#i do want to actually finish their redesigns eventually

[3motionally3xhausted]

Redesigning the Fentons!!

Hi yes this is for yet another Danny Phantom AU of mine it has nothing to do with the Apprenticeship AUs but unlike that batch I actually wanna turn this AU into a fic eventually once I get through a few other big projects I have *sobs*

Anyway individual files for each character under the cut along with my obligatory rambling about all the choices I made ;)

Jazz! Honestly, when I was a kid, I always thought she was 18 not 16 so it was kind of a shock when I started rewatching the show about a yr ago and heard that. Anyway, she's 17 in this AU but already moved out to college on a scholarship bc living in FentonWorks is kind of hell and she has that Older Sibling Guilt for leaving Danny there. For her clothes, I wanted it to be a mix of tactical and preppy.

Danny! (Fenton) The effects of FentonWorks hell is much more visible on Danny than Jazz because she got out of there as soon as she could. Because of that though, a lot of the chores in the lab got pushed onto Danny, without passing on many safety tips, like replacing the ecto-filtrator, cleaning contaminated tools, organizing ecto-weapons, etc. And because he doesn't know any better when it comes to safety, he has many symptoms of radiation poisoning: visually, this comes through in the discoloration/scarring on his skin (Jazz has some slight scarring on her face and hands as well), the cataract on his left eye, as well as burst blood vessels in that eye. For his clothes, I wanted them to look a bit ragged and worn through ripped seams, tears in the jeans, & duct tape around his shoe.

Danny! (Phantom) I don't actually have a lot to SAY about my choics, but I am really happy with it. There are still a few things. I wanted his hair as Fenton & Phantom to be different but still reminiscent of the simplistic rendering of the original show: Fenton is kind of timid so his hair falls over his face, & Phantom is more active/aggressive so his hair is pushed upward. The only other thing I want to comment on is his skin: it's kind of about how I usually stylize Phantom (and I mentioned this when I redesigned Dani a while back) but a "healthy" Phantom in my style would have more bright cyan skin and an unhealthy Phantom has a more dull/zombie green. And lastly, as a ghost, the radiation poisoning kind of cleans up into more neat scarring rather than the muddy/bleeding look as Fenton.

Maddie! Now, I'm gonna be honest, real vulnerable here,... I hate Maddie's canon haircut. It's ugly, I'm not sorry. But I can modify it, so it's fine: now it's curlier, a bit darker, and has a few grey streaks bc she's a genius and constantly pulling long working hours. And, it didn't come across as much as I wanted, but she's got some biceps, strong lady. Now, I'm not really sure why, but I wanted to shift the color of her and Jack's jumpsuit, making hers much more desaturated.

Jack! Big guy. I don't have many thoughts about him either, but I did give him glasses and some stubble for a little bit more dad energy (?) I mainly changed the color of his jumpsuit bc Orange is an extremely hard color for me to render for some reason, so now it's the classic Hazard Yellow. Finally, the most notable difference is the coat I put on him for a bit more scientist energy but my main reasoning for it is the potential visual of him being an absolute tank jumping from overhead with the ghost gauntlets and his coat flapping behind him. Also, I generally like the idea of him presenting himself as a big, dumb teddy-bear, always smiling, but completely unhinged below that facade: dropping the smile or not while towering over you in shadow. Wild imagery.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Do not count on any actual steps towards creating this fic in the near future, it's just on my mind right now, but I NEED to finish my other projects first 🙏🙏🙏 That said, I will (eventually) get around to a handful more character redesigns for this AU including: Vlad, Sam, Tucker, Valerie, Paulina, and maybe Lancer & Dash

[nekogorogoro]

@ruby-the-kat

Since you asked~

William was originally created waaay back in 2016, for the show Wander Over Yonder... which is why he's an eyeball guy.

But I've wanted to redesign him (and the rest of my ocs from that show) for Psychonauts. I did give it a very rough attempt earlier this year:

And you can see them all posted here.

And... Oh! And after finding that post, I realized that you're the one who made the card templates.

Anyway, some quick info on him:

Born deaf

Communicates with others by reading their minds

Or communicates through his best friend/interpreter Aiden with ASL

He's a fairly happy & outgoing person who makes friends easily

Kind of joined the Psychonauts on a whim (he's quite impulsive)

Great with animals, especially small ones

[sundial-bee-scribbles]

trying to psych myself up to finally do oc refs by doing fandom-related refs instead: volume 1

wanted to update my yuma from whatever tf this au is so he was a bit more unique... takes inspo from a lot of different things while also trying to be its own sorta thing? which is fitting given the au ;)

bonus chibi now that i'm also figuring out how tf to do chibis lol:

[usagifuyusummer]

Family Dinner Night!

Congrats Peri(winkle) for finally getting the Godparenting license!!! 🥳🥳🥳 - from your loving parents and godbrother 💖💖💖

More concept art and as usual my insane ramblings below.

I NEED TO GET THE CREATIVE URGES OUT OF MY HEAD!!! It has been bothering with my motivation to finish my gazillions of homeworks lmao. I have so many ideas I need to let out!!! It's suffocating. I hope this will satisfy my creative urges for a while... Or not I will yap about my FOP AU on a separate post (when I'm able).

I can't stop being sad thinking about this family lol. Timmy 😭😭😭

I am not kidding when I say that my head is just filled with so many things that I want to contribute in the FOP fanworks lol. There's a lot I want to do, but so little time...

For now, I've decided to practice my take on the FOP artstyle. I wanted to do something simple as drawing and coloring practice. That's why the coloring this time is flat with no shadings. I think the show doesn't focus on shaded colors too much (except on scenes where there's a heavy implication of day/night, for shock value, etc.).

Just wanted to draw something cute because I haven't been feeling so swell lately. Nothing too poetic or detailed this time.

Other than that, two of the outfits this time is actually inspired by @suki-na-kumo for Peri and an image I found floating around in Twitter/X (sorry I don't remember who shared it) for Timmy's design. Suki-na-kumo's FOP family redesigns are so cool and adorable! I like that they always include flowy attributes in Peri's outfits lol. It makes him look like a pampered brat (which he kinda is seeing how his family coddles him), an otherworldly prince and also a Twink TM (that is unavoidable lol). I kinda want to draw their other FOP redesigns, but I'll just go with Peri's first.

I am not sure where that 18 year old Timmy design is from, but it kinda can be his design for those who theorise him on becoming a lawyer as an adult. There's a lot of instances where Timmy is wearing a suit in the show, but this design is one of my favs due to the hairstyle change. My adult Timmy designs in the future will be influenced from this piece of official art. I wonder if there are more Timmy designs in the wild wild west out there that I haven't seen... It is certainly an interesting find (Teen AJ is also there, and his design also looks cool to me).

Cosmo and Wanda's oufits are something that I cooked up. I don't think the coloring looks good... I just did this on a whim, and for about 13 hours. Damn, I am procrastinating on my work lmao.

Still, the context this time is, that they've had a family dinner to celebrate on Peri's achievement on finally obtaining his godparenting license!!! Good for him!!!

This is an AU if Timmy somehow was able to find a loophole in the "losing your memories of your fairy godparents after you become an adult" rule. Because of that, he continued his life as normal (as Timmy's chaotic life can be), but this time he is able to keep in contact with his fairy family even if they're not contractually obligated to stick together. Timmy does live with the Fairywinkle Cosma's around his college to early work years, but he eventually was able to move out and live on his own at where he works as a lawyer after a while in his adulthood. (His birth parents eventually went on a lifetime vacation without him or just went away for too long that Timmy just lives on his own a lot after he is 18 and above...)

Despite living on his own nowadays (In a New Wish context), Timmy does keep in contact with his fairy family and visits them when he's not busy with his job. Cosmo and Wanda still took a long vacation in this AU, first due to, yeah, Timmy is no easy feat as a godchild lol, and second, they actually want to take their time to raise BOTH of their children (even if Timmy is no longer a child/godchild) and guide them until they're stable adults. Timmy during college years actually only stays with the Fairywinkle Cosma's on holidays, so when Timmy's busy with college, that is when Cosmo and Wanda take their time relaxing lmao.

