#barebones but may be prettied up at some point

[coldgoldlazarus]

Okay, mostly done screeching in excitement, now it's analysis time.

First point: That purple blast of the turret getting taken out looks great.

Looks like we're opening hot, a lot like Corruption's beginning. Hopefully won't be quite as protracted as the Norion battle, though, lol.

Also, I've seen some jokes already about how this section will end with Samus getting depowered like the openings of Prime and Echoes, but given how barebones her arsenal seems to be here, (missiles and morph ball, which sometimes she just starts with and keeps, maybe bombs too) I don't expect that to happen.

The HUD and helmet edges are a lot more dialed back this time, pushed as far into the corners as they can go. Probably better for visibility this way, but I am gonna miss the more wraparound feel of the previous setup, with the missile count and hazard meter along the sides. But this isn't a bad look by any means, and we still have a fair few items here.

A & B: My bet is this is the replacement for the old hazard meter. In addition to keeping it out of the way, putting it right next to the motion tracker is a good move. I may actually remember to use that more this way.

C: Health bar is obvious, of course, but I really like the move of tucking it away into the notch on the top of the Echoes/Corruption/Beyond(!) helmet visor. The lines around it suggest an empty row above, undoubtedly for the energy tank pips once those are picked up.

D & E: Minimap is present as usual, not really much to say there, but I love the addition of a compass direction scroll beneath it, which should be helpful for putting places in context of the broader map. (Tallon IV's elevator label system, anyone?)

F: Missile count has been shunted down from the side to the bottom corner. I'm interested to see if it will grow upward, or just stay in its present spot and scale accordingly, as you collect more expansions.

G: This is the one everyone's already pointed out, but it seems that we won't have a visor OR beam swap readout.

Scan Visor is still an option as shown in the next bit, but based on the lack of an indicator in the hud, it's probably just going to be a toggle between that and combat, without anything else like X-Ray or Thermal or Echo or what have you. (Or it could be that that would only get added to the HUD after picking up a third visor, but I won't hold my breath for it.) Kinda disappointing to deemphasize one of the cool new mechanics the Prime subseries brought to the table, on one hand, but I'm still grateful to have the Scanner, and the extra ones always did struggle a bit to see much use.

Similarly, a bit disappointed this means we're probably looking at a stacking beam like in Corruption and the 2D games, (unless of course beam swapping is still there and just being left off the HUD until relevant for the sake of cleanliness #copium) but not entirely surprising; I'll live.

But what is interesting is what's there instead. The D-Pad seems to be tied to non-Beam weapons or tools instead, with the missile launcher as the only one available at present. I'm really curious to see what the other items will be; I imagine this is going to be Prime 4's unique spin on things. I saw someone suggest affinity weapons like in Hunters, but given those all function like Beams, it feels weird to me to set them against Missiles instead, ammunition requirements notwithstanding. I'm not going to rule those out, of course, but I could see this being something completely different entirely.

Again, I am very glad to see the Scan Visor is still here at least. Even better is that it uses the full-body highlighting of objects like Echoes and Corruption instead of Prime 1's icons. Pretty minimalistic layout, all told; I like that the scanning bar is a ring now. And it doesn't reflect Samus's face by default like in Corruption, which makes sense since we're not liable to have the same kind of mutation shenaniganry happening here.

I forgot to snag a screencap of this bit on my computer, so forgive the lower quality, but this scene is interesting for a few reasons.

The Pirates' breaching charges letting them into this room just as Samus passes through a gap in the wall overhead is a nice touch, and also remniscent of some sequences from early on in Corruption.

The Federation guys in here seem to be wheeling away someone or something on a stretcher in a hurry. That could be important.

Energy tank up in the rail section, but blocked by a box. Are we just going to bomb through to get it right away, or will we drop down into the room, and have to come back from the other direction to pick it up? (Please be the other direction)

Samus looking spiffy here, even at a distance. And as some have pointed out, looks like she's walking out of a portal instead of a door, pointing to either more dimension-hopping shenanigans like in Echoes, or possibly the time travel elements I recall hearing Tanabe wanted to play with at some point. (This plus the black hole look of the logo makes me think this could be more likely.)

Whatever the nature of the portal, though, the interesting thing to me is the sort of circular structure in the rock around it, suggesting a doorframe almost. A lot of the portals on Aether seemed to actively cut into the environment at random, the rock carved out in perfect spheres with fucked-up edges, and interrupting the pre-existing architecture or geology. In contrast, this looks like it was put here on purpose, implying a more controlled creation. Potentially really fascinating implications in that.

I also kinda wonder if these portals will be replacing elevators as a way to get between regions.

Ignoring the big numbers in the middle, (though they do kinda mess with my prediction that Prime 4 was going to be a 2024 holiday title to avoid getting eaten by Switch 2's inevitable 3D Mario launch title,) a couple things stand out to me here.

Giant tree in the background is giant, and I love it for that. Also looks like it's not the only giant tree here, even if still probably the biggest. I hope we get to go there later.

But in addition, we have a bridge in the middle distance, and a tunnel opening in the foreground. I will eat my hat if we don't get to cross that bridge, and my bet is that they're going to pull a similar trick here as with Skytown, letting low-poly versions of other "rooms" be visible from the current one, but dividing them with interior sections for optimization reasons, allowing for amazing landscapes of all traversible terrain. I loved that there, it looks great here, I can't wait to go explore all this myself next year.

[autumnslance]

Hi! I’ve been trying to make an introductory post for my WoL, but when I tried doing so freeform it ended up overly long and full of rambling. I’ve searched for templates all over the internet, but the only ones I can find are in the general style of D&D character sheets that include irrelevant information about stats while not properly dedicating space to the actual character traits. I saw the format you used for your OCs, and it seems to be about what I’m looking for. Is there any chance you could provide a blank template along those lines for me and others who might have the same problem?

Funnily, while I keep them all similar, I didn't have a template before now. Also reminds me I need to do some updating and revision on my own OCs, it's been awhile and they can use a refresh for character and plot updates.

I recommend making static pages over posts; easier to track and edit. I am a stickler for organization, so keep my pinned post to the bare basics with links to the profiles and other pages, to keep from stretching the post to a mile long, in part, and to keep the info where it's easily read and relevant. Also because mobile app view won't show one's theme and links, and the pinned post is more likely to be seen and accessible than a sidebar or menu.

I have tutorials on how to set a custom theme (and access full blog features) as well as how to create those static blog pages. Tumblr may have made some updates since, but the gist is the same, and the Help pages have newer details if necessary.

I do urge keeping colors and format simple, accessible, and reader friendly, including screen reader friendly. A row of asterisks or tildes as a separator line are usually individually read out by screen readers, as is the code used to make those fancy hard-to-read gothic letters folks use for "aesthetics." In a lot of my profiles, I split sections with images of the character (which should also use alt text if we're trying to be kind and inclusive, and it's to the point of a profile page anyway).

I think I will put the intro and template here in the post under a cut, and then in a Reply Comment add a link to the Google Doc version, cuz of how Tumblr is about external links. An actual blank copy-pasta is on the GDoc, what's below has some thought processes for each section for guidance.

This a pretty modular template, that can be added to or subtracted from as needed. Move descriptive blocks around as they seem more or less relevant for your OC, substitute things that make sense over things that don’t; this is just a starting point!

I see these as broad strokes; a quick introduction and general overview of your character, meant to give an at-a-glance idea of who they are. It’s handy for other writers and artists, and even oneself for keeping track of some details. I recommend practicing succinct writing here; these blocks should each stay between 100-300 words or thereabouts. Use links to other pages and tags to point toward longer details and stories (and keep them handy for yourself!). It also makes it much easier when you want to revise things when characterization marches forward, or if you want to retcon something entirely.

But these are all just my opinions and ideas on how I approach OC profiles after making them in some form or another for about a quarter century. Make it as long or short as it needs to be, change it up, go nuts, I ain’t your mom, and so on 😉

-

Statistics: The basics; barebones, at-a-glance stat blocks, handy for quick reference. Can be added to or shortened as needed. If a stat starts to word wrap on a standard screen, trim it and move that extra detail to the “Description” paragraph below the list.

Race: (for FF14 fantasy possibilities) Nationality: (or Ethnicity, whatever works. Where are they from, as that helps shape them?) Height: (both feet/inches and centimeters are handy here) Eyes: Build: (I prefer this to weight, as that’s ridiculously variable depending on one’s build, which is more important visually anyway; are they broad, stocky, skinny, muscular, stringy, etc) Hair: (color, type, texture, preferred lengths and styling) Skin: (sometimes I fold scars into here, if there’s nothing too outstanding) Scars: Voice: (how do they sound?) Nameday: Age: (depends on your personal timeline for your OCs, but I recommend an age range over specifics; mid-20s, 25-35, late teens, a little over a century, etc. Less updating and fits with the handwaved time bubble anyway) Disciplines: (what are their main job[s]? The adventuring or professional skills they’ve learned?) Hobbies: Birthplace: Current Home: Occupation: (Their actual day job, different from or part of their disciplines?) Signature Items: (A particular weapon? A piece of jewelry? Always wear a specific coat?)

Description: A very short "immediate impressions" type description; what would someone "on the street" see when meeting/looking at your character on a typical day? Taking some of the info from the stats but then how you want those barebone facts to be seen; is the OC elegant, or rough? Expensive clothes or simple attire? Any particular smells, or sounds? I recommend around 100 words.

Biography: Very brief, general overview of the backstory that led them to the point where they become a story protagonist (adventurer, the WoL, or other roleplay archetype). Don't have to go into great detail, keep it short and simple; it's a blurb that sets up how they got here in broad strokes. I think my longest bio is around 300 words, and it probably shouldn’t go over that here.

To get more details, one can always link to specific stories, or to a tag. I have multiple OCs, so I might make my tags something like "Aeryn Backstory" or "Iyna Lore" or "Punchy History" or some combo thereof (I usually try to keep them consistent though for ease).

Persona: What face do they present to the world? How are they perceived by the public, acquaintances, coworkers, family, actual friends? Some of these answers will be the same, some may change depending on if and how they code switch in various social situations.

From there, what lies underneath the surface? What are some general internal attitudes, traits, feelings?

A hundred words for outward demeanor and another one hundred for innermost self ought to cover the general broad strokes.

Romance: If so inclined, details about the OC's relationship details; sexual and romantic orientations, relationship history, current situations, how they view and approach intimacy (or not!).

Links to relationship tags or stories or art can work well here, too.

Echo: Does the OC have an Echo at all? Is it a "typical" Echo, or do they have some special abilities, some things they're better at than others? How does it affect them, how do they feel about it?

This is another section that may be a free space section to remove or swap to something else relevant to the character.

Hobbies: The stuff outside of work and heroics. Ways they relax, special interests, side jobs, things they enjoy, and so on. This can be an expansion of the listing in the stat block, or you can cut out one or the other to avoid redundancy.

Companions: What’s their chocobo like, or do they have another favored mount? What pet(s) do they have? Are they practically a Disney Princess? Have a familiar? Do they prefer arcane entities? Technological constructs? Or do they eschew companions entirely?

How to find the OC in game: This is where I list things like realm and data center, and addresses for the FC house and personal house or apartment. Not necessary if you don't want folks to go looking.

Links: The links can be scattered through the post in relevant sections, or gathered together here. I tend to put my basic tag for the character, if I have an aesthetic tag for them, their story tags, any links to art references or other miscellaneous items I want easily found for myself and others. I often put this close to the top if a profile is longer and I want those links to be quick referenced.

OOC: Any particular notes one wants to make about the character from a meta perspective. Can also be combined with the Links.

[charrfie]

i need to so badly know your opinions/thoughts on wilfre and sock

Unsure if this is the same dtl anon as before, but either way HELLO AND THANK YOU FOR BEING CURIOUS!!!!! I would be more than happy to share! Because the phrasing of this ask was pretty vague, I winded up writing a multiple page essay in an attempt to cover everything wilfre/sock related. So it's all under a read more. That being said, if I've not covered something you were specifically curious about, let me know. I have a million more thoughts on the two (or the whole game!) I'd be happy to share. Here's an additional drawing I made to accompany everything :^]

For those unfamiliar with the drawn to life series, please be warned MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW!!!!

So, to get into it! I figured I would start with the very basics: wilfre, sock, and the rest of his forms. A lot of folks have different interpretations on the intricacies between wilfre and his disguises! I'm a believer in the fact that they *are* all the same person (in contrast to how some people believe them to be disguises created from stolen appearances/stolen bodies)... but different facets of this same person. Essentially, normal raposa wilfre was a wholly fleshed out being, and every other form he takes exaggerates various traits of his. Flanderization, I guess, but only to a certain degree. Shadow wilfre is an elevation of his more sadistic tendencies, sock is an elevation of his cowardice, and salem is an elevation of his mystery/flair for the dramatic. Granted this is a fairly barebones description of the way his forms worm since I do believe there to be more to these characters and their behaviors, but what I've said already gets my point across well enough for a generalized "what are your thoughts" type of question. Though I will say, sock's spotlight on cowardice is especially interesting to me considering- at least from what I've seen- wilfre's character being largely dictated by his own fear is not something focused on often by fans; it's much more common for you to see him just being cool and evil. We'll come back to this.

Another thing that comes from my belief of them all being the same person is that wilfre absolutely *did* design his separate forms with conscious intent (with an exception of shadow wilfre, which was likely only natural corruption of his form following his exposure to shadow). It speaks so heavily for who he is as a creative!! He likes being a little edgy and snobby- hence salem's design- and he also doesn't think too far ahead sometimes- hence sock's name, which absolutely had to be something he thought of on the spot! So many hints at who he is as an individual outside of "the antagonist" are hidden away in small details like that.

Now, with that out of the way, back to the topic of wilfre's fear!

