#and that's if the rng works well

[beardedhandstoadshark]

So is Infinity Nikki actually worth it this time or does it also derail into a grindfest like Love Nikki sadly did (unless you fork over loads of money ofc)

[nightmareonpeachstreet]

Baby Nohrians have taken over my castle

[dandelion-wings]

Checked today for funsies and I have a ratio of 37 fully-built characters (level 90, at least 9/9/9 talents, at least adequate level-90 weapon and level-20 artifacts on them) to 26 I haven't finished building... I know they'll continue to add 4-stars (and eventually 5-stars I can't resist anymore), but it does make me feel like I can in fact get them all built and hit a point where the only ones I have to do are new ones as they come in! \o/

[hearthomelesbian]

the sort of thrilling content i spend like 60% of my time on youtube watching

[trapton]

i was pizza simming last night bc i bought it on the switch so i wanna get all the endings, and like, i'm having a skill issue w. fruity maze .....

[thingswhatareawesome]

just could not get that 12th star in pure fiction. have retried so many times, ended up playing until way fucking longer than i should have. and yet i see people clearing the whole thing with fucking 70s. partly this is what i get for not having prioritized traces on my buffing characters. also this i guess is what i get for not pulling every single uber ranked 5 star even though part of it is getting fucked over by rng (I SEE YOU STANDARD WARP AND GEPARD AND FX). but also i guess this is what i get for rng fucking me over on so many halfassed to lousy relics? i think that's what gets me--is that it's just never enough. never enough 5* never enough pulling the RIGHT ones, never enough traces done never enough truly good relics bc the game won't GIVE me them

and it's not that i'm ftp anymore, i'm doing that little monthly jades subscription and the occasional bp here and there. but it's just never ENOUGH.

[spookyagentfmulder]

💔 yeehaw?

A  FUCKED  UP  KISSING  MEME 14. an   ‘  i’m  sorry  ’   kiss.

It had been a rough couple of weeks for the both of them.

The holidays were always hard, especially with their families getting cut down to size more and more with the passage of time. It was always a miracle when the remaining members actually stayed alive, especially with the scare Mulder went through with his mother not that long ago. But with this brought tension. With this the two of them we're reminded even more so that they're families had suffered the consequences of their pursuit of the truth.

Dana had taken it the hardest, being reminded of more beyond just the deaths of her father and her sister. Everything was fresh in her mind and it caused her to make decisions that drove Fox over the edge. Another tattoo. Drinking. Lashing out. Holding him at arms length. It drove him mad. Drove him to push back and strike out, to be passive aggressive and apathetic towards his own health and safety. For days they fought and it was only until she had told him the truth behind it all - nightmares of Duane Barry, wanting to move apartments - that the two of them found themselves returning to who they really were.

Two people who loved each other more than words could say.

And so they let their mouths do the talking. Mulder had pulled her into his arms, and not soon after he felt the pull of wanting to feel her lips against his own once again. He wanted to show her just how sorry he was for all the things he had done. He wanted to show her how sorry he was for not realizing all of this sooner. He was sorry. So very, very sorry. As he wrapped his arms around her, he hoped that Dana would forgive him.

@beyondthescully

[tariah23]

The boss fight is impossible for me 🗣️… Kromer…. This shit is a gazillion worse than 2-10 Arknights and I think I’ll still have a better chance of beating that eventually over THIS. This difficulty spike in LCB is so scary right at the very beginning…

[clanwarrior-tumbly]

Hiii can I request a platonic request?

crk self-aware!( shadow milk or dark cacao) with a child/teen reader! (9-13?)

idea:

Reader is heavily bias towards their favorite cookies, decorting their kingdom with the same theme as the cookie! and also a grind hard and never once spend a penny(f2p player!) and I want to see the reaction of those cookies!

thank you have a great day/afternoon/evening!!

Thank you, hope you have a good day too! This will just be for SMC

.........

Shadow Milk

The moment he made his debut in the game, you had a new favorite cookie.

Even before he became playable, you were eager to decorate the kingdom with blue and white aesthetics, saving up all your coins and diamonds for his Domain of Deceit collection, buying the Castle of Trickery skin, etc..

