#as inefficient as it makes editing things

[snailpdf]

my desire to impulsively post fic is being curbed by the fact that my laptop runs like shit lmao

[rottenpumpkin13]

ASG visit a grocery store plz

Shinra has a system where groceries are delivered to the First's apartments upon order, however this time Angeal was inspired to explore the city and suggested they all take trip to the local grocery store for their shopping.

• Sephiroth is in the produce aisle, roaming over the fresh vegetables and rediscovering ones he forgot about—what is a romanesco and why does it look like that? *buys some because it looks interesting* —and then it happens: the sound of a thunderstorm as the vegetables get misted. Sephiroth is like a little kid as he watches, mystified, as the vegetables get showered to the sound of rain. Whoever invented this is brilliant. Sephiroth stands there, waiting for another show for a good 10 minutes before he walks off, disappointed. It should be voice activated.

• Genesis finds the cereal aisle and makes a beeline for the one thing he came here to find: Stamp Puffs: Limited SOLDIER edition! - Now with a miniature figure of your favorite hero inside!

• He grabs the box with his face on it, tears it open excitedly and......HUH? Where's tiny Genesis?? Why is there a SEPHIROTH figurine instead?? This is HIS CEREAL BOX IT HAS HIS FACE ALAKSJAJSHSJ

• Angeal is busy shopping around for the necessities—milk, eggs, yogurt, olive oil, those chocolate-filled snack cakes Sephiroth says are "meant for children and unfit for a SOLDIER's diet" but he ends up eating half a box worth of anyway....

*Angeal spots Genesis opening a cereal box in the cereal aisle. To his left is a pile of opened boxes, to his right is a pile of Sephiroth action figures*

Angeal: Gen, what are you—

Genesis: BLASPHEMY *sets a tiny Sephiroth on fire*

Angeal: I don't know you *walks away quickly*

• Sephiroth finds an entire watermelon. He has never purchased his own fruits before, let alone a watermelon. Sephiroth sees other shoppers slapping their watermelons. He thinks this is standard procedure and slaps his watermelon. He breaks the watermelon in half. Watermelon juice flies everywhere. People are staring. Sephiroth takes off with his smashed watermelon.

• Angeal is still going through his shopping list: garlic, tomatoes, toothpaste, those fun cookies he gives Zack whenever he performs a task successfully that Lazard says is immoral but Angeal will continue to give him anyway.

*Angeal finds Sephiroth looking at a jar of two-in-one peanut butter and jelly*

Angeal: Hey, bud! Having fun?

Sephiroth: This item is a prime example of inefficiency. They deliver a skewed ratio, with a significant percentage more peanut butter than jam, as if they fear exceeding a certain jam threshold, despite jam arguably being the superior component of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Not only that, but by mixing the two, it distorts the distinct flavor profiles achieved when spreading peanut butter and jam separately. And then they have the audacity to charge 8 gil for it. I am disgusted.

Angeal: Why is there a smashed watermelon in your cart?

Sephiroth:

• After opening 33 boxes of Stamp Puffs with his face on it and finding nothing but Sephiroth action figures, Genesis gives up. He starts to walk away when he sees a small child pick out a box with Sephiroth's face, open it, pull out a Genesis action figure, and exclaim "Cool, I got Genesis! He's my favorite one!" — Genesis is now sobbing into a bag of bread. He still has to pay for the 33 boxes of cereal though.

• They all regroup back at the checkout line. Angeal is standing there, mystified as Sephiroth's cart is filled with items such as a gallon of honey, 6 entire boneless sliced hams, several trays of frozen convenience dinners, bubblegum-flavored children's toothpaste, and purple shampoo.

Angeal: Pray tell what the purple shampoo is for.

Sephiroth: An elderly woman in the shampoo aisle informed me that this is very good for gray hair.

Angeal: But your hair isn't—oh never mind. Genesis, what on earth are you going to do with 33 boxes of cereal and 33 Sephiroth action figures.

Genesis: File a complaint to the marketing department. Can you believe all of the Genesis cereal boxes came with Sephiroth action figures? Every single one of them.

Sephiroth: I apologize for coming inside of you.

Genesis:

[splatsvilles-fashionista]

Splatoon 3 Version 6.0 Patch Notes Breakdown

Been a little bit since I did one of these, but Nintendo released the Chill Season 2023 patch notes about three hour ago, and while in terms of balance changes this is one of the smallest patches ever, it's got a ton of quality-of-life changes, so let's dig in, shall we?

So let's start from the top. In terms of new content, this patch includes a new catalog, two new stages (Robo ROM-en and Bluefin Depot), two new Specials (Splattercolor Screen and Triple Splashdown), nine new weapons, two new multiplayer songs, the new King Salmonid Megalodontia, and eleven new Tableturf cards.

Additionally, you'll note that they're including a line about giving you one Sheldon License at the end of each season. This is actually really relevant to a change coming down in line, so tuck that in the back of your mind for later.

The balance changes are all buffs, but they're relatively minor, and only six Main weapons and one Special are seeing any changes this time around.

Starting off, .96 Gal is having its ink efficiency buffed by 8%. It currently gets 40 shots on a full ink tank, so I wager this increases that number by about 5-10, but it's 5 AM my time at time of writing and I am bad at math, so I don't know for sure.

Ranged Blaster's explosions get a 15% paint buff. Note that this applies only to the final explosion and not the trail, so it's not a straight 15% paint buff.

Dread Wringer gets a 10% ink efficiency buff, and since it currently has ten sloshes on a full tank, that increases that number to eleven.

And finally, for Main Weapon changes the Heavy Edit Splatling now paints more. Unlike the Ranged Blaster's paint buff this is a lot harder to gauge, but Heavy Edit's paint can be kind of spotty and inefficient, so this is undoubtedly a good thing for it.

After that, we've got only two points-for-Special changes.

Jet Squelcher and L-3 Nozzlenose both get some points shaved off their Specials, taking their Ink Vac and Crab Tank to 180p and 190p respectively. On one hand, I am biased and hate the Jet Squelcher, and I think this buff was completely unwarranted and unnecessary, but on the other hand I love the L-3 and want only good things in life for it, so they balance each other out, in my book.

And, for the final balance change of the entire patch, we've got a Reefslider buff, as it now makes you invulnerable during its startup 13 frames faster. The thing about this change is that like, it's a buff, and that is good, but the problem Reefslider has is not getting the Special off, it's that you very rarely survive the aftermath of using it, and this does nothing to solve that. With Triple Splashdown on the horizon I think things might be rough for this Special in the future.

And that's all of the balance changes! There being so few of them indicate two things to me: That Nintendo is overall happy with the the state of the game, and that they are wary of touching anything unless they have to. And one hand I get it, after all, competitive players are currently saying that there really isn't a meta at the moment, just picking weapons you're good at and playing well, and that's probably not an environment you want to shake up too much. But on the other hand, there are a lot of things like Line Marker, Undercover Brella, and Reefslider to name a few, that could really do with some sprucing up to help them keep up with the just the middle of the pack. I think raising the bottom bar a bit higher would be to everyone's benefit.

But we've got two Specials being added, so I suppose now's not the time to rock the boat too much. We'll see how things have shaken out come the mid-season patch in January.

But the balance changes are a very small part of these patch notes, and nowhere near the most interesting, so let's keep moving on.

