#i actually have a video in the works for this comic

[thehelltingvilleclub]

Josh Levy - Teddy Bear with a Lightsaber

He's not fat.. okay he's fat AND he's big boned.

Joshua “Josh” Aaron Levy [05/04/80] Secretary of Science Fiction AOL / Online Users: [JediJunkies_80] Theme Songs: Science Fiction Double Feature - Me First and Gimmie Gimmies | Ghost - Mystery Skulls | Aliens Exist - blink-182

Favorite Shit: Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr. Who, Twilight Zone, Kaiju, Stargate SG-1 Battlestar Galactica, Klingon, Alternate Earths, Firefly, Planet of the Apes, 12” Action Figures, Torrent Sites, The X-Files, Babylon 5, Akira, Farscape, Boba Fett

Despite his (well earned) grievances, he still hangs around these fuckers cause he can't really seem to find solace anywhere else, even online spaces. He didn't expect to find any enjoyment out of going to tournaments with Jerry, but an excuse to get good city food and walk around the comic shops they were held in were enough in his book to keep him coming back. He even managed to find a space themed tabletop he likes to play, and... y'know.. maybe other reasons..

But we don't talk about him shit uh IT UH--

Never tell me the odds.

Oh Joshybear my beloved you poor antagonistic shitsmear.

His mom is in the hospital a lot more often or just straight up bed bound, which makes him kind of never want to leave his room out of guilt.

Yes, this dingus still blames himself for it, though it's not like his father helps with that.

Whenever he isn't holed up in his room, he's trying to drag somebody anybody out of the house to do something. Anything to get his mind off of stupid emotional shit--

He often goes with Jerry into the inner city when he has tournaments, especially when nobody else really wants to go. Sometimes he even covers Jerry bus fair or just borrows his mom's car.

However, this fucker HATES driving. It makes him the most anxious he's ever been his entire life. It is nothing like video games and it is nothing like the Millennium Falcon, that's for damn certain.

He also hates trying to park because he is deathly afraid of hitting the side of someone's car with the door.

Josh actually doesn't meet Matt at the same time as Jerry, surprisingly enough. Jerry introduces them when they bump into each other at the shop for a non-tournament related reason.

Josh nearly had a panic attack on the spot but it's fine

The moment he heard Matt had never seen the Star Wars films he nearly lost his mind.

This became the entire basis of Josh's attachment to the dude: "I have to show him the cinematic masterpiece that is this damn franchise."

And that's all it is. Mhmm. Totally. Don't ask why his hands are clammy and he's even more show-offy than normal whenever he's around. Don't.

please?

He works with his dad at their Synagogue as essentially a secretary and sound technician, but hey, it lets him write his fanfictions Reimaginings and scroll through blogs in peace, right?

And it keeps him out of his dad's hair and the house, so it's kind of a win-win-win.. win?

I love him

I want to eat him.

A DOUBLE POST???? HJGDSAJKHDKSJALHDLK You're welcome

Also don't worry guys, you'll get a WHOLE lot more info on Matt soon. He's not an affiliated member of the club and I didn't have many drawings of him (despite my.. excessive notes...) so I'm cranking them out as I post this.

NOW LOVE THE BIG MAN ON CAMPUS DAMNIT.

also hi I know his pants look weird shut up nothing else looked better.

[fllnseraphim]

Alien Stage and Religion

I watched the popular Alien Stage youtube series a while back and was interested about how often "God' was mentioned. Keep in mind, I am not a fan and casually watched the avaliable videos and searched a few things up here and there, so my view...will be surface level. It will also probably be a reach and none of it is canon.

I'll start with Anakt garden, a sort of music school for the human children, which teaches them musical literacy and prepares them to praticipate in the alien stage competitions. However, it uses a cult-like system to brainwash the human kids. They are made to believe in a false god called "Anakt". Which, apparently in the comics, Till's mother has prayed to before. Based off of this, I can assume that this God acts the same as a God from monotheistic and Abrahamic religions.

But our four main characters (Mizi, Sua, Till, Ivan) are unaffacted by the brainwashing. Because their love for others (Sua and Mizi's mutual love, Till's & Ivan's unrequited love) is more important to them than whatever Anakt God. This fuels their love for singing more than faith.

ROUND ONE: MY CLEMATIS

Mizi and Suaare the most religiously tied out of all the others. In this video, Mizi already speaks of a god. She mentions that on Earth, humans used to believe in a God and have religion; that things that couldn't be solved with human strength was just the will of God. And that these Gods (here she mentions it plural), lived in a place connected with the sky where humans simply could not reach.

She also explains that the moment humanity left, they forgot God.

Her statement is untrue. Humans are unable to forget a God or Gods. Religion and faith will always exist in humanity, because a desperate human being will look for a savior and for a God. She proves this by saying "if believing in God is human, if all I can do as a human is believe..." and she looks at Sua next to her on stage and thinks "my God, my universe".

Mizi sees Sua as her God, or I think it would be better to say as an "idol", aka a false God. The lyrics of the song also prove this as they sing in the beginning "Oh my Clematis, hope bloomed from the abyss, oh my Clematis, always be by my side."

It's fair to assume that to Mizi, Sua was that God, the one who gave her hope/made the hope 'bloom' like a clematis flower. The meaning of the clematis flower is also interesting; it means mental acquity, which could be interpreted that the feeling they had for each other made their minds clear & reasonable, causing them to be unaffected by the Anakt garden's brainwashing.

After Sua dies on stage beside Mizi, she

After Sua dies on stage, Mizi is left to sing "oh my Clematis, hope withered in the abyss" by herself. Her 'idol' had died right in front of her, and her hope vanished as well. My personal interpretation of this was that Mizi was 'punished' (not by the aliens, maybe an actual God or the universe), for believing and seeing a false God. The death of Sua in front of her forced her to realize that Sua was, in fact, not a God nor the universe. Only a mere human just as she is. It's somewhat common knowledge that many religions strictly forbid the belief in other idols or Gods.

I also believe that Sua acted like Mizi's God.

Sua is a quiet character, and in the MIZISUA video we see her eyes which are hollow with no emotion, she looks dead or like a doll. Later on, she is shown to be happy and much more alive when she is with Sua. The pleasant feelings she had beside Mizi, compared to the dull emotions in the past, may have been what caused Sua to keep Mizi in the dark about the way their world worked.

