#i know a lot of those are still in development though so i'm saving them for a bit later

[living-undead]

hi domi!! i wanted to nerd out about interactive fiction--- what's your favorite one you've played recently? & is there an mc you're particularly attached to / why? :)

Ooooohhh!! Hey Lush! 👋🏽

The most recent IF that I've played was me replaying Keepers of Sun and Moon, I really had alot of fun with that one. But next on my list is Samurai of Hyuga. I got through Book 1 about 2 years ago and never finished the rest of them, but I wanna go back and catch up on all 5!

Of all the stuff I've read... I think the most attached I've been to an MC was in WTA: The Book of Hungry Names. The mixture of my love for White Wolf media and the writing just feeling so... "natural", it really made me feel less like I was playing a role. Any IF that takes away that feeling of me playing a role is where I really start to get attached. Wayhaven also made me feel that way at times!

[kozachenko]

Finally decided to play around with my old lineless style again! Also figured out a way to draw Reimu that I actually really like!

Artist's Notes;

I've mentioned in a few earlier posts that I've been wanting to draw in my lineless style again for a while as a way to test what I've learnt from my previous style in regards to lighting. I did the face first and then for a while was thinking about doing a full body illustration of Reimu just to draw her outfit again. I'll talk about the face first since that's the first drawing I did in this batch.

For the longest time I really couldn't find a way to translate Reimu's face into my style. I was able to make her clothes work out well, just not really her face. I did like elements of how I drew her face a few other times, namely the tiny eyebrows and her pupils, but they didn't really feel like Reimu to me, or at least how I imagined her in my head. I then realized that it was less of a problem with the entire face and moreso the eyes, and it took me quite a bit of trial and error to make something that I was happy with. Also, as much as I thought the tiny eyebrows were cute, it didn't really make sense with her character. Like, from what I know about Japanese history, plucking your eyebrows was something that nobles (rich people) would do, and since Reimu is...neither of those things, I decided to just give her some thicker eyebrows instead (I will be saving the plucked eyebrows for another character though, so they will return). After I got to a face I was happy with, my next challenge was the hair. I did the front part first and liked that enough to continue, and then after more trial and error I realized that deep down I was a short-hair-Reimu-is-best-Reimu-truther this whole time because once I gave up on the long hair and gave her shorter hair something just clicked in my brain. And so, after drawing her outfit in again (this time without the yellow tie which is kinda sad but I'll find a way to incorperate it into future designs because it just was not making sense to me in context with the rest of the outfit) and finnicking around with the bow, I came to a version of Reimu's face that I actually liked. I thought that it made more sense for her character to have her cut it short, mainly because she's doing a bunch of Youkai extermination and she has to keep her hair out of her face somehow. I still wanted to make it kinda messy though, as Reimu is probably too lazy to clean it up herself. I think another reason I like it so much is because in Forbidden Scrollery, Moe Harukawa gave Reimu short hair and that really suited her, so I guess that was just a subconcious reason as to why I liked it so much. I also think that the shorter hair helps to separate her a lot from Marisa, as I think Marisa looks really good with longer hair. Speaking of, now I wanna do a drawing of her and Reimu together to really solidify how I draw them (unlike the previous version where it was just them standing). As much as I do like the face, I am concerned if she looks too much like how I drew Keiki now, but that might just be a product of the stylistic choices I made with her eyes and I might just be overthinking it. I am hyperaware of same face syndrome so that's probably the reason I'm so concerned about it lol.

Now for the fully body drawing. I was struggling to think of a good pose for her, so I just took a picture of myself and used that as a reference while still making slight adjustments for readability's sake. This is another case of, "I've looked at this too long and can spot every single issue with it" but this time I'm still happy with the final product mainly because this was a test drive for how I want to develop my lineless style in the future and for what it is I am more than pleased with the result. The main reason I deviated away from my lineless style was mainly because I was having a hard time with the lighting and making it interesting, and I am so glad that I've finally found a way to make it work! I'm especially happy with the clothes, as I think clothing folds are really fun to draw. I was somewhat inspired by the works of J.C. Lyendecker and the way he draws clothes, though admittedly it is not a one to one, since I mainly wanted to try implying the shading of the clothing folds with shapes (I do really want to do a study of his style one day as his art is incredible). So for the sleeves, I drew in a bunch of triangles where I wanted there to be a strong highlight, roughly coloured in the inside, and then blended them all so it looks like a more subtle. On both of these drawings, I also added in a noise filter to give it some texture (as that's what I used to often do with my drawings) and while I do like it, I might want to experiment with making it more subtle in the future, as it's pretty noticeable in both these drawings. Overall, I'm really happy with the lighting and colours of this drawing, and while I could nitpick several aspects of it (her hand holding the gohei looks too tense, I tried making her look like she was standing on the balls of her feet but the positioning of her Gohei's trail of papers ends up making it look weird, and I could've put more effort into the hair and bow and so many more things), this is more of a piece for me to experiment with my style again, and I'm excited for when I get a new idea for a piece, as I really wanna try some more stuff out with this style!

[lemon-lime-behavior]

Do you have any tips for drawing noses? Sorry this is out of nowhere but I'm wanting to improve on my art, specifically the faces, and it's always the nose I find myself struggling most with.

I really struggle w making it fit the face if that makes sense? Every time I try to add it it just throws the whole face off, especially the eyes, not to mention how to make different nose types and the angles </33

I love your art style so bad, it's so smooth and satisfying to look at and the way you draw noses like it's nbd (and anatomy in general like damn) baffles me so I was just wondering if you maybe had any tricks or not, Ty either way for sharing your art in the first place <33

@extravagav Well I can try! First off thank you very much, I often feel like I still have a very long way to go in regards to proportions and anatomy so I really appreciate your kind words <3

Hokay, so, noses. I do love noses. To start off when it comes to drawing noses I'm afraid I'm going to have to give you the most annoying advice in the world which is just to practice a lot. Find a lot of pictures of noses in a bunch of different shapes from a bunch of different angles and just draw them until your brain melts out of your ears. Pay particular attention though to the nose as a 3D object!

It's of course trickier to do than I'm making it out to be but the more you practice at imagining the nose as a 3d physical form the easier it becomes to make a nose model in your mind that you can rotate like a microwave.

This is my personal very very basic understanding of the nose's construction:

it's like three circles and a taco shell.

Okay so now that you've got a basic understanding of the nose's construction, how to put it in the middle of the god-dang face??

So the funky thing about noses is that they tend to change shape the least out of all our facial features when we're making expressions. Our eyes change shape, our mouths move, our eyebrows, our cheeks, our jaws, they all go all over the place. the nose, however, tends to be pretty stationary and doesn't deform much (save in one important way I'll get to later). So because of all this, and here's my biggest piece of advice when it comes to making the nose fit in the face, I like to draw the nose first! I do a very loose head construction, draw the nose, and then sort of "hang" the rest of the features off of it:

Two very different expressions, same nose!

Now when it comes to noses interacting specifically with the eyes the greatest thing to remember is that the part of the nose that sits between the eyes sticks out farther than you might think, and will likely be obscuring one of them, the extent of which depending a lot on the angle and how pronounced the nose bridge is.

for someone with a pretty flat nose bridge you'll be able to see most of the eye except in a more extreme angle, while someone with a protruding ridge might obscure the eye entirely. but the nose will likely be interacting with at least one eye if we're not facing the character head on. Really making your brain think in 3d is gonna most helpful here.

Finally! The nose being expressive! So the main way the nose plays in to expression is by wrinkling. the muscles that pull up your top lip and the muscles that pull down the middle of your forehead are almost all connected to the nose, so the nose tends to develop a lot of wrinkles whenever brows are furrowed or teeth are bared.