Anarchy Series and X Battles are receiving a whole slew of changes, the most prominent of which are some new badge rewards for win streaks and attaining high X Rankings. Additionally, matchmaking in X Battles is being changed to more strictly separate people with high and low X Ranks, as well as allowing more team compositions. To cut a long story short, weapons have a set of internal values that the game uses during matchmaking to try and balance the team compositions. Matchmaking in high-power X Rank infamously takes a very long time, so I have to imagine that this change aims to speed things up by making the matchmaking more lenient on that front.

Salmon Run, in addition to the new King Salmonid, is getting some significant changes, starting with some changes to the Specials:

Kraken Royale and Triple Splashdown are being added to the pool of available Specials. Additionally, Mr. Grizz has finally agreed to always provide at least two workers on every team with a long-range Special to handle all the pesky Stingers and Flyfish. Be sure to thank your local union representative the next chance you get.

This change is particularly spicy. Your Salmon Run stage badges will now boost your starting difficulty on their respective stages, adding more incentive to play beyond the two superbonuses, as well as making the grind for future badges easier. This certainly gives me more motivation to go for those VP 400+ badges.

You'll now be able to tell what King Salmonid is present during each Shift, and the Salmometer will change to match it, as well. Can you believe they didn't change that when they added Horrorboros?

Also I am curious what this means for those Shifts where the King Salmonid was random. Will the Salmometer become a question mark? Are they not gonna do those anymore? We'll have to wait and see.

But this next change, is a big one, and it's for, what else, Big Run:

Big Run trophy requirements will now be set in advance, and no longer scale off top 50%, 20% and 5% player results.

I am in two minds about this change. On one hand, I always thought that people complaining about overfishers in Big Run were kind of petulant and entitled, especially when the rewards were as minor as locker decorations and badges. Maybe that's mean-spirited of me, but there was never a way for me to read it as anything but people demanding to be given the same reward as the people working the hardest without putting in the effort themselves.

But on the other hand, the 5% cutoff has been steadily rising as overall Big Run participation decreased, which is just a natural result of time passing and casual players falling off the game, nothing weird there, but this means that the top becomes more stacked, further disincentivizing casual players as getting even the bronze trophies becomes harder and harder for them. Giving the players much clearer and more achievable goals will likely serve to pull a lot of people back into Big Runs, and that is undoubtedly a good thing.

And hey, I said the rewards weren't worth getting upset over, and by that same metric, I don't think it's worth getting upset over more people getting them, either. All the better, if it makes more folks happy. And as for the people who do want to grind their hearts out, well:

There's still some recognition for that, too.

So that's the gist of the Salmon Run changes, so let's finish up with some miscellaneous changes.

Remember how I told you to keep that bonus Sheldon's License in mind for later?

Players who own every currently available weapon will now be able to trade extra licenses in for Shell-Out Tokens. In other words, that extra license serves as a failsafe so you don't lock yourself out of buying future weapons by spending all your licenses on gacha rolls.

The Splatfest Battle Pro queue is receiving the same matchmaking changes as X, presumably for much the same reasons.

And finally, the most important change of all:

WANDERCRUST IS BACK!!! YEAH BABY!!!! WOO!!!

[sophieinwonderland]

A More Comprehensive Look At Proxy Bypassing...

One of my posts recently talked about Proxying and Proxy Bypassing. This seems to have created some confusion about how Proxying and Proxy Bypassing actually work. And I'll confess, I'm not always the best at explaining things.

So before going on, I want to establish what these terms actually mean.

Proxying: This is the act of typing or writing for another headmate who isn't fronting.

Proxy Bypassing: Bypassing occurs when, while proxying, the nonfronter's words start flowing directly into the fingers faster than the fronter can process them.

To eliminate some of the confusion, I edited the title of the diagram from before to make it clear that this is mostly about the bypassing itself, not just proxying in general.

It is possible for systems to proxy without bypassing happening, which I don't think I was clear enough on when I made the diagram.

But it does USUALLY happen. Especially when writing long paragraphs.

Some have also asked how this is different from possession. And the difference, to me, lies in the fact that possession is more voluntary movement whereas proxy bypassing is largely involuntary and happens unconsciously. People don't choose to Bypass and often may not even realize it happened until after the fact.

So... what's actually going on here?

Because the above is an explanation for what it is, but not actually why it happens.

Well for that, we need to talk about some basic psychology and neurology.

The Cerebrum and Cerebellum

To start, let's take this very basic diagram of the brain from the Cleveland Clinic. Later, we're going to draw all over it in a way definitely not approved by the Cleveland Clinic.

The Cerebrum is the biggest part of your brain. This is the part of your brain that deals with higher thinking, consciousness, emotions, autobiographical memories, etc. There is a lot going on here. But as plurals, just know that if your headmates are anywhere in the brain, it's going to be in the Cerebrum.

Meanwhile the Cerebellum is more for carrying out more automatic processes, balance, motor control etc.

Do you ever notice how when you walk, you aren't consciously thinking about putting one foot in front of the other? How you aren't consciously thinking about how to maintain balance and not fall over? You just sort of point the body in the direction you want it to go, decide the speed you want to walk, and then it kind of just handles all those other details on its own without you having to think about it.

One way to imagine this might be that the Cerebrum contains more conscious programs like headmates... while the Cerebellum contains nonconscious ones. Commands of where to walk and how fast are sent from headmates in the Cerebrum to the Cerebellum which then actually dictates the movement.

(Note: This is a huge, HUGE oversimplification about these brain structures. But it's a necessary one for what I'm trying to explain here.)

We might conceptualize this relationship like this:

Headmate 1 sends what they want to happen to the Walking Program which then sends it to the through your nerves to have the actions carried out.

As you might guess, typing similarly is ran by processes in the Cerebellum, as are basically all motor skills. That's why it often feels a little automatic when you're typing, and why you don't need to think of where every individual letter is on the keyboard as you type.

So just as there's a walking program, there's also a typing program.

Now, when Proxying without Bypassing, Headmate 2 sends information to Headmate 1 who sends it to the Typing Program in the Cerebellum.

But as you can see, this is inefficient. It's an incredibly inefficient way for the brain to work.

So what does it do instead?

Well, my theory is that the Typing program essentially starts listening to Headmate 2 directly, if it already knows that it's going to be typing what Headmate 2 is saying. There's no logical reason to keep Headmate 1 involved in the process with Headmate 1 just acting as a middleman.

Hence, the signal bypasses the fronter and goes straight into the typing program.

Headmate 1 has not actually left front even if they may be a bit dissociated. But this automatic program is now taking instructions from a different headmate.

And unless Headmate 2 can already possess limbs, they may still not be able to do anything else with the hands except type. Because they're still not actually possessing. They're just sending information to the typing program which is what's actually sending it to the fingers.

Conclusion

I hope this explains a bit better how proxying and proxy bypassing work.

Thanks everyone who asked about proxying and proxy bypassing, because I tend to forget that just because something is making sense in my head, it won't to everyone else's and I need to get better at explaining these concepts in ways people can understand. Hopefully this was a bit more successful.

And thanks to the Cleveland Clinic for giving me such a nice brain to draw all over! 😜

[anameistoohard]

Hello! We thought it might be good to have a pinned post so y'all can know a bit about us.

I guess start with the obvious thanks to that title: We are a we.

The bit less obvious: We are one person :p We learned we were a system in September 2022. There's a bunch of us in here but not everyone fronts. The ones that do often have a lot of identity confusion/blendyness so we don't usually specify who's speaking. If you don't know, you can refer to us by the body's name, Taylor, and the pronouns we us irl, she/her.

