#i'm excited to focus on less characters in the future

[rebouks]

you have a lot of characters in your story, how long does it take you to create characters, mostly side ones?

Too many, nonny.. too many!! 😅

Hmmm for me at least characters tend to develop over time, I rarely start off with a full picture for them in my head, if any. I usually just have a vague idea, create 'em then just plop 'em right in and see what comes to me lmaooo

Let's take Tristen as an example. I originally made him for a challenge he wasn't accepted for and I ended up needing a few extra's for Oscar's stay in rehab and thought he'd be a good fit. I wanted someone who Oscar would connect with more than anyone else so I gave them a few things in common, like music taste and their style. Then I thought of why he'd be in rehab and settled on an unfulfilling childhood, strict parents, let's go off the rails with a bad crowd type deal.. (not too different from Oscar either, though the nuances are quite different).

Then there's Bruno.. who was originally a reserved, intimidating guy we didn't know much about (neither did I LOL) but each scene he was in just gives me more ideas of who he is, how he acts, why he does the things he does.

Idk how to explain it but I really just go with the flow/don't overthink it. I don't plan shit, just like everything else I do.. it just happens naturally 😂

[thankskenpenders]

Thoughts on Sonic 3!

On December 10th, 2018, I was on the last day of a trip to Milwaukee. The night before, I'd attended the wedding of one of my best friends, Jake, who I've known since high school. Even though half of us were sick the whole trip, it was a great time. Derek had asked the wedding DJ to play "One Week" as the first request of the night, and proceeded to lip sync the entire song on the dance floor. On that cold winter morning in a hotel room hundreds of miles from home, Derek and I groggily checked Twitter on our phones and saw the shocking news: Paramount had teased the design for Sonic from their upcoming live action film. Even in silhouette, the shape of his face and the realistic curvature of his limbs made him look like a grotesque little homunculus. This movie was going to suck.

Six years later, I've now seen the third entry in what's become a hugely successful Sonic film franchise. It features Keanu Reeves as the voice of Shadow the Hedgehog in a fairly faithful adaptation of his story from Sonic Adventure 2. At the time of writing, it currently sits at a whopping 86% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, vying for the title of the best-reviewed theatrically released video game movie of all time. Critics are saying nice things about the emotional journey of Shadow the Hedgehog. Never in a million years did I think I'd see this day.

I, too, have now seen this movie, and... yeah, it's pretty good.

I'm gonna get deep into spoilers here, so I'll just say up front that I liked the movie. It feels like just about the best possible execution of this version of Sonic. But that's also damning it with faint praise, depending on who you ask.

If you're a fan of the games who didn't like the second movie, you probably won't get much out of this one, either, unless you just really love Shadow so much that nothing else in the movie matters to you. It doesn't reinvent the wheel for this film series. It's still got a heaping helping of broad comedy, cheap pop culture references, bad one-liners, and characterization that diverges greatly from the source material. This is not high art, nor is it a direct adaptation of Sonic Adventure 2. If you're the kind of person who hates this portrayal of Sonic and Eggman, or a lore nerd who'll hate that they let Shadow do Chaos Control without an Emerald, then just don't bother with this.

On the other hand, if you did enjoy the last movie, then you'll probably have a fun time here, too. Shadow is very cool. The action is the best it's ever been. There's a bit more focus on characters from the games, and less on human characters invented for the movies—with the exception of Agent Stone, who's in this a lot because everyone likes him. There's a lot of SA2 fanservice. They even play "Live and Learn." It's a fun time! Be sure to stick around through the end credits.

And now, to dig deeper, let's get into the spoilers! I'm gonna jump around a lot and talk about different aspects of the movie, spoiling everything along the way.

Shadow and his reams of lore

Here's the main thing you came for: Shadow is great in this! They really did him justice. Keanu Reeves is extremely solid in the role. He can be a bit flat as an actor sometimes, but I think he did well here. He can be tough and menacing, but he can also be earnest and emotionally vulnerable. Good casting call. Excited at the prospect of seeing more of him in the future.

Really, as a Sonic Lore Nerd I'm most interested in discussing the changes they made to Shadow's backstory. I'm sure there will be many fans upset with the changes, but for the sake of streamlining a complicated backstory that was subject to a bunch of retcons and multiple layers of amnesia and fitting it into a 110-minute movie, I think they generally made smart choices.

For one, Gerald didn't create Shadow using Black Arms DNA, because Gerald didn't create Shadow at all! Instead, Shadow arrived on Earth inside a meteor, and Gerald was merely the prominent GUN scientist who studied him after he was captured. (That meteor does have very strong Black Arms vibes, though, so I wouldn't rule out the possibility of them exploring that stuff in the future.) This simplifies things a lot and allows Shadow to be a direct foil for Sonic, kind of a version of our hero who was treated as a lab rat and lost the only human he considered family instead of finding happiness like Sonic has. Then later Shadow hurts Tom and Sonic wants revenge, and it mirrors Shadow's feelings about Maria, and after they fight they can empathize with each other over this, Shadow sees the error of his ways and helps save the world, yada yada yada. You get it. People predicted 95% of this movie's plot from the trailers, but it's effective.

Likewise, all of the stuff about creating Shadow as the ultimate life form who's immune to all disease to cure Maria's illness is completely cut out. Shadow's still called the ultimate life form, but he's treated as more of an energy source than a genetic research project here, playing off of the stuff about Eggman wanting to harness Sonic's natural Chaos Energy in the movies. The original intent behind the ultimate life form project was always hard to explain in the games and doesn't even come up that much, so I don't blame them for cutting it.

Because Gerald isn't doing genetic experiments and creating artificial life, the Biolizard also doesn't exist. It does, however, appear in an old monster movie Shadow and Maria watch in a montage, with Shadow later commenting that he worries he's a monster like the one he saw in the movie. That's a clever way to include it, I think.

The ARK sort of exists. There was no space colony back in the '70s, all of the events of Shadow's flashbacks just took place at a secret GUN base on Earth. Fair enough for a version of the story ostensibly set in the real world. The big space laser in the third act of the film is obviously supposed to evoke the ARK, but it's referred to as simply the Eclipse Cannon. It's still not a full-blown space colony, just a weapon of mass destruction Gerald designed for GUN in exchange for his release (while also secretly planning to use it to blow up the planet in an act of revenge). I am, however, pleased to report that the Eclipse Cannon still has a giant Eggman face on it.

And as for Maria: I like her in this! She's obviously not going to get a ton of screentime, and she's always going to be a very straightforward character, but she's more playful and lively here. She teases Shadow for being grumpy and plays with him a lot. She feels less like this perfect embodiment of everything good and pure in the world and more like an actual kid. She's still not a complex character, but it works.

And the most important question: do they show a child getting shot and killed by the military? The answer is almost. In the flashback, GUN soldiers chase Maria, Shadow, and Gerald and ready their guns, but the young Commander Walters (who's in his 20s rather than being a kid) grabs them and tries to stop them from firing on a child. In the chaos, a soldier fires, missing Maria but hitting a generator that then blows up and kills Maria. So, y'know, close enough I suppose.

So, yes, many of the details change here, but they captured the gist of Shadow's story from SA2. The emotional core is there. I will say, though, I almost feel like Shadow isn't in this movie as much as I thought he'd be? I think he's used effectively in all of his scenes, and they make room for his backstory, and BOY does he get to kick ass in his fights, but for much of the middle part of the movie he's overshadowed by Ivo and Gerald. Though this might be a compromise to leave more screentime for...

Tails and Knuckles

I'm relieved to report that Tails and Knuckles both get a good amount of cool stuff to do in this! They don't feel like an afterthought.

