#i don't normally like to explain my abstractions but. this one was a lot of fun to write
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okay unhinged essay about ragatha probably #1 idk i don't think this is all of my thoughts but here's what i could actually put down
i think the most surprising thing for me Personally is getting a lot of my interpretations of ragatha correct ? like . the thing that almost destroyed my motivation for this blog is the fear that my unhinged overanalyzation of her mannerisms in the pilot were Wrong - i actually thought about canceling everything when i was off from canon - but now ... yeah i'm not doing that
i guess it's just that we had so little of her in the first episode that i thought i was Manifesting her issues but Nope she really is this much of a Loser
first of all ! i suspected that she has low self-esteem but Goodness Gracious !! i didn't expect it to be Actually almost non-existent ?? like i thought i was Exaggerating for this blog but no , no person with a normal amount of self-esteem would Warp an incident so much in their head that they somehow believe something going wrong is Their Fault .
like she's so focused on pomni the entire episode because she Genuinely believes that the fiasco in the first day was her fault ( even though IT WASN'T , but she's really that used to quickly blaming herself ) and wants to make it up to her . but of course pomni is still adjusting and is Overwhelmed by everything ( which is understandable ) so she's not really in the mood for ragatha's bullshit
but with how ragatha reacts and what she subsequently tells kinger - she read those more as ' i do not like you ' than ' i am too fatigued to care about anything right now ' which is such a Large leap , but considering she was the one who Apologized to pomni for giving her a stressful first day ( which was COMPLETELY out of her control , ) it makes sense that she assumes that pomni has something against her - which was not helped by how none of ragatha's attempts of starting a friendship were reciprocated
i do understand why she would Think it's her fault - as pomni's a newcomer and More Stress is the last thing she needs , especially in her first day - but ' oh she doesn't like me ' is still Such a hasty conclusion that someone who already ... Doesn't Like Themself would jump to .
of course i can't not talk about the potential history between her and kinger . through their dialogue you can tell that ragatha's one of those people that took a batshit long time to truly adjust to the circus - which has a lot of interesting implications . with how she seems to understand the process of finding an exit in episode 1 , it explains a lot . my girl was so Not well when she entered the circus .
honestly it's just nice seeing that ragatha at least has Some support despite her being the one who holds everything together - it makes the ending impactful in my opinion ; they do really care for each other and will be saddened if one of them is gone .
also of course she asked if everyone's alright despite having a cleaver to the head ...
something that also has been nagging me for a long time is how much she always gets the short end of the stick . like , literally every time she's on screen , she Has To Get Harmed in some way . i would brush this off as slapstick when her official pin doesn't have her HAVING A KNIFE TO THE CHEST ???
Maybe it's just slapstick . maybe with her having parallels to kaufmo considering how he's said to be a goofy toxic positivity type guy like ragatha and is the one that has abstracted thus far is just a coincidence and doesn't speak levels to what might become inevitable as the series goes on ,
#[ ooc ]#[ ESSAY WARNING ]#tadc#the amazing digital circus#tadc spoilers#the amazing digital circus spoilers#tadc ragatha#||#couldn't find a way to fit this into the post but#something about her just screams ' abandonment issues ' and i don't think i have enough evidence to prove it but . the feeling's there
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Silly
Summary: Reader decides it's a great idea to lock themselves in their room for almost a month, figuring out a way to get out of the digital circus. Jax is not having them abomanalize in front of him.
Warning: censorship/censored cussing?
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You had randomly been thrown into the digital circus about a few months ago. Staring at the space and boards on your wall with a sigh, you slammed back down on your bed. 'It's no use! I'll never get out of here,' you thought angrily, putting your hands over your face softly. Did you even want to leave? I mean, you sort of had pomni. And ragatha. Maybe Jax, you chuckled at that thought, because you knew deep down you definitely had that rabbit. You, pushed the thought down though, because who would want you? Especially a guy like Jax. He'd obviously pick someone on the outside of the digital circus over you when you guys got out anyway.
Would you even get out? 'Oh god, not back to this questionnn!' You mentally groaned. You had been in your room for so long, locked away hunting for the exit, an exit, just.. Something to give you the peace of mind that you weren't trapped and the people you briefly remembered were still out there. Hell, you were probably on the verge of becoming one of those... Things. What was it called again? You couldn't even remember. Youd been in here so long you forgot a lot of things.
You sighed, slowly pushed yourself from on top of your bed to the floor. Your shoes making a little 'squek!' Nose as you did. You smiled. Sure, that was childish but that was one of the only things you liked about this body. It wasnt you, it didn't look like what you remembered, hell, if you even remembered it. You stared down at your feet, looking at your slippers smiling and grabbing your coffee from the desk.
Did people in the digital circus need coffee? No. Did you beg Craine for access to coffee with the same effects? Yes. You smiled, walking over to the door slowly, coffee in hand until the knob turned by itself. That can only mean one thing, you groaned and quickly took a giant sip of your coffee, before running over to the door to prevent Jax from seeing your whole room.
the door flew open and almost hit you in the face. Jax chuckled at this, but noticed the boards before you stepped right back into place to block his vision again. His eyes shifted to worry.
"Well, I'd say someone needs to knock." You said, putting your hand on your hip playfully.
"I did, twice. I'd say someone needs to let go of so much coffee." He retorted in the same voice eyou did, which made you roll your eyes and chuckle.
"Jaxi, I've told ragatha and I'll tell you,
I'm fine! It's just a little... Theorizing."
You explained, motioning to all of it. Jax sighed, rubbing the space between his nose.
"You've [BLEEP]ing asked for it now, so your going to get the real, emotional Jax here, okay? Oh-[BLEEP]ing-kay." He said, practically shoving you back into your room, closing the door and locking it. he sighed as he stepped in, he really didn't know how to go about this.
"Jax, your kinda scaring me-" you said, before being cut off.
"absolutely NOT, n/n. You don't get to..lock yourself in this room for week's, almost a MONTH and then not come out at all, not even for food, and [BLEEP]it, EVEN I know that's not normal for you! And then tell me your scared of me, snapping at you! I'm so sorry y/n, but I REFUSE to let you sit by and destroy yourself like this, especially when you are so important to most of us. You are NOT abstracting. Not on my watch."
He said, breathing rapidly. And then, realization had just set in on him and you. He never snapped at you, sure he could be a prick but he never yelled, was he serious? However for Jax, it was the realization he had just yelled at you.
"I-" you started, but we're quickly cut off.
"Nuh-uh, hot stuff. Now that you've listened to the.. Overly emotional "Jaxi" in your words, we're going out of this..... Place." He said, practically glaring daggers through you while scrunching his nose at your room.
You nodded quickly, grabbing his hand. He blushed a dark purple, but shook his head to brush it off.
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"Nono- shut up!" You yelled at him, he was using those stupid cheesy pickup lines on you again.
"Hey, are you a calculator? Cuz I could never leave you alone in school!" He yelled at you, almost laughing himself. You fell into the floor, holding your stomach with laughter.
Ragatha walked outside the tent, she needed fresh air, untill she heard laughter. She turned her head softly to see what was going on, and there you and Jax were. She smiled.
'they're so silly.' She thought, before walking off back into the tent.
#tadc jax#the amazing digital circus#jax#tadc#cute#x reader#jax x reader#sweetness#sweet#silly little guy#sillyposting#so silly#silly#silly guy#luxelorienfanfic
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Can you do The Amazing Digital Circus characters meeting the reader for the first time?
A/N: ofcofc!! thanks for the request, i ADORE writing for tadc! <33 (keeping these platonic since most characters i write for in tadc are platonic)
Another New Home (TADC & Reader) [Headcanons]
Rules For Requesting
Characters I Will Write For
Masterlist
Summary: General meeting/friendship headcanons for ALL characters of TADC
Caine:
Seeing as he's the ringmaster, Caine introduces himself first!
Tries to be a bit less louder than he was with Pomni. She's actually been talking with him lately, trying to get him to be a bit more friendly! And human!
Can you blame him for being slightly rude? He's not even human, so he can't be blamed for not understanding certain emotions.
But you help him understand! He'll ask you from time to time about what certain human things mean.
When you first spawned into the circus, Caine helped pick out a name for you! By that I mean he chose it for you. You didn't get a say in anything.
Your relationship now? Well, he makes sure you don't get abstracted! That's enough for a good friend, right?
Pomni:
Immediately freaked out hearing a new name in the theme song. DESPERATELY hopes you're not too weird, like Kinger or.. Jax? Well, she hopes you're not rude like Jax
After meeting you, she's pleasantly surprised! You two can kinda relate to your situation. Jax likes to call you two the "newbies".
Pomni tries her best to explain to you what the digital circus even means for you, what abstraction is, and what not. She may not be able to answer all of your questions, though.
Thinks you're one of the "normal" ones to hang out with. Tries sticking with you during Caine's adventures. (She just needs someone else that gets her. Luckily, you fit that role perfectly.)
If she's comfortable enough with you, some days she may visit you in your room! Pomni doesn't do this often, though, so feel lucky.
Overall, the two of you are existential crisis buddies! If you become friends with her, be prepared for lots of deep thoughts and.. well, confusion.
Ragatha:
Ragatha is always eager to meet someone new in the circus! Despite how dire your situation may be, she tries her best to cheer you up.
Every morning she checks the doors before going down to the grounds, and that morning she found your door. Your design intrigued her, she just had to meet you!
She definitely explains abstraction better than Pomni tried to. When you get nervous about.. well, going insane, she heavily reassures you. Although Caine's adventures may seem like hell, they're actually pretty fun! Sometimes.
Ragatha shows you to your room, before she lets you get to know everyone else. She tries to stay optimistic for you, but you can kinda feel her underlying worries about the situation as she explains it.
She's definitely one of the easier people in the circus to get along with. If you get to know her a bit better, she may open up to you! Ragatha will try to tell you everything she knows about her past self, but she's left with very little wisps of what she used to be like.
Ragatha is on the more nicer and motherly side of the group, so when you can you try to spend time with her. If you put in the right effort, Ragatha will become really fond of you!
Jax:
If you've read my other works, you'll know Jax isn't one for new people. And at the same time he is. He's really indecisive.
But meeting you wasn't too bad. You weren't overwhelmingly annoying, but you did have some elements to your character that he could tease or make fun of.
Your first impression of Jax was.. honestly kind of bad. He was a complete dick, what more do you expect? To say the least, his antics did not help your increasing confusion.
If you still hang out with him after your horrible introductions, he would be.. amused. Becoming friends with Jax was just setting yourself for failure. Walking into a bear trap.
He teased you, pranked you relentlessly, and made sure you failed horribly during Caine's adventures. Why? I dunno, it was funny.
Jax will tone down his asshole nature as time goes on, and the closer you are with him.
You'll know he's placed his full trust in you when he asks you to help him out with a prank.
Zooble:
According to Zooble, her name for you was 'weirdo' in her head until she met you. As is for everyone, I suppose.
Your first meeting was.. awkward? You had asked her how her limbs worked, detachable and all. It was intriguing to hear about, though.
One thing you shared in common with her was probably both of your lackluster attempts at Caine's adventures, before just deciding to give up.
