#also this version makes more sense than the one i posted earlier this year

[jcs-singular-slut-strand]

[mistakenot4892]

Disclaimer that this is a post mostly motivated by frustration at a cultural trend, not at any individual people/posters. Vagueing to avoid it seeming like a callout but I know how Tumblr is so we'll see I guess. Putting it after a read-more because I think it's going to spiral out of control.

Recent discourse around obnoxious Linux shills chiming in on posts about how difficult it can be to pick up computer literacy these days has made me feel old and tired. I get that people just want computers to Work and they don't want to have to put any extra effort into getting it to Do The Thing, that's not unreasonable, I want the same!

(I also want obnoxious Linux shills to not chip in on my posts (unless I am posting because my Linux has exploded and I need help) so I sympathise with that angle too, 'just use Linux' is not the catch-all solution you think it is my friend.)

But I keep seeing this broad sense of learned helplessness around having to learn about what the computer is actually doing without having your hand held by a massive faceless corporation, and I just feel like it isn't a healthy relationship to have with your tech.

The industry is getting worse and worse in their lack of respect to the consumer every quarter. Microsoft is comfortable pivoting their entire business to push AI on every part of their infrastructure and in every service, in part because their customers aren't going anywhere and won't push back in the numbers that might make a difference. Windows 11 has hidden even more functionality behind layers of streamlining and obfuscation and integrated even more spyware and telemetry that won't tell you shit about what it's doing and that you can't turn off without violating the EULA. They're going to keep pursuing this kind of shit in more and more obvious ways because that's all they can do in the quest for endless year on year growth.

Unfortunately, switching to Linux will force you to learn how to use it. That sucks when it's being pushed as an immediate solution to a specific problem you're having! Not going to deny that. FOSS folks need to realise that 'just pivot your entire day to day workflow to a new suite of tools designed by hobby engineers with really specific chips on their shoulders' does not work as a method of evangelism. But if you approach it more like learning to understand and control your tech, I think maybe it could be a bit more palatable? It's more like a set of techniques and strategies than learning a specific workflow. Once you pick up the basic patterns, you can apply them to the novel problems that inevitably crop up. It's still painful, particularly if you're messing around with audio or graphics drivers, but importantly, you are always the one in control. You might not know how to drive, and the engine might be on fire, but you're not locked in a burning Tesla.

Now that I write this it sounds more like a set of coping mechanisms, but to be honest I do not have a healthy relationship with xorg.conf and probably should seek therapy.

It's a bit of a stretch but I almost feel like a bit of friction with tech is necessary to develop a good relationship with it? Growing up on MS-DOS and earlier versions of Windows has given me a healthy suspicion of any time my computer does something without me telling it to, and if I can't then see what it did, something's very off. If I can't get at the setting and properties panel for something, my immediate inclination is to uninstall it and do without.

And like yeah as a final note, I too find it frustrating when Linux decides to shit itself and the latest relevant thread I can find on the matter is from 2006 and every participant has been Raptured since, but at least threads exist. At least they're not Microsoft Community hellscapes where every second response is a sales rep telling them to open a support ticket. At least there's some transparency and openness around how the operating system is made and how it works. At least you have alternatives if one doesn't do the job for you.

This is long and meandering and probably misses the point of the discourse I'm dragging but I felt obligated to make it. Ubuntu Noble Numbat is pretty good and I haven't had any issues with it out of the box (compared to EndeavourOS becoming a hellscape whenever I wanted my computer to make a sound or render a graphic) so I recommend it. Yay FOSS.

[expectiations]

The Husbands of River Song is not and has never been about the Eleventh Doctor being a deadbeat, distant husband (gross mischaracterization by the way) and the Twelfth Doctor being the "better, more mature, affectionate" husband.

It was about River Song. It was about River and how the events in Manhattan took such a toll on her. It was about letting us see River dealing with grief the way The Snowmen showed us how the Doctor coped after losing believing he had used up all his time with River.

Looking at THORS now with The Ruby's Curse in mind, I get the instinct (for lack of a word that I cannot remember) that the Manhattan incident Blue Roach read from River's diary was not the Manhattan episode that we saw in series 7.

On that note, I'd also like to bring up the fact that the Doctor grounds River and River grounds the Doctor. As Tree talked about in one of her tags, River's empathy is more cognitive than emotional and after musing on it for a bit – considering that the Doctor can no longer go to Manhattan (which may have changed in later series but I wouldn't know at the moment because I have yet to overcome series 7b) and that River does spend time with her parents in Manhattan post-TATM, would the latest Manhattan incident in River's diary be the funeral for Amy? Amy's death? Perhaps even Anthony's? I mean, we already know Rory died five years earlier than Amy. So, knowing how deep River's love for her mother is, it's not too farfetched to say that River spent that time with them. River was by their bedsides as they drew their last breath.

Then Rory's gone, Amy's gone, Anthony's gone. Where does that leave River? Where is the Doctor? (sulking on a cloud on top of Victorian London? trying to figure out the mystery of his newest companion? all while constantly mentioning a certain Professor Song who actually turns out to be his dearly sort of departed absolutely beloved wife?)

Without her parents (and her husband) to ground her, she goes on this maddened, grieving space Robin Hood spree. She seeks fun to fill in the void and takes up marriage as a hobby/side quest. Does she look for the Doctor? Perhaps. Yes, actually. Considering she crashed her latest sort-of-husband's ship onto a planet where she purported the TARDIS to be.

But... she's stealing the TARDIS. She could have just called the Doctor, yeah? So, she doesn't want the Doctor to know then. Well... yeah, considering she has two sort-of-husbands in hand.

So, River would just have gone on from one space Robin Hood spree to the next had the TARDIS not sort-of-stranded herself on Mendorax Dellora to make sure her Water stopped being stubborn and reconcile(?) with her Thief?

Also taking note of how River has read stories about them and knows that Darillium is purported to be their last night together (I could also bring up the fact that this is why I find it easy to digest the "River meeting regenerations of the Doctor younger than the Tenth Doctor makes sense and doesn't break cannon nor ruin SITL/FOTD" but that would take a whole other post). Does this River believe her time with the Eleventh Doctor has ended? The same way series 7b Eleven believed his time with older versions of River has ended? Is this all part of some grand fuckup in communication all thanks to their tangled timelines?

Maybe. Maybe not.

But has River not just been running from her family's death? Has River been running from her supposed last night with the Doctor?

"But River doesn't run." Oh yes. Yes, she does. She knows when to stand her ground. She knows when to charge. And she knows when to run.

"That's out of character for her." No, it's not. She's not invincible. She's this well trained assassin, yes. But invincible? No.

Invincible from the tendency to be blinded by their emotions? Obviously not.

River lies. And River runs.

She is not afraid of her death. She is afraid of the day when her husband, her Doctor, looks into her eyes and looks right through her. And it shouldn't kill her but it does. It did.

So she ran and ran until her bigger-on-the-inside Mum gently reached out and put her back together with the only person left who could ground her. Who she didn't recognize at first but still fell in love with (and would have loved even if he hadn't been revealed to be her actual, long missing husband). Who finally found out their last night wasn't just any night – it was a twenty-four year long last night. Who finally gave her a breather from all the running she'd been doing.

And oh what a night that was (it was the talk of the universe).

[physalian]

8 Signs your Sequel Needs Work

Sequels, and followup seasons to TV shows, can be very tricky to get right. Most of the time, especially with the onslaught of sequels, remakes, and remake-quels over the past… 15 years? There’s a few stand-outs for sure. I hear Dune Part 2 stuck the landing. Everyone who likes John Wick also likes those sequels. Spiderverse 2 also stuck the landing.

These are less tips and more fundamental pieces of your story that may or may not factor in because every work is different, and this is coming from an audience’s perspective. Maybe some of these will be the flaws you just couldn’t put your finger on before. And, of course, these are all my opinions, for sequels and later seasons that just didn’t work for me.

1. Your vague lore becomes a gimmick

The Force, this mysterious entity that needs no further explanation… is now quantifiable with midichlorians.

In The 100, the little chip that contains the “reincarnation” of the Commanders is now the central plot to their season 6 “invasion of the bodysnatchers” villains.

In The Vampire Diaries, the existence of the “emotion switch” is explicitly disputed as even existing in the earlier seasons, then becomes a very real and physical plot point one can toggle on and off.

I love hard magic systems. I love soft magic systems, too. These two are not evolutions of each other and doing so will ruin your magic system. People fell in love with the hard magic because they liked the rules, the rules made sense, and everything you wrote fit within those rules. Don’t get wacky and suddenly start inventing new rules that break your old ones.

People fell in love with the soft magic because it needed no rules, the magic made sense without overtaking the story or creating plot holes for why it didn’t just save the day. Don’t give your audience everything they never needed to know and impose limitations that didn’t need to be there.

Solving the mystery will never be as satisfying as whatever the reader came up with in their mind. Satisfaction is the death of desire.

2. The established theme becomes un-established

I talked about this point already in this post about theme so the abridged version here: If your story has major themes you’ve set out to explore, like “the dichotomy of good and evil” and you abandon that theme either for a contradictory one, or no theme at all, your sequel will feel less polished and meaningful than its predecessor, because the new story doesn’t have as much (if anything) to say, while the original did.

Jurassic Park is a fantastic, stellar example. First movie is about the folly of human arrogance and the inherent disaster and hubris in thinking one can control forces of nature for superficial gains. The sequels, and then sequel series, never returns to this theme (and also stops remembering that dinosaurs are animals, not generic movie monsters). JP wasn’t just scary because ahhh big scary reptiles. JP was scary because the story is an easily preventable tragedy, and yes the dinosaurs are eating people, but the people only have other people to blame. Dinosaurs are just hungry, frightened animals.

Or, the most obvious example in Pixar’s history: Cars to Cars 2.

3. You focus on the wrong elements based on ‘fan feedback’

We love fans. Fans make us money. Fans do not know what they want out of a sequel. Fans will never know what they want out of a sequel, nor will studios know how to interpret those wants. Ask Star Wars. Heck, ask the last 8 books out of the Percy Jackson universe.