Adding those wrinkles can add a lot of impact in the expression! And not just angry ones neither:

Sooooooooooooooo yeah! noses! They're weird and they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and they can do a lot to add character to a face and they can also make you want to tear your hair out in big clumps! I'm still learning myself when it comes to noses (and most other things) and I'm faaaar from a master at it, but I hope I've been able to provide at least a little bit of help. If you do use my advice going forward please let me know! Good luck!!!!! (And here's all my nose "headcanons" for the strawhats. The ones who actually have human noses, anyway):

[frommybookbook]

Earlier today, some friends and I were discussing one of those Star Trek captains memes. You know the ones I’m talking about, the ones that pit the captains against each other with pithy descriptions that glorify and champion the men and shit on Janeway. The ones where Picard is describe as the wise teacher and scholarly diplomat; Kirk is the brave trailblazer and lovable rogue; Sisko is the take-no-shit commander and more-than-human uniter; Archer is the quick thinking explorer and the avenging do-gooder; Pike is the empathetic Boy Scout and the quippy everyman…and Janeway is an irrational murderer and erratic loose canon. And, as usual, I went on a bit of a rant. They (looking at you @redsesame, @epersonae, and @emi--rose) told me to share it here so, if you trudge through this whole thing, blame them.

Does Janeway make some questionable decisions throughout VOY (Prodigy!Janeway is a different conversation for another time)? Yes, absolutely. But here’s the thing: every captain does. What I still love about her though and will champion until I'm blue in the face is that Janeway owns her decisions more than I think any other captain does.

Picard and Kirk hide behind the Prime Directive a lot. That's the reasoning Picard gives for not interfering in the drug running in “Symbiosis” and leaving the Ornarans trapped in dependence on the abusive Brekkans. His line, “Beverly, the Prime Directive is not just a set of rules. It is a philosophy, and a very correct one. History has proved again and again that whenever mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well-intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous." is a cop-out we hear from him time and time again, especially to Dr. Crusher, as she is the one who most often calls him on his bullshit.

Kirk does the same thing. We still this when he leaves Shanna and the other thralls behind in "The Gamesters of Triskelion" and when he forces Elaan of Troyius into a marriage she clearly doesn't want because it's "for a greater good." And all the while, he's got Spock at his side giving him confirmation bias that he's following regulations.

And Sisko, Sisko makes some of the most horrific and destructive decisions of any captain and uses not only the Prime Directive to fall back on, but he's got the Dominion War to blame. He poisons an entire planet to get back at one man he feels betrayed him in "For the Uniform" and don't even get me started on his actions in "In the Pale Moonlight".

Enterprise is so unjustly shat on by the fandom that I almost hate to bring some of Archer's questionable choices into this conversation but I'm going to do it anyway. Similar to Sisko and the Dominion War, Archer has the threat of the Xindi in his back pocket to excuse some of his worst behavior. If Tuvix is the worst thing people can point to for Janeway, then we have to talk about Archer and Sim, the simbiont created solely to be a living tissue donor for an injured Trip, a procedure that will kill the living, breathing, sentient Sim. Archer orders Sim created against the arguments made by Dr. Phlox. He rationalizes his decision with the same argument for the greater good that we see from all the others. He says to T'Pol before Sim is created "…we've got to complete this mission. Earth needs Enterprise. Enterprise needs Trip. It's as simple as that." And it doesn't end there. When Sim is grown enough for the procedure and has figured out what's going to happen to him, he challenges Archer himself, arguing for his own right to live, and Archer sticks to his guns. This exchange directly between Archer and Sim is haunting.

Archer: I must complete this mission; and to do that, I need Trip. Trip! I'll take whatever steps necessary to save him. Sim: Even if it means killing me? Archer: Even if it means killing you. Sim: You're not a murderer. Archer: Don't make me one.

Not only do all of these captains (except Archer, who arguably writes the damn thing himself at the end of the series) have the Prime Directive to fall back on, they also have Starfleet/the Federation/Vulcan High Council right there on speed dial to validate their choices and hear their excuses and give them another commendation. They all know that ultimately, they can turn to someone higher in command to turn to for help.

Janeway is alone. She is alone with her crew 70,000 lightyears from home with only her training and her own moral compass to guide her. Yes, she claims the Prime Directive a lot but she also goes with what she feels is right and she is clear about that with her crew. When she makes the decision to split Tuvix, despite what everyone else says, she sticks to it and more importantly, does the procedure herself. Picard would have forced Beverly to do it, saying Doctor I gave you an order, your conscience be damned, and Archer does the same to Phlox with Sim, but Janeway takes the tool out of the Doctor's hand and says it's my call, I'll do it. When everyone is angry and mad about her destroying the Caretaker's array, she stands up for her decision and says yes, I did it, because it's what my Starfleet training said to do AND because I think it was the right thing and it's on me to make the hard choices.

She also can admit when she made the wrong decision, which isn't something we see from the other captains. In the season 5 opener, "Night", we see her in a depressive state because she's questioning her decision to effectively strand her crew in the Delta quadrant but she comes out of it when she's reminded by her senior staff that the crew believes in her and trusts her, she should do the same for herself. When the Doctor has a mental crisis in "Latent Image" after questioning his own choice to save the life of Harry Kim over that of another crew member, Janeway admits she did the wrong thing by first deleting his memories of it so he could get back to work and then sits with him for days while he works through it because that's what captains do.

And she does all of this without the backup and support of Starfleet. She doesn't have anyone higher on the chain of command. She's 70,000 miles away from the admiralty and her support system. There's no one higher than her to give her a break from making every decision.

To quote my fellow Missourian Harry Truman, for Janeway the buck stops with her in a way it doesn't for any other captain and she is painfully aware of that and owns that and that is why I love her and she's my captain.

[speakergame]

Progress Update - 3/4/24

Hello and happy March!

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? 😅 Well, I finally have some good news for you this time: I have some actual news!

I'm happy to be able to announce at last that an update is on its way! I’ve still got some assets to make and code cleanup and testing to finish, but I should finally have something to show you soon.

I’ll put a cut at the end of this and go into more detail about the what and why of what I’ve been working on during this long and unintended hiatus, but the tl;dr is that I hope to have an update out by the end of the month, and that said update will break any saves made in Chapter 4. Unfortunate, but unavoidable, since Chapter 4 had to be recoded from the beginning 😞

I just want to thank all of you once again for sticking with me through my extended silence! Especially to my patrons who’ve put up with me putting everything on pause month after month while I dealt with my real life shit, and to everyone who’s sent me kind and supportive messages to let me know Speaker hasn’t been forgotten. It really means a lot to me.

Okay, enough of that sappy shit! I’m gonna get back to work finishing this up 😁 I’ll put out another update later this month once I have a more definite release date.

Thank you all for reading! I hope you’re having a fantastic 2024 so far, and that the rest of the week treats you kindly. See y’all soon! 💙💙💙

(For those who want a more detailed breakdown on what’s been happening and what to expect, hit the readmore)

I won’t go into the personal life stuff I’ve been dealing with this past year that has slowed down my work, but as far as the actual game goes: 

To put it simply, I just wasn’t happy with it. Some of it could be because of how many times I had to reread the same section while I was coding the scenes that would’ve taken place after the last update, but no matter how much I edited or rearranged it, I didn’t like how that scene turned out. There was something… formulaic that had been happening with the way I always laid out scenes, and a bit of stagnation in the story, character, and relationship development that bothered me.

So I rewrote it. And when I still didn’t like it, I rewrote it again. And I still didn’t like it. I thought about scrapping the whole thing on more than one occasion as I struggled to get out of the corner I’d written myself into.

Inspiration finally struck at the beginning of this year, thanks in part to another interactive novel I follow, and I really like the direction I’ve taken it now. 

Instead of the RO split scenes happening where the last one left off, Speaker, Seer, and Gavin are gonna have a chat about Things™ to move the next story arc forward. Then Speaker will get some downtime, by themself at first and then in an extended scene split with the RO of their choosing. 

All the Big Plot Things that were going to happen in Chapter 4 will be moved to Chapter 5 instead, and 4 will be a bit more of a filler episode. A deep breath before the plunge, as it were.

This split won’t just be a quick conversation/reaction from the RO, but a full on different direction for the rest of the chapter based on who you choose. Most of them will involve leaving the house; all of them will involve actual one-on-one time (or one-on-two time, as the case may be) away from the others. And though romance isn’t required, all of them will have the potential to really move the romance forward if you so choose. One or two might even have a lock-in choice (maybe. I’m not 100 percent on that, so don’t hold me to it) 

These scenes won’t be in the next update, because they’re all very complex, but the update will definitely have the Seer chat and at least some of the by-yourself stuff. The update after will have the rest of the alone time stuff (including the clothes/body CC you’ve all been waiting for), and then the one after will start the RO scenes. I think.