Sometimes when they really want to have some time alone or when Peri wants to see his bro, they will send Peri to Timmy's college for a day or more. Timmy babysits Peri so much during his college years lol. They both had fun though! With a lot of Peri newfound nuclear fairy power shenanigans at Timmy's college lmao. Studying law and taking the bar exam has never been more chaotic with babysitting a nuclear powered fairy child.

There's a lot more on this AU that I've been thinking, but I'll stop here for now. I need to gather my AU ideas in one post sometime later.

Also, Peri and Timmy are both adults here, Peri's around his 20's here and Timmy is on his early 30's I think. Cosmo, Wanda, and Peri are in their human disguises here, because they want to learn more about human culture (A New Wish context) while also having the desire to be more in Timmy's life.

I headcannon Timmy to be kinda short in his adulthood. This is also a nod to that episode when his fairy family used imperfect human disguises, even Poof/Peri was taller than Timmy in his human baby disguise lol. And also hey, wearing braces during his teen years paid off! (his big teeth are visible only when he opens his mouth lol)

As usual, here's some concept art and a png lineart pic if you want to use it to color it better than I did lmao. (that was a long yapping session... thanks for reading)

[hazshit-hotel-hater]

Do you have a molly redesign?

I do!

She isn’t a fullbody or finished at all but I love her dearly. Whenever I draw her face I like to make her look really sweet until she opens her eyes and its like ⚫️w⚫️ and its like “oh! um!” Cause I love doing stuff with eyes. I want hers to be kind of creepy looking cause I mean shes a spider! But also I want her to look a bit out of place in heaven, her halo is a little crooked, her eyes are really big and don’t have much shine to them, and her general appearance is just a little off putting the way she stares and her interests. Like she was in the mafia and witnessed her brother overdose and slowly die in a coma, shes going to be kind of fucked up. Plus she has a bit of a thousand yard stare in canon anyway

I think molly being in heaven is really interesting honestly and it’s a large part of her character, like she’s very important to plot once Sir Pentious gets into heaven and we actually see more of it. Shes still her own person of course but she also serves as a way to show that some people in heaven are almost as strange as people in hell. Molly loves spiders and has an intense interest in true crime and surgical procedures, also again, she’s something that people are usually afraid of, like when you die and go to heaven most people usually aren’t like “OH MY GOD I HOPE IM A SPIDER…” but she totally was cause shes just like that.

Unlike Angel (hence why he isn’t up here) Molly was very religious and still holds a large chunk of religious trauma, however she remains faithful and is using her faith as a way to cope with her grief and stress. A large majority of her family were homophobic and transphobic so having two twins that were respectively gay and trans they didn’t take very kindly to that. Molly was just much much more closeted than Angel/Anthony. She still tried to help him with his problems but found it hard to when he was so engaged in the family business and turned to drugs instead of talking to her and we know how that ended up turning out already.

Molly never really got to transition while alive and spent the remainder of her life after Anthony died more closed off and a bit more sad than she already was. She didn’t entirely shut down but for a few years she absolutely did and eventually separated from her family and tried to pursue herself and her religion further (ie. getting a boyfriend and going to church) While Angel broke many of the 10 commandments, Molly made sure to do her best to respect them and would always pray afterwards. She did end up dying of old age and ended up in heaven, though upon arrival realising her brother was in fact not here was a detrimental blow to her mindset and sets up a bit of the point with how religion can be used both to help grief but also can be used to completely ignore grief as well as coming to terms with the fact those you care for might not always be the best people and sometimes you’re forced to leave them behind because of that.

I have not reached this point in the rewrite yet to figure out how or if Angel gets redeemed at all but I really like imagining them hugging and being shocked at how much the other has changed

[thestellarcartographer]

Another finished commission, completed over the course of several months, and with a fair amount of interesting changes during the process.

I'm going to put the process under the cut, and you can just enjoy a sample of the final renders above if you like.

So, as always, started out with simply 'blocking' of the scene based on the information provided by the commissioner, getting scale right, and making sure the particular consoles and key environment items like the Captain's chair, are in the right place.

I then move to the more detailed blocking, adjusting based on feedback, adding new elements and getting other details right. You'll notice early on that part of the changes so far have involved flipping the back-side consoles around, and changing the off-shoot corridors into walls with a door, as well as adding, altering, and removing some other details.

At this point, I also added in a stand-in ceiling, just to get the basic composition, shapes, and scale correct. This, again, went through a couple of iterations before the final version, and was drawing on the same visual cues on the Voyager bridge, with a little TNG mixed in. As you can see in the final version, this went through some revisions, but retained the same visual style.

With everything now looking as the commissioner wanted in block out, I started working on the actual build - starting with the Captain's and other Officer chairs, before moving onto the other main details, including consoles, railings, pillars, etc.

After this was a lot of iterative work, changing things here and there as we go based on feedback, or my own feelings on the composition or quality of what I'd done and how it meshed together. Eventually, I got the point of putting in test LCARS, before moving on to starting to generate custom LCARS based on the requested colour palette.

The MSD specifically went through a lot of variation between starting and final version - mostly just revisions to the LCARS colour bars, or location of some of the minor elements. It was my first completely from scratch MSD, and I really enjoyed the challenge of it.

By this point it was largely ensuring everything meshed nicely, fit the style-guide I was given to work to, and finalising the LCARS, doing final redesigns on the Operations and Security alcoves, and adding final touches.

Then the commissioner gave me their final sign-off, and we end up at the final images shown at the tops of the post!

All in all, it was an interesting comission, and as always, I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into my workflow. Any questions, let me know!

[embrassed-dabblings]

Alright so, ever since I showed my redesigns for IMP, I've been nervous about showing anyone else (mainly because I'm not greatest write). But I wanted to take a shot at it

And (from what I think) people liked them, so I did someone else.

I took on the "prince in distress".

To be honest when I first watched hb since the pilot, I didn't mind it. But then it started to grow on me and then it became more meh (It really started when his outfit was switching between a shirt and a jumper (?). Anyways, onto this owl.

Janus is a well-known and upstanding hellborn citizen due to him running one of the most successful sections within hell, but also having the title of one of hell royalty depends him on.

You see, Janus restores things, but mainly magical things. Any magical artifacts from Asmodean crystals to even grimoires, he is able to restore them back to new. He is a well-known curator who is tasked by royalty to store all historical and not so important books of hell's history.

This first fact catches the eye of a certain imp. However, he didn't expect (or even predict) that he was sneaking into a building where its owner is actively awake during the night.

The thief leaves only with a fairly damaged tome, but Janus doesn't be too alarmed as it wasn't important as ones that are hidden and locked away, but the magic within it was expected to wear out eventually.

A few years pass and life is going normal, Janus finished having breakfast with his wife Elanor and his daughter Octavia and they're watching tv together. A commerical break is happening and Janus is clearly uninterested in all of them

Until one catches his eye

One with an imp that looks VERY familiar to him...He's gotten interested and upon getting the number, he decides to help the thief once more to see how far this imp can go.

And that's Janus! In my au,/rewrite, he is not a main character and is not shown much until he gets revealed later. He still get shown but still not as much as it's mainly revolved around KODAL.

So now, headcannons + changes:

- Let's start with the biggest changes first: Janus does not take the place of Stolas. Stolas (the actual prince) is a seperate character from Janus. Also in addition, that Stolas is not like the show version

- Janus is NOT a prince or related to royalty; he is in fact an Overlord (yes, THOSE overlords) as he works as a mayor (of sorts) to his section in Pride. The only relevance to royalty he has is that he works with them sometimes (and are seen within their good graces)

- He hasn't cheated on Elanor (Stella in the au) and the thought has never crossed his mind (They are the real gomez and morticia addams)

- Despite hiding in the shadows and acting like a villian, Janus genuinely wants to see Pyro and KODAL succeed and constantly gives them multiple clients (and pay) to get benefits for both of them

- Janus looks imitadating, but man is a total sweetheart: consoles in everyone, an absolute dork whose head over heels about his family and would invite you over to tea. However don't let that fool you, He can still be a malicious beast if he deems you a threat or upset him or his family greatly.

