#established IP

[snackugaki]

a return to square 1

now that we’ve all been thoroughly blasted by the Rise movie I can take another stab at being more thoughtful in designing Venus for Rise. 

first, a refresher:

prologue | part 1 | part 2 | part 2 ½ | part 3 | part 4a | part 4b (ish?)

supplementary doodles: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

just gonna go full AU divergence, let whoever Big Mama’s Assistant be whoever (after thinking it over, it does sorta seem to more likely it’s Jennika), still gonna keep her start as an initiate, acolyte-adjacent, monk-ish kid running around in the Hidden City, ward to the crow yokai who adopted her as a foundling. 

We never saw who Draxum’s bodyguard was, they were alluded to during a crew discussion only (unless I missed a design reveal somewhere). in the same vein that me and a bunch of others I’ve seen that think Assistant is Jennika based... pretty much on those claws at the end of her hands, then the bodyguard could be mostly likely be Venus. i’m basing that theory on the very very VERY scant information we have from the show, 1) Draxum is adept at the mystic arts from magical item manipulation to summoning to.... I dunno, what do you call it when he set up the memory dive into Splinter’s mind? he can draw magic circles and operate them as seen when he had to move the boys to another memory.

2) dude wears Venus’ signature cyan post-team switch, can’t scream foreshadowing louder than that

3) Draxum straight up opens a portal to another plane to let the Hamatos go in and snatch up sword!Karai, original Venus taught the boys how to dreamwalk and guided them through a dream plane, ehh? ehhhhhh? *eyebrow waggle*

4) to me, the most record scratch, eyebrow quirking part: he uses armored bees just as Venus did in the original Next Mutation show. Venus’ armored bees and Draxum’s both were used to ensnare and trap opponents. though to concede, Venus’ exploded into a sticky goo, Draxum’s apparently auto-dug into the ground and sprouted as vines

the trip up for me in designing is what exactly “Draxum’s bodyguard” means. the first time I thought about it I had imagined as Draxum taking a younger Venus under his wing, teaching her (give or take realizing she was one of his anti-humanity soldier experiments), becoming his protege of sorts, prrrobably committed to his cause, becoming adept enough in both her mystic and physical prowess and takes it upon herself to protect him.. just real wuxia tropey about it.

but like... Draxum’s cool with hiring muscle, re: Garm and Freki so why wouldn’t he also just hire a bodyguard. it would make more sense this way but it depends on some characterization I’m shaky on for Draxum. he believed in his cause enough to go to Optimus, Arcee and Megatron (I forgot what those giant head characters were called only that their VAs voiced those transformers sry kids) for support. after that, I thought that maybe he’d be a little more discerning about who he recruits to bolster his plans which would be a little more lenient to my original idea. 

...

fuck it we ball au divergence, wuxia tropey protege > disciple > adamant protector pipeline it is.

[calatianlinguist]

Thank you for your amazing contributions to the documentation of Hyrule! @becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys you have earned a well-deserved follow from the Hylian Linguistic Society!

Okay so as you all know I’m extremely cool and clever and also a published scientist, so let me tell you about my latest research.

In the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the continent of Hyrule is one of the biggest open-world maps ever created, even beating games like Skyrim and the Witcher. But, HOW BIG?

Obvs it’s very hard to get a precise size because the in-game map does not have a scale bar (terrible map skills from that cartographer). HOWEVER, if you climb the Ridgeland Tower there’s a guy up there who is a weeaboo for the Rito, who begs you to glide for him in the name of “research” (what a fucking dweeb am I right?) If you do so, he tells you how many metres you’ve flown before landing. This includes if you simply step off the tower and plummet to the ground in a straight line, and happily for my in-game ankles, the tower is surrounded by water to cushion the many landings I made to bring you this information.

Ten drops gave me a mean average height for the tower at 63.83, median 64.2, so I’m taking it as 64 for ease of Maffs.

For a flight from the tower, I picked a strip of land on the same contour line as the tower base and then flew along that. There was a slightly higher standard deviation in twelve flights because sometimes Link would step nicely over the edge and start gliding and other times he would yeet himself bodily into the sky and then start, and one time gave me an outlier because I got zapped by an electric Wizzrobe that saw me. But over all, flying the same line and hitting pretty much the same landing spot, I got an average of 250.1 metres. I took this as 250, again for ease of Maffs.

Pythagoras’ theorem hit then, so I worked out that the distance from the base of the tower to the landing spot was 242 m. Putting that into Adobe Dreamworks, I could then translate that per pixel of the map I was working with (2.42 metres per pixel.) From there, that allowed me to calculate the area of Hyrule’s land mass, roughly, in pixels and then convert it back, so having done that GUESS WHAT FOLKS

Hyrule is 25,454 km2, or 15,816 sq mi.

Wales, by contrast, is 20,735 km2, or 12,884 sq mil.