We are also a trans woman: Or at least... the body is? It's complicated. The majority of us are girls/strongly fem leaning but we have some guys and enbies in here too. We started hrt in October 2021 so we were already a year into it when we learned about our system. After a lot of questioning we came to the consensus that we should continue hrt. The guys are willing to put up with it and overall we are quite happy with the changes.

Autism and dyslexia: These make our writing a bit stilted/disjointed sounding sometimes. The two of them combined can make socializing online exhausting, trying to figure out what to say and how to say it (anxiety is no help either). If we don't respond right away, or at all, just know we're sorry 💜

Art! The reason you're probably here lol: We create art in just about the most inefficient way possible, in ms Paint, where there are no layers, you can only rotate in 90° intervals, and if you try to resize a picture it becomes a blurry pixilated mess. And we do so without a drawing tablet. When we make pixel art we're manually placing squares one at a time. But there's something kind of soothing about this slow monotonous inefficiency. We mostly do pixel art, but sometimes we make comics, or just whatever we feel like making.

If you have any questions, this is an open invitation to ask: Curiosity is a good thing! Don't worry if you're using the "wrong" language or you think something might be too personal, as long as you're respectful and kind, feel free to ask us anything about us/our experiences/our art. If we don't want to answer we don't have to, so there's no harm in asking. Just please don't turn to us for links/resources, we're not good at keeping track of that kind of stuff.

Written by Mark (they/them), Danny (he/him), and Taylor (she/her)

(Edit: I guess we should mention we have a twitter too)

(Edit edit: screw twitter we on blue sky lol)

[jinglejingleclown]

Just watched venom 3: the lasst dance, and so I've got. Commentary. I discussed most of it with my saint-like friend, so now I'm just left puzzled rather than vaguely upset. Spoilers be upon yee, be warned.

1. Those alien xenomorph things were honestly pretty tame. They didn't kill humans unless provoked. They couldn't see shit besides the codex. Straight up they didnt even attack eddie so long as venom was semi-under wraps. So why was it so deeply necessary for venom to sacrifice himself and kill them? I don't get why, based off what the movie had shown us, eddie and venom couldn't have just straight up walked out of the situation and everyone couldda been chill while they calmly called in reenforcements. This was like a really weird way to raise the stakes, those aliens were genuinely like very pleasant for killer-alien standards from what was shown

2. The area 51 scenes were the most inefficient lore dumps ever. I got the stakes within the first 3 mins of the movie when sephiroth was just explaining paragraphs of lore i didnt need scientists to reexplain it over stretches of 40 minute nothing-lore dumps

3. Now not to say that any venom movie has been the wittiest quipiest smartest movie ever, but there was a lot of just. Dumping lore on the ground. Tell dont show type beat. Like it was impressive how they were fumbling that bag. Not like ive ever had high standards for marvel movies but wow that was tough

4. Why were the symbiotes nice? Based off of venom's coworkers and son, symbiotes are not nice. I find it hard to believe all the symbiotes were chill at the end and saving nearby families n shit. Eddie is still teaching venom what the word "morals" mean, granted venom isnt the smartest symbiote but still im pretty sure symbiotes dont give a shit abt humans, and nothing explains why theyre nice and helpful suddenly

5. Venom did not need to die deadass i dont know why he and eddie didnt straight up walk away. Deadass. Like i get it maybe they have enoigh scraps of morals bt the two of them to put together one good decision, but even still like it was a weird way to raise the stakes and kill venom. Im not mad that venoms dead in general, i think it sucks but like that was a decision they could make and that id be reasonable abt. But he didnt have to die like this, yknow? That was a really weird set of circumstances to make him go out on. Id have believed him dying to carnage more than thos, the emotional and physical stakes just werent high enough for me to feel anything or be invested while it happened. And btw i loooooove venom and im not the strongest willed person if they had hammed that shit up i would have been sniffling and sobbing at the end. But i left dry eyed and like ??? What was that bro

6. Maroon 5 amv? Dog what. And i've also seen tiktok edits do better montages btw

7. Lot of weird editing/timing/cutting decisions made for this movie that made it kinda drag, even during action sequences

8. Hippie family was cute at first, then got annoying, genuinely felt tortured alongside eddie during that super long song sequence

9. Why were venom and eddie not like more of the main focus of the movie

10. Why didnt the symbiotes just kill venom and eddie to get rid of the codex. Then they wont be hunted too. That easy. I would have believed venoms death more and been more amused if the symbiotes had turned this into like a total fucking massacre

11. Deadass the area 51 part of the plot generally jist didnt need to happen i didnt need to know any of those character or their motivations

12. Eddie had no emotional weight during the death of venom, venom carried the emotional scene hard but eddie didnt even do the standard minimum screaming wailing crying why god why. No. Maroon 5 montage.

13. Didnt fuck nasty on screen :(

14. Why was eddie let off the hook by the government like that, that was crazy why are tbey letting him loose and after they let him loose why isnt he going nuts trynna get venom back. I get they were like muts together and visually eddie was NOT doing fine during their symbiosis, but the other movies made me believe they were both ride or die abt each other. Venom sure as fuck wouldnt just like be chill after eddie died, hed be going crazy trying to bring eddie back. This isnt a one way street. Wheres the fire in eddie. "I'll never forget you" eddie "fucking nuts dogged journalist whos forever trembling like a neurotic chihuahua" brock would never. But no. Maroon 5.

15. Just a lot of generally hand-wavey stuff. And im not a cruel watcher, if i recognize plot holes, especially in a silly movie like this, i could be like oh okay well ill ignore it or come up with some reasoning for it. But deadassssss the monsters couldnt fucking see eddie and venom so long as they didnt COMPLETELY transform. Venom could literally still be doing his shit they just couldt transform completely. Easy. Thats fine bro. They couldda waited it out until they figured out a solution. With the stakes as they were, there was no reason for venom to die in this movie. The stakes were so high and it was so easy to avoid triggering them, venoms a lot of things but hes not That stupid. I deadass think that venom and eddie couldda just walked away from the area 51 situation with the last like 3 living scientists in tow and been like fine

16. He just straight up didnt need to die in the scenario they gave him. He could have escaped unscathed. Deadass. Im so confused why he would choose to die in that situation. Bc he'd be forever hunted so long as the codex existed? Dog I dont think venom gives a shit abt the other symbiotes he cares abt himself, eddie, and like 4 other ppl from LA and thats it. He ate three peoples heads at the beginning of the movie, hes not like, captain moral

17. Didnt fuck nasty raw on screen :((((

Conclusions: i really enjoyed eddie and venoms road trip, and only those parts of the movie. Every other part was not only a drag, but unneccessary. Venom in the movie verse isnt built like captain america, they raise the stakes too high for a dude and his gay tapeworm. Eddie and venom should be fighting like, joker-scale enemies max. Villain of the week type shit. I genuinely wouldda been happy with just like a singular symbiote-eating alien invading thats like low stakes enough for their buddy-cop schtick. The fate of every symbiote was a lot, and also most symbiotes dont even fuckin like venom lmao. "The black one" had me snorting in theaters tho, what a nickname damn. The horse and river montage was great. I liked some of venoms mannerisms i thought he was really cute this movie.eI dont know why this movie couldn have just been explosioms, macbine guns, and venom on the run from the government, that wouldda been great dumb fun. 3/10. I'm gonna go read fanfiction and dream up a better way to end this trilogy. There wasn't even a french kiss. Not even a normal kiss. Damn they didnt even hold hands deadass. Im not trynna be mean its more like i cant beliebe they fumbled the ball this hard rather than using a perfectly acceptable cliche villain of the week approach, kicking back, and raking in that fangirl dough. It didnt have to be a weel written movie, it just had to be okay and coherent and it was somehow neither

