#hylics mentioned

[untitledddddddddddddd]

WAYSIDE DRAWINGS BECAUSE I LOVE WAYSIDE!!!!!!!!!!

[sentientstump]

i just think that somsnosa

[nightwere-mojo]

Hylictober 2024 week 1 - Boots

[oofermcooferson]

Older art from May of 2023. Took a trip to New York, saw Hadestown and loved it. As soon as I got out of that theater, I made an au where the gang were a bunch of Broadway actors.

[whentheydied]

scintillation

[karen360-x3]

...Wayne you idiot (OG meme here )

[dread-knight]

Hylictober 2023 - TV & Melting

[adrian-sheppy]

wayne and ken and gordon drink the juice that makes you ace

theyee friends see my vision NOW.beams it into your brian

[waspinators]

hmm

[strangeryetstranger]

i think theres something wrong with my brain because everytime i either get into a media or re-get into a media my brain is like 'you should mix that with pokemon' like how the fuck do i make bloodborne pokemon. how the fuck do i- actually hylics pokemon kinda works. ay yo holy shit. retreating into my den i know what im doing today

[theearthmagicguy]

Oh I think I saw this chair in Funger Termina!

Why the fuckdja make it??

???

[thypandatetor]

I don't think I ever made an individual post with knitted baby Wayne. Hmm...

I was watching a stream of Lil Cunchy playing Hylics 2 a couple months ago and mentioned that chibi Wayne looks knitable, so she challenged me to do so. And like... Anything to impress animators I respect...

I put wires in him so he could pose!

[braxiations]

Hylics Analysis - The Significance of Hylem and the Afterlife

Hi, and welcome to another Hylics analysis! I’m hesitant to call it a theory because I’ll spend the majority of this post going over what I believe to be the canon intent. Most of this stuff is, in my opinion, pretty grounded, but I’ve seen so little discussion about it online. I aim to unpack the ways hylem unexpectedly appears in Hylics, its importance to the overall story, and what its true source may be.

Hylethems

The first, and really only direct mention of hylem comes from some workers in the caves of New Muldul. The workers are seen cutting away at pink cave formations called hylethems. Specifically, they cut away at odd tendrils protruding from the hylethems presumably called fronds (which is what they’re called internally.) The fronds themselves writhe, indicating that they may be alive. The minecarts of the miners are full of these fronds. One of the miners describes hylethems as “hylem-rich cave formations.” Another, crucially, says the following:

“Glove lathing. Burrito synthesis. All starts with hylethems. Find a rich vein, translates to a lotta bones. Lotta bones.”

This gives us two uses for hylem or hylethem fronds. The fact that the fronds are what’s being harvested might suggest they’re the items of value, not hylem itself, but this is pretty unclear. Maybe the fronds are full of the hylem? Really, the two might as well be synonymous for our analysis today.

While we’re here, I’d like to take the time to clear up a piece of dialogue that I see confuse people, being an NPC in New Muldul that describes the town’s primary industry as “calthemite husbandry.” I’ve seen people attribute the word “calthemite” to both insects and juice beasts, but calthemites are a real thing: they’re cave formations. Given that the harvesting of hylethems is shown in New Muldul, I think it’s safe to say that’s what they’re talking about here.

Standard uses of hylem

Hylem is stated to have two uses: burrito synthesis and glove lathing, though the wording of miner’s speech suggests they might have many more. Burrito synthesis is odd but rather self-explanatory, and implies hylem might have healing properties for both flesh and will (this’ll be important later.) Glove lathing is more interesting. “Lathe” and “lathing” have multiple, kind of convoluted meanings, but its usage here suggests either coating or shaping the gloves. This could either mean the gloves are coated in hylem, likely as a liquid, or the gloves are cut out of pleather and shaped by… the fronds? It’s really unclear. 

The description of the tendril hand item is “The people of Mocetul shun lathing, and for gloves rely on other processes.” The long gloves are also described as “standard gestural combat garbs.” It seems clear that gloves are what enable the use of gestures, but whether or not lathing is responsible for this is questionable. The fact that the tendril hand was made without lathing suggests hylem isn’t critical to the use of gestures, however it might imply that it's the usual process that enables them. Regardless, lathing is clearly common and important and hylem is what allows it to happen.

What’s a Hylemxylem anyway?

Ah, the Hylemxylem, Gibby’s associated fortress. Before we discuss it, let’s take a look at its name. First is the word “hylem,” which is a term unique to Hylics (and also apparently the name of a music artist,) and “xylem.” In simplified terms, xylem is a sort of transport tissue within plants that takes in and distributes water and minerals throughout the plant. With this in mind we can basically translate the word “Hylemxylem” into “thing that takes in hylem.”

[Before we move on, I want to suggest an origin for the word “hylem.” This is largely conjecture on my part, but I believe Mason knew he wanted Gibby’s fortress to absorb a substance and wanted to use the word “xylem” in there. Needing a name for the substance and wanting it to rhyme, he added the “-lem” suffix. To complete it, he took from the game’s own title: Hylics. Why would he do this? Well, as we’ve seen glimpses of, hylem might be very, very important to the nature of this world.]