When you were too tired to commit to an adventure, you'd hang out with Zooble. She was nice company, and much different from others who were much more chaotic. Spending time with Zooble gave your brain a rest, a chance to slow down. And.. it was nice.
Zooble may seem unwilling to befriend you, but I promise she's trying. Not many people actually try to befriend her, unless it's Jax. If you count Jax's pranks as a way of befriending.
In all honesty, when you first met her, you kinda thought she would be.. crazy. Like Kinger. Maybe it was her design, with all the colors in all its glory, but you found yourself pleasantly surprised!
As long as you aren't a natural annoying person, or push buttons like Jax, Zooble eill probably grow fond of you! She won't admit it, though.
Gangle:
Oohh, Gangle. She's a tough one. Right now she's focused on her comedy mask, and doesn't even notice you when you first spawn in.
When you come to say hi, she's still in sorrows. She wishes you could've seen her happier side when you first arrived..
You try to help Gangle fix her mask, but you.. kinda end up making it worse. You apologize profusely. Don't worry, she forgives you. She may have just cried a bit more.
The more you hang out with her, the more comfortable she will get with you. She's a tough one to break, so it may take a while for Gangle to become fully trusting in you.
Try not to make any sudden movements or bursts of affection, because she will cry. Gangle, being as emotional as she is, will probably break down if you're too nice to her. They're happy tears, I swear. She's just not as used to affection like she was before.
As you grow closer, you begin to notice the little things. Gangle begins to show hints of smiles, and if you're lucky, she'll giggle a bit at a joke.
If you're patient with Gangle, she'll get attached to you. Sorry, no take backsies. She's just happy to finally have someone to feel safe around.
Kinger:
Kinger is.. a wild card. Don't get me wrong, Kinger is one of my favorite characters, but you have to admit he's a bit startling at times. And confusing. So imagine meeting him after being transported to another reality, already confused enough with your current situation, and now having to deal with Kinger's personality.
Him being a bit, you know.. coo-coo, he kinda ignored you at first. Kinger thought he was just hallucinating again, as per usual. Then you spoke, and he immediately jumped.
Speaking to him leaves you a bit frazzled, but you don't mind. He asks a lot of confusing questions about you, like how many half-syllables are in your name. You don't even know your name yet..
But you spend time with him anyways, he can be fun at times! He's decently helpful on adventures, and is a joy to have outside of Caine's antics. (What I'm trying to say here is that you build fortresses together.)
Kinger categorizes all of his friends using chess pieces. He says your a knight. Not even he knows why, he just one day told you that you seemed like a knight.
Grow close enough, and this humanized chess piece will ramble on and on about plants and insects to you. When he's ranting, you can barely make out anything he says, as his words naturally seem to blend together. Honestly? He's probably neurodivergent.
One day he'll tell you about Queenie. But it's gonna take a while. Estimated 5 years. For now, you two are great friends! In a way, Kinger feels like this weird childhood friend you never had. And Kinger.. still sees you as a knight.
#headcanons#tadc#the amazing digital circus#tadc & reader#& reader#platonic#platonic fic#tadc x reader#x reader#x reader headcanons#x reader hcs#the amazing digital circus headcanons#tadc headcanon#meeting headcanons#friendship headcanons#meet cute#minor fluff#general hcs#requests open#request please#caine#pomni#jax#zooble#ragatha#gangle#kinger#tadc pomni#tadc jax#tadc ragatha
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Hey. "7 years of computer science for this". Hey what if. What if ok kinger has a wife ok but what if. What if when he's under all his pillows he's actually trying to remember what happened before. Before the amazing digital circus. How to get out of it. Trying to find a way. Just think about it, like darkness makes him get back to normal, and I don't think he would have said "7 years of computer science" just like this if he only remembered his wife.
Like that's a bit sad to think about it because I know that a lot of people likes kinger including me, but I think that he will MAYBE abstract. I know he is there since much more time than the others but I don't know, it could happen.
Remind yourself before insulting me or whatever that I'm not a super mega fan of tadc like some of you so I might have missed some infos about kinger that goosework dropped here and there, and I havent checked the wiki, I'm just writing this because I WANT THIS THEORY TO LEAVE MY BRAIN ARGGHHHHH
Kinger is pretty unstable, not really in the way that he could abstract at any moment like, but he has lost his mind, and does not seem to remember anything when he's with the others, even if he is able to go in the dark sometimes in their presence. In the hell it's diferent IT'S COMPLETELY DARK, so he was able to be in his normal state with Pomni. He tries to reassure her and all, because he is at that moment aware of what is tadc, which he wasn't really the moment before ???????? OK and so my idea is that (I think) he probably is one of the ppl who created tadc (I mean that's a bit obvious) and that seeing that being in the dark makes him go normal, he stays in the dark as much as he can so he can try to remember what happened BEFORE, his wife has existed for sure but he would be using her a a cover to avoid the others to be anxious because of him, I think that doing that kinda make him go crazy, explaining his state when he goes out of the dark. The more he tries, the darker he has to go in to remember. See, he had to be in HELL to remmeber. So it drives him crazy. He almost remember something but in the end just forget it. Kinger is going to abstract . I'm warning you guys.
Idk I that make any sense, english isn't my first language but I swear if this become a reality I WILL CRY 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
He's trying to find a way out of tadc, goes in the dark to be able to remember, does not succeed, it drives him even more crazy than he was before, he gets out of the dark and goes back to his crazy-CRAZY state. It hides to the others the fact that he's trying to find a way out, that he's actually REALLY going crazy and probably not so far from abstracting.
PLUS !!!!!!!! If we folliw what I've said, being able to talk with pomni in his normal state probably made him realize how crazy he has become. It will just accelerate his abstraction.
I'M SO SORRY IK THAT'S AN HORRIBLE AND SHITTY THEORY BUT IDK i I I DON'T WANT KINGER KINGER TO DIE WHAT DO YOU THINK 😭😭😭😭 BUT LIKE ????????,,??? AND THAT'S WHY HE WOUKD HAVE SAID THE THING WITH COMPUTER SCIENCE. HE REALIZED. HOW CRAZY HE HAS BECOME SINCE THE LAST TIME HE WAS ABLE TO BE LIKE THIS IN FRONT OF SOMEONE OR IN GENERAL. I'M DUMB. I'M CRAZY. IM GPING CRAZY 😭.
The whole thing with his wife is absolutly adorable
#tadc#the amazing digital circus#kinger#theory#queenie#why do YOU think he said the thing with computer science ? honestly that's a bjg mystery#help#chui française si vous voulez que je vous l'explique en francais mdr#TGE EPISODE WAS SO CUTE OURHGHDIOOAHDHOD1IAVP and uh yeah scary BUT OH MY GOD#oh and remember that's the first time i ever try to post a theory anywhere. i never spoke to anybody about any of my theory so uhh voila TvT
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so yi sang isn't my blorbo but this is driving me crazy SO
Deep dive into this picture!!!!
Okay, first off. We can see that this is an edit of the picture of the League from Chapter 4.
The word 'edit' is chosen specifically. At first, it looks like the picture was just defaced, but Ring Yi Sang is an abstract painter and there's a lot of changes outside of what you might think. A lot of silhouettes are distorted wildly, especially including the two mysteries in the back left, and strangely Aseah.
Of the three faceless characters, I have no idea which one might be Rim. I'm GUESSING he's probably not the femme-y tall one, but who knows.
Also, Dongbaek has these swatches of white on her face, which no one else does.
They look vaguely similar to the 'feathers' on Yi Sang's painting of his wings.
But since we're talking about faces, let's inventory it, shall we?
Of the three unknowns, two are frowning while the one in the foreground next to Dongbaek is smiling. The frowning faces are heavily distorted as well. The face of the one on the right looks to be 'melting', heavily lopsided compared to the other faces, while the one on the left has their eyes de-emphasized, drawn smaller and darker than the others unless one of them is missing?
Very abstract, so it's hard to tell, but if you consider Dongbaek and front guy basic faces, you can see that these two are distorted in a way Dongbaek isn't.
Yi Sang's face here is very interesting. First off, he appears to have given himself a hat, but more importantly his face is drawn dramatically differently from every other face in the picture. Even the relatively un-distorted ones are childish smiley faces, while Yi Sang has a 'normal' face in silhouette. He's effectively saying that he is important, human, but the rest of the League are just shadows of the past.
As you can see, just about everyone in the back row has their heads distorted somehow. I have no idea what this means.
Gubo and Dongrang's faces, meanwhile, are really strange, even compared to the face of the person next to Dongbaek. They're both drawn with smiles, but the smiles are distorted even more than the lopsided frown in the background. Gubo's smile reaches entirely across his face, while Dongrang's is almost a 'V', with the corners of his mouth drawn up to be level with his eyes.
Young-ji is completely free of any graffiti, as well as any distortion.
(Aseah will be explained later.)
But what do the faces MEAN? Simply going off the ones we know, Gubo, Dongbaek, and Dongrang-even more when we consider the vague information we have on the fate of the others and compare that with the faceless ones, we have a pattern.
Yi Sang is smiling, fitting with his joining the Ring later.
Dongrang and Gubo, both of whom sold out to Wings, are smiling. Dongbaek, who was injured and had a breakdown after the fall of the League, is frowning.
For the faceless ones, Rim is one of them, another sold out to work with T Corp, and I can't remember who/what the third one was. Two frowning faces, one smiling. From the rest of this, it seems reasonable to extrapolate that the T Corp defector is the smiling man in front, and since Rim isn't notably tall, it seems very likely Rim is the shorter man in the back with his face 'melting', or in the regular picture, this guy:
But then there's Aseah. Aseah is one of the most interesting parts of this picture. We can't see his mouth, but it's not a choice on Yi Sang's part to obscure Aseah's face-it's a choice on nai_ga's. His face is blocked by the handle of Yi Sang's weapon. Why?
Aseah first appears in Leviathan as a captive of the Ring. When we see him in Limbus, he's an associate of N Corp and in charge of the Ring. Regardless of which, the fact that Yi Sang is a member of the Ring as well as a friend of Aseah's would make him an authority on Aseah's emotional state, as well as what happened to him. We don't know much about Aseah, who is something of a cipher. Whether he drew him with a frown or a smile could have meant a lot about what the circumstances around him are.
Also, interestingly, his face seems to be less distorted, like Yi Sang's. If his face was as distorted as Dongrang or Gubo's, it would be immediately apparent where his mouth was-even a more simply drawn mouth would probably reach up or down into the cheeks outside of the paintbrush handle.
Finally, as a side note, comparing the expressions with the original picture:
In the original picture, far-left, tall one, and Possibly Rim are all smiling. Yi Sang and Dongbaek have small smiles-Yi Sang appears much happier in his drawing than in the original picture, as Ring Yi Sang probably considers himself to be now. Aseah seems expressionless. Gubo is frowning slightly. Dongrang looks visibly uncomfortable, which is particularly interesting considering how he's drawn in Yi Sang's version. Considering our Yi Sang might have harbored a grudge against Dongrang, this one might too.
Regardless-it's very interesting that someone so focused on denying the past and putting it behind him would not simply deface the picture, but put effort into that defacement by giving them different expressions.