- His favorite hobby to do with his family is shopping and taxidermy (a shared interest)

- As for prince Stolas, he is one of Janus's patrons as he is a frequent customer. He holds in high regard and sees him as a role model (hence the coat having stars and having paimon's robe palette)

And...that's all I have so far, thank you for looking and reading !!

No hate to the original designs btw, just did this for fun

[briskalishous]

You guys, my brain took like from April (I think) to finish this piece. I don't remember the inspiration making this, but it's part of the redesign I'm doing for a fanfic and just in general fun fluffyness becuz this fandom gets too sad sometimes. This was supposed to be done some time ago, but mental health got in the way and also the fact I didn't like the initial final sketch, so I started over, took me some time. And bruh if that wasnt enough, the app I'm using also kept corrupting or losing sketches so I don't have everything together to show the process. But anything is better than nothing. Also, please don't mind the shading, I'm still figuring out light placement and layering, especially on mobile.

Anyways, here's the final product!

I saw some funny sketches of Alastor being carried all the time so I made a funny headcannon that he likes to be picked up or is indifferent to it, just as long the hand and body placement is appropriate with certain people (others that are close have more leniency). I don't really have a story here but I like to say that this trio hug happened becuz it's one of those once in a blue moon family get together where Husk and Alastor aren't in a powerplay and are actually enjoying each other company with Niffty being a small adorable grandma making sure her boys are okay and slightly disturbed/amused by her antics and stories.

With Husk, I kept him somewhat true to his character design, just changed outfits and details on his persona like his symbols, marks, and colors. These symbols will be emphasized in another fanart I'm cooking up. I also placed "brands" that symbolize his deal and ownership status with Alastor. These brands, instead of being actually branded on his person, are branded on any piece of clothing he wears as long as they are visible (shirt, pants, hats, etc). One is on his collar shirt, which equals to Alastor and another on his wraps on his feet of his own Overlord status. In my rewrite, I have it that in order for Husk to maintain his deal of keeping his power is to keep running his business of gambling but with restriction. I have a lot more to write about this, but I'm saving it for his redesign posts in my redesign series. Also, a funny lil hat on the side becuz it's part of his getup that got knocked over in the hug session.

With Niffty, I was going to keep her the same, just some extra bug detail to her person, but I scrapped it off. Instead, I have her as a hybrid of a poodle dog and bug. She and Alastor have a bumpy first introduction becuz of her dog hybrid side, but eventually, they worked it out in a weird, chaotic coworker/roommate relationship. More on that on her redesign post soon. She also has a brand of Alastor’s ownership over her on her apron. She doesn't have much on her appearance but her personality and chaotic mindset makes up for it :3 She's the same crazy lil lady, but with some common sense and sort of old lady behavior from her.

With Alastor, I changed his hair from my redesign, but I think I'm still going to change it with every drawing I do, so it's not permanent. He also has a brand, just not visible, unlike Husk and Niffty. This isn't from his choice of wanting to hide that he's owned but from his owner that nothing should be given away from his disappearance to not ruin his mission. However, there's still that hidden joke that every time Alastor walks, he will feel that brand on his hoof so that no matter where he goes, he is reminded of where he stands. He doesn't look gray here like in his redesign due to the lighting, but I like to say that it will probably change to another headcannon. For instance, depending on how 'human' he feels at the moment, his features and skin color will change. When he's not all powered up and feels at peace, he's more soft and human looking despite his reputation and animal characteristics. But when's he's powered up or is threatened, then his 'humanity' is zapped away, turning his look more demonic/inhuman/alien. I'm still playing with this headcannon, so I may scrap or add on to this.

That's all I have to say for this piece other than I'm proud of the coloring and how soft this looks :D

Here's the process that I could find:

This is from the old sketch. I also had it colored it out and in process of shading but it got eaten by the app so yeah :')

Here is the final process! I changed the positions, the wings and tail, and redid Niffty's design.

[mdverse]

hi!! i feel like you may have talked about this before but out of curiosity, could you explain/talk about your kurt’s tattoos? :3

hi yes ofc i would love to!! i did in fact talk about it ages ago but i am always happy to say more and u picked a great time to ask bc i've been reworking all of the vb au tats so this isn't just a repeat of my previous post about it (except i never finished my official redesign of kurt's sleeve yet so i can't actually show u my reference)

for his sleeve i went the floral route with flowers that represent the most important relationships in his life, so it's intertwined ivy leaves and forget-me-nots wrapping around his arm (whether or not they actually look like the flowers they're supposed to be is a whole other thing lmao i think i get sloppier the more i draw them)

ivy symbolises fidelity, marriage and friendship - obviously u have to ignore the marriage part here bc this one is for finn and santana (furtana best friends and siblings fr <3)

forget-me-nots symbolise true love and respect, as well as the promise that u will always keep someone in ur thoughts - i always see this one as being primarily for his mom, but i think it probably does eventually extend to the entire hudmelpez clan

i also originally gave him a lil sun on his forearm for burt as a lil nod to you are the sunshine of my life gcv, which is kinda visible in some of the older drawings that have his tattoo but. i recently realised that i chose a really stupid placement for it so im gonna move the sun to his shoulder once i actually update my reference sheets. that being said i am realising right now that i still included the sun on his forearm in yesterday's post and that's devastating to me personally so pls pretend it's not there

and then the newest addition to kurt's tattoos is a very "u have to know where to look for it otherwise i think it's easy to miss it" but i did slip it into yesterday's post so! furtana matching tattoos my beloved let's talk about that one too <33

i think that things are extremely tense between furtana during the earlier stages of burt and carole's relationship (especially between kurt and the other 2) (not gonna really get into this rn bc it's not super relevant lol) so to me they do end up connecting over music and it remains a really important common interest for them over time despite their different tastes (in the sense that like. idk i think as duos they have more interests in common but as a trio they probably don't so music is a big thing for them) (i wish i could articulate this better but hopefully u get it) etc etc so. had to sit down and imagine what each of them drawing an eigth note would look like based on their handwriting (as one does i guess?) and then i figured it would be neat if they each had all 3 notes instead of just the one they drew so. matching tats for the siblings :)

(here's part of my unfinished reference sheet for that lol i think i still need to adjust stuff for the size/placement of finn's and santana's but kurt's is already figured out) (for artistic purposes i did actually change it from my original placement, which was closer to his ear) (i just wanted it to be a bit more visible in drawings lol)

[tangarang]

So any word of Coupon Kids or are you unsure/trying to keep quiet about it for right now? I like quat's redesign. It's more visually distinct than the original.

tldr: I am trying to pick back up on Coupon Kids, reworking the story (yeah , the actual story) with a lot more intention! Idk how long it will take, but just know that I'm taking it seriously.

If you want the LONNGGG story of it, here it is!

Last time we left off in the comic, I was in quarantine with my niece and sister! I was helping to raise my niece so my sister could get out of a horribly abusive relationship. I was a full time nanny which was tough! Cause I had to still make rent from home on commissions, but no one was buying them because we all became RLY RLY poor all at once.... go figure.

I turned to Coupon Kids for support because umm I was kinda fucked tbh 6_6. I had run out of money and had no time to make more, but I SQUEEEZED out the last of the Halibut Jones arc! (which, even at the time of completion, I knew it was an underwhelming piece of work, but I finished it and I'm proud I did!) Thanks to everyone's support, I had enough financial padding that I could rely on Patreon's passive income and refocus on supporting my sister/niece as well as plan to make the move down south to continue my schooling once the quarantine let up. So thats where I had left the comic for the time being in terms of story, with a sprinkle of short strips here and there, but nothing plot related, because the plot was horribly fucked right from the get-go.

I had to take multiple severe hiatuses with Coupon Kids because I got my ass handed to me on several accounts through ought. Horrible breakup, friend break up, severe mental illness, best friend got cancer, best friend died, quarantine, unexpected parenthood, gallbladder disease, then school. All the while Coupon Kids was something I made in the deepest pits of my depression.