[the-broken-spear]

Aequorin has made a post addressing the thing:

Transcript below the cut

[Text reads: We want to apologize for the execution and editing decisions we made as a team on the Auraboa story, Ancient Arboriculture Observations. Your critique of the story and that parallels can be drawn to the struggles faced by native nations and the forced assimilation of their children into a western world have been heard. Looking at the story now, we can absolutely see how such parallels were drawn, and are committed to correcting this. We thank you for both reaching out to us, and for your patience while we worked to address these concerns. The Auraboa were and are intended to be dragons with a scifi-alien mindset with an innate mental link and a different perception of time, not a native nation. The original draft for the story had many ideas, context, and characterization that were explicitly stated and then cut out for the sake of word count. The expectation was for the breed article to do the heavy lifting required, but it also wound up insufficient to support the needs of the story and as a standalone article. The fact that the hatchlings were changed but still able to freely move between the Loop and a linear time perception was left implied instead of explicitly stated. Regarding the concerns shared on Auraboan speech, the mental link and the non-linear perception of time meant that speech was an inefficient and alien form of communication for the Auraboa, resulting in stilted speech patterns that we will be evaluating with a critical eye to avoid harmful stereotypes. We appreciate the critique and feedback. We will use this as an opportunity to better our lore and restore much of this original context to make sure we are telling the story and building the world we want and intend to tell. We are also re-evaluating our length limits based on the individual stories we want to tell and the world building we hope for these entries to do. We've been restricting the story lengths to prevent writing ourselves into corners like the Tidelord and the long, long break between Bounty of the Elements and its planned conclusion in Adventure Mode. And like with the Undertide story, the Auraboa story suffered under this artificial limit. This time, this combination lead to us publishing a story that could be read in multiple and harmful ways. We also need to note that in the United States we are entering a holiday weekend and many of our employees will be taking or are already on paid time off. We apologize that a change cannot be effected as immediately as we would like, but will work to improve the story as swiftly as possible (November, ideally.) For today: The Auraboa breed article has been expanded to more fully cover the connection that the Auraboa have in the Loop, duality of the nature of Auraboa hatchlings, and to make clear that the Auraboa born now are not and have not been severed from their connections and family. We will update Site Status again when the short story is updated with the additional context, direction, and ending. We want to thank the community again for your feedback and commitment to bettering the world of Flight Rising. As always, we ask that feedback on topics that touch on real world matters of significance are submitted directly to us through Contact Us.

/end text]

[trekmupf]

Evil Cube from outer space

Pro

Spock being a good leader & Sassy boy

Shatner getting his sweaty sporty chest out again. I mean the entire workout scene, McCoy ignoring the red alert and kirk video calling Spock shirtless and sweaty

and Kirk literally walking around the entire ship without a shirt and shoes???

“What am I a doctor or a moon shuttle conductor?”

the way bones sits on the bridge railing

our crew sitting in the conference room for hours, slamming back coffee

Bailey is a great and important part of the episode: we see his decline (along with McCoy), it's realistic and well contrasted to the senior staff on the bridge, and his arc comes full circle in the end

I love it when McCoy is literally standing behind Kirk in the captains chair

the fact the dummy alien makes you think this is the worst alien design so far and then it DOES turn out to be a dummy is great

Not only in theory but generally shows important mechanics on the ship: How the characters / crew work together and who does what

especially the way kirk relies on both Spock and McCoy to advise him, challenge him and back him up in their very own way; also the way they clash but come around again after, it's all so rounded

also shows who kirk is as a captain: calm, level headed, rational but empathetic, thinks deeply about major decisions and is conscious of his role and responsibility; and also so smart with how he handles the crisis and outplays his opponent; the way he leads his crew, the way he refuses to give up; but his anger and emotion also keep him very human

the fact that he decides to save the former enemy is so Kirk, I love him for it (knowing how he continues to value life and what it will cost him later on)

special effects (I really implore you guys to check out the original special effects if you've only seen the Netflix / DVD versions, it's on youtube)

The sounds on the bridge, little beeps and boops, are such a great atmosphere

“ a cube is blocking the ships way for half an episode” shouldn't work and yet the characters, music and editing really hold the tension up during the first half

the second half is even more tense and puts the characters under such stress until the plot twist in the end that relieves that tension in a great and satisfying way

good scoring and dramatic music

Con

Was filmed earlier than most others, so the inconsistencies are back (clothes, roles, characters, camerawork)

Bashing Yeoman Rand doing her job served no purpose and was unnecessary sexist; didn't like McCoy's comment either

Counter

shirtless kirk

brains over brawls (technically there was no brawls option)

superior alien race studying humanity

Quote:

"You know the greatest danger facing us is... ourselves, and irrational fear of the unknown. There's no such thing as 'the unknown,' only things temporarily hidden, temporarily not understood" - Kirk

"Has it occurred to you that there is a certain... inefficiency in constantly questioning me on things you've already made up your mind about?" - Spock "It gives me emotional security" - Kirk (the way they look at each other drives me insane)

Moment: Kirk pulling the entire Corbomite story from thin air

Summary: A tense episode about a terrifying and hopeless situation putting pressure onto our characters and revealing their core characteristics and strengths as well as highlighting their relationships with each other, with a great plot twist to round out the episode. It also openly and directly tells us what Star Trek is about and its philosophical and ethical core messages – the best episode so far and one of the best in general.

Previous Episode - Next Episode - All TOS Reviews

[diakamu]

A headup about the Japanese Art Youtuber かかげ（Kakage）

so sorry for bothering you but please be careful of who you support, or, rather what idea you might unintentionally support by supporting them *Edit In the said Youtube "bootleg" live, Kakage was caught making some "mental illness joke" and "s*icide joke," making fan of the victim.

They have since made “apology” tweets where they’re just justifying themselves’ “inefficient way of telling things" (implying ppl are not smart enough to understand their edginess) and saying their “mental illness joke” was actually just mentioning a medical fact and thus not offensive but “sorry if my speech mannerism offended you” kind of. https://x.com/kakage0904/status/1815754046730580476?s=46

↑link to the “apology”. Machine translation does an okay job here I thought

[apprenticestanheight]

Can I get number 10 "Will you marry me?" For Mark Hoffman? And maybe for Adam

Onions- Mark Hoffman x gn! reader

Hi!! I went ahead and did this one for Mark as I feel I don't write for him nearly enough, but if you'd like me to do this prompt with Adam, just feel free to let me know (be that through a response to this fic or an ask in my inbox! I don't know when it'll be done as I still have a lot of writing to get through before I consider myself on top of the reqs I currently have to do, but at the very least I can promise it'll be done either before christmas, on christmas, or the day after!)

Thank you for sending this one in and here's the obligatory but still wholly genuine apology--I am so sorry that this has taken me so long! A lot of the time things get buried in my inbox and that fact in combination with a bad record with object permanence usually go together in a rather inefficient way. Life has also just kind of done it's thing and demotivation has kind of kicked me in the back a little bit. While it sucks that I can't say that super long wait times for requests are out of the norm, I hope this one was worth the wait!!

Fic type- this is super fluffy!

Warnings- kissing happens a lot and sex is passively mentioned once. This fic is also edited but I've been awake for eleven hours and had written it while awake for something like fourteen so the editing might be a bit off regardless--I apologize if it is and if it is, please feel free to let me know and I'll fix it right up!!

In the week or so leading up to the proposal, Mark was doing everything he could to make it seem like nothing special was happening on the getaway he'd planned for the two of you that weekend.