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FUN IDEIA ALERT!!!
FUN IDEIA ALERT!!!
Spoopy season requires spoopy things
sooo i was kinda of thinking Ghost!child reader with the gang (platonic, always!)
Lemme explain it to ya, So i wanted to see some hc of an spirit child reader whos soul got stuck into the digital circus, how, you say? Lets say that in the moment that reader putted the headset something fell in their head, killing them instantly, since reader was wearing the Headset, instead of their body and conscience go to the digital circus, their soul got there! Their appearance being something peaceful and pleasing to the eye, like Reader's appearance are a child covered in white robes with some gold details and a flower crown. But reader's eyes represent constant sadness, like there are always rivers of tears falling off their eyes who (strangely) doesnt make a mess on the floor, kinda like Gangle's tears but more sad
If you go close enough to Reader you can hear multiple whispers, inaudible ones cuz its multiple whispers at one time but only Reader can understand them. If they question what the whispers says, Reader will say: "its the voices lamenting." In a full echoish-whisperish voice.
BUUT theres more!
Since reader is a spirit they can lift things with their mind, dim the lights and go invisible (ghost things)
Reader rarely express any other emotion than sadness, but when they snap... OH BOI
Reader will go full hostile mode, their appearance distorts into something really creepy, like their eyes will go full pitch black and the tears turns into some glitchy goo, their robes getting slightly black in the edges, Reader will start throwing things around with their mind and scream loud as hell, basically like a ghost tantrum.
Im very excited with this ideia AAAA
- 🦇
Crying child
Ik that isn't what you meant. But the first thing my mind went to is the crying children from fnaf. Also this sounds honestly really hard to write for. I ain't gonna just not write it though. I wasn't really sure if you wanted headcannons or a oneshot. But this felt like a more oneshot-ish request so I did that. TADC Crew x Child Ghost Reader
You were one of the first people to arrive at the digital circus. You were around 6 when you first arrived and are now much older. But being trapped here as well as being dead had taken it's toll on your young mind so you still act around the same as when you first arrived. Still easily excitable, still gullible, still sad. You really were like a ghost. Not only because you were literally a ghost but you rarely spoke unless spoken to and would just quietly float around an endless stream of tears falling from your eyes. You also had the tendency to just stare at people. You had an aura of sadness around you. The occasional quiet sob and endless depressed whispers that always followed you around made it hard to be around you for long periods of time. Their's a lot of mental problems in the circus already, and you sure as hell ain't gonna help. When you are happy, which is rare you're quite nice to be around. The tears and whispers stop and you really do feel like just a normal kid to the others. Now anger is a different story. When you're angry Caine has to actually lock you up cause you've killed a few people. Your usual appearance resembles a fallen angel. Snapped halo, dirtied once pristine white robes lined with gold. But when you're angry it flips. Your robes singe at the edges leaving behind a brownish blood red color your halo sinks into your head and is replaced by a single broken pure red horn. The fact that your soul is in the circus makes you have some kind of power. You don't really use it cause you don't know how. But when you're mad at someone it is proper time to freak out because you've deleted a few people. You always feel horrible afterwards but their isn't anything you can do for them. The ones who have been abstracted at least have a chance of being helped. The ones you deleted not so much. So in the rare occurrence that you're around everyone they do their best to keep you calm, and to keep Jax away from you (He doesn't believe you're a threat.)
(Another kind of strange request. Sorry if this isn't good. I just didn't really know what to write. I did my best though. Hope you enjoyed it.)
xoxo, Jester
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hey sun! sorry to bother you, but I'm currently doing a commission for a guy who wants a portrait made in the disco elusium style and I've never drawn in that style before ^^;
any tips, especially how to color?
not a bother at all! and while i'm not an expert on the disco elysium art style since i don't think i've done enough studies on it to say that i'm confident on saying what to do, i'll try my best to list out the things i've noticed while mimicking the art style. i'll split this into two parts, the composition of a portrait and the rendering and technical stuff behind it
i'll keep it under read more bc some of these portraits i'll be talking about are spoilers! whoops!
COMPOSITION
there's like, an unbelievable amount of variety when it comes to the portraits of disco elysium! personally, when i'm trying to mimic the art style, i try and look at the portraits in the game and see which of these characters are the most similar personality-wise to the character i'm trying to draw, and then i reference
1. PERSONALITY AND GROUNDEDNESS
let's compare the portraits of these two characters, ok? we have sylvie and idiot doom spiral. right off the bat, TOTALLY DIFFERENT VIBES, and that's good because we can instantly tell what kind of people these characters are supposed to be! and that's something disco elysium is excellent at.
sylvie's portrait is very simple; a very limited palette is used and the rendering on her is rather exact even with the rough-esque rendering that disco elysium's art uses. idiot doom spiral's portrait, on the other hand, is a lot more chaotic. there's more disorder to his portrait with how the paint strokes in the background seem to mix in with his face, there's a disheveled quality to how he's rendered.
ask yourself, how grounded is this character you're drawing? on a scale of sylvie to idiot doom spiral, how normal does their portrait look?
now, i'm not done with this klavier but i think it's pretty obvious that i heavily referenced smoker on the balcony's portrait because they have very similar vibes and role: pretty boy npc who your protagonist may or may not be a little infatuated with pftt (there's just something so different about them! i can't put my finger on it...)
2. WHAT DO THEY STAND FOR/THE ABSTRACT
ok! besides personality, they also have a knack for just doing some gorgeous portraits that truly reflect just, the history of a character and their role in the story. now i'm not the best at analysis so these are just gonna be some very simple observations about kim and dolores dei's portraits pftt.
the big white circle behind kim's face, besides doing an excellent job of framing kim, is very reminiscent of a nimbus which we typically see in religious art. it makes kim look like a very important figure, someone you should listen to. it's also kind of like a nod to how kim is like the few people who's like, civil and even nice to harry after his whole mind-breaking bender.
for dolores dei, GODDD i can rave about this portrait forever, it's such a favorite of mine. first, the rendering of her skin, she's like an opal or a golden statue; it's otherworldly, which makes sense because that's what harry thinks of her. and then, the splotchier and messier rendering below her, it's like she's fading away, she's just a distant memory of the past.
i'll use this very quick doodle of apollo in the de style to explain my point about symbols better. what is it that you want to emphasize about your character? are there any motifs you'd like to show?
i definitely wanted to portray apollo as determined and even heroic-looking in this portrait. leaning into his name, added that rim-lighting as if the sun was shining on him. emphasized his badge by giving it this exaggerated shine on it and lastly, made the background like the one he has when he perceives.
3. LOCATION
for backgrounds, i feel like you can go either three ways: abstract colors, political alignment, and location.
(i'm not happy that i have to use gary as an example here but he's the most blatant example of the second type of background AKSKSKS orz)
ok! so harry's bg, pretty funky, pretty fun. gary's bg, he's a fascist, that's the fascist flag in de. moving along trant's bg looks like a very abstract version of the wall in the building he's seen gazing at, heck, the way he's head is turned to you looks like you just called out his name and he quickly turned around to look at you but he is still very much facing the building.
more examples of those three things! garte: colors. titus: that red block is present on all union members. dicemaker: facing the window in the darkness of her workshop.
RENDERING
de has fairly very realistic looking faces, so brush up on your knowledge of the anatomy of a face or collect many faces/portraits that look the character you're trying to draw and reference the SHIT out of them!
1. BRUSHSTROKES
you're gonna be needing some brushes that have a texture to them ok. you're gonna need to slap those bad boys in that digital canvas and go wild ok. you can still do lineart kind of not everything is like rendered RENDERED bc some portraits make heavy use of smoother-looking black strokes to indicate lineart. ok i love you
2. PALETTES
think back to personality and symbolism, what colors are strongly associated with your character, and how grounded are they. the more normal they are the more minimal colors are used but if there's something going on with them you can go so so so wild
and also, you can eyedrop tool the colors from any of the de portraits, makes life easier pftt
3. HOW TO RENDER? HELP?
i'll go ahead and put my drawing of butch!kim here bc i basically just did a study of kim's portrait pftt. the art style is very painterly so i'm so sorry to say that you're gonna have to paint 😔 i know... i'm so sorry...
so block your colors! block your shadows and chip away on that thang, give it dimension! don't zoom in on your canvas in the earlier stages bc you'll end up fixating on one tiny part instead of the whole painting itself, and that's gonna make the duration of your drawing so much longer lol
ok i've been writing this for way too long and i can't think anything more to add so if there's anything else you want to know that i didn't mention here, feel free to ask me again. now good luck 🫡
#again not a bother at all i'm just terrible at answering asks quickly FDGHJD orz#sunnysidetutorials#sunnysideanswers#marchmay-may#described#id in alt text
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Oh Hellos' songs and what Curse of Strahd Characters I associate with them!
Oh boy they are my favorite band of all time and boy do I have things to say.
Also this does contain spoilers, so if you're a player, maybe get your DM's permission before reading through this.
Ireena: "Trees" "Notos" "Dear Wormwood" "Exeunt" "Boreas" "Lay Me Down" "On the Mountain Tall"
Oh boy, it's quite a few, if I'm being honest. "Trees" is about her relationship with Izmark, obviously. "Notos" is largely vibes based, but it's a lot of freedom and being willing to fight against the circumstances you find yourself in, which is a major theme for her. "Dear Wormwood" like... come on. Do I even need to say anything about this? Strahd has been controlling so much of her life, and now she's realized who he is and how bad he is. The whole song is about rebellion against an abuser and making your own way, without their influence. Similarly, "Exeunt" is about... leaving. Running away. Saying you've had enough of the treatment you've endured and getting the hell out of there. "Lay me Down" picks up right where that leaves off, bold and determined to get away, if not in life than in death. It's her hope of one day not being trapped in the soul snowglobe of Barovia. "Boreas" and "On the Mountain Tall" are both a little more abstract, but I think Boreas relates to the periods of depression she's been through as a result of.. you know. Strahd. And as for "On the Mountain Tall" like.. tell me you can hear the line, "I know you want me to be afraid, I know you want me to love you," without thinking of her and Strahd.
Izmark: "Trees" and "Soap"
"Trees" is there for symmetry with Ireena, being a song about their childhood and how, for a little while, they were happy. "Soap" is one I just like, can't explain properly. Frankly it came to me in a vision, and sometimes I know a song fits a character long before I figure out why. I think what initially drew me to associating it with Izmark is the lyrics about having a softer side, but needing to become tougher to survive in the world, and trying to figure out how to make who you want to be compatible with who the world says you have to be.
Rahadin: "Pale White Horse"
I feel like there's little to say that isn't obvious. The Pale White Horse is the coming of death, something twisted and horrible that makes even the bravest cower in fear, and if that isn't Rahadin, I don't know what is.
Doru: "The Valley"
Doru hates being trapped in Barovia (I mean, they all do, but Doru really hates it). And because of how much he hated everything about the place he was raised, it made him very eager to follow someone who said they would lead him into something better. Unfortunately, that individual bit off a little more than they could chew in this brilliant attack on Castle Ravenloft, and that's how Doru ended up undead.