She may have wanted for Mizi to always be carefree and happy, to look at Sua with the eyes of love and hope. This also may have led Sua to unintentionally feel God-like, because Mizi saw her as her whole universe. When they sing together, she knows she's going to die, meanwhile it looks like Mizi is in the dark about this. My theory is that, Sua, as someone who is looked up to as a God, needs to sacrifice herself for Mizi. Her actions were selfish, ungodlike, in this way I see her more as an angel (off topic but it reminds me of that song that goes "always an angel, never a God" haha.)

It's actually really difficult for me to see them as lovers or girlfriends. I saw it more as co-dependancy with heavy religious undertones.

While we're on Mizi and Sua:

ROUND 5: RULER OF MY HEART

Mizi is standing on stage against Luka. And we see that Luka is provoking her by using Sua and reminding Mizi of what she had lost. Mizi becomes angry and uncharacteristic to her, she attacks Luka.

I'm tying it to my theory from above: Mizi remained to be innocent and happy while she had Sua as her 'idol' but once she loses that, she becomes aggressive and violent. It's like how many religious people are held back to commit "sinful actions" by their fear or strong love towards a God/Gods. Obviosly, consider this a stretch, it's easier to say that Mizi did that because she was traumatized.

Luka is the only character I actually found extremely interesting in the entire series.

He is clearly shown as the spawn of Satan. A manipulative, scheming and cunning individual. Luka knew about Sua's and Mizi's interesting and complex relationship; Sua being a God-like figure to Mizi. It's difficult to say from what perspective Luka is singing his lyrics from.

I believe that verse 1 and the first chorus is sung by him but as if he is pretending to be Sua. Him imitating her voice and 'transforming' into Sua in Mizi's mind as he sings, confirms this.

The lyrics talk about a "perfect subject" and "when our darkness overlap (let me take it away from you)" it's like he is mocking Sua for acting like a God, and Mizi for being the faithful subject. When they sing the chorus, repeating, "ruler of the heart", it's like he is telling Mizi that Sua was ruling over her heart and now that she is dead, her heart is empty.

Then in verse 2 when he sings "make me your God, I can give you everything", Mizi hallucinates of Sua running by and then of the dead Sua. I believe that, once again, he was singing and mocking Sua.

He made Mizi fully acknowledge once more, that she made Sua her God, a God that ended up causing her pain rather than taking it away. In this way he mocked Sua and her death as well.

With the repeat of the "ruler of my heart", following right after, it aggravates Mizi, because she knows he is right. She is angry at him for mocking them both and she attacks him.

On the other hand, you can look at it through him singing the lyrics himself, rather than through acting like Sua. If you look at him like he is the spawn on Satan, you can see that he is trying to provoke her by getting Mizi to view him as a God now that Sua is gone. He kind of reminds me of that snake from the Adam and Eve in the biblical story. Trying to lure her into darkness. He succeeds when she attacks him, and he smiles at his little victory as she is being dragged away.

FINAL: BLINK GONE

(I skipped talking about the All-In video because I don't have enough material nor enough interest in the relationship between Hyuna and Luka.)

Luka, unlike Till, is seemingly laid-back and doesn't view Till as much of an opponent. Honestly, nothing religious here either, probably due to Till being on the stage as well (sounds weird but I'll explain Till later). Luka only gets slightly shocked when he sees the reignited hope in Till's eyes after Till notices Mizi in the crowd. His plan went slightly askew and it looks like he gets kind of angry before Till finally loses.

it's the only time he's really shown any emotions aside from when he sees Hyuna. It's very obvious that Luka likes the control he has over other peoples' emotions and feelings. He finds joy in tormenting others and most likely feels like a God-like figure. Unfortunately for him, he has one constant reminder of his human nature, because he has an underlying condition only humans can have which causes his blue-purple fingers.

I'm interested to see what his story is and what exactly is going through his mind. But he's not really part of the main characters so it leaves me a bit sad.

Alas, I have no more to say about the little blonde serpent.

*Also, this was my least favorite song in the series and I didn't look much into the lyrics.

IVAN AND TILL

Ivan and Till are much more interesting than Mizi and Sua in my opinion. However, I don't see any religious undertones at all. You can say Till wanted Mizi to be something like his saviour but I would disagree.

I believe these two characters are so much more interesting and complex through a psychological perspective.

If you remember, at the very beginning I talked about Anakt garden and how the four characters weren't affected by the cult brainwashing because of their love for each other.

I take it all back now.

Mizi wasn't affected because she viewed Sua as her God.

Sua wasn't affected because she viewed Mizi as her savior from despair.

Ivan wasn't affected; I believe Ivan is the type to not believe in things like a God or Gods or maybe even hold hatred for a God. He's just so unaffected by the religious stuff, he wants what he can see and feel. He wants Till. His feelings towards Till are interesting because in Black Sorrow he sings about how to him Till is a black sorrow. There's so much more too...

Till seems to be the most rebellious of them all. I can imagine it's probably why he's not affected by the Anakt garden. His love towards Mizi is the most reminiscent of one you would see on Earth. It's one where he wants to know more about Mizi, be beside her, see her, prtoect her, etc.

Well, if you dig far and deep you might find some religious symbolism for Ivan and Till but it'll be less interesting than figuring them in a psychological way. Especially Ivan, who's incredibly mysterious.

ALIEN STAGE; SWEET DREAM

Finally, my favorite song in the entire series (alongside Nowhere, which at the time of my writing isn't officially out).

Sadly, I have not much to say about it. I don't understand why they sing about a Lord and the father. All I could come up with was that when they sing "my father, my universe" we see the children standing in Anakt garden and singing. Which leads to the interpretation that maybe this video is showing how Anakt garden works (their brainwashing methods) and that these children are singing in praise to the false Anakt God.

This and it's probably singing about Sua and her death based off of the "white dress, dyed red" lyrics, refering to the white dress Sua wore in the first stage. If you want to go further, you can say it was Sua singing about Mizi and how she viewed Mizi as her savior as well, and as a God, hence the "my father, my universe" and "Lord, when this song is over, come and save me from this please".