I was worried that Tails in particular would completely fall by the wayside, since even his debut movie didn't entirely know what to do with him. But he's good here. He pretty much just feels like the Tails from the games at this point, especially since they dropped that fawning admiration he had for Sonic with that running gag of him going "Only Sonic the Hedgehog could do that!" He often chimes in as the one who wants Team Sonic to stick together when Sonic and Knuckles bicker. He particularly gets to shine in the Mission Impossible-inspired heist sequence at the GUN headquarters in London that serves as the climax of the second act, which feels like it was tailor made to let him shine as the tech guy of the team. He also gets several opportunities to swoop in and catch someone for a save in an action scene. He's good in this!

Knuckles is... fine. He's definitely fallen into the role of the comic relief dumb bruiser since joining the good guys, but he's at least a little better than he was in his own streaming show. The jokes lean more into him just being really brash about his strength and skill, rather than him being this archaic warrior who doesn't understand anything about the modern world. He also gets a few more serious bits in the back third of the movie where he gets to shine a little more, so overall it evens out to him being fine. They could've done way worse.

As for the relevance of the Knuckles show: Knuckles is now said to be the guardian of the Master Emerald, like in the games, though with no Angel Island this amounts to him hiding it somewhere for safekeeping. It's eventually revealed that he just gave it to Wade, who gets exactly one scene (sorry, Wade-heads) for a joke about him using the Master Emerald as a hockey puck. So, the miniseries explained why Knuckles has a connection with Wade. That's it! Also I think Knuckles might use the Flames of Disaster a bit in fights, but they never called the technique out by name, so I never really thought about it. So, yeah, the six-episode streaming miniseries about Wade bowling has zero meaningful relevance to the Shadow movie. Who could have seen this coming?

Miscellaneous humans

For that matter, the human supporting cast is MASSIVELY downplayed in this one. Tom and Maddie are there for two key sequences (the beginning of the movie and the GUN HQ heist), but otherwise they disappear for long stretches of the movie. They don't go to Japan in act I, nor do they go to space in act III, and there's no subplot for them during those periods, either. There's nothing like the wedding subplot in Sonic 2 where they'd constantly cut back to Hawaii for comic relief with the humans and only reveal why this was relevant to the plot near the end. (There's also no random dance battle in Siberia.) If a human character is here, it's because they have something to contribute to the plot right away. Most people will probably consider this an improvement, and I'd certainly say it makes for a much tighter script, though I have to remind everyone that I thought the wedding being a GUN sting operation was such a funny twist that I'm a defender of the Hawaii subplot.

On the subject of Tom, something funny I've noticed is that they've just completely downplayed the fact that Tom and Wade are cops. Tom being a cop never comes up once. Wade being a cop only gets referenced via the fact that he's practicing hockey on the roof of the police station in his one scene, but he's not in uniform or anything. They clearly got the memo that we don't want Sonic to hang out with cops.

Here's something else funny: Rachel and Randall got character posters, but they're actually not in the movie! Not technically, anyway. During the heist sequence at GUN HQ, Tom and Maddie use some gadgets Tails invented to holographically disguise themselves as those other characters. But the real Rachel and Randall never show up in the flesh. It's a very odd way to shoehorn the actors into the movie. (Jojo is also absent. They did not give her Amy's role of being the girl who reminds Shadow of Maria. Instead they just let Sonic have the big heart to heart with Shadow that makes him switch sides.)

You know who IS in this movie? Krysten Ritter. Not as the voice of Rouge, as the fandom once hoped, but as a director for GUN. She gets like three scenes and she feels completely checked out the whole time. Can't say I blame her! She's not really a character, just a plot necessity. Commander Walters dies in Japan but gives Sonic one of two keycards needed to activate the Eclipse Cannon, and then Ritter's character assumes Sonic stole it and labels him a bad guy. So that's why they have to break into GUN HQ in the second act instead of just talking things out with them. Still, I am at least relieved that Sonic doesn't work with GUN for most of the movie.

I gotta be honest: when Walters pulled a credit card-shaped object out of his pocket, I thought he was about to give Sonic another Olive Garden gift card as his final act before dying. Part of me wishes that happened.

The supporting human character in this who really gets to shine is Agent Stone, which I'm sure most fans will agree was the correct choice. There's a LOT of Agent Stone in this. He's good. I don't have much to say about him, but he's fun as usual.

But, of course, the ones who steal the show are Jim Carrey, and his costar Jim Carrey.

The Robotniks

I've gone back and forth on whether or not I can actually see movie Robotnik as Robotnik. I think with this third and final entry in the Jim Carrey Robotnik Trilogy, I've landed on... yeah, that's just Jim Carrey playing a Jim Carrey character. He's absolutely having fun with the role, and I enjoyed watching him, but I think a lot of that comes down to the fact that I'm a millennial who grew up watching Jim Carrey movies. If you didn't like him before, this movie will probably be nails on a chalkboard to you, because now there are two of him.

Ivo's arc here leans very heavily into the fact that he grew up as an orphan and never knew his family, a thing offhandedly mentioned in the first movie that's never been a thing for any other version of the character. Here, he learns that he has a living grandfather who's also a mad scientist, and it feels like a hole in his heart has been filled. It certainly makes sense for a place to take this version of the character, and it fits with the movie's themes of finding and losing family, but the cartoonish, childlike affection Ivo feels towards Gerald and all the scenes of them frolicking and dancing together have basically nothing to do with the characters from the games. He's a fun villain for this movie, but he's overwhelmingly used as comic relief this time rather than as a serious threat. He doesn't particularly feel like Sega's Dr. Ivo Robotnik, the arch nemesis of Sonic the Hedgehog who'd take over the world with an army of robots and a fleet of airships in the span of a day if Sonic wasn't around to stop him. He's a guy who lives in a big crab robot and has some drones. He has more in common with Carrey's depictions of the Grinch or the Riddler or Count Olaf than Dr. Eggman. Though he does, at least, finally get his outfit from the games by the end of the movie. So that's something. And also he's in a fat suit now. They only make jokes at the expense of his weight a little. Hooray...?

Gerald, meanwhile, is... largely the same character as movie Eggman, but older, so they can make jokes about him having saggy flesh and smelling funny and needing dentures. (Also, his voice kind of sounds like Homer Simpson sometimes?) To his credit, Carrey absolutely nails the handful of more serious scenes Gerald gets, whether it's Maria's death or his sinister turn when he reveals that he actually wants to destroy the Earth. But then it's right back to goofs about there being two of the same guy. Even the final battle features a lot of slapstick shenanigans with the two Robotniks fighting each other. I was able to enjoy the absurdity of it all, but if the humor doesn't land for you the dual Jim Carrey schtick is a hell of a lot of the movie. I wouldn't be surprised if there was more Gerald than Shadow in the movie, when you go and tally up their screentime. I was able to enjoy the sheer absurdity of it, but your mileage will vary.

I will, however, say that the split screen stuff they do with the two Carreys is EXTREMELY impressive, from a filmmaking perspective. They were absolutely flexing with their ability to pull the effect off. They don't rely on cheap tricks like cutting a lot, or having shot/reverse shot scenes where you're looking at the back of a body double's head. Instead they have a lot of long takes where the two Robotniks are talking to each other, you can see both of their faces, and they'll even hug and touch each other a lot, and the whole time the conversation maintains a natural pace like it really is two actors playing off of each other. It's really well done. It's an incredibly silly idea, but boy did they commit to it.

Sonic

I've hardly said anything about Sonic himself in all of this. It's his movie, isn't it! Well... I don't know, he's fine.