You were dedicated to the grind(TM) and believed in good RNG, never spending a dime on the game.

Sure, that made the arena daunting when almost every team on there was crafted by "pay to win" players, but you climbed the ranks considerably well.

With your luck, you pulled Shadow Milk Cookie sometime after playing through his story arcs.

He became aware of his existence as a video game character, and normally he would've been angry about that truth....but when he realizes you're dedicating your entire kingdom to him and him alone--he feels special.

Like he is king here.

He's happy to have an admirer, even if he's the only one aware of you.

Plus, he somehow found out that you didn't "cheat" to pull him or buy anything related to him. You worked hard to get what you wanted.

He thinks cheating once in a while isn't such a bad thing, and he even tries tempting you to "spoil" yourself by spending a little money on his packages that contain lights of deceit and/or his soulstones...but you resist.

"Come onnnnn, you know you want to! Maybe for your birthday? Or Christmas?"

"Nah. Ever since I made this account I refused to spend a single penny on it."

"...not even for your favorite Cookie ever???" He dramatically gasps. "Ooooh, how you wound me..."

In actuality, it doesn't bother him that much. But he'll tease you about that just for the fun of it.

If you pull his Sage of Truth costume, he'll be like "look ik you were grinding for those rainbow cubes but do NOT put that on me-"

He doesn't stop you if you decide to, but even as the Sage he still expresses his displeasure at times.

However, after pulling Truthless Recluse's costume, he pretty much pleads for you to keep it on Pure Vanilla permanently.

You eventually reach a compromise where you keep them off within the kingdom and during world exploration-related battles and on for everything else (special episodes, bounties, etc.).

[circus-clangen]

asking a bunch of cool clangen blogs (yea you) a question cause I’m working on making one right now- How did you find the main plot based on what clangen generated and make it all mysterious and interesting and stuff?

OHH this is so tricky because SO much of the main lore I’ve interpreted from clangen events hasn’t happened yet, and I can’t spoil it…. How about a very vague one: rng gave me a cat in the future that looked VERY similar to an existing cat I had, with a kit that looked VERY similar to a kit that same existing cat also had. Now I admit that the “Oooh secret family member!” Is probably the most common and least mysterious way you can interpret clangen lore, and I myself have had to tone down my own use of it, but that’s just one example!

I’ve also had cats die of non-murder causes, but given circumstances and relationships with another cat, I choose to interpret it as a murder.

My two big pieces of advice for you are this:

1. As you’re making your plot, write down EVERY little thing that happens. Im even talking the randomly generated character statuses that change every time you reload the game. You don’t have to USE everything and in fact you shouldn’t, but sometimes two correlating minor details are all you need to get a good idea going.

2. Clangen isn’t going to magically make you a wonderful storyteller, and your readers aren’t always going to be captivated. When making a mysterious dramatic plot, know that you’ll get better over time. I look back at my old moons and cringe SO hard, because I just didn’t know what I was doing. And don’t get discouraged if your readers dont seem interested in your mysterious plot or don’t notice all of your foreshadowing details! A good mystery cannot be super intense 24/7, or it’s exhausting. If you want a good mystery, take it slow, and trust that it’ll be more rewarding for the people who really care to stumble across your little details months later, than it would be to compromise and water down the storyline.

You’ve got this! It won’t be easy, and writing mystery is in my opinion the hardest thing you CAN write, but just do what you can and what you love and you’ll do just fine!

GENUINELY both work very well for him. Any accent that’s aggressively and nauseatingly city boy American, that’s how he talks

Anon to be so fr I changed it recently but for MONTHS that’s exactly what it was. Gold star 🌟

Aww weird… that’s crazy… it’s a good thing there wasn’t any kind of supernatural occurrence going on the exact instant Tigertoe found out she was pregnant because man that’d be awkward

*checks toaster over strapped to wrist* hm

U right anon

🫲👀🫱

You guys are not ready for the video essay I’m going to make in like 2 years when Circusclan is completely finished. I have a bottle of wine I’m saving

THIS GUY GETS IT!!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I completely understand and even encourage the Ringstar haters—he’s not a saint—but THISSSS is how I see my boy… he never wanted any of this to happen, and yet it’s his own fault it all did.