In which case, Mizi and Sua would be viewing each other as their God, (a 'love' doomed from the start sadly). It's an interesting view as well but I won't dig deep into that.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Overall an interesting project. Major respect to the creators, it's very creative, has great art and amazing music. I'm sure the comics are fun too and add a lot more insight to this, unfortunately I'm not interested.

If anyone actually read this, and is a bigger fan of Alien Stage, please tell me if I was wrong somewhere. Maybe the creators confirmed something as canon but I said the complete opposite haha.

All of the images are by VIVINOS from youtube.

[gamingblur103s]

my thoughts on neo the world ends with you

long but probably not very good to read. spoilers and allat

i have to admit that i have a knee-jerk resentment towards a lot of the twewy franchise outside of the original game. every port and remake and reimagining of the original is simply worse off because something fundamental about what made the original experience so fantastic is removed. granted, this is often out of necessity for it no longer being a DS game, and from a business perspective, something like the anime adaptation only makes sense when a sequel is coming out practically immediately after the anime ends. still, in regards to these rereleases, i can easily see them as things that only add to the franchise rather than remove from them. the mobile port, despite screwing with the art style and the gameplay, added new music that is on par with the original game's score. the anime adaptation, despite its truncation, occasional mischaracterization, and format the story was not made for, looks pretty great and is still fun enough to be an effective recap, which was its precise purpose. it is much harder to say the same for final remix.

final remix is a port of a port; it maintains the streamlined and exponentially less engaging gameplay of the mobile version. granted, it comes with new pins which work well enough with this new base, but that doesn't change the problems i have with these fundamentals. to make up for that (as well as bridge the gap between it and neo), final remix comes with "a new day": a continuation of the story that is necessary to experience in order to understand neo.

to be blunt, a new day is where my previously mentioned resentment began. the story it tries to tell is so emphatic on its mystery that it foregoes any actual depth. as something that is expressly being tacked onto the original story rather than its own entity, its poor quality leads to directly detracting from that story.

the reaper's game (for og twewy at least) was meant to act as a symbolic prison for neku that colored every bit of his progress. yes, his character development is fairly blatant, but if anything, it benefits from that. the framing of the reaper's game actually makes the arc more grounded in how arduous it is, in how it was so much longer than neku could have ever expected, in how it hurt in all the ways he was scared it would.

it's all perfectly embodied by the fact neku is still wearing his headphones when the original game ends on the sublime emotional note of him taking them off. it's careless storytelling, to such an extent that it colors everything that came before it as the last canonical events we get to see, made all the worse by how it (and consequently, the game) ends with Neku dying. again. the only thing that keeps me from being completely outraged at the comical disregard of his arc is that it at least doesn't take away his emotional development.

there's also the iffy characterization overall, once again to serve a mystery the plot cannot afford to answer the larger reaching implications of. mind you, there's nothing outright OFFENSIVE about its portrayals (i actually think fake joshua is the best example of characterization in the whole thing; it's fun to show what a character is by what they aren't), but it's all just so vapid. forgive me for being smarmy enough to use an antimetabole, but when you go through a whole-ass video game that has its plot function in service to its characters, playing such a blatant sequel-bait that has its characters serving the IDEA of a plot feels like a disservice to those characters. if there's a connection to be felt, it's not indicated or made stronger by what happens here; it's all for the sake of hype.

i'm rambling, but hopefully that embodies my emotions going into neo comprehensively enough. i couldn't help but see a new day as utterly counterintuitive, and as a result, i had my typical territorial nature for my favorite things cranked up to twelve. i couldn't even fully trust the original staff with this game. for a while, i couldn't shake the feeling that the franchise of twewy outside the original game tarnished my experience with it. i did everything i could to convince myself to go full "death of the author": everything that isn't the original game simply isn't canon. but that didn't feel right to me, so i still kept this deep curiosity in me. then, about two and a half years after its release, i started up neo and spent my winter break exclusively on playing it through to the end (college made it so if i didn't finish it then, i'd have to wait till the summer).

this FINALLY leads me to my thoughts on the game this post is supposed to be about.

in a word, neo feels derivative. mind you, that's by no means the full story. for certain aspects, that description is either deeply unfair or outright untrue; for others, it's frankly generous. holistically, however, it feels like a continuation of what twewy had to offer, when it could've been an evolution. this by itself would make it worse than the original, but then there are times where it can't even accomplish that much.

on that note: the presentation.

og twewy didn't just have a fantastic style, but phenomenal direction. it was a multi-pronged refutation of the idea of "style over substance". the pause menu alone is so informative, yet so digestible because of its adherence to the game's style, what with its inspired choice of music and cute lil thumbnails for all the menus you can navigate to from there. there's also accounting for what players will most often check the menu for and an effort to make such features particularly accessible. the shining examples of this are dedicating nearly all of the top screen to the map and the fact that all the combat options aside from the pins (your level, partner behavior, game difficulty) are available on that screen, rather than hidden in another menu. hell, credit where it's due, the rereleases' version of this menu are all just as good; the attempt to depixelize the visuals makes it look a little too much like a gacha game for my liking, but absolutely nothing about it was changed in such a way that it becomes harder to navigate

in general, i think ui/ux design is way more important in games than it's given credit for, though that's undoubtedly changed in recent times. it's always been listed as a separate career from other graphic design jobs, and rightfully so, but for games especially, it can't be stressed enough how much they make or break a game's flow and "vibe". fact of the matter is, a significant chunk of a player's time is going to be spent in menus no matter what. i'm sure there's exceptions to this, but all i can think of is very primitive examples like pong which obviously don't apply to what i mean. as a result, making those menus feel fun and/or natural to use elevates the entire experience in ways even the most diligent game developers might not realize. an article from gamesradar has a translated quote from persona 5 director katsura hashino which really emboldened my feelings on the topic

"In Japan, UI design is often handled by new employees. ... Top level designers are usually in charge of characters and background graphics, with the UI being secondary. I think that’s a mistake. That’s why Atlus' UI designers are paid so well."