I may actually split the RO scenes into separate updates, and let my darlings over at Patreon vote for the order they’re released. That way I can focus on one at a time instead of trying to split my attention six ways at once.

Okay, that’s enough rambling for me today. Time to get back to work! Still got a lot to get done before this is ready, but it’s so close now.

[orphiclovers]

Thoughts on yjh and body horror?

Hmm, some. I think Yoo Joonghyuk's whole deal is a lot more often about mental anguish as opposed to physical. Regression resets all his wounds and scars except the mental ones, so those are the ones that take a massive toll on him. 'Hell of Eternity' is hell because he can never escape his own memories. He is weak to mental attacks but his body is usually near indestructible.

Secretive Plotter's damage is the 'curse of immortality' and his only motivation is finding eternal rest, so that's all mental. Even outergodification is a mental process. Losing his appearence as a 'human' was a secondary side effect to losing his identity as 'Yoo Joonghyuk' and just asthetically speaking, turning into a shadow person isn't really 'body horror' to me, which I associate more with viscera and flesh, not cold and clean intangibility.

I'm not just bringing up SP because I have brain worms (also that) but because there is a specific regression that I think does exemplify 'body horror', and that's 999, baby!

Hear me out. I don't say this soley due to 999's lack of limbs, since there's nothing inherently horror about being an amputee (though removing his own eyes is a bit saw trap energy not going to lie) BUT because his was the one regression where his main problem wasn't mental - he had all his companions, was as happy as one could be in an apocalypse - but the fact that his physical body failed him. He didn't die in battle, but instead wasted away due to the 'outer world covenant'.

Kim Dokja might be self-sacrifical but this guy was on another level.

999 didn't hesitate to take hits for his companions, which is how he lost his limbs, and at the same time he borrowed an outer god's powers to win battles (I'm imaganing a chaos version of advent of a half-god) , which probably looked really epic, but unforunatley was at the expence of his soul. The covenant ate away at him piece by piece, and it's said his 'bloodstream went haywire until he couldn't walk or use his skills' (the translation was wonky here but you get it) which I take to mean he had some kind of cell damage, kind of like radiation or chemo.

This was a years long process, from when he first signed the Outer World Covenant up until the 99th scenario, and that whole time he kept borrowing those powers even though he saw it was killing him. What I mean is, it probably didn't look or feel great to see him falling apart, but the level of gore is reader's choice to imagine (anywhere from a tasteful coughing up blood and nosebleeds, to skin peeling off and hair falling out etc.).

Oh and since I know you would enjoy this, I'll say this too.

I don't think Secretive Plotter knew what he would do to 999.

He meant to save 999, not kill him.

This was almost assuredly his first Outer World Convenant, since I figure changing the 999th regression was the first thing he tried to do after he gained the ability to worldline hop/ had the tiniest bit of control over his outer god powers. He was still young and hopeful - 'foolish' as the Secrerive Plotter reminices. But he clearly fucked something up badly, maybe since he didn't have the clear grasp of probability manipulation that he developed in the next thousands of years or tried to directly change too much.

Canon era, he gives both KDJ and HSY a covenant just fine and they don't have any issues from it. (He's very careful to take the probability on himself - remember the finger thing?)

I wonder how horrified young SP was to see 999 destroying himself using SP as the method. Did he try to back out at some point, but couldn't due to the covenant? Did he try to make 999 stop, which he of course refused to do? I think about them a lot.

[rovingotter]

I started writing my own version of the Honda Odyssey scene from Deadpool & Wolverine but I probably won't develop into an entire story so I'm just putting it up here. Canon-typical violence/gore.

Logan had just jammed his claws straight through Wade’s skull, into his brain, and out the other side.  Which was rude.  Wade’s vision went fuzzy and then totally dark, and half his body went limp—it was temporary, he knew, but it was always a little unnerving.  Logan had also decided to be extra rude and entirely miss his frontal lobe, so he could still think about how hurt he was by Logan’s mean-spirited rant.

Couldn’t even save a relationship with a goddamn stripper.

Also, he was dragging Vanessa into this? Hello? Not cool.

They were probably getting a lot of blood on the seats.  Whatever.  It wasn’t his car.

Wade’s right arm still worked, so he fumbled for Baby Knife, yanked it out, and plunged it in what he hoped was the direction of Logan’s face, though it probably wouldn’t make it through his stupid adamantium-enhanced skull.  To his pleasant surprise, however, the knife encountered very little resistance.  There was a roaring scream and then a rubbery pop which let him know he’d gotten Logan right through the eye.

Ha! 

He angled it upward, making it harder for Logan to pull away, and Logan jerked.

Logan went still, panting.  Wade was on his back, on the backseat, and Logan was on top of him, crushingly heavy, damp with sweat, chest heaving.  He spoke slowly, through clenched teeth, every word a strain:  “Get—your knife—out—my fuckin’ head.”

“You first, honeypie.”  Wade was kind of impressed that either one of them could still talk.  Though he was kind of having trouble remembering how they’d gotten into this situation.  They were in a car, and Logan was mean.  That was all he could say for sure.

Logan’s claws were still stuck through Wade’s head, Wade’s movements still jerky and uncoordinated, his vision still absent due to the two-inch-thick wedge of adamantium which was very rudely skewering his visual cortex, but he had a good grip on the knife, most of which was now inside Logan’s skull.  And he wasn’t feeling very charitable.  So he wiggled it around.

Logan gasped.  He tried to pull back, jerked again, and went limp, grunting.  “Uh—fuck—hngh…”

Wade knew it was just pain, but those little grunts sounded distractingly porn-like.  But his anger was still strong enough to overpower his spasm of confused arousal.  “Apologize.”  Wade squeezed the word between clenched teeth.

Logan didn’t answer.

Wade wiggled the knife harder, up and down and side to side, feeling its edges scrape against Logan’s eye socket.  “Say it!”

Still no response.  Logan had gone worryingly limp on top of him, and Wade was starting to wonder if he’d made a mistake.  Logan’s brain regenerated just like Wade’s, sure, but brain regeneration wasn’t always as neat or clean as the rest of the body.  Sometimes memories would be fuzzy or missing afterward.  Also, he didn’t fully understand how well Logan’s brain regenerated.  And he’d just pureed Logan’s whole left frontal lobe.  It probably looked like a meat smoothie now.  It was probably leaking out. What if he didn't get better? What if he turned into a feral beast-man and ran off into the woods to live in harmony with nature? Or started shitting his pants? What if Wade had just broken the Wolverine and he couldn't ever move or talk again? No, no, he was fine. This was fine.

Wade groaned.  “Fuck.”

Logan’s claws were still in Wade’s skull, and Wade still couldn’t move his other arm.  Or either of his legs.  Or see.

“Logan…”  He gulped.  “Logan.  We’ll both pull out on three, okay?”  No response.  “Okay?”

Logan made a weird, whimpery little noise. 

“Peanut.  Hey. Can you hear me?  Can you understand me?”

“N-not…good.”

“Pull out.  Just pull out.  Okay? One—two—three!”

Logan’s claws slid out of Wade’s skull with a shhhk. 

“Agh!  Fuck!” he panted.

Wade tried to pull out the knife, but it was in pretty deep, and trying to remove it was more awkward than he’d anticipated, especially without the use of his own vision, which was returning more slowly than he'd hoped.  Logan growled and jerked back before Wade could manage to maneuver the blade free.

“Logan…”  Wade tried to sit up and flopped back down.  His body felt like a bag of mashed potatoes and his vision—though now returning—was foggy.  He reached out, groping at empty air.

Where was Logan?

Wade paused to catch his breath and give his neurons a chance to knit back together.  His head throbbed, dull hammer-blows in the back of his skull. Nausea rolled over him, then faded.

Slowly, he sat up.  This time, his limbs obeyed him and held.

The car was drenched in blood, the seats stained beyond any hope of cleaning, there were little chunks of pink stuff here and there, and Logan was nowhere to be seen.