I feel like movie Sonic is a known quantity at this point, and either you like this take on the character or you don't. There was some speculation early on that this was supposed to be a younger Sonic who would grow into being the character we know from the games and comics, the one who's still got lots of quips but is also kind of aloof and cool, a free spirit who goes where the wind takes him, a figure the other characters look up to. And... no, that didn't happen. Once again he gets more serious as the stakes are raised, and he's totally badass when he goes Super, but the rest of the time he's still a little goober with tons of generic one-liners who learns schmaltzy lessons about the importance of family. He's still constantly going to undercut the tension of most scenes by cracking a pop culture reference that will make the average American parent go "haha I've heard of that." I don't think they're ever gonna change that. I think this just what the writers think Sonic is like.

And, again, for what it is, it's fine. He's a little annoying. You already know how you feel about movie Sonic. This third entry won't change that. But they do, at least, have him say "Talk about low budget flights, no food or movies... I'm outta here!" before jumping out of a helicopter. As my thoughts on the climax will show, I am not immune to fanservice.

The climax

God, the climax is SOOOOO fucking good. It's fantastic. Easily the best action these movies have ever done.

Rather than saving Super Shadow for the team-up with Sonic at the end, they have both of them go Super to fight each other first, and they just go full DBZ with it, fighting across the entire planet. It absolutely rules. I think this is the new coolest fight the two of them have had in anything ever. And then they have to stop the Eclipse Cannon together, and sure, there's no Biolizard. But Gerald DOES release a swarm of GUN Hunter robots, and the ensuing space battle turns into some Gundam shit. It's good! It's so good!!! The movie's flaws kind of melt away for me here when I'm watching Super Shadow take out an army of robots with Chaos Spears on the big screen. What a timeline we're living in.

And yes, they play "Live and Learn." They had to. They knew the assignment. They actually play a slight remix, but it's still got the original vocals, so it's perfectly recognizable. Actually, the tune of the song is used as a leitmotif for Shadow throughout the movie, first introduced via an acoustic guitar version played by Maria, and I really love that. I've been begging these movies to use more music from the games the whole time, and I'm glad they finally did so here. (They also use the traditional level clear jingle early in the film, and Eggman's theme from SA2 is very briefly used as a ringtone.)

... Anyway, uh, meanwhile Eggman, Tails, and Knuckles straight up just kill Gerald to save the world? They unceremoniously knock him into an energy field at the end of their slapstick fight aboard the Eclipse Cannon and he disintegrates like he hit a bugzapper. It's over in an instant. It's not graphic or anything, but it's, like... I didn't expect them to show it, or for it to be such a casual murder! Eggman has one quip about it and then immediately moves on.

Shortly after this, Eggman and Shadow sacrifice themselves to stop the Eclipse Cannon. Shadow's sacrifice doesn't stick, obviously (he's revealed to be alive by the end of the second stinger—pretend to be shocked), but Eggman's probably dead dead. I seriously doubt Jim Carrey's gonna come out of retirement for these movies again. His final moments before the big explosion are also SO dragged out and belabored. He has a dramatic final line like ten times in a row. It really just feels like the series saying goodbye to Carrey. And, again, it feels like a fitting enough end for this Eggman's arc, but it's an odd adaptation of the character from the games.

And so, that's what we're left with. This is far from Sonic Adventure 2: The Movie. It's not that, though there are many, many references made to that game in particular. It's a sequel to the film Sonic the Hedgehog 2 that has a similar tone and style, but Shadow and Gerald are in it, and Shadow gets some really cool fights, and there's a liiiiiittle more focus on stuff from the games than last time, and the script's a little tighter. If that sounds fun to you, you will have fun with this. I know I did. If it doesn't, you're probably better off waiting for them to inevitably do an animated reboot whenever this live action series runs out of steam.

It hasn't quite run out of steam yet, though...

The post-credits scenes, and the future

One of the big questions going into this was: what's next? How do they top a Shadow movie with heavy Sonic Adventure 2 overtones, in terms of hype for the fans? How do you fill Eggman's shoes after Carrey retires, for real this time? There are still more fan favorite rival characters to get through, but how many movies in a row can they introduce a furry foe for Sonic who inevitably turns good and helps him stop a larger threat by the end? And when the hell are we gonna see the girls?

Well, we now have our answer, and it's one I'm cautiously excited for: a whole army of Metal Sonics, and Amy!

Yes, Amy! Finally!! It's an absolute crime that we've gone three whole movies and a streaming miniseries without including the female lead of the series. I've complained about this ad nauseum (and also the fact that they cut Rouge from the story). But at least now they're finally doing something about it.

But now the question is, how will they characterize Amy? Sega's struggled with her for years, and there's a million different directions you can take her. Her one scene here has her smashing a bunch of Metal Sonics and wearing a cloak for the sake of a dramatic reveal, which gives her the vibes of a mysterious, badass action girl. This is, of course, completely different from how Sonic and Amy met in the games. What will her personality be like? She doesn't speak here, so who will they get to play her? Where did she come from? Will she even have a crush on Sonic? All of these have yet to be determined. So, like, I'm hyped to finally see Amy, a character who should've been in the movies from the start, but they could so easily end up playing it safe with an incredibly boring girlboss version of Amy who's no fun at all. We'll have to wait and see.

(My prediction: they're going to try to cast either Zendaya or Ariana as Amy.)

Metal Sonic, likewise, is very exciting, and he looks perfect. He looks just like the design from the games. But the question is: what will they do with this army of Metals? Will they be lead by one main Metal Sonic, perhaps Neo Metal Sonic, who gets to be a proper bad guy? Will they take some cues from Sonic CD, Heroes, and the OVA, or do something completely original? Where did they come from? Were they activated as a failsafe after Eggman died? Did they and Amy come from some sort of bad future, riffing on Sonic CD's time travel? Will they explore the fact that Metal wants to be the one and only Sonic? Or will they just be an army of disposable robot grunts for Sonic and friends to mow down like it's a Dynasty Warriors game, while some other villain takes center stage?

It could go so many different ways, and some prospects are more exciting than others. I mean, the Knuckles show had endless possibilities for what it could do with him, and none of the options on my bingo card were "Pachacamac's ghost tells him to help Wade win a bowling tournament." And while I'm a sicko who thinks it's funny that the Knuckles show is what it is, forgive me for keeping my hype about Amy and Metal Sonic in check here until we learn more.

Regardless of what they do, it'll still be hard to top the hype of Shadow, and it'll be hard to fill Jim Carrey's shoes for general audiences. So despite this clear statement of intent, I have no idea what the future of this film franchise holds. But regardless of what they do, I can say one thing for certain: the kids in my theater were hyped as hell for it. They popped off over Metal Sonic, and they were screaming their heads off with excitement over Amy. I heard a teenage girl on the opposite end of my row of seats say "finally!" over Amy's reveal, verbalizing my exact thoughts. She also said that this movie was "peak," though it diverged from the games, and she hoped they'd do a movie with Silver and Blaze someday.

The kids are gonna be okay.

[dovesndecay]

It's June! It's Pride! It's (my) Birthday!

The Introduction Spiel:

Hi, I'm Reyah! (any pronouns! no really, go for it!) On June 21st, I'm turning 32, an exciting and mysterious age to be!! (So I've heard)

Warning: This is a post asking for financial help, and if there's one thing I would ask is that if you read the whole thing: please reblog.

I'm a multiply-disabled queer person of color, a writer, artist, and photographer. I live with three of my best-good-pal-friends, (@renthony, @kryptidkhaos, and @natalieironside) and our collective army of pets.

We all know it's damned hard to be all these things at the same time under the capitalistic hellscape we're living under, and we/I am always in need of a lot of help with the existing.