Going back to Cars 2 (and why I loathe the concept of comedic relief characters, truly), Disney saw dollar signs with how popular Mater was, so, logically, they gave fans more Mater. They gave us more car gimmicks, they expanded the lore that no one asked for. They did try to give us new pretty racing venues and new cool characters. The writers really did try, but some random Suit decided a car spy thriller was better and this is what we got.

The elements your sequel focuses on could be points 1 or 2, based on reception. If your audience universally hates a character for legitimate reasons, maybe listen, but if your audience is at war with itself over superficial BS like whether or not she’s a female character, or POC, ignore them and write the character you set out to write. Maybe their arc wasn’t finished yet, and they had a really cool story that never got told.

This could be side-characters, or a specific location/pocket of worldbuilding that really resonated, a romantic subplot, whatever. Point is, careening off your plan without considering the consequences doesn’t usually end well.

4. You don’t focus on the ‘right’ elements

I don’t think anyone out there will happily sit down and enjoy the entirety of Thor: The Dark World.  The only reasons I would watch that movie now are because a couple of the jokes are funny, and the whole bit in the middle with Thor and Loki. Why wasn’t this the whole movie? No one cares about the lore, but people really loved Loki, especially when there wasn’t much about him in the MCU at the time, and taking a villain fresh off his big hit with the first Avengers and throwing him in a reluctant “enemy of my enemy” plot for this entire movie would have been amazing.

Loki also refuses to stay dead because he’s too popular, thus we get a cyclical and frustrating arc where he only has development when the producers demand so they can make maximum profit off his character, but back then, in phase 2 world, the mystery around Loki was what made him so compelling and the drama around those two on screen was really good! They bounced so well off each other, they both had very different strengths and perspectives, both had real grievances to air, and in that movie, they *both* lost their mother. It’s not even that it’s a bad sequel, it’s just a plain bad movie.

The movie exists to keep establishing the Infinity Stones with the red one and I can’t remember what the red one does at this point, but it could have so easily done both. The powers that be should have known their strongest elements were Thor and Loki and their relationship, and run with it.

This isn’t “give into the demands of fans who want more Loki” it’s being smart enough to look at your own work and suss out what you think the most intriguing elements are and which have the most room and potential to grow (and also test audiences and beta readers to tell you the ugly truth). Sequels should feel more like natural continuations of the original story, not shameless cash grabs.

5. You walk back character development for ~drama~

As in, characters who got together at the end of book 1 suddenly start fighting because the “will they/won’t they” was the juiciest dynamic of their relationship and you don’t know how to write a compelling, happy couple. Or a character who overcame their snobbery, cowardice, grizzled nature, or phobia suddenly has it again because, again, that was the most compelling part of their character and you don’t know who they are without it.

To be honest, yeah, the buildup of a relationship does tend to be more entertaining in media, but that’s also because solid, respectful, healthy relationships in media are a rarity. Season 1 of Outlander remains the best, in part because of the rapid growth of the main love interest’s relationship. Every season after, they’re already married, already together, and occasionally dealing with baby shenanigans, and it’s them against the world and, yeah, I got bored.

There’s just so much you can do with a freshly established relationship: Those two are a *team* now. The drama and intrigue no longer comes from them against each other, it’s them together against a new antagonist and their different approaches to solving a problem. They can and should still have distinct personalities and perspectives on whatever story you throw them into.

6. It’s the same exact story, just Bigger

I have been sitting on a “how to scale power” post for months now because I’m still not sure on reception but here’s a little bit on what I mean.

Original: Oh no, the big bad guy wants to destroy New York

Sequel: Oh no, the big bad guy wants to destroy the planet

Threequel: Oh no, the big bad guy wants to destroy the galaxy

You knew it wasn’t going to happen the first time, you absolutely know it won’t happen on a bigger scale. Usually, when this happens, plot holes abound. You end up deleting or forgetting about characters’ convenient powers and abilities, deleting or forgetting about established relationships and new ground gained with side characters and entities, and deleting or forgetting about stakes, themes, and actually growing your characters like this isn’t the exact same story, just Bigger.

How many Bond movies are there? Thirty-something? I know some are very, very good and some are not at all good. They’re all Bond movies. People keep watching them because they’re formulaic, but there’s also been seven Bond actors and the movies aren’t one long, continuous, self-referential story about this poor, poor man who has the worst luck in the universe. These sequels aren’t “this but bigger” it’s usually “this, but different”, which is almost always better.

“This, but different now” will demand a different skillset from your hero, different rules to play by, different expectations, and different stakes. It does not just demand your hero learn to punch harder.

Example: Lord Shen from Kung Fu Panda 2 does have more influence than Tai Lung, yes. He’s got a whole city and his backstory is further-reaching, but he’s objectively worse in close combat—so he doesn’t fistfight Po. He has cannons, very dangerous cannons, cannons designed to be so strong that kung fu doesn’t matter. Thus, he’s not necessarily “bigger” he’s just “different” and his whole story demands new perspective.

The differences between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi are numerous, but the latter relies on “but bigger” and the former went in a whole new direction, while still staying faithful to the themes of the original.

7. It undermines the original by awakening a new problem too soon

I’ve already complained about the mere existence of Heroes of Olympus elsewhere because everything Luke fought and died for only bought that world about a month of peace before the gods came and ripped it all away for More Story.

I’ve also complained that the Star Wars Sequels were always going to spit in the face of a character’s six-movie legacy to bring balance to the Force by just going… nah. Ancient prophecy? Only bought us about 30 years of peace.

Whether it’s too soon, or it’s too closely related to the original, your audience is going to feel a little put-off when they realize how inconsequential this sequel makes the original, particularly in TV shows that run too many seasons and can’t keep upping the ante, like Supernatural.

Kung Fu Panda once again because these two movies are amazing. Shen is completely unrelated to Tai Lung. He’s not threatening the Valley of Peace or Shifu or Oogway or anything the heroes fought for in the original. He’s brand new.

My yearning to see these two on screen together to just watch them verbally spat over both being bratty children disappointed by their parents is unquantifiable. This movie is a damn near perfect sequel. Somebody write me fanfic with these two throwing hands over their drastically different perspectives on kung fu.

8. It’s so divorced from the original that it can barely even be called a sequel

Otherwise known as seasons 5 and 6 of Lost. Otherwise known as: This show was on a sci-fi trajectory and something catastrophic happened to cause a dramatic hairpin turn off that path and into pseudo-biblical territory. Why did it all end in a church? I’m not joking, they did actually abandon The Plan while in a mach 1 nosedive.

I also have a post I’ve been sitting on about how to handle faith in fiction, so I’ll say this: The premise of Lost was the trials and escapades of a group of 48 strangers trying to survive and find rescue off a mysterious island with some creepy, sciency shenanigans going on once they discover that the island isn’t actually uninhabited.

Season 6 is about finding “candidates” to replace the island’s Discount Jesus who serves as the ambassador-protector of the island, who is also immortal until he’s not, and the island becomes a kind of purgatory where they all actually did die in the crash and were just waiting to… die again and go to heaven. Spoiler Alert.

This is also otherwise known as: Oh sh*t, Warner Bros wants more Supernatural? But we wrapped it up so nicely with Sam and Adam in the box with Lucifer. I tried to watch one of those YouTube compilations of Cas’ funny moments because I haven’t seen every episode, and the misery on these actors’ faces as the compilation advanced through the seasons, all the joy and wit sucked from their performances, was just tragic.

I get it. Writers can’t control when the Powers That Be demand More Story so they can run their workhorse into the ground until it stops bleeding money, but if you aren’t controlled by said powers, either take it all back to basics, like Cars 3, or just stop.

—

Sometimes taking your established characters and throwing them into a completely unrecognizable story works, but those unrecongizable stories work that much harder to at least keep the characters' development and progression satisfying and familiar. See this post about timeskips that take generational gaps between the original and the sequel, and still deliver on a satisfying continuation.

TLDR: Sequels are hard and it’s never just one detail that makes them difficult to pull off. They will always be compared to their predecessors, always with the expectations to be as good as or surpass the original, when the original had no such competition. There’s also audience expectations for how they think the story, lore, and relationships should progress. Most faults of sequels, in my opinion, lie in straying too far from the fundamentals of the original without understanding why those fundamentals were so important to the original’s success.

[zahri-melitor]

Finished Batman: The Knight.

Oh my god is this a good comic. It very much reminded me that Zdarsky and I are on very similar wavelengths in terms of what we look for in a story. This felt like, no joke, someone had picked my brain of what I expected to see and had envisioned existed during the events of Bruce's training quest, and presented it to me on a platter, divided between 9 separate masters, each chosen and elaborated out of various hints and suggestions over the years.

It wasn't perfect; some of these mentors and masters were in effect standing in as a summary of multiple known characters with these skillsets, while others altered and shifted earlier versions of this history to fit better. But it made for a coherent update, and cleaned up a lot of pre-Crisis and early post-Crisis conception of this period that no longer fitted together as neatly, and sorted out the timings, and made it make sense.

For instance, we know there are multiple single blow techniques, from various secret masters. Shiva knows most if not all of them, and we know of several different masters and traditions who have them (O-Sensei, Richard Dragon and Ben Turner: the Leopard Blow; Legless Master: the Whispering Hand; Master Kirigi: the Vibrating Palm Strike). Shiva also knows The Scapel, The Wind Through the Reeds, The Lion's Paw, Wave and Shore, and the Skullcrack.

But Bruce doesn't need to learn all of those in the course of this story. He needs to learn one, as a representation of that period of his education. And so Master Kirigi got pulled forward to be the representative of the set.

We got more Henri Ducard, and a Ducard that was back to his pre-Flashpoint version. We had Giovanni Zatara and Zatanna. We had Lucie as a stand in for Selina's teachers. We actually got two teachers in the realms of 'stupid shit Bruce has done to his brain': but in this case we got to offset Hugo Strange (who could not trick Bruce, and who must always fundamentally know who Bruce is even as nobody believes him) with Daniel Captio, who is allowed to train Bruce in weird mental techniques and stands in for everyone else (Professor Milo. Dr Hurt. Whoever convinced him to do the Th��gal Ritual. Etc etc)

It was elegant. And I don't think it needed any more of Ra's and Talia in it than it had; indeed what we got was a tight compression of some Denny O'Neil and some Mike Barr Ra's story themes into the underlying fundamental origin of the relationship, but not a full discussion of all its features. There are so many more stories out there further elaborating on their many conflicts.