Wade, still shaky and uncoordinated, climbed out of the car, landing in a heap on the ground.  Logan was sitting a short distance away, on the dirt, staring blankly into space, Wade's knife still jutting out of his ruined eye. He was breathing heavily.  Blood, dirt and sweat stained his suit.

“You know you can just pull the knife out yourself,” Wade said.

Logan didn’t react.  His remaining eye was wide open, glassy.  He was drooling a little.

Wade crept toward him.  He started to reach out.  Logan flinched back.

“Whoa.  Hey.  It’s okay.  I’m just gonna take this out.  It’ll only hurt for a sec.”  He could already see Logan’s squished eye trying to regenerate, but it was healing around the blade—which would, of course, make it extra unpleasant to remove, but such was life.

He gripped the hilt. Then, bracing himself, he yanked the knife out.  Fast, like pulling off a band-aid.  Logan roared loud enough to startle a nearby flock of crows out of a tree. They flew off into the sky, cawing.

Wade started to wipe the blade off on Logan’s suit, then changed his mind and wiped it off on his own. It was red, anyway.  Logan blinked at him, breathing heavily, as his eye slowly knitted itself back together.

"Do you know your name?" Wade said.

After a pause, he muttered, "Logan." He swallowed. "I...I'm Logan."

"Do you know my name?"

"Wade."

"Good. Now count backwards from ten," Wade said. "And then list every prime minister in reverse alphabetical order. And tell me the square root of pi divided by nine."

"Fuck off."

"You're gonna be fine."

[clockwayswrites]

A Broken Sort of Normal Part 4

WC: 439 Materpost CW: Mild Family Drama

Thankfully it wasn’t long before Danny could get home and take a hot shower. The casserole he’d taken out of the freezer was fine to go in the oven at that point, and he tossed it in as he finished drying off his hair. It was getting long again. He’d kept it a bit shorter since he’d started working and figured he’d be due for another cut soon. He grabbed his phone and sent a message to schedule it, or else he’d just put it off until it was unmanageable.

And then he was left staring at his phone.

Thinking about Jazz.

Maybe he should give her another call— another chance.

The phone was ringing before he had thought much about it.

“Danny?”

“Hi Jazz— Jasmine, sorry.”

“It’s fine, Danny,” she said, but Danny could hear the reprimand in her tone. “What going on?”

“I just…” Why was this so hard? “…wanted to call back? Our last call cut short and I didn’t get to tell you everything.”

“Lacey needed me.”

“That wasn’t— I wasn’t trying to say you shouldn’t have ended the call, I just thought I’d try again. I know you’re busy there. You’re still planning the baby shower, right? I’ve got some vacation—”

“Lacey and I talked, and we don’t think you should come,” Jazz said over him. “And not until the baby has been through all their major shots either. It’s just, you’re around disease a lot and we don’t want to take any chances. You get it, right?”

No, he really didn’t. He was emergency response. Jazz would know that if she ever listened to him.

“…Can I at least get the baby something? Do you have one of those list things?”

“It’s called a registry, Danny.”

Danny held back a sigh. He didn’t want this to end in a fight. “Okay, do you have a registry, Jasmine?”

“Of course we do. But we don’t expect you to get us anything off of it,” she said quickly. “We’ve picked out everything based on the latest research into cognitive development and reviews so nothing on it is… cheap.”

“I have a job.” This was going to be like the fight about his schooling all over again— where Jazz called his paramedical degree a trade school. Like there was something wrong with a trade school anyways. “Just send it through, okay? I’ll see whats on it and I won’t send anything that’s not. And I won’t try to visit.”

“Danny…”

“Give Lacey my best, I’ve got to go,” Danny said, hanging up before he could say the angry words that were bubbling up in his throat.

----- AN: So maybe I'm still not over my sil calling my masters of science a trade school. Though there is nothing wrong with a trade school at all and I'll fight anyone who says so. I honestly wished we had more of them in the US. But yep- I might have picked some of the less lovely traits of my sil and a friend to put into Jazz here. I'm not trying to bash her, I just think it would have been so easy for her to go this way if nothing ever came of her parent's research and she didn't have to adjust her world view to helping save her little brother's life nightly. And if all she saw in that little brother now was someone who supposedly didn't try and maybe resents for having to always be the Big Sister.

Danny could sure use some hugs though.

Due to the new post editor and being shadow banned, I no longer tag! You can subscribe to this post instead to be notified in the same way.

[whoishotteranimepolls]

This might count as Defend your Blurbo. If not, would you please use this as a Defend your Blurbo post

Attention, One Piece Fandom, I know there are a lot of you. I'm debating on whether or not to start One Piece, but there's one thing that has kept me from giving the show a chance for years, and that is Nami and Robin. They are drawn without internal organs.

So I'm scared I have been burned by anime before, especially Shonen, where they will have female characters with really cool character designs they hyped up as being some of the strongest characters but need to be saved every other Arc, or they're actually really cool and then get killed off quickly or I have the most basic generic backstory and their only personality trait is simp. Or, for some reason, in the universe, all the female characters just so happen to all choose to be healers. It's like that isn't just a coincidence and somewhat sexist. Or they're just weak in general.

So One Piece fandom, are the female characters actually well-developed and unique characters even though they happen to be drawn like that? So this is less a defense of Nami and Robin and just a defense of the female characters in general. But I know Nami and Robin are the main two, so you are welcome to use other examples of female characters I have not heard of from the show. I'm curious to see what everyone comes up with, but I'm still a little scared again. Shonan doesn't have an excellent track record with female characters. The only Shonen I think that truly did a fantastic job with its female characters has been Black Clover.

I am not worried about spoilers if they help make your point, and with how long your show is, by the time I get to that particular part, I probably would have forgotten about it. That is, if I do decide to start One Piece, and if I start, do you recommend reading the manga or watching the anime? Which is better?

Defend Your Blurbo #11

Please remember this post is about curiosity and genuine fandom discourse. Be kind with your answers because this is not a debate essay, this is a discussion between fans.

Here's a photo of Nami and Nico Robin for those of you who are not familiar with the characters

I don't think anyone will argue with the anon about One Piece female characters being drawn like they don't have internal organs. It's even worse with other characters like Boa Hancock and progressively worsens post time skip.

However, Oda may not be able to draw female characters, but he can write them. I'll let the One Piece fandom explain that part remember they said they don't mind spoilers, but I would still prefer if you would put a spoiler warning for everyone else who may be worried about spoilers.

So One Piece Fandom Defend your Blurbos

[dayntee]

So I finished Veilguard a while back, and of course I have thoughts. I'm sure none of them are original and have been plenty stated, but hey, we all need to mourn a game when we're done with it for better or worse, so here's mine.

Note: I wrote and queued this before I was aware of the layoffs at Bioware today. This is, in no way, meant to rub salt in the wound or point fingers. If anything, I'm gutted for the people who poured their heart into this game only to be found jobless today. I'm in the exact same position myself, and have nothing but empathy for the situation. To spoil what's below - I enjoyed my time with Veilguard. It could have been better, and if you're a dev that worked on it, you probably know that. I'm sorry it's turned out the way it has, but thank you for the experience regardless. It was a fun game.

Spoilers after the break, obviously. Be aware there will be discourse, but I'm not here specifically to bash. If anything, I'm actually still grateful for the experience.

Overall, I did enjoy my time with Veilguard. After all, my final save file was around the 85 hour mark, so clearly I had no issues continuing to sink time into the game. I itched to play when I wasn't, and I got my Solavellan ending I've been waiting 10 years for, and I damn near 100%'d the whole thing (including getting the hidden cinematic after the credits). So what went wrong? What did I not like? Why do I feel so… empty now that it's over?

If I were to summarize my issues and feelings with Veilguard, it's that it felt like it gave just enough to be passable content, but never committed to being a truly exemplary experience. In every way, from system design to companion design to overarching story to itemization, everything is fine… but not great.

Knowing that DAV went through development hell contextualizes a lot of these issues. If the art book is to be believed, the project had two full blown restart buttons pushed and many leadership handoffs. I've been in conversations, though, where folks ask "Why on earth could DA2 pull off a great storytelling experience, but DAV couldn't?"