I absolutely hated my self, my work, and my art. That all looped back to being a strange source of peace for me to make stuff w/o fear of judgement. No one could hate Coupon Kids as much as I did. I was the #1 Coupon Kids hater and I ruined it by making it. (this is a retrospective pov obv... I dont think my work is worthless anymore thx wellbutrin lol)

Coupon Kids was very liberating to write in that I had no standards, but the lack of structure kinda eventually lead to its own downfall once I started to get better. I had a very loose idea of what I wanted the story to be, but I was so disoriented by chemical imbalance and weed (I smoked SOOO much weed) I didn't rly care about the ending because tbh I thought I was gonna be dead before I got anywhere near the ending. But then Kira died, So I officially abstained myself from death's sexy loins and committed myself to giving life another go.

Sorry for the autobio dump: its kinda hard to convey Coupon Kids development w/o getting into the nitty gritty of what I was going through at the time of making it. The point is this: I made Coupon Kids with the intention of it being a stain on my legacy- but then I ended up loving the stain and it's inhabitants. Its made coming back to it difficult, because I want to put genuine effort in it but that clashes with it's overall tone. Instead of creating in spite, I'd like to create it in celebration of my artistic short comings and to do that is to completely rework the entire moral of the story and all of the characters. If I'm gonna do it right, I'd like to take my time.

Not sure how many people made it to the end of this one! Sorry I'm so quiet about my process. tbh the last 4 years have been the best of my life despite holding a lot of dread. I'm doing a lot better now and am really excited to work on what I love and be grateful I have the power to do so ! So thank you for reading if you are still interested, it means a lot!

[maydayissleepy]

Creation lore for my AU GO!! !

For those of you who thought this au was a recent thing for me I'm proud to say it's not. Just ignore the fact that I have less than half of the plot written I am chronically unable to finish projects

. Anyway it was ORIGINALLY just about the visual themes in my mind but then that lore bit about Chen and Clouse got me Thinkin and. Well. Yeah

I'll likely have a second post with like actual story and plot things but for this one I just wanted to show off the aesthetic stuff, because as much as I loved the vermillion and snake theme it did not mix in my mind with time travel.

So, for my AU, the Twins do not have the vermillion for their villainous faction (respectfully, I would still love for them to exist with the rest of the serpentine because their concept is so so cool) and, instead, I've created some steam powered robots to go with Krux's theme! And also attempted to redesign the Iron Doom to resemble a dragon more so than a snake. However for both of these I was once again realizing that I have a tad bit trouble designing robots and mechs

Aaaaand the last visual aesthetic change I think I made was changing the swamp to an ancient city's ruins in the desert? Because, yknow, desert, sand, hourglass theme? But also I think a past city's ruins plays on Krux's past theme a bit

WAAH I don't have a good drawing for the ruins city so here take this and also a lego build of the clock tower

I do plan to push the ninjas' outfits for the season more twoards steampunk or cyberpunk individually, but that's something I have yet to work on

But of course, as I will also note when I eventually make a post for the story things over my au, I do my best to write and draw these things as respectfully as possible! I genuinely appreciate feedback on my work and I want to create things that everyone can enjoy, though, having not really interacted with the fandom I may be a bit out of the knowledge on what you guys like and accept. Though I try very hard not to, I tend to be a bit oblivious at times, which is usually my main deter for interacting with fandoms. So being said, I would love and appreciate kind pointers if you guys have any feedback!

[gaymer-hag-stan]

A Tekken 8 Review That Nobody Asked for From a Longtime Fan Who Has Been Playing for Ages But Is Not a Pro - That Title Is Too Long

Having spent a little over 24 hours playing the game on my PS5, I feel like it's an appropriate amount of time to share my first thoughts on it. I will try to keep spoilers to a minimum so just skip the "Story" section and you should be fine.

General Thoughts

A pretty healthy roster, overall happy with who we got. I do wish Anna and Christie were here, and I also miss Lucky Chloe. With Eddy already announced and Azucena taking over the "cooky dance-y character" I unfortunately don't see Christie or Chloe returning, but Anna better fucking do!

They all look great, even the ugly ones, they look satisfyingly ugly, if that makes any sense. The girls still suffer from the Madame Tussaud's wax figure syndrome that plagued the entirety of Tekken 7's roster, but, maybe I'm gaslighting myself, I do feel like they look a bit less plasticky than some of the initial teasers? Most of the redesigns are great, the hair (Lili's hair has never looked better), water and dirt physics all finally WORK and I love how all the clothing animates with the wind effect, the Fallen Destiny stage is a great one to illustrate all of the above. We can see Yoshimitsu's fingers after three decades! I'd love to know the thought process behind this redesign lmao

I love that they finally, after so many years of other fighting games having it but being inexplicably absent from Tekken, they finally added Player vs CPU matches! FINALLY! Finally I can pick my character and my opponent of choice, pick their costumes and set a stage for them to battle. I'm so happy for this even though it might not make any sense to anyone.

Combo Challenges! We finally have combo challenge in Tekken! Another common fighting game feature inexplicably missing up until now.

Gameplay feels a lot of fun. I wasn't sure about the heat mechanic but it's actually a lot more fun than I initially thought! I tried out all of the cast and am slowly completing both their story episodes and an Arcade run for good measure. I am obviously still maining Nina. They have decided to simplify a lot of her combo throws and I am having fun terrorizing people online with them by breaking their bones! I'm also using Arcade Quest to learn how to play as Lili and Azucena, some basic moves and combos and whatnot. I wanna also do Zafina, Jun, Jin, Hwoarang and Xiaoyu as well eventually. I think these eight will be my main squad for the time being. As a side note, King and Steve feel extremely fun to play, I haven't picked either in ages, but with King I was really close!

The netcode is, surprisingly functional??? We did recently switch to an optic fiber connection type, but I'm still on WiFi and I am having zero problems!

Jukebox is thankfully back again! I literally spent an hour or more before playing the game at all to decide which song goes where lol

Something that scares me regarding upcoming DLC, is that I do not see a season pass being sold anywhere except the Deluxe Edition bundle that costs 40€... I'm sorry but I don't give a fuck about owning 32 identical gold costumes or Tetsujin or whoever the fuck as my Arcade Quest avatar... I only want Eddy and the other three (one of them better be Anna!) thank you very much!

Story

"The Dark Awakens"

Believe it or not I haven't even finished the main story yet as I'm trying to pace myself through all the modes and enjoy them, savouring every moment. At the moment of typing this I am almost halfway through and I must say, even though I am still firmly in the "Drop the cinematic NRS style story modes" camp, and I would much rather have had either arcade mode with proper, canon endings back, or a revival and repurposing of the Tekken Force mode, in an SF6 World Tour mode type of way, out of all of Bandai Namco's attempts at a cinematic story mode, from SCV to Tekken 8, this has been the most satisfying attempt so far. I love that they are fully embracing the overdramatic nature of Tekken along with its campy side and it's present from the very beginning, with Jin throwing his bike at Kazuya's helicopter! "A Fate Decided by Fists" were we actually get to choose which fighters advance through the first round was the biggest highlight so far! I did not expect to fight Azazel again in 2024! I miss his Tekken 6 design though, he no longer glows according to his remaining health or has his limbs crumble away into scarabs according to which parts of him you're hitting. Also, I do understand why they felt the need to overemphasize how "Jin was a good guy all along and he's not like Kazuya" to redeem him and attempt to portray him as a more traditional hero, but I think they went way too far. Literally every single cast member, characters who've never met him before especially, makes a point of how good a person Jin is. Also, I do understand that there were a lot of people complaining that most of the cast were ignored in Tekken 7's story mode and I appreciate that they tried to include more of them this time, but it's so half assed and superficial. Like, Lili, Asuka, Hwoarang, Leo (who finds their missing father, a forgotten plot point from Tekken 6 of screen without a single explanation) Xiaoyu, PANDA offer absolutely nothing to the story so far other than to just be there and tell Jin what a good guy he is. And I say all that as someone who is firmly on Jin's side and despises Kazuya.