(side note: as great as the menus in p3r mostly are, the change for the in-battle menu from the revolver chamber is criminal. i know they still kinda have it, but i still prefer what the original did)

with all that said: neo twewy has three pause menus.

the first menu, which i will call the main menu, is where most of the options that relate to gameplay are. your current objective, social network (no jesse eisenberg in sight), equipment, map, and collectible progress. each of those five things i mentioned are their own menu within this menu, except for equipment which is actually two menus in threads and pins (to be fair, just like twewy).

the second menu, which i’ll call the pause menu, has all the shit that give off system setting vibes. saving, loading, going to the title screen, volume control, subtitles (always yes), voice track (we’ll get to that), the works. worth noting that this menu has absolutely no style to it. it is laughably barebones. sauceless, if you will.

the third menu, which i’ll call the combat menu, has all the combat options twewy had at the bottom of its main menu. this menu is also pretty lacking in sauce, though i suppose there’s only so much that could be done without it feeling obtrusive.

an insane person would argue this is a good translation of the immediate access in twewy’s ui. this division means less navigation is needed for certain option and it makes clutter a non-issue (in theory). while i’m sure this is true for some, for me, it became a consistent headache which would often undermine what i think are its design goals. the main menu’s subdivisions are a good example, but i actually didn’t have too much of a problem with it since switching between the menus was fairly snappy. the pin menu, however, was COMICALLY clunky. it becomes far too difficult to navigate your list as soon as week 2 starts. neo is a home console game, so there is zero need for a single pin to take up THAT much space on the screen, especially when that same pin at a different level of progress is listed separately, effectively doubling the amount of shit you have to sift through. the attempts at giving me shortcuts and filters ended up only confusing me. by the end, i resorted to exclusively consulting the full list every time, because even if it was tedious as all hell, at least i understood it and could eventually memorize the positions of things.

granted, it’s not all bad. you can actually access the combat menu while you’re in the main menu, so you can experiment with your level and view the drop rates in the noisepedia simultaneously. this version of the map, while it takes extra steps to access, also has features twewy’s map did not, namely the ability to see the kinds of noises that spawn in an area. you can even zoom in and out! for some reason!

these undeniable improvements are not only things twewy did not have, but in some cases (i.e. the map's new features) couldn’t have. however, it’s still missing the forest for the trees; the fundamental flow is still so disjointed that these features feel like a bandage on a tumor. i fully concede this next complaint is at least partially on me, but i cannot tell you the number of times i pressed the button for the wrong menu. because each menu has important shit that i need frequent access to, my muscle memory for the “i need menu things” neurons are always confused. if i’m not wasting time by going to the wrong menu, i’m wasting time by hesitating on pressing any button in case i’m wrong.

i’m being cruel here to an extent, and i acknowledge that. in isolation, these problems aren’t even a fraction as damning as i make them out to be, but when it’s something repeatedly experienced throughout the entire game, i cannot ignore how i dread having to interact with these menus and how they color my experience. granted, you could argue these complaints refute my thesis statement on neo being derivative. it may have failed, but is this not neo trying something new? to that, i would make the distinction that this is not a case of neo evolving, but rather, simply adapting.

allow me to branch back out to the more general subject of the game’s presentation.

i am by absolutely no means going to be calling the presentation of neo bad. that might be shocking to hear after me going so hard on the ui of all things, but i'm not an idiot. the soundtrack is a delight ("the beginning of a happy life" is genuinely, no bullshit, honest to god one of my favorite vg songs i have ever heard), the visuals are never any worse than ok (fret's design is by FAR my favorite, but i also liked shoka, rindo (mainly just his mask continuing the theme of neku's "hear no evil" with "speak no evil"), and susukichi), and when the two combine, it consistently achieves a familiar vibe throughout.

VERY familiar.

again, the presentation of neo is not bad. i would go so far as to call it good overall. but i genuinely struggle to think of any way it substantially iterates on what twewy has to offer. from where i'm standing, it feels like a complete copy-paste (with one exception that i swear i will get to soon cuz this is now like my third time alluding to it).

it's a bit of a mainstream example, but when you look at something like final fantasy, there's a clear throughline in the presentation of pretty much the entire series. even at its most vibrant and cutesy, there's this particular breed of gothic or sci-fi or—and i truly do not mean this disparagingly—edgy you can feel in the foundation of a final fantasy game. conversely, even at its darkest, final fantasy has its own brand of whimsy and bombast in chocobos or summons or the bajillion leitmotifs throughout the franchise. through it all, final fantasy has maintained a strong fundamental identity, but has managed to express it in a myriad of ways that, rather than dilute said identity, only bolster and refine its spirit.

i use final fantasy specifically because of its similarities to twewy. granted, these similarities are largely surface-level, but that's also kinda my point. final fantasy as a franchise achieves the variety it does through acknowledging what is fundamental to it and innovating off of that. by contrast, twewy (the franchise, not the game) is afraid to change its spirit and seeks purely to preserve it. because of that, the only way you could really differentiate twewy (the game, not the franchise) and neo at a glance is because of the hardware they are on. acquiescing to the merciless march of time, rather than embracing it.

that's why i still think my complaints about the ui ultimately fall back on the critiques of neo being derivative. while the problems with the ui in isolation seem like the developers trying something new, when you look at neo holistically, it is so clearly just an attempt at merely adapting, and sometimes it feels like neo fails even on that level. it isn't even innovation by necessity; every change feels like a sacrifice more than anything.

and on that note: gameplay.

i would say i generally enjoyed playing neo. the overworld exploration is very bog-standard, but i still appreciate it. remind is cute (it and telewarp's mechanics are obviously scripted but successfully "feel" cool to use) and dive fights are cool. i didn't mind the lack of fast travel, and in fact ADORED beat's soundsurf. having it add to your groove makes so much sense it hurts, and i love what it does to the music. but all of this is kinda window dressing when compared to the combat.