Also Zdarsky does love Tim so much and had fun with parallels and I laughed several times in issue 10 because apparently we were playing Like Father Like Son. Love some good family theming going on in Al Ghul conflict.

It's just been such a while since I had the experience of sitting down and reading a story that in many ways felt like something I had already believed, but had never seen spelled out, and knew that how I wanted it to go in my head contradicted some known comics beats. This smoothed those contradictions out and gave me how I had wanted to conceptualise all of this.

[dead-lights]

trai-lore!

because ya know. trailers. with lore.

i'll see myself out

but! before i go - I went and compiled all of the Vampires trailers I could find! I wasn't familiar with all of the shorts and I'm not 100% sure I found them all. There are a lot of contradictions, but aside from the gameplay trailer they can mostly be stitched together.

Also, I recognize I'm trying to wring blood from a stone, reading into things that EA never intended, but ya know. That's the point of exploring lore!

this is mostly validated by werewolves - Lily's dialogue confirms that Caleb was turned by Miss Hell, and the 7 years unlucky mirror confirms that Vlad ambushed her while she was brushing her teeth.

It looks like the bar Miss Hell attacks Caleb in is supposed to be in Forgotten Hollow. There are plenty of reasons he could've been there, but to me that implies that Lilith turned first, and he was there because that's where she hangs out now.

It looks like you're supposed to be able to see the normie parts of Forgotten Hollow from that cliff with the bench, rather than just more of the mountain. There's definitely supposed to be more than just those 5 lots.

I'm not sure if the person behind Miss Hell in the bar is anyone specific? they feel slightly familiar but I might be thinking of Leila Illes from island living, which came out afterwards.

It's unclear how Caleb ended up in the bathroom or whether he asked to turn - the animation is the same either way. In game, I've had a lot of success with both bat-form bathroom ambushes and the good ol' "ask for woohoo and then cancel the order as soon as you're alone together" maneuver so either is plausible. To me, it looks like she's reenacting her transformation, with her as Vlad, so she would've wanted unwilling prey. I've generally thought that Caleb followed her into the bathroom thinking he was going to get laid, but with that in mind it does make sense that she would've just ambushed him when he got up to pee (poor humans and their bladders can't handle their nectar). @charsimsalot has a lot of interesting things to say about how being forcibly turned would have affected Miss Hell in this excellent post about the apartment they built for the rebellious vampires!

That bathroom door is on backwards. I checked - that door only has a sign on one side. Maybe they really wanted to hammer home the point that this is a bathroom? the sink and toilet do a pretty good job of that...

Caleb is not a daywalker in this trailer - since this seems to show him in his earlier days, that 100% checks out. It takes 15 skill points to become a daywalker, which... yikes.

note: I know the sims is very gay these days but do keep in mind that vampires was released January 2017. Gay marriage wasn't fully legalized in the US until June 2015. It was a big deal that Caleb suave kissed a guy in the trailer!

fun fact: the song used for this, deadly flo, seems to be either very cheap or free to license. It is used in a few episodes of the Baking Championship franchise. Y'all, that franchise got me back into baking and directly inspired GOBC. I lost my absolute shit when I heard it playing! There are also parts of Holiday Baking Championship that sound suspiciously like the sims 2 theme... I kinda wonder if there's a simmer in their sound department.

Not really that interesting - earlier versions of their outfits/vlad's dark form. Lilith cannot actually turn into a bat in-game.

vlad bloodvein can use "deprive needs" (must be a master vampire at minimum)

brandy can turn into a bat (should be a minor vampire at minimum)

based on the view outside Brandy's bedroom window, it looks like the virtuous vampires might live in an apartment in San Myshuno?

vlad uses supernatural speed to collect figurines

Not very interesting - just Brandy and Elle eating.

↓↓↓ WARNING - jumpscare below ↓↓↓

lmao what

this one doesn't even seem real, but as far as I can tell it was in fact released as a teaser for the full trailer.

This is the official trailer - it lines up reasonably well with other lore. Also the song is so fun.

Most notably: this trailer shows that Caleb is the one who turned Inna. No context is given. Other promotional material & the in-game paintings show that she was a thrall, potentially for hundreds of years before Caleb turned her.

The exterior of the house where Caleb turns Inna looks exactly like Wolfsbane Manor. However, Inna's bedroom doesn't match any room in the manor. It looks like there is a nearly identical house where Widowshild Townhouse currently is, so either Inna was in that house, or Wolfsbane Manor has since been remodeled. It would be kinda interesting if Caleb and Lilith decided to buy Inna's old house when they moved...

When Caleb turns into a bat, he's in the graveyard to the left of Vlad's house. Maybe he and Lilith lived with Vlad for a time? It kinda looks like Vlad had a lot of vampires filtering in and out of his place.

Elle real horny. I wonder what happened to that guy - he isn't a gallery vampire but he shows up in a lot of the paintings. As far as I'm aware Elle doesn't show up in any paintings.

This trailer is an absolute mess. It contradicts enough existing lore that it shouldn't be taken as any sort of canon, but it's a decent source of inspiration to fill in the gaps, and I pulled heavily from it when I was choosing powers for the gallery vampires.

Elle uses her mist form (I checked the animations) - she must be a grand master. She can use Command.

Markus Crow has supernatural speed - must be master+

Lilith is using a computer at the beginning of this, which feels weird because this is supposed to be at least 50 years ago. That said, technology doesn't advance in the sims, so, sure.

This makes it look like Vlad just broke into her house and turned her like he did with Miss Hell, but to me Lily makes it sound like Lilith was a more active participant: "I remember when my cousin, Lilith, first told me she'd met a fascinating man named Vlad. After that, she started spending a lot of time "training" with him. I thought she meant they were workout buddies. It wasn't until later that I found out she'd been lured to the dark arts."

Lilith's bed is a reward from the painter career - not sure if the implication is that she earned it herself?

I can't really see outside Lilith's windows, but it does kinda look like Forgotten Hollow? Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me - why would she and Caleb have to move to Forgotten Hollow if they already lived there? That said, that isn't Lilith. And that isn't Caleb. This was from when their names were Gina and Raylan.

Note that "Raylan" doesn't have the good vampire aspiration, and his traits are completely different. The others aren't quite the same as the gallery sims, but at least they still have the same names.

Looking out the window, it looks like the Virtuous Vampires are in Forgotten Hollow with everyone else. In one of the shorts, it looks like they live in a big city. I'm not sure which I like better!

Lilith is used as the example for supernatural strength. While she doesn't actually have that in-game, this is part of why I like to make her fitness 10 brute with vampiric might.

Elle continues to be real horny. Who is that guy? I like the implication that they had to go get it on as bats because Vlad was taking a nap and they couldn't fuck in his coffin :(

Bonus! While this isn't a trailer, exactly, it's a promotional blog post from Vlad's point of view and it is the best. Every last part of this makes me happy, from Caleb and Lilith ganging up on Vlad to Vlad referring to sparring matches as "epic duels" (or, in this particular case, what seems like a pretty good training sesh for Caleb).

Nothing about Lilith makes it seem like she doesn't feed on people except a) her household description and b) this post. That said, those two things about as primary as canon can get.

Vlad claims to own 100 gray coats

Vlad only fought Caleb. There could be so many reasons for that - was Caleb the one who made the challenge? Does Vlad not want to fight his offspring?

Vlad claims that the Encyclopedia Vampirica is mostly based on him. Make of that what you will.

Second bonus: Did you know that Vlad has a normie cousin??? There was a bit of promotional content for seasons involving the Climate family. This is that time they invited Vlad over for Harvestfest.

Please let me know if I missed anything! There's a lot of material out there, much of it no longer available on EA's site, so it's definitely possible there are things I didn't find.

[wanyouzi]

For the new saga, I have some of my own ideas, well, I hope many people will accept them, but unfortunately, in my country, many fans don't listen to what I say and just want to hear what they want to hear(My English level is not very good, the following are machine translatisee):

What I'm saying is that everyone has assumed Jay's goofy animations (which I would consider goofy enough) as the official established plot (note that plot and storyline are different, the storyline serves the plot). But in reality, Jay's first album did not have the long animations found in his new album, at most there were some short clips to help understand the storyline. The animators at the time drew their animations based on their own interpretations of the lyrics and their own imagination, creating excellent works one by one. Later albums saw Jay adding more and more long animations, it is likely that he did so because he saw more and more animations and wanted to try it himself (or at the request of his fans) to create his own animations. Jay has also said that he is not good at visual design, so he may have known that the animations he designed would not be good. (It seems that they were used to help understand the storyline, telling us that we're going to drown here, or that we're about to fight here.)

So, I think that what Jay thought of can be considered just one of the countless works, and if you don't like it, you don't have to watch his works.

In summary, the plot was something that Jay had thought out in advance, but the storyline was not. His animation was simply his own idea of the storyline, so if you don't like it, you don't have to watch it. (I think there will definitely be an animation where Ody has an epic battle with Poseidon, both of them getting badly hurt in the process, and Ody just barely wins in the end. Even if there isn't one, we can create our own, again, to reiterate, the plot is predetermined, but the storyline is free.)

Regarding the plot where a mortal defeats a god, and in the end, Poseidon is injured and says "Please," if you simply cannot stand this scene, then you can stop reading here and leave (thank you for your cooperation).

Epic, in essence, is a large-scale, adaptation and re-creation of the original work, rather than being completely based on the original classic. Why could Ody defeat Poseidon? It's not about who is stronger or weaker, it's about skill counter! Skill counter! Didn't Jay post his setting for the gods earlier? In his setting, even Hermes can fight Poseidon. Then, it makes sense for Ody to wear a windbag like Hermes and use speed to fight Poseidon. If Poseidon were as powerful as in myth, the fight between Hermes and Poseidon would be a joke, let alone Ody. (Of course, the jetpack is a little bit unrealistic.)