Character Episodes

Thank god they have more than one single fight this time! I would have liked it if they found a way to make each of them be canon. Like, I think every single one of the Arcade mode endings of SF6 is canon, if I'm not mistaken, and most of them seem to take place before the events of the main story, as a way to give us a clearer understanding of why each fighter fights. I think Guilty Gear does exactly that too. Nevertheless, I do appreciate that each fighter has fights specifically tailored to them, with specific opponents. It's not clear to me yet if they're completely non-canon or not, as in Nina's she seems to have been hired by Lee to sabotage G Corporation and Kazuya, I pray to God this is true and she's not actually, willingly working for that asshole, like, I'm still in complete denial that they threw her entire character development from Tekken 4 to Tekken 7 to the trash can just to go "NInA WiLl WoRK FoR WhOmEvEr"... She's also suspiciously missing from the actual story like, she simply just appeared in ONE scene so far and then left without doing literally anything. She also seems to only have special interactions with Steve and Lee so far when others get a lot more. Her handling story wise in this installment is insulting, considering she's the most popular female fighter in the series and one of the most popular in the genre...

Offline Modes

Arcade Quest

It's cute... It's certainly a cool way to mask your tutorial and the avatars are kinda cool, but they're nowhere near as good as what Capcom did with SF6 and World Tour. I must say I prefer Tag 2's Tekken Lab over this.

Super Ghost Battle

Ghost battle, after five attempts is finally fun! Tekken 7's was by far the worst attempt as the game would automatically pick opponents for you, matching you with much harder ones if you were winning too much and much lower ones if you were losing too much so that you wouldn't climb the ranks as fast and it would artificially increase playtime. Now that Tekken has actual single player modes other that the story there's no need for that, and they made it work. You simply choose from a list, and the ones that contain unlockable (useless) customisation options for specific characters are actually marked so that you can attempt to get the item you want.

Arcade Battle

I love that they still included a traditional eight battle long Arcade mode, even though they could have just had the character episodes and call it a day. My slight nitpick, again, is that they're still doing this thing that they've been doing since Tekken 5 or 6 where the first few battles are characters in their default costumes and then a horde of Namco's customized monstrosities attack your eyes... This is a huge pet peeve of mine, I understand it in the context of Ghost Battle, and Arcade Quest, but I do not want to see goofy customs in other, "serious" modes. On top of that, the ghosts you get seem to be from the Super Ghost Battle's catalogue of freaks, and are therefore higher difficulty than most, which in turn makes them actively harder than the mode's final boss which I think is kinda hilarious!

Tekken Ball

I will admit, I only played a single match and never touched it again. It is actually challenging, I'll give it that, but I don't see the appeal. I'd much rather have Tekken Bowl again back instead tbh. Also I wish that stage was playable in normal modes too.

Customization

Avatar customization is kinda whatever, but it works well enough for Arcade Quest and I don't really visit the Tekken Fight Lounge.

Character Customization however is where I have an issue. While I've seen lots of cool customs of various characters from other games and IPs, including Shimbori himself dressing up Super Battle ghosts as DOA characters!, I don't really care for the customization options? My only real use for Character Customization in Tekken so far was to recreate past / alternate outfits. Like, in Tekken 6 I would buy the schoolgirl outfit parts for all the teen girlies, in Tekken 7 I recreated Nina's 2P outfit from Tekken 4 using her Blood Vengeance catsuit as a base, stuff like that. In Tekken 8 all I'm getting is a huge catalogue of Zara's apparel... And all the unlockable outfits are either their default look with less clothes on, or weird cosplays of other characters. Why? Tekken Character Customization peaked in Tekken 6, where every single one of the 40 (41 if you count Panda, who I think had some different options from Kuma) characters had his own personal selection of outfits and items, matching their personality and look. I don't want to play as Nina dressed up as Ada Wong or in a business casual for a 9-5 desk job. They made everything way too generic and bland and, on top of that, we don't even have trademark pieces like Nina's purple catsuit, her ponytail, Hwoarang's taekwondo garb, Xiaoyu's Tekken 6 battle costume. The Tekken 5 veterans should have had their Tekken 5/6/TTT2 costumes and hairstyles on top of their Tekken 7 ones.

Overall, I am very very happy with this game! It seemingly does almost everything right and I am glad to see it improving on, literally, every single thing over Tekken 7.

Score: 9 / 10

[hazshit-hotel-hater]

Niffty Redesign! (3/7)

Holy shit was not expecting to finish in the same day much less in like… under 4 hours??? IDK IM HAPPY WITH HER THOUGH!!!!

My biggest inspiration this time was lovebugs and specifically this LPS lovebug

Yes im colour picking Niffty from a littlest pet shop. Who is gonna stop me? Hasbro? They don’t even own LPS anymore!

Im making Niffty a bit tanner because while I see it a lot in other fandoms, I don’t ever see tan asian people in the Hazbin fandom, tbh this place seems like its allergic to melanin in general. There’s also a lot of stigmatisation around POC women in Hazbin like I’ve mentioned before. I plan on having Niffty deal with a decent chunk of stuff later on, a lot of it relating to obessions and romance and learning how to manage feelings like that and keep relationships with other people.

I wanted her socks to be cute but also held up by a garter belt so you can gather she’s got something going on. People seem to stray away from the topic of Niffty and sex or romance because they see her as a child or have infantalised her in some way. Yes ik I talk about this all the time but like GOD it pisses me off.

Her maid dress is actually a much darker shade of hot pink to the point its not really hot pink anymore but it is I promise

Niffty’s main sins are lust, wrath, and envy, seeing as she is a lovebug and also her current backstory is killing a lover out of jealousy. The redder pink parts are supposed to be a mix of lust and wrath so I hope that comes across well?

The same thing can be said about her clothes and all that. With her dress and the reddish hearts it’s supposed to be like “in one sin there’s another” but idk how well I pulled it off. The stitched up heart is also supposed to represent her hopeful/eventually redemption. I’d like to give Niffty more character than just “crazy small lady” so I’ll be trying to balance being somewhat like that with also being a bit sensible. I think it definitely could be done but I have doubts Viv will do much with it.

It really sucks that the POC characters and especially women they just get reduced to one or two traits and then thats it. Viv already is terrible at writing women and I think writing Niffty for her is just boring because, again, she cannot write women. 90% of this rewrite is me saving the women/hj

There will be more indepth Niffty content from me eventually, as of now this is my backbone for her design and overall story. Btw I think her rubber gloves are cute but make really annoying squeaking sounds 24/7. No idea if I’ll pull off another fast design like this, but we shall see!🐐

[cybertron-after-dark]

Wayward Sparks Lore Post

This is the lore for the fan continuity my redesigns are from. I've actually been working on the story for a very long time before posting any of the artwork for it, and I hope to eventually make this a finished product in some way shape or form! I won't be revealing everything about the story just yet for that reason, but this sort of a little "show bible" for the continuity that's been living in my head rent free for months. Hopefully, you'll get a kick out of some of the concepts.

The Basics:

The war's been going on for a good long while. Long enough that everyone's just getting sick of it. Most sick of it would be Megatron, who's been sticking it out with his Decepticons for SO long he's ready to do something drastic.

With a small team of his best Decepticons, they steal the Allspark and track down the leader of the Autobots, Optimus Prime, picking up an energon haul from a deep space outpost near a spacebridge. Megatron's intent on finishing this as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, nobody told Megatron that the Allspark doesn't particularly like being commanded, nor are there any controls on it conveniently labeled "press here to eliminate enemies." So, after what's seeming like a pretty pointless dogfight-turned-fistfight that was SUPPOSED to end with the Allspark blowing the autobots straight to the pit, Megs can't help but be a little frustrated when the Allspark takes control of the spacebridge on its own instead and sends them to a backwater dirtball planet with no feasible way off.

The Autobots arent all too happy about the predicament either. The Decepticons still have the Allspark, and Primus only knows what nefarious plots to ransack this world he's brought them to are cooking up in his diabolical processor. (He doesn't have any plans whatsoever, he's entirely bullshitting at this point, but you can't just let the enemy know that)

Meanwhile, back on Cybertron, something sinister is brewing within the Senate. Something Senator Ratbat and his toadie, Sentinel Prime, can't keep hidden for much longer.

The Autobots

The loyal devotees of Optimus Prime, enlisted in the Autobot Corps to make Cybertron a better place. Or, as most of Cybertron knows them, Optimus's merry band of idiots and assholes. See, most Primes have standards for who they recruit as active followers. The strongest, the swiftest, the smartest, what have you. For Optimus, anyone who wants to help the community may join. Which is great and all, but man, does it attract the screwups and all the neuroses they carry.