Strahd: "Like the Dawn"
One of my favorite things to do with Strahd is take things that are super cute and wholesome, like Adam seeing Eve for the first time and realizing how wonderful it is to have someone who understands him, and making it about how horrible and fucked up Strahd is. This song is normally really romantic, but I dare you, just go imagine Strahd singing this about Tatyana and come back to tell me how icked out you are.
Sykane (OC): "Eat You Alive"
I'll talk more about her one day, but you know that weird Dark Power who can let you reanimate the dead if they've only been dead for a few days? Yeah, she's the Warlock/Necromancer's patron :)
Ezmerelda: "Thus Always To Tyrants"
A song about bringing life back to a dry valley by overthrowing the corrupt tyrants that have destroyed it? Yes, obviously it's the most badass Vampire Hunter out there. (I also think that some of it, especially toward the end, that's in reference to Van Richten).
Ludmilla: "Rose"
My Ludmilla has been hiding who she is from everyone, including Strahd. She was once good friends with the party Druid, but under a different name. Also, the lyrics about appeasing your leviathan groom? Love will get you slaughtered? Ugh. I love her.
Kasimir: "Rounds" and "The Lament of Eustace Scrubb"
"Rounds" is a song I personally use a lot to help myself get out of depressive slumps, due to it's slow building and references to taking in deep breaths, learning how to speak again. In his playlist, this song comes just after everything Rahadin does to the Dusk Elves, and is him slowly trying to pick his life back up after unbelievable pain. "The Lament of Eustace Scrubb" is honestly a bit of wishful thinking on my part, since our Kasimir hasn't quite realized that he has the ability to change and grow from the many, many mistakes he's made. But one day, maybe he'll realize that he can be set free.
BONUS ROUND WITH NO EXPLANATIONS
Escher: "Danse Macabre"
Abbot: "Smoke Rising Like Lifted Hands"
Lady Wachter: "Hieroglyphs"
Volenta: "Torches"
Sergei: "Grow"
#curse of strahd#dungeons and dragons#the oh hellos#music#dnd 5e character#strahd von zarovich#escher#ezmerelda d'avenir#rahadin#the abbot#cos ireena#ismark kolyanovich#kasimir velikov
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ok i've decided i want to infodump about vee and nova a little after all! because uhh not only am i impatient because autism but i also. want to dip my toes into talking about this. just days ago i was still terrified but now i am Tentatively Brave... if i can talk about it here casually like this then i should be able to write a more formal summary later some other time
i've tagged this post appropriately (at least i think i have, feel free to suggest if i should add more) but also a heads up here too before i keep talking that while i'm not going into graphic detail on anything there are STRONG themes of organized sexual abuse of a child, sexual abuse of animals, and grooming! (there are no disturbing visuals in this post, just text)
IF YOU CAN'T READ THIS POST THAT'S OKAY I STILL LOVE U
takes a deep breath alright so the deal with these two. back all the way in 2021, i decided i wanted to make "vent ocs" as in i just wanted some concrete/consistent designs i could use in vent art drawings that weren't a direct reflection of what i envision myself to look like or whatever. i was going through a lot in 2021, in december 2020 i had just gotten my first big repressed memory back and my life was in a whirlwind of change and heavily increased PTSD and DID symptoms, so i was using art a lot as an outlet. in the end i settled on this drawing, based on the design taste i would have had as a young person (god the quality is so old now LOL i've improved a lot but anyway)
i was intending for these two to be just visual designs and nothing more than that but i got attached and actually ended up giving them a whole storyline and everything, which is something i admittedly hadn't done in a long time up to that point so that's cool.
the reason i preface explaining the premise of the storyline with this is because i think it's important to acknowledge that these two are intrinsically tied with my real life and the feelings i experience as a CSA/OA survivor. not because i think someone has to go through awful things to write or draw about them necessarily, but because i am passionate about expressing myself. it's important for me to be seen in some way, to be heard after years of silence. it is not safe for me mentally to share the exact details of my abuse online rn (and please don't ask for them!) but i also don't want these two to be removed from the message that i survived something and this is me making art about that in an abstracted and magical way with a fictional universe that brings me a lot of comfort. i hope this makes sense lol
oh and also with that in mind if you think for even a second any of this is a weird sex thing for me or some shit please stop reading this post and go do something else with your time. this is my trauma expression and i don't need to be compared to the people i was abused by when i was a literal toddler thank you!
AANYWAY so! premise! gonna be point blank with it! vee (not her original name but shh) is born as a normal 100% human girl, aka without the eevee ears and tail. she is groomed from a very young age (like, toddler age) and eventually abducted by her groomers which happen to be members of... well right now it's team rocket because i haven't spent the time to worldbuild a new villainous pokemon organization yet. roll with me here. she is taken to a remote facility out in the middle of fucking nowhere and is never returned to her previous life or family.
Why? well i'm glad you asked! the org is running a bunch of different experiments in this facility and one of them happens to be trying to enable humans reproducing with pokemon. this doubles as both a money thing and a power thing. they seek out a child as the victim of these horrible experiments because children are easily malleable. way easier to control a child than an adult who already has a firm identity/self.
vee is the child they chose. surgery is forcibly done on her to give her working eevee ears and tail, and also like, fuck with her body chemistry and stuff. she's biologically part eevee now. yes this is bullshit pokemon magic science LMAO but she is kept in this facility and chronically sexually abused for a few years by pairing her with various mons and trying to get eggs to happen.
the experiment isn't working though so they hypothesize that giving her a dedicated partner, especially of the same evolutionary line, would help, and they raise nova from birth as an eevee to take on that role. eventually the two of them are paired together. despite the acts they are forced to commit on each other and the abuse they endure, they actually become inseparable very quickly cause like. they don't have anyone else. and also they just genuinely care about each other. additionally at this point nova has evolved into an espeon and has telepathic powers, so him and vee can communicate linguistically with each other, so you know that helps
generally my current focus of this story is in the early years, when vee is 12 and younger, before they start realizing that shit is fucked up and they need to escape (up until that hypothetical point they have been successfully groomed into believing everything happening to them was not abuse/was normal). i have left out a metric fuckton of detail here just to get across the basic premise. i am constantly exploring vee's psyche, nova's psyche, it's like an in depth exploration of the mind of an abused child in horrific circumstances and god it's cathartic. i love these two so fucking much
btw i guess this art has more context now huh haha after i infodumped off the plot to my sister they looked at this art again and was like. OHHH THIS IS EVEN MORE OMINOUS AND HARD TO LOOK AT WITH CONTEXT. AND I WAS LIKE YEAH!!!! YOU SEE THE VISION!!! THE SYMBOLISM!! ETC!!!!
uh yeah if you read this far thank you and i just wanna say i've been building up the courage to talk about these two for GENUINELY two years, it has been over 2 full years since that initial drawing, and i am nervous and jittery posting this but i do not want to die without having shared my work with the world and i'm willing to take the risks to get my voice out there. so you reading it is very much appreciated ur like my first step into being more confident as a survivor lol
oh and fwiw despite these guys being so correlated with my trauma it's not offensive to make headcanons or ask me questions about them or compliment darker art of them however you want, in fact i love that shit!! please i've been holding these guys back for two years i have so much to say that hasn't been said. as much as i am nervous i am EXCITED
#sa tw#mind control tw#csa tw#oa tw#abuse tw#this post is a bit of a mess sorry!#this is why im sort of “drafting” my summary as a stream of consciousness infodump#i need to tackle having the confidence talking about this first#just get it out no matter how messy#and THEN i can clean it up and present it in an artistically pleasing way#kiki was here#kiki.txt#vee & nova
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I did not have high expectations (mechanically) for the Stormlight/Cosmere rpg, same as with any IP tie-in game, so I was pleasantly surprised when I read the beta rules. From what I have read, I would rather run or play in the Cosmere rpg than the three rpgs that I have played extensively (DnD 5e, FFG Star Wars, Pathfinder 2e). I am going to be comparing the Cosmere rpg to these three frames of reference of mine, and explain what I like about it. This is all theory for now, though I will run the Bridge 9 one-shot in a couple of weeks for my playgroup. And yes, I know that most of the Cosmere rpg ain't novel. Beyond borrowing from 2-3 of my three frames of reference, the initiative is basically the one from 'Shadow of the Demon Lord', etc.
I have mixed feelings about the plot die. I don't actually like narrative mechanics in the first place. That being said, no system I've played was devoid of mechanics I dislike, and the plot die is (almost) the least objectionable a core narrative mechanic could be for me, beyond nonexistence. The obvious point of comparison for me is obviously the Star Wars system. The plot die's opportunity and complication are basically analogous to SW's triumph/advantage and despair/threat. In addition to that, the lead designer of the Cosmere rpg, Andrew Fischer, also worked on the SW system.
I think that the plot die is better than the Star Wars dicepool mechanic in every possible way. First of all, the plot die is an opt-in kind of deal. Barring a few player abilities (the existence of which is my only criticism of the plot die), the GM decides whether it gets rolled or not, with the rules advising the GM to use it roughly 30% of the time, specifically in exciting moments. In Star Wars, every roll produces these narrative effects. Yes, technically, 1s and 20s also produce complications and opportunities in the Cosmere rpg, but the designers added them because people played like that was already the case because of how they are used to crits from other games. A tenth chance of one of these is much lower than almost 100% like in SW. Anyway, the point is that when we played the Star Wars system, having to come up with narrative stuff on every roll was a chore, rather than fun and exciting. Sometimes I would get a triumph on a roll for a routine check, and rather than that being exciting, it was more like 'uhh, what does this even mean?'. Sure, there are mechanical ways in Star Wars to spend advantages and threats and so on. What tended to happen in combat though was that unless you used advantages to crit someone or auto-fire, you just used it to give someone else a bonus die. And the most likely result from a bonus die beyond a blank was getting an advantage. The same principle happened out of combat, where we often took strain for threats and regained for advantages. A lot of abstract resources were pushed around, with a negligible net effect. Certainly not something worth that giant hassle. Also, sometimes you would get a triumph effect and three threats. That was always hard to interpret.
Secondly, the plot die is way simpler, which has a whole host of benefits. In SW, there are six different narrative dice with specialized symbols. You have to buy a lot of overpriced plastic to even play the game. The plot die of the Cosmere is a single d6. Sure, its nicer to use the custom one you can buy from Brotherwise, but the beta rules advise on how to use a normal d6 for the plot die. 1,2 are complications, with a bonus to your roll equal to twice what you rolled (+2 or +4), 3,4 are blanks, and 5,6 are opportunities. That is easy to remember, since higher numbers=better narrative result. While you could technically do the same with SW, the fact that there are six of them, including d12s, makes it completely impractical. Also, the dice in SW have either only all positive effects or only all negative effects. If you are gonna do this entire narrative crap, at least do interesting stuff with it, like higher chance of success but with negative narrative effect. Those make for better stories and better game design. And oh look, that is exactly what the plot die does. So, yeah. In case you couldn't tell, I hate the action resolution dicepool mechanic of SW.