Of course—of COURSE he had to let his baby girl live, even though it meant she couldn’t never be anything more than an insect to him for the rest of his life.

Did Goldmasks deal extend to Starclan? Will he even make it to starclan? Something in him knows that surely he cannot… yet something else dreams that maybe his soul and the devoured part of his heart waits for him there. One day, maybe, he’ll peer down through the clouds and once again feel love for his one and only daughter.

[splatsvilles-fashionista]

A quick look at the Splatoon 3 Version 9.3 changes!

(credit to Lewyn4k on bluesky!)

I'm a bit late with this one, all the Splatubers have already gotten their patch note explanation videos out, but this is a really interesting patch so I wanted to go through it and give my thoughts!

Let's start with the Main Weapon changes:

Sploosh, Splattershot Jr., Aerospray and Dapple Dualies have all had their shot velocity increased by 3%, which confers a slight range increase as well (because if your bullets travel faster they get further before they start to drop!). I don't think this solves any of these weapons' most pressing issues, but let's not look that gift horse in the mouth. Gift seahorse?

N-ZAP is now a little bit more accurate and moves a little bit faster while shooting, which makes it in line with the Mini Splatling in terms of strafe speed. Keep in mind that this value is multiplicative with Tacticooler, since it maxes out your Run Speed, so Zap's gonna be really zooming now!

Nova's had its' jump RNG decreased by 33%, which is a big change numerically, but I don't think it amounts to very much. Nova's still incredibly inaccurate as a baseline needs to hit five shots to kill, so t his doesn't do anything real for it, I think.

Big Swig's vertical flick hitbox is now slightly bigger. For some reason it used to have a more narrow vertical flick than the other Rollers, but this change should likely but it more in line with the rest.

Painbrush's delay between swings has been reduced by about 2 frames, which is a small but not insignificant change. While Painbrush can two-shot, it's much more likely to splat in three or even four shots due to its damage falloff, and with this buff those will now be 6 and 8 frames faster, respectively. This buff also means that painbrush paints better, too!

Mini and Heavy Splatling both had their charge time reduced by 2 frames for the first ring and 3 frames for the second for a total of a 5 frame faster full charge. Mini now gets a full charge in 27 frames (less than half a second!) while Heavy gets a full charge in 72. Additionally Heavy had its firing duration increased by 11%, which means it fires for roughly two and two thirds of a second. Some nice changes for weapons that were honestly pretty good already!

Splat Dualies' bullets are now a bit bigger making them easier to hit. This does not increase their paint or anything like that, and it does not affect your shots fired while sitting after a dodge roll. This is actually a reversion of a nerf they got in late Splatoon 2! Splat Dualies were already really good with a stellar kit in the form of Suction Bomb/Crab Tank, and I don't think this moves the needle much, but hey, can't complain!

Recycled Brella gets a paint buff and a 14% ink efficiency buff. "Slightly" is doing a lot of work here, because the actual increase is somewhere in the ballpark of 27%! Recycled paint was mediocre on a good day, so it's well deserved. The ink efficiency buff also means that it gets two more shots on a full tank, which combined with the painting buff means it might just get a decent amount of Specials, of which it has two pretty good to pick from. All in all a big win for Recycling fans!

Snipewriter gets its' second paint nerf, and while they didn't put a number here datamining's shown that it roughly translates to a 5% paint decrease. Not nothing, but it'll probably be fine, though this is not the only nerf the pen is getting this patch as we'll see in a bit.

And for the final Main Weapon change of the patch it's Decavitator's turn on the chopping block, the dash slash now takes 2 more frames to start, going from 8 to 10 frames, while its paint's been reduced by 12%.

I actually really quite like these changes because while I like Decav a lot it's always been a bit overtuned, and these nerfs reduce some of those aspects while still retaining the most fun and interesting aspects of the weapon, the big hitbox and high damage. This is a very good approach, I'd say.

There's no Sub Weapon changes this patch (boo! buff angle shooter and toxic mist already!) so before we continue to Special changes let's take a look at the points for Special changes:

Snipewriter joins Squeezer and Sloshing Machine in the 220p club, and S-BLAST is paying the price for its recent competitive popularity, having risen in usage quite a lot after the Ranged Blaster nerfs last year. Not much else to note here, I think.