In the first game, his sights are not set nearly as high as they are in the sequel. He chooses to spread shadow over the whole world as an effort to fix what the creator ruined; he WILL take matters into his own hands and bend the world how he pleases if it means a reality "done better." While there may have originally been truth in such a goal, his reasoning is slightly disingenuous considering it's more of a rebellion than an instance of wanting to actually better the world (due to his inability to ACTUALLY fix things how he wishes he could). Wilfre has a habit of convincing himself he's correct though, so it makes sense why it pans out this way. The writing of the first game makes it out to be a lot more malicious and pointlessly evil than dtl:tnc. Sort of always seemed flat and boring to me in how it's presented so I tend to have to embellish it a bit in my fanworks lol. It's also at this point that the fear which drives him isn't as obvious... while there are suggestions of it in dtl, it's ramped up a whole new degree in dtl:tnc. For now, most of what the player sees sets the stage for this development with wilfre's struggle against power imbalance.

At the very beginning of dtl:tnc, this framework of a power imbalance comes into play almost immediately when wilfre is spoken to directly by the creator. It's almost insulting to him considering he prayed and begged for some kind of answer for so many years, and yet only when he is far past his worst- when he is no longer devoted- now he hears them. He's livid and extremely reactionary about it! In part, this is due to justifiable anger, but I've always been lead to believe fear plays a large part here as well. His manner of speaking shifts, he hesitates; he's unsure, only for a moment before breaking out into an extravagant display of his power. Almost as if to reaffirm his control of the situation. As the game progresses, these sorts of actions increase in frequency.

Alongside these sorts of direct fear reactions popping up much more often, wilfre's shifted goal also reflects the terror which motivates him. His sights have been set on bigger things by this point: saving the world by freezing it in time and space. It's destruction is imminent if he doesnt stop those who try to return color to it. It's an action SOLELY motivated by fear of death, something he develops an almost obsessive fixation with.

Wilfre's thought process during the execution of his plan tends to follow the idea of "you can't bake a cake without breaking a few eggs," which is essentially the equivalent to "you can't save the whole world without killing or harming a couple people along the way." Even if it requires him to create a sterile, barren, unmoving world, he will do anything to prevent the physical destruction of the world... to prevent death. This is something he considers noble and just; something which makes him a savior. Realistically, freezing everything EXACTLY how it is is not much better than the world and it's inhabitants fading out of existence; it's basically the same thing! But when fear dictates logic, it doesn't need to make any sort of sense. Self preservation is the most and ONLY important thing one accounts for.

Sock, specifically, embodies wilfre's myriad of fears to a whole new level. Rather than fear being combated with a reactionary display, he cowers, hides, and acts dismissively towards a various amount of situations. I'll delve into this a bit more later in a separate point, but while some of this may be to manipulate others in the situation, it's not uncommon for wilfre to do/say something that puts on a front while masking other meaning. It's just that his typically inward thoughts tend to project themselves outwardly in this form of his!

Keep in mind that while I do believe there to be reason behind wilfre's logic and actions, that does not necessarily excuse all or even most of them. Do not misconstrue me!!! He's killed people, he's trapped people both in physical cages and in time and space, he's psychologically tortured others, the list goes on. And that's what makes him so fascinating! He's not a good guy! If you erase or excuse all of his terrible actions he becomes so much less interesting as a character and antagonist. But its undeniably interesting to look into the psychology and motivations behind his actions.

Moving on from this, it is also worth noting that I am a HUGE proponent of jowfre and it's very much so interlaced with my reading of the story/characters. Let me explain:

Sock, as a character, stands out to me a lot in how he is a major turning point for wilfre. According to his plan, the "sock" disguise SHOULD be another approach to the same issue at hand: preventing any raposa from impeding on his end goal. Disguising himself as salem was his first attempt at this... but holes were quickly poked in it's execution, and he found that prevention by force would not be successful. Instead, he then goes the opposite route; by disguising himself as sock, he can befriend jowee (who at this point has assumed the role of leader), gain the trust of others, and destroy their group from the inside. Which works! ...A little too well, he finds, as he too starts to believe his own lie of being someone who cares about jowee and his fellow raposa. And in return, he is gifted something he thought impossible in his current state: jowee's genuine friendship.

Now obviously this is a BIG DEAL. For a lot of reasons. For one, it's a hell of a lot harder to endanger the life of someone you care about than it is a random stranger who hates you (worth noting that every time this happens in the game, it becomes increasingly passive to the point that any danger isn't even coming from wilfre himself, sock just suggests that everyone leave/give up). But even less than endangering someone's life is breaking someone's spirit. If he can break jowee's determination and make the village give up on their mission, he'll succeed. And yet this is STILL something wilfre can't find it in himself to do.

I have two personal favorite examples of this that stick out to me. The first is the infamous treehouse balcony conversation... where jowee is heartbroken about the disappearance of mari. Discouraged and lost, jowee confides in sock, airing out his grievances. It's an ideal moment for sock to reaffirm jowee's broken view of himself; jowee wouldn't argue with the state he's currently in. Instead though, sock listens to him, encourages him, and comforts him. One can argue that it's a simple manipulation tactic since it's the perfect moment for wilfre to gain jowee's trust, but it's always stood out to me as something very... vulnerable. Jowee *is* the first raposa wilfre has had casual conversation with in ages anyway...... it's as if he's relishing the feeling of being able to relate and be on equal ground. The shadow has influenced his entire being, yes, but there's an undeniable glimmer of humanity in him still that yearns to escape. It's also here that we get critical insight to wilfre's inner principles when he tells a (likely fictionalized) tale and ends it with "I made a decision that- regardless of consequence- I would succeed." It speaks so much for who he is at his core and how right he believes himself to be. He's sharing BIG things with jowee rather than breaking his spirit.

The second example of this is following the first hint of mari's betrayal: when she steals the book of life from jowee. Accusations are being thrown around, faith is dwindling, and the entire village is on the brink of collapse... but when jowee comes forward with the notion of wanting to try again, to not give up... out of everyone else there, sock is the first and only to speak up. Cheering for him and encouraging him forward. Without him doing so, the mission would have failed. WHICH IS CRAZY BECAUSE THIS IS LITERALLY WHAT HE'S BEEN ASKING FOR!!!!!! The entire time he's been accompanying the village he has again and again (and will continue to) try to get everyone to back out of what they're doing, to split apart. But when it's served to him on a silver platter, he can't. IT'S FASCINATING!!!!!!!!

As I said though, jowee's friendship doesn't just come with one issue for wilfre, but multiple. Arguably the most egregious is the fact that it makes wilfre question if his grand plan of draining the world of all color is really right. If it's something he should even bother to do. Which must be a realization so chilling considering *he is doing so to save the whole world.* How can such a pest of a single raposa make him- the great and infallible wilfre- waiver in his confidence? This particular issue is all implication rather than direct statement; I've mentioned previously how sock gets less and less pushy as time goes on, instead vouching for generally avoidant approaches, and this is what I'm referencing here. It's downright procrastination rather than prevention!

Wilfre drags the execution of his "destroy jowee's village from the inside out" plan out for so long that he only acts when he's desperate. When there's nothing else he can do, no further thing that might delay them. He's been backed into a corner and knows jowee is far too determined to quit. And so, he drops the act. He steals heather's pendant, reveals himself as wilfre, and escapes.

I highly doubt it's intentional (and I'll get into the details on why I find this legitimate reasoning regardless of intention later), but I do find it interesting that he waits until the moment in the map room to ask for the pendant because it directly follows jowee having an outburst about wilfre and how terrible he is. Realistically, it would have been even more in sock's favor to have stolen the pendant while jowee was alone with him on one of the islands they visited. At that point, the other villagers may even have turned on jowee- their leader- out of suspicion. Better yet, sock could have stolen the pendant away while jowee slept, eliminating the need to get caught entirely. But he doesn't. It's not until he's desperate AND is directly getting reminded that the person he most cares about hates him that he acts. It's a nice callback to the aforementioned treehouse conversation the two have: regardless of consequence, regardless of losing someone he had come to care about, he would succeed in carrying out what he meant to do. And so he does. He tries to, at least.

A brief interruption from this point to speak on the writing quality of the games themselves. The drawn to life series contains two separate writing approaches: multidimensional storytelling and face value storytelling. "Multidimensional" in the sense that the writing itself mirrors a character/dictates their identity (e.g. jowee's writing reaffirming his position as someone thought of as unworthy) and "face value" in the sense that the writing tells the story in a straightforward sense with no hidden meanings (e.g. most large plot developments). It's pretty fascinating! Now, do I think this approach of dual writing systems was intentional? Well... no. Truthfully it's my opinion that the writing in the game is fairly underwhelming and not very well thought out. It's not a masterpiece by any means. But despite intent, the dual writing system is very much so at play, and one needs to approach the game being ready to actively parse through which is which.

I bring all this up to say that occasionally, the blatant multidimensional storytelling embedded in the games' writing is really just meant to be normal, face-value storytelling. Certain interactions or events seem deeper than they really are, implications come to the surface due to it, etc. And because of this, the growth of certain characters is entirely stunted. Namely due to the fact that while the player expects said character(s) to act in a certain manner due to implications previously made, this character will instead act in a wildly unexpected way because it was what the writer initially intended. And as we've established, intent does not equal correct execution. By far the worst example of this is the latter half of dtl:tnc, where wilfre tears the appearance of "sock" away with no remorse and escapes to his wasteland. After all the build-up of his blossoming relationship with jowee, his dynamic character development, and overall stakes rising, the player is suddenly brought back to a very static, unsatisfying square one... a completely out of left field 180° with character direction. I've always suspected the reason for this was that midway through the project, the script writers realized the villian had become more sympathetic of a character than one of the main protagonists (mari) and out of nowhere switched it up, cut off character arcs, etc just to ensure their original intent was preserved.. even if that ultimately led to something that felt clunky and odd.

A bit of a longwinded side tangent, but it all prefaces my next point: if the games were written with more care and without the literary biases present, wilfre would have had a redemption arc. Or at least an arc where he sees his redemption as a choice, but turns against it.

I know, I know. You can't simply see a villian character you enjoy and go "well I think they should've had a happy ending so I'm going to let AU reflect my analysis of the canon media." That's not what I'm saying here! It's not just a simple wish for better circumstances influencing my thoughts. I would have been 100% okay with an unhappy ending for him either way, if only the writing didn't handle it in a way so jarring. Because it *is* jarring though, I try to work with it by incorporating it into my analysis rather than just discarding it as unusable, disingenuous storytelling. Case in point: what I did with my jowee pmv... you GOTTA boost the drama and stretch the truth a little bit...

To wrap this very long response up, I wanted to briefly mention very minor miscellaneous thoughts I have about wilfre that didn't fit in with any other main topic I touched on:

Based on my interactions with the fandom, I've come to notice there are a LOT of people who seem to think wilfre doesn't believe in the creator. In reality, he very much so does, he just thinks they suck lol.

I think it's very cute seeing how wildly out of practice wilfre is living as a normal raposa. He's spent so long as a shadow that things which used to come so easy to him are such a chore now (e.g. in lavasteam where he breathlessly chases after jowee trying to keep up with him.. he's so used to floating he's out of practice actually carrying his bodyweight around).

I have always read drawn to life as being a story relating heavily to forced role fulfillment; a character must fill the role they are given, or the world/their own self will fall apart. Assuming you're the same anonymous asker from before, you've seen my pmv, so you know how evident jowee's forced role fulfillment (or lack thereof) is throughout the games. But wilfre is also a shining example of this narrative theme! Many of the issues that the raposa world suffers from (be it relationship disputes, societal structures, general unhappiness, etc) are oftentimes tacked on as something wilfre is somehow at fault for, however loosely. The shadow's influence leads him to lose a lot of his humanity (raposity?) on its own, but his role as the scapegoat does as well, since it warps him into more of a concept than person. This is another reason his paralyzing fear of death is so critical to get across; it returns some of the humanity and dimension to him which make him more well-rounded.

I mentioned that sock becomes more avoidant as the story progresses, but what I've neglected to mention is the fact that wilfre is generally very avoidant by nature. Despite having more power than any other thing he commands, throughout both games he incessantly tries to have the hero and others dealt with through indirect means (other bosses/shadow creatures, influencing potential allies, robbing raposa of resources, etc). It's a pretty obvious behavior that dictates his character, but is further enabled in the circumstances I elaborated on outside of these notes.

Not very wilfre-specific but moreso just general info: I do not consider the newest entry in the series of drawn to life: two realms canon in the slightest so none of my interpretations of stories or characters will ever stem from two realms events. Sorry!

Wtf is up with him being weirdly flirty with mari at the end of tnc btw. I usually just excuse it as bad writing and that sudden shift in character I talked about. Which is funny because if that character shift is indeed the writers overcompensating then that means they were worried about too much gay tension between wilfre and jowee I guess LMAO there's literally zero reason for it otherwise.. it's so ooc and out of left field. Can I just write this dude myself please.

Thank you so much for asking in the first place... I love talking about these guys!!!!! <3 If you can't tell, lol. Hope you found it interesting, I'd be happy to elaborate further if anyone's curious. Just know it might take me a little while since it took me about a week to get to this ask haha

[12pt-times-new-roman]

c3e87

We open on the Bells Hells traversing through the storms on foot, with Kraveris in sight through the cleft valley of a mountain. There's one travel roll left, and they roll another, more severe storm.

As the storm abates, there's another flare -- it feels the same, but every Ruidusborn gets 15 temporary hitpoints (does not stack with the flares from before, as with normal temp hp).

FCG casts sending on Ira (twice), and it's like there's a haze between them and the Changebringer so it takes more effort than normal to cast the spell, and the spell itself takes longer to find its destination, but it does work. "Bells Hells here, on the moon with you. We've got information and treasure. And plans. So many plans. Laudna says hi. Where can we find you?" // "Oh, my. You've finally come along! Welcome to the crimson land of the strange and beautiful. I've been busy watching, learning." // "In relation to Kraveris, where might we find you? Please be specific and brief so that we may speak more in person. Laudna still says hi." // "But where's the fun in that? I'm very interested to talk, but I want to see how interested you are in finding me."

They decide to try to connect with the Volition to get access to the city. Imogen tries a sending to Vesh. "You didn't trust us before. Maybe the dispatching of Admuda will convince you. We need to find the Volition. We're here to help. Outside Kraveris." // "Look. If you must talk, find me in the Jagged Edge, within the Clutch. Tell Jodot that you are of the Vanguard, and looking for a contract."