There's something else at play, and after my own experiences in the game industry and squinting between the lines to try to glean what I think may have gone wrong, I have a hunch. Pure speculation ahead: I don't think leadership ever fully agreed on a committed vision.

The broad strokes are there, and they are strong:

The Lighthouse is a cool fucking hub. It grows with your group, responds to their needs, and shapes itself around you as you experience the world. The concept of this is dope AF.

The goal is closure on all the questions left unanswered after DAI. It does get to most of these, even if not as fully and as satisfying as some of us lore nerds would have liked.

Combat is fluid and pretty engaging (at least at first). It's simple, fun, and generally fulfills power fantasies well (for context, I specialized as a full Veil Jumper Archery Rogue).

WE GET TO EXPLORE NORTHERN THEDAS. This is so cool and a place we've all wanted to go for ages. TEVINTER. NEVARRA. WEISSHAUPT. All exciting prospects.

Level design and map design are pretty A+, imo. Landscapes and set dressings are beautiful and artfully crafted. Even if there are aspects of the visual design you disagree with, they committed to it and fulfilled it well.

Exploration is fun. I rarely hunt down every chest in a game. I could not stop treasure hunting for the life of me, and some of those hidden treasures felt really special and rewarding to uncover.

The cast of characters and factions you interact with are interesting and very different - from one another and from previous casts. It's nice to see some new tropes that either haven't been used or have been out of rotation for a while.

Solas is a good antagonist. He was before, and he still is, and biased Solasmancing aside - I always looked forward to the breaks in the game where I got to banter with the Egg.

Voice over cast is fantastic. I know some folks were less fond of non-British/American accents, but honestly, I was very fine with it. It reinforced that this part of Thedas, and this time in the overall storyline, is new and different. Thedas is changing, and so are its people.

All these things said - every single positive I have above feels like they were baseline requirements for a AAA Bioware RPG. That they don't go above and beyond these bare minimums is where the game feels like it fails, especially as a payoff for a critically acclaimed entry that's 10 years old and has a passionately dedicated fanbase.

A phrase I've been using a lot with folks is that DAV feels like the Lacroix of Dragon Age games. It's got the branding, it looks like Dragon Age, and it kind of tastes like Dragon Age, but… just barely. It leaves you feeling like it's lacking. It's a hint of it, and going back to drink it again doesn't quite satisfy you.

What we call this in game development is minimum viable product (MVP), which is usually trotted out at the point by production and/or leadership when you realize you've meandered on the project for so long that you just gotta ship something. This works if you're actually going to commit to polishing it up and continuing to make it better after launch for a live service game; fix it later is fine when that's a reasonable expectation.

But Veilguard walked back on that concept. It no longer was going to be live service, but a one-and-done, and the final, late pivot meant it just had less time to cook in its final form and likely a ton of wasted work that got chucked out. There are so many places where the experience feels like an alpha or beta version of what they actually wanted to do. The Lighthouse and Companions as a whole both exemplify this; they feel and look cool, but the experience of both are shallow and underdeveloped. They felt like they were missing something.

The most egregious issues, in my opinion, in no particular order:

Apologies in advance if they're your favorite, but Rook is probably the worst protagonist we've ever been given. Not because their concept is inherently bad, but because I couldn't really make them mine. Rook has no arc, makes few decisions that truly matter, and no moral conundrums barring maybe the Treviso/Minrathous decision. Even then—it feels like there's a right answer to that decision.

To explain: Minrathous gets fucked at the end of the game anyway. If you pick to save Minrathous, you've just doomed two metropolis level cities to excessive death and destruction AND locked yourself out of a potential romance option for no particular reason.

Rook's actions in Thedas also matter the least. The end state of the game is the same no matter what: the Evanuris fall, and the Veil is preserved. How you do it is largely immaterial. In every other game entry, shit can seriously go sideways and it's always directly because of your decisions.

Companion arcs are largely shallow and so reliant on Rook, they fail to feel real. Some of these arcs are more egregious in this manner than others, and some of them have truly excellent stories to tell (oh, hi there Emmrich). But even with the best arcs, this person asks you to make utterly life-altering decisions for them and you've probably known them for like a month or two at best. It just doesn't feel like I, as the PC, have the right to make that call, or that I've earned it. There's not enough time nor enough high stakes prior to those moment.

I won't beat this one to death, but the limited amount of previous choices not mattering in this entry hurts, and I know how complicated it would have been to explore all of them. That said, there were a few that had a ton of specific investment that deserved better resolution: Kieran in particular would have mattered so fucking much if he existed as canon. I understand that's the crux of the problem, but it makes it so that if he was part of your world state in both DAO and DAI, his absence is all the more noticeable.

The South being destroyed off-screen through text will never not bother me. The Inquisitor is apparently faffing about doing fuck all with the resources they've built over time, especially if they chose not to disband the Inquisition. They didn't chase after Solas, who they knew was going to be a problem, and then they ALSO let the South fall? I'm sorry - it does a hero that the majority of this fandom is most likely heavily invested in the worst service no matter which way you look at it.

Veilguard feels like a game that couldn't get out of its own way. The part that has me grieving the most is that you can see under the surface a great game was there, but just not fully realized.

Without being one of the people who made the game, we can only speculate and can't presume the cause for why we got what we did. Hell, as someone who works in game development, sometimes you never get the answer yourself as to why things went so horribly sideways. The larger the game and studio, the more blind spots you're likely going to have on the overall project.  That said, I have nothing but empathy for the Veilguard team. It's very clear that at least the majority of folks working on it poured in a ton of work and cared a lot about it.

It's not my place to blame anyone in particular for it, because I don't have the first-hand knowledge necessary to cast that judgement. I hope the folks who worked on this don't let it get them too down; you still made a fun game. And I'm sure you're just as disappointed it wasn't the love letter to Dragon Age that you probably wanted it to be, as much as any of us fans who feel it didn't meet the bar.

You had an impossible job to do; the expectations here were so high, and you had more obstacles than any dev team should reasonably have during their project, regardless of the expected fires we all run into during development. Despite that, I still had fun, and I still care quite a bit about these characters.

That's worth something. Thank you for the experience.

[mii-ruby]

Theory about the "Price to pay"

Spoilers 'till chapter 260

So we're finally at the point where Yona has to talk to the dragon gods herself. We knew this was bound to happen and it was honestly the most logical turn of events. What we don't know however is the price she'll have to pay to get such a wish fulfilled.

Two theories come to mind:

1/ The first and most popular one is that Yona will have to leave the mortal realm and return to heaven to be the Crimson dragon King again.

No need for the dragon warriors anymore, they'll simply lose their powers, and the gods can finally have Yona back like they always wanted, which could be the interpretation of the last line from the prophecy "And The Red Dragon Shall Return At Dawn".

This theory, although logical, is just too cruel. Akayona is not a tragedy, I can't imagine Kusanagi will end a story about found family, self growth and overcoming your trauma with the death of the main character. I desperately tried to find another suitable price that didn't envolve Yona sacrificing herself, which leads us to the second theory:

2/Yona gets to stay on earth, but all the people she knew forget about her. I know this might sound just as cruel if not more than the previous one💦, but please hear me out 'till the end!!!!

Yona had done much more to the country as a normal girl than a princess. She went to different tribes on foot, bonded with peasants, pretended to be a bandit, pirate, an entertainer... etc, and fought off traffickers and dealers without ever mentioning she was a princess. Yes those people she helped will probably forget about her, but she can return to them and help them while being herself again. She doesn't need recognition as "Princess Yona". She draws people no matter her title.

On the other, since she'll no longer possess warriors with divine powers, she won't be a target for greedy individuals or people from enemy nations, so the gods can rest assured about her safety.

Lastly, everyone forgetting about her means that the red dragon no longer exists on earth. It's like his memory left the mortal realm and ascended to heaven again "And The Red Dragon Shall Return At Dawn". This could be an interpretation of the prophecy. The red dragon won't literally return to heaven. It's his memory that will leave people's minds and return to be a property of the heaven.