There's also the fact that Ody is fighting with Poseidon directly, which is just not realistic. Does Ody have to be the same wise and cunning as in the original? I think a human, no matter how powerful, is still just a human. After going through so much pain and suffering, he would break down, lose his mind completely, and give up. Let's not talk about the original here. In Epic, Ody is already a completely different person from the beginning. Epic's Ody would feel guilty for killing a baby, would he? He would, right? He would just pat himself on the back and walk away without any burden. Epic's Ody is suffering from the goddess's harassment on Calypso's island, would he? He would, right? He even had a child with the goddess.

For me, I would rather accept the epic version of the Odysey. If the epic version of the Odysey, which has endured all the sufferings over the past 20 years, can go home immediately, but then be stopped again, and still be able to play mind games with Poseidon as before, then I suggest abandoning the epic version and going back to the original work. The original version of the Odysey is more in line with everyone's mental standards.

Finally, I ask loyal readers not to curse me 🧎🏻‍♂️. If my opinion has made you uncomfortable, you can simply exit. Please don't curse me, I really fear it. Thank you for your cooperation 🙏🏻.(However, I welcome friendly discussions.)

[newlabournewromantics]

did you guys know tony blair actually wrote supercut by lorde?

this is dedicated to @tonyblairwitchproject thank u for enabling me

the process of putting together a supercut, of rewriting and reimagining an (artificially) positive version of a particular storyline, is eerily similar to what tony blair does in every aspect of his life. this is especially noticeable when it comes to his relationship with gordon though — he rarely goes into detail as to just how ugly their interactions were, and his public statements about why they grew apart are always imbued with soulless language about “professional” and “political” disagreements, rather than any honesty about the deep personal betrayal that was actually going on. plus, whenever tony does express any sense of anguish over the breakdown of the relationship, he’s always incredibly quick to defend his own behaviour (denying granita even happened… what the hell), erasing any responsibility he might bear. he is LITERALLY creating and playing a supercut, one which only has any traction in his own head.

journalists have written about new labour in 1997 being drenched in a certain magic, offering the public something to believe in. “gave” is past tense though, as the tbgb relationship began to deteriorate just months after getting into government, and newlab’s popularity would only dwindle as the years went on.

remember that one clip in the gq alastair campbell interview where tony refused to say he didn’t dream about gordon? yeah i remember it too, isn’t that funny!

two things to say here. one, tony can’t reach for gordon because they are not on speaking terms like whatsoever not even remotely. two, i truly think that tony has repeated his own version of events concerning gordon, both in his head and in public, so many times that he’s come to view them as reality — even if tony did interact with gordon properly, he would only be able to see the version of gordon that he’s created.

1994-2005 (ish), they wanted to reconcile and ease the tensions, but external pressures (teams around them, pressures of the jobs, emotional blockages etc) prevented them from truly fixing anything.

Tthese lyrics give me the impression that the speaker would twist themselves into any shape, fashion themselves into any persona, just to hold the attention of the person these lines are directed at. Very much reminds me of accounts re the 1994 leadership discussions, where it’s said that tony was promising gordon anything and everything to get him to swing behind him, then making similarly wild promises about succession later in government just to keep gordon playing the game. Also, it reminds me of that absolutely fucking awful (positive) rawnsley quote that goes something like “tony would cajole, plead, argue, rail against gordon”, just to get him to talk to him.

in my head, this section relates to his immediate post-pmship period, where he’s taking on international roles left and right to try and recreate the pure magic of newlab (and ultimately failing! lets’s not be dishonest here).

THIS IS THE MOST TONY BLAIR SET OF LINES IN EXISTENCE!!! PAY ATTENTION HERE!!!!!!!

first line relates to the nonsense (very sensible accurate analysis) i was spinning about tony rewriting his and gordon’s history, erasing his own culpability and capacity for TREACHERY! the lines about calling… such an obvious parallel with the infamous three hour phone calls, the “endless circular conversations”, the screaming fits down the telephone line…….

another dreaming reference? more likely than you’d think

this outro, although repeating lines i have already covered is actually very important to cover separately. the way that it just repeats itself, over and over and over and over, until the song finishes is actually incredibly aligned to tony’s mentality when it comes to tbgb. as i said earlier, i truly think that tony has repeated his own narrative regarding the way that he treated gordon — and his responsibility for how their relationship played out — enough times to view it as reality. he is insane and i understand him like nobody else.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist:

Over the past few weeks, a couple of the children of Christian hate-preacher Steven Anderson have gone public about the physical abuse they suffered growing up. Given that Anderson routinely tells Christians to marry young and have as many kids as possible, the revelation that abuse may be rampant in his own home isn’t as much shocking as it is long overdue.

Who is Steven Anderson?

If you’re not familiar with Anderson, he’s someone with a long history of saying vile things. The Tempe, Arizona-based preacher celebrated the deaths of murdered LGBTQ people and called on the government to execute gay people with a firing squad. Anderson’s sermons have been so outrageously awful that 34 countries won’t allow him to step foot within their borders. His acolytes include Jonathan Shelley and Aaron Thompson, both of whom I spoke with this past summer. More than anything, he’s the de facto leader of a movement called the New Independent Fundamentalist Baptists. New IFB preachers are, on paper, all about following the word of God as written in the KJV translation. In reality, they spend their time gleefully trashing LGBTQ people, Jews, “effeminate” men, and everyone else they deem heretics.

[...]

The troubling posts from Isaac Anderson

About a year ago, we learned that one of his kids, Isaac Anderson, was somehow taking his father’s hate even further. The second oldest of 12 children, Isaac admitted to being a full-blown Nazi, complete with a tattoo of a Nazi War Eagle across his chest.

[...]

Isaac Anderson’s interview led to his brother speaking out

That interview had an interesting consequence, though. It spurred one of Isaac’s siblings to go public about his childhood. In early September, John Anderson (the third oldest son) reached out to Dead Domain because he wanted to share his own story and make the case for why his parents shouldn’t have any contact with his siblings (specifically the eight who still lived at home with the Andersons). John spoke even more bluntly about the abuse he suffered at the hands of Steven and Zsuzsanna Anderson. The allegations in the interview involved “closed fist beatings, whippings with electrical cords, insulting and belittling children as young as six, starvation as punishment, and exposure to the elements.”

[...]

Another Anderson child speaks out

And then, this past Thursday, Dead Domain posted an interview with a third Anderson child. This was Miriam Anderson, the oldest daughter in the family, and the one John brought up earlier because she had been “trying to get away.” Many of Miriam’s terrifying recollections echoed what her brothers said earlier about how abuse occurred at home, including mentions of specific pieces of equipment in their kitchen that were used against them. She talked how she had suicidal thoughts from the age of 11 onward because of everything she endured at home. Her brothers’ stories, she added, were “100% true.”

The takeaway… for now

In a way, these stories, as heartbreaking as they are, are also uplifting. Uplifting because at least two of these kids don’t share the worst characteristics of their father. They want the public to know what their lives have been like, bursting the bubble their father has kept around them for years. It turns out his version of Christianity has been the nightmare outsiders always suspected. His theology isn’t just awful to his ideological opponents but also to his own flesh and blood. If they can escape that environment—and they sure as hell are trying—perhaps there’s hope for others in similar situations. At the same time, it’s awful that they still have to play it cautiously because of Steven Anderson’s wrath. No one should have to fear harm from their own parents. But when their parents place their idea of God’s Word over common sense and decency, we can only hope they find solace and safety somewhere else.

Fundamentalist kook pastor Steven Anderson has at least two of his speaking out against the abuse they suffered at the hands of him and his wife Zsuzsanna.

[seaofreverie]

Sparkstember Day 12: In Outer Space (Cool Places)

Oh boy, it's finally here!! Having been a Sparks fan for nearly a year by that point, I finally got to an album I just straight up don't like! I honestly forgot by then that this was even a possibility. But a world where I can enjoy everything in such a vast catalogue of a favourite band of mine would be too perfect. It would be pretty strange and unsettling even. Not to always make it about my other favourite band whenever I'm talking about the first, but with TMBG also I eventually got to that one studio album release that I just couldn't bring myself to like, no matter what. So I think I discovered a bit of a personal repeating pattern here.

Alright then. My verdict on this album, which already got a pretty mixed response from fans as far as I know, is that it's not very good, or at the very least, it's not for me. Even the songs I like here I mostly like in the sense of, well, this one I could listen to again outside of the album every once in a while, but they're nowhere near being an actual favourite (besides one song, or two, mayyyybe four if I'm feeling particularly generous).

So I think that my main problem here comes down to how the arrangements / instrumentals seem rather empty to me but not in a cool minimalistic way. And, dare I say, they're pretty damn uninteresting - very few elements of suprise or anticipation to be found here. This is the only Sparks album that just... doesn't feel Sparks to me. (And that's coming right after Angst, which might really just be one of the most Sparks-like of Sparks albums in a way). Something is TERRIBLY missing here and a couple catchy melodies and fun synth lines aren't enough to make up for that. It drags on quite a bit and is underwhelming to listen to as a whole. With only a couple moments of change and something more interesting and engaging. It's this sort of situation where I feel like the whole time I'm waiting for some kind of resolution that never happens ultimately. First instance of me putting on a new Sparks album and forcing myself to sit through the whole thing. And last one I hope! (and expect...? well, better not jinx it)

Ok, having said all that... This will be a historical event because I can't finish this post before I have my obligatory listen to the album of the day on its day. So, time for some real time documentation of my changing opinion, or lack thereof. Time to hear IOS in it's entirety for the first time since april!

...Ok, I'm glad that I didn't say all this in vain at least, LOL! Because I'm still underwhelmed! No major change here. Definitely still not something I'm going to return to more often than very occasionally and the "waiting for nothing" effect was very present and real once again. And it just dawned on be, but do most of these songs not have a bridge?? Maybe that could be part of why it all feels pretty predictable! But alright, as per tradition, let's look at some highlights anyway.