You both worked in the precinct but in different areas--Mark was a detective and you worked with the CSI team--so keeping the news from spreading really wasn't all that difficult.

Perez and Strahm had been the only ones who knew a lick of Marks plan, and while Strahm had asked him teasing questions about the ring and the plan for the proposal with a shit-eating grin on his face, Perez seemed genuinely happy for him. She asked about the location and if he'd written some big, sappy speech, reminded him to make sure that all of the camera angles would be perfect and not unflattering, jokingly asked if she was invited and told him to ease up on the coffee during the week before the getaway as too much of it could cause jitters.

So then the weekend came and you and Mark drove to a cottage that had previously been owned by Marks parents in the outskirts of the city. They'd given it to him but he'd never had much cause to use it before that weekend, and he was glad to see that it was just as nice as it had been when he'd last seen it.

You settled in, objecting to spend that Friday night in nothing more than a pair of boxers and one of Marks old NJPD sweaters, hugging him from behind as he made dinner and you talked about anything except for work because of how exhaustive talking and thinking about work had become after how long that week had felt.

Mark was trying to search for the time to do it--the ring was in the pocket of his sweatpants, and you'd discussed proposals before anyway so he knew there was no big expectation to do it somewhere good or while wearing anything exceptional. Your plan for that weekend was mostly just to eat good food and have good sex and Mark had honestly planned to do the proposal somewhere after you'd accomplished both of those goals.

But, on a Friday night somewhere in December of the year 2004, your lips are pressing against the back of Marks shoulder and he can feel them spread out in a grin as your hands move to his hips, and you've been together for a decade and Mark is wondering why he didn't propose sooner.

"I love you," you whisper against the skin of his neck, laughing a little as you watch Mark brace himself by pressing his palms into the granite countertops.

"Will you marry me?"

Mark kind of hates the way it comes out--he wanted to at least have it somewhat planned before he popped the big question, not say it over a pan of onions that were in the process of caramelizing while the sky displays the dark of a Decembers four o'clock. He wanted to look at you while he asked, get down on one knee and at least try to do the old fashioned stuff.

"What?" You ask, laughing a bit more. "Mark Hoffman, are you playing some kind of cruel joke on me? I like it when you get funny but not like this."

"No," Mark rushes the words out. "No! I'm being serious--I swear I meant for it to be less spontaneous than this but your fucking lips--I wanna get married to you. I have a ring and everything, but you kissed me and you know how I'll get when you kiss me the right way. I promise I meant to propose in a more serious way, all right? Not while you're in one of my NJPD sweaters from when we first started dating and a pair of boxers I bought you for christmas so that you'd stop stealing mine to wear as shorts."

You let him go, step away.

"Well, if you're so serious about doing it properly, I invite you to go ahead," you're grinning, and Mark wants to kiss it off your face more than anything, but he doesn't. Instead, the cook in him turns to the pan as you take his hand in yours and interlace your fingers.

"The onions might burn--"

"They'll be fine without your eyes for a sec," your grin widens. "Mark--I appreciate that you proposed the way you did but if you're gonna make a stink about not being able to propose all proper and gentlemanly, then I invite you to do so. I promise I won't change my answer."

Mark snorts, gets down on one knee and pulls out the ring.

"Perez told me that a big, soppy speech would make you more likely to say yes but I never believed that," he takes a breath in. "I just want to emphasize that, well--we've been together for ten years now and I've wanted to marry you for at least four but work has been so busy that I haven't really gotten the chance to do it. I love you, Y/N, and that is why I'm doing this and why I was so hellbent upon doing it right."

"Yes," you blurt, grinning like an idiot.

Mark scoffs, laugh falling from his lips. "You made a stink about me making a stink about proposing wrong, and you've answered before I even asked!"

You laugh, covering your smile with your hand. Mark feels the urge to pull your hand away but doesn't, instead lets himself smile so hard that it hurts.

"Will you marry me?" He asks. "Will you make me the happiest guy in the history of the--well--ever, and marry me, Y/N L/N?"

"Mhm," you hum, nodding quickly. "Yeah, Mark Hoffman. Absolutely."

Mark rises, slips the ring onto your finger and hums as he pulls you into a tender kiss, palms resting on your elbows as he presses you lightly against the fridge.

You pull away, and both of you are grinning like idiots but that doesn't really matter.

What matters to you is the fact that Mark has just proposed, and you've accepted, which means that you're engaged. That fact alone is enough to make you elated, and such is what you feel as you go back to your previous position, Mark watching the onions and occasionally stirring while you hug him from behind, hands on his hips as your lips rest against the back of his shoulder.

Mark is grinning at the onions, just as elated as you. It is the perfect ending to a perfect night.

[noctilin]

ooo do you use clip studio and photoshop for different purposes and if so could you elaborate on that??

i used to draw on photoshop exclusively before i got clip studio paint. csp ran better on my computer for drawing so i eventually committed to it! but there's a lot of things that still make it a pain in the ass for me. one example is the text tool in csp is very inefficient to use, so i end up switching to photoshop for any typeface i need. i still do some graphic design from time to time which is easier to do in photoshop. photoshop also serves me well when i need to prepare files for printing my art and anything post-processing and adjusting colors and whatnot :) so to run it down: csp for drawing, photoshop for editing and processing

[quaranmine]

I've been rereading Firewatch AU because I intend to make a copy to give to my mother to read. It will, um, be the first time she's ever read my writing but this is probably the best example of it anyway. It's not like I want to explain Watcher!Grian to her either lmao so it may as well be this

I wanted to use the Gdocs comment feature to sort of "annotate" parts for her to give her some fun facts as well as explain the more fanfiction-y elements. (For example, explaining what calling Mumbo a spoon means.) So since I am doing it alongside minor edits in a reread, I am doing it in the most inefficient way possible by copying and pasting one page at a time to the new document. For 217 pages. Yay! Gdocs has a feature to just copy an entire document, but since I am editing it as I go I want both copies to be the same. Except one has comments and one is clean. And I only want to read it through once for comments/editing. Anyway!

Things I am noticing:

I do, as always, cringe a little at earlier writing. But I actually do this less than normal on this fic? I actually still like most of it and can reread it pretty easily. This is in contrast to some other things of mine where I whiplash back and forth dramatically on love/hate.

I have used THREE different formats for "am/pm" in this fic.

Somewhere, somehow, the formatting is different on the documents because the new copy is??? shorter than the other??? But they have the same wordcount so I know I haven't skipped anything. there's just Something off between them

i will add more as I go 🤔

[slotumn]

The wildest most extrapolative 3H headcanon/worldbuilding I have is that Nabateans are actually some kind of biocomputer/information storage devices who also functioned as local deities for human communities across the Fódlan in the pre-civilizational reset days.

They originally took on the form of large animals because that's what humans tend to revere + that makes it physically easy for them to help with stuff like, idk, harvests and big construction projects. They also basically store the entire history of those communities in their physical forms.

Originally, they didn't have human forms or the ability to communicate directly with humans, but they did have chosen figures who acted as intermediaries; priests, basically. The priests were given blood of the Nabateans, which enabled them to communicate with, and access the information stored in the Nabateans on behalf of their community. So these are proto-Crest systems, but unlike post-Agarthan war era, the Nabateans and Sothis hold control over granting (and taking it away, although those cases are rare). Major/minor Crests denote ranking within the priestly order, with there being only one major Crest holder at a time to lead the rest of the order.

