#a bit dark tbh

[chloesimaginationthings]

Love it when you give him this winged eyeliner look

Very adorable. Pretty princess core

Michael got good at makeup but just to do his eyes and nothing else

[deadsetobsessions]

Danny used to be a vigilante, firmly on the side of good. Like, illegally, but morally good.

Danny’s 100% sure that whatever he is now, it’s not good.

Is Gotham’s influence just Like That?

He was homeless when he got to this thrice damned city (literally, because Lady Gotham was so cursed) and now he’s… here? In a mid-level penthouse with a rotation of homeless kids going in and out of his kitchen and eating out his pantry??

Danny adjusted the cuffs of his dress shirt, making the conscious decision to ditch the tie. He’s a tall 6ft 4 now, taking after his Dad. His head smarted all of the time, hitting doorframes when he was being a bit clumsier than the normal ghost-like grace he had learned to channel as The Phantom.

The Phantom instead of just Phantom. Why? Because Phantom was the name of a teenage vigilante in another dimension. The Phantom, on the other hand, is an intimidatingly tall, deceptively kind, extremely dangerous kingpin.

Honestly? Danny didn’t even want this life. Like, he had no idea it would snowball like this??

He supposed that it all started when the Penguin was trying to snatch kids off of his block on Crime Alley. Not officially his block, of course, because Danny didn’t actually enter this city to be a crime-shadow thing. But he hadn’t lost enough of Phantom the Vigilante to ignore kids getting hurt. He still hasn’t, if he’s being honest. He flew into a frantic search, tracking down the missing kids to Penguin’s bar. The Iceberg Lounge. Apparently, he wanted the kids to do some menial tasks and what not. Danny, rage flickering through his core, intangibly went in and robbed Penguin of every coin and secret the man kept.

Then? Danny blackmailed the Penguin to guarantee his kids a measure of safety from the Rogue. That began the slippery slope into whatever it is he does now. Penguin was being kept in line by Danny’s threats, the grip he had on the Rogue’s weak points, and a wonderful bit of intimidation.

——

“What, you stinking phantom? I’m stickin’ to yer rules!” Penguin snarled, forced to his knees by invisible blob ghosts.

Danny, salty and pissy from the lack of sleep he’d experienced trying to keep Penguin’s men in line as a result of Penguin trying to test where Danny’s lines were, dropped the temperature to the point where Penguin started shivering. Considering the place was already cold- the Iceberg lounge lived up to its name- it meant that Danny was standing nonchalantly in a room that was negative twenty five degree Celsius in a sweatshirt, Danny was already making good on his natural intimidation factor.

“It’s The Phantom to you, Oswald.” Danny said, in the tone of someone saying “it’s the shit, to you.”

Danny narrowed his blue eyes, letting a tiny tint of ectoplasm make his eyes glow a bit in the suddenly icing over room.

“Your people have been getting on my nerves, Oswald. Roughing up kids is so… uncultured. Are you sure you’re a Cobblepot?”

Penguin snarled, the effect of which was rendered ineffective due to his increasingly violent shivers. Plus, Danny loomed over him without even trying.

Danny, annoyed and asking himself “What Would Dan Do To Intimidate This Guy?”, gripped Penguin’s shoulder and hauled him up one handed. He dragged the mob boss over to one of the booths, avoiding the bodies he’d dropped (non-lethally) when Danny first walked in to ruin Penguin’s night. He shoved Penguin in chair he iced over, because Danny’s petty and if he saw one more bruise on his kids at Penguin’s hands, Danny was gonna go full Dan the Murderer.

He at least allowed to room to warm up before laying into Penguin, though. He stayed standing. Hey, he had the height advantage to use. He could have kept Penguin kneeling, but it was probably god the best that the mob boss got some sense of pride back.

(Danny had no idea that sitting as someone loomed over you to lecture and threaten you was even worse than kneeling. At least with kneeling, you knew where you stood. But sitting? It leaves you horribly off kilter.)

“I told you to keep your people in line. Kids are off limits, Oswald.”

“I kept them in line!”

Never let it be said that Oswald Cobblepot had a normal functioning sense of self preservation.

“Really?” Danny jabbed his pointer finger lightly on top of Penguin’s trachea and allowed his fingernails to sharpen into Phantom’s sharper digits. Penguin tried to lean away. “Then why did they start a gun fight when there were kids visible on the street? Why did I see one of my kids get hit by one of your poor excuses of a bouncer?”

“I-”

“Don’t care much for your excuses, if I’m being honest. I let you mess around with the little projects you have, without even breathing a whisper of your secrets. Sionis would love to know how you double crossed him the last deal, yeah?”

