind of standoffish boy who is quickly befriended and encouraged by nora, xander and vicky. so nora's betrayal (and by extension, knowing* what she had planned, xander and vicky's) rocks him to his core and he backslides hard. and rose, who over the course of the first season slowly grew apart from gwen, someone she has always deeply respected, and feels like she horribly betrayed her by handing the book over to nora.

both of these things make the prospect of unifying The Sight into something resembling a group of friends rather than a bunch of distrusting or self-important people vaguely working toward the same goal more daunting than any of the other challenges they face. but the silver lining has always been and still is dirk and rose's friendship (romance), and it slowly infects the rest of the team until they begin to have a fighting chance.

and that's what the sight is really about.

ALSO!

because you are here from my t-word art and i feel called out by absolutely no one except myself: okay listen dirk has been the target of tickling and will probably continue to be just because he is the OC who likes it the most. dirk craves attention and physical affection and he likes roughhousing and laughing. (my man laughs in basically every situation)

but he is terrified of choosing to be vulnerable because rejection hurts worse than physical pain. it stands to reason he loves being tickled. he can believe that someone is tickling him because it's funny or because he (intentionally) annoyed them, and not because he's letting them do something nice for him, or he looked like he needed a hug, or his hair pet, or to be doted on. even though basically everyone catches on that he likes this.

also it's just fun for grumpy/rude/sassy characters to get tickled stupid.

... i've been sitting on a tickle fic for a while because it refers indirectly to these BIG SPOILERS, but now that this post exists i could probably post it. i might post it soon.

[nevertrulyset]

I've been trying for so long to convince myself otherwise, but after today, I just have to admit it: my workplace is a toxic environment. I wish I had made drastically different choices in the past so that I never had to get this job in the first place. But now it seems like I kinda have no other options.

[thewrongshop]

Incredibly vulnerable Archivist challenges terrifying avatars completely unprovoked compilation

[ID: screenshots from the transcripts of episodes 89, 97, and 131 of The Magnus Archives. The first reads, “ARCHIVIST: Yes, yes, I understand, you could easily kill me, I’m at your mercy, blah, blah, blah. I have heard it before. And from things much scarier than you.” The second transcript reads, “ARCHIVIST: I… Y… Y-you don’t… sound Russian.” The third transcript reads, “ARCHIVIST: That’s it? [he snorts] Hardly worth a rib.” End ID]

[sclappin]

New Christmas card is up in my shop, along with a few other new items!

A field guide for identifying the various birds your true love may foist upon you this winter.

[yuri-is-online]

An office shoujo think post

so you know that post from wttmcsms? The one about having a fake ring to chase off the men, a character who doesn't notice it, and flirts with reader trying to prove he'd be the better husband:

I came up with a slight idea for a dating sim based off of it by expanding the original concept just a tad... but I would appreciate some advice lol. It would be a super simple project with the classic neutral, bad (sort of), and good endings to help me practice the coding stuff.

The Setting: it's a simple office rom-com, nothing too deep or serious. The MC has recently decided to start wearing the ring due to some bad experiences at their previous job and is encouraged to do so by their best friend who promises to help keep up the ruse.

original concept/the flirt- same as the above described scenario with no real changes... he would be the "first route." Very shojo flirty love interest who wants to prove himself to the MC and teases them a whole lot. Pretty simple not too much drama?

the pathetic guy- Lennox... he's short and normally really self assured but for some reason he turns into a pathetic mess around the MC on his route. He's a bit of a loser when it comes to romance and constantly shooting himself in the foot to the point it is surprising how well put together he is outside of it. Similar in concept to the flirt's route except he's not a smooth operator.

the tsundere- megane ceo ikmen except she's a woman. She's the sister of your best friend and doesn't remember hearing about you getting married but what if it's true? And she's lost her chance? Because she keeps sticking her stupid foot in her mouth and making it sound like she hasn't been in love with you all this time and when she learns you aren't married that just makes it worse. Because if she flirts with you now then won't she just be like all the other people who made you uncomfortable?

My problem is I would want to add a fourth normal route but I can't settle on a good trope to model it after... the reason being I have a yandere route planned and i know that's not everyone's cup of tea lol. But tropes are difficult, so here are the potential ones I was kicking around:

let's sexualize that old man- idk middle aged salaryman who works at the company tm. The problem is I wanted to also make him a little more pathetic which is Lennox's trope. I guess we don't have a kuudere, which sort of works well for the middle aged man trope.

rivalmance- the MC is a secretary and the business they work for makes some sort of product... so I guess there could be another secretary? Maybe for the cfo of the company. I'm thinking of a rich, bratty ojou-sama. A Regina George type... except less pink and more black??? I'll be honest I am not as fond of this one might need to take it back to the drawing board.

senpai- a pretty obvious trope for this sort of set up... a mentor at the company, maybe the retiring or senior secretary who is very soft and big brotherly who is really gentle in how he expresses his concern over how little your husband seems to care for you, but not because he wishes he was him. If he says that enough maybe he'll believe it?

kohai- MC is new to the company so maybe a little bit of a timeskip where there is a new secretary who really wants to prove himself. Super big golden retriever energy with a person who desperately wants to be taken seriously but is a bit clumsy so you don't at first. He insists he loves you but everyone in the office brushes his feelings off as a crush and it's super annoying!!!! But he's got really chubby cheeks so his pouting is just too cute to listen to what he's saying.

or something idk. I want to work on the demon thirst trap idea but... I really need to practice the code to do that well so I need to do something much much simpler first and office shojo is pretty simple I suppose.

[foragedmoonlight]

[digitalduckie]

This Valentine's season I'm offering up a new YCH commission! You choose what characters go in the A & B spots as well as custom candy hearts. Couples portraits are welcome as well!

To order, visit my Ko-fi commissions tab.

[Order Here]