I ended the month of May with some smaller bills left still to pay, but am thankful to say that June already had fewer bills than usual due, and the amount I need to start the summer off right is actually less than I was afraid it would be! Woohoo!

What I Make

I mentioned my artistic endeavors, let me show you them!!

Writing

I write less often than I'd like, but I share poetry and shorts, when I have them, on my Patreon!

You must be over 18 to pledge, as I have, can, and will again share Adult Content occasionally. Patrons pledging at least $1/month get access to all content. But most posts becomes free to access eventually. :)

When I do longer form content, I primarily write fantasy with a focus on queer brown characters with disabilities, mental illnesses, and disordered attachments. Because therapy is expensive, and writing is free.

Photography

I do wildlife and landscape photography, primarily, but you can also check out my portrait and event work on my website! You can purchase PRINTS HERE.

And because it's my birthday, I'm offering a 32% discount code for all my prints! The code is good from June 1st to July 1st!

A Note, if you purchase a print: first off: thank you. (please feel free to send a photo of wherever you display it!!!) secondly: this will not go towards the received totals on my financial need because Pixels doesn't pay out until nearly 2 months after the purchase. Funds made from sales will go towards future needs.

CODE: PDHHTR

Artwork

I've been exploring art, both analog and digital, a lot more lately, and have shared both process photos and final drafts on Patreon! Here are just a few examples:

I admittedly don't post on patreon as much as I wish I had the energy to, but I try to make at least one thing a month, provided I have the spoons and time.

Creativity is, like, a level 5 spell slot when you're disabled and impoverished, and I appear to have exactly One (1) of those available at any given time.

The Needs:

The Bills: $1,100

Yeah, we had to get here eventually. Since this post is already pretty long, I'm putting the rest under a cut.

More than half of this, as always, is just for the car payment and insurance that keeps the regular day-job-haver getting to said job, and all our medical appointments, errands, etc.

I still owe around $13,000 total on Johnny Car, but I think we all know that's just not a real number.

The rest of the funds would go toward paying the small subscriptions, for my various medications, and the regular attempts to whittle away slowly at the $4,300 worth of other debt.

($2,200 of back taxes, and $2,100 of credit card debt, and gods, do I mean slowly. Interest piles up so much faster than I can seem to whittle.)

If you're able and willing to help with paying the bills, direct donations can be made here:

PayPal | (link)

Venmo | (dovesndecay)

Cashapp | ($dovesndecay)

If you can, and only if you can.

The It Would Be Cools:

Since every dime that comes in goes primarily towards food and bills, there's little left afterward to be put towards other life necessities like clothes, toiletries, let alone things I just think would be nice/neat/nifty to have.

I have a High Priority wishlist. It's mostly art supplies, bulk toiletries, etc.

I'm woefully low on clothes, being short, fat, and trans, so very little of what I own actually feels good to wear so much as it simply covers my body. I have a wishlist of clothes that would be nice to have.

For everything that firmly lands under the "I just want it" category, I have an Enrichment list. It's mostly stuffies, but also games, room decor, hobby supplies, books, and stim toys.

Our household keeps a big wishlist for things we need, want, groceries, accessibility products, and everything in-between.

Okay, now what?

Well, now, I'm gonna ask that if you got to this point, and if you can't/don't want to do any of the things listed above, then please reblog this post.

The more people that reblog it, the more likely I'm able to pay my bills for one more month this year.

But if you don't, it's not like anyone's gonna know. I'm not omniscient, I swear.

Anyway, I don't expect anyone to do anything if you can't or even if you just don't wanna, but if you can and you're willing to, it means the world.

I didn't think this is where I'd be at 32. But I never really expected to get here at all in the end, and it's a lot nicer than I thought it would be. Mostly because I am surrounded by amazing people who have the capacity to be so much kinder than I will ever have the words to describe.

Thank you, and to all, a happy pride!

🧡💛💚💙💜🤎🖤

[asteroidfieldgame]

Some thoughts about setting up for Stormlight 6: loose threads from Wind and Truth (massive spoilers):

Battar was presumably pulled into Taravangian's recreation of Kabranth. Now, she's with the rest of the Heralds, and knows about, and possibly where to find it.

Retribution identified Hoid as the last threat to him on the planet, and destroyed him. But Hoid probably isn't the most invested being not in his control. Nightblood is either not a threat in his view, out of his ability to destroy or detect, or is close enough to a Spren to be protected. The other highly invested beings are all protected (bondsmith spren, Navani, presumably the Heralds, possibly the unmade).

Taravangian's emotional side seems to be taking over much more. Last time he encountered Hoid, he cleverly messed with him and erased some memories. This time, he simply destroys his body immediately, allowing him to heal elsewhere, with his investiture fully intact. But now that he has no more restrictions, he could have messed with him much more, or even potentially unmake Hoid.

Are the Voidspren protected or does Retribution plan to keep using them? He didn't seem to reclaim them. He seemed to think he would need to deal with Ba Ado Mishram, which either means she's protected or he's afraid to directly confront her while Odium likes her more than him.

Speaking of Shards leaving, is that a major concern for other Shards? Is Harmony at risk of losing Preservation if it finds someone who really really hates change? Or is that more of an Odium thing? Maybe a bad example; Preservation would hate changing vessels. Unlike many of the original vessels, the power actively chose Taravangian, so if anything it should be less likely to leave him. Or this is evidence for my earlier theory that Cultivation intentionally made it so Odium would be drawn to him on his stupidest day, but will become misaligned with his intent as he continues and goes back to his normal schemy ways.

Cultivation is really stupid. Despite being repeatedly claimed to be the best at seeing the future, Taravangian, Dalinar, and even Moelach and Renarin ran circles around her.

Who claimed Dalinar's soul, or maybe his cognitive aspect? The only ones who it seems could do something like that are the Oathpact (who doesn't seem to be doing that), another Shard, or maybe the Nightwatcher. The ones I could see claiming his cognitive aspect could be Cultivation, Valor, or the Nightwatcher - he presumably died with valor and she was name-dropped a bunch for someone who wasn't in the story, or Cultivation or the Nightwatcher could still lay claim to him. Or maybe the power of Honor wants to let him die, but if so I'd think it would oppose animating the Blackthorn Spren. Even without intervention, a sliver like him could potentially survive for a while as a cognitive shadow, perhaps indefinitely. I realize he stretched towards the beyond, but it's unclear exactly what survives in a Cognitive Shadow.

Jasnah is set up for a very interesting arc in the back half. Before, I questioned how a novel would focus on her, since she seemed to be much more self actualized than the other main characters and soon-to-be main characters, and having already reached the 4th ideal her character development seemed to be 80% done off page. Now, after her huge and basically single-handed failure in Thaylenah, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory as her past mistakes were thrown at her, I'm excited to see where she goes next. I hope she figures out how to Elsecall properly soon. Szeth was able to do it by focusing on his quest even though he was previously unable to.

Shallan has 2 main options: go worldhopping or be saved by Jasnah or Navani. Navani seems a bit stuck, but maybe Jasnah will figure it out. However, I don't see Shallan waiting around for years, and I doubt Jasnah will have such a potentially major piece of character development off page, given how much has already been off page. Unless, flashback chapters extend into the timeskip, in which case I could see this happening.