Optimus Prime (he/him)

If there is one word to describe Optimus, it'd be "troubled." If you ask him, trouble is all life ever gave him after he made Prime. He loves his team to bits, but they can be... Frustrating at times. Even still, looking out for them is priority number one. He took an oath when Primus gave him his power: "community before self." Failing to uphold that wouldn't just be letting himself down; It'd also tick off Primus, and given the god has an eldritch, symbiotic connection to him in his head and in his spark, not honoring that vow doesn't end well. He knows the madness that comes with a broken oath firsthand, after having to denounce the mech he originally swore fealty to... But, that's in the past. Nothing a little engex can't help him forget.

Bumblebee (he/they)

Bumblebee is a happy go lucky little bot. A little too happy go lucky, honestly. As though he just doesn't have any sense of self preservation. A chronic ignorer of red flags, somehow Bumblebee makes it out of every single encounter unscathed. He never really understood why some bots can be so anxious or mopey, and he makes it his mission to help the aforementioned anxious and mopey bots see the bright side, much to their chagrin. Especially to the chagrin of Prowl, who doesn't remember the last time he smiled and isn't interested in doing so any time soon. Bee is determined to get a giggle out of that downer one way or another. He's a little bad at reading the room, and he doesn't tend to take the whole decepticon threat thing very seriously, but he really does mean well.

Wheeljack (he/him)

Excellent at both making and breaking, Wheeljack is one of the team's tech guys. Fun loving, explosion addicted, and a firm believer in ignoring common sense and safety precautions, it seems Wheeljack and his lab partner, Bulkhead, can make any sort of gizmo you need with only a 50% chance of it landing someone in the medbay. Usually wheeljack himself. That said, he's never really all that bothered hy his injuries, often laughing at himself even if half of him is scattered somewhere across the room. This generally disturbs anyone unlucky enough to see it. Usually Bulkhead.

Prowl (he/him)

Prowl is... Not exactly doing amazing. To say he's depressed would be a bit of an understatement. When he's not out on the field, the other bots don't really see much of him. He keeps to himself, always making use of Teletraan-1 to stream his shows, tinkering with new mods for his weapons, or just sleeping the day away. More than anything, Prowl wants to help people. He was hoping he could do that through law enforcement, at first. When he realized that wasn't his path, he hoped maybe joining the Autobots would be. Now that he's here, all he needs is the motivation to actually get out there and do something great... Maybe tomorrow.

Ratchet (he/him)

Ratchet is the team's medic, as well as the resident dipstick-in-the-mud. A mech of schedule, rules, and protocol, Ratchet gets flustered and almost personally offended if any of those things are broken. Straight laced as he may be, Ratchet still cares deeply for his teammates, and worries a lot about not being able to fix them perfectly if they get hurt. Honestly, he mostly needs everything in order just so he knows exactly what to do if and when things go wrong. You'll never hear him admit that out loud, though. You'll also never hear him admit to anything he did in his med school days, back when they called him the Party Ambulance.

Bulkhead (any pronouns, mostly he/him)

Another bot standing firmly in team worrywart. Bulkhead tries to cut loose and have a good time, he really does, but it's hard when your best friend/lab partner is an accident-prone adrenaline junkie with very poor impulse control. Bulkhead is a sensitive bot, a mind both creatively and mathematically inclined, wrapped up in a very big, very heavy, very clumsy package. All in all, Bulkhead just wishes the other bots' definition of fun was... Safer. With less injuries sustained by the end. That being said, he has a pretty hard time expressing it when his friends' antics cause him distress.

Other Bots

Back on Cybertron, the rest of Optimus Prime's followers try to maintain peace in a ceasefire until the two factions' leaders can return from... Wherever they ran off to. The other active Primes and their followers, most of all Sentinel, have more or less been keeping Cybertron in order while the Autobots are indisposed. While they frantically try to contact their leader, Cliffjumper (he/him), Ironhide (he/him), Cosmos (she/they) and Seaspray(they/them) have to keep the whole Autobot Corps from falling apart.

Decepticons

To call the Decepticons terrorists would be remarkably unfair. That being said, calling them heroic would be one hell of a stretch too. For all intents and purposes, the Decepticons are largely considered the undesirables of Cybertronian society. And they don't like that one bit. Warframes, petty crooks, monoformers, pit fighters, malfunctions of all stripes, all are welcome under the Decepticon banner, so long as you're pissed off enough about how you've been treated. The angriest among the crowd being an increasingly high number of mechs sporting odd, experimental frametypes they say they were reformatted into against their will.

Megatron (he/him)

A warlord, a tyrant, the ruthless leader of the most feared gang of criminals in all of Cybertronian territory. At least, that's what he wants you to believe he is. Megatron is quite a bit of bark and (while definitely not none) significantly less bite. It's a frustrating thing, being labelled a heretic and a threat to society for wanting to be equal. So, really, what's a mech to do but commit to the bit and hope it scares off the cowards who want you dead? Megatron can be headstrong, and has moderate anger issues, though he manages them quite well. Still, he's got nothing but love from his Decepticons, trying as they can occasionally be. He can be a bit overprotective of his troops, very much acting like an older brother to the more vulnerable among his ranks. He's also been trying to court Starscream, but he seems largely oblivious to Megatron's advances.

Starscream (he/she)

The terror of the skies and the mean girl of the Decepticons. Starscream is largely convinced everyone around him is an idiot. Sadly, he's blind to it when he, too, is being an idiot. A capable aerial fighter, and the second in command of the Decepticons, but seemingly cursed by bad luck at just about every turn. And the consequences of her own actions, but don't say that part out loud. Starscream is intent on usurping Megatron one way or another to gain control of the Decepticons and lead them PROPERLY, because his dumb ass could never. Especially now that he's acting all weird all the time around her. He must be onto her schemes...

Soundwave (he/him)

Soundwave has seen quite a bit. He's seen things he very much wishes he could forget about at times. Having worked as a secretary for Senator Ratbat just before the war, he got a glimpse behind the curtain of Cybertronian government and it sickened him to his core. Now he works his aft off to topple the whole thing, no matter what it takes, or how badly he overworks himself. When he isn't vividly plotting the death of the scumbag Senate, or neck deep in Decepticon work, Soundwave is usually seen with his adoptive family, Rumble, Frenzy, Laserbeak, and Ravage. The cassettes are still young, not to mention mischievous, so Soundwave definitely has his servos full, but he wouldn't trade them for the world.

Shockwave (he/they)

A disgraced former Senator, and a victim of a botched empurata-shadowplay combo, Shockwave tries his best to live as normal a life as he can with the Decepticons. He's a bit of an oddball, emotionally stunted in some regards and wildly oversensitive in others. The other Decepticons take great care to make him feel safe, and he appreciates that greatly, though he's never really sure what would be a socially acceptable way to show that gratitude. Aside from his eccentricities, Shockwave is a mech of science, and an extremely useful asset. He's a master of tech, and a wizard in the medbay, though his bedside manner is unusual to say the least.

Blitzwing (he/they)

Blitzwing's triple changing frame was not exactly their choice. Nor were the three personalities their processor splintered into when they were reformatted. Unfortunately, the only ones who really seem to believe them about what happened to them would be the Decepticons. Evidently, when a three faced bot starts babbling about being abducted and experimented on by Senator Ratbat and Sentinel Prime, that comes off less as "honest whistleblower" and more "crazy guy who's been hitting the engex a bit too hard." So, until the real culprits can be exposed for what they are, Blitzwing spends his cycles in the Decepticon ranks, either helping out or causing chaos for funsies.

Lugnut (he/him)

Lugnut is the very picture of a loyal Decepticon, at Megatron's beck and call, ready to back him up every waking second, even when Megs really didn't ask for it. A particularly big and tanky bot, Lugnut is the muscle of Decepticon High Command, an unyielding wall of an opponent. He's also kind of the fun police. Easily jealous, Lugnut has a bit of a grudge against anyone he perceives as Megatron's current favorite (Megatron does not actually pick favorites) and does anything in his power to stay in his master's good graces. As unworthy as he thinks the rest of high command is, ESPECIALLY starscream, he is still a reliable ally and trustworthy teammate to the others when he needs to be.