So now, let's talk about Special Weapons, and this is where the juice is this patch.

Ultra Stamp had its thrown mode damage numbers changed around quite a lot, having its instant splat radius massively increased while its outer splash damage radius had its damage doubled. To show you what this means in practice, well...

If Ultra Stamp would paint your feet with its explosion, you get evaporated. This is a big buff, making thrown Ultra Stamps a genuine threat that you need to be on the lookout for facing a weapon that has one.

So is Ultra Stamp as bad as Trizooka now? I don't think so, and it's for a couple of reasons. For one Ultra stamp takes more time to activate and throw than it takes to get your first Trizooka shot out, making it easier to react to. It also can't arc around obstacles the way Trizooka bullets can with their weird spiraling trajectory. Also, you only get one shot, when you've thrown your hammer it's all you get. And the final nail in the Trizooka comparison is that, well...

Trizooka gets a major nerf this patch, essentially getting the reverse change of Ultra Stamp. Roughly the outer half of the splash radius was changed to deal 35 damage from 53, so the person using it has to be pretty precise to get meaningful damage onto people now. They also decreased the duration from 6 seconds to 5.5 seconds, so you've gotta get those shots out fast!

And finally, Triple Splashdown paints 11% more. This change is a help in Splat Zones in particular, as Triple Splashdown actually painted surprisingly little given the three explosions, but now it'll paint enough to flip some zones on its own with no Special Power Up. It's not as good for this as Reefslider since you have to actually be in the zone as you start the Special, but utility is utility!

While we're all done with weapon changes, there's still some Stage changes, specifically to Tri-Color Turf War stages specifically:

To demonstrate the layout changes, here are some images courtesy of diamcreeper24 on twitter and Inkipedia. Old layout on left, new on right:

These stages, Bluefin in particular, were some of most imbalanced in terms of attacker/defender win/loss ratio, hence why they got changes.

And that's the patch! Overall I like the changes, but I do hope that in the future we see a bigger focus on buffing weaker Subs and Specials, as the biggest problem a lot of weapons have is not that their Mains are weak, but that they are hard to justify because of bad Subs and Specials. That said the Ultra Stamp change is a good start, here's hoping for something similarly drastic for Wave Breaker,

[cerastes]

IS2+3+4 Relay/Triathlon Runs Breakdown and Post-Mortem

Yesterday, I streamed a trial run of a tentative format I'd love to start playing, for now called IS Relay Run (or Triathlon, but that name has an expiration date with IS5 coming soon), where you do a run of IS2, followed by a run of IS3, and finally a run of IS4, with the catch being that units used in IS2 are banned from the IS3 run, and units used in IS2 and IS3 and banned from the IS4 run.

Here's the ruleset my chat over at Twitch and I built and agreed upon for the trial run:

Difficulty levels correspond to the minimum difficulty that gives you maximum scoring conditions, thus, IS2 Calamity, IS3 Waves 7 and IS4 Natures 10, as those are the minimum difficulty levels that net you the maximum score in those respective modes; Calamity gives the highest score in IS2, Waves 8 and up offer the same scoring as Waves 7 in IS3, Natures 11 and up offer the same scoring as Natures 10 in IS4.

Reserve Operators don't count into the unit bans. The logic is that 1) there's many of them in the first place, 2) softens some of the inherent logistical nightmares that come with three distinct runs of IS RNG can bring in a format that's already cutting deeply into your numbers.

Elite Operators count into the unit bans. So if you nab yourself Sharp in IS2, you don't get to use him in IS3 and IS4.

Alternative versions of Operators don't count into unit bans for their counterpart versions. You want to use Kroos in IS2 and Kroos the Keen Glint in IS3? Knock yourself out, no one should ever be denied their Kroos, they are two distinct units for the purpose of this format.

If you take an Operator and don't use them even once, they still count as a pick and are banned from the rest of the runs. Sometimes, a pick is an investment opportunity, and it may or may not pay off, like grabbing Texas the Omertosa in IS3 hoping to get a promotion, but then it never comes. Texas, in this case, still counts as used.

