#and the complexity of the character models

[sdv-confessions]

Sending an ask with regards to the anon that said Sam/ Penny didn't make sense to them.

Not a shipper myself but I do know one of the main reasons is opposites attract but another, and a personally, more compelling reasons is that on the surface they seem like opposites but their more alike than they appear. And oh boy am I gonna go off about them.

Again not a shipper but I do like it when fics and general creatives explore how Sam, despite not initially appearing as such, is burdened with the responsibility of growing up a bit too fast because of the absence of a parent. Obviously this is about Kent and how he never really raised Vincent and even when he was there, he wasn't fully there or Vincent was too young to remember. Not Kent's fault obviously but it still left a noticeable absence in a male guiding figure that Vincent needed after being comfortable with one. And Sam, initially would try and prop his dad up, making him out to be a good father who was serving the country. He's out there kicking Gotoro butt. But as the years passed by of Kent not coming home, gradually Sam became more responsible for Vincent in the prior role. He probably taught him how to ride a bike, or tie his shoelaces and other activities and skills traditionally taught by a father.

Fics tend to explore this more reserved side of Sam that a general chunk of the fandom isn't aware of. Cause the cutscene that presents this more complex side of Sam is one of the only truly missable cutscenes of the entire game (the year 1 beach scene with the perfect circumstances). So general concensus is that Sam is an aloof skateboarder who kinda takes his job seriously and has his head in the clouds dreaming of becoming a popular musician. That's what's presented with most cutscenes and dialogue of Sam.

Penny, however, contrasts this image completely with honestly more grounded cutscenes. You can tell she's a hopeful person trying to make the best of the hand she's been dealt. And everybody knows she was forced to be the adult when Pam spiraled into alcoholism and negligence. And Penny herself admits she does the cooking, she does the cleaning. She takes care of the family by herself. And she's been doing this, presumably, since she was a child.

Penny's circumstances and character (doting and anxious but hopeful) make her maturity levels leagues above Sam's. But that's an assumption based on Sam being the loopy golden retriever stereotype (but he is a good boy, one of the best). And when you base their relationship purely on that, it is opposites attract.

But then that would be focusing on the surface and to get to the true meat and potatoes of the ship, you gotta dig deeper.

With Sam, once you include both the fact he was Vincent’s important male figure/ role model AND the fact that he's a silly goofy guy as previously mentioned, the ship gets so much more interesting. You also have to include the fact that Penny isn't all doom and gloom. She knows how to have fun and can be relaxed. Examples of this would be the picnic, the recipe testing and especially her 10 Heart event cause that shows she can be a bit adventurous.

And they both share a similarity in how they utilise their passions and hobbies as an escape from their circumstances. Penny primarily reads for the sake of escapism. Sam plays the guitar and writes his own lyrics, most likely to express his frustrations (I admit this is a bit of a stretch. I'm spitballing here). And both have an oddly nurturing nature to them. When married Sam is a children's edutainment performer, a job he's extremely proud of, therefore showing he has said caring nature and love for children. Penny is the town's sole educator for Jas and Vincent and has admitted their resources are limited with regards to educating the two. And yet she takes them out for educational field trips, that are most likely unnecessary but she's aware that even if they are, they're fulfilling experiences for the children. They both have a passion for caring for children, going the extra mile for them (I especially commend Sam, as I do have experience with being a musical children's edutainment performer and to genuinely go through with it takes serious mental fortutude unironically).

In most SamPenny content and to my understanding, the ship thrives in how they contrast yet compliment each other well. Sam can relate to Penny's struggle of being forced to grow up too fast, having to fill in for somebody who should be but isn't there (I still love Kent, this is more for Penny's dad and Pam specifically). And in some depictions, he comforts her on it. And in Canon, he would do exactly this as seen with Year 1 Beach Scene (that beach scene is the glue for this entire argument). And Penny could educate on new topics as Sam is a curious person in general.

And another opposites attract element that I really like about them that I rarely see being explored is how their weather dialogue reflects this so well. When it rains, Penny's dialogue is gloomy and distant. She doesn't like the rain, seeing it as unpleasant and an environmental reminder of her home life and how washed out and depressing it is. Meanwhile, directly opposite her trailer, Sam is happy as can be because he gets to play his guitar as loud as he wants. A genuinely optimistic view of the weather. A good contrast with Penny's more depressive perspective. And this does apply vice versa.