Favourite songs (and other highlights):

Cool Places: never felt in any strong way about it but repeated listens made it an enjoyable little ditty over time, lol. One of my first impressions here was how LOW Russell's voice is, this must be the lowest he's ever sung, right?? And oh, quick shoutout to the 21×21 version of it too

All You Ever Think About Is Sex: ok, this one's really cool and exactly what convinced me that the rest of the album would be enjoyable in the same way. Not for me unfortunately!!

Please, Baby, Please: my definitive fav here that I like a whole lot and that for whatever reason doesn't seem to have any of this album's problems that I described earlier. And I'll always be partial towards songs that I can interpret as being aspec-coded, thanks to my predisposition to do that as often as possible

I Wish I Looked A Little Better: very similar case to All You Ever Think About Is Sex

Dance Godammit: it's funny. It's fun to listen to sometimes

[eldritch-elrics]

happy new year everyone! to celebrate the beginning of the new year at midnight, i.... did not do anything, because i didn't notice at all. i was too busy playing sh2r.........

anyway. i did the labyrinth today. as i may have mentioned, the labyrinth is my favorite level in og silent hill 2. this means that i have a lot of opinions about this segment. sh2r's labyrinth.... is hit or miss. that is to say, when it hits, it hits hard, but when it misses, it also misses hard.

first up, a surprise appearance! abstract daddy! holy shit! holy shit!!!! that was one intense boss fight, oh my god. the other bosses in the game so far have been pretty standard, not any more exciting than their og counterparts, but abstract daddy ramped it up a notch. for the most part, i loved all the changes they made. it felt like the dip into angela's otherworld was not just one little tangent in an otherwise unrelated segment, but a whole area in its own right. the environmental design was a highlight here: the fleshy, breathing walls, the huge pistons and machinery, the televisions projecting abuse, the artifacts that suggest domestic violence (smashed plates etc). the way that you're half running from abstract daddy and half fighting back! it felt like we got a better look into angela's psyche through this expanded vision of her otherworld, and that was great.

i think that the cutscene with angela was mostly the same as in the og? i'd have to look back at both side by side. i think this cutscene hit really differently for me this time around because i already know the game's twist - i was watching it and going "damn, that's a bit on the nose, angela," only to look at the og's script afterwards and discover that the line was the same in both versions, lmao.

it was a really, really interesting decision to put this scene before the maria jail cell scene. it completely changes both scenes in ways that i have complicated feelings about. i'll try to explain...

so, to me, the post-abstract-daddy cutscene kind of hinges on angela's accusation that james is only interested in one thing: that is, sex. (idk if this is really the most "important" part of the scene, but it's the one that i find most interesting in the greater labyrinths context.) both games give us a reason why it makes some sense for angela to make this accusation - a reason, that is, beyond the obvious fact that her trauma has caused her to see james's friendliness in a different light. in the remake, it feels like the whole thing is framed as a misunderstanding - james had that line in the park where he told angela he was looking for a little girl, angela took it the wrong way, and now she has fully built up a version of james in her mind where he's a sexual predator of some flavor. as players, we know that this is probably not true, but it still casts some doubt on james & his seeming good nature. was his relationship with mary really all it seems...? (spoiler alert: nope!)

in the original game, there is a layer beyond "trauma-informed misunderstanding" to angela's accusation that all james wants is sex. and that is the fact that, earlier in the level, maria says essentially the exact same thing. maria and angela make the same assumption about james, with extremely different tones.

i promise i have more to say about angela, but let me segue into the maria jail cell scene here for a moment. this was the only cutscene from the remake i'd seen before playing it! my out-of-context thoughts on that scene are posted here. anyway, as i've probably talked about before, one of the reasons why i like the cell scene so much is that it works as the setup for an elaborate joke that the game is playing on the player.

the joke basically goes like this:

james finds maria again, yay

maria tells james in no uncertain terms that they are going to fuck when he comes to find her again

james's reaction to this information is kind of ambiguous

the player, assuming they have bought into the sexiness of maria, goes through the whole grueling labyrinth segment determined to see maria again asap

this momentum is completely interrupted by abstract daddy, and especially by angela accusing james of being a sexual predator

if the player has bought into the idea that james is attracted to maria - or if they themself are attracted to maria - this is a "wait, what??" moment. it's a "making the gooners self-conscious" moment (sorry). "joke" is perhaps not the right word, but it's a rug pull. you thought you were getting sex? nope! you're getting Feeling Uncomfortable About Sex! and i think that is just great.

going back to angela, this is the second layer to her assumption that james wants sex. in the original game, to the player, angela seems like she's hit on something that might very well be true. regardless of what james thinks about all this - and i think the game deliberately suggests very little about what james thinks about all this! - he's gotten himself into a sexually charged situation with maria. this, perhaps, causes the player to rethink some things about angela. if her instincts are right, and james is pretty sex-driven, should we take her more seriously when she accuses james of infidelity and (indirectly) murder? this whole thing with maria sure resonates with angela's accusation that "you probably found someone else."

and i just think that that part of the scene hits harder if we've already seen james have this semi-sexual moment with maria. it's surprising! it's a bait and switch!

consider, then, what's different if james is mentally carrying all of angela's accusations - you only care about sex, you probably left your wife for someone else - into his interactions with maria in the labyrinth. of course he's going to deny that he wants to touch her, even if his face tells us he's conflicted! of course he's going to catch himself when he's "too" emotional over her death! it paints the whole thing in a different light. and it's an emotionally nuanced and realistic light, certainly. but man... the overall emotional arc of james here is a bit flatter & darker because of this change. and i do like how the original is a bit more ambiguous about james's feelings for maria, even if i completely accept this version as well.

to sum up, you could say that the placement of the scenes in the original gives players both more of a surprise, and more doubt about james's character thanks to angela's instincts seeming more immediately on-point. in the remake, however, the scene order feels like it moreso makes james doubt himself.

my other big question is about how to read maria's line change in this scene in this new context - from "Come and get me. I can't do anything through these bars" to "Well, if you happen to make up your mind… I'll be waiting." in the remake's version of the scene in general, she seems much less flirty & assured of his attention, and i think that is sad - i like how she comes off as totally manipulative in the original (and imo for reasons that are very sympathetic!). but it's interesting to see her more subdued & harder to read in this reworking. i take the line change as an indication of her stronger, more equal relationship with james in the remake: even though she needs him to like her, she's been doing that by building a legitimate relationship with him. she doesn't feel as strong a need to play the sex card as forcefully as possible... if that makes sense.

it kind of makes me wonder what the remake team would do if they were given the opportunity to completely rewrite the jail cell scene. now of course they can't do that, as it's possibly the most iconic scene in the game, but... i'm curious! would maria be warmer? less completely inscrutable/mysterious? would they be able to do more story-wise with the scene switch?

of course, an extremely plausible answer for why the scene order is switched around is so that players don't have to do two bosses back to back. but that switch creates some interesting story implications!

anyway. i sure do start talking a lot when maria is involved...

all that being said... let me talk about the actual content of the labyrinths!

so i think that... the nicest way i can put this is that i & the remake devs have different opinions about what the labyrinth's core gimmick is. to me, the most important thing about the labyrinth is the way it represents a complete break from the design of the levels that have come before. you are now in a lawless place. there is no map. apart from the one required to open up maria's room, there are no puzzles. this is silent hill 2 stripped of all flourishes and signifiers. you don't know where you are, or what's going on. you just have to get out and find maria.

the remake adds puzzles. worse, it adds multiple sections to the labyrinth!

i'll start by acknowledging that, visual design wise, all of these elements are extremely fucking cool. the redesign of the turning box puzzle is legitimately fantastic - the escher vibes are perfect, and i love how it's scaled up to a terrifying size. the remake certainly understands that a core part of the labyrinths' horror is how they look manmade, but don't correspond to any sort of building you might find in reality - a contrast to the rest of the game, which is set in extremely mundane, recognizable locations turned horrific by what has been added to or subtracted from them.

but... puzzles? the "rotten" section of the new labyrinth (sorry i keep switching between singular and plural for "labyrinth;" either feels like it fits wrt the remake) is just kind of... bad, in my opinion. like, taken out of context it's fine. visually it's great - i loved the dead body thing (??) wrapped in bandages where you never actually get to see what it is. and the fridge filled with guts!! and so many new things for james to stick his hand in! (really funny that this is like, a running joke in the remake now?) but having to collect items, collect keys, use them all in a centralized location to move on to the next segment... that's the sort of gameplay we've been doing all game. that's standard shit. this absolutely should not be part of the one level that is defined by how it completely does away with all of the "standard shit."

i think there's also a more psychological reason why the labyrinth should not be a long, puzzle-filled level. this is the same reason why i think i'm ultimately okay with the remake moving the position of the prisoner puzzle. that is: i believe that the labyrinth gets rid of (most) of the thinky stuff because the game wants you to focus on the fact that you have to get to maria. and it's a trek to get there, but there's not too much to distract you... until you get to abstract daddy, that is.

anyway... the "desolate" section was pretty good. felt like the og labyrinth! except with a sort of blue filter over everything? idk about that choice. it's interesting how pyramid head's lair isn't optional this time - there's something to be said about the power of making the coolest things missable, and it seems like the remake is often pretty scared to keep the missable things missable. and speaking of missing things, i really missed this james commentary:

i really liked how you can just see pyramid head standing and watching you from behind the bars here though.

finally, the "ruined" section. the visuals in this bit were really awesome, but overall i think this part sucks ass. as i've said, i do like the combat in the remake, but having a forced enemy gauntlet kind of area (or any moment outside of boss fights in which you have to kill the enemies) is simply not in the spirit of silent hill. thumbs down!

which brings us to the end of the labyrinth, and fortunately two really great moments. the first one is: james holding (dead) maria's hand!!!

my heart!!

as opposed to the original scene, where he just kind of says "mary..." out of nowhere, the remake gives a little context to that line: he stops crying, and sobers up a little, and turns away before going "mary." it extremely reads like him accepting maria's death (or rather... telling himself that he shouldn't be so sad over maria's death) because his ultimate objective is still to find mary. another james repression win...

this is an interesting interpretation! even though it gives james a clearer (and also more nuanced) emotional progression in this scene, it also still leaves open the avenues for both the "in water" and "maria" endings - your actions as a player decide whether or not james ends up repressing/rejecting his feelings about maria or not.