So the continent of Hyrule is, it seems, bigger than my entire country to the tune of about one and a quarter times the size.

Thank you all for listening, I will now take questions.

[sarcastic-clapping]

sometimes i open the replies to a post on here and remember that some of you people are so insane and out of touch with reality that you've invented a new and substantially worse subspecies of chronically online, the likes of which scientists have never seen, and i have renewed appreciation for my beautifully curated coven of beloved mutuals who huddle around me and protect me from having to gaze upon your derangement on a daily basis

[lucydacusgirl]

I feel like popculture atm is like overrun with people who are already famous and established and are therefore surrounded by yes men. Can we bring back editing.

[snotklown]

also i dont think video game movies have gotten better at all i think theyve gotten more forgettable and bland which is. arguably worse

[pinksilvace]

.

[gamesception]

So I finally got around to seeing the new Pixar movie, Elemental, and it's pretty great actually? Like, I know the marketing made it look very generic. The trailers seem to give the whole movie away, make you feel like you've not only already seen this movie, you've seen it a dozen times. But believe me, that's not true. There's a lot more going on with the main character and her relationship to her family and her culture and the pressure she's under as a second generation immigrant trying to honor the sacrifices her parents made for her sake. And the love interest water guy who seems so deeply mediocre in the trailers actually has a lot more going for him as well, putting so much effort in and so much on the line. Like, yes, it's a different-worlds odd-couple romance with a kind of strained racial / immigrant metaphor, but it's a really good and earnest and heartwarming version of that.

And it Just Looks Breathtaking - the colors, the use of transparency, the water and fire effects especially, the way the characters are always flickering or bubbling or flowing, every part of them always in motion even when they're standing still. If you're an animation fan you'll be watching it in awe wondering 'how is that even possible', which, I mean after having the same feelings watching Spiderverse 2, it really is a rich summer for animation.

Sure, from a business perspective Elemental looks like such an obvious mistake. And maybe from that angle it was. I mean, to spend so much money on an original movie with an honestly rather subdued plot and concept - like, there's a reason romance movies are generally relatively low budget affairs - and then to throw it up against Spiderverse 2 of all things? The executives at Disney are out of their goddamn minds. But as irrational as Elemental's budget might have been, every penny of it is on display. If you're an animation fan you really shouldn't miss the chance to see it on the big screen

[bbbigforehead]

omg it's going to be another andromeda i was so focused on anthem's L i forgot abt andromeda

[mizukagami-takamagahara]

I 100% agree with your tags about what could have made EE look a little better. I really didn't mind RR as much as EE probably because it at least retained the Blazblue aesthetic and style. RR felt like a weird knockoff Blazblue game, BBDW was an actual Blazblue VN dressed up as a gatcha game (my possibly unpopular opinion is that if BBTAG can be considered a legitimate part of the series so can BBDW), EE doesn't even feel like a knockoff it just feels like Blazblue characters in a completely unrelated game. And from what has been revealed about EE's story this may literally be the case as in that is the whole plot. That I feel is what specifically gives off the "parading around the corpse of the Blazblue franchise" feel to me.

A quick salt warning; I aim to fall somewhere in the range of neutrality on this blog, particularly when dealing with Entropy Effect. I want people to be able to enjoy the game fairly and to feel safe sharing that excitement here! I'm willing to try to meet the game on fair, even ground. That said, when it comes down to my own biased feelings, I would've married BBDW if I could've, and I already have some pretty strongly negative feelings about the studio behind Entropy Effect. So I have a bad taste in my mouth about this upcoming game. I don't plan on being particularly harsh in this post, but I will be sharing my uncensored opinions here. No disrespect meant.

Now. Carl. Oh my god, Carl. I'm dying, Carl.

I played Revolution Reburning while waiting for BBDW to launch, trying to scratch the "upcoming game hype" itch, and the gameplay was super fun! But damn did it leave me with a serious hatred for the game itself and the studio behind it. The game has a story mode that is poorly translated, horribly bastardized/watered down, and just... just really bad. I'd respect it as a fan game, but the fact that it's a legitimate thing just pushes my buttons too damn much. Call it a pet peeve.

Again, the game is fun! It's cool! I really enjoyed playing it! There is not an ounce of doubt in my mind that Entropy Effect will be fun as hell, because this studio knows how to make a fun game.

But I really, really wish they weren't involved in BlazBlue. As I mentioned elsewhere, a lot of my rage comes from this sense that what I personally love about the BlazBlue series [the story, the setting, the world Mori has crafted since his youth] has been placed in a zero-sum game against another totally enjoyable aspect of the series [gameplay, and if I'm feeling bitter, the whims of ArcSys's marketing team.] It's not like these two facets actually need to be opposed to one another. Hell, they should be flourishing in tandem. But after everything that happened with BBDW and Mori leaving the studio, I can't let go of the idea that projects that focus more on gameplay and consumer appeal [such as EE] are being pursued "instead of" or "at the cost of" the parts of the series I love the most. So. I get salty. I do, genuinely, hope that time proves me wrong on this.