To me, their relationship can be summarised as this: Sam is the sliver of sunshine on a cloudy day and Penny is gentle breeze to cool one on a blistering summer day. Penny acts as the unexpected calm to Sam's chaotic storm whilst Sam shows Penny the beauty and positivity in even the most seemingly negative of scenarios. When there's excess of one, the other balances it out. They comfort each other in their pain, they lift each other up when down. They can choose to indulge the other's interest for the sake of feeling fulfilled by their partner's apparent excitement when discussing their passion etc.

In conclusion to this silly little rant for a ship that isn't even in my top 20 Stardew ships, nevermind otp: he was a skater boy, she was a scholarly girl, could I make it more obvious?

.

[darklinaforever]

With the glorification of the relationship between Thomas & Ellen, it allows me to see what the antis (moralizing puritans) consider to be a great love and positive relationship...

A relationship where the woman stifles who she really is, her powers and her desires.

Apparently, it's a sign that the man who allows you to do this for a while is your guardian angel and a healthy relationship (because apparently it's a good thing that Ellen's innate supernatural abilities be restrained for a time when she meets and marries Thomas).

See these posts to better understand :

And then Thomas is a good husband under the pretext that he is not a monster / vampire with a rotting body.

It doesn't matter that Thomas embodies the classic patriarchal husband who thinks he knows better than his wife, doesn't listen to her and doesn't really understand, even when he experiments Orlok himself ; He has a nice appearance doesn't hit her and try to do good things, so he is a good husband, a healthy relationship...

(Something tells me patriarchal concepts don't really bother antis anyway...)

Better yet, he's the real hero of the story who shines instead of Ellen for them just because he tries to destroy the vampire for her (quite peculiar when we remember that Orlok represents in part the desires of Ellen and her supernatural nature demonized by Victorian society, and that Thomas dismisses precisely this aspect of Ellen that he does not understand, therefore her desires and her supernatural nature)... So chivalrous, isn't it ?

The film literally talks about the criticism of Victorian society for its patriarchal nature and the fact of not being able to accept women with their desires and powers through the character of Ellen and that of Orlok who represents precisely these parts of Ellen.

Consequently, thinking that the relationship between Thomas (who is basically trying to be like his best friend, embodying the perfect vision of the Victorian patriarchal man) and Ellen in this context is healthy / pure, and that Thomas is Ellen's guardian angel is absurd.

Just like thinking that Ellen's abilities being restricted after meeting and marrying Thomas is a good thing too, and that because of that specifically Thomas will be Ellen's great love as well as her guardian angel who saved her from darkness.

Not to mention demonizing Orlok by trying to make him the pedophile abuser of Ellen who would have groomed her as a child and subsequently raped her several times.

Doing all these things is called twisting the story to avoid accepting what it really tells.

I'm not saying that Thomas is a horrible individual and that Orlok is a good being. Not at all.

It's much more complex than that.

Thomas is a generally good person who really loved Ellen, but caught up in the model of a societal system that he sees no problem with and completely wants to marry, and who on top of that can't really understand his wife, dismisses her for it and acts as if he knows better than her what she needs, what she wants and doesn't listen to her.

Orlok is the incarnation of evil, death and a demon, but in a context where he partly represents the feminine aspects demonized by Victorian society and therefore repressed by Ellen who is all the more ashamed of these aspects of herself that she judges to be potentially bad and shameful because of the world in which she lives and which she would like to get rid of to live a life judged happy and normal according to the standards.

Unfortunately or fortunately, she cannot conform to it and embraces who she really is through her union with Orlok at the end of the film.

No relationships are healthy in this movie. No characters are virtuous. Not even the heroine who seemingly sacrifices herself at the end to save the world. Everyone is gray and everyone has generally twisted relationships in this movie.

Thomas' character included, as well as his relationship with Ellen.

And you know what ?

That's why the Ellen & Thomas relationship works in the plot of the movie, and why the love triangle works.

Because Thomas is not this knight in armor that some try to pretend and he has real flaws that are extremely questionable (and not superficial flaws like the antis try to highlight to in fact praise him).