Any ending goes.

You may pick any starting squad. It doesn't have to be the same one in every run (and in the case of many squads, this would be impossible anyways).

***Not a real rule, but one I stuck to anyhow: No Ingot withdrawals from the Shop, mainly because I'm interested in seeing if the format can be used for racing, and in case of a race, this would be so someone with 999 investment ingots doesn't have a huge advantage over someone with 10 if they decide they're going to break the piggy bank to absolutely ruin the other contestant.

With this ruleset, I ran the format and it was very fun. This was the final roster:

With that said, here are some considerations I have following the trial run:

IS2 Calamity is very volatile. With no exaggeration, it was the most challenging part of the run, in no small part because I got the Sigil of Tragodia (All enemies have +30% Attack, Defense and HP, and you have -2 Deployment Slots). For those not in the know, the way Calamity works is that runs start you off with a powerful Cursed Artifact unique to Calamity that exclusively works against you to make things harder, as well as a minor positive Artifact, usually Squad Size +1. The rationale in using Calamity, besides the max scoring logic, is that with Calamity, you'd be incentivized to use powerful Operators you'd otherwise keep in the bench for future ISes. In the case of the Trial Run, that was why I picked Dusk and Shamare for IS2, as the reduced Deployment Slots and hefty increase to enemy Defense meant that Dusk's S3 was going to be very very strong (as well as providing me with many Arts tanks for the Scarlet Singers; Freeling's have 50 RES), and having Shamare's Cursed Doll helps bring down those immense stat boosts at least temporarily many times per map. I'd say whether IS2 is run Standard or Calamity is up to player discretion, as the raw volatility of Calamity can make for plenty an early end to the run. When it comes to potential Races, I'd say Standard is the way to go, due to the selfsame volatility; the Cursed Artifacts are not made equal, Tragodia is VERY dangerous, whereas others can be half as threatening. If one contestant gets Tragodia and the other doesn't, then that's already a potential huge blow not really in line with the spirit of the race (considering there's already plenty of other random factors such as node distribution, Bewildered IS2 floors, recruitment voucher luck, and such)

Endings are really a player discretion thing. Normally, you'd take the path of least resistance for your ending routing, but if you want to challenge yourself or, more importantly, want to agree to certain endings on your race, knock yourself out. That said, I think the most logical thing is to stick to Ending 1 on all races, because of the random nature of getting Endings in most cases. IS4 is much more consistent in this regard, but IS3 very much isn't (going for Ending 2? Hope you're Gopnik-proofed the moment you get the Last Knight) and IS2 even less so.

I think it's ok to withdraw Ingot from the Shop if you're doing this solo, but I really think Races should ban withdrawing Ingots, for the reasons detailed previously.

Something that didn't come up during the trial run or during discussions is what happens if you lose: I think we all implicitly agreed that you simply start over from IS2, because we love high stakes. That said, in a race format, there's two real ways to go about it: If you game over, you lose the race outright, OR if you game over, you start over from the IS you lost at. This, I'm still thinking about and I'll run it over with the people over at my stream next time, but for now I think it's definitely something you can agree to either way with the other racers. If you're playing this as a self-imposed challenge, my suggestion is to treat a game over as a true game over that sends you back to IS2, for that delicious tension, But Of Course, that's all that is, a suggestion, if you think for you it's more fun to just start over from the IS you lost at, well, that's what you do.

Other considerations with the races may be performance differences between contestants (Racer A's computer or phone runs much faster than Racer B's, thus they load faster). These may be 1 or 2 seconds, but 1 or 2 seconds per loading screen add up after three entire runs (hell, "just" 1 or 2 seconds is huge already in and of itself in the context of a race). Another issue might be that this can easily take several hours, given it's three distinct ISes with extra scrutiny on Operator picks, during which emulators may crash, phones may overheat, Things May Happen. This is true in one way or another for a lot race formats of things in general of course, but it's worth thinking about it anyways. Things that come to mind is maybe doing the race in segments, so IS2 is its own segment, and the first place can chill until the rest are done, then they all start IS3 together and so on, and the end timers are used to make the final calculation on who won or lost. Another format could also be points format per IS, so clearing IS2 the fastest gets you one point, IS3 gets you another, and so on, and person with the most points at the end wins the race. There's Different Ways to go about it in respects to people's limitations, specs, available time, and such.