So, the Hylemxylem xylems hylem, that much seems pretty clear. With this in mind we can identify the pink goop flowing throughout the hylemxylem.

Seen throughout the hylemxylem is this strange, pink liquid, highly resembling that seen in the Afterlife. It fills many of the rooms, spews out of spouts, and appears to flow into the fortress via the tubes descending down into the waters. It’s this very liquid, described as “the terrestrial juice,” that Gibby floats in before his transformation. This, as implied by the name “Hylemxylem” itself, is hylem. But where does all this hylem come from? Of course, it’s possible that the tubes of the Hylemxylem bore into the ground, sapping hylem away from the Hylethems. However, we don’t need to speculate on this. In one of the few changes to the environment during the course of Hylics 2, we see where the tubes lead…

The Afterlife

That’s right. A detail I see often overlooked is that, after the raising of the Hylemxylem, many tubes appear in the Afterlife, each flowing with the pink substance that comprises the sea, up into the sky. These tubes only appear after the ‘Xylem is raised, implying they’re the very tubes pumping hylem into the fortress. A quick glance at the game’s internals confirms this, calling them “Afterlife Xylem Columns.” I really hope this isn’t ambiguous at this point: the pink liquid within the Hylemxylem is the same liquid that fills the Afterlife.

Thanks to Happy/S For Sprinkles for this photo! Also, it's a lot easier to see in-game that these tubes are flowing with the sea's liquid. You can pretty clearly see it flowing upwards.

Now, this leads me to two conclusions I hope you find reasonable:

Wait, we very clearly see the tubes of the ‘Xylem go into the ocean. Is the Afterlife in the ocean? Maybe in some weird bubble? That’d explain why there are fish flopping around in H1. Maybe it’s an underwater cave??

More relevantly, if the pink goo in the Hylemxylem is hylem, and the pink goo in the Hylemxylem is also the Afterlife goo, that must mean the Afterlife goo is hylem. X = Y and Z = Y. Therefore X must equal Z.

This is, to me at least, super interesting. Despite never being outright stated, it is very, VERY heavily implied that the sea of the Afterlife is hylem. This sea’s strange waters, mind you, comprises the pools and fountains we fall into to reach the Afterlife. It also comprises the sea that spits us out when we die. If it is true that X = Y = Z, then hylem is not only responsible for the burritos we eat, the gloves we use, or the seemingly the ascension of Gibby, but also for the repeated reincarnation of our party members. Remember how I earlier noted that burritos, synthesized from hylem, heal flesh and will? Well, that may be an extension of the life giving, healing properties of hylem as found in the Afterlife! That’s why, I believe, Mason named the substance of hylem after the games themselves. Without hylem, the story of the games wouldn’t be possible. It's a foundational element to the world itself.

This also explains the weird fixation the game has on hylem. While Mason might have some worldbuilding hidden in random item descriptions or one or two sets of NPC dialogue (the only piece of non-relevant worldbuilding mentioned more than once being Amulom,) hylem has 5, completely separate NPCs that talk about it upright (not even counting the other NPCs that talk about calthemites.) Hylethem fronds are even seen scattered around the places that Smuldunde visits for some strange reason. This conclusion, that hylem enables the events of the game, explains why; it isn’t irrelevant worldbuilding. Hell, you could even view the hylethems being mentioned so early on as foreshadowing for the Hylemxylem itself and Gibby’s ascension from the terrestrial juices. Like the ‘Xylem does, it seems likely that hylelthems sap hylem away from the Afterlife!

Conclusion

So, that concludes the analysis! Hylem is a powerful substance that enables the use of gloves and burritos, sustains the Hylemxylem, and allowed Gibby to ascend. Given the evidence we have, I think this is the conclusion intended by Mason himself. Perhaps we were all intended to figure this out on our own, but the abstract and indirect story-telling method of Hylics 2 obscured this. Hell, I’ve seen a ton of misconceptions about the Accretion despite things the game pretty directly shows us. Maybe I should make a post about that? Anyways, I hope you enjoyed! I might make an addendum to this post as well going over some specific ideas like how the Moon might have processed hylem and why only Gibby ascends through it. After that I’ll probably cover either the symbols used in the world of Hylics or some speculation on Viewax. I might even put up a poll on which I should cover first!

[boiled-bronze]

Decided to redraw a very old Hylics fanart, from when I first got my drawing tablet!

It never stops amazing me just how much I have improved, though I have to admit I did cheat a little bit with the background, I made it with the help of Blender intead of drawing it all, but I guess it still goes to show my general artistic development or whatever

Date-less version of the new one, rambles, and comparisons between sketches below

I am really happy with how this one turned out, well, I've been quite proud of my art in general recently actually. I don't know why I was so patient with this one, I spent quite a few hours just refining the lineart, doing some lineweight around the outer borders of the most important individual "pieces" and purely black shading in a few parts. Barely noticable, really, but generally I'm too lazy to do that, not to mention the armor has a decent ammount of detail for what I'm used to. God forbid I every draw Dedusmuln with the same design twice.