Oh, and when I say that Ellen powers are associated with Orlok, it is in the symbolic sense that when he arrives, Ellen associates everything that disturbs her for society with Orlok that she has awakened. Since, as we saw, symbolically, Orlok represents what disturbs in Ellen for society. But Ellen's powers existed before Orlok and she woke him up thanks to them precisely. I said that for avoid misunderstandings and because there is an interpretation in the fandom that Orlok gave to Ellen her powers, in order to completely demonize this part of herself and make people believe that Thomas stopping all this for a time is a good thing and victimize her even more. Making her main strength an additional aggression from Orlok ultimately. And it's ridiculous.

That's all I had to say.

[bingsoo-jung]

I’m going to be adding on two unconnected topics:

1) reading the dellemortes as asian when they were not cast as such is weird

2) the simplification of dorian’s identity down to solely south asian was brought about by a poor understanding of complicated ethnicities formed in former british colonies

One

While the dellemortes were originally intended to be korean-italian or korean-spanish (in my head this means they were supposed to be korean-argentinian LMAO) they clearly didn’t actually end up casting that way. And that’s fine! I don’t mind that. But people going ‘but they WERE that in the game’ are ridiculous. Like… no clearly they weren’t. They didn’t cast a korean actor, let alone a korean spanish, italian, or latine actor for that role. And to be honest with you, they were trying to find someone who matched a nearly non-existent ethnicity. There are only around 70k people worldwide who match what they were looking for, finding 2 actors and an older actress with the correct accents and ethnicity would’ve been impossibly hard. I don’t blame them fo not going that route.

But it does mean that in a cast of very purposefully cast actors that acting like the guy played by a clearly not asian guy, is playing an asian guy, is just a weird form of modern yellowface. Like no, he’s not korean. Stop being weird and fetishizing koreans. Like yes i would like every piece of media to have koreans, but not every piece of media does, and pretending like your local white fave looks korean is fucking weird. Calm the fuck down. Be normal.

Two

So here’s the thing, dorian’s character, and thus tevinter retroactively, have been made south asian coded because of dorian’s actor. However dorian’s actor isn’t solely south asian. Specifically ramon tikaram is indo-fijian and sarawak malay. For a bit of history, indo-fijians are people of indian descent in fiji, whose ancestors brought to fiji by the british to be indentured servants under horrible conditions. Whereas sarawak malays are ethnically malay people from sarawak. Malaysia was the oldest british colony in asia, in fact the east india company wasn’t named for india, it was named for malaysia, the east indies are the south pacific. Furthermore, tikaram was born in singapore, when britain still had military there, his father was in the military, there is a lot to be said about brown soldiers of the british empire being used to police their other colonies, and that weird and specific reality.

Now, if you know anything about these groups, and how people in the south pacific tend to identity, most of our families identify with the country we’re from. You can look up indo-fijians talking about how they often dislike being put being into solely one category of pasifika OR indian, and in my experience as southeast asian, we also dislike being told we’re just one thing. Identities formed in the context of colonialism, especially by diasporic populations are complex things, and to simplify them down to the easiest component to understand, is very much a view of ethnicity and identity that is reductionist. Just going ‘well they’re this thing because their ancestors were’ is weird and distills ethnicity and culture down to some psuedo-scientific concept with numbers and percentages centered in an understanding of ethnicity that was created when britain set down its colonies and started involuntarily moving people around so they could get all their tea and sugar for cheap.

Now I don’t know how tikaram identifies, not in the least, but I do think it says a lot when a bunch of white canadians with no connection to the region, decide to just pick the easiest route of identification for a character they partially based off of an actor, and basically go ‘he’s south asian now!’ Like yes, they don’t need to model the character off of tikaram’s specific heritage, but there is something to be said about creating a fantasy world and actually creating interesting new cultures from combining and exploring how different cultures IRL could interact and produce something new. It also in many ways shows a lack of thought about the ramifications. Because it’s bad enough with the context of tikaram being of indian descent. I would say it’s worse with the context of tikaram being indo-fijian which is a group of people who we know were traded, sold, and passed around by the british. It adds a specific weird extra layer to everything, and it makes all of that history just a bit more… yikes.