Something I'll say is that it's pretty time consuming, and it can be stamina consuming, too: I was streaming while doing it, and streaming means interacting with and entertaining a group of people whilst you play, which adds another factor of exhaustion, but I think that just focusing on the game should be pretty fine for most people. Your mileage may vary as to whether 3 runs back to back is not a lot or a lot (it's plenty if I'm also needing to stream, but not at all if I'm just playing, for example). That said, it's a bit of a moot point if you're doing it in your own time; you can do IS2 one day, save a screenshot of your banlist, then continue with this challenge two days later with IS3, then do IS4 yet another day. The world (and format) is your oyster after all.

And, of course, this is really, really endgame stuff to be doing, given you have to have enough units prepped for not one, but three runs at a reasonable difficulty level. It definitely rewarded having map knowledge and knowing your key units to bring to each IS.

But, yeah, really fun format if you wanna try something new whether it be with our 'house' rules or your own!

[loudclan-clangen]

(I thought of something funny)

Whenever Owlstar comes back to camp from solo walks, there's just this giant banner at the entrance reading "Welcome Back, Cheater."

Slitsplash swears they didn't put it up, but appreciates whoever did it.

Meanwhile, Fiercestripe is smirking in the background. (She did it)

They’re throwing him a party!

(˃̣̣̥▽˂̣̣̥) These asks all flow together so well I genuinely cannot tell if they are multiple people or just one person who is SO PISSED. Made my night to see these all come in at about 2am. If Owlstar has 100 haters im one of them, if Owlstar has 1 hater it's me, if Owlstar has no haters im dead.

I do! It was actually incredibly comical from my perspective because Eklutna showed up, did fuck all for 5 moons, got pregnant, then promptly died giving birth, to which i went "aw, that sucks" clicked on her kits, and SAW THAT THIER DAD WAS THE LEADER, SOMETHING THAT I DID NOT KNOW COULD HAPPEN. Eklutna didn't even have any romantic like for him, to my recollection, and Owlstar had like maybe a single tick for her? It was really just lucky rng I guess. Owl and Silt actually didn't break up in the game at all, in my original draft for the story, when i was just writing notes as i played, Siltsplash was a lot more... okay with it? Like they were pissed but their personality was a lot more demure so they didn't act on anything really. The exact quote from the draft was: "I won’t lie to you. I’m angry. Starclan, I’m more than angry, I’m furious. I have half the mind to tell you to leave and never come back.” They paused, seeing Owlstar deflate and taking some slight, bitter satisfaction in it before continuing, “But that wouldn’t be fair to those kits. They didn’t ask to be born, much less to you. They deserve to have a family, or as much of it as they are able to have, and starclan help me we’re in this together." It certainly fit with what I knew about them then, but given my ability to look forward and see future events, I decided that a break up made more sense.

Don't be sorry! I am not currently in artfight, I'm considering it but I wouldn't be able to be very active due to school, and I don't want to take another break from this blog so soon after my last, so it's not very high up on my list of priorities. I'm kinda casually working on refs for the more popular characters, so there's a chance I'll get those done and join a team, especially if it's something you guys want me to do. If that happens I'll be sure to let you guys know! I am now in art fight! I gave into peer pressure again. (In a good way).

I don't think even Silt knew. Siltsplash was OUT of it after their conversation with Owlstar, (see: the Eklutna hallucination), and they probably didn't even know where they were headed until they reached the nursery. But after setting eyes on the kits, Siltslpash knew that there was only one option. Yes, they "took the kids in the divorce" but truly they weren't thinking about revenge. They just saw kids who needed something that they could provide.

In terms of writing, though, since I have hundreds of moons of foresight, it was a total bait and switch. I needed to make sure that people had a reason to come back after the break and any comic with kittens in it usually gets a lot of attention, so it was a "marketing" decision to split up the moon the way that I did, in order to make sure that there wasn't too bad of a fall off in interaction for the blog.