Then, they head to one of the outposts that stands outside the walls of the city itself.

Fearne notes that she could potentially look like a reiloran because she's been practicing her magic, and they work out that because the reiloran's low-level telepathy doesn't give a direction if the creature is unknown, they can do a bit of telepathic ventriloquism to make it seem like she's actually talking.

That brings up a good point though: couldn't they polymorph into reilorans? The ones they've encountered have been of varying class levels, so some of them have had to be lower than level/CR 11, and it's not like PCs haven't polymorphed into other humanoid creatures before.

As they approach the outpost, they see another figure that they haven't seen before: eight feet tall, clad in leather armor, with furred legs almost like a sasquatch. Fearne disguises herself as a reiloran, and Imogen speaks through her: "New recruits for the Vanguard. Our caravan broke down, and yours was the nearest outpost."

This figure has a deep voice, southern accent, and isn't sure why they'd bring recruits here -- it seems like there are fewer reilorans and more armed (possibly drafted) civilians manning the outpost. But they let them through, their ruse works for now.

The tower, though pretty tall, is also empty except for motion-sensitive lanterns and some barebones provisions.

While FCG ritual casts telepathic bond, Ashton and Laudna go up to the top of the tower. There are crenulated parapets here, fit to take cover behind or put a spyglass through; one of the guards, another of the sasquatch-type people, actually has an Exandrian firearm, and the other is a bormodo with a spyglass.

Chetney learns that the name of the outpost is Tyran A.

While Laudna scouts with Pate, Ashton trades questions with the bormodo. They ask what strawberries, apples, and blueberries taste like. Ashton gets the name of a bar, and learns that the Clutch is an outer ward of the city.

With Pate, Laudna sees something carved into the earth, and a protrusion that looks almost like a warhorn (which indicates that telepathy is more of a short-ranged thing, and they need actual sound to project over long distances). In the city, for as refined as she would've expected, it appears that the surface has been eroded away, dilapidated; the fine details and sharp edges have been worn down, there are no bustling throughfares, and it reminds her of Bassuras. (Almost like the majority of the city's infrastructure and populace is below-ground.)

Orym gathers some information about the "Attrition" (I'm assuming he purposefully mispronounced "Volition," but I dunno if I missed something) -- they can come from anywhere, they can be anyone, "it's just kind of a gut feeling... if you hear something loud and dangerous, you run." The sasquatch-guy points out a ruin that was once an outpost.

The two reiloran guards defer to Fearne because Imogen told them she's the Willmaster, and the facade almost cracks because of the latency between Fearne receiving their telepathy and Imogen talking back to them -- but Fearne just makes the deception check. The reilorans refer to "the Will" as if it's some kind of independent council or agency that hires and gives orders to the Willmaster, but this might also be their name for the Weave-mind.

Breaking news: Sam, after a whole-ass campaign playing a bard, learns how ritual spells work.

As they all gather at the base of the tower and prepare to head toward the city, Imogen puts the circlet back on.

They approach the walls of the city, having gone around the main gates, and find that there are homes and businesses clustered together like eggs on the surface-level. Laughter, and they see a group of children petting, grooming some kind of livestock.

Break time!

They descend onto the main street of a semi-subterranean village on the outskirts of Kraveris, and approach the two children: a reiloran and a bormodo -- Asha and Kolito, respectively. The reiloran is speaking with her actual voice, not telepathy.

They tell them that "the Clutch" is this entire section of the city, outside the walls where the buildings are clustered like eggs. They aren't allowed to go underground because they're "clutch-folk" -- their families aren't important enough to be allowed into the lower layers of the city.

All of the above-ground city is the Keluma-Kraveris, and the below-ground part is the Vatera-Kraveris. "The Crumbles" are the parts of the city where the upper layer has crumbled down into the lower layers, and it's a kind of wretched hive, "where the rough folk live."

They also take interest in Chetney -- "you're so small, but so old!" Also, Chetney continues to be fantastic with kids, which is hilarious to me -- they've never had toys before, only dreams of them, and Chetney makes them some.

Hold up-- Chetney says that the more he makes toys, the less special they get. Did he get Condensed Capitalism, The Feat from Nana Morri?

The guardian of these children comes around the corner, and looks afraid of the Bells Hells. There's a nervousness, a reticence, that belays the relationship that the people of the Clutch have with the Emperium. They say that the Emperium wants to put every resource toward "the coming move," implying that they would draft or otherwise steal away or use their small, seven-year-old children to support their war effort. They also point the Bells Hells to the Jagged Edge.

As they move through town, they see a mixture of the native people of Ruidus: bormodos, reilorans, and the gray-furred sasquatch-like people they saw at the outpost. The majority of them are civilians, thin, living rough, afraid. They scatter, and so do the Bells Hells -- but they botched the stealth roll. There's the sound of scratching on stone as two avadons (giant faceless moon wolves), saddled with reilorans on their backs, trudge through the street. Other figures walk behind it as it moves through, accompanying a wheeled container, heading from the entryway to the city toward the outside. One of the avadons sniffs out Fearne: "you're out in strange places, Vanguard... there have been a number of rising attacks against this city, we're on alert. What is your business? Answer my question, Exandrian. Who are you, and what are you doing here?"

Fearne fumbles her way through the conversation with some decent rolls, but Imogen -- without consulting the party, even though they have telepathic bond up -- takes it upon herself to collapse a building onto the reilorans and every surrounding civilian.

Fearne wildshapes into a tiny-ass fly and tries to get away, triggering an attack from the avadon, and we go into initiative!

They have two choices: either grab Fearne and run, which would let the enemies alert the city, or take everyone out so they can't raise the alarm. It sounds like they're going with the latter, but with some foresight to not cast fireball in the middle of a populated city.

Foregoing the collapsing building plan, Imogen just throws some stones at them, and everyone's engaged and seen at this point so there's no escaping this.

Ashton update: When Ashton deals a critical hit, attacks against that creature have advantage until the start of their next turn. Notably, the wording on this feature -- as Talisein read it -- specified "character," not "creature."

Laudna casts blight through Ashton's hammer, which -- after a spellcasting ability check based on the spell's level -- lets her split the spell and target 2 creatures instead of 1.

Orym update: One of the battle maneuvers he took was riposte.

FCG update: FCG's "toll the dead" is re-flavored to "scramble the dead," and he plays the modem dial-up sound when it happens.

The battle is over and everyone's alive, so they toss all the bodies into the portable hole so that no one else can talk to them later. "We're getting way too good at that -- let's run." Meanwhile, Imogen and Laudna use prestidigitation to get rid of the blood on the streets, and they investigate the cart: it has a 1ftx1ft heavy metal container, which also goes into the hole.

They see a witness in a window, and Laudna sends Pate to intimidate them -- they're an older civilian reilora, spooked. "'ey! You! You don't say a thing. No peeping! Shh. Don't worry; we're all friends here! Look, we even cleaned it up for you! It's a service we provide here. So, what did we learn?"

In the aftermath, they immediately head to the edge of the city. They just barely make a deception check to pass themselves off as people who belong; there are folks talking to each other, gathering -- it's a sense of a military occupying its own city, and it's been like this for a while now. In the Treshi scry ball, they see the faintest blip near the entrance to the city.

FCG casts locate creature on Jodot, and gets a ping within 1,000 feet -- they're far into the city, through this decaying Escher painting that is the surface-level, but they all follow the signal until they come to what appears to be some kind of mercantile district, where hovels, tents, and cabins give way to stained glass, magical lanterns, dyed cloths, and signposts. There are home decor shops, dye shops, gifts -- some have chimneys with smoke. But they eventually come to the outside of a massive kiln, with a structure built around the base of it with a sign carved like the memory of a handwriting. Inside is the clanging of metal, like a workshop.

Inside, it's very warm, and carries the smell of a kiln firing clay. There are all kinds of weapons here -- scimitars with obsidian edges, spears with shards of glass. There are also little knickknacks: models of wuccors, the glass rendition of a dancing reiloran. It's a unique mixture of artistry and weaponry, manned by a tall, rotund, male sasquatch-like creature with stark white hair and heavy goggles, chipping away at a tiny piece of something.

They have a nordic-type accent, I think. The Bells Hells use the key-phrase that Vesh gave them, and they roll insight to see if they're walking into a trap: with FCG's nat20 insight check, they see that the shopkeep is legit.

Jodot walks into a back room, and nearly 5 minutes later, a reiloran shrike emerges: she has dark green eyes with a scar like a C that curves from her eye to the edge of her mouth. As she enters, she's taller than any of them but with a natural hunch to her form. "So. You have my attention -- you said you needed a contract, yes? You wear, ah... deceptive attire. It shows promise. What is your business here in Kraveris? Do you need help smuggling things in, out? What do you want?"

Vesh is speaking with her mouth and voice, like the children from before. She lives among many people, and feels it's best that they all live at the same level. Ashton lays it all out: "We're here to figure out how to stop those who want to release the One Who Sleeps." Imogen clarifies that they're not here to stop reilorans from coming to Exandria, but Ludinus from enacting his plans.

They are not on the opposite side of this conflict from Vesh -- she's not part of the Volition, but she's a liaison between them, so she can show them where to find them. The Volition signals their current safehouse by a different color, and she pulls one from behind a curtain: a deep, royal purple, freshly-dyed. The safehouse is hard to find, so they'll need a vantage point: somewhere in the Banners, a district of the city. She gives them the name of an associate, who will let them through in exchange for wealth. He works at dusk, so they have a few hours, and Vesh can guide them there.

The weapons that used to be built here before the Emperium take-over channeled the lightning from Ruidian storms into attack power.

Stepping back to where she came, Vesh disappears, and Jodot emerges: he allows them to stay in his shop for a short time, so they can rest before heading out again. Chetney offers gold for a gold-plated scythe. Jodot takes the gold and slides it into the kiln, where it'll be melted down, because gold doesn't have much value here apart from being a rare material to work with.

Vesh lets them stay in the basement for an hour to recoup and take a short rest, but they have to be gone by the end of it. Meanwhile, Laudna asks how much the sculpture of the dancing reiloran is -- with a persuasion check, Vesh gives it to her, on the condition that if the Bells Hells are captured and the dancer found, Vesh will give them up.

In the basement of this workshop, they take short rest. Imogen re-attunes to the circlet, while Chetney and Orym investigate the box. The construction of it is familiar -- it's the same as the Cerberus Assembly boxes they procured from the Paragon's Call encampment, and there is a trapped magical lock on it.

Now that sending is working again, FCG wants to contact Frida, and they all wonder why it's suddenly working again. They look at the scry ball, and see that Otohan has moved closer to the center of the city.

They talk a bit about the disparity between classes here on Ruidus, and Imogen expresses that people here might be "better off if they could come to Exandria... they've never seen trees, or anything like that." Orym says that it's beautiful on Ruidus, too, but they want to see what the Dreamers see -- and Laudna recognizes that it's easier to sway those who have been stepped on when they're trying to rally a force against the oppressive Vanguard.

Ashton notes that it's too easy to make assumptions, so they're not exactly infiltrating but they aren't integrating either -- and Chetney, in stride, notes that it wouldn't be the worst thing if half of them got captured. (it would. it would indeed be a terrible thing if half of them got captured. all of them is one thing, but splitting up? disastrous.)

Halfway through this discussion about expendability, Imogen gets a message from Vesh: "wait. Don't move." A half-dozen footsteps sound above them, Laudna casts darkness on the basement, and all they have is the sound of footsteps and silence as we pick up next episode.

[kogarashi-art]

It's the last previews for Falling Into Darkness!

Important note before I go into some details on the pictures: I will, in general, not be doing this for other fanfics I post. The main reason I did this series of illustrations was as something of a treat for finally crossposting this 10-20-year-old story to my AO3 account. I don't really plan to draw a ton of illustrations for other fics I do.

That being said, I may do occasional images that will be posted with future stories on AO3 (I have a quick one for the first chapter of the next fic I plan on posting, for one), and if I do other fanart, related to a fic or not, I still plan to post art here.

But I'm glad for all the kind comments and everyone enjoying this series of illustrations with me. :D You guys are awesome.

With that, description-stuff (including more behind-the-scenes than usual) below the cut. 'Tis long; be forewarned.

First up, arguably the easiest illustration to do in the whole set. It's a silhouette, so the foreground wasn't really an issue (other than trying to get the edge glow just right, and I still don't think I quite managed but I'm definitely telling myself not to mess with it any further). The background was already painted for the second illustration in the whole set:

I just fixed up the paths and the treetops and added a little lookout stand to the building on the right, now that Sonic and Sally weren't blocking those spots. After all, it's supposed to be the same view anyway, so I figured I'd make it easy on myself and not have to completely repaint the scene.

The second image employs some little cheats here and there. Here's the original sketch from my sketchbook for comparison:

Very loose, lacking detail. Straight lines are more like suggestions. The robots are spiky blobs. I have a literal note next to a stick figure and a hollow shape telling me to get some references. There's the barest hint of the alcoves the robots are standing in.

I didn't show this level of behind-the-scenes off with other illustrations in this series (though I suppose if anyone's ever interested, I could do a process post about how I worked on these), but one of the first things I did with this series of illustrations was sift through the roughly fifty individual sketches I'd drawn to illustrate various parts of the story (not counting redraws of portions), ranging from vague shapes to much more detailed drawings, to narrow it down to the ones I was actually going to finish for this project. I ended up with 27 total images, including the two I'm previewing today, focusing on having at least one but no more than three images per chapter.

Once I'd determined which sketches, like the above, were going to become a finished piece, I then went through each and every one of them in Photoshop with a sketch pencil brush and filled out the sketches to a point where I could reliably ink them. That meant things like swapping out figures that didn't work with redraws of them or making size adjustments, like so:

The first image is the second illustration, and you can see I redid Sonic because his initial pose didn't work. The redraw was actually a pose of him I did to draw his post-Mobianization robotic elements from the end of the story, but the stance was actually good for what I needed, so I Photoshopped it in and then sketched the rest of the replacement drawing digitally. The second image is Sally watching Knuckles walk away, and you can see that I changed her left arm, and also reproportioned her body prior to inking (bigger head, smaller body).