The mechanics behind why Sothis and the Nabateans hold final control over Crests and is this:

Nabatean bones are where the history/information is stored

Nabatean blood grants authorization to read the information

Crest stone is admin access that's the key to editing the info as well as doing all the cool supernatural divine shit

And all this is relevant to why the Relics work the way they do.

(More about Nabateans as metaphor for human history under the cut)

Throughout most of (pre-Agarthan war) human civilization, this system of Nabateans + human intermediaries worked pretty well. Nabateans are the archive of human history and knowledge, their priests are its maintainers and curators. As civilization developed, humans gained (or rather developed) more and more autonomy and self-governance, while direct Sothis/Nabatean rule over them decreased. Nonetheless the Nabatean information and storage system remained because, hey, it's useful.

But it starts to creak as humans industrialize, and especially, as the information revolution occurs. More humans are literate than ever, they can communicate faster than ever, and information/data is more accessible than ever. Not everyone likes the system of Nabateans and priests anymore, seeing it as slow, inefficient, and gatekeeping.

And, most importantly, there are people taking advantage of these circumstances for their own ends— like the group that come to be known as Agarthans. They seek to use technology for the preictable things like profit, power, and immortality; and although their technological achievements were only possible thanks to the library of human knowledge and history reliably archived by the Nabatean system, they no longer see it as necessary and actually see it as the obstacle to gaining the human/material resources they need for their projects, so they start doing everything possible to discredit and destroy it.

Sothis and Nabateans don't just sit idly, of course. They too try to adapt, and Sothis giving the Nabateans humanoid forms so they can communicate directly with humans is one. But this also has its own side effects, like the priests fearing this will make them obsolete, with some even betraying them and joining the proto-Agarthans as a result— which is where they got more detailed information about the mechanisms and powers of Crests from.

Fundamentally though, the issue is that Sothis + Nabateans and the proto-Agarthans are working on a different time scale. The former plans and strategizes in generations and centuries, the latter plans and strategizes in financial quarters/election seasons/etc, which feels more approachable and "real" to other humans.

At any rate, eventually, the proto-Agarthans gain enough supporters and initiate a war across Fódlan with the goal of destroying the Nabatean archival system.

This is also why Sothis and Nabateans didn't prohibit or crack down on the proto-Agarthans growing like that. On principle there's nothing wrong with pursuing technological advancement— Sothis knows it's not a good look as goddess to suddenly butt in and crack down after centuries of assisting and blessing humans for their advancements. And the turn from "let's make some cool gadgets" to "man fuck Sothis she just gets in the way" was just too sudden for her MO. Think of how long homo sapiens has been around vs how long the internet and especially all the bullshit related to Big Data™ has been around; that's the discrepancy in the time scale we're working with.

And not everyone fell for the proto-Agarthan's shit, as a matter of fact more than half decided they still prefer Sothis and the Nabateans when push came to shove. But there still were enough proto-Agarthan supporters to do significant damage to society. Plus the proto-Agarthan leadership was willing to do whatever it took to destroy Sothis' system, no matter how many of their own supporters died, because the leadership in fact did not give a single shit about their supporters.

So yeah the war escalates and boom, great civilizational reset on Fódlan. Sothis spends most of her power making the continent not a post-apocalyptic hellhole, then she goes to sleep to recover. All the Nabateans now have humanoid forms, but most of the human communities they were supposed to be guardians of just fucking evaporated so a good majority come to Zanado and wait for Sothis to wake up. (But also there are still quite a few scattered across Fódlan living with what remains of their communities, except now in humanoid form.)

All this would have worked out well, if not for the fact the Agarthans managed to survive. And they're no longer the "proto-"Agarthans; at this point, the ones who aren't bitter/egotistic megalomaniacs have all died in the war, defected from then, or got executed internally, so they have pretty much self-selected to the worst of the worst. And they still managed to retain the information on how the Nabateans and their powers work.

Now humanity is on its second civilizational dawn, where everything is chaotic and they're still trying to figure things out, this time without Sothis helping them along. The one thing that was supposed to help is the fact the Nabateans still remain in some form— Nabateans, who are the compilations of human history and knowledge itself, now able to communicate with humans directly.

Of course the Agarthans can't let this stand because 1. fuck Sothis 2. they want to exploit the power of Sothis and the Nabateans— human history and wisdom— for themselves only. But they've suffered heavy losses from the last war, so they can't do it directly, hence they grab the closest charismatic and power-hungry dude to do the job of fucking it all up.

Cue Nemesis, the massacre at Zanado, and the Crest+Relic system as we see it in the game.

The important thing here, mechanically, is that Nemesis and the Elites not only have the Nabateans' Crests (blood, which allows reading), but also the bones (information storage) and most importantly, Crest stone (editing and other admin access shit). That's why they're so powerful, and that's why people with Crests can use matching Relics and the combat arts regardless of their proficiency in the weapon type. When someone with Nabatean blood gets their hands on those matching Nabatean bones and Crest stones, they unlock access to like... the combined proficiency and experience of their ancestors who used the weapon and the techniques. And of course they add their own experience in there as they use it, too. This is why Relics and Crests are still so powerful and coveted, even as Crested blood grows thin.

Metaphorically, this makes the Nabatean genocide and the Crest system even worse. It's like a couple of assholes barged into libraries full of thousands of years of human wisdom and artifacts, burned most of it down except the stuff they found useful which they looted, overwrote the rest to serve themselves, and completely fucks up the development of humanity on a continent for the next thousand years as a result. Of course there are still a few other libraries (Nabateans) remaining— but these libraries are sentient and they just saw the other libraries get burned the fuck down and looted, so they decided to never advertise what they were or share what they hold for (self) preservation.

Also Rhea is mentioned to be the youngest of the Nabateans Sothis (directly) made, and in the context of all this, I headcanon that she's the first and last Nabatean created from the scratch with a humanoid form. She's pretty much the Nabatean 2.0 made to counter all the bullshit the Agarthans were pulling, which is why she has a title so grand as the Immaculate One.

She's a lot more in tune with humans than the older models of Nabateans, which is how she successfully lead the Adrestian Empire against Nemesis and the Elites in the War of Heroes— but at the same time, why it's also why she's so fallible in the same way humans tend to be. As a Nabatean she is meant to be the keeper and embodiment of human history/wisdom, but after seeing what humans did with it (destroying and bastardizing them into weapons), she decided that maybe it would be better for humans to not learn of it (at least the full true versions) at all.

And that's pretty much where all the tragedy of Fódlan in 3H starts.

[antheiantics]

ENTJ Behaviours - Everyday things the Internet analysis don't tell you about - weirdly specific edition

Loud loud laugh. The type of laugh to make you go under the table. Happens roughly 2-3 times a day.

Shouting for no apparent reason.

Zoomies, yes, zoomies around the house.

Zoomies in talking - The point is to get it out fast and furious and go on with the day. Spoiler alert: 80% of the time I have to repeat myself, because people didn't understand my point delivered in Eminem speed. I'm fine, we're fine, it's fine.

Constantly forgetting people don't have the ability to understand with just one, maximum three words. Exception: INTX

Hating to be late and arriving early. Completing several tasks while waiting.

Having absolutely no tolerance on people who are late. Holding a grudge about it. Waiting for the day to just leave so the other person learns from it.

Abrupt style changes that shock people - going from casual business to grunge fairycore, not realising that people get confused with the vibe.

ENTJ procrastination is a thing - it's just procrastinating by doing other smaller tasks instead of doing the big looming one.

Being confident all the time except in a specific moment in which it's required to.

Ordering food at McDonald's because your extroverted friends were "too shy" to.