i'm sure my utter obsession with rpg (especially traditional rpg) gameplay aids my love of neo's combat, but i think most people can appreciate the gameplay loop. assigning party members to specific buttons is an undeniably fun concept. the hyper-customization of the combat is also something to be admired (to an extent); i'm sure i'm not particularly special for this, but i adore any opportunity to play a game "my way". the pin list is a teensy bit bloated with repeated ideas but with a higher number and/or different and somewhat arbitrary "element", but i sincerely love it overall. with how diverse the ideas are, there's a shocking few that i would consider objectively worse than the others. for example, the strength of the game's combo system "groove" means that a pin having a lower power doesn't actually make it necessarily worse, since less damage per attack allows for longer combos, which allows for more liberal and consistent use of the special moves unlocked by reaching the 100%, 200%, and 300% thresholds. inversely, as a compulsive grinder, the game's progression felt fairly natural even when i was pretty blatantly overprepared. fights are incredibly busy, and the boss fights especially are designed so that a single mistake can become a slippery slope of punishment. i died fairly frequently, particularly from getting too big for my britches and taking on a reduction chain i just couldn't handle. thus, fights never felt thoughtless the whole way through, which i was frankly REALLY impressed by.

i would accredit each of these compliments (or a stronger version of them) to twewy (to the point where i'm strongly tempted to derail this whole thing into how much i fucking love twewy's gameplay), but to its credit, neo does take different ways to get there in a lot of cases. to be doubly fair, though, as i've previously stated, these different approaches feel like they needed to happen rather than resulting from a distinct and passionate vision. to be TRIPLY fair, though, what's here has so much polish and depth that there was clearly some kind of passion present. my mind made a strong connection to kingdom hearts; i am not a big kh fan, so that is either indicative of just how similar neo and kh are (that someone like me could point it out) or how ignorant i am to action rpgs (accusing neo of being similar when it's really not). i'm open to either option.

the hyper-customization also feels like a double-edged sword, in that there is virtually no difference in how each of the six party members play. making your party members distinct from a gameplay perspective is INCREDIBLY important, because it's such an effective tool of storytelling. for better or worse, how a character performs during gameplay will directly influence how a player will view that character holistically. if, either by pure luck or bad game design, a character underperforms, a player is inclined to view that character less fondly. while neo's method of little if any distinction seemingly circumvents this slight dice roll, it closes off a unique opportunity entirely and settles for something that feels a little bland. mind you, this doesn't change anything about what i liked about the game's customization and customization as a whole. i do believe, generally, that the more customization the better, but that can't be an excuse to homogenize the party members.

none of how the game handles levelling up and stats really helps this. yes, characters will have different tastes in terms of food (leading to potential bonuses on top of the stat increases that food already does), and some clothes will have secondary benefits exclusive to certain party members, but it's not nearly enough.

i'm tempted to say that the solution to this would be to find a better balance, and that is still true on a fundamental level, but i also don't think making party members distinct and customization are mutually exclusive, or even necessarily things that mitigate the capacity for the other. if you want to go as extreme as what neo attempts, then yes, a focus on customization will undermine uniqueness, but there's also ways to let them heighten the other. in twewy's case, the dynamism of neku's gameplay vs the static "gimmicks" of his partners spoke not only to the personalities of each character individually, but also of neku's relationship with those partners and with people as a whole. more contemporary and popular examples of this would be pokemon (especially nowadays with nature mints and streamlined ev training) and persona (especially 5 royal).

the latter of the examples i bring up is an interesting one to me: taking advantage of a protagonist who is a canonical blank-slate (not to say joker or any persona protag from 3 onward has no personality, just that they are wild cards) to let them fit whatever mold the player wants. it's a big indicator of what i mean when i say that customization and uniqueness can coexist, because in this case, they're two almost completely separate spheres that manage to function without overpowering the other. when they DO interact, such as with the intended evolution of the mc's personas or the customization allowed for non-mc party members, it only enhances what it touches.

i should stress, despite these critiques, that i think neo's gameplay is good. i had fun with it. there are aspects of it, such as its pin selection, that i found memorably impressive. but i want to stress why i stick so strongly by my thesis—that neo is derivative—even for its best aspects.

and on that note: the story.

let's get the big thing i've been alluding to out of the way: i ADORE neo's localization. i really, truly, sincerely think there wasn't a single time in the entire game where i felt some piece of dialogue was awkward, and that is not only a compliment for the localizers, but for the writers as well. don't get me wrong, i could sometimes notice that things were localized, but that realization never jarred me. rather, it made me that much more confident about what that piece of dialogue could tell me about the character saying it, the situation they're in, and/or their relationship(s) to whom they're talking to.

i won't act like it's absolutely perfect, of course. however, my complaints come from failures to achieve the goal of localization, rather than with the innate nature of the practice. for example, probably my biggest hang-up on it is that it undersells a lot of the sentiment when shiki and neku finally reunite, though the voice acting is partly responsible for that (likely moreso the voice direction rather than the actors themselves, but i can't say for sure).

back on the positives, i do find the english voice acting pretty good. miranda parkin as nagi is my personal highlight; her performance reminds me a LOT of erica lindbeck's futaba sakura, and you should absolutely look into her work on her youtube channel "ParkinArt" when you get the chance, because she is superbly talented. shoutouts also go to xander mobus as kubo (i struggle to think of a sleazier voice) and pretty much every returning va.

in general, i am pretty massively defensive of localization and localizers; whole lotta people who don't know shit spouting, well, shit. to be fair, i'm not much better, but at least i'm on the side of the people who do this shit for a living. and i'm also on the side which appreciates those people for the work they do, because i can't help but feel like it's really fuckin hard. you're not just translating the literal words, but finding ways to synthesize it to maintain the SPIRIT. This short video by "Jehtt" about the opening line of Sonic Adventure is an excellent example of what I'm talking about.

as for the content getting localized itself, final remix (and specifically a new day) made it clear that whatever sequel comes out, it's going to be some kind of direct continuation of what's been established, rather than a self-contained story in the same universe or something along those lines. personally, i would've preferred the latter if a twewy sequel HAD to exist, and to its credit, my favorite things about neo twewy's story tend to be the things which THEORETICALLY make it stand on its own. obviously, your enjoyment is enhanced if you play the first game, but there's enough in neo to make it possible for someone who doesn't to still understand it.

for example, new characters are fun, even if occasionally half-baked. i'll get the riff-raff out of the way: the shinjuku reapers felt like goofy personifications of gimmicks that served their purposes well enough, coco is a bit less annoying this time, tsumugi is hilariously half-baked after being hyped up as much as she was, hazuki... exists, and i struggled to see any of the other team leaders as more than an impetus for other characters (though i am DEEPLY grateful kanon isn't as bad as she could've been). speaking of which, how about those characters?