And for pieces like the final one in this illustration series, I sketched in all the details that were missing from the initial sketch (which, as I said, was pretty barebones; in my defense, it was the last one I drew, and by that point I was pretty tired of drawing robot hedgehogs so Sonic was something of a stick figure in most of the last chapters' sketches).

And here's where one of the cheats comes into play. I drew one robot hedgehog. Specifically the one you see the most of, near the tip of Robotnik's cape by the drafting table. I drew it on its own layer in Potoshop, then copied and pasted it into all of the other holding bays, erasing parts that wouldn't be visible as I went along. I also went and found those references I needed for Robotnik and Snively and drew the two of them properly.

And then, because I much prefer physical pen-to-paper inking over digital (my tablet is not one of the fancy screen ones, and I've yet to really get comfortable digitally inking with it, despite owning it for nigh on twenty years), I colored all of the sketches red, assembled them in groups on letter-sized images, and printed them out onto cardstock (my preferred medium when I'm going to be traditionally inking). I inked them with my various inking pens (some Sakura Microns, some Faber-Castell PITT pens), scanned each sheet back into my computer, and cleaned up the lines in Photoshop (the reason for the red printout was to make it a bit smoother removing the sketch from the inked lines, though it wasn't as clean as I would've liked; oh well).

That left us with the above. Because I inked them each by hand individually, the robots don't look copy-pasted, because it was the underlying sketch that had been, not the ink work. The tables and holding bays also have straighter lines thanks to using a proper ruler for those (though I didn't concern myself too much with things like perspective and right angles), and after drawing the straight line, I went back freehand over spots to give them a bit of that hand-inked wobble.

From there it was a matter of laying down the flats in Photoshop, then shading, adding effects, etc. I like the cold yellow light I've got on the robots, and the overall shading on the yellow cape. Also that sense of satisfaction when I called this one done, because it was the last one. Huzzah.

I'll see you on Monday for the last chapter!

[samkat10423]

As promised, here are a couple of pics of the back of my Town Hall. It's a pretty nice place for sims to gather and enjoy the views. They have easels and telescopes, live music, and a small outdoor cafe.

Moving right along, here's the new abode of that runaway princess. Inside, I used Sandy's Tiny Houses set to furnish it. And it is very barebones. As her mother likes to say, "You want to live like every-day sims? Well, have at it!" No more royal allowance, servants, clothing allowance, jewelry - whatever. Since the princess only finished less than a half of a semester in both Communications and Fine Arts, she has no marketable skills. (Yes, I did take away most of her skill points since she was pampered all of her life - and all of her money). When I took her into CAS, I gave her a haircut and crappy dye job - she did it herself! - and new clothes more in line with her new circumstances. I also changed her traits. She now has that Diva trait instead of the virtuoso one. She also does NOT get along with her co-workers - especially her boss - because 1) they expect HER to work Every. Single. Day. And actually work - like a peasant! And apologies to any of my Brit friends, but I modelled her on the current whiney royal who lives here in my country - who has done nothing but criticize us since he got here. Sorry, guys! I love Brits - but they're too much.

While I was in that area, I placed @icemunmun-spicy-scalpel's lovely replacement lot for Hans Tavern. She called hers the Natural Woodlands Cafe and it's zoned as a hangout. I added the bikes out from, but otherwise did nothing to the outside.

This is the cafe area. There's that coffee thingie from Uni and I may have added that jukebox. Otherwise, it's as she designed it.

There's a small hallway between the cafe area and this room. I did make some changes here. I added the rug, the lights from wonkymoon over on TSR, the artwork, and the bookcase.

There is a 2nd floor, but all that was up there were some sleeping bags - which I left. The only change I made was adding @mspoodle1's poker table so my hikers can get in a game or too, after a long day up on the mountains.

And finally, @11 Meadow Beach Drive, I placed this shack to replace my diner rabbithole. It's currently for sale, but once buyers walk inside and see all the rats scurrying about, they leave. Local sims tell newcomers - when they ask about the food - that it serves as a reminder of why sims learned to cook and eat at home.

[breitweisergallery]

So you said you were working on a few wips...talk to me. Tell me everything

okay okay okay okay so (pulls up the last time i referenced any of my wips to remember what i even posted about)

Original WIPs:

Since I just started working on it tonight. I'm taking a playwriting class this semester so I started working on what will be my end-of-the-semester project (the semester starts tuesday) because I already know what my project is going to be. It doesn't have a title yet, but it is going to return to my roots of leaving two actors on a stage basically going through emotional hell as their stories intertwine in the form of interrogations (gotta love a barebones interrogation room scene on a barely lit stage).

"#WhatHappenedToTennysonBeatty" is (hopefully) going to be the project I focus on moving forwards with my fiction courses. It's written in script form, as a podcast breaks open and exposes the mystery of a disappearance from ten years previously.

I have a new adult fantasy book I've been working on for a minute too, and I just had a breakthrough literally tonight about it, so I'll probably be working on that on/off as well. The book is split between three major POVS: Felicity 'Fix' Brion (married to a diplomat and maternal figure to her orphaned nephews, in her husband's country following an assassination of her sister-in-law), Roel Devani (former prince, former spymaster, turned war criminal), and Cealin Ecgwine (essentially a priest in the church, escorting what may possibly be an actual god reborn away from his death).

I ALSO have a near-future dystopian book I've been working on in a very on-and-off way that deals with some pretty heavy topics I don't want to super get into. But its got some queers and some magic realism, so that's fun.

TDJ WIPs:

"What if Yohan simply didn't?" I've mentioned it in passing, I think, but it's an AU in which Yohan's plans are waylaid by chronic pain and trauma. Soohyun's meddling ends up with Gaon going to visit the house in which Yohan and Elijah are bottled up, and though initially the Kangs are both cold to him, it takes very little for them to warm up to Gaon.

"????" is an Elijah-centric 5+1 of emotions as she experiences them over the course of the show. I know the emotions are 'anger, bitterness, reluctance, hesitation, hope + happiness' but I've written exactly one sentence of it.

"Another ?????" is an exploration of Yohan's trust in Gaon through the eyes of the people around them: K, Jinjoo, Elijah, Jungho, Soohyun, etc.

SFH WIPs:

I can't talk about the SFH WIP for legal reasons (again, I'm a mod of the zine, I know what the topic/theme is gonna be months in advance lmfao)

Critical Role WIPs:

Nicknamed "Tilly" with the working title "regret informs only the living," it jumps between ~C1 and C3, in a world where Percy and Laudna had met as children and did know one another. It jumps between their childhoods, immediately after reclaiming Whitestone, and when Bells Hells bring Laudna to Whitestone to revive her.

Originally nicknamed "Life 5," now its own fic titled "obsessively, incessantly, to a point of suffocation", it's an alternate history in which the Empire made a severe push into Xhorhas as the perfect moment. Asarius falls, and Dens Olios, Thelyss, and Tasithar are captured. The citizens of Asarius are split between four internment camps. Switching POVs between scourger Bren and survivor Essek, it's an alignment flip.

"friends on the other side," also called "Kingsley is Confused™," is immediately post C2, following Kingsley as he tries to piece together some semblance of identity and life, while Mollymauk and Lucien simply do not shut up in his head. It's enough to drive anyone mad, really. But maybe, just maybe, King is smart enough to figure out how to get them out of head and into bodies of their own.

"kindness is a dish best served" is an alternate C2 ending, in which it is Lucien pre-Nonagon who wakes up when the Wildmother brings him back. He lies through his teeth, claiming he doesn't know any of them. Only Caleb (visibly) sees through the lies.

Currently nicknamed "Vesper de Rolo's Very Bad, Not Good Day," it's a retelling of C3, in which Vesper de Rolo is a member of Bells Hells.

Currently only nicknamed "the consecution fic," the only thing I've written is this: 'thirty years after Essek Thelyss of No Den is executed for treason, Lirik Thelyss of Den Thelyss begins to go through anamnesis and realizes he can tell nobody who he truly is.'

And that's not including two 5+1s I'm sitting on for more Thelyss family dynamics because there's something so fun about locking Essek, Verin, and Deirta in a room together and poking them to see what happens.

And, now, lastly. The one I can't forget. "The Fickle Nature of Time's Children," suffering under the weight of my 22k word outline. It's a Caleb/Essek time travel fic with a twist, dealing heavily with themes of depression, a lack of fulfillment and unhappiness, with a massive redemption arc for the Tombtakers because they deserve it.

~

*exhales* okay that's it. Mostly. I have a couple of other original pieces of writing I didn't touch on because I haven't been working on them as much.

[just-a-carrot]

[Easter + Our Wonderland spoilers! Also a pretty long analysis, oops.]

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The more I think about it, the more OW and Easter seem kinda like antitheses to each other. Even TVTropes pointed this out:

"Spiritual Antithesis: The whole game is intended to be one for Easter, coming from the same author. Easter had a troubled protagonist, while his friends had more carefree lives and were unaware of his issues, while Our Wonderland has a fairly normal protagonist who is completely unaware of his friends' troubled lives and issues."

This is somewhat of a barebones explanation of it, and I'm not sure if it was exactly "intended", but it still rings true.

Easter ends up trying to ruin everyone else's lives, and in turn drag them down with him. He also never owns up to or feels guilty for his actions. In fact, he tries to pin a lot of the blame on Nester for supposedly not doing anything to help, to the point of him becoming a "bad guy" in his dream sequence. (Leave it up to the traumatized six year old to save the day. Yeah, very smart, East.)

Iggy does the exact opposite. In each arc, he tries to "help" whichever of the LIs the arc is focusing on in any way he can, which in turn makes him lose sight of his own self and get dragged down to their level. (This is especially prevalent in Arc 3.) He also seems to put all the blame on himself, quite literally stating that everyone would be better off without his existence in Arc 1.

Also, each game has a character who's a sort of "exception" to this rule.

In Easter, for example, Nester is also traumatized, and he is fully aware of Easter's actions. Yet, unlike Easter, he tries to move on with his life and leave the past behind.

Also, can I just go on a "quick" tangent and say that Nester's camera is a really good metaphor? During all of Easter's Escapades ™, Nester was fully aware of what he was doing, and yet never tried to do anything about it. He would just observe. (Though I will say that Easter maybe gives him too much shit for that, as he was, like, six years old, freshly traumatized, and also the least liked of the group, so good luck trying to convince anyone Easter's out to get their asses.) And think of what a cameraman does in a movie? He's fully aware of the current events, and yet he is in no power to change them, all he can do is record. Just like Nester... I know the camera literally only shows up two times but I just thought this was cool, okay?

Anyways, in Our Wonderland, Genzou, despite also having a troubled life, doesn't escape to Wonderland until the very end. And when he does, he doesn't end up going insane because of his wish, remaining Iggy's ally until the end of each arc.

Considering all of this, I think the endings for these games make perfect sense.

The problem with Easter is that he's stuck. As Nester points out, he's been fully consumed by hatred, and as such makes no effort to move on or become a better person. This is makes the hopeless ending work, as it shows that Easter's stubbornness and hatred has finally led him to the point of no return. He may have been redeemable at some point, but now, it's too late.

In Our Wonderland, things are different. Even in the cast's hateful, fucked up states, there is still a glimpse of humanity deep within them. There's still that wish to make things right. And unlike Easter, the OW cast find the strength to push through their corruption, and end up on the road to recovery. Of course, this did not come easy, and it won't get any easier, but what matters is that they did it. They are finally confronting their issues head on, and choosing to work through them, granting themselves the freedom that they sought do desperately in Wonderland. But freedom does not come from escaping, freedom comes from accepting, and letting go.

Our Wonderland shows that redemption is possible. Easter shows that it takes work.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

oh my gosh alkdjfasdk this is quite the analysis????

yeah i did see that on the tvtropes page, along with some other easter-correlations, though i admit freely that no connections between the games were intentional and i wasn't thinking about easter at all when i starting thinking up ideas for OW 🤣💦 then again i do often have people point out connections even within OW that i had never planned on/put in there purposefully, so i'm perhaps not the best judge... 🥴

(the tvtropes page used to have some really weird/inaccurate stuff about gidget tho until someone corrected it... 💦)

i think that is a really interesting point tho. easter and iggy couldn't be further from each other in the way they approach things and their general mindsets. which is a bit amusing as they still both somehow manage to be at the center of their respective friend groups with the other members generally all liking them to various degrees (easter doesn't have the love square that OW has LOL tho if i'd been more courageous of a dev at the time of making easter, i had originally wanted to add some latent feels in there between totl and easter)

iggy definitely gives up a big chunk of himself trying to be what his friends need, to the point where wonderland itself is actually helping to morph him into that role during each arc; meanwhile, easter is jealous that all his friends are better off than him and wants to see everyone suffer as much as he did. in both stories, there's this intense interconnectivity within the friend group revolving around the respective MC, but they're kinda opposite mindsets/approaches 🤣

"Also, can I just go on a "quick" tangent and say that Nester's camera is a really good metaphor?" -> LKDJASDFADS add another one to the list of "things carrot didn't even realize themself" 💦 that is a really cool analysis of that...

that's a great point about easter being "stuck." like in his head he had convinced himself that there was no way moving past it and he was hopeless, to the point where the only thing he could think of to do was lock his memories away (until over time they broke free again). whereas with iggy, despite everything, he has to keep trying, 100s and 100s and 100s of times, if only due to the nature of the loop. so he kinda just has to keep trying and keep moving forward every time they have a new breakthrough

"Our Wonderland shows that redemption is possible. Easter shows that it takes work." -> this is really good lakdfad easter didn't even try, while iggy is forced to try one way or another kinda lol

at any rate this is a really interesting analysis and look into how the two games play off each other (even if none of it was intentional from my part LKDJALDSF). thank you so much for writing this up and all your thoughts, i really enjoyed reading this!! 🥺💕

[discuit]

Introducing Discuit: An Easy-to-Use, Open-Source Social Media Platform

Welcome to Discuit!