I really like the progression system of the Cosmere rpg, with the exception of using milestone advancement (though its inclusion's suckery is mitigated by the goal/reward thing). It is actually conceptually very simple, but very flexible, meaning there is a lot of meaningful choice without overwhelming a new player. Every level, you get (in addition to a couple other things) one talent from one of your skill trees, called paths. I am currently a player in a Pf2e campaign, and leveling up is a chore rather than fun. Different levels give you different kinds of feats, so it is not very straight forward. It also takes a long time to read all the feats I qualify for, most of which don't even interest me. Also, it is very easy in Pathfinder to screw up if you don't plan out your characters progression in advance. When I started, I took the ranger's crossbow feat. Turns out that was a trap: no other feats actually help crossbows, and most of the good ranger feats require you to attack multiple times or in melee, neither of which a crossbow is made for. In a skill tree system like Cosmere, it is very easy to identify what talents I can take, and I can immediately see whether a talent is something I can build on by seeing how many talents are further down from it.
Star Wars also uses skill trees, but you basically get one big tree with a lot of filler talents you have to take to progress, but which you aren't actually interested in. The Cosmere rpg has a stronger focus on mixing and matching from different trees, with trees going less deep, having less filler. That looks more fun to me. This in-built multipathing is really cool. Multiclassing in DnD 5e was an afterthought, and is either very suboptimal or very broken, with barely anything in-between. I like how the Cosmere rpg is like 'hey, most characters fit multiple archetypes, lets reflect that in the game by not only supporting multiclassing from the ground up, but also actively encourage it'. Also the one talent per level thing makes leveling very manageable from a complexity standpoint.
Moving on to the magic, I really like that PCs don't start out magical. You earn your cool powers through play. Also, they said that they balanced the heroic (non-magical) and invested (magical) paths against each other, so that it is perfectly valid to only take talents from heroic paths and those who take invested path talents will often alternate between those and heroic ones. If true, that sounds awesome. And of course, the magic is Sanderson magic, so its really good. The best way to encourage creativity in players is to give them a smallish list of options, but have these options be very flexible. That is exactly how the Stormlight magic system works, with characters being closer to superheroes than DnD spellcasters. I think that is way more interesting. One of the frustrating things with DnD 5e is that the magic is never explained in a way that the GM can intuit how it works. Instead, they just spell out exactly what any given spell does, making them very rigid. Spellcasters have too many options, each of which is super rigid. Worst of both worlds. With the Cosmere, though I am not an arcanist superfan, I do understand the magic well enough that I am confident in adjudicating creative uses of powers (which the system explicitly supports!). Investiture, which is basically mp, is also just so much cleaner than spellslots, a vestigial leftover from vancian magic that the DnD designers were too cowardly to kill completely.
Finally, combat. I dislike armor class, so I am a big fan of armor just reducing damage, like the soak value in SW or DR in Gurps. The initiative system has me most excited to be honest. I think it will really speed up combat in multiple ways. For one, there is no die rolling and writing down initiative values and ordering them. Players basically just say when they want to do their turn. This also should make them more attentive, since they can't just wait for the GM to call their name. It also means that players can guarantee to go after each other, so that should encourage cooperation and teamwork. The distinction between fast two-action turns and slow three-action turns looks like it will force players to make a meaningful choice every turn. Overall, looks like a simple, clean and fast initiative system. The two-three actions remind me of Pf2e, though notably the reaction is much more relevant in the Cosmere rpg.
The graze rule, where a character on a miss can still spend 1 focus to deal their weapon's damage dice to their target, is very interesting. My initial instinct was to think that it is really OP. It would probably be a really OP rule if armor did not reduce damage, but given that it has gone through extensive playtesting, I assume that it is actually balanced. Assuming it is balanced, I think its pretty cool, since it means that you still managed to do something, even if you missed your one attack of the round. Makes it less frustrating.
So yeah, those were my main thoughts on the Cosmere rpg. It is not my most anticipated rpg, but I do intend to back and run it and am also really looking forward to the world guide as a fan of the books.
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Are we all secretly Argentinian? A brief history of VPN in Beemoov's fandom
Once upon a time, when only High School Life and maybe Eldarya TO were out, players were able to choose their own bank when making a purchase on the games websites. Some banks were extremely cheap compared to others, the cheapest of all being Argentina. This from the perspective of people living in other countries. As an example:
2800 Gold coins were worth 39€ or 49$ or 400 ARS 400 ARS were the equivalent of 27$ in 2016.
So, clearly, anyone given the chance would spend less with such a big discount. And the chance was indeed given, since it was easy to just select another country's bank on the website.
Fast-forward a few years, the option to choose a bank was removed, and people could only use the bank associated to the country they were connecting from. It didn’t take much time for people to realise that it was enough to change IP via a VPN to make the games think you were connecting from Argentina and still access its bank. Additionally, Argentinian's currency was getting more and more devaluated in time and prices were never really adjusted at the bank. So, those 2800 Gold which were worth 400ARS or 27$ in 2016, were now worth 11$ in 2019.
This VPN trick has been around for years now. Not all players were aware of course, and not everyone was comfortable in using a VPN or able to. But still, quite a lot of people were doing so. Some of them even made a business out of it, recharging other people's accounts using a VPN and taking a fee for their "service".
Fast-forward again, to 2022. The VPN trick escalated, the secret was not that much of a secret anymore, especially because people were freely talking about it everywhere, Discord, Facebook, all social media really, even TikTok videos were made explaining how to do it. Very simply, too many people were using it. Consequently, Beemoov worked on it and managed to remove Argentina's bank from most VPNs for people playing from Europe and North America. (NOT South America, as I vaguely remember it was mentioned that they were trying to protect the Argentinians living in nearby countries). This led to a crazy uproar, mostly from the biggest fandom affected, the French one. People were leaving tons of messages on all socials demanding the reinstatement of Argentina, and also sending curses and death threats to Beemoov employees. The most recurrent message was of people outraged that the company had blocked VPNs without telling their players and demanding dialogue and compromise. On the other hand, Beemoov replied that VPNs were never a functionality of the games, and they don't need to discuss it with players.
Approximate translation of Beemoov's official reply (neither French nor English are my mother tongues so feel free to double check):
"Goodmorning. The use of VPN isn't a functionality offered by the game, just like it isn't normal use of the game to circumvent the base tariffs. Thus it's normal and logic that the company would put a stop at this technique. (Without having to communicate it since it's not a functionality of the game that we are retiring or modifying, but the exploitation of a fallacy.) The tariffs that each country pays are established according to their buying power. Of the 2 euros payment that can be done by the players via VPN Argentina, the company only earns a few cents. And with just a few cents it's clearly impossible to cover the costs of the episodes production and business costs in general, pay our employees, and create new content for our players. Under these conditions, it's certain that the company would eventually go bankrupt. (Like many of you wish, but us not that much.) To give you a less abstract example, it's as if someone would accept to see their salary of 1329 euros (minimum wage, for example) drop to 44 euros. Do you think this person would be able to live without any problem? We are sorry if our base tariffs are not convenient for you and we understand that they are not accessible to all of our players, but these are what allow the company to survive and to make new content. Of course like in all free-to-play games you are not obliged to pay and you always have the possibility of playing for free (and this is thanks to the players who pay the normal price)."
Fast forward again to this year, August 2023. The economic crisis in Argentina has led to high inflation and 22% devaluation of currency. All businesses have had to up their prices, including Beemoov. Those 2800 gold coins that used to be worth 400 ARS ~ 27$ in 2016, and then 11$ in 2019? Are now worth 1.14$. Beemoov has had to up the prices and now these are costed at 6,800 ARS (or 19.43$), an increment of 17 times its original value (but still less than the 2016 dollar equivalent).
Consequently, we have seen now the rest of the fandom, the part that hadn't been affected one year ago, going ballistic. And the same kind of threats and complaints that were posted last year by the European fandom are now posted by the American fandom. One would assume that only the Argentinians are complaining, rightfully so, since they are the ones directly affected. But actually most of the complaints come from people living elsewhere who were either using VPNs for their own benefit or created a business out of it.
(these are from 4 different people I found with just a 5 minutes search, we really live in a capitalist dream lmao)
Additionally, people have been upset about the company's reply. This message has been circulating in several social media, and people wonder if it's true or fake.
I don't know who originally posted so I can't say if it's true or not. (Personally I tend to believe it is.)
(Using Google translate here because I don't know a word of Portuguese, so please correct me if this is wrong.)
"To be fair, Latin America is far from our biggest customer, but that's not the point. Beemoov was forced to take action after numerous abuses by players (and in particular 80% of purchases from Brazil) using VPNs to connect to Argentina and take advantage of this country's poor financial situation to buy APs and other in-game currencies. The few players currently residing in Argentina are unfortunately affected by the situation and we are very sorry, but we could not remain inactive in the face of a fraud of this magnitude that puts the company's sustainability at risk (payment of employees, office rent, work equipment, taxes, creation of new content, etc... Each of these must be paid in euros following the French currency - as we are located in France)."
People have been particularly offended by that "LATAM isn't our biggest customer" which isn't hate, it's a fact. Despite the LATAM fandom being big (second only to France by number of players), the currencies of all the countries involved are worth less than euros, and that's why it can't be the biggest client, it's just math.
Some math below for who is interested, but feel free to skip: For example 1300 gold are costed 200 in mexican pesos which is 10.7 euros. Similarly this same amount of gold is 30BRL in Brazil, which translates to 1.6 euros. Compared, 1300 gold in France are costed 19 euros. (On top of these there are also bank fees and currency exchange fees). This means that, if no one were using VPN, it would take two mexican players for Beemoov to earn the same amount as they earn from a French player. And even more, 12 Brazillian players to pay what they get from one single French player. (Again, I'm not considering bank fees, so these numbers should actually be higher). Of course this is just an example on one single purchase. It's not representative of the whole bank. But with some very hacky math, approximately I think that LATAM doesn't contribute to more than a quarter of Beemoov's revenue (and keep in mind that for the past year LATAM could use Argentina VPN and Europe couldn't). Of course, again, this is veeeery approximate, but I remember Brazil wasn't included in Uncoven, so I think that if they are cutting another bank in the future it might be that one. This is not the case for New Gen of course since we know Brazillian is one of the languages included.
So, where are we now?
VPNs are still being used of course, not Argentina but other countries (mostly Brazil, Turkey, and a few others). I don't think there's any stopping VPNs for good in the old games, but I'm pretty confident the company might've found a way for New Gen.
What do I think of all this?
These up here are facts. Now my personal opinion is that things aren't that black and white. I totally agree with the fact that the company has expenses and needs to pay salaries of their employees etc etc. At the same time it's also true that for whatever business when a product is faulty prices are lowered. Eldarya ANE has not the same quality as the other games, prices should reflect that but they don't. Similarly, some episodes are released very bugged, and people have to replay 3, 4, 5 times to get the illustration they would've been able to get in one playthrough and should be compensated for that. In Moonlight Lovers there was a crazy bug for more than a year, me and the friends I made guides with had to replay each episode at least 5-8 times. I don't even want to try to estimate the amount of money I wasted on that game otherwise I would curl in a ball and cry. The company should've provided compensation to us and all the players who played Moonlight Lovers during that year, but they didn't. So when episodes are bugged and people have to replay many times I see VPNs as morally justified.