[stackslip]

CAN YOU ELABORATE ON TLT BEING A HOMESTUCK FANFIC‽‽‽‽‽

i'm exaggerating a bit, but taz muir was a well known homestuck writer who wrote under the username urbanAnchorite. her fic the serendipity gospels is one of my fave fics ever, but was never finished and it's only by book 2 of tlt that i figured that the clear allusions to it in book 1 weren't just cute little nods but that she'd expanded on some of the ideas/concepts and worldbuilding of the serendipity gospels. to name a few:

the ninth house cult is heavily based on the juggalo church muir wrote/expanded upon in TSG, from face paint to the rituals and a lot of the accompanying prose

act 2 of TSG takes place mainly in a spaceship that serves as "cathedral" of the juggalo cult, and is described to be covered in bones that have been painted in many colors--which is close to the description of the mithraeum

act 2 also features the two main characters being much younger people mentored/manipulated into horrible acts by an old man who is thousands of years old and bickering with his other thousand year old friends/enemies, who seem to share knowledge and understanding that neither the two protagonists do but also deeply resent one another. hard to not read a parallel to john and the lyctors here!

to elaborate on this bc i just realized it: it is heavily implied in TSG that the dancestors (older people thousands of years old) went through a universe reset and built the empire in the image of their own trauma and anger, which would v much parallel what happens to john on earth and how he "reset" humanity

less of a homestuck thing and more of a taz muir thing: said old man is v much grooming the main female character and making her life miserable during the entirety of act 2

a lot of the story takes place in the background of the trolls' empire being a horrific imperialist force that the main characters were originally very excited to join and become a part of, with one of these characters in particular daydreaming about becoming ground troop for invasion while also holding a terrible secret that would have precluded him of doing so anyway. p neat parallel to gideon's own thing here

act 1 and act 2 of TSG are from two different pov characters, with a drastic shift in prose style and understanding of the situation/world when the pov shifts. which v much echoes how tlt has worked so far. part 3 was barely started before it went on hiatus, but it followed the same pattern.

speaking of, the prose of act 2 of TSG definitely feels very close to harrow the ninth's prose. you can just open the fic and check the first chapter of act 2 and how it's written, and you'll see what i mean. there are differences--the prose of TSG act 2 is more inflected with southern usamerican evangelical speak, i think? i'm not american so i can't quite 200% tell

there is an external armed resistance to the empire's violent imperialism and resistance that was supposed to be the focus in act 3 of TSG, which never happened. nona the ninth did, though, and it follows that structure.

there are also eldritch horrors that threaten the entire universe--homestuck's own horrorterrors--that are in the background of TSG and implied to be an important part of the future plot that we never saw. tlt has the ressurrection beasts

taz muir's worldbuilding around the blood castes in og homestuck that she elaborates on in TSG also somewhat parallels the way the houses function in tlt

iirc there's also worldbuilding around space travel in tlt (such as the obelisks? i think that's the name? and the use of necromancy to power them) that parallels taz muir's own take on how space travel works in the troll empire, using psionics and draining them dry in a similar way

i think the necro-cav relationship 'ideal' is based around how taz also interpreted moirallegiance in not just TSG but all her homestuck fics, down to how its legal implementation and the idealization of it vs its role in troll/houses imperialism and the reality of blurred lines in "expected" relationships. i'd love to hear taz's discourse on troll romance

i also think the necro-cav relationship parallels the other legal pairing explored in TSG--legislacerator and subjugglator.

there are probably more parallels i am missing--i need to reread TSG soon, as i haven't in a while. there are elements i'd say are more like, how taz herself elaborated on the bones of the worldbuilding of homestuck and then made it her own thing, which is rad as hell. other elements are more fun nods, such as gideon's aviator glasses being shamelessly stolen from dave homestuck, and a lot of gtn's prose feeling very homestuckey. it's def not like, just a little rewrite and boom, you get the locked tomb! imo it's more elements of plot and worldbuilding that were interesting enough to develop into something of its own and that taz made into something new, along with other elements of other stories (such as lolita and umineko) being woven into it. part of why i enjoy tlt so much is its "collage" aspect, taking elements taz thought interesting in other stories, or using these elements to purposefully evoke specific feelings/moods to construct or obsfucate certain ideas.

[eliotlime]

End of September Update

Just as a heads up, I'll be closing my commissions after the first week of October (06/10/2024) just so I can focus on other projects! If you'd like to order a bug from me or get any of my other regular commissions now's a good time to do so!

(Bugstyle | Regular Comms)

I made a really brief post on twitter about what I'm up to but since tumblr supports more text I'll just go into more depth on what projects I'm working on at the moment and general life updates!

I used to write blog posts on wordpress for school and it's just hilarious that I stopped doing that considering it feels like I was born to blog!

In general, I've been trying to crawl out of this very odd mood swing-y state I've been in for the past year. I've been semi-public about it but I graduated with a degree in animation same time last year and have sort of been recovering from the absolute burn out of that as well as watching the animation industry essentially collapse just as I left college.

I'm hoping to get into UI/UX design this coming October and try to piece what little control I have of my life back together. I don't really know what I'm doing to be honest and it feels like I'm just pawing in the dark with a lot of this stuff.

In lighter news I've been trying to get into something I've always wanted to for years which is comics! I'm not sure how much I can speak about it at the moment but I just got into an anthology which is very exciting.

I applied to shortbox last year but didn't get in :( but fingers crossed I'll get in next year! On a related note I've made a Cara profile which I'm using as a comics portfolio and archive.

--

Those of you who've been following me for years know that I've had a webcomic project called, Happenstance (which I've restarted endlessly for about 10 years at this point). While I don't really have a concrete update of that for you guys I will say that the story is more or less fixed and whatever version of it I have now is most likely the version I'll proceed with in the future.

I did try to get the ball rolling with this at the start of the year with a pilot comic but it made me so miserable to work on it I abandoned it and started making an unrelated zine instead haha

I do have plans on finishing this eventually and it'll be up on my itch.io and gumroad like everything else!

Speaking of the zine, I'd just like to thank everyone who purchased Cute Thing! I think for my first independent book project it did pretty well! It was incredibly embarrassing and nerve wrecking to promote it but I'm glad I did it.

I don't know why there's an 18+ warning on this considering this zine is pretty tame.

I guess it also helped that that stupid ass diary comic i made blew up at the same time so I got to shill my wares in relation to it. Even though I think it gave me some kind of psychological damage but every time i gain minor internet fame i shrink back into my shell anyway, this is just the first time i really felt so much.. vitriol from randos lol.

It's just hilarious it overlapped with whatever guilty gear obsession I had at the time as well. Thank you to everyone who stuck around and uh.. sorry! I walk wherever the wind takes me and it's frequently towards my own characters.

But! Speaking of Guilty Gear, I am working on an Abacelsus zine I briefly talked about on twitter a couple months back. The title is sort of pending at the moment and while I did say it might be free as a digital download, I'm probably going to charge a couple of dollars because of how much effort I'm putting into this.

On the plus side that means I'll probably be putting more effort into it! I'm aiming for 24 interior pages of stuff and hoping to release a digital version of it by Halloween 2024!

I'm trying to work on more prints and stickers for conventions as well and I never posted about my convention escapades here all too much but you can check out this instagram post for what I had up the last time I boothed!

That's kind of all for the stuff I'd like to get done within this year but other projects that I'd like to aim to get done by 2025 is a continuation of my Cute Thing zine that I'm aiming to collate by Valentines Day, hehe how romantic.

There's nothing terribly concrete for that at the moment but I do know I want it to have more pages than Cute Thing. It's called My Boy and yes it's named after another Car Seat Headrest song.

I've got a lot of irons in the fire and another iron is that I'm also planning a 4-panel comic series for my band characters that I've posted some pilots about before!

Pretty messy planning but most of my long form stuff looks like this.

A 4-panel comic series is just less intimidating than a fully coloured webcomic series (Happenstance) that I know will be finished decades later. I've also seen a lot of webcomic artists I've beloved just.. abandon their years long project and it's kind of scary to me that will definitely happen to me!!!