“I- I’ll keep them in line!” Penguin stuttered.

“Well, I believe in second chances,” Danny bullshitted. Ancients, how was this even working? “So I suggest you make an example of the guy that smacked Hailey around before I make an example out of you, Oswald.”

“Fine! Fine!”

——

And with that, he got access to Penguin’s resources and men and more importantly, the corrupt police officers. He made Penguin “boot out” the pedophilic ones (in a very violent way) and kept the rest.

Then? Mr. Freeze froze over the god damn pipes and Danny had to intimidate and make a deal with the Rogue so he and his increasing roster of orphans had access to warm water.

In exchange for Danny’s restorative and, more importantly, unmelting ice, Mr. Freeze was now Danny’s… on-call enforcer?? When he’s not researching cures for his frozen in a pod wife, that is.

Danny was satisfied with that. He was! But then Black Mask happened, with the man trying to engage in a battle of wits with Danny over the control of Crime Alley which, at that point, was firmly Danny’s territory.

The thing is, Danny doesn’t play nice anymore. Why bother with pointless mind games when he could just…

——

“So, you’re The Phantom.”

“And you’re Sionis.”

Black Mask twitched at the name, gloved hands pulling out his guns. Danny sat on the counter, head touching mid cabinet, and sipped out of Sionis’ favorite mug.

Because Danny broke into Black Mask’s safe house and stole his quality coffee. The man’s eyes were wary.

“How did you get in here?”

Danny shrugged. “Walked.”

Danny held the coffee out of the way as Sionis unloaded a clip into his chest and lunged forward to slap a mask onto Danny’s face. After waiting a bit, as Black Mask’s smug triumph bled into shock, Danny laughed and, using a bit of his natural strength, tossed the guy off of him. He casually took the mask off of his face.

“Jeez, I’m trying to be nice, here.”

“So, you’re a Meta.”

Danny grinned. “Eh. And you’re a cult leader with a mask fetish.”

Danny tuned out the rant about the “true face of Gotham” or whatever, already bored, and sipped at Sionis’ coffee. The ass might be a psycho, but his coffee tastes were wonderful. Danny stood up, rinsed his mug, and turned back to Black Mask.

“You’re trafficking people. Kids.” He said, cutting through Sionis’ chatter. He was sly about it too, committing violence and torture in a way that would ensure obedience and fear. Danny probably would have never caught on, Black Mask’s schemes being so ingeniously created and executed, had he not kept a hawk’s eyes on the more vulnerable members of Crime Alley’s community. And the rest of Gotham’s vulnerable communities, of course.

“My, a wonderfully obvious conclusion. Now, Phantom, I have a proposition for you.”

Sionis seemed to have gotten his bearings back. Danny tilted his head at him, looking down.

“You can work for me,” Sionis said, before opening a laptop with video feed to one of his masked men or whatever holding a knife to one of Danny’s more fearless kids. Danny snarled.

“Or, refuse, and your kid will lose a finger for every instance of your defiance.”

“I told you not to touch the kids, Sionis. I don’t allow trafficking either.”

Black Mask chuckled. “Cut off a finger, Sadness.”

“Yes, bos- ARGHHHH!”

Danny watched as Mr. Freeze froze the goon’s arms before breaking them.

“I’ve got her, Phantom.”

Danny nodded at Freeze, keeping an eye on Sionis in case the fool bolts.

“So, what are your cards now, Sionis? You’ve sure pissed me off with nothing to show for it.”

And that was the last night anyone heard from the one that was supposed to be the King of Crime.

But Gotham knew the head mounted on a pike at one of Black Mask’s hastily abandoned bases was a warning, that The Phantom was watching.

——

Then he somehow got a gaggle of more orphans that were undead zombie “Talons?”

From there, he just obtained influence over the crime bosses of Gotham. Because his Talons kept bringing him heads and blackmail and his crime alley kids and Gotham orphans kept bringing him information for food and safety?

But like, Danny never wanted anything in exchange for the safety he provided. His core could give less of a shit whether he got anything in return. But he couldn’t convince his kids of that! They’re putting themselves in danger and ugh-!

Danny checked himself once more in the mirror. Ready, he stepped out into the night to wait for the Bats at his new favorite VIP spots.

On the way, he passed Ivy and Harley, who he waved to. Pamela worked under him because he controlled Gotham’s criminal underground (which also mean the official parts of the city considering the sheer amount of corruption) and influenced them into more plant friendly methods. His dominion over Undergrowth also helped immensely.

Harley? They’re friends. He beat up and crippled her abusive ex. She gave him therapy and stopped torturing people for fun.

Danny stepped into the back door of the Iceberg Lounge. No one stopped him. No one dared to.