(also: i wonder why the door leading to maria says "208" on it? gotta think about that another time)

finally (yes this is the last thing for real this time) - continuing from the remake's tendency to make previously missable/optional weapons/areas required... pyramid head's sword is now required for one final puzzle!

i thought this whole bit was GREAT. i don't really mind that you don't get to keep the sword (it's a cheese option anyway, lol), and moreover i fucking love the symbolism of james dragging pyramid head's sword through the sea of monstrous hands. as a figment of james's psyche, pyramid head's role is to cut down distractions in james's path - whether that means dispatching other monsters, or killing maria over and over. to have james be the one to take the sword and cut a path forward shows that he is on his way to, you could say, being his own pyramid head. moving forward without maria. literally cutting himself out of the abyss of his mind. and of course... the next stop is literally into his own grave... so i think that is a really fun symbolic progression!

[recurring-polynya]

Idk if you’ve answered this question (sorry if you have) before, but how do you think Renji & Rukia first met ? What do you think their life was like originally before Soul Society ?

Pardon me if I'm reading this wrong, but...Rukia and Renji's first meeting is enshrined pretty thoroughly in canon? She rescued him from a water heist that was about to turn disastrous.

This is from Chapter 98/Episode 32: A Star and a Stray Dog, which is the first place you should be looking if you're interested in pre-canon Renruki lore.

As to the second part of your question...you mean before they died? What sort of lives did they have in the World of the Living?

I'm gonna pontificate, so I'll throw that under a cut

First off, I am fascinated with the fact that Kubo gives us nothing about what anyone's living life was like. On one hand, I would like to know everyone's pre-history, but on the other, I'm glad he didn't, like as a literary choice. The slate is supposed to be wiped clean. It doesn't matter. It's maddening, but also correct.

It's also one of those places that is just ✨fanfic free real estate✨ in terms of I think everyone should make up their own version for their blorbos, so of course I have them for Renji and Rukia. I have absolutely nothing to support these, they are just what I felt in my heart.

I have actually talked about Renji's beforedeath quite a bit, here and there in various fanfics, usual under the conceit that, particularly in their Inuzuri days, he would sometimes blurt out some half-remembered thing and then promptly forget it again. Here an excerpt from Chapter 3 of go places:

It’s an Alive Memory, Rukia is nearly certain. Most souls get them. All the boys did, from time to time. To Renji, it’s just brain dust. Whatever it is in Soul Society that makes people forget their lives also makes this memory detritus slippery to hold onto. Renji won’t think of this later, or attach any importance to this conversation. The funny thing is, after ten years of watching him stumble through these moments, Rukia probably has a better idea of what Renji’s life was like than he does. He lived on a farm of some sort. A small one, or at least his family grew a lot of their own food. He died of a fever. Nearly all of his Alive Memories involve his mother. Rukia is almost positive that Renji’s mother is the one who taught him to write. The sewing scissors were likely hers. In Rukia’s imagination, Renji’s mother is very tall and beautiful and kind. Rukia doesn’t need to use her imagination to know that Renji loved his mother very much.

Just to offer a little more detail--doing the math out, where Bleach starts in the early 00s, Rukia and Renji have been separated for 40 years and knew each other for 10 years before that, it would make a lot of sense for both of them to have died in WWII. However, I like to think that time is very wobbly, especially in the outer Rukon, so I like to make their deaths a little earlier-- specifically, I think that Renji died in the 1918 flu pandemic, which may have contributed to getting a plague spirit for a zanpakutou. That being said, my general vibe for his childhood is based on Kanta, the neighbor kid from My Neighbor Totoro, which takes place in the 50s. In any case, he had a pretty small and unremarkable life in rural Japan, aside from the fact that he was loved very much, which will never be unremarkable, no matter how common it may be.

I have written less about Rukia's beforedeath, mostly because she was too young when she died to have any phantom memories. [Note: I know there are some theories out there, based on some arcane clues that Kubo has dropped that Rukia may not actually be a normal soul and may be related to Hell. That's...fine. While I'm never going to say no to a storyline that centers Rukia, I really do hope that it comes to naught. Ichigo has enough Crazy Origin going on and I like the Rukia's backstory the way it is, so I'm just going to ignore all of that for the sake of this post]. Ahem! So, infant death is not anything surprising, or even really interesting, but what makes Rukia's kind of compelling is the fact that her much-older sister died at the same time. To me, this indicates either a natural disaster or a death-by-violence.

As I said above, there are infinity ways you can go with this, but to me, there were two important things I wanted to capture 1) given Renji's descriptions of Rukia having an inherent grace and nobility, and the idea that something about Hisana caught Byakuya's eye, I thought that maybe they should have been noble, and 2) I wanted them to live by the sea. I do not actually remember how I landed on this, but in the 1850s, a bunch of sea fortresses were constructed to protect Japan by attack from sea (see here for more detail). This was the tail end of the Edo period and I liked the idea that maybe Rukia came from an old samurai family, and her father was sent to oversee one of these coastal forts. Did they die in a bombardment? A bad storm? The Kanto earthquake? I never got that far. I'm not even sure if this is a realistic scenario, if they had civilians living there, etc, this was just a half-thought-out thing I came up with for a bonus chapter of a fanfic that someone requested once. The one other detail from that that I came up with and stand by is that I think there were more siblings in their family between Hisana and Rukia. I also like that this idea that makes Rukia somewhat older than Renji, even though the math is impossible and the points are made up anyway.

[qiriex]

Why do DnP have such a large transmasc/lesbian following?

Hi! So I put out a general feeler post about this, and it seems like y’all are interested in a big ass post about Dan and Phil’s relationship with their LGBT audience. Click on the read more for a bit of unhinged analysis.

I have… a lot to say on this matter, and tbf I warned you it would be long. This will mostly be focused on the wlw (specifically lesbian) and transmasc experience with DnP. Before I get into it, I wanna state that I am NOT transmasc. I’m a he/they afab lesbian, but I am in no way talking over any transmascs who have differing experiences. This post will mostly deal with the AFAB experience, as I am not AMAB and can’t speak for our lovely transfems/enbies/cis men! I love you guys, and I would love to hear about your experiences too, though! I’m going to be using as much non-gendered language as I can, however I’m talking about some pretty gendered topics so bear with me. One more thing to note is that when researching this, I found a lot more examples of Dan shouting exact communities out. This is a post about them both, as they are both extremely important to queer communities! It’s just that Dan has generally done more press runs relating solely to his sexuality, so there is more content there. I’m sure I’m missing a lot, though, and if anyone has more Phil focused clips/screenshots I would love to link them here. This is very much a work in progress post, I’m sure I’ll be adding more later and if you have screenshots/clips/anything, my dms and my submissions are open! Okay, done with disclaimers for now, I think. This post will be split up into a few sections: DnP talking about the LGBT community (both pre and coming out), how they empower their wlw following, how they affirm transmasc identities and what they mean to the LGBT community as icons. I would like this post to be free of any in-fighting drama, both from the Phandom and LGBT side of things. We are all awesome! 

Dan and Phil are both queer men who came out after acquiring a large fanbase that was predominantly AFAB (love you transfems and cis dudes going strong btw). However, a community that started out as a common “fangirl” fanbase over the years has shifted into a predominantly LGBT fandom with a disproportionate amount of specifically transmascs and lesbians. The word fangirl was often thrown around as an insult to people like us back in the day, but I think it makes perfect sense that a group of disenfranchised, young, queer AFABs would be drawn to DnP. Both of them were, for obvious in hindsight reasons, vocal supporters of the community. I can’t find an unedited version of the clip, but this clip from 2017 is a great example of that. Correct me if I’m wrong, but not a lot of non-out YouTubers educated their community in the way that Dan does in this clip.  I think sometimes it’s lost to time how bad YouTube used to be, that 2013-2017 time period was peak anti-SJW era. As basic as what he said was, somebody with his level of influence taking the time to educate his audience on queer issues as a presumed straight man was very meaningful. This not only created a safespace for young, queer AFABs but also made their specific audience more saturated with us than your typical “straight” YouTuber of the day. Their audience shares more demographic similarities with someone like Tyler Oakley than someone like Zoella, which makes sense in recent years.

This tweet from Dan from before he was out displays my point perfectly. To my enby ass, things like this meant the world to me and I can imagine it’s much the same for my transmascs out there. Going back to the clip earlier, though, I think that how willing to break gender norms they both were had even more of an effect in attracting transmascs who hadn’t yet fully discovered themselves. This isn’t denying that a lot of transmascs who were already out were drawn to DnP! Most of my Phandom friends were actually transmen back in the day. However, I think in retrospect there’s a huge pipeline from going into the fanbase as a cis person to coming out of it as… not. It makes perfect sense to me that a generation of transmascs would be drawn to and model themselves after the two of them. Going back to the YouTube landscape of the time, even their contemporaries had a much meaner edge that DnP just never had. This unfortunately made them targets of their fellow “vaguely emo relatable YouTuber” scene; people like Shane Dawson and Onision immediately come to mind, at the time they would have been in a similar category but in retrospect are nothing alike. There was an air of cruelty that Dan and Phil never fed into, consistently remaining themselves. I think that as a baby transmasc, people who stayed loyal to their principals even when it wasn’t the cool thing to do was really empowering. In a time when my friends were all fans of LeafyIsHere, Dan and Phil weren’t afraid to be kind. To be soft, even with the context we have now of how scary that really was. After BIG/COTY dropped, it was easy to see why they were great queer role models.  But I’d argue that they’d always been this, even before we knew they were queer.