Now, even though I said that everyone will forget about Yona, I'm sure there'll be one exception to this rule. Only one individual will never forget about Yona while everyone else will, and it's Hak. The first reason is obviously the romance that'll just get reset to zero if he forgets about her. I mean, knowing  him he'll probably fall in love with her again, but it's like all their moments and all the development in their relationship will disappear and restart from zero which is something a lot of readers won't accept.

The second and most powerful reason (literally the reason that made me write  this post) is that one scene from chapter 25 that everyone hated. Remember when Yona asked Hak to be the only one to call her "Princess"? Remember when she told him even if EVERYONE IN THE COUNTRY FORGETS ABOUT HER, HE HAS TO BE THE ONLY ONE WHO REMEMBERS?

What if that scene was actually foreshadowing the ending of the series? That everyone will forget about who Yona was, and that he will be the only one to remember? Ofc I'm sure it won't be that easy. Hak will probably have to pass some kind of test to prove that he's worthy of remembering Yona, but I'm sure he'll succeed and the gods will begrudgingly yield to his request so Yona won't live a sad and lonely life after they cast their spell.

Ofc I'm aware this is still a cruel predicament. The family she fought so hard to save will forget about her, but she'll be able to start a new relationship with them. It'll prove that their bond was always genuine, that it had nothing to do with the dragons' blood, and I'm sure they'll love her as much as they loved her before.

The country also will forget about princess Yona. Her achievements will probably all be attributed to Soowon (but it's not like she cares about fame or recognition anyway).

Speaking of Soowon, it's kinda fucked up that he gets to forget the girl he hurt so much. He'll forget that he ever had a cousin, that it was her father he murdered that night, that she was the one who got the gods to heal the descendants from the Crimson illness...etc, It's unfair but we can't do much about it I guess.

What do you guys think about this theory? Would you be okay with it if it happened at the end?

[the-irrelevant-trumpeter]

hello mischief fandom. as you may have seen, we got the very exciting news that the play that goes wrong is coming back to new zealand. however, because of the new tour, the play that goes wrong australia/new zealand instagram account has wiped all of their old posts from the previous tour, which means that all of those videos are gone forever.

as you all know, i am a dedicated lore collector, and i had previously been through every post and written down any and all lore from it, so even though i didn't have the videos themselves saved, i do still have a list of all of the lore we received from the account. so, in memory of the previous aus/nz tour, i am going to share all of the lore i have written down from the account. enjoy!

in melbourne, chris had tried to book the princess theatre, but they were put in the comedy theatre instead. when he asked trevor about it, trevor said that the mormons were at the princess (aka book of mormon). chris didn't understand what he meant by this. this implies that chris might not have heard of the book of mormon.

robert described the drama society as "a rich tapestry, just like the carpet"

trevor and annie said that when you join something like this, you expect the actors to be really cool people, but once you get there, it’s not like that at all.

annie has described sandra as "hot" mean.

trevor said that sandra's not a great actress, and "wouldn't get a start on neighbours" (a famous australian soap opera that launched the careers of actors like margot robbie, kylie minogue and natalie imbruglia). it's also worth noting that brooke satchwell, who played sandra in the tour, was in neighbours for four years.

max said his dream role would be one of the ones from jurassic park, specifically the sick triceratops.

sandra tried to insist that the drama society is like family (probably not genuinely) and one of the asm's (called maggie) disagreed.

max does a gag where he puts tissues on his eyebrows to look like an owl. he called this an "intervowl", a rare owl that only appears during the interval.

jonathan's family has been involved in the film business for a long time, but he'd mostly done modelling up to haversham manor. he thought doing the show would be a good chance to learn transferable skills, and he described it as "really eye-opening and a really wonderful learning curve". he said "anything to get more experience", and he thinks he's really developed and has come a long way. he thinks the next step would be a part with more lines (foreshadowing ppgw).

max said that his uncle gave the company quite a lot of money and then asked if max could be in the show. (this goes against regular canon, as this is more of the backstory of ppgw rather than tptgw).

sandra wants to get paid to do promotional videos, which someone off camera agrees to do, although the caption clarifies that she is not getting paid for it.

sandra claimed she got offered a lot of money to be on i'm a celebrity (presumably the australian version, but there is a british version so this still works).

robert had never heard of canberra and annie had to explain to him that it was the capital of australia. when he asked "what's there", annie didn't know.

max convinced trevor to go up the sydney harbour bridge with him (i didn't clarify whether they walked the path or actually climbed it. up to interpretation i guess). trevor claimed it "wasn't much to look at" and said it wasn't very good, saying it's just high up. max said that it was "so much fun" and that they should do it again, and he likes it when he jumps up and down on the wood they're standing on (which trevor immediately stops him from doing). they took heaps of photos together and somehow max's eyes were closed in every single one.

when chris was trying to film a video, annie and trevor tried to tell him that there was a fire, and chris told them to take care of it and go away. trevor also tells him that dennis is hurt, and chris once again tells him to leave. once he's finished filming his video, he runs off to deal with it, complaining about this happening "every five minutes".

during a promotional video, sandra tries to claim that haversham manor is a one woman show where she plays 8 different characters. she says that if you want to see any images or her showreel, to go to www.sandra.lee.com. (i'm not 100% certain that 'lee' was the word used, as chris interupts her, and this could also be spelled differently, such as 'leigh', so take this one with an open mind).

annie has a mini series involving a unicorn pillow pet, named penelope. she documents penelope's journey through getting ready for the show. these next dot points will be from that series.

jonathan “calms penelope down” on gala night. annie says that jonathan has a lot of experience with galas due to his modelling career, and he shares this knowledge with annie/penelope. annie also calls him a gentleman.

penelope “helps” trevor before the show. trevor looks disgusted/annoyed about this.

dennis likes to have interval naps, and will hug penelope during these. these naps are apparently on the floor

penelope “gives chris some last minute tips”. chris apparently insists that penelope can’t talk, which annie claims is wrong.

annie says that "even tough guys need hugs", while showing a picture of robert hugging penelope.

i have to put the rest of this in a reblog, because tumblr has a character limit, so check the notes for the rest of it (some big ones in there!)

[qiu-yan]

3 6 7 11 16 20 25

bro is trying to get me killed lmao /s

choose violence ask game

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr:

this shit

6. which ship fans are the most annoying?

gonna be honest here, the single most annoying part of the MDZS fandom is that one hyperspecific sort of wang and xian stan who insists on shitting on not only the other characters, but also other wang and xian fans who ship the characters in ways they don't approve of. this kind of stan can not only be relied on to have the worst possible takes on everyone ranging from jin guangyao to jiang cheng, they can also be relied on to harass other wang and xian fans simply for putting wang on the bottom. fun times.

7. what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

surprisingly, no one yet. sometimes i feel the hater urge to dunk on the morally-pure version of wei wuxian that the diehard wei wuxian stannies have collectively hallucinated, but i still find the wei wuxian from canon to be quite compelling.

11. number of fandom-related words you've filtered

the "canon jiang cheng" and "canon jc" tags. everyone stfu

16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

"morally pure wei wuxian who did nothing wrong ever." to me, wei wuxian's hubris, his unique capability for inventing new kinds of cruelty, his failure to think of the consequences of his actions, his tendencies to run away from negative feelings, and his ultimate failure to protect the people he was trying to protect, are what make him a compelling character to me. these flaws in parallel with his courage, kindness, stalwart moral compass, and genuine love make him interesting to me. so i don't quite understand fans who instead insist on erasing all the morally grey and highly interesting stuff he did in favor of insisting he did nothing wrong ever.