He settled onto a velvet couch, nodding respectfully at the server that had immediately and nervously set down his mai tai. He glanced around for cameras and wire taps, before giving up and upping his ectoplasmic output to short any recording devices out.

He sipped his drink as he waited.

“Batman.”

“Phantom.”

“Oh, good. You didn’t bring Robin,” Danny said, watching Batman tense. “Kids shouldn’t be in places like these.”

Batman stayed silent.

“Come on, sit.” Danny gestured to the couch across from him.

“This isn’t a social call. I’ll stop whatever you’re scheming-” Batman growled.

“Oh my god, you’re so dramatic. Is this where Nightwing gets it from?”

Batman snarled.

“Sit, sit.” Danny rolled his eyes.

Batman stayed stubbornly looming. Danny sighed, allowing his voice to slip into velvet danger.

“I told you to sit, Bruce Wayne.”

“You-”

“I won’t repeat myself again, Bruce. You’re testing my patience.”

Bruce sat, wary and hyper vigilant. Danny sighed, settling back in his chair.

“You’ve heard of Red Hood, yes? Don’t answer that, it was hypothetical. I know you’ve heard of him.” Danny waved a hand impatiently. “I don’t really care why he’s setting up shop in my Alley, but he’s upsetting the other crime lords. They’re asking me to interfere.”

“I don’t work for you.”

“No,” Danny acknowledged with a nod. “But I could make you, if you push it. Politeness would serve you much better right now, Bruce, seeing as I am doing you a… favor. And since I’m not shouting to the world who you are under the cowl.”

Danny gave Batman a pointed, patented, mom glare.

“… Apologies.”

“Now, you might be wondering what that favor is.” Danny watched Batman’s cowled face carefully. “I thought you should know that the Red Hood is your “Jason Todd.’”

Batman was still. And then Batman leapt at him, snarling, “How dare you-!”

Danny caught the vigilante by the throat and squeezed.

Batman’s flurry of punches- which, mildly ow, those gauntlets kind of hurt- quickly changed to clawing and maneuvers to get out of the choke hold. Danny held steady, cutting off the vigilante’s air supply until he began to go limp. He’s not Superman. Danny will bruise and kill, if he had to.

“Are you going to listen to me now?” Danny asked mildly, emulating both Black Mask’s drawl and Dan’s effortless psychosis.

Batman gave a weak nod. Danny plopped him unceremoniously back onto his couch. He sipped on his drink once more as he waited for Batman to cough some sweet air back into his lungs.

“I’m telling you to get your little birds in line before I have to go hunting, yeah? Keep your kids out of danger, Bruce, and I won’t have to step in.”

“He- how do you know..?” The growl isn’t there anymore, and Danny felt a smug sense of vindication of having smothered it out of the guy. Woah, no, that thought was too Dan and too little Danny. Danny handed him a cup of water, which Batman didn’t drink.

Danny rolled his eyes and raised an eyebrow. “Drink. If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it by now. And as for how I know…”

Danny held up a beat up copy of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, filled with Jason’s writing. He tossed it to Batman, who caught it with blank eyes.

“Water,” Danny reminded him firmly, feeling like a mother hen. Batman gulped down his water, eyes flicking between the pages of Jason’s annotated book. Ancients, Danny couldn’t believe he annotated his book. A crime lord, like that? Well, it’s not like Danny could say anything.

Batman looked up at him, a silent demand- no, plea, because he’s not in a position to make demands- for an answer.

“Broke into his safe house. You should contact your fling, Talia. Seems like she dunked him into these “Lazarus pits” and told him you replaced him with the current Robin.”

Danny could see Batman’s emotional gears hard at work and honestly, he doesn’t have time for that.

“Now, we’re done here. You owe me one for the information. I’ll collect later.” Danny grabbed the Dark Knight, who stayed oddly unresisting (shock, maybe?) , and hauled him up.

“Tell Tim Drake to eat more. He looks too skinny.” With that, Danny dragged the Dark Knight to the window and punted him out. His kids were waiting on hot chocolate night and Danny had to go shopping for quality ingredients.

——

“YOU COULDN’T HAVE TOLD ME THE BIGGEST CRIME LORD OF YOUR CITY WAS THE FUCKING HIGH KING OF THE INFINITE REALMS?!”

“Hn.”

“BLOODY HELL, DON’T YOU GRUNT AT ME, YOU BROODY BASTARD!”

Constantine let out a scream. Shite, the king who held his soul contract was a crime lord. Great.

——

The reason intelligence and convoluted schemes and genius doesn’t work against Danny is because he’s got weird standards of what he’ll tolerate and the fact is that his normal dumbassery and mother hen tendencies cancels out and coherent thoughts or plans he might have had.