We are an open-source alternative to Reddit, although we have steadily been gaining a bigger audience from all over the internet.

On the 16th of June, 2023, Discuit was launched as a reaction to the Reddit drama regarding the forced shutdown of practically all of its 3rd-party apps and tools. It was a pretty barebones platform at first, with only one main community, and only text posts.

Now, about 8 months later, Discuit has over 5000 users, and is still slowly but surely growing. We've gotten many more features, such as different post types, the ability to request your own community, and several 3rd-party tools are being developed!

Right now, you might thinking "Hey, this platform seems nice, but what makes it different?" It is, after all, made as an alternative to Reddit- it's not really its own platform, some could say.

And, well, there are a few things!

First of all, one of Discuit's main goals is to prevent the enshittification that caused Reddit's decay. This means that our monetisation strategy will not revolve around ads, ever. All we have in terms of monetisation at the moment is a Patreon, the proceeds of which far exceed our current hosting costs. In the future, we might add things like Discuit Premium (similar to things like Discord Nitro), which adds some cosmetic options. We may also add a feature similar to Reddit's Awards, but at the moment, neither of these are necessary.

Another of Discuit's core goals is quite similar to what makes Tumblr so beloved among its users; a lack of algorithm. There are no addicting strategies to keep users here: no requiring registration simply to view content, no popups asking you to sign up every single time you navigate to a new page, a mobile browser experience that doesn't suck in order to drive people to the app, the ability to turn off infinite scroll- it's all here, and more will come in the future.

Discuit is not designed to be as attention-grabbing possible, unlike most platforms nowadays. It's simply a community, and that's what makes it so awesome.

The third of our core principles is the ability to customise as much as possible about your experience. Right now, these options are relatively simple, and mostly include the ability to disable infinite scroll, but they will be expanded upon in the future. Users will eventually be able to filter out all low-effort/meme content, for example, and only see the really good stuff. Or the inverse, if you're just looking for the memes.

Communities will also have more customisation options. These will include things like a "point" (somewhat like Reddit Karma) requirement before being able to join or post in a community, options for more experienced users to be able to help the moderation team using a flagging system, and much more.

If all of this sounds like your cup of tea, then come on over to discuit.net! We have a wonderful community there, and we'd love to see you there!

If you're still curious about the site, we have a few places where you can find more information:

Discuit's Substack (Note that the few posts we have here are relatively old, and may be outdated.)

Discuit's GitHub repository (Not necessarily for finding information, but you can look/add to the code behind the platform here!)

Discuit's most official community, Discuit! This is where all major announcements regarding the platform are posted, and where you can find the latest version of the roadmap.

Thanks a ton for reading! We hope you have a good time with us.

With love,

The Discuit Admin Team

[nerdnag]

How much do you plot out your stories before you write them?

More than I used to!

Up until maybe 2019 I almost never plotted out stories beforehand. Therefore I have a LOT of started docs saved with little random ideas: some of which never became more than a page, some of which went haywire after a while and never recovered. And there are some entire "books" or fics that were completely improvised as I wrote them. That used to be how I wrote when I wrote for my own enjoyment only.

I tried my hand on an overarching structure for an original work back in 2017/18, but that was probably my real first planning for any story I'd ever written.

And then I think it was @alienducky who really got me into plotting and got me stuck on it for real. We worked on a fic together, and it would have been practically impossible to do that without some kind of joint plan. I remember she started a table at the top of the doc where she listed all the scenes, and I was like yeah, that's a good idea, and it was. After that I started plotting out my own fics in a similar manner too, and now I never want to go back to how I did it before. The stories just turn out so much better when I know where I'm going from the beginning. But I plot in a way that still lets me be creative with the plot along the way.

So this is how I do it nowadays:

Scribble any little initial idea I have - sometimes in a single sentence, sometimes in a paragraph, sometimes in random loose sentences here and there that only make sense to me.

Place the bits I know I want into some kind of organised scene structure - if I don't already know which order things will happen in, I'll get a first sketch on that now. I usually structure this into actual chapter titles (placeholder titles that just give me an idea of what the scene is about) so that step 5 becomes a bit easier later.

Loosely figure out what kind of ending I want - just so I have something to aim for. Usually I have two large threads going and then a number of subthreads; the main threads (like a fantasy conflict or a romantic struggle) have to be clearly solved at the end imo, but some of the subthreads can be more loosely handled. At this point in the process though it's all just a rough sketch.

Slowly fit more pieces I want into the puzzle - any scenes that are necessary to bring me to the end somehow, or even scenes that bring me joy to think about, as long as they don't stray too far from the main threads. I also make sure to always add in early on which pov I think I want for every scene.

When I have a beginning, an end, and a number of scenes that seem to coherently bring me from one to the other, I start fleshing out parts. This usually means that I start writing bits and pieces here and there. Often I wrote the first handful of chapter first before I go on to the rest of the story, so I have a basic idea for myself of what the characters want and how they should be acting. But after the first few chapters, I usually jump from scene to scene depending on what mood I am in and what feels more joyful at any point in time. So I might write half a scene in chapter 7 one day to then write an entire chapter 22 the next day, only to then jot down a few paragraphs into chapter 16 after that. (This is my adhd working, I let it because it's worked out pretty well for me so far.)

Along the way I may come up with new ideas and adjust things, I flesh out scenes that were very barebone in the beginning, I solve and change things that turned out not to work, and when I reach the latter chapters that I wrote early on (for example ch 22, if I wrote that straight after ch 7), I'll usually have changed enough things that I need to rewrite large parts of that chapter. That is fine by me, it's all part of the process.

I should also add that if I've started posting it on for example Ao3 along the way, I sometimes - very rarely, but it happens - adjust my plans depending on what people comment. This is usually only if someone comments something that is so genius or otherwise so perfectly natural for the story that I just cannot let it go by without doing something with it, and only if it fits into the plot somehow. One example of this is when I noticed that several people were suspecting a particular character of having hidden motives. Up until that point I hadn't planned on doing much at all with that character, but when I realized that what I'd already written was leading very naturally to their conclusion, I decided to give that character more space from there on out and even played into the whole hidden agenda idea (but with a twist). That kind of thing can be really fun to do, but I don't do it if I don't think it will work for the plot I already have.

There have also been occasions where conversations with @alienducky have led me to change things in similar ways. One example of this is when I sent her a first overarching plot of my entire then upcoming fic series back in... 2020 I think? And she's great with noticing details, so she asked me how the characters would be able to send letters to each other if they didn't know where the other person was. I told her there was a magically enhanced wolf in there that would be used to bring letters back and forth. She was so into the idea of this wolf, and asked what would happen to it later in the story, that I simply had to make it part of the main cast, and in the end it even played a very important part in a reveal down the line. XD Throwaway details that grow larger like that are also very fun.

Omg I actually found our old convo from back then, I can't not add it in here.

TLDR; I plot out an overarching story with beginning, end and bits and pieces in-between, then adjust as I go.

[spookfished]

sept+ oct media roundup

hi again :3 this month in september i was really busy with school so busy that i didnt make a media post for a whole month!!!! lol and also ive been getting back into FINAL FANTASY XIV: ENDWALKER grind lmfaooo so i wasnt really on that #mediagrind as much as i could be… but i still have some things to talk about :3 by sakshis (@.lilquill) suggestion, im also talking a bit about the music ive been listening to! this is also being crossposted onto my extremely barebones neocities

books/comics:

paladins strength by t kingfisher: m/m romance about a coroner and another former paladin! still psrt of the saint of steel series. i thought it was, once again really charming and grounded! also it involves a death room and i love those. the authors idea of 'these two characters are hiding something from each other' feels a little bit more contrived this time on pipers end, but i still had fun :3

home comforts: the art and science of keeping house by cheryl mendelson: nonfiction instructional manual on how to do various homemaking activities: cleaning, laundry, cooking, etc. ok ngl i got this book bc a book i was reading about 27/7 service..? was like "if you have never cared about housekeeping before this ones pretty useful." bc of various life and medical issues, the house i grew up in never really cared much about this kind of thing, except for cooking and self sufficiency. home comfort was written by a full time lawyer who was raised w the idea that she would grow up to be a stay at home wife, which i think is pretty interesting! it manages not to fall into tradwife ideas (imo?) by reframing these tasks as like.. a cyclical, rhythmic kind of self care that serve to make your home feel more safe and cozy. kind of like the marie kondo idea that folding all your clothes by hand puts like intent into your them; not practical for everybody, but sometimes a nice idea! also has a bunch of practical stuff, much of which is not particularly useful if you live in a college dorm. this book made me make my bed more often lol. i wish it had an updated section about tech (especially cord management)

the maid by nita prose (dnf): thriller about a (strongly autistic coded) maid who gets caught up in a murder at her hotel. i dont know i feel like i could have powered through this, but the way that the maids autism, and the way she interprets situations vs how the audience interprets situations is either played for pathos or laughs (its sometimes hard to tell which) rubbed me the wrong way. her life just… sucks? so bad? i feel like other people reading it may find some validating representation, and the voice is certainly interesting and brisk.

lolita by nabokov: doesnt really need much of an introduction. not going to lie, i read this bc i like nabokov but also to silently feel superior to all of the discourse girlies on tumblr. i did enjoy it though! in a way, at least? it's definitely a novel that can only be taken in small bites. i feel like a lot of the wordplay went over my head, and i'm not sure how much of that is due to me not knowing french and how much of it is due to the english language evolving so much after publication (and how much of it is just my own lack of knowledge. close reading is not really one of my strongest suits) . i was relieved to find that people call it funny, because it honestly was at some points. its really interesting when people can balance revulsion and humor and sick fascination, but that ratio is a pretty personal thing

she who became the sun by shelley parker chan: a retelling of the rebellion against the yuan dynasty, except the future ming emperor is a woman instead; part 1 of a duology. i really liked it! i liked the idea of like ummm sort of the two genders being Agency and No Agency. i thought baoxiang was pretty great love a fruity queerbaiting bureaucrat. thought it was pretty interesting that he continually tried to assert the importance of his own work and also worked really hard despite the fact that approval was obvioiusly never going to happen--so was it really that kind of futile endeavor, or for other ends….?! ooh so mystrious very excited to see him feature more in the second book. (spoilers for the book) some scenes that especially stood out were actually with some of the side characters! such as the mayors wife :3 the climactic scene with ouyang and esen was very delicious

he who drowned the world by shelley parker chan: sequel to she who became the sun! zhu yuanzhang has clawed her way up to her very own army and the yuans power has been destabilized, but everyone else is still racing for the crown. dude. i liked this book so freaking much. sooooo freaking cool it expands on a lot of the ideas and i also liked the development of the yingzi/yuanzhang relationship. additionally it managed to display the kind of like. trans horniness that (DISCLAIMER: I DONT FUCK) i dont really see in a lot of published books.. pretty cool! reminded me of when i went to a burlesque show and saw a woman (medical horror cwwww?) stick a needle through her hand lol. fantastically well balanced cast. do you think about the EROTICISM OF VIOLENCE? and GENDER ROLES? please read this book it made me so stressed. i really believe that at the end of the book baoxiang becomes a stay at home prisoner war

an unkindness of ghosts by rivers solomon: scifi about "exploring the conjunction between structural racism and generation ships" where medic aster uncovers a grand conspiracy! i thought the world building was reallyyy fun ship that has Been Voyaging Forever is an old and good trope, and this book goes hey but class and race will still exist though. to the point of like um recreating plantation dynamics i think? very anti utopian in a way i enjoyed. the mix of advanced scifi stuff and also having no resources was interesting :3 i liked giselle and theo a lot, and pretty much all the supporting (+sympathetic) characters besides aster? who took a lot longer for me to warm up to--shes definitely given a lot of nuance and life, but i think overly literal autistic/coded characters are a bit cringe..? im sure it meant a lot to someone (esp having a black autistic char?) just not me personally. oh but i really enjoyed the difference in voice between all the povs they were really distinct and fun. also aster and giselles rship! i think it would have been nice to have more intense moments, but thats also a personal preference for dramatics kind of thing--a lot gets glossed over in a 'past trauma' kind of way.. neil is right that i mostly have been reading books that blast you though lol. i really liked the scene at the end though like wow.. returning to the earth.. that was really good honestly. the stuff about archives and memory keeping was interesting --there was definitely like a thread through but i wouldn't have caught it w/out leo mentioning it. something about multiple interpretations..? something about history being passed from person to person rather than through physical means….?? its a strong debut i think :3 felt kinda movielike in an interesting way. rlly wish theyd went into The Gender more although i guess it mostly wasnt about that yeah and i wish the ending had more to do w like. her doctor stuff lmfao it was a little disconnected

video games:

13 sentinels: 13 teens intertwined stories come together in a story about love, mechs, and every scifi trope in the universe. also, the past and the future! the background art is sooo gorgeous i think my usual attention span for visual novels was increased significantly just by being able to walk around while dialogue was playing… if you have a low tolerance for heterosexual "pair the spares" type behavior, this may not be for you--i really liked some of the romances though, like with fuyusaka and sekigahara.. i liked the themes of like. idk you can try to relive the past, but all itll do is stall you from moving forward--we can examine past mistakes but we cant ever get a 'redo.' alsooo people were haters about the battle segments but i played it all on hard and really enjoyed it. tbh anyways would recommend!