20. part of canon you found tedious or boring

not quite what the question is asking, but i found the actual wang and xian romance in the original novel to be a bit lacking. mainly because (as other people have said already) a lot of the romantic development happened when lan wangji was drunk. at the very least, i wanted to see lan wangji's reactions to his various drunken adventures once he sobered up the next day, and i'm rather disappointed we never got to see that.

furthermore, on wei wuxian's end, it did kind of feel like wei wuxian was using this exciting new romance to distract himself from his past problems, even though it also seemed like he didn't actually know all that much about lan wangji. the only version of the romance that makes sense to me is the one where wei wuxian was already into lan wangji (subconsciously or consciously) in his first life; otherwise, wei wuxian falling in love with lan wangji during his second life, when he's yet to process any of the shit that happened in his first life, feels too much like him running away from his problems with a guy he believes will validate all his decisions. meanwhile, on lan wangji's end, i feel like the novel just did not give us a lot to work with in regards to his character. so it feels like, if you want to be a fan of lan wangji, you have to do a lot of the legwork of building up his personality yourself.

what also disappointed me a bit about wang and xian, as well as lan wangji's character arc itself, is that lan wangji is never really challenged on a moral-dilemma level in the same way that many other characters are challenged by the story. how do i explain this...alright, i'll put it this way. i've been brainrotted about madohomu (madoka magica) since i was in middle school. and that's partially because i know for a fact that, if homura was put in the trolley problem and had to choose between [killing 5 strangers] and [allowing madoka to die], she would choose to kill those 5 strangers to save madoka. but after reading MDZS, i realized i legitimately did not know what lan wangji would do in such a moral dilemma. because MDZS equates [being morally righteous] with [supporting wei wuxian], lan wangji is never placed in a dilemma where he has to choose between sacrificing wei ying and doing something the audience would think of as unforgivable.

these are just my own hyperspecific tastes, though.

25. common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing

gonna put my hater hat on for a second, but i kind of roll my eyes at the jiang cheng haters complaining about how jiang cheng stans keep posting in the "canon jiang cheng" tag. dude, if it bothers you that much, just block the jiang cheng stans. then things will be peaceful in your favorite tag again.

[phoenixgrl1412]

DPxDC Idea - Parents and Dead on Main

This post is more setup/background info for what could be a larger story. If I ever write more of this, I'll link it back to this post.

For clarity, I do use the term 'human' to refer to those who are alive and don't live in the Infinite Realms. I am sorry there is so much worldbuilding and so very little Dead on Main

-----

Danielle (nicknamed Ellie because Dani would be way to confusing and she is her own person) starts to destabilize again, but the cure from before doesn't work. It's beyond what Danny can do on his own, so he takes Ellie to Frostbite.

Frostbite tells the duo that basically, Ellie's core formed incorrectly. Her core has been struggling to keep her alive until now, but it can't hang on any longer.

But! There is a solution! They can take Ellie's core and basically force it to revert to a pre-formation state. They'll then be able to artificially generate the conditions needed for Ellie's core to begin forming correctly on it's own. At that point, Ellie will be able to grow at a normal rate, but they won't be able to artificially age her up.

In simpler terms, they can de-age her to an itty bitty ghost egg (or whatever you want to call it, maybe embryo?), and then trigger the change that makes her an itty bitty baby halfa. She'll have to age normally after that.

It's to save her life, and without it she'll turn to goo and she's running out of time, so they do it. Ellie becomes a baby! A baby halfa!

It's important to note that a baby ghost is not the same as a human baby. The term "baby ghost" refers to two things. 1) newly formed ghosts and 2) child ghosts who may still "age" and alter their form to match that of an adults. When a new ghost's core is fully formed, that's when they stop being a baby ghost. The time it takes to be fully formed can vary from ghost to ghost.

Following this definition, after the de-aging, Ellie is a baby ghost. At the start of the show when the portal had just opened, Danny was a baby ghost. At some point, his core finished forming (more on that later, possibly in a separate post), so he isn't a baby ghost any longer. Box Lunch is a baby ghost because not only is she newly formed, but she will, presumably, age into an adult form. Youngblood is not a baby ghost, because even though he is a child, he has determined that he will NOT age and take on an adult form. Being child sized is his adult form.

When it comes to the question of who will raise Ellie, there are complications. Ordinarily, Frostbite and the Far Frozen would be happy to raise her, especially as a favor to Danny. However, Ellie is a halfa. She needs to be able to spend time in the human world and amongst living people, not just ghosts in the Infinite Realms. Vlad isn't an option for obvious reasons, so Danny is it.

It helps that, in the years since Ellie was created, he'd taken on a parental role towards Ellie. So, even if he wasn't the only option, he would have been the best option anyway.

So, Danny is a dad now. I'm imagining him at 20-23 years old, so he's going to have that I'm-a-new-dad-and-I-have-no-idea-what-I'm-doing energy like, all the time now.

But here's the thing about baby ghosts, and it's not any different for baby halfas. They form a bond with the ghosts around them, literally a bond between their cores. They rely on those bonds to know they're safe, as the baby ghost's core isn't developed enough to protect them. Baby ghosts feed on emotions until they can process ectoplasm, so they also rely on these bonds for nutritional reasons.

These bonds are familial in nature and will carry into adulthood. The bonds can always change, but it's a lot harder to change the bonds when a baby ghost is involved. Not only because a baby ghost may not be able to communicate very well, but also because changing a bond is stressful on cores that aren't fully developed.

It's also important for a baby ghost to have lots of bonds. The parental bonds they form will be the most important, but having other bonds is a key part to the development of a ghost. As they get older, these bonds can influence who the ghost becomes as an individual, much like how living children are influenced by those they spend a lot of time around. A baby ghost is most influenced by the ghosts they have parental bonds with.

A parental bond doesn't mean a biological parent, though it can be. Using Box Lunch as an example, she'd have parental bonds with Box Ghost and Lunch Lady. But, parental bonds can be formed with adoptive parents or mentors, and there can be more than two parental bonds. Ghosts tend to stop forming parental bonds once they reach adolescence, but it's not a firm rule or anything.

A ghost with only one parental bond, however, is going to be almost solely influenced by that parent ghost, especially if they are an actual baby like Ellie is. And in the case of a baby halfa whose only parental bond is the person whose DNA she's based off of? Yeah, she's going to end up to be almost identical to Danny, which isn't what anyone wants.

At first, Danny thinks it isn't a problem. Jazz, Tucker, and Sam are liminal enough that even if they don't have true cores, they can form the bonds that ghosts do. They are also living, so they'll be beneficial to the development of her human half. One of them can form a parental bond with Ellie, they're going to be big parts of her life anyway, problem solved!

Or not solved. When Ellie was de-aged, she kept the bonds she'd already formed. She's got a parental bond with Danny, but aunt/uncle/niece bonds with Jazz, Tucker, and Sam. And as previously mentioned, it's awfully difficult to change the type of bond a baby ghost has with someone.

And so, Danny needs to find another halfa, or someone human but liminal, to raise a child with. Danny has been living in Gotham, and the most liminal person he's met is a hot guy who makes death jokes and goes by the name of Jason Todd.

Is dating his co-parent required? No, but Danny is not going to pass on hitting that. Jason Todd is the most attractive person Danny has ever seen.

-----

Jason: *walks into the batcave, holding a tiny sleeping child in one arm*

Batfam: *stares*

Jason: *moves around as evenly as possible to not wake the kiddo*

Batfam: *stares some more* *realizes the kid has black hair and blue eyes*

Jason: *digs through a pile of old gear without a sound* *makes calming sounds when the kiddo shifts around* *does what he needs to and leaves with the sleeping kiddo*

Batfam:

Stephanie, probably: Damn, I bet on Dick. Who put money on Jason inheriting Bruce's adoption problem?

-----

Ellie falling asleep on Jason while he's Red Hood, and he can't do anything because cat rules apply for tiny, sleeping baby halfas.

-----

Jason showing up with baby Ellie around the batfam, who have no idea why he has a kid or where she came from. Jason isn't going to tell them shit, so he refuses to say anything about her and might have taken it too far.

Baby Ellie: *sneezes adorably* *accidentally shoots an ectoblast at the wall of Jason's safehouse because she can't control her powers*

Dick: I get that you don't want to talk about the kiddo, but can we talk about the fact that she has meta abilities and that you now have a hole in your wall that's still smoking?

Jason: what are you talking about? what hole?

Dick: The one right behind you?

Jason: oh, that? been there for weeks, keep meaning to fix it but haven't gotten to it yet

Dick:

Dick: I literally watched the kiddo shoot a green blast at the wall just now

Jason: *wiping Ellie's nose and then picking her up so she can rest her head on his shoulder* what kid?