[oriixxc]

I trust you won't kill me.

and if you do, then I've gotten sloppy and probably have it coming.

🔗Twitter

[cobaltcreations]

Me and my partner @the-good-ol-art-corner collaborated on this AWESOME poster for one of our favorite Bendy Aus @toontiedterror by @dictatortirah !! I am in LOVE with how it came out and I am so excited to see how this story and world develops!!

I put so many details into this, it is absolutely silly, but I had a swell time doing them. Those headshots on the missing posters belong to the staff from our own Bendy project @howdy-folks-its-showtime and we didn't even intend to make two versions. But I put so much into the background... I just had to make a version without the foreground to show it off <3

[tshortik]

"Tell me master – When would be the best time for your delightful Urges to awaken? Perhaps during a lover's embrace?"

URGE is an adult 47 page sapphic Durge/Shadowheart fancomic I worked on since a little while now.

You can get it for free on my itch io because I am not going to post 47 pages here lol.

Please read the tags because there is usual Dark Urge fuckery going on. Use personal discretion plz. This was a lil project to try some silly saucy comic stuff that was supposed to be just 4 pages, but I got lost in the sauce :') Anyway, hope you enjoy!!

>> Get it here!

[eldrtchmn]

Queen of the Full Moon

[levemetal]

Watercolor test to get back into it! It's botched, especially the chair but eh. Gonna post anyway ٩( ᐛ )و

Mei Nianqing, inspired by the lovely @kimbapchan's gorgeous design of him in their swap AU <3

[qwertyprophecy]

Mortholme Post-Mortem

The Dark Queen of Mortholme has been out for two weeks, and I've just been given an excellent excuse to write some more about its creation by a lenghty anonymous ask.

Under the cut, hindsight on the year spent making Mortholme and answers to questions about game dev, grouped under the following topics:

Time spent on development Programming Obstacles Godot Animation Pixel art Environment assets Writing Completion Release

Regarding time spent on development

Nope, I’ve got no idea anymore how long I spent on Mortholme. It took a year but during that time I worked on like two other games and whatever else. And although I started with the art, I worked on all parts simultaneously to avoid getting bored. This is what I can say:

Art took a ridiculous amount of time, but that was by choice (or compulsion, one might say). I get very excitable and particular about it. At most I was making about one or two Hero animations in a day (for a total of 8 + upgraded versions), but anything involving the Queen took multiple times longer. When I made the excecutive decision that her final form was going to have a bazillion tentacles I gave up on scheduling altogether.

Coding went quickly at the start when I was knocking out a feature after another, until it became the ultimate slow-burn hurdle at the end. Testing, bugfixing, and playing Jenga with increasingly unwieldy code kept oozing from one week to the next. For months, probably? My memory’s shot but I have a mark on my calendar on the 18th of August that says “Mortholme done”. Must’ve been some optimistic deadline before the ooze.

Writing happened in extremely productive week-long bursts followed by nothing but nitpicky editing while I focused on other stuff. Winner in the “changed most often” category, for sure.

Sound was straightforward, after finishing a new set of animations I spent a day or two to record and edit SFX for them. Music I originally scheduled two weeks for, but hubris and desire for more variants bumped it to like a month.

Regarding programming

The Hero AI is certainly the part that I spent most of my coding time on. The basic way the guaranteed dodging works is that all the Queen’s attacks send a signal to the Hero, who calculates a “danger zone” based on the type of attack and the Queen’s location. Then, if the Hero is able to dodge that particular attack (a probability based on how much it's been used & story progression), they run a function to dodge it.

Each attack has its own algorithm that produces the best safe target position to go to based on the Hero’s current position (and other necessary actions like jumping). Those algorithms needed a whole lot of testing to code counters for all the scenarios that might trip the Hero up.

The easiest or at least most fun parts for me to code are the extra bells and whistles that aren’t critical but add flair. Like in the Hero’s case, the little touches that make them seem more human: a reaction speed delay that increases over time, random motions and overcompensation that decrease as they gain focus, late-game Hero taking prioritising aggressive positiniong, a “wait for last second” function that lets the Hero calculate how long it’ll take them to move to safety and use the information to squeeze an extra attack in…

The hardest attack was the magic circle, as it introduced a problem in my code so far. The second flare can overlap with other attacks, meaning the Hero had to keep track of two danger zones at once. For a brief time I wanted to create a whole new system that would constantly update a map of all current danger zones—that would allow for any number of overlapping attacks, which would be really cool! Unfortunately it didn’t gel with my existing code, and I couldn’t figure out its multitudes of problems since, well…

Regarding obstacles

Thing is, I’m hot garbage as a programmer. My game dev’s all self-taught nonsense. So after a week of failing to get this cool system to work, I scrapped it and instead made a spaghetti code monstrosity that made magic circle run on a separate danger zone, and decided I’d make no more overlapping attacks. That’s easy; I just had to buffer the timing of the animation locks so that the Hero would always have time to move away. (I still wanted to keep the magic circle, since it’s fun for the player to try and trick the Hero with it.)