my favorites were nagi and fret; i see their concepts as a bit tropey, but executed well all the same. the ways their arcs intertwine were surprisingly compelling; nagi's dislike of fret wasn't just a weird gag, but an inevitability of fret's compulsion to put up a front and nagi's keen perception and hatred of "fake" people. once nagi learns why fret puts up this act as he makes an effort to move past that instinct, they start bonding almost immediately as she tells him more about her inner workings and that she'll take care not to be so judgmental thanks to his influence. the reveal that she got fret on elegant strategy after the events of the game made me smile way more than the game trying to get me to like rindo and shoka as a couple ever did.

on that note, i could take or leave rindo as a protagonist, and in general, my interest in the shinjuku reapers (especially shoka) waned as they became more significant. that's not BECAUSE of their significance, mind you, simply that they ended up disappointing me in one way or the other (with the possible exception of kaie who was just kind of a silly little guy). it comes back, yet again, to my thesis on this game failing to meaningfully iterate. i understand and agree that there's a lot of value in establishing parallels between characters, even if the plots of their stories are disconnected. i would go so far as to say it's ideal to make a sequel expand on the subtext of what's been established like that, as long as it and what's new bolster each other. in the case of rindo, i struggle to appreciate things about him that aren’t some extension of neku when he was a protagonist. i found his arc about making his own decisions sudden and a bit inexplicable, especially with how blatantly it was stated. felt like a case of saying a character was having a specific arc without actually giving them that arc.

as for shoka, i do like her more than rindo. in fact, it’s her relationship with him that made me lose interest; it felt like all the things that endeared me to her, like her relationships with the other shinjuku reapers and her brand of snark, got pushed to the side in favor of said relationship. it dominated everything else about her character in a way it felt like it just didn’t with rindo. granted, this could just be because he’s the protagonist, and her “snark” is a surface level reason to like her. however, i don’t find that first concession to be an adequate excuse, and it was precisely her personality that got me interested in the character to begin with, only for it to feel discarded (albeit probably not completely, i’m sure there’s a cute lil moment or two i’m forgetting). considering shoka’s love of gatto nero and shiki’s presence in the game, i imagine the parallels between the two have to be somewhat intentional, including with their relationships to their respective mc. like with rindo, these parallels make it hard for me to appreciate the character, but unlike rindo, shoka’s parallels seem to actively oust the things unique to her, as opposed to rindo’s leaving little opportunity for appreciable distinction to begin with. again, i ultimately prefer shoka, as tis better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.

that just leaves the three elephants in the room/party: all of them are returning characters. two of them are characters you played as in twewy.

i do want to make it clear that even at my most territorial, i don't think i was ever completely against the idea of there being returning characters; if anything, my ideal twewy sequel would actually feature characters like joshua or hanekoma more prevalently than they were here. rather, much like most things, it comes down to how you implement them, and neo does so in a way that pretty blatantly relies on them. even that isn’t a necessarily a bad thing, but remember what i said about this story attempting to stand on its own?

what shocks me about their sheer prevalence is that very little of it feels necessary. i don’t get the feeling that any of the og gang were needed to make this story work on a thematic level (as happy as a lot of their scenes together made me), and in fact, as i alluded to with rindo and shoka, it actually seems to impede or dampen a lot of what the game is trying to go for. i see it as perhaps the single most blatant example of my thesis statement. neo plays with the concept of a self-contained story, but is unable to let go of what's already there, innovate enough on the franchise and original game’s core, and pull through with something standalone, because it seems generally unwilling to embrace change, and consequently, key aspects of creativity and what makes a good sequel. i understand if others don’t share this opinion, but to me, it really feels like neo only changes when it has to, and that reflects in the changes it makes as well as the ones it doesn't.

and on that note: the conclusion.

sorry this feels so disparate. i definitely wouldn't call neo a bad game, and in fact, i think given some time, i can comfortably call it good. plus, i can, after some difficulty and deliberation, say it and even final remix's existence only add to og twewy. impulsive territorialism be damned, it makes me happy to see stories and characters i love be added on to like this. the aspects i consider bad, even if they might be fundamental, are not enough for me to avoid embracing and appreciating the good. my silly little headcanons are not “threatened” by things like final remix, even if it felt like they would be in the moment. it is still possible to imagine all my favorite characters living happily ever after with each other, even that cunt with the mop for hair joshua, and if anything, certain scenes in neo only add to those delusions. i may have complained about them, and i do stand by those complaints, but i cannot deny how much i love them in isolation. i think the only thing that could've made me hate them is mischaracterization, but the only instance of that which stuck out to me (neku and shiki reuniting) seems to be a translation issue, and the real sentiment of the scene aligns far more strongly with my views of the characters.

that said, i'm still definitely disappointed by it all. neo's derivative spirit felt very pervasive to me the whole way through, and by the end, i felt a strong urge to replay twewy. that's not a necessarily bad instinct to have after playing a sequel, because it's the idea of "wanting more". it is, however, bad in this case, because it was a mix of that and the idea of "wanting better". i wanted to play something where these good ideas were new, or better yet, something where the new ideas were good. as it stands, i'm left the slightest bit hollow; just enough to be noteworthy, but i still feel like a dick for bringing it up.

i'm happy i played this game. i may very well play it again in the future. there's aspects of it i like to the point of loving. and yet, i hesitate to say i like it.

my feelings on this game continue to be jumbled, even after all this. still, writing a lot of it out definitely helped, and it was really fun to make! thank you oh so very much for reading; i hope you enjoyed it!

oh, and i would rather rip my dick off than play scramble slam again-

[tblsomedoodles]

The Preferable Alternative - part 14

Start - previous - next

rare 6 pg update! b/c the pacing was better if i stopped the scene there.

Leo: That was weird.......ANYWAYS!

: )

[blackkatdraws2]

There are more things in the Parable than Stanley knows about. [Blank Scripts AU]

[personishfive]

in which his life is like a video game

[ferronickel]

Hail, flatter! This one, who is a layperson of the arts and comixcraft, has a query for you:

So like, what is flatting?