--

The long and short of it is that I've got a lot of projects and a majority of it is not making me any money. I'm extremely lucky to be surrounded by people that support my work but it gets hard to just do all of this by yourself with no guarantee that it'll go anywhere.

Patreon's a beast I've tried to tackle but it's kind of an ass of a website to use so I'll probably try to use ko-fi a bit more. I've kind of never really liked the subscription model and really do prefer to launch curated PDFs of my work every few months, but again I'm really just clawing at the dark and grasping at anything I can.

Let's wrap up this long post by mentioning that I might want to give streaming a shot! I used to stream a little when I was a teenager but I'd like to give it another go!

I don't think I'm going to have a dedicated persona or vtuber avatar but a small little png-tuber would be frankly hilarious. Maybe something casual to start of with, it gets pretty lonely spending everyday working on images alone.

--

Thank you for reading! It's an extremely long post to all but say that I'm scared but working on projects still! If you'd like to support me, here's my ko-fi page and while I'm working on getting more stuff on there here's my itchi.io & gumroad as well.

As I mentioned before I'm closing my commissions on the 6th of October to work on my Abacelsus zine so if you'd like to get a bug or any of my regular style commissions now's a good time to do so!

(Bugstyle | Regular Comms)

I'm hoping to make more update posts like these in the future and not psyche myself out every time because they're really good for me to collect my incredibly jumbled thoughts. Thanks again to everyone who's followed, supported or even just looked at my stuff it really means the world.

If you have any questions or just generally want to talk to me about my characters, my DMs and askbox is always open! Any professional enquires can be shot towards me email as well: eliotlime@gmail.com

XOXO, Stay weird!

-Eliot :)

[herefortheships]

My thoughts on Venom 3.

It's been a long time coming! I'm pausing my Beetlejuicy blogging tonight to talk a little bit about Venom. If you didn't know, back when Venom 2 was released, and a little bit before then, I was absolutely obsessed with Venom. More specifically, I was totally obsessed with Symbrock. (Although my love for the character of Venom has been with me since I was around 13 or 14 years old, back in the early 2000s.) So for a while, I think between 2021 and 2022, this blog was almost entirely dedicated to Symbrock (and Destiel, that one is always here). That's the reason why my blog title was originally "My Fandom and Random Blog": I hyper-fixate on whatever piece of media blows my mind. And for a good chunk of time, that was Symbrock, so I'm writing this little intro to this post because my blog is currently, predominantly, a Beetlejuice (Beetlebabes) blog. And it will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

But tonight, we go back to my previous hyper-fixation.

I have a lot of feelings about Venom 3. This post will focus on the Eddie x Venom relationship, as that's what I am most invested in. Warning: There are spoilers here.

My fresh-out-of-the-movie feeling is that I loved it, but a few things made me go "hmm..." Starting with the marketing for this movie.

I would not have expected much in the Veddie shipping department if it wasn't for the marketing. It's a superhero action movie and I know what kind of world we currently live in (plus this world isn't reading for a monsterfucker leading character like our beloved monsterfucker king Eddie Brock lol). But I noticed that a good effort was put into highlighting their relationship, not just as a friendship, but as a romance, in the marketing for this movie. There were TikTok edits and Instagram posts showing them as a romance, and the phrase "We ship Eddie and Venom" was also used (here's the Instagram post, if you don't believe me lol). What I'm getting at is that the ship was used to hype the movie. So, what was I supposed to expect? Look, there was a lot of lovely subtext between Eddie and Venom, which I loved, but it wasn't any more obvious than what we got in LTBC (in fact, maybe it was even less evident? I'll get to that in a second). So it doesn't really justify all this effort to hype up their relationship.

So, when they amped up the shipping as they marketed a movie with the slogan "'Til death do they part" (which I should mention had scenes in Vegas, notorious place for odd weddings, hello), a lot of fans (myself included) thought that something was going to happen in Vegas, if you know what I mean. Or that at least the subtext would be even more obvious. Some fans even expected another Veddie kiss scene (my expectations were more reserved, but after all that marketing I would not have been surprised to see a kiss, tbh).

I never expected to get anything overt in Venom with Symbrock, but this being the final film in the trilogy, the previous movie ending with the two of them on the run, the release of that deleted scene in which Venom is teasing Eddie about Eddie being in love with him, plus all this gay marketing? I started to expect we'd get something a little more evident, and only that is what made me feel disappointed we didn't get more. I'm sure I'd be more excited and happy with all the subtext we got in this one if it wasn't for the expectations created by the marketing, ngl.

I did cry in the scene where they were with the hippie family and Venom was talking to Eddie at night about how they'd been happier with a different kind of life. But I think I only cried because I had been spoiled about the ending. Knowing they would be separated in the end, that Venom would die, made that scene a lot more emotional and tragic, because Eddie and Venom will not have a chance at that happy and peaceful life.

And now that I brought up Venom's death, I have to say this: I really wish we could have had a couple more minutes with Eddie on that bed reflecting about his loss at the end. In the comics, whenever they are separated, usually Eddie is losing his mind, either desperate to reconnect with the symbiote, almost like an addict who's been cut off cold from his addiction (like in my favorite "The Hunger", 1996), or out of his mind in grief, feeling the symbiote still there like a phantom limb (...pretty sure this was in Donny Cates' 2018 run, but correct me if I'm wrong). What I'm getting at is that separating from the symbiote has never been easy on Eddie Brock. But, due to the constraints of movie play time I guess, he got over it seemingly very easily. Also, just an observation, the trailer featured a different take for that scene, in which Eddie says "but I need him", instead of "but I need him back". Both takes were very emotional and Tom's acting was superb, but the scene is too short. I feel like we needed a couple more minutes of mourning. Or if not minutes, then a couple of seconds of Eddie sobbing on that bed, or, I don't know, trying to get up and finding his way back to where he last saw Venom... Something more dramatic like that, is what I mean.

Eddie appeared to be more fond of Venom by the end of LTBC. Especially with comments he made earlier in this film about Venom stealing his life and being (understandably) cranky, I would have expected more grief and even regret from Eddie after losing Venom presumably forever.

About the after credit scene... I'm not sure what I'm supposed to make of it. I mean the cockroach one. One could think one of the symbiotes survived and took over the roach (hopefully Venom), but there was no indication of it; one could only assume the cockroach has a symbiote because, why even show it? Right? Now, about the Knull ending scene, was he breaking the 4th wall and telling us, the audience, that he would make us watch? Or did he say that to someone else? If there was another Venom movie or appearance after this, then I could come to the conclusion that Venom was successfully captured and taken to Klyntar, but being separated from Eddie he cannot operate as the codex anymore. <- That last bit is my own interpretation, though, and should be taken with a grain of salt.

I'm going to leave this post here. I'll write more if I feel like I have more to say (which, maybe I do, because I always do lol), but this is it for now. It was a good movie and I did like it. I do have my criticisms, but overall, they did a pretty good job and I will miss this Eddie and Venom symbiote very much. I hope we can see them again.

One note I want to leave this post with is that I'm pretty sure both Eddie Brock and the symbiote have died more than once in the comics (the most recent Eddie death was this year, btw. I'm not buying that it's permanent because in the comicverse characters die and come back all the time), but one thing will always be consistent with these two, and that is, they will always find a way back to each other. Always 🖤. So don't be sad; Venom is only gone for now.