There’s my least pretty yet practical solo dev advice: if you get stuck because you can’t do something, you can certainly try to learn how to do it, but occasionally the only way to finish a project within a decade to work around those parts and let them be a bit crap.

I’m happy to use design trickery, writing and art to cover for my coding skills. Like, despite the anonymous asker’s description, the Hero’s dodging is actually far from perfect. I knew there was no way it was ever going to be, which is why I wrote special dialogue to account for a player finding an exploit that breaks the intended gameplay. (And indeed, when the game was launched, someone immediately found it!)

Regarding Godot

It’s lovely! I switched from Unity years ago and it’s so much simpler and more considerate of 2D games. The way its node system emphasises modularity has improved my coding a lot.

New users should be aware that a lot of tutorials and advice you find online may be for Godot 3. If something doesn’t work, search for what the Godot 4 equivalent is.

Regarding animation

I’m a professional animator, so my list of tips and techniques is a tad long… I’ll just give a few resource recommendations: read up on the classic 12 principles of animation (or the The Illusion of Life, if you’d like the whole book) and test each out for yourself. Not every animation needs all of these principles, but basically every time you’ll be looking at an animation and wondering how to make it better, the answer will be in paying attention to one or more of them.

Game animation is its own beast, and different genres have their own needs. I’d recommend studying animations that do what you’d like to do, frame by frame. If you’re unsure of how exactly to analyse animation for its techniques, youtube channel New Frame Plus shows an excellent example.

Oh, and film yourself some references! The Queen demanded so much pretend mace swinging that it broke my hoover.

Regarding pixel art

The pixel art style was picked for two reasons: 1. to evoke a retro game feel to emphasise the meta nature of the narrative, and 2. because it’s faster and more forgiving to animate in than any of my other options.

At the very start I was into the idea of doing a painterly style—Hollow Knight was my first soulslike—but quickly realised that I’d either have to spend hundreds of hours animating the characters, or design them in a simplistic way that I deemed too cutesy for this particular game. (Hollow Knight style, one day I’d love to emulate you…)

I don’t use a dedicated program, just Photoshop for everything like a chump. Pixel art doesn’t need anything fancy, although I’m sure specialist programs will keep it nice and simple.

Pixel art’s funny; its limitations make it dependent on symbolism, shortcuts and viewer interpretation. You could search for some tutorials on basic principles (like avoiding “jaggies” or the importance of contrast), but ultimately you’ll simply want to get a start in it to find your own confidence in it. I began dabbling years ago by asking for character requests on Tumblr and doodling them in pixels in whatever way I could think of.

Regarding environment assets

The Queen’s throne room consists of two main sprites—one background and one separate bit of the door for the Hero disappear behind—and then about fifty more for the lighting setup. There’s six different candle animations, there’s lines on the floor that need to go on top of character reflections, all the candle circles and lit objects are separated so that the candles can be extinguished asynchronously; and then there’s purple phase 2 versions of all of the above.

This is all rather dumb. There’s simpler ways in Godot to do 2D lighting with shaders and a built-in system (I use those too), but I wanted control over the exact colours so I just drew everything in Photoshop the way I wanted it. Still, it highlights how mostly you only need a single background asset and separated foreground objects; except if you need animated objects or stuff that needs to change while the game’s running, you’ll get a whole bunch more.

I wholeheartedly applaud having a go at making your own game art, even if you don’t have any art background! The potential for cohesion in all aspects of design—art, game, narrative, sound—is at the heart of why video games are such an exciting medium!

Regarding writing

Finding the voices of the Queen and the Hero was the quick part of the process. They figured that out they are almost as soon as writing started. I’d been mulling this game over in my mind for so long, I had already a specific idea in mind of what the two of them stood for, conceptually and thematically. When they started bantering, I felt like all I really had to do was to guide it along the storyline, and then polish.

What ended up taking so long was that there was too much for them to say for how short the game needed to be to not feel overstretched. Since I’d decided to go with two dialogue options on my linear story, it at least gave me twice the amount of dialogue that I got to write, but it wasn’t enough!