This one will be a little bit more personal, but I would like to start this section out with a personal anecdote. I grew up in a fairly liberal household, in which I was told being gay was just fine. However, my mother just so happened to use the word ‘lesbian’ as a descriptor for any woman she thought was “unsuitable”. Ugly, boyish, mean, it didn’t matter; to me, lesbian was an unmistakably bad word. I knew that the word didn’t mean that, but intrinsically I had never heard it as something positive until I heard Dan simply shout out the lesbians on a YouNow stream. Simple, right? Four years later, and BIG came out. I identified as a bisexual “who would never actually date a man ahaha” at the time, and it was life changing. Dan and Phil have frequently shouted out their lesbian fanbase over the years to the point where it’s developed into a bit of an inside joke. This is meaningful for a multitude of reasons, one of which being just how demonized not only the word but the group can be. Even when poking gentle fun, neither of them ever lean into hurtful stereotypes. I went to We’re All Doomed last November, and when Dan took his jumpsuit top off the audience screamed. He yelled into the mic “I thought you were all lesbians!”, to which the crowd screamed even louder. You can poke fun at each other without playing into things like the mean lesbian stereotype, for example, and I think it’s things like this which show that they have a genuine appreciation for their lesbian audience. I can only speak from my own experience when I say that I was originally drawn to them for their authenticity even in a hostile environment. I was a closeted lesbain who had grown attached to closeted gay men, because on a level I didn’t understand yet I related to them. It was a parasocial relationship that if I never had, I wouldn’t have come out. This section is a lot less objective than the others, because for me it’s impossible to look at this objectively. A lot of the reasons that transmascs would be drawn to DnP are why lesbians would, especially in a less than LGBT friendly era like the 2010s. They were never afraid to be perceived as weaker than their peers if that meant being kinder, and from a lesbian lens this wasn’t how I modeled my new relationship with gender off of but what I wished the world was like. I grew up with a deep, fundamental fear of men that is still there, but when I would watch actual sunshine Phil Lester and Winnie the Pooh ass Daniel Howell it made me realize that there are people out there who have your back.

I think this is where the conversation turns to now; we are mostly all adults, DnP have been out and proud for four years now. The pair have returned to YouTube (gloriously, might I add) and can talk openly about even the most mundane parts of being queer. Dan has been a very outspoken part of the community, doing a really lovely bit of standup about it. Watch it if you haven’t. I don’t think either of them are obligated to be spokesmen for the community, in a way I think one of the most powerful things they’ve done after BIG/COTY is to just continue living. Watching two queer people thrive how they have is incredibly important. They’re still just as great role models as they have ever been, just with nothing to hide this time. I think now that most of their younger fanbase has grown up, we’ve been very reflective of our past with the Phandom. Certainly not me (lie). It’s not a mystery to me, though, that two groups of closeted AFAB children would attach themselves to figures like DnP. The pair’s content encouraged a level of creativity, of believing in yourself against all odds that was and is unmatched to this day. We can moan about how much of a demonic fanbase we used to be, but the fact is that we turned out alright. People wonder why our fanbase feels like the most healthy parasocial family this side of Tumblr, and that’s because in a way we are. We were raised by these two British dudes to be how we are today; smart, funny and creative. All kids have a rough teenagehood, don’t they? It’s no wonder why queer kids would be drawn to a culture like this, one in which despite everything there is still hope that we will one day grow up to be our honest selves. Dan and Phil did, and so will we.

Thank you if you made it this far! I know this is a bit over sentimental, but they mean a lot to me. They did back in the day, and they definitely do now. Like I said in the beginning, feel free to add on. I would love to hear about this from a transmasc perspective, or any other perspective! I just love talking about these two lol. Love you guys.

[azraanth]

Rant / Naruto and One Piece's protagonists.

I've been reading up analysis on Naruto and Luffy's to see how people perceived both of them as protagonists. Of course, everyone is biased by the fandom they are in, which is fair. But they do always compare both of them and don't think of the context of the story that's being told. And since I am in the mood to ramble about this...thought I would make a post.

Tdlr; Naruto and Luffy are great protagonists for their individuals stories and both are trying to say differents things.

About Naruto :

His childhood ; discriminated against because the Kyubi/Kurama reside inside him and the Tailed Beast injured and killed a lot of the villagers // loved ones of many ninjas and more or less deem Naruto responsible for it because he represents Kyubi, not making a difference between the child and the beast. That's the adults faults. Added to that, he has no family to count on and isn't taken care of by anyone instead. The child is completely isolated from everyone and everything and he doesn't understand why. He makes pranks and stupid jokes to gain attention from people because it's better than to be ignored. The only other kid who he's more or less in the same situation as him is Sasuke.

He grew to learn that he needed to be useful to the village in order to receive love or attention from them so he sets the goal of becoming Hokage. The system he is in partcipated in that mindset, it's very logical that he would end up setting such goals, if you think about it with the context of the worldbuilding and what is valued in it.

(That being The Village and Peace and a world who value sacrifice for the system set in place and put 13 years old kids on missions and create soldiers out of them.)

So, when you think about it, it's only logical that Naruto would grow to value other people's opinion of him a lot. On top of that, the people who have goals that are more individualistic are heavily punished or portrayed as traitors by the narrative. (Which could be related to the fact that Japan is a country that favor's the community more than the individual goals / well-being of its people. It makes sense that it's translated in what mangaka write about.) Think of Sasuke. He wasn't looking for a way to destroy the village at the beginning, just a way to kill Itachi which wasn't even related to village business and was his personal goal. Yet he was called a deserter for not serving the village. Why would Naruto try to go against the system?

That's the question I asked earlier and I have some thoughts on the matter. The thing is, Naruto is earnest, it's a big quality as much as it is a flaw. That's what permitted him to empathize with a lot of the villains he encountered during the manga but it's also what stopped him from getting back at the village for their mistreatment ; he wants to be loved above all else. I mean, it's not the title of Hokage he wants, it's the love and respect that comes from it.

He's clearly a product of his environnment. He can't change the system because the narrative created by Kishimoto never gave him the occasion to completely dismantle it but it did gave him the tools to question it. Throughout the series, he's confronted by people who are victims of the system of the manga and he does promise to change things later on. But he doesn't even realize that he is as much of a victim as they are and he can't fulfill his promises.

But that doesn't mean he's not a likable or a bad protagonist because of it. I would say it makes him compelling and interesting. It's just that shonen fans want more simplicity (and I would argue that simplicity doesn't equate to badly written protagonist or even less complex protagonists) in their protagonists, someone who inspires them to be better version of themselves. They want a story about hope.

Naruto is partly that. It is about hope, but in a more grounded, realistic way. It's hope about changing things little by little, with each step you take. Naruto (the series as much as the character) is not doomed to eternal sadness or happiness. He's just there and try do things with the tools at his disposal, like everyone else.

Naruto is a story about hard work, discrimination, cycle of hatred, critcism of war and its horrors but also a deep exploration of trauma, emotions and what makes a person who they are and how to understand each other in a very complicated world and how to find love with it and that's why Naruto is the perfect protagonist of this story. Because he did learn what love really meant at the end just not the way he thought he should have it.

About Luffy

From the very start, One Piece's story is about hope and realizing your dreams. It's a hopeful story in which hatred doesn't take the precedent over people's choices and freedom. It's about a big journey you undergoe in order to grow, learn and then get to your goal while eating, drinking and fighting with your friends. All of that while also aknowledging that the world is not fair to everyone that's in it and no one is born equal to another.

Luffy is the perfect protagonist for this story. He's written to inspire people. Not just in the manga but the readers as well. "His selfishness is selfless" is a sentence that describe his principles and morals quite easily. Luffy is freedom. That's just it, really.

He's a simple character to understand because he's consistently the same throughout the manga while undergoing subtle character development. The thing is, Luffy is a character who changed as he learned from his adventures. He learned to deal with things in differents ways as he went on his journey. He went from resolving his problems with a good punch to learn that he can solve his problems by apologizing and bending the knee for the sake of others. He went from escalating to a fight with a crewmate who felt like he didn't belong in his crew to saying that he couldn't become the King of Pirates without them.

But, through and through, he stayed selfish. He was selfish when he fought an Emperor when he was specifically told to not do it at that precise moment because said Emperor was drunk and destroying a village with innocent people in it and Luffy couldn't even think of the possibility of wasting those lives for a plan. He was selfish when he punched in the face a Celestial Dragon and didn't think of anything else other than the fact that this man is a complete asshole. He's selfish when he beat the shit out of Doflammingo or Crocodile. He's selfish when he helps Nami ; he wants her as his navigator and no one else. So he destroys what stops her from being by his side. The thing stopping her being her village under the tyranny of Arlong. He's selfish when he asks Soge King to burn the flag of the WG because he wanted Robin to live. She could die later if she wanted, but not there. He's selfish when he says to Chopper to shut up and come with him on his ship.

He's so selfish that he liberates anyone he meets from the limitations they have imposed on themselves by simply giving them what they need ; uncondionnal love and support. He's very much the embodiment of freedom and portrays it so well that it is only natural for him to be the protagonist. His story is about liberating the world. (One Piece is not finished when I am writing this.)

As you can see, I have not mentionned Luffy's past as I have with Naruto. It's because Naruto's past is central to his character and his journey. Luffy isn't. Luffy's past explains who he is and Naruto's past define who he is. Neither are bad ways to approach the writing of a character.

Knowing the past of a character in One Piece is not that important, as long as you know them as they are, now. It explains why they are the way they are without defining what they can be. (Most of the time, I wouldn't say that that learning about Kuma's story didn't change my perspetive on his character. But then again : it explains his actions.)

That's what I think fundamentally makes the difference between Naruto and Luffy : the way they were written by their respective authors and the goals behind the character and what purpose they serve the respective stories.