[tokiro07]

Ichi the Witch ch.10 thoughts

[(N)Ice Boat]

(Topics: thematic analysis - Death for Death/talent, character analysis - Hisame, speculation - Kumugi/Magik/Minakata)

Dammit, I was wrong again, Ichi really did just make sashimi instead of turning Hisame into an outfit...I think @wickedsick predicted that, so good job, Wick

It was certainly well telegraphed, he was literally fileting her, and Desscaras/Kumugi were wearing the iconic sushi chef headband, I just was hoping for something a little more on-theme I guess

I'm not at all disappointed in this outcome, mind you, I'm just bitter about how I keep whiffing on what seem like easy pitches. I'll probably feel a lot better about it on reread, but right now I'm just a bit embarrassed

Enough lamenting though, let's focus on the chapter itself!

Good Enough to Eat

The sashimi boat really is the perfect solution to this trial, honestly. First and foremost, it's a solid reflection of Ichi's philosophy of Death for Death. As Ichi says in the flashback, the sashimi boat is an artistic and ritualistic expression of both respect and gratitude for the prey, the core ideology behind only killing when it is necessary for survival and not wanton destruction in the name of entertainment. The prey's life is not more valuable than the predator's, so Ichi wants to honor the life that he has taken for his own by treating it with dignity

Moreso than just the spirit behind Death for Death, it is also literally taking that philosophy to its logical conclusion by reflecting Hisame's own actions upon her. Hisame enjoyed putting her victims on display, making their frozen corpses into macabre architecture, so it's only fair that the same would be done to her. A punishment that fits the crime

However, it also is what allows Ichi to actually pass the trial because while it is a gruesome fate, it is not actually a punishment for Hisame. Like I said, it's a reflection of her own artistic sensibilities turned back on her; she is now the one being put on display as a grotesque art piece - of course she'd find that more beautiful than being trussed up in flowers or frills! She was telegraphing it the whole time!

It's also a fun play on Desscarass' attempt to cheat last week by saying true beauty is on the inside - by rending and exposing her flesh, Hisame can see her literal inner beauty in a way that is both novel and a perfect encapsulation of her sense of aesthetic

I do think that turning her into an outfit would have ultimately had the same effect, but focusing on Ichi's established specialties works much better as a bookend for this arc's themes

Playing to Your Strengths

While I initially wanted Kumugi to learn the lesson of individual capability directly, having her see it firsthand through Ichi's talents is a great way to set her arc on a slow burn rather than simply cooking it all the way through in one shot

Before, she was simply told of the idea, and now she's merely witnessing it in action, but she has yet to personally experience or internalize it, steps that will come later as she's forced to contend with her own shortcomings and insecurities

My guess is that she's meant to be more of the Usopp of the team, who even to this day is struggling to recognize just how far he's come in his personal journey. Like how Usopp had to learn to be brave in increasingly personally challenging scenarios, Kumugi is likely going to be put in scenarios that make her feel less and less suited to them, but through emulating Ichi, will slowly come to learn that her unique capabilities make her just as skilled as Ichi in her own way

But again, I'm getting ahead of myself. For now, what matters is that Desscaras' line about Ichi doing things that only he can do seems to have resonated with Kumugi, even if she doesn't fully understand why just yet

Speaking of things we don't fully understand yet, this chapter has left me with a couple of questions that I'm very excited to see addressed in the future

Gotta Catch 'Em All

First, as this is the first time we're seeing a non-combative trial, is it common for Magiks to be so peaceful when they become magic stones? Obviously Uroro was distraught, but should we expect most of them to be satisfied or even happy to be bested?

And for that matter, what does it actually mean to be turned into a magic stone? We know they can be returned to normal upon the death of their spell holder, but is it more of a seal or a cycle of death and rebirth?

Cus if it's the latter, then Magik psychology must be fascinating, as they're likely able to accept their deaths because they have such clarity of purpose in their lives. If it's the former, though, that raises a bunch more questions about their cognition

Are they conscious while in stone form? Is there any circumstance where they can be retrieved?

Uroro is obviously an exception where he can manifest of his own will, but when Ichi cast Inazuri and Inazuri appeared, was that simply an apparition to represent him, or was it literally Inazuri coming to summon the lightning? He didn't say or do anything, so it seems like it was just imagery, but is it possible that with more advanced mastery of a spell that a Witch can fully materialize a Magik as a familiar?

I'm starting to suspect that this might be the case, as Hisame's last words were "I wouldn't mind letting you take me on a date." Perhaps she meant it metaphorically to represent giving herself to Ichi as a stone, but with how bombastic and unique her personality was, I think it would be a huge shame if she's just gone from the cast forever

On the other hand, though, how many Magiks is Ichi going to acquire? He already has three, and one is already a major cast member; will the other two and all subsequent Magiks become a rotating ensemble cast, throwing in their two cents whenever the author deems it funny or interesting but forgetting about them the rest of the time because there's just too much to keep track of?

Or will they simply be inert, effectively dead to the narrative and only contributing as MacGuffins to solve increasingly specific and harrowing challenges with no semblance of personality or individuality ever again?

Both options sound bad when you put them like that, though they both serve a specific purpose to the narrative that would help it flow. I'm pretty sure that's why Shaman King abandoned the Pokemon-esque ghost of the week premise pretty early, since it wouldn't do to have Yoh juggling a bunch of side characters when one would perfectly suffice. Come to think of it, I think Kagamigami did the same thing...

Only time will tell, but I do hope there is a way for Ichi to connect with his Magiks on a more personal level, especially if it turns out that it's something Witches either weren't aware of or deliberately don't do to avoid forming personal attachments

Even if we don't get more insight into Ichi's relationships with Inazuri or Hisame, though, there is one relationship of his that I'm confident we're going to be seeing a lot more of

Teach a Man to Fish

I have no idea what role he's is going to play going forward or how long it's going to take to get there, but there is simply no way that Minakata isn't meant to be important

Minion to the Big Bad? The Big Bad himself? The Big Good?? I don't know! But mentors that protagonists fondly remember and were heavily inspired by as children always do one of two things: turn evil or die horribly. Sometimes both! Lookin' at you, Kite HxH

I don't want to speculate too much since we've basically learned nothing concrete about him, but being that he's a wanderer with a mysteriously hidden face, I'll bet right now that Ichi's going to meet an oddly large man later, walk away none the wiser, and then the man is going to pull out the deer skull mask and say something cryptic about how much Ichi has grown

Buuut just to make a particularly wild shot in the dark now with no basis whatsoever: I won't be surprised if it turns out that Minakata has something to do with Ichi becoming a Witch. Maybe Minakata did something to him, maybe Minakata is also a Manwitch. Either way, there's definitely going to be an explanation for Ichi winning that lottery and Minakata is currently the best (and only) lead we've got on that

And with that, we've completed the first full story arc. It's definitely proving to be as fun as I expected it to be, I'm just surprised it's taken this long to establish a long-term goal. I won't be surprised if we get another mission to establish a bit more of a daily life-style pattern, but I worry in Jump's current climate that waiting too long to raise the stakes will prove detrimental to Ichi's longevity. It was around this point when Shigaraki showed up in Hero Academy, Geto showed up in JJK, and God was established as the antagonist in Undead Unluck, so I'd say we'll at least get a glimpse of the antagonist in the next few chapters hopefully

Until next time, let's enjoy life!

[christiansorrell]

TTRPG Read-Through: Traveller - Book 1

Here is a read-through I did about a year and a half ago (originally posted on Twitter) of one of the all time classics: Traveller by Game Designers' Workshop! This read-through just covers Book 1 - Characters and Combat from the original Traveller box set trio of books. - Christian

This is the 1981 Second Edition printing of the classic Traveller three zine box set! Been wanting to read this for ages now. It's discussed A LOT in Mothership circles.

Really interesting to see GM-less and solo play options here. Didn't realize that was being done explicitly at this time. Also, nice to see "he or she" language here rather than the just "he" you see a lot in older games.