But bugs asides, the point is that if VPNs were used only a few times, and only by those players who really would not be able to play otherwise, then nothing would've happened. But as always, when something is abused the "authorities" try to put a stop to it. (Because really it's crazy that a middle-class European via VPN spends only a few cents on each episode and then expects to see more content. This isn't only fraud against the company, but also disrespectful toward the players who pay full price and allow the games to keep existing.)
However, I want to end this post with a positive message, if anyone made it this far it's earned. During my deep dive in the fandom to write this post, I saw that the trolls, the haters, the death and violence threats against Beemoov workers or other players, the wishes to see the company go bankrupt and everyone left without a job, all these came from Europeans and Americans alike. Seeing all these curses and threats in english, french, spanish, brazillian portuguese etc warmed my heart. There is no racism when it comes to hate, humanity sucks everywhere 💕
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// Why do you like Ragatha
(Unleash it. Type out the essay.)
// ... the essay warning tag really is going to apply here ^^
ragatha became my favorite character almost instantly the moment she appeared on screen . like i could remember even around the teaser for the show i was pretty fond of her , though i could chalk that up to me liking Any design that is remotely based off raggedy ann
she perfectly fits that oddly specific character type only I love , which is 'grown woman keeps failing no matter how hard she tries and it's marvelous to witness' , like i'm not sure how to explain it too well - she's not really a girlfail or a girlboss in my eyes ... she just . never wins ! and i love that , please keep fucking losing ragatha the amazing digital circus
to break it down , what's apparent in her approximately less than 7 minutes of screentime is that she's a goofy goober who's essentially the voice of reason . she's not emotional like gangle , unreliable like jax and zooble , or out of her mind like kinger . she was essentially the only one who tried to ease pomni into the circus instead of hard-hitting her with the reality as if that won't make her abstract on the spot . it's clear through her interactions with the other characters and how she talks to pomni that she acts like the Pillar of the group , with how compliant she is with caine's adventures and has a comforting presence .
the problem is ... that all of those 'positive' traits are ... Detrimental to her own wellbeing . like i'm sure a part of her positivity is genuine , but her optimism clearly hinges into toxic positivity and her selflessness is taken to the point of people-pleasing and neglecting her own needs . it's clear that she sees her own emotions as a burden that she doesn't want to put on other people .
and . she's dishonest . my girl is dishonest . she often brushes off things as not being as bad as they actually are , she picks her words to cause less conflict as possible , and it doesn't seem like anyone else is aware of her internal turmoil ... even when she's in Literal Pain she still brushes it off as being okay - and she stayed quiet instead of telling pomni that she's upset .
which is ... hilarious . there's just something about nice characters that tell the most lies to me . bonus points if it seems like they're the one who tells the most truths out of the entire group . everything about ragatha is Dishonest .
and it's funny yet again that these Really don't help her at all ! i think it's clear just from promotional material to the pilot that ragatha is meant to be a punching bag . her teaser shows a cleaver Being Thrown At Her , was tripped by jax and Literally Most Of Her Screentime In the Pilot Is Being In Pain , and that's not counting gooseworx's doodles . my girl's fucking Losing .
and it fits her avatar well since she's a Rag Doll ... she's basically never meant to win from the start . she was never the main character .
it interests me so much on how all of these will be taken in the full series since they're all very interesting setups , especially for the setting that the story is set in . i just need to see more of my girl and i wish that a lot of her content isn't limited to ship art . you guys do not understand how desperate i am to see content of ragatha interacting with either caine or zooble . i am Not normal about them .
also i want to kiss her on the mouth //
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8 & 11 & 37
i'll take these one at a time so i can leave stuff below the fold on each one.
8. any recurring dreams?
yeah, so many. i used to have a lot of specific reoccurring dreams mostly about dragons attacking and hiding under the window while the dragon is peering through outside and then the fire breath is coming around corners and trying to escape from that.
a lot of reoccurring dreams set in school where like i realize i'm naked and then cover up and check my backpack to see if there's like clothes in there or something and then i realize i'm in a dream and if i go under the table i will wake up and then i do but then that's still a dream and i try going under things there and wake up and then i don't know if i'm awake or asleep and it gets progressively more real until eventually it's sleep paralysis and i'm in bed and can't move and then suddenly i can.
there's also one particular recurring theme that I won't get into now because it doesn't seem like something for an ask game response but i kind of do want to maybe talk about in another post because I am curious if any other trans people have a similar experience, which is the recurring SA nightmares I've had as long as I can remember, but especially lately (maybe just bc I started writing down my dreams lately so I'm remembering more).
those are more like reoccurring themes, where it's like the same concept but maybe a little different, but there are also more specific ones that reoccurred a lot, but i haven't been having those ones the last couple years, so i don't remember some of the details very well. i remember the original dragon one was a reoccurring dream like that, where there was like a king on top of a castle in space and time travel and all this ridiculous stuff and it always played out the same way, but i would try to do it differently each time to try to finally beat the bad guy or whatever but it never really worked out.
i also will occasionally have one repeat just like once or twice, usually in a row the same night, so i'll just be like aware that everything that's happening just happened but something went wrong and this time i'm gonna get it right. sometimes it's a few days or weeks later.
my dreams are all very vivid and they get pretty weird and abstract. But lately they've been very, very trans focused. Like there's been themes I could attribute to being trans before, but lately there's a lot more where in the dream world, I'm like, "oh no, i'm going to get outed to all these people!", or dreams that are just a pleasant interaction where somebody realizes I'm trans and treats me like a normal human being. there's one note i found about a dream that's literally just i woke up and realized my hair had grown really long over night and played with it in the mirror doing different styles and trying to figure out how i would explain to my parents why my hair was suddenly long.
most of them are just like complete nonsense though:
like i just found one where i'm just DMing for D20 cast members (except then i'm in the world of the story and i'm a hot genderfluid shapeshifter spy).
And another one that at first was my childhood best friend's family at my parents' house but then i saw a cute girl in a red dress and we hit it off and exchanged info, and then it got dark as i walked back to the house and i saw something move and realized too late that it was a jaguar (i got ate).
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Gushing about Homicipher's Language
Big fat long rant incoming
--The full dictionary of the game is 200 words.
Which means two things:
The writer (yatsunagi) determined that they only needed those 200 words to tell their story.
The otherworld residents only need 200 words to talk about everything they want/need/can remember to talk about (assuming that the game's dictionary is the full vocabulary of the language.
Fanfic challenge: write a story using only those 200 words. Make it fully understandable for the reader.
Assuming that the residents only have 200 words to say everything they need to say:
--There are no gendered words, no words for counting, for measuring time (except for "time," "little amount," and "big amount"), no verb tenses.
--There are words for movement, direction, being alone or going together, emotions, desires, parts of the body, words for danger and safety, for pretty and cute.
--These are the ideas most important for the residents to communicate. They live in a dangerous, bloody world, without any sun or moon. Measuring time is useless because there are no days or nights. Companionship is important for protection and for happiness.
-------But what about pretty and cute? There are no words for ugly (though they could say "not pretty"). Do they think of things as "ugly" and "pretty?" Or do they think of things as "normal" and "pretty?"
--But of those 200 words, only one is a color word: red
Makes sense. After all, there are very few colors in the otherworld.
The otherworld is mostly black, gray, white, and brown.
Red is an important color to distinguish. It is the color of Mr. Scarletella, blood, and many of the residents' hair.
Black, gray, white, and brown could probably be conveyed through the words for "dark" and "bright."
--But what about Ms. Blue-Clad?
When a resident wants to refer to another resident in the third person, and that resident is not present in the room, they usually use descriptors.
Mr. Chopped refers to Mr. Silvair as "long hair resident."
Mr. Silvair refers to Mr. Chopped as "head resident."
Mr. Crawling refers to Mr. Scarletella as "red."
So how would the residents refer to Ms. Blue-Clad?
There are no words for "blue" or "woman." Why are there no words for blue? Mr. Stitched has blue eyes. There's buckets of blue paint. Maybe they would call her "dark hair resident?" Or maybe "big eye resident?" "Blood eye resident?" (Because her eyes are always bleeding).
Guys, I'm having such a hard time imagining being able to see a color but having no word for it. Are there colors that I can see that I can't describe? I don't think so, but then again, how would I know?
Theory: Maybe the residents can't see blue? But that doesn't make sense because why would Ms. Blue-Clad wear blue and only blue if she can't see it?
--I've seen a lot of fanfics where MC teaches the monster-husbands some of her language.
Question: To what extent would they understand the abstract concepts?
For instance: the otherworld only has "like" and "dislike." Since the language is extremely economic, I'm going to assume that "like" also contains "love," and "dislike" includes "hate."
So when you try to teach them the difference between "like" and "love," to what extend would they understand it? Will they think of love as "like a lot" or will they understand love as humans do? (Platonic, romantic, the difference between loving a child vs loving a best friend). Maybe it'd be easy for them. After all, in English we use "love" for romantic partners, children, and pizza, but the feeling, the understanding of that kind of love is understood within the context. If you say, "I love my son," I know what love you're talking about. And if you say, "I love chocolate cake," I know what love you're talking about. I don't need it explained.
What I mean is, if you don't have a word for a feeling or concept or idea, can you understand it? Would that feeling or concept or idea come if you learn a word for it? Perhaps so. The French word "dépaysement" refers to the feeling of disorientation that comes from traveling outside of your country. It can be a positive or negative feeling. In English, we only have a phrase for the negative aspect: culture shock. For the positive aspect, we would say "happiness" or "excitement." There's not a specific word for what the French are conveying in the positive sense.
I think that if Mr. Crawling said "I love you" in my language, how would I react? Would I know the kind of love he's referring to? Is it the love between friends? The love between best friends? The love between husband and wife? The love between a child and their favorite food? I guess I'd have to learn from him what he's feeling.
#homicipher#homicipher language#language nerd rants about how fascinating the homicipher language is#help i'm obsessed#positive rant#horror vn#horror game#fanfic challenge#i actually do want to see someone write a fanfic using only the otherworld language
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New version of my theory abt kinger with more details (actually I thought that the og version wasn't published thank you for the likes and reblogs everyone !!!!!! 💙💙💙💙
This version might be even shittier than the first one 😬
Hey. "7 years of computer science for this". Hey what if. What if ok kinger has a wife ok but what if. What if when he's under all his pillows he's actually trying to remember what happened before. Before the amazing digital circus. How to get out of it. Trying to find a way. Just think about it, like darkness makes him get back to normal, and I don't think he would have said "7 years of computer science" just like this if he only remembered his wife.
Like that's a bit sad to think about it because I know that a lot of people likes kinger including me, but I think that he will MAYBE abstract. I know he is there since much more time than the others but I don't know, i feel like it could happen.