… so yeah! I don’t have a way to end this. But yeah

to the people who tagged that asian dellamortes post with “i thought lucanis was asian because of his eyes” firstly me too and before i even read the art book LOL because if i reach then he kind of looks like he has double eyelids but secondly i believe that was copium. if the designers ever come out and say “the dellamortes were always meant to be partially/half asian” then we should kill them because there is nothing that implies any kind of korean or asian coding. i think there is a clear and total failure in character design and writing if you present a character who is white passing and fail to address the fact that their quote unquote culture means something to them and the writing treats them like they’re (only) italian or spanish. like i think if he actually was supposed to be asian he would have mentioned literally any korean dish. while we’re here i kind of would have liked more references to worldbuilding for bellara (and cyrian) who has a hairpin (a cultural thing not seen before in thedas! but from where?) or irelin who has an accent which literally implies she is not from thedas or that she at least speaks another language. same goes for neve and dorian but i also would have had mixed feelings about south asian aesthetics pinned onto thedas’ proxy for the roman empire that is also filled with slavery. like i don’t think it’s gotta be one-to-one with coding especially with a world that is as broad as thedas but it is kind of crazy that a previous head writer said “idk. i guess there are just no asians on the continent. don’t ask me again” and then it was like hmmm actually the pavus family seem to be the only asians on the continent and then suddenly veilguard goes “HEY WE’VE HAD ASIAN PEOPLE THE WHOLE TIME!”

[onthegreatsea]

as someone who loves to make low poly stuff i think what defines the style, for me (and what makes it enjoyable) is how its about using the minimum amount of triangles to convey the most amount of information about an objects form

silhouettes are SO important in low poly art and the majority, if not all, of the triangles you use should clearly convey that 3D form.

almost every poly should have a clear, distinct purpose (animation needs can muddle this a bit but generally it sticks)

also i dont care about how you shade the characters; going with flat shading does not a low poly character make. if you're throwing thousands of polys on a sword and flat shading it to look faceted that aint low poly.

smaller, less defining details can be done through texture usage (not shaders!)… but even then they should be kept small in resolution. and they should use as few as possible. again its about minimisation.

texel density can get suprisingly high tho with clever use of UVs, and texture settings like mirroring or clamping, but this is still largely a case of 'textures should be the minimum size possible to convey the detail accurately'. thats definitely hard to quantify.

a lot of it depends on how the object is going to be used after all. the protagonists face used in cinematics is going to be a lot higher than one used for enemies in gameplay, yknow?

altho at the end of the day 'low poly' is, sadly, a relative term; technically a PS4 game is low poly in comparison to a PS5 game. so maybe i should just go fuck myself.

[starflungwaddledee]

at long last i present... a proper starstruck dee reference sheet! 🎀✨ have a peruse and learn a little bit (but not too much!) about this totally normal waddle dee!

[whump-polls]

(what gender do you prefer for a whumpee, not just generally in whump)

i know that this is simplified and doesn't include all possible combinations of preference and attraction, you can't explore a lot of nuance in this format but this is probably the most complex i can get within the poll options, feel free to pick other/nuance and elaborate in the tags or discuss in comments/reblogs!

e.g if you prefer female characters in whump and arent attracted to anyone (not women or anyone else) or multiple genders excluding women, pick the 4th option if you prefer female characters and are attracted to multiple genders including women, pick the 3rd

(of course male/female characters also include trans characters)

[jesncin]

Does Lex being black and Superman being white(-passing) in your universe affect his hatred of Superman and/or how he expresses it?

It sure does! I'm gonna link back to my initial post about Black Lex Luthor since it sets the stage for the ideas I want to eventually dig into for this take.

(I chopped some panels from Lex Luthor: Man of Steel for the sake of how these pages display on this blog, this is not how it looks in the comic)

Something really interesting about Lex's character is how his ego copes with seeing power and how hypocritical (for lack of better word) he can be about it. In Lex Luthor: Man of Steel, he dehumanizes Superman because he views him as a threat, all in the name of supposedly giving agency back to (his standard of) humanity. He ironically creates an actual not-living-human robot-superhero as a rebuttal to Superman. When Clark Kent criticizes it, Luthor briefly fantasizes about buying the Daily planet and firing him, assuring himself that people like Kent are "insecure men, ignorantly seeking to tell people what to think", all while he himself acts out of insecurity. He builds a tower to represent the pinnacle of human achievement but destroys it and sabotages his own man-made superhero to make Superman look bad.