Dick: *screams internally*

-----

Tim coming up with conspiracy theories as to why Jason has a kid that sometimes has Lazarus green eyes. His theories become more and more wild the longer he goes without sleep.

Tim's current theory is a mass, drug induced hallucination because Jason never confirms that there is even a child, even if he's holding her.

Jason comes home and tells Danny all of Tim's new theories, just to make him laugh. Not only is Danny's laugh one of the best sounds, but when Ellie hears him laughing, she starts laughing too even though she doesn't know why one of her dads is laughing. Jason would do anything to make sure his two favorite people always have a reason to laugh and be happy.

[cult-of-the-eye]

Mag 81 A Guest for Mr Spider

FUCK FORMER HEAD ARCHIVIST

Wait I need to check the timelines - this was 2 days after leitner's death

New spooky music???

My man is so fucking dramatic I love him so much "grand of sand behind my eye" love the way he speaks

Yeah FUCK JURGEN LEITNER

Omg the greying hair is canon??

Child in the 90s makes him at most 27 GOD DAMN. I was imagining like mid 30s...can you imagine a fucking 27 yr old using words like "ilk" when talking to you

Oh shit he's an orphan poor guy

Yeah ok a lot of his personality seems to make sense if you realise he was raised by his grandma

You know those memes that are like people raised by their grandparents are exceptionally polite but in a brisk way, talk fancy and are super posh? Yeah that's him.

Getting such neurodivergent vibes

Yeah he sounds like a main character from the start Jesus Christ he's such a kid who got traumatised and then grows up to be a horror protagonist vibes

My First Leitner lol like kids had to be introduced to them at a young age like those my first toys

He's so funny I can just imagine him as an 8 yr old getting super like affronted at this like how dare my grandma think I am of subpar intelligence he's such a little bitch from the start

"The eponymous Mr spider" even talking about his childhood trauma he's busting out the vocabulary

Fuck that story actually kinda rattled me I had my hand over my mouth in shock for most of it

I think it was the bit where the horsefly brought his son and they were both crying that got me, I could definitely imagine it scaring an 8 yr old

The way it drags out as well, with the pages of the same scene it really heightens the suspense

Is his childhood bully someone we should keep track of?? Love how he says Michael probably cause he sees him as a bully lol

It's interesting how despite him bullying him (quite badly seeing as though he beat him up) he's still like yeah but he saved my life and that means he deserves to be remembered

My bro didn't save your life on purpose, he was just trying to make it worse and happened to come to a terrible fate cause of that

I guess underneath it all he was still a kid who watched someone die, knowing they'd get eaten by a fucking spider, he still held him in some regard

The way he specified the guy was his bully even after he was being eaten though lol

He was desperate to get the book back? That's a leitner thing I guess, the book makes you want to keep it so it can finish whatever it wanted to do to you

On my relisten (which I will do once I've finished the series I'm sure of it), I'll have to look out for any reaction of leitners name

I wonder why Jon didn't react more to Carlos vittery's statement, like it must've terrified him? I saw a post a while back explaining Jon's thoughts and IT WAS GENIUS it was like of course he doesn't react, he must be terrified that someone knew about his experience and somehow did this to mess with him or it was a joke and he can't let anyone know that the Head Archivist is not Good at This ugh it's so good I'll tag it if I can find it

AHHHHH HE REGRETS DISMISSING THE OTHER STATEMENTS AHHHHHH

HE FINALLY ADMITS THAT HE NEEDS HELP WE LOVE THIS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT YES YOU FUCKING DO BITCH.

yeah at least he's right about Elias killing leitner

GEORGIE THE EX GIRLFIEND

ITS SO WEIRD TO SEE HIM ACTUALLY NICE TO SOMEONE WOW HIS VOICE CHANGES SLIGHTLY AS WELL HES LESS ACADEMIC

THE ADMIRAL

Awwww he's so cute with georgie

GHOST PODCAST GHOST PODCAST

THE WHAT THE GHOST T SHIRT IS CANON???? AHH THATS SO CUTE

Can he not go back to his own flat?? Did he bring all his clothes to the archive and then subsequently leave them there? Does he even have a flat??

God Georgie is so nice I would kill for her

It's so funny that an apparent supernatural cynic dated a ghost podcaster

WOW SEASON 3 OFF TO AN AMAZING START I CANT WAIT TO KEEP LISTENING IM GONNA TELL MY THERAPIST ABOUT THIS TOMORROW!!!

[urlknight]

Hi there, Love your work! I'm also doing stuff in Unreal and it feels like it's rarer to find other indie devs using it. I love how clean all your UI feels, and UI is something I seem to really struggle with.

Do you have any recommendations for workflows / tips / sources etc for getting better at UI?

Also I'd love to know more about the material / shader workflow for your latest post if you have more information anywhere.

Thanks :)

Hello there! Thank you!! I hope you don't mind me answering publicly as I feel like some people might be interested in the answer!

I really appreciate your UI (User Interface for those not knowing the acronym) compliment as it's something I've spent a long time working on and specializing in, in my career as a software engineer. UI/UX often goes completely unacknowledged or taken for granted even though it takes a lot of time and hard work to create and develop. In the engineering world I frequently had to advocate for and explain user experiences to those who didn't have as deep of an appreciation for UI or a very sophisticated understanding of why a good, visually appealing user experience makes, or on the flip side, can break everything. I think it's a very challenging, overwhelming topic to grasp and communicate, but just by being interested in it you're already way ahead!

There's a lot going on with UI. From visuals to knowing common design elements to successfully conveying a story to the user to implementation to testing to designing for accessibility to animation and I probably didn't cover everything with that run-on sentence. There's frontend engineers out there whose role is solely to maintain and improve UI component libraries for companies. And that's without throwing games, whose UIs are all uniquely visually tailored to their experiences, into the mix... I could keep going on about this honestly, but I'll get to what I think you can do personally! 1. Learn about common design patterns. What's a toast? What's pagination? What's a card? Little things like that. These apply to all software UI/UX, including video games- and knowing these off the top of your head will make it so much easier for you to invent your own UI designs and patterns.

2. Study the UI in the everyday applications you interact with. Step through menus and think about how you got from point A to point B. Take a moment to think about the why someone put a button where they did. Study the UI in your favorite video games, too! Take a lot of notes on what you think works really well and what you think doesn't. And also there's online resources that are great for inspiration. I personally spend a lot of time on the Game UI Database. - https://dribbble.com/ - https://www.gameuidatabase.com/ 3. Don't be afraid to start with basic sketches or even just simply representing everything with grey boxes. All my UI starts out as really crappy sketches on paper, or tablet sketches on top of screenshots. Visualize your ideas and then keep iterating on them until you've got something. For example, I went from this:

To this. (And come to think of it I might actually still want to make those cooler looking buttons in my sketch) 4. Break everything out into pieces and individual components. A good UI is made up of building blocks that you can reuse all over the place. That's how it stays consistent and also saves you a lot of stress when you need to go in and update components. Instead of a million different looking UI pieces, you just have to update the one! These individual components will make up your very own UI Component Library, which will be the standardized design system and source of reusable components for your project. This also applies to your visual elements that don't do anything (like I personally have a whole mini library of diamond and star shapes that I reuse everywhere).

For reference, here's a breakdown I made of my Inventory UI. On the right, I've labeled most of the individual components, and you might be able to see how I'm reusing them over and over again in multiple places.

5. Spend some time listening to designers talk, maybe befriend some designers! Many of them have an unique, interesting view of the world and how we interact with it even beyond just software. Their perspectives will inform yours.

6. Test your UI on users whenever you can. Get feedback from others. This is the best way for you to see what works and what doesn't. As game devs we spend so much time with our games it's easy for us to lose sight of the full picture.

7. Be patient and don't give up. Continue to be open to expanding your knowledge. These UI skills take time to develop. I personally am still learning even after like 10 years of doing it. Coming up with the visual elements is very challenging for me and I spend a lot of time rearranging things in photoshop before I actually start coding anything at all in Unreal.

Whew, that was a lot, but I hope that gives you some thoughts and a place to start!

I don't have any posts out there about Blender/Unreal shader workflows right now, but I'll consider making another post sometime soonish. I appreciate you asking and you're welcome! :)