The first large-scale rewrite was me going over the first draft and squeezing in more interesting things for the Queen and the Hero to discuss, more branching paths and booleans. There was this whole thing where the player’s their dialogue choices over multiple conversations would lead them to about four alternate interpretations of why the Queen is the way she is. This was around the time I happened to finally play Disco Elysium, so of course I also decided to also add a ton of microreactivity (ie. small changes in dialogue that acknowledge earlier player choices) to cram in even more alternate dialogue. I spent ages tinkering with the exact nuances till I was real proud of it.

Right until the playtesters of this convoluted contraption found the story to be unclear and confusing. For some reason. So for my final rewrite, I picked out my favourite bits and cut everything else. With the extra branching gone, there was more room to improve the pacing so the core of the story could breathe. The microreactivity got to stay, at least!

A sample of old dialogue from the overcomplicated version:

Regarding completion

The question was “what kept me going to actually finish the game, since that is a point many games never even get to meet?” and it’s a great one because I forgot that’s a thing. Difficulties finishing projects, that is—I used to think it was hard, but not for many years. Maybe I’ve completed so many small-scale games already that it hardly seems that unreasonable of an expectation? (Game jams. You should do game jams.)

I honestly never had any doubt I was going to finish Mortholme. When I started in late autumn last year, I was honestly expecting the concept to be too clunky to properly function; but I wished to indulge in silliness and make it exist anyways. That vision would’ve been easy to finish, a month or two of low stakes messing around, no biggie. (Like a game jam!)

Those months ran out quickly as I had too much fun making the art to stop. It must’ve been around the time I made this recording that it occurred to me that even if the game was going to be clunky, it could still genuinely work on the back of good enough storytelling technique—not just writing, but also the animation and the Hero’s evolving behaviour during the gameplay segments which I’d been worried about. The reaction to my early blogging was also heartening. Other people could also imagine how this narrative could be interesting!

A few weeks after that I started planning out the narrative beats I wanted the dialogue to reach, and came to the conclusion that I really, really wanted it to work. Other people had to see this shit, I thought. There’s got to be freaks out there who’d love to experience this tragedy, and I’m eager to deliver.

That’s why I was fine with the project’s timeline stretching out. If attention to detail and artistry was going to make this weird little story actually come to life, then great, because that’s exactly the part of development I love doing most. Projects taking longer than expected can be frustrating, but accepting that as a common part of game dev is what allows confidence in eventual their completion regardless.

Regarding release

Dear anonymous’s questions didn’t involve post-release concerns, but it seems fitting to wrap up the post-mortem by talking about the two things about Mortholme's launch that were firsts for me, and thus I was unprepared for.

1. This was the first action game I've coded. Well, sort of—I consider Mortholme to be a story first and foremost, with gameplay so purposefully obnoxious it benefits from not being thought of as a “normal” game. Still, the action elements are there. For someone who usually sticks to making puzzle games since they’re easier to code, this was my most mechanically fragile game yet. So despite all my attempts at playtesting and failsafes, it had a whole bunch of bugs on release.

Game-breaking bugs, really obvious bugs, weird and confusing bugs. It took me over a week to fix all that was reported (and I’m only hoping they indeed are fully fixed). That feels slow; I should’ve expected it was going to break so I could’ve been faster to respond. Ah well, next time I know what I’ll be booking my post-release week for.

2. This was my first game that I let players give me money for. Sure, it’s pay-what-you-want, but for someone as allergic to business decisions as I am, it was a big step. I guess I was worried of being shown that nobody would consider my art worth financial compensation. Well, uh, that fear has gone out of the window now. I’m blown away by how kind and generous the players of Mortholme have been with their donations.

I can’t imagine it's likely to earn a living wage from pouring hundreds of hours into pay-what-you-want passion projects, but the support has me heartened to seek out a future where I could make these weird stories and a living both.

Those were the unexpected parts. The part I must admit I was expecting—but still infinitely grateful for—was that Mortholme did in fact reach them freaks who’d find it interesting. The responses, comments, analyses, fan works (there’s fic and art!! the dream!!), inspiration, and questions (like the ones prompting me to write this post-mortem) people have shared with me thanks to Mortholme… They’ve all truly been what I was hoping for back when I first gave myself emotions thinking about a mean megalomaniac and stubborn dipshit.

Thank you for reading, thank you for playing, and thank you for being around.

[crystallizsch]

🐍: —?! Prefect, is everything alrigh-

💜: Don’t- say anything. Please.

(oh lore? below the cut?)

(cw: nightmares, implied death/suicide <- ONLY AT THE END) — 800+ words — I DIDNT REALIZE IT WAS THIS LONG???