boyfriend dungeon: dungeon crawler where you can date your weapons. well i 100%d this (except for the whip) but for all of the gameplay bits i was mostly thinking "man i wish i was playing hades". probably not a fair comparison, but it does lack some polish in that department, and overall. all the same, i enjoyed this game! it has a nice soundtrack and art, and i thought some of the love interests were pretty charming :3 also appreciated the flexibility in love routes. it really got a bad rap from the stalker plot huh…pretty solid game and worth playing if the initial concept grabs you. i did borrow neils copy though

hades: after beating bf dungeon i immediately redownloaded hades lmfao. sooo good theres not a lot to say about it. still havent managed to beat the final boss even after all this time bc im too stubborn to turn on godmode >:T

dave the diver: casual sort of dungeon crawler, except instead of killling monsters you catch fish for your sushi restaurant, which you also run. dave the diver stacks on a bunch of mechanics in a way thats… surprisingly manageable? and really charming honestly. im having a lot of fun with it :3 a few awkward boss fights that werent really that fun (and stealth segments..my enemy) havent gotten in the way of like all the rest of it i loooove exploring the ocean and finding new ways to get fish and all of the gorgeous pixel art and also the FALL GUYS GUY is doing the OST. this game is blowing up a little bit rn but honestly for good reason. such a good gameplay loop that also adds in variety over time

manga:

hirayasumi: slice of life about a part-timer working in tokyo who inherits an old womans house--its all about slowing down and enjoying the pace of life--and also how hard that actually is. dude hirayasumi is sooo fucking good im always trying to get people to read this manga i think its adorable and also beautiful and bittersweet. its about growing out of your 20s and the friends around you who are moving up or moving on or even just stuck in place. super awesome

ao no flag: romance coming of age w lgbt themes. a timid high school girl is trying to work up the courage to confess to her crush, and enlists the help of her crush's childhood friend to do it. the mixed-up shenanigans of adolescence ensue. man you know i really love the art for this manga (faces and expressions! so good!) and i think all the characters are really compelling! the trio just have such a cute dynamic and like all of the waffling over feelings honestly feels real. the ending was really disappointing though honestly. still worth a read imo but prepare to be mad. ok here is my longer rant about it (spoilers) ughhh ok its like. initially i thought masumi getting a boyfriend was SO fucking disappointing. especially given that she kinda got the least focus out of the main 4? some reddit comments were like "maybe her boyfriend is trans" but i think that something like that would be……….really complicated honestly? and something that id really want to have explored more outside of just a singular epilogue chapter? and i dont think the implications were that strong there. and given that it would have been good to see more indications that they were actually happy together bc its like the first thing you think when you see her is "oh, she gave up" WHICH IS SO FUCKING DEPRESSING AUGH and she never even confessed to futaba :| futaba and taichi breaking up makes a lot of sense and im like, whatever not really going to object to that esp bc the whole theme is like youthful love. but then on the SAME SIDE OF THE COIN its like it makes no sense for taichi and touma to get together either then!!!!!!!!!!!!! like what a copout. it kinda breaks the whole original premise. AND it feels like its just (whats that word thats like playing to? favoring?) fujos reading the comic and all those ppl are like the girl should DIE for getting in the way of my two gayboys. and aslo the convo with kensuke and the other girls and especially that other guy really felt like i was reading a reddit thread. or like some of the most frustrating conversations that ive had and overheard. like hmm i sort of get what it was trying to say. and i agree that peoples frustration and idea of whats 'right' usually isnt the best rhetoric.. and above all sometimes youre not focusing on your ideas of correctness Or proper rhetoric but having an honest and open communication? but its likeeee well i kinda dont care? sorry

nana: coming of ageish? nana, a flighty girl who's quick to fall in love, and nana, a tough rocker trying to make it big in the city, coincidentally become roommates, and become fast friends despite their disparate lives/personalities. this one is one of the classics! i still havent finished it yet (its also unfinished) but idk i really like it. always fond of flop women like hachi lmfao. the older art style did take a bit to get used to for me

i want to hold aono kun so bad i could die: horror manga about a high school girl who gets her first boyfriend--who then dies only a couple days afterwards. yuki kariya is willing to do anything to make sure aono stays with her, even letting her possess her body. but should the dead and the living really be so closely intertwined? ok the art in the first couple volumes may be a little offputting but this is REALLY good ok. and it has some really chilling panels that i love a lot. aono kun begins with the pretty classic "awkward loner girl x popular boy", but it quickly starts getting into ideas about like…. purity and "the filthiness of desire" and stuff like that. recently has been getting more into why the characters are the way they are? in some uh, really chilling and realistic depictions of abuse within a family. check the cws but mr chainsaw man recommended this manga so you should read it too.

movies/tv:

skibidi toilet: humor/action webseries?? ok so its about this war between the skibidis and the cameraheads, which escalates in technology over time as the cameraheads bring in other objecthead allies and the skibidis grow stronger. me and neil and alena watched all compiled 40 minutes of this in a straight shot, which was kind of like frying our brains in a microwave. kind of like those stickfight videos for a cocomelon generation, the relentless pacing will suck you in kinda like…. a skibidi toilet…. really well made imo but probably only worth watching if you really like cool fights and/or gmod

the shining: prestige? slash? horror a father and his family take care of a hotel only to find out things are FUCKED.. i really didnt know what this was about besides the here's johnny scene before i watched it :3 pretty crazy it really just is a good movie. sucks that the filming was so terrible though

fight club: ok so to me this movie is about colelctive action and gay people. like they had so many people mobilized for radical action and whatever and all they did was blow up a bank. LAME! anyways i really liked it a lot despite the everything. ive been entering my film bro era with neil i hope we watch pulp fiction next <3

music:

this is a couple albums ive been listening to over the past couple months!

THE CLOD(瓦合) by no party for cao dong: taiwanese post rock. im a big fan of this band so i listened to a bunch of the album tracks as they released!! like the first album, each track flows together into a coherent whole, and it retains the upbeat despondency from the servile. however, it feels like theyve also been more willing to branch out musically! especially with tracks like damn and daydream. overall, the album has a grittier, grungier feeling as well. also i know more chinese so i can sing along a bit now :3 (also, their lyric translations are always so good?) a few highlight tracks for me are lie (床) and the human the hole and the mountain. (人洞山).

CRAWLER by idles: british "crankwave", whatever that means. idles is also a band that i really like :3 sometimes i try and listen to other things in its genre and im like well…. this isnt idles though… sorry.. i like things that are the same forever…. i listen to this music a lot when im cleaning haha. it has such a feeling of overwhelm and tearing through rock bottom thats very satisfying! crawling hurts but it works for me and so on. with crawler and the clod both, every time i listen i have a couple favorite new tracks but rn i like the end and progress.

UMURANGI GENERATION OST primarily by adolf nomura: jungle music for a photography-based game (umurangi means "red sky" in te reo). i mostly end up listening to the tutorial + mauao view tracks. well….. i have a huge jungle music bias. unfortunately. but i think a lot of this music really captures the sort of "flow" feeling that you get when working on something creative! this game has an incredible sense of atmosphere i would really recommend checking it out. highlight tracks are swears in ps1 and BEAT THE POLICE

SCALES by king isis: indie pop. i saw them perform live at a concert this august!! so freaking cool :3 to me has all of the self indulgent sadness and rich vocals of an early mitski track but ALSO is an ''indie gem''' (this is their debut album). songs are fun to sing along to :3 my favorite songs from her are 4 leaf clover and im fine thx for asking! but apparently their new mv has sexy vampires in it so maybe go check it out?

as always if you read (or skimmed) to the end, thanks :3

[understandableparadox]

old passage speculating the straw hats

Monkey D. Luffy: Page of breath

Luffy is what I think Tavros could have been. Someone full of life, joy, happiness of such an infectious degree that it inspires everyone around him to become better people, it inspires them to caste away chains that have just lived with out of convenience because tavros, someone who would certainly live a more comfortable life with their chains has caste them away and instead of being horribly punished, they are like a goddamn bird, free.

Land of Blaze and Gold

A massive burning planet, devastated mostly on the surface by the horrifying fire giants that roamed the planet. Spreading nothing but flames and devastation throughout. But once you go underground you find that there are multiple underground oases filled with Beaded lizard constructs who have found ways to use the heat on the surface to make life pretty great. They speak of a way to see the sun again by going to the Capital of the fire giants, El Dorado. The city of burning gold to defeat the denizen Totec

Luffy has a land based mostly on Aztec myths because el dorado is one of the classic treasure hunt destinations. It's the game trying to fit luffy into a track that they recognize. My thoughts are that luffy will immediately ignore this kind of quest because the game expects him to be where tavros is, but he’s pretty much already ready to god tier. Maybe he ends up accidently radiclizing the lizards because again, he could probs just beat the fire giants on the surface and create a pretty damn good town where ever the fuck he wants. 

Luffy more likely than not won't see the point in god tiering and again, ignore it. Immortality is not Luffy's main quest. It's him trying to have fun, it's him trying to live a life that he will be constantly happy with, alongside friends that he can support and will support him in kind. He brings in his crew to fight the denizen and winds pretty handedly

Roronoa Zoro: Prince of Rage

Zoro works a lot as the quartermaster of the strawhat crew. He is the one that enforces a lot of the rules of the ship, wither it's not questioning the captains final decision or ensuring a proper code of conduct is set. Rage is the aspect of negative, fear, rage and importantly,truth. Zoro cuts through some of the toughest opponents set in the crews way, allowing them to work without fear. Like luffy he is a reassuring entity that allows members to work without fear.

Land of Prayer and Passing. 

A solemn land where dead mantis make their death march towards the ever consuming maw of their denizen, a nameless monolithic creature within a massive tower. The sides of this tower displaying an endless list of names appear, the closer they get to the bottom, the closer they are to being eaten by the denizen. If a mantis attempts to escape the denizen and doesn't make their death march, they are dragged by countless hands towards the tower. 

The land is a lot more barebones then some of the others for the sole reason that zoro won't pay attention to it. The game knows zoro has no interest in a lot of weird things and will just blindly hit the problem with a sword like a coked out orangutan with a stick and attitude problem. And it will fucking work. If I had to name the denizen, then it most likely would be enma. Zoro killing their denizen would just be more emblematic of him taking his position then abandoning it out of a slight uncaringness that the mantis may or may not appreciate. It's just a new truth being laid out to them to follow. They are no longer bound by death because the weird guy killed the god of it so they just kinda have to… deal with it

Nami: Mage of Light. 

Nami is a coward but only because she is a relativly normal person within a crew of utter fucking monsters. Monsters that get them in the news every other day because they kicked the king of who caresia in the dick and now the entirety of the royal navy wants them dead. Nami suffers from being perceived and known. But she also manages to profit off of her own fortune, luck and notoriety. 

Land of Vaults and Bars

A massive prison world that contains what could be easily millions of gecko consorts, seemingly born into and raised as prisoners for perceived slights of their ancestors generations ago. But the kicker here is that each tear shed by the gecko becomes solid gold… gold that gets collected and transported to the denizens private vault. Lakes worth of gold and gems ripe for the taking…All you have to do is get past the watchful gaze of Nokken. 

So, the planet is meant to tempt nami to get off track and try to make a profit off the gold and suffering of the geckos (also commentary on the industrialized prison complex but i'll move my ham hock fists out of the way). Nokken was the denizen of choice because it works as the Swedish version of a siren, beautiful men playing music that tempts women into drowning. Again, temptation, lakes, water and gold are the main themes of the world.

Usopp: Rogue of hope

Usopp is an unapologetic coward and opportunist. He’s also insanely negative, everything is the worst possible thing that can happen and he is always ready for death to be right on top of him. But he doesn't let that overcome him. Despite being fucking terrified of the things around him, he finds ways to create opportunity. His entire sthick is finding the perfect shot. The single strike that can turn the tide. Wither its on judgement island, hitting the perfect shot for fucking hundreds of yards away to save his crew, or the insane shot he made up hill from miles away in dressorose, freeing people from someones curse. He finds ways to steal hope from the baddies and give it back to the crew and those around him. 

Land of Mirages and Pyrite. 

A world seemingly made completely out of gold, with sparkling cities run by rather accommodating meerkats. Literally everything seems fine as long as the sun is up, when it starts to dip, the land turns a sickly greenish bronze color. A massive wolf stalks the world, easily eating up the cities it comes across throughout the night. By morning, everything is fine and dandy. Even the cities that were eaten seem to have no memories of being eaten…

A more mystery focused planet because right behind nami, usopp is one of the smartest strawhats on the ship. It's meant to get him trying to figure out what's going on, slowly becoming brave enough to face the denizen head on. Also, yes, it's fenrir. Usopp likes vikings with an intense passion.

Sanji: Knight of heart

Sanji is a professional simp. Someone who under no circumstances will hit a woman, even if their fucking evil as hell. I think out of all the straw hats, he’s the one who gets into the least arguments with everyone. The only real person he ever actually has a problem with is zoro.  Thus my idea is that he is someone who underwent the trials of the knight and just kinda… failed? Instead of using desire and personality to exploit, he allowed it to exploit him. Which honestly isn't so bad. 

Land of pillars and fish. 

A massive ocean dotted along with small dots of civilization atop massive stone towers. Down below the ocean froths kicks up with  a vibrant blue ocean that doesnt seem to have an end. It merely goes down and down and down… each of the villages focus on different needs, like trees or metals. The bravest of em being the fishermen. Brave otters that descend into the depths to try and get a large enough haul to feed everyone before they are fed on by the terror of the depths. 

The denizen of this world is calypso, mostly because the game is going to try and get sanji to fight his denizen and give him a challenge. But again, he fails his quest and is happy about it. He is genuinely happier as the failed knight of heart that stuck to his ideals.

Tony Tony Chopper: Bard of doom

Tony is someone whose life is plagued by doom and gloom. Abandoned by his herd, accidentally killed his own mentor, had to live in semi isolation due to their appearance, but they are someone who manages to get past it. They don't let the sadness of their life get the best of them. They do their best to do what their mentors did and heal people the best they can. Thus I think the god tier of bard of doom would be the best choice.

Land of Plagues and loss

A massive haunted village, something straight gothic. The entire joint is wrapped with this horrid illness that is slowly killing the stork inhabitants, hospitals have sprouted up in certain spots but there's never enough room. The graves are slowly becoming the most populous place. The denizen of the planet Faust, is feverously working on a cure to this hell. 

Chopper being a kid is going to be having a really fucking bad time through out all of this, the game obviously wont give a shit but yeah, his world is meant to really pray on his sense of duty when it comes to healing the sick. And as bards are meant to break, it wants to break him with the despair of the ever coming line of dead consorts. I think he powers through because he is a medical genius.

Chopper more likely than not would god tier once he understands it, again, he has an intense sense of duty when it comes to taking care of people, gaining powers specifically about that would only be on the surface of that.