I've seen your flats in Wifwulf, and I've read about the flats in Looking Glasses, and generally get that it results in an image with similarly coloured areas sharing the same false-colour.

But like, how is it then used? The final images seem to contain more colours and shading, so why not just go straight to this? Why do false colours get used instead of the real ones? How do you pick the colours and how many get used?

How come this is a thing that a whole other person can do separately? I guess that's because it's time consuming - so it saves time somehow?

Thank you! I come in the spirit of humility wishing to relieve my ignorance of your noble craft!

OHOHOHO!!! You've activated my trap card and now I get to ramble about comics craft! And in my area of professional expertise, too! Be prepared for a long post

I'm going to start with the last part of your question:

How come this is a thing that a whole other person can do separately? I guess that's because it's time consuming - so it saves time somehow?

So the thing about comics is that it is one of the most intensely time consuming mediums to create. One person can make comics on their own fairly easily, but it takes forever to produce. Consider that I've been working on Looking Glasses for 18-19 months and have drawn about 87 pages. Now, the western comics industry expects issues to be produced monthly, generally 24 pages in length. It's very difficult for a single person to work at this rate, so the labor of producing comics has been divided. Generally these jobs become:

Writer (writes the script)

Editor (edits the script)

Artist (draws the lineart)

Colorist (colors and renders the art)

Letterer (adds balloons, dialog, and sfx)

Flatter (sometimes 'color assistant' they take the art and prepare it for coloring)

This isn't comprehensive though, there are a bunch of other jobs, like designers and layout artists. Occasionally the artist job gets broken into Pencilers (who sketch the art) and Inkers (who ink the sketch). Basically, by splitting the work amongst a number of people you can produce comics much faster. Not all of these jobs are required, and creator-owed books might have artists do their own coloring and lettering, while big work-for-hire books might have twice as many people working so they can pump out a spider-man book every other week.

Okay, so why Flatters?

Flatting at it's most basic level is just coloring inside the lines. You take a black and white page of art, and you have to fill in every part of the page that will eventually be colored. It's a pretty time consuming task depending on how involved your lineart is.

Flatting a page of Looking Glasses doesn't take me all that long, usually less than a half hour, which is pretty quick. Looking Glasses pages tend to be... optimized for flatting though. There are only ever a few characters and there aren't a ton of background details.

You mentioned Wifwulf (created by my longtime friend and collaborator Dailen Ogden), here's one of it's pages:

Basically everything that's a different base color, (every tree, plant, bit of moss, character, etc.) needed to be picked out separately. Each page of Wifwulf took me a few hours to flat. If Dailen had been doing that themself, those hours would have really added up, but instead they could spend that time drawing and coloring. Now, that said, these pages have a lot of texture, so it's hard to see exactly what I did.

Here's an example from a comic I worked on early in my career. (Lineart by Patrick Custodio)

The writer for this comic loved to put in these incredibly complex crowd scenes, which is something the artist excelled at drawing. I was coloring and flatting at this point on the book, and before I could even start coloring properly, I would need to flat for like eight hours. (I have a much more efficient method these days) It was frustrating because I just wanted to work on the actually creative part, but the majority of my time was spent on something monotonous. As soon as I got the writer to hire a flatter for me, coloring a page would take me only one or two hours, not nine or ten.

So that's why flatters exist, mainly to ease the workload on colorists.

But like, how is it then used? The final images seem to contain more colours and shading, so why not just go straight to this?

Flatting serves a couple of purposes. It's main function, like I said above, is just coloring in the lines. After finishing your lineart it has to get colored in, so in a layer below the lines, you add colors.

The secondary function is preservation. I like to work in a way that is non-destructive, basically, at any point in the process I can restore an earlier version of the drawing if I make a mistake or don't like something. Flats are integral to this.

In digital art, there's this thing called anti-aliasing, where the edges of a line or shape have a drop off of pixel color or opacity. It makes the edges look smoother or blurrier. The three dots on the left are Anti-Aliased, while the one on the right is Aliased, there's no drop off, just hard pixels.

Anti-aliasing is fine until you need to change the color using the paint bucket, or select using the magic wand...

See how the anti-aliased art doesn't play well with these tools, but the aliased art does? So with something like Wifwulf, the final art is going to be full of texture that makes it impossible to select anything again once it's painted. By having a dedicated aliased flats layer under the rest of the artwork, you can always re-select any part of the image you want.

I always leave my flats layer alone, and do any detail work in layers above. For example when I was painting this, it really helped to be able to select just the titan so I could work on those paints without worrying about brushstrokes overlapping the rest of the characters.

One of the other things you can do with flats is quickly selecting certain elements. On most pages, I flat my panels, figures, and background elements separately. Later, with a single button press, I can select just the characters in the scene, or entire panels at a time, which makes things like shading a whole lot easier.

Why do false colours get used instead of the real ones?

If you're flatting for other people you often don't know what the final colors are going to be, so you just pick random ones. Garish colors can be helpful because it makes it obvious that they're not the final colors. Why don't I use the correct colors on my own pages when I'm flatting? Habit, mostly. It's also faster to grab random colors than to track down the correct ones. Sometimes two different things will have the same final color but I like to flat them with different colors so I can select them individually if I need to.

You can see the process a bit here. In my flats, Lancer's spade (eye? eyes? thing) is a different color from his tongue, even if they end up being the same white in the final image. This would help if I ever needed to select just his eyes for some reason. You can also see how I select his body fur color and then add details on top, like his colored fingers and the grey on his arm. Those elements have blurry anti-aliased edges, and it would be impossible to re-select them without flats.

How do you pick the colours and how many get used?

I use the default "additional color set" palette in clip studio and just work my way through it. I pick row and work my way down (for a change of pace I vary which row I start with). How many is mostly dependent on the artwork. You just keep going until you run out of individual objects to color. I have worked on pages where I've run out of colors on this palette and had to start making up more. Typically a page of Looking Glasses only needs around 20-30, though.