Waiting for those same friends to say "hi" to the entire planet while you try to look confident, pretty and approachable.

Being invited in the conversation in the span of one minute and hitting it off for the next 10 minutes.

Walking fast.

The boulevard is the runway and y'all are just peasants interrupting the strut.

Making detailed plans about being a successful company owner in 10 years, but forgetting to take in the sheets the next day. Short-term goals - a strong point, if forced. Day to day to-do list - not a strong point at all, unless written down (most of the time confident enough to remember our own tasks) (most of the time we forget to do several of them, or postpone them to shove three more that we planned to do after two weeks, but oh well, an opportunity arose - extremely specific, might not apply)

Patience. Monstruos amounts of it. Miranda Priestly was just fed up after so many years in the industry and I can see why.

Pet peeves are inefficiency and people who repeat the same mistake over three times, after it was explained to them by multiple people.

Strong opinions. Controversy. How are y'all dealing with Cruella (Emma Stone) and Elizabeth Bennett (Pride and Prejudice) mix, type of person? Genuinely curious. Not asking for a friend.

As for the ENTJ men reading this - do you have like a list or diagram, with all the people that manage to keep up with your Stewie Griffin (South Park) , Kaz Brekker (Six of Crows) tendency to "invest" and Thranduil(The Hobbit/LOTR) type of beauty and pride, and how long is it? Again, genuinely curious.

Wrote the origins of criticism and invented self-criticism in the process, because emotional liability got invented roughly around the same time and apparently it was "too much" *side glances INFPs*

Crying only out of helplessness (not if you can help it, ofc) and anger.

Fan of stupid puns (extremely evident)

Might unintentionally ghost people or leave them on seen, because they messaged you while your brains were working overtime (happens too often)

Caffeine doesn't work, but it's a ritual of pleasure, not to be missed, unless the day is bound to finish in prison. Same could be said if you take tea instead of coffee.

Relaxing by watching documentaries about successful people.

De-stressing by drinking wine with that one close friend that you see once a month due to busy schedules and talking about life.

That close friend also happens to be the closest one to IxxJ type and thoroughly listens while we explain the nature of emotions and why we think that the normal emotion we felt is a terminal illness.

Flirting is a way of surviving not a way of life. Take it as you wish.

Inspecting and dissecting your crushes so you know what you're dealing with. Most of the time we "un-crush" them with a snap of our fingers.

Sometimes we "just go with it" and end in a semi-casual situationship.

When they tell you we are confident and undisturbed by flirting, they're probably lying or not competent enough about speaking on real (not psychology explained) life. We do. It's just not obvious. INTJs, INTPs and ENFJs might not agree, because they somehow just know.

Getting hurt over minimal details people mentions about us throughout a conversation but being unaffected by "the big ones".

Which is hilarious because we're major "big picture" people - details are the things we see last. Sometimes, we don't even bother to inspect them.

ENTJ: Ah, ah, okay, bye-

Other people: No, wait! There's-

ENTJ: I pretty much got it, bye-

P.S. "Pretty much go it." or "I'm gonna wing it.", but make it organised, are probably catch phrases by now. No matter what people tell you that's a major trait of XXXJ people.

When I told you we invented criticism, I forgot to mention we also helped ESTJ and INTJ invent sarcasm.

[aromanticannibal]

Present Mic headcanons! he lives in my head :D (edited as of Nov. 2023)

He's powerfully homosexual he loves men SO much.

He's demiromantic! He's only ever been in love with Oboro and Shouta

He's so fucking tall. And he wears platforms. And his hair is. It's his hair

So many freckles. He has red head skin, pale with so many freckles

Part American on his mother's side, his parents are divorced and the mom lives in the US

Heterochromia Mic my beloved. One green eye one red eye, they're so damn bright too. He makes heterochromia jokes with Shouto.

Fashion wise, he's a very strange mix between a punk, an English teacher (as in, language teacher, not literature teacher) and this one guy who's shirtless and wearing rainbow makeup and glitter at Pride.

He's so blind without his glasses, it's terrible. He's also deaf because of his quirk

For these reasons, he uses his platform as a popular hero and radio personality to talk about disabled people and stuff. He also talks about queerphobia issues and quirk discrimination, though he tends to focus more on blatant differences like Shouji or Tokoyami type of quirk.

When the main kids are in third year, they start being surprise guests on his show and talk about other issues with him (and just fun stuff as well). The first one to participate is of course, hero nerd Midoriya.

Hizashi and Shouta have what the experts call a weird ass relationship. For the longest time, they just lived together without really dating but being completely aware they were in love with each other. One day Shouta told Hizashi it would be easier if they were married for like tax purposes and stuff. So everyone thought they were getting married platonically but they organized a wedding and stuff. Midnight was the maid of honor and Shouta's cat was the best man (his name is Bastard). A couple of heroes they're friends with and trust were invited (Tensei, Yagi - though Shouta was reluctant - 13...) as well as some vigilantes Shouta's friends with, and after a lot of begging, 1-A students (they had to sign a contract that said they couldn't tell anyone about the wedding or take pictures). It was cheesy as possible, completely normal wedding, but after it happened, Shouta and Hizashi never acknowledged it again. Kaminari is wondering if he hallucinated them kissing and slow-dancing together. They also kept the same last name. The only thing that changed is that they're more affectionate in private, and that they call each other their husband.

An Hizashi themed clickbait article would probably be "PRESENT MIC'S HUSBAND'S IDENTITY REVEALED????"

Hizashi sometimes says he has a husband in passing and everyone clinged onto this fact and is desperately trying to find out who the husband is. Midoriya is incredibly happy to know he has hero knowledge only a few select people are aware of.

Going back to Hizashi specific stuff, the man has some powerful ADHD (Shouta is autistic, they're the ADHD autism couple) but he very strangely knows how to deal with it. He knows how he functions so he does really weird stuff sometimes or does things in an allegedly inefficient way because it'll ultimately will make him do more stuff

He also has the new hobby every month disease, except he actually learns a lot and his hobbies kind of rotate, so he's very good at very random stuff. For exemple : embroidery (but he can't sew for shit), a shit ton of instruments (but not the drums), he knows a lot about cats (this fixation was started by Shouta's own special interest in cats), he knows how color theory works (somehow), he's very good at cutting or dying hair, etc.

In high school he had to make an essay about quirk laws but he was uninspired so he desperately tried for a week to make himself fixate on quirk laws, finally writing his essay five hours before the deadline. The consequence of this was an hyperfixation on quirk and hero laws a month later, which plagued him for an entire month more. He therefore knows a lot about laws.

He had an emo phase in middle school. I know it, Horikoshi told me

Hizashi becomes incredibly irritable when it's raining or storming, similar to how Shouta becomes quiet and distant in that weather.

He has a lot of piercings but only where people can't see. Where that ends up being is your choice, I have my own ideas :)

He actually has anger issues, similar to Bakugou, but is way better at handling them. This, in addition to them both being deaf/partially deaf, should have made them somewhat close, but Hizashi actually really dislikes Bakugou.

He has favorites, and unlike Shouta, he very much says who his favorites are. (Uraraka, Kaminari, Shinsou, Jirou and Kouda. He also likes Todoroki but not as much as the other faves) He definitely gets merch of them once it's available (and creates Shinsou merch for him and Shouta, like how he made Eraserhead merch)

Because this is still my blog here's a point about Shimsou, my son the light of my world : Hizashi takes a liking to the kid immediately because of how much he looks like Shouta. He also likes his sarcasm and smartass attitude, he thinks it's adorable (which Shinsou evidently hates). While Shouta won't adopt Shinsou, they're still like father and son to each other, and Shinsou jokes by calling Hizashi his step-dad.