In game Eklutna had an affair with Owlstar, died giving birth, and the "died giving birth" event overwrote the "reveal affair" event so technically, in game Owlstar didn't reveal the affair... ever? (Though I had written in my notes that he told Siltsplash who took them as their own). Story wise, Owlstar hadn't planned to tell anyone until the kits started asking about who their father was. Then he would tell them, and would probably reveal it to the clan when they earned their names and were able to become deputy. But, when Eklutna died all that went out the window. For all his faults, Owlstar is not a bad dad, and he would never leave his kits orphaned, even if it would get him in a lot of trouble to do so. He really does care for them, and he feels terrible about how much he's screwed up their lives so far.

He did bad, deitycrows, he did bad. He cheated on his mate and then his affair partner died in childbirth so he's not very popular rn, I've got to be honest.

I don't think it helps at all but, Owlstar did really genuinely like Eklutna! Now, was that because she never opposed him on anything and flattered him with adoring compliments at every opportunity? Possibly. But the "Starclan said" thing was honestly just more of an excuse for him. He woulda had an affair anyway, he just wouldn't have intentionally had kits with her.

:) Eklutna liked... the power that Owlstar held. She liked that he was chosen by Starclan to lead the clan, she liked that his kits are meant to inherit the position of leadership, and she liked that as the mother of his kits she would have a lot of control over both him and the leader after him. As far as his personality... he's kinda a clown but she could live with that.

To be frank: The order of inheritance is ABSOLUTELY FUCKED. If Eklutna had lived, it would be easy. She would take over as deputy until one of the kits was old enough to hold the position. But, since she's dead and Owlstar's only heirs are literal infants, as their adoptive parent Siltsplash is still the deputy for now. What happens when the kits reach adulthood is kinda up for debate. As Owlstar's closest descendant, Songkit should be deputy upon earning his warrior name, BUT Siltsplash is very much against that plan, and the kits might not want to go against their most attentive parent. So the very unhelpful answer is: We have to wait and see what the characters decide.

Thank you so much! I love to hear from first time viewers and see what you guys think of the characters! I'm glad that the dialogue worked so well and Eklutna definitely has Sol vibes! You look at both of them and go "in what world would this plan work the way you wanted it to???"

[sporeclan]

Hellooooo! I’m working on a clangen blog of my own, so I’m going around asking my favorite clangen blogs some questions. I’m happy to get answers to whichever you feel like answering (or none at all if you don’t feel like it!)

What program and file size do you use?

If you use a font, what font is it?

How far ahead do you recommend playing?

Do you have any advice for layouts?

Do you have any tips for lighting/drawing fur?

Do you have any tips for making cats look more unique?

If you do backgrounds, do you have any advice for creating them?

If you use them, where do you recommend finding reference images?

Hi!! :D

1) I use Clip Studio Paint! Unfortunately not a free program, but I'm very very fond of it. Definitely recommend it to anyone who has the money! My file size is about 1680px wide, I believe? With varying heights. I definitely wouldn't recommend doing it that way, but it's what works for me so :')

2) I made the font myself, actually! Highly recommend doing that tbh, it's a happy medium between getting something handwritten looking without having to spend a thousand years writing haha :D There are probably a hundred websites out there that let you make you own font, but I used Calligraphr

3) It depends! For me playing to about 12-15 moons ahead with a minimum of 6 moons works really well with my style and workflow. Makes me able to cobble together these small interpersonal plotlines while also letting me occasionally play and get new drama to get invested in these characters all over again about. But if I were going for something with a major overarching plot, I would probably go a lot further ahead, if not straight up take the playthrough as far as I'd want it/until a game over just to not risk rng screwing with my plans

4) I would suggest looking up comic panelling tips in general for a better explaination than what I can offer, but I'll try to explain my basic process :'D I mostly go by heart, but I do like to sometimes follow this rule of thumb I like to call the 'Z'

When we read text, we learn to go from left to right, then back to left at a slight diagonal to get to the next line. By following that simple shape when placing characters and especially text, it makes it flow much more naturally to us. And when your pages flow well, you get to break that flow when you want a scene to feel more tense! I tried doing that with the last two panels of the page above and I really liked how that came out :D

Another couple of tips is 1) try not to make the panels too uniform 2) if you want to use two panels for one scene, slanting the side of a panel can make it feel like they flow into each other better, like matching two puzzle pieces if that makes sense 3) small overlapping panels are great for reaction shots and so fun to do!