Other Cons

The Decepticon Base back on Cybertron was already a bit of a hot mess. Now, with Megatron's best mechs missing, it's just a liiittle difficult not to think they're sticking around for a hopeless cause. But, all is not lost. General Strika (she/her) keeps the faction from falling apart, even through the absence of her conjunx, Lugnut. While she handles the practical matters, keeping spirits up falls to the morale officer, Skywarp (any), her trinemate Thundercracker (she/they), and her bestie, Knockout (he/him). Though it's a bit of a difficult task when they're in a ceasefire and they can't even look forward to bashing autobots...

Other Factions

It isn't just the Autobots and Decepticons kicking around Cybertron. Every active Prime has their own band of loyal followers looking to make something of themselves. For better or worse...

Full disclosure, pretty much everything but the Steelguard is subject to a lot of change. There may be more, less, or even totally different factions going forward.

Sentinel Prime (he/him)

Coldhearted, sycophantic, and generally a smug bastard, Sentinel Prime believes in strength above all. Even the vow he took before Primus, "Order Through Strength," reflects that. Having a direct symbiotic connection to Primus went straight to his ego. The guy's downright insufferable. Not that he wasn't before... Sentinel is a loyal guard dog to his liege, Senator Ratbat, and trusts that he'll do anything it takes to maintain order and keep a perfect Cybertron, no matter how grisly or unsavory the cost. He'll have his troops carry out any and all dirty work the Senator needs done without question.

The Steelguard

The Steelguard are Sentinel Prime's followers, largely a band of big headed jerks that think they're Primus's gift to Cybertron and tend not to think too hard about ethics or morals. That's not to say EVERYONE working for Sentinel is a pompous windbag that thinks brute force is a solution to everything. Just most of them. In the very least, Sentinel's prodigy soldier, Breakdown (he/him) seems to have a shred of decency left in him that they haven't been able to snuff out just yet.

Jazz (he/him)

Senator Ratbat's current overworked secretary, and often the subject of Sentinel Prime's petty fits of jealousy. Ratbat takes quite a liking to Jazz, in some twisted sense, often taking him out for drinks or requesting he keep him company in his office. This sets Sentinel off to no end. To Ratbat, Jazz is the only mech on Cybertron worth befriending. To Jazz, Ratbat is quite insane and largely uncomfortable to be around.

Rodimus Prime (he/him)

The newest addition to the roster of active Primes, Rodimus has a very small band of followers that he's still working on a name for. His liege, Senator Ultra Magnus, expects great things from the little Prime, as soon as he figures out how to function normally with the presence of a god in his head, anyway. Though in the meantime, his second in command, Kup, and his high command, Arcee, Blurr and Springer, are happy to pick up the slack. They may not have a name to unite their faction, but they have a creed to uphold: "Hope Endures." They do charity work to keep spirits high while Cybertron is in a bit of a rocky state.

Fire Convoy (he/him)

Nobody knows for certain whether or not Fire Convoy is still online. Most accounts say he went entirely mad, and disappeared without a word, leaving behind his followers, the X-force. Some say he still lives, wandering the Sea of Rust, in search of an ancient titan. The remaining X-force typically keep to themselves, isolated from the remainder of Cybertron in hopes that their prime will return.

The Senate

The governing body of Cybertron, the Senate are appointed by Primus via the Allspark, in a selection process known only to the highest elites. Their top priority is and always will be maintaining order. An increasingly difficult task when the Decepticon menace persists like a nasty infestation of binaroaches. Still, they have full confidence that the primes that serve them will weed out the remaining vermin, no matter how long it takes or how messy it may get.

Senator Ratbat (he/him)

Ratbat values one thing above all else: efficiency. That's why Ratbat is primarily in charge of Cybertron's transport, and all that entails. An efficient Cybertron is a successful Cybertron, and the more like a well oiled machine the world he rules can run, the more the species as a whole can advance, improve, and evolve. No barrier is too great, too grisly, or too taboo to overcome. He will do whatever he must for the good of the world. Whether its inhabitants want it or not.

Senator Alpha Trion (he/him)

Alpha Trion is largely considered the leader among the Senate, as the oldest, wisest, and having been in power the longest. He took in Optimus Prime and gave him purpose after his loss of faith. The mech is like a son to him, really, and he's honored that such a powerful prime with such a dedicated--and useful--following would call him his liege. Alpha Trion strives for a perfect Cybertron above all else, and he truly believes Optimus to be the ticket to that ideal future he has always envisioned.

Senator Perceptor (they/them)

Perceptor is the senator to consult on any and all scientific matters, considered the most intelligent mind at the table. Primarily because they had most of their personality components removed and only has room left in their mind and spark for knowledge. Even their vox synthesizer is a much more archaic and simplistic model than normal, running on software typically only used by drones, all to free up processing power. Occasionally, they have glimmers of emotions they really shouldn't be able to feel with their programming. More often than not, flashes of regret.

Senator Ultra Magnus (he/him)

Ultra Magnus is the bot responsible for planning most of Cybertron's infrastructure, and he takes great pride in the image of a hardworking bot he maintains. His people trust him to consider the population and how to help them best. Well, the populace whose opinions matter, anyway. The expendables can say what they will, whine all day about how they're living in rusted shambles, it matters little to him when he has contributing members of society to appease. Besides, he has his dear Rodimus Prime to keep them quiet with his meaningless little gestures of good will. Quite the useful bot, that Rodimus, if a bit unfocused. Ultra Magnus really just wishes the little Prime would see the big picture and stop fretting over the "less fortunate."

Senator Wingthing (he/him)

Senator Tracks (he/him)

Rich, Noble, and stylish, Tracks has an eye for trends and knows how to set them. Which is quite the useful talent when your job is managing Cybertron's media and propaganda. It's a wonderful thing, being able to keep a whole planet distracted from whatever shady shit you need done behind the scenes.

A product of pure nepotism. Wingthing is often referred to as seat filler, joining the Senate at the same time as his brother, Ratbat, as is tradition when a twin is selected. Describing him generously, Wingthing is an eccentric bot. Describing him not-so-generously, Wingthing is an insufferable, childish moron and a raging misogynist with neither wit nor tact to his name, seemingly only serving to trash talk everything Senator Chromia says. Occasionally he'll help Senator Tracks with his propaganda projects.

Senator Chromia (she/her)

Senator Chromia is the very image of restraint. How else would she be able to listen to every obnoxious word out of Wingthing's mouth without ripping out his entire vox synthesizer? Running both military and law enforcement matters, Chromia is quite the tactician, and merciful enough to hardly ever allow excessive brutality on her own people. Her reassuring presence on the Senate is an inspiration to fembots of all stripes. If she can make it as Cybertron's #1 Girlboss, so can they!

The manifestations of Life and Death, respectively.

Misc

Cedarwood

A small town of humans about fifteen kliks from where the Autobots crashed. Very rural, with a population of self-described hillbillies, rednecks and hicks. The bots aren't sure what any of those words mean, but they're happy to try to make nice with the local organics, whenever they aren't trying to shoot the bots.

Primus and Unicron

Primus, the bored god, inhabits the minds of those it deems worthy, drawing power from their emotions and dedication to their ideals, and watching the chaos and drama his creations cause. Aside from whispering odd non sequiturs and baffling encouragements into the audials of his favorite followers, the strongest vessel for his will is the Allspark, an odd little artifact that never quite likes to stay put.

Unicron, the endless hunger, is a name spoken of in hushed whispers, lest the beast hear you. It is never a matter of if he will find your world. Merely of when. He lies in wait, in deep space, drawn to deep fear and hopelessness, seeking out the most miserable life forms so that he may bring their doom.

Teletraan-1

The primary helper drone on Optimus Prime's vessel, the Ark. Teletraan-1 keeps things ship-shape, helping to run everything from the altmode scanner, to the ship's weapons, to things as simple as connecting to Earth's wifi. It gets things done quick and snappy, it understands Optimus runs a tight ship. Tragically, it never seems to run out of ship puns... Oddly enough, seems to have a strange infatuation with the bot it most interacts with, Prowl, which really shouldn't be possible with it's limited programming. Though with the Allspark so close by, who knows what could happen.