━━━━━━✦

the vice housewarden of scarabia, jamil viper, didn't think he'd be bringing the ramshackle prefect to stay over at his room, and much to his roommate's confusion. then again, the roommate knew better than to question his choices.

it was the end of the day and the vice housewarden was on his way back to his dorm after a late-night errand.

what he didn’t expect was the ramshackle prefect coming out of the shadows and tackling him in a hug.

jamil almost threw down the unassuming prefect out of instinctual self-defense.

but the prefect gripped his back as if she was holding on for dear life— quivering, her head buried in his shoulders, holding back sobs, profusely apologizing over and over and over-

“sorry, sorry, sorry—“

the prefect said she had a nightmare.

jamil just froze, entirely confused.

all this because of a dream? what is the prefect even apologizing for other than whatever this is.

━━━━━━✦

jamil didn’t really know what to make of all of this, but it was hard not to pity the state the prefect was in.

pity. that’s the right word.

he only clarified to himself because the word, concern, briefly passed his mind.

it was not concern. why would he be concerned?

and if it weren’t for pity, jamil would have been annoyed instead. he had to admit, he didn’t know which would have been the worse approach, even though he opted for the former.

plus, this was a side to the prefect that the vice housewarden had not seen before.

vulnerable.

very vulnerable.

as if her walls finally fell. and jamil was able to bear witness behind it.

to choose whether or not to step inside those walls is up for debate in his mind.

no, stop it. not again. there was no point in involving himself more with the prefect this time.

jamil could have walked her back to ramshackle. but they were already in the mirror room, and he didn’t feel like making that trek.

or he might have been too tired and too dumbfounded to think.

yeah, those were jamil's excuses.

━━━━━━✦

it’s not like the ramshackle prefect, yuusha tala, understood either. how this all went down.

why the first person she beelined towards was the one who played a part in her nightmare.

why she felt comfort at his mere presence despite recoiling the moment she looks into his eyes.

either because of fear, disgust, or… guilt?

━━━━━━✦

this phenomenon had happened before.

yuusha and ace got off on a horrible foot at the start, deuce was just another guy that got involved with them by chance, and grim was an annoying cat.

and yet, it felt like she’d known them forever despite having only known them a few months.

there was no way they were all that compatible of a friend group to end up that way.

but the soft spot she felt for all three of them was like they were longtime friends in another life.

and now it’s this… bastard. the one yuusha fell head over heels at first only to feel used and betrayed.

why she keeps giving pretty guys a chance like this is beyond her. yuusha knows she won’t learn her lesson for the foreseeable future, however.

━━━━━━✦

in any case, the prefect finds herself resting on the scarabia vice housewarden’s bed when she could have suggested resting in one of the empty rooms instead. to not trouble him any further.

oh wait. jamil could have brought her to another empty room instead. there’s no way that didn’t cross his mind.

did he assume that would bring up memories?

if so, why would he even care?

the scarabia lounge would have been an alternate choice as well. but would it have been considered rude to put a guest there? even though yuusha wouldn’t have mind?

well. that’ll be a topic for another day.

━━━━━━✦

so the night was pretty uneventful. other than the awkwardness.

wait, actually— jamil wanted to bring up how the prefect had the habit of hugging things in her sleep.

namely him.

even when unconscious, the prefect can’t respect personal space.

but then that would bring up the obvious fact that jamil could have easily woken her up and quietly tell her off. and that he didn’t.

because for some strange reason, jamil felt an odd sense of comfort in her warm yet crushing embrace. and thus pretended not to have known instead.

━━━━━━✦

what was the nightmare, so to speak?

yuusha barely remembered all the details.

except for the feeling of the cold wind tearing through her skin, gravity violently pulling her down—

—and the final, haunting vision of a desperate hand reaching out to her, with an intensely horrified look flashing from charcoal grey eyes.

eyes that belong to none other than jamil viper.

[clockwork-carstairs]

“You made yourself a different person than the one I loved” – on Kit’s letter, his projections & idea of Ty

aka where i try to make sense of kit’s letter in the context of who ty was to him. basically i think that understanding that kit may not have had an accurate image of ty in his head helps to contextualise why kit believes the things he does, regardless of whether they’re fair to ty or not. it makes more sense reading lines like:

“in all the world, kit had never met anyone he believed to be so incapable of evil”

“all his energy had gone into ty, all his devotion and hopes for the future”

because you can see so clearly how much kit was projecting onto ty. ty, more than a friend—or whatever you might call it—was also the personification of this new world and all it meant for kit. kit saw him as this overwhelming force of good, beautiful as an angel, someone who not only wouldn’t do evil but was “incapable” of it.

so you can kind of see why everything was lost for kit once ty went through with the necromancy: because by doing so he was breaking the image kit had of him. of ty as a saviour of sorts from kit’s previous life, the person who convinced him to stay, who made kit feel like he was really a part of something, something magical and exclusive that not everyone got to be.

further evidenced by other lines:

“he had been too fixated on losing ty to tell him what he needed to hear” -> kit knows he should have told ty much sooner how he really felt about the situation. kit knows he deflected and in various ways lied to ty about trying to bring livvy back. but kit had wanted to stay by ty’s side, stay included in ty’s plans, more than his desire to tell ty the truth that he hated the idea.