Remind yourself before insulting me or whatever that I'm not a super mega fan of tadc like some of you so I might have missed some infos about kinger that goosework dropped here and there, and I havent checked the wiki, I'm just writing this because I WANT THIS THEORY TO LEAVE MY BRAIN ARGGHHHHH
Kinger is pretty unstable, not really in the way that he could abstract at any moment like, but he has lost his mind, and does not seem to remember anything when he's with the others, even if he is able to go in the dark sometimes in their presence. In the hell it's diferent IT'S COMPLETELY DARK, so he was able to be in his normal state with Pomni. He tries to reassure her and all, because he is at that moment aware of what is tadc, which he wasn't really the moment before ???????? OK and so my idea is that (I think) he probably is one of the ppl who created tadc (I mean that's a bit obvious) and that seeing that being in the dark makes him go normal, he stays in the dark as much as he can so he can try to remember what happened BEFORE, his wife has existed for sure but he would be KINDA using her a a cover to avoid the others to be anxious because of him when they see him in his normal state, I think that doing that kinda make him go crazy, explaining his state when he goes out of the dark. The more he tries, the darker he has to go in to remember. See, he had to be in HELL to remmeber. So it drives him crazy. He almost remember something but in the end just forget it. Kinger is going to abstract . I'm warning you guys.
He's trying to find a way out of tadc, goes in the dark to be able to remember, does not succeed, it drives him even more crazy than he was before, he gets out of the dark and goes back to his crazy-CRAZY state in which he immediately forget everything he just did. It hides to the others the fact that he's trying to find a way out, that he's actually REALLY going crazy and probably not so far from abstracting. (And so when he goes back in the dark he remmebers the others things, but mostly his wife because it's a tadc thing, the other things are harder to remmeber but he gets some sort of weird flashbacks that he has a hard time interpreting or just remmeber and mostly ignore completely because he's remembering his WIFE and cuz he's still half let's say in his crazy state but if he picks up on a memory he starts kinda remembering the other things and realizing, AND SO BEGIN THE INNER FIGHT like "wait what's that oh hold on i KNOW that but what is it oh my god i know it's important but i can't understand what it is oh my god " yk like when you remember a dream YOU KNOW it's happened but you CAN'T describe even to yourself what it is. You don't even know if it's real or not or if you're just going crazy. or something like this and because there is most of the time not enough darkness.)
PLUS !!!!!!!! If we folliw what I've said, being able to talk with pomni in his normal state probably made him realize how crazy he has become since the last time this has happened so like he's kinda "SIGHHHHHHHHH dammit". It will just accelerate his abstraction, and reduce the chances of getting out of tadc for pomni, jax raghata gangle and zooble. Double bruh. (Like I mean If you you were since a lot of time unconscious of your acts and suddenly you REALIZE and remmebr, like imagine how would you feel.
I'M SO SORRY IK THAT'S AN HORRIBLE AND SHITTY THEORY BUT IDK i I I DON'T WANT KINGER KINGER TO DIE WHAT DO YOU THINK 😭😭😭😭 BUT LIKE ????????,,??? AND THAT'S WHY HE WOUKD HAVE SAID THE THING WITH COMPUTER SCIENCE. HE REALIZED. HOW CRAZY HE HAS BECOME SINCE THE LAST TIME HE WAS ABLE TO BE LIKE THIS IN FRONT OF SOMEONE OR IN GENERAL. I'M DUMB. I'M CRAZY. IM GPING CRAZY 😭.
Idk I that make any sense, english isn't my first language but I swear if this become a reality I WILL CRY 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
The whole thing with his wife is absolutly adorable
HONESTLY ?? I think that my own theory is straight up SHIT but hey I tried
#kinger#tadc#the amazing digital circus#queenie#theory#chui française si vous voulez que je vous l'explique en francais mdr#oh and remember that's the first time i ever try to post a theory anywhere. i never spoke to anybody about any of my theory so uhh voila tv#ARGUZPIDHDOSPJRKFKFKFF
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How a Computer Works- Part 4 (Binary Math)
This is the 4th part in a series of posts explaining how computers work such that you can build your own from just wires and spare electronics (or hell, Minecraft redstone signals, a carefully balanced water fountain, anything you can build logic from really). The series starts in this post, the most recent entry before this was part 3, but the only REALLY required reading for this one should be part 2. Get that knowledge in your brain so this next bit can make sense to you.
Also, I'm basically teaching a pretty in-depth computer science class here for free out of the goodness of my heart, so if you have the cash to spare, maybe consider throwing a little money my way so I can keep surviving and doing stuff like this?
Our focus for today's lesson is going to be actually designing one of these modules we have hooked up to the bus to actually do stuff with any data we pass into it. As I've mentioned a few times, all of this stuff we're passing along can be thought of in a lot of different ways. Completing a circuit when one tracing wires out connects to a positive charge and another a negative means the same thing as a gate saying true, will turn a light tied in there on, we can call it a 1 in our abstract computery talk, or several other things, but we're dong math today so let's think about numbers.
Let's think in Binary
So I think I've referenced binary numbers a few times in a really hand-wavey sort of way, but it's good to stop and make sure we all get the concept thoroughly. Normally, when we think about numbers, we're using our good pals the Arabic numerals- 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9. We just decided to make unique little squiggles to represent these first ten numbers if we include 0, and then if we add together 9+1, we're out of symbols, so we start a new column, put a 1 in it, and reset to 0 in the one we're in. So, 9+1=10. We call this "base ten math" because ten is where we have to start that new column... but really, we kinda just picked ten out of a hat for this? Presumably it's because most of us have ten fingers.
Maybe if we all had hands like typical American cartoon characters, we'd only have made eight unique symbols. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 and 7. Add 1 to 7 and we start a new column there instead of after coming up with symbols for those fingers we don't have. In base eight math, 7+1=10. It's a smaller group we're dedicating that next numeral over to, but you can see how that works, right?
Or hey, what if the first person to start counting stuff on their fingers just thought about it differently. You can totally hold up 0 fingers. So really on just one hand you can easily go 0 1 2 3 4 5. Well, what if we just use our other hand past there? Every time we run out of fingers on our right hand, we reset it to zero and add one on our left. It's base six math in this example but hey with just our hands we can display any number from 0 to a base six 55! Which in base ten would be, let's see, 5x6+5, so, yeah, any number from 0 to 35, but that's still pretty good. Converting it into base six is kind of a pain since you've gotta stop and do the multiplication, but if we all just kinda thought in base six we wouldn't need to convert at all.
And hey, what if we really thought big here? Instead of using one hand for the next column of numbers, we could just treat every finger as a column on its own. Holding some of the required groupings of fingers up can kinda give you a hand cramp, but hey we've got ten columns that can hold a 0 or a 1, so we can count all the way up from 0 to 1111111111! Or uh, in base ten, 1023. Still a really impressive number though! Just explaining this to you I've upped how how you can count on your fingers by more than a hundred times. You're welcome! Sorry about the hand cramps. We're not looking into binary math for the sake of saving fingers though, we're doing it because we're designing logic circuits and doing math on the assumption that the only symbols we have to count with are 0 and 1. Anyway, just so we're on the same page, let's count up from 0 in binary for a while here:
0, 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000, 1001, 1010, 1011, 1100, 1101, 1111, 10000.
You can follow along with the pattern right? And if you're curious what that'd be all standard base 10 style, let's count through that same number of... numbers that way.
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. I made some of these bold to make it a little easier to count along. It's the ones where we're adding a new column in binary, and hey look, it's all the powers of 2. If you have to convert in your head, that makes it easier.
Binary Addition
So let's try thinking in JUST binary now and do some basic math. Before we get into the double-digits- Wait no, if we're pedantic, di- is the prefix for ten things so we shouldn't be saying "digits," we're in base two, so, bi- so... the double bits, I guess), we're just got:
0+0=0. 1+0=1. 0+1=1. 1+1=10
Hey, wait. does that pattern look familiar to you? Like we had to go to a second bit for 1+1, but just ignore that for a moment and look at the lowest one. Humor me. We saw this same pattern in part 2!
0 xor 0 outputs 0. 1 xor 0 outputs 1. 0 xor 1 outputs 1. 1 xor 1 outputs 0.
Oh damn. So if we want to add two bits of data, we just XOR them. All we have to worry about is the spill-over into the next column. Well.. hell, let's see what this looks like if we're looking at two columns here.
00+00=00. 01+00=01. 00+01=01. 01+01=10.
If we just look at the "1s column" digit, yeah, XOR works. And is there a pattern for the "10s column?" Well, it's a 0 for everything except when we go 1+1... we had a logic circuit for that too though, right? Yeah, good ol' AND. Only outputs 1 if both value A and value B it's looking at are both 1.
So OK. We rig up a circuit that has a XOR gate and an AND gate. We feed the first number we want to add into both of these gates, and we can display our answer as a two bit number, with what the AND spits out on the left, and the one the XOR spits out on the right. BAM. We are masters of addition... so long as the highest numbers we want to add together are 1+1. We uh... we should probably try to improve upon that. Also we've got this whole structure to the whole computer where we've got these registers feeding in and out of a bus with a fixed number of data bits on it, kinda would be nice if the number of bits going back out to our bus was the same as the number coming in to our addition circuit... and like, yeah, that's kind of an impossible goal since it's always possible when adding two numbers the same length that you need an extra column to display the answer, but you know, if the first bit of at least one of the numbers we're adding is a 0 it'll fit, so let's get to that point at least.
So OK. Let's expand things out. We're adding any 2 bit numbers now, and let's pretend we've got like a calculator with a 3 bit display.
000+000=000. 001+000=001. 000+001=001. 001+001=010.
010+000=010. 011+000=011. 010+001=011. 011+001=100.
000+010=010. 001+010=011. 000+011=011. 001+011=100.
010+010=100. 011+010=101. 010+011=101. 011+011=110.
I'm being kinda redundant with showing 0+1 and 1+0 and such. Let's narrow these down to just the ones we need a new bit of logic to make happen though. The 1s bit is groovy. We feed the 1s bits of ANY two numbers into a XOR gate, we get the correct 1s bit for our answer. And if the next bits over are 0s, we can pop what's coming out of our AND gate in there out to there and that's fine too. We're also good if we just look at the 10s column, everywhere we don't need to worry about the 1s column affecting it. The places where we need to do more with our logic are just where we're doing the whole "carry the 1 thing." I already set up the grid of all these so that's just the stuff in the far right column, but hey, let me bold those up too.
And let me just kinda blank out these other bits so we're really focused in on the part where there's a problem...
_0_+_0_=_1_. _1_+_0_=_0_. _0_+_1_=_0_. _1_+_1_=_1_.
Well huh. If we're just looking at a bit in the middle of our big long number, and we're carrying a 1 to that position, we sure seem to be getting the exact opposite of what we get when we aren't carrying anything in here. So OK, let's redesign our logic circuit here. We've got our bit A wire and our bit B wire coming in like we did before, going into that XOR for this output bit, but we need to add a wire for whether we're carrying a 1 in from the next circuit over, and if so, flip that result. Do we have a way to do that easily? Well OK, logic chart time. If we have a 0 and no carry, we want 0. I'm lazy, so, 0 bla 0=0, 1 bla 0=1, 0 bla 1= 1, 1 bla 1 = 0. Oh, that's another XOR gate. We XOR A and B like before, and then just XOR that result with our carry bit, and we are definitely displaying the right thing in this part of our answer. Now we just need to double check if our corner case of handling a carry messes with the next carry anywhere and... oh damn yeah.