I think adding a racial element of marginalization revitalizes all of this in so many ways. We'd get to see the way hurt people lash out through power and corruption. Lex clawed his way to power through cruelty and hates seeing how Superman doesn't use malice to get to where he is in power. Maybe the cognitive dissonance in Luthor's mind justifies his feelings towards Superman by thinking that Superman represents this safe, palatable version of power. It's unearned because of course it is, he looks like a white man after all, and all the benefits and second chances that go with it. It's up to someone like Luthor to show people what it really looks like to earn power, it should be messy, there should be casualties. This is how the world works to him, and he knowingly upholds it to justify the cruelty that got him to where he is.

If he can change even just one person's mind about Superman, maybe all that self sabotage, including hurting others like him, would be worth it.

[prostocupoftea]

Guys i made it

i put him in blender

My dummass kinito shape design was too hard to draw so now he is menacingly A-posing in my .blend file

I will need to rig him and then i can make him do silly dances. Jk mostly posing

Also i think i'll draw eye on him by hand in each frame just so that he'd have that vibe of... idk, my sufferings maybe ? but i think that could look cool

Anyway, he is stupid, i love him, i hope you do too

[figofswords]

thoughts/braindump about the new zelda game:

-PLAYABLE ZELDA!!!!!!

-fairy design VERY good. what a funky little creature. also i can't believe zelda is hyrule's first poketrainer

-god i almost feel like this would work really well if it was closer to like the tunic style? tunic isn't nintendo but it's very much a love letter to games like alttp and i think it really does a good job mixing the cute/charming with the sinister/mysterious in a way that would REALLY make those portals hit harder visually.

-i don't have a problem with the cutesy-ness of it - wind waker + the other toon games are some of my favorite zelda games visually and they go for a cuter style, but they work really well because they're a) a really nice stylized mix of 2d/3d and b) the character models are all very very emotive, exceptionally so for zelda games especially. by contrast, the link's awakening remake style they're bringing back for this game is very. plastic looking. instead of inviting you into this colorful world, it pushes you a step back emotionally, because you're playing with plastic dolls, and even worse they're plastic dolls that barely emote. cartooning relies on exaggeration - exaggerated emotion, movements, character design, etc. plastic looking 3d chibis running around a plastic chibi world are stiff, their movements are limited, their expressions feel fake.

-re playable zelda: yay!!!!! re the visual style they're going with: vaguely disappointed, but unsurprised. totk came out last year, and reusing this style means they're probably recycling assets from link's awakening (models/rigs/animations, environment models, probably all of the coding for the mechanics/enemy behaviors) which means it can come out faster and cost less money.

-i'm kinda assuming this is them testing the waters with playable zelda, and maybe if this game is successful they'll decide it's worth spending money/time/resources on a more serious game featuring player zelda.

-might do some fanart of the new zelda in the toon/windwaker style and maybe play around with scenes from the trailer to put it in the tunic style? we'll see

-where in the timeline is this Eiji Aonuma??pink crystal zelda is from oot. dont tell me this is a FOURTH timeline Eiji Aonuma i'll lose it. you still haven't explained what the hell is going on with totk. sir. mr zelda man. please

[squeakadeeks]

dont talk to Singer or her son ever again

[friskdistrollerroblox]

Model of One I'm making in Blender! Still need rigging! But she is working pretty fine, might make small animations in the future with her. Have this small render image of One I made for testing.

Also can someone tell my girly to please be patient, I ain't that good with bones, and shes getting irritated on me just cus I'm taking too long to place them...

[pigeonliker420]

whatevers wrong with this man i like it

[alexjcrowley]

New dad lore unlocked, what the fuck do you mean your friend knew Luca di Montezemolo so you did a test drive with a Ferrari once

[setteidreams]

Buddy Complex (126 sheets) is now available in the settei section.

[no1ryomafan]

I mentioned this briefly last night in my last big post so here it is: The Ashe&Grey to Kei&Go parallel meme. I would’ve done a compare and contrast chart instead of listing out all the parallels but last time I did it the resolution was even worse then these 💀 besides just pointing out the similarities is funnier since I’d say overall their vastly different characters- but these baseline similarities I can’t help to notice even if I doubt it was a reference on ZXs part to Armageddon. Moral of the story they'd all be besties probably. (Also I’m going to ramble in the tags once more-)

[fullmoonfireball]

in hindsight, it’s honestly REALLY funny that people (including myself) used to believe that this was concept art for Meta Knight

y'know. Meta Knight. the guy looked like this in his first appearance.