Nico Robin: Seer of time. 

Robin may have the most dichotmaic themeings throughout the story. She is the woman who brings death yet all her attacks are based on flowers blooming. She is the demonic child cursed with knowledge yet she can sprout almost angelic wings at the drop of a hat. But the one thing that she is consistently associated with is the idea of history and the future. She learns about it in order to apply what she knows to plans the straw hats make. She suffered greatly because of it, learning how to read the ponegraphs ensured the destruction of her family. It nearly ensured the destruction of her crew but she is adamant that she continues learning it. 

Land of dunes and tombs

A sprawling land of deserts dotted occasionally by pyramids, the base of which seems to be an oasis. With fresh clear water flowing from the top of each of them down. Yet the consorts, hawks, seem to avoid it. Content to living near the rocky outcroppings and flying maybe once a day to gather gallons at a time towards the village.  The denizen, Isis is said to already be dead. That this place is due to become non-existant without the spell she was supposed to weave…

The land is supposed to encourage time travel bullshit as well as a tiny bit of archeology, for fun. As a treat. Anyways you go back and forth in time gathering info on WHERE the denizen was when she died and trying to either get the spell out of her or at the very least make sure she never dies. The scratch panel here is a massive harp with glowing red strings that requires thousands of hands to play

She would more likely than not god tier because she has those aradia "oooh, lets see what death feels like!" vibes

Franky:Heir of void

Surprisingly, franky is a lot like equius if he just grew out of his fetish faze and stopped caring.stop me when i'm off base but imagine a genius robotist that kinda creeps people out or actively annoys them when they talk to him. They are known for building prosthetics or complete robot bodies. 

See what I mean? The only difference is that Franky is a lot further along on the path of an heir then equius, already rendering himself into nothing but the personality given his insistence of making himself the perfect war machine. 

Land of ponds and reflection. 

A semi swamp-esque planet filled with snakes waiting at the side of their own personal ponds. Staring intensely at their own reflections within the water. Only leaving in abject frustration to eat or rest. If asked, they will say that they are trying to get a wish from the creature on the other side of the water. The thing that has no reflection. If you can reach the same state as it, it can give you something that will cure all your worries.

The denizen here is supposed to be narcissus, someone that demands to be unchanging because it feels as though it has finally reached a point of perfection, going up someone that can always find something to change about itself. 

Franky would god tier in a heartbeat because it's just what he does on the daily.

the franky-equius think is my hottest homestuck take by the by

Brook: Sylph of life

Brooks overall is a tragic character who has died trying to fulfill both a legacy and promise, but given a second chance to finish it. Everyone he used to know died around him. He sailed with their bones. The only thing he has left of them is the final song they sang together. Brooks is someone who understands the finality of death and understands that life is wonderful, beautiful, precious and rare beyond exception. Thus will help anyone he can not squander it. Singing wonderful songs to  brighten the mood of those around him. He is a sylph of life solely because he has died enough times to keep it sacred. 

Land of notes and ivory. 

A prehistoric land that is filled with hummingbird consorts.here the skeletons of massive ancient creatures roam, animated by some odd magic… rendering only small parts of the forest safe from the boney march of the behemoths. The hummingbirds know when they are close, given the harsh wind that sweeps through the jungle blows through their hollow bones, forcing them to sing in a discordant cacophony. 

Brooks would not god tier, he wants to make the most of his second life and understands that there is a certain beauty in knowing that one day it will end. Immortality is not something he has any interest in.

the denizen more likely than not would be ihy, as he is one of the first gods of music, and childhood. He's just a kid playing with their favorite dino toys and making music (badly) because that's how they know to play.

Jinbei: Witch of mind

it seems a little bit werid but my logic here is that witches are defined by some sort of accident, mistake or whatever that relates to their aspect. the death of jades grandpa through teleportation, the death of the trollian race by feferis lusus, and for jinbei his inability to make the logical decision of putting down arlong and allowing him to cause that much distruction.

aside from that, jinbei is always cooking up plan after fucking plan, disappering to set things into motion months ahead of time to ensure the prospairity of the things he deems important, such as fishman island and whole cake island.

Land of rips and tides

a massive underwater planet, seemingly from the moment you make the initial plunge you are stuck in a massive sprawling labrynth of tunnals that delve deeper and deeper into the planets core, occasionally these tunnals will create currents that will rip through, dragging anything living through them until their dead, slammed and cut on the walls of the tunnels.

the denizen the laviathan, an abstract concept of the oceans blind rage, something that holds the unstoppable power of the ocean that must be subverted and coareced through the most carefull of planning.

[akfamilyhome]

The history of my video capture woes

(This post was originally released exclusively via Patreon on May 23, 2019, and is now here as a test for long-form text content! This post also contains links to old archived videos from my YouTube channel. Most of these videos were made when I was of a young age, and do not reflect the current quality of my videos or any of my views and opinions today.)

Everyone probably has that one system that shaped their childhood or teenage years. My childhood systems are the Wii and DS, but the 3DS is probably the most important and influential system I've ever had so far, both to my teenage years and for my YouTube hobby.

Since I got my very first 3DS on July 11th, 2011 (I THINK that was the date), I've been being to make videos with it on my then barebones YouTube channel.

I've captured game footage before this though, and it was...bad. Holding a camera up to a TV looks and sounds substantially worse than sticking it in front of a 3DS screen and speakers.

My first 3DS related video was released on July 14th, 2011 and was just the QR Code of my Mii and my friend code. My Mii has barely changed since then (and tbh probably isn't the most accurate representation of me but I've gotten too used to it).

Also I'm pretty sure my 3DS friend list is already full so you probably don't need to try entering it, sorry

[Continued after the break!]

My first video that actually used footage from a 3DS is a gameplay video of Super Mario Bros. back when the 3DS Ambassador Program dropped:

I just balanced a small digital camera we had on a pencil sharpener as a support. I think I still have that camera, but it's probably buried in a closet somewhere with a dead battery I can't find the right charger for. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

At that point, I don't think I've even heard of the concept of capture cards yet. In 2011 they were still in the prototyping phase, and a few well-known YouTubers at that time (cobanermani456 comes to my mind just now) simply stuck HD cameras in front of 3DS screens to capture footage.

So with my dingy little digital camera, I couldn't really do much with the setup. Of course, at that time I was just holding my 3DS in front of the camera resulting in some shaky screen images (often also angled so I could see the screen clearly and my reflection wouldn't show) This lasted ALL THE WAY until September 2012. Oof.

Around the end of 2011 I switched to a different camera which apparently made things worse because now my videos ended up in 240p. I have no idea what is up with that. That's also when Super Mario 3D Land came out which I played the hell out of and made some tips & tricks videos about (that was probably the niche of the early years of my channel if I had to describe that period.)

Check out this video for some sweet 240p-upscaled-to-480p goodness and the first semblance of game footage coupled with actual video editing.

Also at one point I tried capturing direct audio by using an aux cord but the headphone jack of the main computer I use for editing at the time was broken, so it didn't really end up well.

By August 2012 I figured out a way to stabilize my 3DS footage: stacking 3DS game boxes and putting my 3DS on top. Over the years I've used different other items to hold my 3DS up like smartphone boxes and stuff, but 3DS cases are pretty reliable. I think at that point I've also internalized how many 3DS game boxes to stack up in my mind like they're a unit of measurement. You can see this in action in one of my first videos on Pushmo:

By now you've probably noticed the wacky wave effect you get when you put an LCD in front of a low res camera. That'll stick around for a long time.

Anyway, this stuck around for a while as I pumped out some random NSMB2 videos and posted my first ever Let's Play of Super Mario 3D Land. In terms of video editing, 99% of the time I just uploaded the raw footage because the videos were fine without editing at the time.

I got a 3DS XL on around September 2012, but was still stacking it on top of game boxes and other stuff. It resulted in the screen placement never being consistent, but I was content with it at the time. Sometimes I also managed to capture both screens at once.

Then came everyone's favorite game, Paper Mario: Sticker Star. I keep saying the game's an integral part of some of my channel's very early growth, because I churned out quite a few GameXplain-like tip videos about it, such as how to get the Barrel sticker (you have to get it exclusively from Broozer enemies that show up in some airship enemy encounters). Arguably my biggest 'hit' at that point came when I beat Bowser without using Kersti:

This video is super grainy looking because I was recording my 3DS XL screen with my 3DS cameras. I have no idea if my regular camera was out of commission or something but it happened. A bunch of people liked it.

At this point I'm just super used to this method of recording 3DS footage now. It was certainly a lot easier to set up, record and post videos more regularly, but looking back, it didn't really make my channel stand out too much. There isn't really any incentive to watch a guy stick a small camera in front of a 3DS for video guides over a professional Let's Player using capture cards.

On March 28th 2013 I posted this video of some Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon footage in 1080p! I believe this footage was recorded with a smartphone that belonged to my parents at that time. The high quality was able to get rid of the wavy patterns on-screen but I never adopted it, either because it was too much a hassle to set up or I wouldn't always get access to it that easily.

I went back to my tried-and-true regular method and a bunch of people were asking me what I used to record footage. So I recorded this video with my 3DS:

Yeah I set my camera (a PowerShot S95) on an iPhone box and my 3DS XL on a dictionary. Those were the items that just happened to have the perfect height. Sometimes in life you gotta improvise.

In May 2013 I uploaded some stereoscopic 3D videos of 3DS games. This required...yes, putting the 3DS XL in front of a 3DS with the 3D effect on. (It wasn't the other way around because the 3DS screen was smaller and more suitable for recording purposes). It sorta worked, but y'know, low quality and everything. It was a neat idea though seeing as not a lot of stereoscopic 3D videos of 3DS games existed at that time.

I also tried direct audio recording again with another video!

I have no idea how I managed to get this to work, seeing as I record footage in my own room then edit the footage on the home computer in my living room outside, but I guess the method was to record the direct audio through a notebook computer situated next to me, then taking that audio and combining it through the camera footage on my home computer. It was probably too much work for me at that time.

Alright, it's fast-forward time, you've seen me do this recording setup for far too long now. 3 years to be exact.

In 2014, after watching Chuggaaconroy's Let's Play of Kid Icarus: Uprising, I picked up the game and it included a 3DS stand! I then tried to incorporate it into my recording setup so I would no longer have to memorize what specific combination of everyday household items I can use to prop my 3DS up. Here's the first video using it:

And then that's just what I basically used for the next 3 years as well. If it ain't broke (?), don't fix it.

Small interlude: We got a new camera during 2014, which is actually the one camera I still use today in core videos! [2022 editor's note: I've switched to a smartphone camera since.] In October, during a small event I did called Sakurai Month, I gave it a whirl in recording 3DS footage with a Kid Icarus: Uprising video.

And it looked REALLY good! The downside is I had to use a tripod to stand the camera up, which took away a lot of space for me to sit and see the screen properly, plus I wasn't able to record the bottom screen due to size constraints, and (I'm not 100% sure if this was done for the KIU video, but) the audio recording on that camera is a bit crappy, so I had to use my regular digital camera alongside it just so I can get the best audio. Even now in my core videos, the voices for the off-screen footage is recorded with my smartphone voice recorder.

Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.

But other than that, I've just used the ol' trusty PowerShot S95 for the rest of my 3DS videos. Occasionally I do some editing to get both screens at a decent size such as for my Smash 3DS videos, but that's about it.

And yeah, I used this method all the way up to early 2017. By that time, I was finishing up my high school finals, and did some reorganization in the apartment. I've also started covering topics other than 3DS games, such as other Nintendo hardware like the Game Boy systems (and the Switch was on the horizon as well!) so I felt that the quality of those videos clashed a bit with videos where I stick a camera in front of a 3DS screen.

Still, I had a running LP series at the time (Rhythm Heaven Megamix), and I tried using the new camera I got to record some footage as well, but it just wasn't cutting it for me. I felt that using these high quality cameras to do more comprehensive videos like filming hardware shots and the like was a better idea than using it to just do what I did for the past 6 years.

And thus the idea of the core videos were born!

I also got a used Elgato Capture Card on October 2017, allowing me to grab footage from the Switch and even some older systems. But to think I was done covering the 3DS would be dead wrong, as there was still a lot of potential topics I wanted to cover for the 3DS, just in a more sophisticated manner instead of just pointing a camera at a screen.

This gave birth to ideas for videos such as 'How Super Mario 3D Land Saved The 3DS', but to make those videos a reality, I would either have to nab footage by other people from the Internet (which I generally try to avoid unless absolutely necessary), or use a homebrew-enabled New 3DS which had a method of recording gameplay footage to a PC application over Wi-Fi.

While that sounded reasonable, it wasn't the best solution, as the video was often very choppy and had a few visual artifacts depending on your connection speed. The best videos I could get out of it were around the 20-30fps range. You can see a sample of homebrew 3DS capturing in this tweet:

But still, it was better than off-screen footage in my opinion, so I did my footage recording with homebrew and went on my merry way...

Then I learned that Katsukity, the sole provider of 3DS capture cards at that time (since Loopy had stopped orders) had a price drop.

I took the hit and grabbed a 2DS from their store with a capture card pre-installed for 300 USD. Compared to using homebrew, using capture cards allowed for me to capture both a higher resolution and framerate, as well as allowing for capturing DS games (which isn't possible with homebrew). To sort of alleviate the cost, I sold the 2DS I had at the time to a real life friend who coincidentally didn't have a 3DS and wanted to get into its game library.

And since then, I think it's served me really well! Of course, as of this post there's really only like two core videos that are DS/3DS-focused, but there are still plenty of topics I want to talk about. The recent Photo Dojo video is also possibly the first ever non-Nintendo YouTube video about Photo Dojo in which footage was recorded with a capture card!

It has its downsides, such as the direct audio capturing being a little wonky unless you use an audio cable (which would be a bit of a hassle with my current setup), but I feel like it will still be serving me for quite a few years to come. [2022 editor's note: still going strong!]