011+001=100, and 001+011=100. These are the cases where the 1s column carrying a 1 to the 10s column means we have to do something different with that carry bit. So, we're still making our carry-the-1 result a 1 if A and B are 1... but we also need to make sure it's a 1 if we are both carrying something in, AND our original XOR gate is spitting a 1 out. Well we can throw that AND in there, and we can throw in an OR to check either of these two conditions, and there's our new and improved carry-the-1? result.
So let's put it all together now!
For a given bit, we have value A, value B, and Carry. We have a XOR gate that takes A and B in. We feed the result of that and Carry into another XOR gate. That spits out the sum for this bit. Then we AND the result of that first XOR and our Carry feed that result into one side of an OR gate. We feed A and B into a second AND gate, the result of that is the other input for our OR. That OR now spits out a fresh Carry bit. We can plug that into the next adder circuit down the line, for the next column to the left in our result. BAM, there we go. Just clone this whole weird set of 5 logic gates for as many bits as you want to deal with, daisy chain those carry values into each other, and congratulations. You have somehow rigged together something where electricity goes in, electricity goes out, and the weird path it has to take along the way has this weird side effect where you can work out what two binary numbers add up to. Please note again that we didn't at any point make some sort of magical computer person and teach it how to do math, we just found patterns in how electricity flows and where the pure math concept of logic gates and binary math happen to work the same way and exploited that for a result that's convenient to us. Shame that was such a pain wiring up, but hey, every time you add another copy of this onto the end, you double the range of numbers you're able to work with. Eventually that hits a point where it's worth the effort.
Well addition is all well and good, what about subtraction?
OK, so just to take stock, so far we have a big addressed block of memory somewhere we keep our numbers in. We have, for example, 8 bit lines on our bus, and when we want to do addition, we set stuff that turns on "hey, place with our first number, put it on the bus" then "hey register A, read the bus for a moment," then the same to get a number to slap in register B, and we've got this sum register sitting between registers A and B with a bunch of these adder circuits hooked in between all the bits. We might have some leftover carry line with a 1 on it and nowhere to plug it in, but ignoring that spill-over, every bit on our bus is to go good for addition. When we're setting up command codes, we can make more to do some other math with A and B and that's all well and good, but we have a real big problem when it comes to subtraction, because out of what's going into A, going into B, and coming out of sum, at least somewhere we're going to need to deal with the concept of negative numbers. So when we're doing subtraction, one line on our bus needs to be reserved for whether it's positive or negative. If you program, you're maybe familiar with the concept of unsigned integers vs. signed integers? This is that. With only positive numbers, if we've got say, 8 bits to work with, we've got a range of 00000000 to 11111111 to work with, or 0-255 in decimal, but if one of those is getting swiped for negative or positive, now we're talking like, -127-127.
But wait, that's not quite right, is it? Like if we arbitrarily say that leftmost digit is 1 if we're negative, we get things like, 1 being 00000001, 0 being 00000000, -2 being 10000010 etc. but... what's 10000000? -0? That's the same thing is 0. That's redundant and also gonna really screw the count up if we're like, adding 5 to -2! Or really, any other math we're doing.
Oh and we also need to remember when we're stuffing a negative number into a memory register, it's not like that register knows what concept the bits we're shoving into it represent, so like, you personally have to be responsible for remembering that that 1 on the leftmost line, for that particular value, is noting that it's negative, and not that the 10000000s place or whatever has a 1 for some number, or the first of 8 switch variables you're stashing in this address to save on space is on, or whatever else. We here at the memory address hotel are just trapping electron wiggles in a weird little latch or we aren't. No labels, no judgements.
So OK no matter how we're storing negative numbers we need to just actually remember or take notes some way on what the hell convention we're using to represent negative numbers, and where we're applying it. But we also need a convention where like, the math works, at all. Just having a bit be the is it negative bit works real bad because aside from having -0 in there, we're trying to count backwards from 0 and our math module has no conception of back. Or of counting for that matter. Or 0. It's just a circuit we made.
OK, so, let's maybe store our negative numbers in a different way. You know how a car has an odometer? Rolling numbers counting up how many miles you've gone? And there's a point where you run out of digits and it rolls back around to 0? Well funny thing about our addition thing is if you add a 1 to a display of all 1s, that also rolls back around to 0 (and has that carry value just hanging out in space unless we have a better idea of what to plug it into). So if we like, have all the numbers we can display printed out on paper, and we represent that rolling over by just rolling the paper up and taping it, so we have a bit where the count is going like: ..11111101, 11111110, 11111111, 00000000, 0000001... well we can just arbitrarily declare that all 0s is really 0, and the all 1s before it is -1, etc. Try to make that work maybe. And still remember that 10000000 or whatever is where we abruptly loop back between the highest positive/lowest negative numbers we're handling.
Here's a funny thing though. If we start counting backwards, we totally get this inverted version of what we get counting forwards. Just going to show this with 3 bits for convenience but going up from 000 you go:
000, 001, 010, 100, 101, 110... and going back from 111, you go
111, 110, 101, 100, 011, 010, 001... and yeah, look at that with a fixed with font, and it's all just flipped. And huh, you know what else is cool? If we go back to saying the first bit is 1 for negative numbers and a 0 for positive, you can just add these and it almost works. You want to subtract 1 from 1, that's the same as adding 1 and -1. Invert the negative, that's 001+110=111... 1 shy of the 000 we want. Huh.
What about 2-2? 010+101=111. 3-3? 011+100=111. Everything that should be 0 is 111, which is 1 less than 0 when we roll over. What about stuff that should be positive? 3-1? 011+110=(1)001. 2-1? 010+110=(1)000. 3-2? 011+101=000. Still all 1 off if we just ignore that carry going out of range.
-1-1? 110+110=(1)100, which translates back to -3... and that's kinda the only example I can give that's in range with this, but throw in more bits and follow this convention and it'll all keep working out that you get exactly 1 less than what you want, turns out. So, if we're in subtract mode, we just... invert something we're bringing in then add 1 to it and it should all work out?
So OK. We have a wire coming into math land from what mode are we in, it's a 1 if we're doing subtraction. We XOR that subtract line bit with every bit of what's coming into B, that does nothing if we're in addition mode, but if we're in subtraction mode, we're flipping every bit, and tada, the subtraction works without any other changes. We just need to conditionally add 1 if we're in subtract mode now but... wait, we already have literally that. We just take this same "we are in subtract mode" wire and run it in as a carry-in to the rightmost bit of our adder chain. Again, if we're doing addition, that just carries in a 0 and does nothing, but if we're in subtraction, it carries in a 1, and... we're done. The explanation was a long walk, but yeah, when subtracting, just add those extra XORs, plug in that carry, and remember your negative numbers are all weird in storage. Done.
Let's do multiplication and division next!
No. We can't do that.
Well seriously, that's not a thing we can just layer on top of this relatively simple thing we have wired up. We've got this lean mean math machine will give you whatever result you need basically the instant you load values into A and B. Definitely by the time you, being conscientious about not leaving the doors to the bus open all the time, officially flag things to write out from sum and into whatever destination. Multiplying and dividing though, we need more steps, and we need scratch spaces for temporary values. I suppose if you're careful you can multiply by like, loading 0 into B, load the first number you want to multiply into A, just feed sum directly into B, and pulse the clock however many times you want to multiply, but... you probably don't want to just constantly be reading and writing like that, it's tying the whole bus up, unless you have an alternate pathway just for this, and you have to keep count. Still, I'm assuming that's how people do it when they build a dedicated function in. I'm still looking at older systems which assume you're going to do most of your multiplication one step at a time, running through some code.
There's one big exception though. If you multiply any number by 10, you just add a 0 onto the end of the number... and guess what? I'm not using "10" specifically to mean "ten" here. Whatever base you're doing your math in, that still works. So in binary, if you just want to specifically multiply by 2, it is super easy to just shift every bit to the left. Like, have some sort of "shift left/multiply by 2" wire come in, set up logical conditions so that when its set, all we do is have the bit that we are feed into the carry flag, then for the sum ignore everything but the carry flag. 00011001 turns right into 00110010. I picked that out of a hat, but that's binary for 25 getting doubled to 50 as I eyeball it here. Dead simple to do as a single operation. Shifting everything to the right, AKA dividing by 2 is similarly simple... and hey, you might notice that in say... very old games, there's a whole lot of numbers doubling. Like ghosts in Pacman? Each is worth twice the points as the last? Yeah that's because that's easy to do fast.
Other math though takes more steps, and tends to involve extra hardware design to make it work. Like if you're doing division where you aren't guaranteed to have a whole number at the end, so, most division? Suddenly you need to have decimal points in all of this, and work out where they go, and this is why you hear people talk about "floating point processors" as this whole special thing that we just did not have for decades. For now at least, that's beyond the scope of what I'm teaching. Might get there eventually.
A final bit about bits...
So hey, we need to pick some arbitrary bit count for how wide we make our bus and our registers, and also some number for memory registers, command codes, maybe other stuff. And you just kinda want to pick a nice round number. You can't pick ten though, because ten isn't a round number in binary. It's 1010. So usually, we round down to 8, nice and simple, or we round up to 16. And then if we're like filling out charts of values, it's easier to count in those bases. Counting in base 8 is easy enough. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 10. With base 16 though, we need 6 more symbols in there, so we go with 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F 10. And sometimes people make a point of making the B and D lowercase, because if you want to display those on the sort of 7-segment display you still see on cheap clocks or things going for an 80s look, B and 8 are too similar, and D and 0. Base 16 is also called hexidecimal. People will shorten that to "hex" and you see it a ton when people are looking at raw data and don't want to get thrown by long binary numbers, and it particularly gets out to the general public when we're talking about like, 8-bit color values. 8 bits gives you a number from 0-63, hey that's just 2 digits in base 16, so like, for HTML color codes, you can use 2 digits each for red green and blue values, and technical artists just kinda memorize stuff like "right so FFFFFF is white, 700080 is a pretty bright, slightly blue-ish purple, etc."
We tend to go with 8 bits in most places though, or some multiple of 8 anyway, and someone randomly decided to call 8 bits a byte, and that's kind of just our standardized unit for measuring data now. Well mostly standardize. Because people will say, like, 1 kilobyte is 1000 bytes, but in practice people actually round things off to binary values and they're going to actually be off a little.
Anyway, linguistic trivia! Whatever number of bits it is we store in a register/load to the bus is called a "word" and we talk about how many bits long our words are, because once you design the architecture, you're stuck with it and all. And sometimes you want to be space efficient and not use a whole word, so you do some logic gate trickier to chop off whatever portion you don't need when reading it and not change what parts you aren't trying to when writing it and just kinda store multiple variables in a single value. One common thing that happens as a result of this is that you'll break up an 8-bit value because you just want like two values from 0-15 instead of one from 0-255. And when we're working with one of those half-bytes, because puns, the actually term for that is "a nibble." No really. And if we're using a single bit for a variable a lot of the time we call that a flag. Common to see a byte used to hold 8 flags.
For now let me just point anyone following along with this at this first post of me talking about the game console I'm designing. That's a pretty similar topic to this one.
Let me also point you again at my patreon, too.
CONTINUED IN PART 5
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