“you made yourself a different person than the one i loved” -> ty as a person being shaped by kit’s projections of all his hopes and dreams, the face of this new world kit was drawn into, the first person he really got close to after he was pulled from one world to another, the person who convinced him to stay.

was the “person [kit] loved” an accurate reflection of who ty really was, flaws and all? unlikely. and the image of ty in kit’s head didn’t allow room for the real ty’s complicated, overwhelming grief, either, and the ways he would try to cope with it: and i believe this is part of why kit was so shocked by what happened and why he’s still so angry at ty. because ty proved to him that he wasn’t what kit believed him to be, and so all of kit’s hopes for his new life came crumbling down.

do i think it’s fair to ty? no, i don’t. but i think both can be true: that kit is upset and had gone through a traumatic situation, and has valid feelings about it while also understanding that he had a very skewed perception of ty that wasn’t fair to him.

mostly i think we need more room for understanding ty’s feelings*. how it must have felt to lose his twin sister in a horrifying way, devised a plan that (to him) seemed completely reasonable** only to have his best friend switch up on him last minute, tell ty he loved him mid-ritual, later say he wished he’d never met ty and basically tell ty that he was selfish and then on top of that leave without saying goodbye.

i also stand by my belief that “how long do you think it will take you to forgive me” is something both ty and kit could/should be asking each other, not just one way around. i honestly don’t understand why both kit and ty would think only kit needs to forgive ty and not both ways. mostly i just don’t think the narrative that ty’s the only one who needs forgiving is very fair, or makes much sense with their characterisation + the context + what actually happened.

in sum, when kit says “you made yourself a different person than the one i loved”, the person he’s referring to is an idealised version of ty whom he had projected all his hopes and dreams for the future onto, and by going through with the necromancy ty completely shattered kit’s understanding of him. this is consistent with other lines in his letter: “you wanted that more than you wanted me”, “when you brought livvy back, you changed yourself” (did ty really change? or did he just prove to be different from kit’s idea of him? genuine question), and perhaps most strongly evidenced by this line: “i don’t know the person you are now. you took yourself away from me. i can’t forgive that.” i don’t understand why he can’t forgive ty for not being the person kit thought he was, nor how on earth ty was supposed to know this, but i digress.

* i hope this is addressed in TWP because between TDA and now, we’ve had FAR more insight into kit’s thought processes than ty’s and as such we’re only really seeing one side of the situation.

** i also think part of the glaring misunderstanding between kit and ty can be understood from their respective backgrounds. obviously for kit, growing up away from the shadowhunter world, something like necromancy is completely out of the question. the way it would be for you or me. but ty grew up in a world where bringing people back to life was something that could and had actually happened. so it’s a far crazier, more impossible idea to kit than it would’ve been to ty.

[kitsu-smiec]

Satoko and Rika :)

May they find eachother in every universe.

[cloudyydraws]

did the evil art style challenge with the kagamines!!

+brainstorming and sketches under cut

sorry oomf i ignored the "dont draw women" rule i couldnt resist

friends also regulated me to plain black lineart with no variety :(((( RIP FOR THE SKETCH I LIKED IT A LOT

[kerizaret]

Pair 3/5 — Queen & King of Hearts ♥️

[artsy-1diot]

drawing kudos managers as I beat them part 7 (+satellite investors)

IM FINALLY FREE FROM THIS DRAWING OH MY GOD i had to learn how to draw skelecogs just for this drawing and it took like four days to make.

also fun fact one of my besties is named nix :3

[doodle17]

Many things about the Ink Demons deisgn bothers me, but I think the number one thing is his "smile". Because it isn't really a smile, it just looks like a regular exposed jaw. I honestly think if they kept the beta smile it'd be infinitely better

So I made an edit of what I thought it should look like. I had to stretch and mesh it a bit to get it to look right, bit I think I achieved what I was going for (I know I suck at editing but at LEAST you can picture what I mean)

Left is the original, right is my edit

I honestly think the right would be way creepier. The demonic goat legs, the big ass hands, I would ignore ALL of those if they changed his smile

[wardensantoineandevka]

I also saw a mod called No Parrots that took away the vibrant colors of the griffons and changed them to be muted and mostly-grayish, and out of spite, I desperately need someone to recolor the griffons to match various macaws