And lastly, don't be afraid to break the panel border!

It can add a lot of momentum and impact if used right! Plus it's so fun to do <3

5) No sorry, I don't do lighting/shading in my comics at all :'D

6) I have a couple posts here and here describing my own process a bit! But otherwise I'd like to refer to whisper-cats' response to this same prompt, it's pretty in depth and I think they give some really solid advice here!

7) Not particularly, just find a style that works for you the best. I don't do a lot of backgrounding, but when I do, it's in this lineless limited palette style because that's just my favourite kind of background to make

I do highly recommend trying to limit how much time you spend on a background. Don't burn yourself out on one panel because then you'll never wanna finish the whole page!

And for 8), I dont use references so sadly I can't give you any good recommendations there either :')

I hope any of this made sense, lol! Good luck with your blog!

[sealsdaily]

what are the different kinds of seals im curious

There are many different ways to categorize seals/pinnipeds, but we'll be focusing on the most integral to Seal Gameplay.

There are three families in your cast of playable characters: earless or "true" seals, eared seals, and walrus. These are then further split up in subfamilies, tribes, and genera. I'll sum up a brief overview of each subfamily's character class and the species within.

Phocinae: DEFENSIVE SUPPORT

These are the most common earlygame party members, and their support for the DPS can make or break a playthrough. You start the game with a Harbor seal along with your first party member, it needs no introduction. Some of these also splinter off into healing as well, but the Baikal seal also has an offensive supporter edge to it as its massive Perception stat lets it easily expose enemies' weak points and lower defenses. The Ringed and Ribbon seals are also very popular picks, they're simple but very effective at raising stats (ringed raises speed, ribbon attack)

Monachinae: DPS / ATTACKER

The bread and butter of any pinniped party. There's not much i can say about DPS seals, they do big damage! The most popular of these, of course, is the Leopard seal: It's a late-game add, but very worthwhile as it has the highest base attack stat, with good HP. Elephant seals are also a popular pick and synergize well with many fur seal species. Monk seals also have some support qualities, but it seems they're not used that often.

Otariinae: HEALING

Sea lions tend to range on a spectrum of focuses on either all-in-one healing or over-time healing. It's not as picked, but i often use an Australian sea lion in my party compositions for the over time healing, since it works really well with Spotted seals' shielding and DEF mechanics (walruses as well). Overall though, a Steller sea lion can work with mostly any party due to its simplicity.

Arctocephalinae: OFFENSIVE SUPPORT

You wouldn't believe just how much offensive status effects a fur seal can have up its theoretical sleeve. There are many subcategories under this character class such as focus on STUNs, enemy vulnerabilities, DMG over time, etc. Guadalupe fur seals especially are a hot topic: a lot of newbies tend to get intimidated by their risky and RNG-reliant strategies, but the more i've used them the more i can say they can absolutely be worth the risk.

Walruses: TANKING

Walruses are the only species in the Odobenidae family, so if you want a reliable tank there's just one pick. For what it's worth i don't really use tanks but i can definitely see the appeal in their shielding and DEF stats. They're also the only species that can redirect damage from an ally onto them.

Hope this helps!

[pushing500]

Oh, a weird ship has crashed near us! We'd best deal with it before it comes to us first...

Alistair, we don't have a laser sword for you yet, but I'm sure your melee ability will work just fine with this thrumbo horn. Come on, let's go!

The Jones boys might be a little overprotective of their first android, but they're smart enough to realise that it's better for the melee fighters to be closer to the fight than hiding behind the ranged attackers. Now, let's crack this ship open and see what we get!

Egads!! It's a fungoid zombie person!! I sure hope androids are immune to infector bites 😱

... Oh.

Well, uh... a one-shot kill works too. Good job, Alistair. The cool new jacket Kwahu made for him has obviously caught Randy Random's attention and turned the RNG in favour of our lil' guy. Hooray!

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