So! That's flatting! It's a little known job, and it's how I got started with my comics career, so I have a lot of thoughts on it. I was trying to be concise (lol), so I hope this all makes sense, but I'd be happy to clarify or answer any other questions about this process. I know I didn't really go into how I flat my work, so I can make that post if anyone is interested.

[syrupyyyart]

one of the first and only teasers for motley: the cartoon

[unfriendlyamazon]

the thing about azula is she's also a victim of abuse she bought into her father's ideology because she was rewarded for doing so (and she has some funny thoughts about divine right to rule) and explicitly gains power both in the context of her society and mentally by torturing her brother ("you can't treat me like this you can't treat me like zuko")

which is to say the show depicts azula and zuko has fundamentally different from a young age (and zuko's inherent goodness is his main source of conflict for most of the show) and i appreciate that the show doesn't go out of its way to show sympathy or explain its abusers, even when azula is given her moments, it's not to make her more sympathetic, and i think the show is aware that azula has benefited from being a natural prodigy who aligns herself with fire nation ideology, but it's clear by the end that ozai treats her as no less a tool or extension of himself than he does zuko

which is also to say her final battle between katara and zuko is my favorite part of the show hands down i find it beautiful and the music makes me tear up and when she is defeated and sobbing and completely undone, it's my favorite part of the show. azula has spent so much of her time and energy into currying favor with her abusive father, putting herself into a position of power, and to be undone by her brother who she views as inferior to her in every way and some waterbending peasant i think it must just break her worldview. everything she's done up to that moment, it was the wrong move, and zuko is now the one on top

anyway i think the show has a lot of interesting things to say about power and those who wield it, and i think azula's relationship with power, both under it and exerting it herself, is a really interesting one, and as a foil to zuko, she works really well in showing that even aligning oneself with power despite or because of circumstances is ultimately a fruitless task, and those in power will keep moving the goal posts as you try to get ahead

[pixlokita]

Why don't you allow them to do dubbing for you?

While a few people have been polite enough to ask and properly credit there’s a quite a few dubs that didn’t get permission, didn’t credit properly if at all… even credited the wrong person on purpose. And don’t get me started on people using AI voices to “dub” comics (also without crediting the source) . At least put in the effort. That’s just reposting art at this point :’> anyway it gets depressing when people say they’ve seen your art but couldn’t even find you because of that. I love the dubs that people were nice about tho 💖 it means a lot that they’d go out of their way to do that sincerely because they just liked the comics or contributed to the ideas somehow but yeah it got pretty overwhelming and bad after a while.

[papaiyatree]

marvel rivals have got me thinkin about what if dc had a similar game out >_>

[flickering-nightfall]

[astranauticus]

not sure if this counts as an AU but.. thinking about the Per Aspera crew as horror game bosses like.. you are wandering through a forested mountain range and you know somethings wrong because the forest shouldn't be this eerily silent, this devoid of life, and then you hear the crash of falling trees and there is a hand that is half your size glowing golden in the night and it is grabbing you and its claws are digging into your flesh and you see the spines running down the golden arm that is far too long as it lifts you over a crater in mountain, over a coiled, serpentine thing with a visage that is not of this world, and if you look closely you can see the shape of a child curled at the centre of the thing, golden hair reflecting the glow of the creature and if you listen closely you can hear her sobbing, 'Don't hurt me, I don't want to do this'. you are sailing through the astral sea when you see an ephemeral, resplendent spelljammer cutting through the starry waters and you rejoice because you have been lost on the seas for so so long, so you board the ship looking for help, supplies, anything, and you are greeted by a blue fire genasi (you wonder, do those even exist? but you can't get off the ship now because where else will you go?) and she tells you she is the captain of this ship but as far as you can tell there is no crew on board, and if she is not appearing right behind you from a trapdoor you've never noticed she is always in the engine room 'fixing the ship' even though the ship seems to be sailing perfectly fine ('Where are we going?' you ask her once and she doesn't even turn to look at you, 'Don't worry about it') and if you are ever so unlucky as to damage the ship in any way, you begin to catch flashes of red and orange out of the corner of your eye, a fire genasi wearing the woman's face who whispers at you with hollow, angry eyes 'Don't you fucking dare hurt my ship'. you are sailing through the astral sea when you see a rotting, decaying spelljammer, so badly damaged it's barely moving although you have to wonder how it's even staying afloat at all, and out of some morbid curiosity you climb on board and the deck of the ship is in no better shape than the hull, the marks of hard-fought battle - scars in the wood from sharp blades and arcane energies, stains of blood and oil splattered about - still fresh but you know time doesn't pass on the astral sea so who knows how long ago this all took place, and as you climb below decks you start to notice the writings on the walls, pieces of parchment nailed to every surface and connected with fraying, rotting threads, or words etched directly into the wood, the deep gouges barely readable, and you start to hear the creaking and clanking of rusted machinery slowly moving about and you turn a corner to see a figure standing in a room facing the wall, slowly scratching yet more of that unintelligible writing into the bones of the ship, and it turns as the rusted dented mechanite stares at you with eyes ablaze and he asks 'Who are you? Where is my crew?' as sparks of arcane lightning begins to arc through the room. you are running through a feywild forest and you know, even without the figure chasing you, that you have made a horrible mistake, you should have known better, should have been more careful, should have kept your impulses in check, and now you are being chased through an unfamiliar forest and the figure, the Hunter pursuing you knows this realm like the back of his hand, knows every tree and shrub and vine that is slithering up to grasp at your ankles, and you glance back desperately to catch any glimpse of your pursuer but there is no pursuer, he has hidden himself with some arcane trick or some innate power or just the knowledge that this realm is his home, and you hear his voice even though you cannot see him as he cries out 'You should not have hurt my family. Prepare to face the Hunter of Hundkiln'

sorry no Vhas yet maybe I'll update with one for him once we get more of his whole deal

[journal420]

what if i shilled gravity falls and pokemon crossover thoughts. what then

[oldrockformations]

I’ve been reading superhero comics lately and I just,, want to force these bitches to drink some water. How are these people not passing out from dehydration every fight

Nobody with abs that defined has a healthy daily fluid intake. Get this man some goddamn gatorade

[sweetberry-roebuck]

My oc Jacob and the two characters I wasn't aware of when I made him but who are suspiciously similar to him in different ways :-)