Since then, Katsukity has gone bankrupt (sadly unsurprising given the REALLY niche market of their products), and there isn't really a new source of 3DS capture cards at this time. Hopefully the resale values for them won't skyrocket like crazy, but if you're dead set on getting one no matter the cost, aside from second-hand listings, Merki (the European distributor for 3DS capture cards) still have old 3DS XL capture cards in stock, but you'll have to ship your system to them, so the shipping costs might add up.

But for creators who are starting out, if you want to make content using the 3DS, you can either go the homebrew capture route (if your 3DS is of the "New" variety) or just use a smartphone camera, since most can do at least 1080p nowadays. I mean, I got by with using a crappy camera for 6 years. :]

But anyway, hope this gave you a fun little insight into my history of struggling with capturing handheld footage! I think it's a nice example of equipment quality not being the most important thing for creators, even with simple tools and software, you can still make content that's pretty dang good. Even now, my setup is still evolving, and your support means I will be able to improve it through things such as better tripods and microphones, as well as more things of interest to cover, so I must thank you all once again!

If you have any further questions about footage capturing, don't hesitate to ask me. :)

[s1nfu7h0r53f7y]

Something that has been long overdue. This will be pretty barebones. Don’t have a lot of experience with angles besides side profiles, so try to bear with me.

Name: Noel(female)/Des(masc), “Horsefly” (nickname for either)

Race: Demi-human Equestria Changeling with traits from draft horses, ox beetles, and myth accurate Spriggan (formerly human)

Age: 36

Height: 5’4”

Abilities: Inhibited Shapeshifting with specialization in sizeshifting (changes only last for 6 hours, drains magical and physical stamina to varying degrees. Form is locked until it wears off. Limits are lessened when in own world, but never completely gone. Size increase and decrease is in the following multiplied/divided increments: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 100. Does not like going to the extremes or even second highest due to how they either make them extremely vulnerable or increase their risk of causing unintended harm), lesser manipulation of clouds, wind, and rain, flight (very clumsy start, wings are tucked against body when not in use), creating portals to locations they’ve already visited (can share this ability with others), limited polymorphing (has same restrictions as if transforming self), lesser illusions (clearly made from harmless magical sea green flames, calls them “fae fire”), facultative bipedalism (fancy way of saying they can move equally well on 2 legs and 4 legs), able to climb walls and ceilings with little effort

Orientation: bisexual, with strong preference towards men

Gender: bigender She/He is fine with they, but does not personally identify by it, instead using it for ease of addressing. Form changes slightly between gender presentation, masc having longer horns and fangs, more fluff volume, and slightly more bulk. Tends to lean more towards fem, but as they are only recently exploring the more masculine elements of themself this may change. Despite being a shapeshifter, they had top surgery, to ensure they had this trait permanently instead of just 6 hours. Scars are hidden under chest fluff.

Bio: condemned themself to form of non reformed changeling as self imposed punishment, believing they could only take love and not give it. With time, they realized they always were able to care, there were just times it could be a bit stilted, and had followed poor advice from their father that just wanted to isolate them. With the realization that they cared, some humanity was gained, but as something different. In some ways, more free than regular changelings, but with restrictions to stay somewhat level headed. Demi human is the default state, but they do have a full changeling form. While not the appearance of the reformed changelings, it is healthier and softer in appearance than those that haven’t reformed. The front legs bend more akin to a predatory mammal than an ungulate. They had traveled to many realms to improve them self while still confined to the changeling form, this now is simply a means to explore interact with different worlds, with new ones popping up now and again. There is also a realm unique to them, one that they call home. It has a range of environments, that can accommodate the needs of many flora and fauna. They tend to find individuals that they befriend wherever they travel, though typically keep those numbers small to moderate. Often, they share their gift of inter dimensional travel with those they deem “friends”, and invite them to their own realm as a place of respite to use when they wish. There is also a tendency to bring flora and fauna from one word into their own. While they do use it for more practical purposes, they actually enjoy using their shapeshifting (and especially sizeshifting) recreationally. They can be shy showing that aspect of themself, not only for the vulnerability when small, but because they know the typical thought response one has to something larger than themselves is “this can harm/kill me”, and often fear twists “can” to “will”. It’s to the point that while nervous showing this skill the first time to someone regardless of which direction they go in, showing growth in particular often has the cowering on the ground, eyes shut and often watery, whispering please, as if the roles were reversed. After trust is established, they become much more casual, though they tend to stay on all fours when enlarged to ease communication, reducing collateral damage, and be less intimidating. If an individual shows interest, Horsefly is more than happy to share the experience and that of other transformations through polymorphing. There are times their inclination to nurture can become more pronounced when enlarged, thankfully they are extremely gentle (though they will go full kaiju against a threat). They have been known to offer what essentially boils down to “cuddle therapy”, which is gentle doting and words of reassurance from them while they are enlarged. There are times when they will shrink down either to seek comfort or just wanting a bit of doting on. Typically they seek similar treatment that they would give when the roles are reversed: hugs, nuzzles, chin scritches, headpats, being gently pressed to their heart (though being placed in a pocket over it is equally good), if it’s a partner than gentle kisses would also be highly coveted. When nestled against someone’s heart, hearing and feeling every breath and heartbeat can sometimes lull them to sleep, often snuggling in. They tend to keep a death grip if you try to move them in this state. Being a changeling, they do need to feed on love, regardless of the type. They typically feed passively in small amounts to avoid harming others, but will sometimes incapacitate someone that is a threat by forcefully draining them. They can absorb other emotions, but rather than feed, they typically use this to alleviate intense negative emotions in others. The trade off is they take on that those feelings, and must either work through them naturally or find some scum bag to send it into

Personality: socially anxious, but can be quite playful and even rowdy when with the right crowd. While they can sometimes be aloof or even burned out, the flip side is that they tend to be a bit of a mother hen. Can get emotional, in cases of lashing out they apologize after they cool down (unless you’re a genuine sack of sh*t).

[hikayeplays]

10. SELINI

A puzzle platformer with an incredibly strong visual identity and surprisingly simple controls that lend themselves to quite some flexibility despite having only very basic option that force the game to use timed platforms to add variety. I like the "follow mommy" first levels and the light mechanic although I may have wished to have a bit of story? Tied to those visuals.

8/10

Wishlisted

11. Rabbit&Steel

A dungeon crawler/rhythm game with very bare bones functionalities in which the cutesy aesthetic of the bunny fighter is meant to do the heavy lifting since it does not have a dungeon proper and instead you float kicking other cat fighter girls. Not bad, not good, very very barebones.

6/10

12. Froggonit

An isometric/pixel art puzzle game in which you play as a little frog who wishes adventure and now has to rediscover their island one tile as a time. The game is basic but the controls feel smooth and the humour is quite spot on at times other than being cute.

6/10

E to dance

13. 100 steps

A point and click dungeon crawler roguelite with procedurally generated floors and tile movement. It is quite nice, the tile movement is fluid and remember a board game and the art style is a mix between hollow knights and hades with some very interesting concepts. The controls are not the fluidest expecially on controller or to switch between weapins and potions and walking but it works enough.

7/10

14. Super Power Racing

A fun little top down pixel racing game with nice clear graphics and good nostalgia camp music and sounds. Despite me being very bad at racing games and not enjoying them very much I found the controls to be fluid and sensitive and the theme variations, like the obstacles/weapons of the power race tracks to give a much needed sense of novelty between laps.

6.5/10

15. Battlecore Robots

A mecha themed beat em up tournament game with fast paced action fantastically supported by tight and intuitive controls. The movement in all four dimensions is crisp and precise and it allows, with some practices, for some really fun combos with the various weapons and abilities and acrobatics, only the UI is a tad clunky with the "hold down button for x second" functionalities but other than that very very good and with a nice aesthetic

8.5/10

Wishlisted

16. Wild Country

This is a concept that should not work and yet works too well. Animal crossing but city building but actually a deck building tournament in which you duke it out to become the new major. The "duel" aspect is really fun with a series of strategy tile buildings. The controls are pretty easy with keyboard and mouse and despite the graphics outside the tile building being...basics the game is both pretty fun and pretty good looking. I wanted to play way more

8/10

Wishlisted

17. The Ancients

Survival sim game set in the cave age. While the concept may be interesting the controls are awful and clunky and unintuitive.

4/10

18. Rolling Fur

Do you remember that game you used to play back in school where you had to flip a rectangle thru a hole? This game is the same exact concept but with a cubic cat. The commands are responsive and the art style is cute but nothing to write home about. Not for me but I'm sure some of you are gonna scratch the autism itch on it.

6/10

19. Dread Weight

A horror visual novel/text-based game with a baffling mix of semi realistic art and anime characters cutout and dating sim mechanics. The horror part was quite good if a bit rushed but the mix was giving me whiplash. Bonus point for muscle mommy but man I'm utterly baffled

5/10

Steam Next Fest October 2023

Alright let's see as many Demos as possible!

1. Ocelot Sunrise

A nice roguelite bullet hell with various levels (only one playable in the demo) and a sci fi scavengers story and a comics/borderlandesque aesthetic that makes the cutscenes very nice to look at. The background music is a bop too. Alas the controller controls are not completely implemented yet and quite clunky to use in a mixed way, however the power ups and the weapons seems really fun to play with.

7.5/10

Wishlisted

2. ASTRA: Knights of Veda

On first impact a bread and butter jrpg with all the pros and cons of the genre like huge bazongas! Regardless of which category you consider them in. The artstyle in game and in battle is expecially nice with this sort of "dress-up paper doll" look that sets it somewhat apart and the cutscene style for the evil faction and the dream realm is quite good. The controls are nice and intuitive enough although it needs a mouse to click on certain things like equipment. The voice acting is good enough? I'd say but the audio levels mixing leaves to be desired in some parts. Now the cons: it required to make an account even to play the demo and it has an obligatory post download 8 gb of additional content, there are "daily reward" and buyable cosmetics but most aggravating of all (for me) there are minutes of cutscenes every 5 minutes or so of gameplay.

5/10

Not for me

3. Estate Agent Simulator

The first bugged demo. The second prompt for the italian tutorial popped up with this half baked and definitely not italian way and had to restart the game in english

The gameplay itself is fine? For a game like this? Certainly not particularly nice nor particularly bad but the camera bobbing is atrocious, it gave me nausea after I cleaned the first house, the game was also completely silent. I'll add a +1 for the promise of a pettable dog

4/10

4. Lose CTRL

A surreal satirical you rage you lose puzzle game in which you play as Billy as he tries to climb the corporate ladder to reach a segway. The game mess with your controls and your mind in a mix between Get Over It and Brazil (1985). The split screen capabilities intrigue me although I wonder how it could work with keyboard and mouse controls. The general style is charming and distinctive but also amateurish and rough around the edges. To try, at least once.

7/10

Wishlisted

5. Leila

Leila is a chill and relaxing kinda lofi click and drag puzzle game that goes back the memory lane in a coming of age(?) Tale for a middle aged woman, the titular Leila. The puzzles shown have a nice variety between styles and difficulties, and they are certainly meant for someone looking to lubricate those neurons. The art and the background music are pretty nice and the voice acting is quite good too. If you like click and drag puzzles I feel that wishlisting this one (and always trying the demo before) maybe one of your best bets so far.

8/10

6. Tales from the Dancing Moon

An old-school-ish rpg inspired by runescape in which you run around doing errands for the townsfolk and at the same time try to unravel the mistery of your memory loss, the presence of a smartphone that you can use to take photos in game gives it a mild isekai flavour but not too strong based on what I've seen. The controls appear fluid enough and the sound design while not spectacular does it's job. The character creation menu is surprisingly in-depth for this kind of games.

6.5/10

Runescape wannabe

7. There's Always a Madman: Fight or Flight

A text based spy adventure in which you play as this super special agent and have to choose between different options both in action and dialogue. While the story itself seems nice the absence of any voice action or any background image besides some solid background color makes the experience hoverwelmingly boring as you are left to click repeatedly thru text.

3/10

I yawned

8. Rocket!

A mix between a shoot them up and a roguelite bullet hell heavily inspired by galaga and the classics. While the concept is nice and seems intriguing enough and I don't doubt it may end up garnering quite the cult following like many other niche games the controls are exceedingly hard and finicky, the spaceship appear to drift incontrollably with no apparent rhyme or reason.

4/10

9. Aureole: Wings of Hope

An incredibly fun and novelty platformer/dasher game where you follow the tale of two angels while you speed and dash and jump at full force thru obstacles in the shape of a bouncy halo. The mechanics are surprisingly simple and incredibly flexible at the same time, creating a gameplay that can be adjusted to your own needs, I appreciated particularly the ability to "freeze" while you charge a jump or a dash. Despite not being a platformer lover I absolutely adored this little demo to bits, so far the only that has left me truly wanting more.

9/10

Wishlisted

[just-horrible-things]

Masterpost - Loiral and Marcus

I find the drow are always a pleasure to work with. They have enough fire in them to make breaking them a satisfying challenge. They are quick learners and they know what to expect, which is always a thrill. With most subjects what you see first is fear of the unknown. That’s all well and good, but the fear of the known-too-well adds some pleasant variety. And of course you don’t lose the element of uncertainty. There are more than enough ways to hurt a person to keep anyone guessing. It is a thing of beauty to watch that haughty pride at war with the intelligence and experience that tells them that the fastest route to relief is to submit.                                                                         – Marcus Arcuarius

Summary: Fantasy story of a drow petty noble (Loiral, pronounced LWAH-ral) captured and enslaved by a powerful human priest from the surface (Marcus) for mysterious and nefarious purposes. Though initially defiant, Loiral quickly learns to bend the knee or be broken.

Caution for: slavery, fantasy specieism, classism, gore

Writing: 1) Capture - i, ii 2) The Holding Facility - i, ii, iii, iv, v 3) An Excursion - i, ii, iii, iv, v 4) A Lesson In Respect - i, ii, iii 5) What Slaves Do - i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi 6) Flight - i, ii, iii  7) Recapture - i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi 8) Routine - i, ii

Tags: 'Verse: #loiral and marcus Characters: #marcus arcuarius, #loiral al’sekath, #aeliira

Current status: Inactive

Masterpost updated 04/10/2023