Wreck-gar (he/they/it)

A strange little bot that showed up one day after the Decepticons managed to lose the Allspark for a bit. Equipped with a vacuum on his back and a strange little noisy box the humans call an "accordion," Wreck-gar doesn't seem to know a thing about Cybertron, leaving everyone very confused on just who he is and where he came from.

The Dinobots

Wheeljack's name for the rudimentary security drones he's been planning to make. Inspired by extinct Earth Fauna of tremendous size and power that he found out about from binging Earth documentaries, and this one movie he fell asleep halfway through called Jurassic Park. No way anything this cool could go wrong on him!

[crowithy]

sooo about your trio of ocs, sorry if im late ( ; ω ; )

whats their friendship dynamic like

how did they all meet

how tall are they

I saw you mention Micheal having a pet rat on toyhouse WHAT IS ITS NAME YOU MUST TELL US NOW THIS IS A THREAT (/j)

what are their music tastes

do the others have pets, if not what would they want as a pet

okay this is a bit late sorry BUT here's your answers ( a bit out of order)

so Pom and Micheal met in middle school, they got put together for a school assignment and have been friends since. They met Matt in high school, they were sitting alone at lunch and Matt kinda just showed up one day and started talking to them. their dynamic is hard to describe (mostly because I cannot describe things for shit) but Matt and Pom are the biggest talkers of the group, Pom is the main planner, Micheal is off to the side not in a bad way. Its not that they talk too much or don't let him get a word in he's just quiet. He prefers to listen to a conversation more than be apart of it, just being there. Even if he doesn't look like hes paying attention he is. Just don't get him started on mushrooms, snakes, or welding, he does a complete 180 and will not shut up.

Micheal has 3 pet rats actually! I plan to draw them eventually

Micheal jr. often shortened to just junior (named because he has little black patches of fur and Matt gave Micheal the idea as a joke and he went with it)

Nuke

and Dipshit (that he calls dipstick when hes around his younger brother)

the others don't have pets but Matt would probably have a turtle or some kind of lizard. Pom isn't really a pet person but probably a cat, which despite his claims of not wanting a pet he would absolutely spoil that thing.

music tastes is kinda hard because I absolutely do not know my genres that well. but ill do my best

Matt has multiple playlists for different moods and genre's vary but his main three playlists are a bunch of circus music, the world revolving added to the same playlist over 100x, and the misc playlist with 100 songs that do not match eachothers vibe at all. some artists I think he would listen to: 100 gecs, Insane Clown Posse,and Lemon Demon

Pom has one main playlist she dumps all her favorite songs into. but its a majority death metal some artists i think he would listen to: Scene Queen, Bear Ghost, Mother Mother, Black Dresses, Korn, and Necrogoblikon

Matt, I honestly have no idea other than its mostly My Chemical Romance I did make him a playlist (wip) on a whim tho because I was bored

and finally their heights! (as well as the redesign for Pom!)

I was going to finish this drawing first, but I lost all motivation for it.

[paradoxcase]

Sorry for the extended absence. The Riven 2024 remake came out on the 25th, then I went on vacation to see my aunt, then we all got covid from me going through the airport, I spent like a week and a half recovering from covid and eventually finished Riven, and now I've been decompressing a bit from all that by booting up Stardew Valley 1.6 for the first time since it came out. Eventually I will reboot back into linux and finish listening to the other two Locked Tomb audiobooks, maybe I'll do that this weekend.

Here's some Riven remake thoughts under the cut:

I dislike the animated characters compared to the live action from 1997, but I like that they kept most of the original recorded dialog (from what I've seen, I think the only rerecorded dialog was Atrus?), but the animated characters weren't as bad as I was expecting, so I guess there's that. I'm guessing they probably had to do this because they didn't have 3D recordings in 1997 that would have looked good with the free movement during cutscenes and VR?

I didn't like that the camera angle was locked to the cursor at all times, I feel like they could have done what they did in Exile and Uru and had right click unlock the cursor, that system worked perfectly in those games. It got a little odd during the cutscene where Gehn shows you the trap book, since I guess they wanted you to be able to click on the trap book without moving the camera, maybe because moving the camera significantly during the cutscene triggers the cutscene to end? I didn't play with it a lot, so I'm not sure. But during that cutscene, there was a weird thing where the cursor could move freely, but the camera would follow it slightly after a delay, and it was kind of disorienting

I like the new number system. It never really made any sense that the Moiety would be using D'ni numbers in their puzzle to enter Tay, or that Catherine would use D'ni numbers in her personal journal. I think the Rivenese numbers are much better incorporated into the animal puzzle than the D'ni numbers were in 1997, actually, and I like that you still have to figure out the D'ni number system even though it's no longer used in the specific puzzles it was used in in 1997

I really love the new conception of what the domes are, and why they exist, and how you use them to travel between islands. I also kind of like that you can access Prison Island before accessing Age 233, and actually have to access it before solving the animal puzzle

There was so much potential to the remade animal puzzle, but I feel like the actual implementation fell on its face. The lens was perfect for the puzzle, and so was the idea of using it to find the clues and the numbers, and the numbers themselves were perfect for the puzzle, but the clues were just not it. I was not able to make the clue for totem #1 appear in the game, even when following a guide, I suspect the game is just bugged in this particular place. Totem #6 showed me the wrong animal picture for some reason, not sure if this is a one-time glitch or an actual bug, I'll have to check when I replay the game. Totem #3 and #5 both had a moth as their clue, but obviously it's not possible to choose the moth twice, so this was what ultimately lead me to look in a guide. Apparently #3 is the moth, and #5 is for some reason the frog. After completely the whole game I still don't know what the frog had to do with the moth or how I was supposed to say, hmm, yes, a moth, obviously I'm meant to choose the frog for this one. Also, one of the guides I came across described the sunner as a "toucan", like, dude, have you literally ever seen a picture of a toucan, do you for some reason think a toucan is an animal with four flippers and no wings and flat duck bill, what on Earth would cause someone to describe that shape as a "toucan"? Anyway, I think this part of the game definitely could have been better

I'm a bit confused by the redesign of the prison. The in-game text now identifies the prison as being Gehn's former office before he moved to Age 233, and so I guess it was redesigned so that the elevator no longer has bars for that reason. But we still have information in the game that Gehn would go up to interrogate Catherine periodically - I feel like he would have modified the elevator to allow him to use it without releasing her, the way it worked in the 1997 version. Instead, in this version, we have this thing where you have to go through a railing, off the beaten path, all the way out to the Moiety totem, and then climb a series of ladders and parkour across some precariously placed boards to talk to Cathering through the bars on the outside of the prison. The proximity of all this to totem made me initially think that the Moiety were coming out here to talk to her (since the domes are no longer protected with a password and the Moiety know how the solve the fire marbles puzzle according to Catherine, and must therefore also know how to use the domes to travel between islands) and Gehn was unaware of this route. But since it's now the only way up there without freeing her, Gehn must have been using it, too. I really can't see him assembling this whole parkour arena to get up there, he would have at least built a stairway or another elevator or something. During the course of the game, you discover another rift into the star fissure on Temple Island, and it gets patched up with honest-to-god metal plates after a pretty short period of time. When Gehn needs to get stuff built, he seems pretty efficient about it, and I get the feeling that Catherine has been imprisoned for a while now. There's also kind of a odd thing about the elevator - the elevator can't even be called on the first floor without the password, which does make sense if this was Gehn's private office originally. There seems to be another place to enter the code upstairs too, but it's been broken. Naively you might guess that the code was needed to leave the office, too, and that's how Catherine was imprisoned (which is dumb and also a fire hazard, but I think it's actually totally in character for Gehn to create things which are dumb and also a fire hazard), but this doesn't work, since after Catherine leaves the prison you are still able to call the elevator back up so that you can leave after her. So I'm not sure what the broken code entry is supposed to mean, there

I like that we got to see a bit of Tay and Age 233, although there wasn't a lot to do there. I wonder why Gehn had the smaller wooden Moiety totems on Age 233? Seems out of place

I haven't played through all the bad endings, and still have nine locked achievements on Steam. When I eventually get bored of Stardew again, I'll probably go back and 100% it and see the bad ending content