Also, look at their respective sketches!! I don't know how or when this change happened but look at how much more natural the new one looks!!!! I remember back when I was making the first one I really hated how wonky my humanoids looked but I never understood how to properly fix it, but it seems I just needed some practice! About three years of it so far, and I'm sure I will keep getting better (and so you can too!)

[amphibizzy]

bluesky functions among a lot of false positives in all aspects of both moderation and curation. a net is cast, there is bycatch, and those get appealed/manually reviewed. a curation or moderation list should only cover an amount of users their own staff can handle basic vetting and appeals of, and thats generally the case for trusted ones. lower stakes things happen in curation, like say a feed that pulls posts mentioning "hylics" and tagged hylics, accidentally netting posts about Gnosticism and not the funny rpg game. manual removals/exclusions or inverted keywords is the work that must go into it

there are several current attack vectors, for example actively turning stuff like follow4follow trains into honeypots (where the followed account is then rebranded and its followers shamed or put on a list alongside it, worse people nuke-block everyone who follows it) and "mistakes" in untrusted, malicious labels/lists. this is a likely, malicious-user-driven reason why a large pattern of people could be roped into a fast moderation decision which is cleaned up in post there are users who make the platform more functional and there are ppl who make it worse. both have nearly the same tools, which are decently powerful but can be slow to update or have short outages

i wrote too many thought tags and then had even more thoughts so im gonna readmore here. i just wanna be productive in the decision if whether or not u wanna deal with joining and curating bluesky and its all interesting to me. yap yap

example: possible that the child safety bans picked up some people who were maliciously added to certain lists that then get targeted for reports

that but also *POTENTIALLY* some could be the maga ppl making fake trans etc accounts- deliberately infiltrating and trolling and being put on horrible subject lists willingly. there are also certain Harassment Websites who are currently targeting users in mostly alternate ways. it could also straight up just be people finding a list of a kind of person and mass reporting everyone on it

that is happening- just not sure if its part of it. the point is that there is a lot of bad actors

i have LIGHTLY looked into it and am not stating fact, but because of this context i think its is extremely reasonable that the ppl caught up in the bans are mistakes via user-driven malicious action, especially with the appeals that have gone through so far. theres so many things that are just kinda frontline messes that could be taken out of context. I DO NOT DOUBT THAT I COULD BE WRONG so dont be annoying @ me if i am. theres still info i wanna talk about in here but the whole platform is more complicated than the moderation ppl here are used to which ranges from fuck all to some awful shit. even here, a specific recent shitty tumblr ban wave had an extra shit layer of false positives, and i personally saw successful appeals of those.

on top of all of this, bluesky was gaining a million users a day for a bit there (and im shocked its functioning as okay as it is), theres no way any of this is gonna be perfect for awhile, and its going to look bad. but i think its worth continuing to curate if you dont have a need for a platform like bluesky, then no pressure to go there. i do personally consider tumblr and bluesky to be the two peaks rn. insta maybe a lesser if ur already established (but eugh, lol) bluesky is similar to twitter in structure but with easier curation (fully understanding the difference between each type took me a hot minute lol), plus a user driven effort to vibe reset from twitter by pulling away/cutting off combative interactions, muting and blocking instead of butting heads, more and noticeably less hostile interactions everywhere i look.

and imo feeds to organize your own posts is huge, not as easy to pass through like tumblrs archive but far better than nothing. ill b making a few categories of my art into feeds

just hesitate a bit before getting scared away from another basket to put your eggs bcs of some secondhand info. look into it because it could be interesting. bluesky doesnt cut off logged out users (another plus) so you might be able to look into things directly

update from me 10 mins later: i went to take my own advice lol and i found a relevant official statement from one hour ago

[water-mellie-seeds]

Birthday haul ???

1! Pyramid steve no hat (i will make him onw irs ok) from esther!!! Bettee image of Funny letter coming later. Irs jn the envelope and i cant move anymore And plasma ball from esther that i need to get batteries for but i Will show when i do i loooove plasma ball

2: ! I dojt have everything from momo pictured but here is the shirt that i got from faer and he got me silly ghoasts And a gameboy keychain And a haunted apple fanta and. There were other things i believe. Balloon and confetti ( i got glitter bombed) and a b&w picture of tylers silly pixmix AND a happy meal toy silly thing♡

3: stupid giant pin i bought

4:

M.HAAHHDKWHWLHDN nmshskdhskdh hohhhohckahdkahd mtt figure. .dhkahdks//=?÷& parents

As well as bad end theater from mica, several game from momo ( most notably hylics😈😈😈) and! Free drink from the pro palestine bubble tea shop ive mentioned before 😈

And

There are other things maybe but i cannot Think. Of them