He's very protective of his friends and very good at noticing when something is bothering them.

HE CAN UNHINGE HIS JAW. His fans find it very hot (it's me, I'm his fans)

Everytime he tries to dress up nicely, he fails miserably (case on point : this). He's infamous for it.

He doesn't especially like small children, except for ONE small child and it's Eri. She's the light of his life he loves her so much.

After Shouta adopts her and Hizashi gets custody of her as well by default, he immediately starts researching how to be a good step-dad. Eri will for some reason start calling him her uncle, despite him being married to her dad, but Hizashi is fine with it, he loves just being a part of the little girl's life.

He's a KING at Just Dance and karaoke nights.

My hand is, for some mysterious reason, itchy. So this is the end of the post :D

Feel free to tell me about ur own headcanons whenever /gen

[windchimesgames]

End of Year Recap + Plans for 2024

Hey everyone!

Belated Happy New Year to everyone! I know this is a very late end of year recap 😂Unfortunately, the past week ended up much busier for me than expected, so I could only get around to doing this now that things have calmed down a little.

This is a crosspost of a public post I made on Patreon a few days ago, so if you prefer the formatting there, you can read the post at this link:

PS: I do free monthly devlogs / posts there on Patreon, so consider joining the free tier of the Patreon even if you aren't interested in the paid tiers!

For those who'd rather read the post here, I'll leave the extraordinarily long ramble in a Read More cut below!

Let's start with a quick recap of the highlights / achievements accomplished in 2023!

Okay, this one may be slightly cheating. While Emberfate only launched on Steam in Jan 2023 so the 92 positive reviews came in in the year of 2023, it was up on Itch.io since mid 2022, so not all 383 Itch.io ratings came in in 2023.

Still, I'm pretty proud of these stats! Perhaps the numbers are nothing compared to some other amazing games' out there, but it's still something I'm proud of. It makes me happy that my silly experimental nostalgic little game struck a chord in so many players — much more than I expected given how niche the topic was!

Now, unfortunately, I could not get Emberfate's DLC for Potato's route out by end of 2023 like I had hoped. Porting the game to mobile also ended up much more difficult than I expected because of just how much of the UI I'm going to have to redesign — and hence, programming to be redone — if I wanted to make the game fit a small mobile screen. So both plans are going to have to be postponed to 2024.

The other notable highlight of 2023 is that both Lyrissa's and Kierdan's routes for Reanimation Scheme were released for beta access! That put the game at 3/5 routes complete, with a total of 431,786 words for the script.

I recruited a handful of beta testers to test the three completed routes a few months ago, and so far, the feedback has been positive overall. That's been a huge relief and lifted a massive weight off my chest — due to the controversial reception of the demo, I've been extremely anxious that the game would be hated by the players, and I've done so many rounds of editing and honestly perhaps somewhat unnecessary and obsessive rewriting of the script, but none of it felt good enough 😂 So hearing the positive comments has been a huge motivation / morale booster. Perhaps I should have done beta testing sooner… LOL

There are two more achievements unrelated to a specific game project that I'd like to mention:

2023 is the year that I became more interested in and better at Ren'Py programming! Most of it is thanks to my amazing programmer friend and Ren'Py wizard, Feniks (whom you may know as the programmer for Our Life series), who sparked my interest in programming and helped teach me a LOT. While I'm by no means a professional now at coding, I feel much more comfortable navigating around Ren'Py code and setting up what I need to in the backend of the games I'm developing, which opens up new doors for me for future projects in terms of what kind of features (big or small) that I may be able to include! Though the side effect of that is I looked back at the code I did for Reanimation Scheme from previous years and was immediately horrified by how ugly and inefficient it was. 😂I did redo the backend code of the Gallery and Achievements system a bit, but the rest will just have to stay for now.

I made quite a few new connections within the indie VN dev sphere in 2023! I made a shocking discovery that there's enough number of indie VN developers from Hong Kong to fill half a minibus, and I was lucky enough to connect with them and share our experiences and learn from each other! Due to new project commissions I took on for $$$ (real life financial needs suck), as well as a couple of small game jam projects I joined as programmer to buff up my programming portfolio, I also made some new VN dev friends unexpectedly. It's been really nice, because honestly, solo dev can be a really lonely and isolating endeavor sometimes. I'm super grateful for the new connections I found myself making in 2023!

Looking Ahead: 2024

Okay, that was a lot of rambling for the recap. More than I thought I would write. Now let's move forward to what the future will look like for this studio in 2024 and what goals I'm setting for myself this year!

Priority #1: Finishing Reanimation Scheme

Of course it's Reanimation Scheme. As mentioned above, we're currently at 3 out of 5 routes completed (sans partial voice acting). So the biggest goal for 2024 will be to get the game done. and out. Finally.

I won't be giving a concrete release date until we're like, literally in beta phase for all 5 routes, just so I won't have to announce a delay and let people down. But given the current progress and pace of work, I'd say probably around mid-year — maybe Q3 latest.

I'll be keeping up with the episodic updates of Reanimation Scheme's beta build on Patreon (and Kickstarter) from this month onwards, beginning with Jori's route and then followed by Sebastien's.

The remaining Kickstarter rewards may take a little longer — but ideally, all of them (artbook / lorebook / short stories collections, etc.) will be done by end of the year as well.

Priority #2: Potato's Route DLC for Emberfate

Potato, poor Potato. His DLC had to be put on the sidelines until Reanimation Scheme is done.

Half of the art has already been commissioned and completed by the amazing Remnantation — we're just missing his selfie CG & his MMO character sprite! So the next step would be the script and then the voice acting for the calls part. I won't be able to start on the script until mid-2024 earliest, but given the fact that his route won't be that long if it's parallel in length compared to the existing three routes, it probably won't take too long to do. Perhaps 2-3 months for the development process of the DLC?

I'll likely be releasing his DLC early on Patreon, potentially also episodically as it's completed, like I did with Emberfate. So if you're interested, keep an eye out for it when the time comes!

Something Secretly Brewing in the Shadows?

If you're pledged to this Patreon on $10 tier or above, you'll probably already know what I'm alluding to.

I won't be announcing or talking much about this for now, since I don't know when I'll be able to start working on this project properly (i.e. I need to meet my above two goals first). For all I know, it might end up being not a 2024 thing but a 2025 thing. So I'll only tease it slightly for now here.

Bonus Goal: Market, for the Love of God

If you follow Wind Chimes Games on either Twitter or Tumblr, you'll probably have noticed the sorry state of my social media. I… really do not like marketing or posting on social media. I never know what to post or say. I'm too unfunny and uncreative to meme or write humorous captions that get engagement. 😂It kind of feels like I'm shouting into the void, and nobody really cares about what I have to say on my projects when there's so many cooler and more interesting things out there. So I always try for a brief period of time, and then I give up 😭

This year though, I really really need to take marketing more seriously. With two releases planned for 2024, marketing is going to be important if I want the games to sell more than like 20 copies LOL

So I guess, uh, hold me to it and call me out if I don't start posting regularly after all 🥹

Conclusion

If you've made it this far on this post, thank you so much for listening to me ramble. 🥹 2024 is going to be a very busy year, but hopefully, a productive one that will end with me meeting all of the above listed goals.

Thank you so much for joining me on the wild and bumpy journey that was 2023, and I hope you'll stick around for the exciting things to come this year too! Here's to a great year ahead of all of us!