You, Carl, mentioned EE's story. Like you said, everything we've seen of it so far suggests this isn't even a real "spinoff" title for BlazBlue, in the sense that spinoffs like RR and CrossTag told their stories using the same building blocks as BlazBlue's setting. I personally don't interpret them as existing within the same canon, but they're undoubtedly using the same material.

Entropy Effect's story and setting seem to be entirely original. They look interesting, but I'm stuck with this feeling of "why the hell did they make this a BlazBlue title, and not just an original one?" Maybe when the game releases it will surprise me and I'll understand, but at the moment, with my current levels of saltiness, it feels like a heartless cash grab.

We know there's some level of turbulence behind the scenes at ArcSys around the BlazBlue IP, since BBDW's failure and Mori's suspicious departure. We also know that in the current media landscape, a lot of executive heads are rampantly refusing original projects and insisting on pumping out installments of franchises that already have a name and a following. I don't have any information on whether or not ArcSys is struggling with this, but it's been a growing problem in the gaming industry for years now.

The worst case of this in my memory is the Dead Rising franchise, another one of my all-time favorite games. Differing visions for the franchise and an unwillingness to support new properties let to an absolute mess on the development side of things, and ultimately the death of the series.

Note; If you're interested in what happened to Dead Rising, Did You Know Gaming has a wonderful video on it.

With that experience in my memory, I'm worried about the future of BlazBlue. I wonder if it was always the plan to make Entropy Effect a BlazBlue title, or if it was originally pitched as its own IP, but rejected unless it could be tied in to an established franchise.

[todayisafridaynight]

rgg studios addicted to making daigo support, i'm p sure most of his rggo cards are support too, no? (i say that with confidence but i'm not sure that's actually true now that i've typed it haha well all the rggo daigo cards i've seen are support at least)

dps glass cannon would suit him though - the only rgg character to get downed by one bullet

DPS GLASS CANNON IS HIS CALLING rgg doesnt know their man like i do. theyre nerfing him on purpose to keep the game balanced

[ipcearn]

I wish the Traveller spoke more often

[theconfusedartist]

ok, so

there’s two posts I’m gonna be making for the assassin’s creed rewrite au. one which is just a long post about how the Toba catastrophe happened in the rewrite, as well as some supplementary info about the PoEs and why Desmond was chosen for his specific role.

and the actual chapter I’ve been vaguing about all this time. tbh, it’s not going to be the full chapter, just about 30 pages worth simply bc I realized that in striving for perfection, i wasn’t actually making any more posts about protocreed bc i didn’t either want to spoil anything or get people’s hopes up. but. the chapter ends when Desmond and Alex part ways, rather than when Desmond goes back to pick up Elijah like it was originally meant to, as it transitions a lot better into the next chapter which is in Alex’s PoV

honestly, I was making an assassin’s creed only rewrite before I got back into prototype but it was ideas from the wonderful @teecupangel @wolfofartblock and @neroangelus that made me rethink my entire rewrite to make it protocreed (as well as the art and fic that they had on their blogs that made me feel less like i was going crazy for even having the idea, god bless!) and @zero-saito @dezmondmyles @kingbob2-0 for asking me questions about the au when I started to get a bit lost in the overall process.

Like, if it weren’t for y’all and the entire protocreed community on tumblr, as well as my irl writers group, I probably would’ve never shared anything about this au and would’ve only spoken up about it once the game itself was complete (which is at the very least not coming out for a year, bc I need to make sure all the new mechanics i have planned work out when in testing and are fun to play) and that would’ve been kinda a bummer.

special shout outs to @saturnineaqua who was one of the first people (and my mutual!! :D) who liked my posts about AC and stuff, I was honestly so nervous about posting anything about it, I was about to delete the post minutes after making it, but your initial like was what got me to keep it up.

also, i know i didn’t tag every single person that liked my posts but I just wanna say y’all are amazing! seeing that people actually like this content made me feel better about posting it.

since AO3 is down, i’m gonna post the chapter here on tumblr and ff.net simply because it’s not nsfw and i have little chance of it ever getting taken down or anything. i’ll make a follow up link to it in the following reblog

[fleshblight]

why tf do people like christopher nolan anyways? he’s a mediocre filmmaker at best and everything he’s made since memento has been like the visual equivalent of an industry plant

[becomingpart2]

God, these tom holland spiderman movies are so bad. Nothing about this looks or feels like spiderman, this is just some random kid.

[vinyls-and-valentines]

Top 10 Scooby-Doo media to make shitty show-writers watch before making a show for the Scooby-Doo franchise

[perenlop]

annoying thing abt the velma show is that now i gotta see scattered takes about why race swapping characters in reboots is the most evil and lazy thing you can do, and that seems to have been the point considering the show laughs about it, and this is absolutely going to cause hostility towards poc