I have tried to remain neutral during this rant, mostly because I think I can go on a while when I am not. I do have to add something personal, though. I love both protagonists a lot but for very different reasons. I really like to dig in with Naruto, especially his past and where it lead him as grew in tohe story as a character. I think he's very interesting to analyze and fun as well. Especially when you look at his story though differents lenses : either being japanese culture being reflected in the manga, history, politics, a story of love, a queer love story about repression in un unjust system (it is my favorite reading), an author being the product of his culture or a feminist reading (either to empower the characters or to analyze the sexism within the manga). It's just an endless ressource to exchange on. One Piece is also interesting in the sense that, yes, of course if you read the story in various ways (history, politics, feminism, queer reading, artistic, morals...all related to differents cultures) you can learn a lot about the manga itself, what inspired Oda but also about the world and very important life lessons, even. But what makes it interesting is the characters as much as the lore and the mystery behind the One Piece and what I love the most about it, is frankly, the hope it gives me about a better world, about realizing your dreams and not giving up on them. As much as I love analyzing Naruto, it never gave me that.

[splashskitty]

Lore part two remake.

this is a remake of part two I'll be keeping the first part two up but I wanted to make a version where I show the pictures too will my art make it any more clear probably not but I still wanted to do so anyway.

First things first this is going to be a very long post if you don't like long post you should probably not read any of my lore posts cuz all of them are very long and this one will probably be extra long because it comes with art too.

Second the art is not going to be very good don't expect it to be good if you've seen my art before it's not going to be as good as that either very sketchy and bad I didn't fix anything on it so it's bad this is also just my first time drawing like this so expect it to be very bad!!

Third the characters aren't going to be fully colored but will be colors coded so you know who is who

Nerium is pink

Nino is red

Nepta is Orange

And Actaea is grey

I'm pretty sure that's everyone in part one I have to make a part two of this probably even part three who knows

Anyway let's start the lore!!

This is Nerium at 8 Nepta at 12 and Nino at 4 yeah I don't how to draw children and I also don't really know how to draw adults people are hard mostly Nino because he looks a way to tall to be a 4 year old I wasn't really thinking about that when drawing him and honestly I think he would be a tall kid maybe not that tall Nerium definitely would just be short that's all I really have to say about it I just wanted to draw them all together.

And this was the first thing I drew I did for this Which is also why it's especially bad so don't mind how bad it looks it mostly gets better from here not much but you know mostly.

Hopefully with time I will get better at scaling the characters and making them not look so big or small at times but that's just something that I'll probably get better at with time :p

This is Nerium getting stung by a wasp at 8

I gave her a scar for it that doesn't really make sense but I'm keeping it she doesn't still have it as an adult but I'm keeping it for when she's a kid to a teenager.

Mostly just for cool scar reasons even again it doesn't even make any sense and that is not how that would look at all but oh well :p

This is Nino trying to get Nerium to take care of the bees with him because that was something she used to do with him before she got stung by a wasp.

And then Nerium running away out of fear cuz she scared of the bees and wasps now and then Nino being confused because he thought it was their thing because it used to be.

And also just a little bit of extra lore since I didn't draw anything for it Nerium and Nino's relationship becomes a little strained after this but after their teenagers or Nerium is they become besties again or best siblings and they mostly just help each other with the farm or Nino trying to teach Nerium how to fish she doesn't like it.

It's all about that I just really wanted to talk about Nino and Neriums relationship because they're the siblings ever just like me and my sibling <3

This is Nerium and Actaea as little kids probably 8 and 9 playing ponies specifically My Little pony friendship is magic don't mind the timeline and the fact that this is the My Little pony from 2010 and these should be grown adults later they had their my little pony friendship is magic earlier I guess I don't know just don't think about it too much.

This is my favorite of the art I drew and I really need to draw more of Nerium and Actaea friendship and strained relationship later on they have a lot of drama and trauma and I really love them.

This is Nerium and Actaea as teenagers like 16 and 15 maybe I think Nerium would be a bit older than Actaea and I wanted to draw them being friends again because I just wanted to show how strong their friendship was

They have friendship bracelets and everything two peas in a pod.

oh and another little bit of lore I don't know if it's easy to tell but they're supposed to be opposites one of them is multicolored the other one monochrome Nerium is mostly nice so Actaea is supposed to be mostly mean Nerium is very emotional so Actaea has very good control of her emotions Nerium has siblings and a good amount of friends later while Actaea it's kind of a loner and they're really just supposed to work off of each other I know it's probably hard to tell but they're really supposed to be the yin to each other's yang at least that's how I'm trying to make them :p

This is Nepta leaving for college and Nino being excited for her well Nerium is sad at the thought of any kind of change and somebody leaving her

Just so you know their age at this point Nepta is 20 Nerium is 16 Nino is 12 it was hard for Nepta to get into college but she did!!

Now what she's going to college for I don't really know college much but something clothing or fashion related because that's her passion :3

At this point Nerium starts to reach and mental low of sorts the idea of change and abandonment leaves her in a state of depression and mental spiral and she just kind of starts to lose it a little bit

I don't really have anything else to add to that except for she's got bipolar disorder and abandonment issues and she's just not having a good time.

This is Nerium stabbing Actaea in the eye it was some kind of fucked up way to make Actaea have eye problems like she does or something like that and again she had a mental breakdown so this is just the result of it.

No it's not right to stab your friends even if you have bipolar disorder and have some kind of abandonment issue like things but that's what She did and that's how the cookie crumbles :p

This is Actaea her parents that are stick figures Nerium parent / Mom that's also a stick figure

Obviously Actaea's parents aren't happy but Nerium's mom convinces them not to get the law involved don't ask I'll decide how that works later

And Actaea and her family end up moving because they think Nerium is crazy and if they're not getting the law involved they're getting themselves the fuck out of there and just pretend that that makes sense okay it's my story damn it.

Also this has nothing to do with anything but if you know my character Actaea you know she has horns in animal crossing well I tried to incorporate that into her hair and I just think it looks really cute and that's just something I'm going to be doing for her from now on

And this is Nino trying to comfort Nerium because at this point he's kind of the only one on her side not that their mother isn't but Nino really the only one she will be by her side no matter what

And this is when they're relationship really starts to get better because Nino becomes all that Nerium has for a little while until she meets Zinnia who becomes a very important friend to her as well.

And again there will be more lore next time as I just said you will see Zinnia and will pretty much just get to meet her friend group this is all I could fit in one tumblr post but I think this is a good way to end it with sibling love who doesn't love siblings!!

next part will mostly be about friendship because friendship is magic and I'm pretty positive I will definitely have to make a part three that will be about family/her life as an adult because these posts will really just be about going through Nerium life.

This is really fun it was like a little experimental thing again it's not very physically good but I think it probably helped me learn some things and it definitely helped me keep my mind off of some things and it was a really good distraction and a really good way to get better at making quick art because I've always took my time and try to make everything look good so it was fun to do something that I didn't care if looked bad or didn't try to make look good.

Is it definitely very quick I got this done in about two days all of these arts so I guess maybe expect another one in another two days or so I don't know but for sure I'm not going to rush myself but I am going to be working on it and I am excited to share her friend group and to share more lore.

Nerium has been a character who's been in my life since I was about 7 and she's very important to me and she means a lot note that a lot of this is self indulgent and probably won't make a lot of sense but but it's mine and I love it and I'm so happy to be able to draw it out and actually make it feel real the story's always been in my head so it's nice to actually put it on paper I guess more on the phone but you know it's just really refreshing!!

Anyway if you see any spelling mistakes no you don't I'm dyslexic and I'm probably not going to fix them and if I do that will be later. and also note the story is subject to change Nerium is a character that changes with me and so does her story so if it doesn't make sense it may make more sense as time goes on and it may not so just know that.

And again this is my first time ever doing something like this so I really hope you enjoy and I hope that it makes even a little bit of sense if not that's okay too it makes sense in my brain and I suppose that's good enough I just had so much fun doing it and I can't wait for part two hope you enjoyed sorry for the long post don't mind spelling mistakes and if you liked this you should check out my other lore post they don't have art but that is where you get to learn and see my characters see you next time <3

[vaelzz]

do you post AI art or did you make it

It's a mixture, I've been making art for about 10 years now but some of the more recent ones are incorporating AI. I'm currently combining older methods and techniques with AI to come up with some new and cool results. It still ends up taking tons of time and effort but I can get ideas out from my head much quicker and better now. I do get overly anxious and a sense of imposter syndrome because I'm not entirely doing things by hand but I've been trying to get over that. I've had a few people be negative or dismissive about me using it but I don't think they understand it's not as simple as me writing a couple of sentences to instantly get some masterpiece. I have a lot more I've worked on but I've just been too in my head overthinking it to post because I feel irrationally guilty? I mean most of my work is photographic except I've painted over them with a Wacom tablet in Photoshop which was also enough for me to feel the imposter syndrome and avoid making things. So yeah I am still super conflicted because I have a few hundreds artworks I've made throughout my life and then I have these newer ones using a blend of digital painting and AI to better assist in my process but I get anxious because I don't want it to discredit everything I've done but I also know with these new tools it's going to be harder than ever to keep up unless I use them. It really isn't worth me spending 30-40 hours on a single artwork when no one really cares and I'm not getting paid for it either, just sitting alone in my room suffering and forcing myself to make a single artwork for what? I actually had someone accuse one of my artworks as being AI made before I even used it until I showed them the earlier versions and the slow time consuming process. Like I am a bit cut up over AI because I spent so much of my life learning art and making sacrifices so I'd have the time and space for it.. but it's an adapt or die situation for digital artists. These AI models do keep getting better though so whilst not there yet it does make me debate what things will look like when they are good enough for you to simply ask it to make you an artwork of whatever you want and for it to instantly pull out a masterpiece. I find that scary because what is there left for me to do? What is my purpose in it all? Would that even be my own self-expression? (The overthinking list goes on and on lol) Perhaps it's just an ego thing though and the accessibility gives more people the means of self-expression which they previously did not have the opportunity. I guess the only part that worries me is that I put so much time, effort and thought into everything that the idea of someone dismissing or disregarding it is quite hurtful. (which tbh is the reason I barely post) All I really wanted to do was make cool things and have people go "wow, that's so cool, how did you think of that? How does your mind work?" as opposed to "Nice AI artwork". So yee TL;DR Mixture of AI but all my older stuff is done completely by me. I'm working on putting together a portfolio/collection of older works just so I can have some distinction there.