The UPP is clearly the creation of an utterly deranged mind. This seems like a huge overcomplication of just listing stats (unless all your players are proficient in hexadecimal).

[Hi, it's me from the future here (aka now - 2024): I've learned to embrace and love the UPP (or more specifically the planet stat version from one of the other books). It's complicated at first but really quick and cool once you know how to read it.]

I really like Social Standing as a stat replacement for charisma or charm or other social skills you tend to see. Feels like it would have more impact on the story and less of a "Roll to see if you convince him, I guess" sort of anticlimax social skills have most of the time.

I'm now into the "you can die during char creation in Traveller" bits. Really cool in some ways. Really comical in others. It recommends you enlist your bad stat characters into the Scout service because of it's high mortality rate (so you can roll a diff char before play), lol.

Essentially, you roll stats and that's your entire character but to give them some experience they can enlist in a Service. You have to roll to get in and may get rejected. If so, you submit to the draft (get into one at random). You can die. You can gain skills and promotions.

Honestly, the char creation feels like a solo game unto itself. Risk v reward of how far to push your enlistments to boost your skills and standing and benefits. You could have a whole story in your head by the end of it. Great Session 0 material.

As a 34 yr old, this hurts. Apparently, I have -1 Strength, Dexterity and Endurance now...

I admire commitment but asking GMs to use this full char creator for all NPCs (which means generating chars until you get one capable of filling the role you need) is truly too wild. Best part: at the end, it just says you can also pick whatever you want for stats and skills.

The weapons and intro text have much more of a space as a new age of sail vibe to them than I was anticipating. It's cool. Far more Dune than Alien (so far).

Interestingly (unless I missed something), skills are detached from your stats. Your base stats make getting into a Service easier and help you with Saving Throws and such, but skills have their own modifiers based on the situation and your expertise. It's cool (if a bit dense)!

In case you were wondering, there is absolutely no art in this entire book. I'm hoping we'll get some in one of the other two books with vehicles and ships and such but won't be holding my breath. Gives the whole thing a very Serious vibe.

Always interesting to see how older games chose to handle this (or not).

Here's the UPP in action along with quick listing of other character info. Interesting even if it is just too overcomplicated for my tastes.

Can't overstate how much char creation feels like a whole solo game of its own. You can roll a character at age 18 and have them go through seven 4-yr terms in a Service before retiring and having substantial cash, specific possessions, memberships and social standings. Wild.

The character sheet mentions PSIONICS which is exciting (but I'll have to wait till Book 3 for more on that apparently).

Combat is straightforward but has some unique bits: a focus on stealth as an option and movement/attacks occur by all parties simultaneously which means everyone (enemies too) gets to move and then everyone chooses who to attack and you roll them all. Sounds really fun.

Stats have cool effects in battle. Your Endurance stat is the number of attacks you can make before needing to rest (can you imagine if DnD just didn't let you do a base attack at a point?). Strength and Dex can boost or lower certain weapon rolls like you'd expect.

If trained in a weapon, you can give your expertise as a negative mod to your enemy's rolls to attack you to reflect parrying and blocking which is cool. The skills also add to your attack rolls. Skills just seem really useful overall here.

I just love that we get stats for broadswords, revolvers, and laser carbines. Plus, there are even special tables for archaic weapons for when encountering lower-tech civilizations. It feels like a really wide open interpretation of what space could look like. Feels exciting.

A few more equipment tables and a final quick reference page at the back and that's all for Book 1. I'll be back with Book 2 and 3 in the coming days!

Main thoughts: Character creation is very involved but really cool - its own game practically. Skills are very deep in a way that feels refreshing when compared to more stat-focused games. Combat has some fun, chaotic twists. Feels like a wide universe of possibility here so far.

I'll add Books 2 and 3 to this thread when I give them their own read-throughs. In the meantime, here's my newsletter (last two months have Mothership freebies): https://meatcastle.substack.com

And here's my website (with links to my games and modules and all that good stuff): https://shop.meatcastlegameware.com/

Thanks for reading!

[nnnn99999]

Finally getting to my thoughts on the heart killers episode 1 and honestly it was better than I expected. Maybe it's because I didn't have many expectations to begin with. As long as I have my beloved joongdunk on my screen together I am a happy woman. But this episode was so fun and interesting and I am so excited for what's to come. I have so much I want to talk about so I think I'm going to make separate posts about each of them. Yes I am writing 10 different essays at the same time just like I did with bbs and that is a good thing. It means I am excited about the show itself and not just the actors. It was more than an hour long episode (I love that it was so long) and I enjoyed every moment of it.

I love the pacing of this episode too. It's not rushed at all, yet it's jam packed and doesn't waste time on unnecessary things. Except the burger mukbangs by First. Why was there an asmr burger mukbang not once but twice in this episode? I mean I don't mind but the question remains. This was the one thing that totally threw me off guard. Again I am not upset about it at all but I can't stop thinking why this decision was made? Is it because everyone in that production team loves watching First eat? Actually, that is quite a reasonable speculation. Yes I dedicated an entire paragraph to First's mukbangs because I really can't stop thinking about it.

I am so so glad my beloved joongdunk got the opportunity to be part of a production like this. This is so different from their previous projects and I can already see that they got the chance to explore as actors in ways they couldn't before. And I love that for them. My joongdunk heart is happy and content.

Also have to mention I love firstkhao in this too. I may focus more on joongdunk because I am a hardcore joongdunk simp but I really do appreciate all the other people involved in this project as well. Everyone put a lot of love and effort into this show and I appreciate that.

I don't know how this series will turn out in the future. But I already know I am going to love it. It has everything I enjoy- a fun story, interesting characters and character dynamics, fun lighting choices that contribute to the storytelling, music that sets the tone of the scenes, my favorite kind of pacing, good actors, good production and most importantly my beloved joongdunk. Thank you so much Jojo for bringing this show to life. I am eagerly anticipating what's to come and I am having a blast along the way.

The fact that we are going to get most of the scenes from the trailer and the bts photos in the first 2 episodes already is so exciting to me as well. This means we have no idea what will happen after ep 3. And that is so fun and exciting. I love that they did that. It makes me anticipate what's to come even more. Jojo, I love you, I really do. This show of yours is right up my alley.

Fun fact about me that nobody asked for: I have not seen 10 things I hate about you. Which is actually pretty weird because I have seen most romcoms from that time period, some even less popular than this one. I don't know why or how I missed it. I also refuse to read Shakespeare for very petty reasons. So yeah, I really have no idea what to expect from thk. But that makes it extra fun for me.

[the-final-sif]

I still REALLY WANT dsmp s2 ;-;

I'll be honest, as much as I enjoy the thought of DSMP S2, I'm actually a lot happier that Dream is putting it down for now, with the idea that it might happen at some point in the distant future.

Like, there's a lot of things at play here.

First and foremost, just on a motivation and mental health perspective, it was pretty clear that DSMP was a really big drain for Dream. After Techno passed away, Dream was essentially carrying all of the major plotlines in some fashion or another. It was obviously really hard for him to do and keep up with, and I'm glad he's putting that down for now.

Second, it's really hard to not take into account how Techno's passing influenced how all of them see the SMP. Lots of different lore SMPs have gone through player changes, but the DSMP is the only one I know where a streamer actually died during it. That can make it really hard to go back to on an emotional level. And I absolutely get why that would play a part in demotivating/making a S2 difficult.

Third, the DSMP was kind of stopping Dream from being able to do other things. It was eating up a lot of his time, and if he tried to work on another major project, join another SMP run by someone else, etc, he was gonna get hounded about why he wasn't working on x plotline on the SMP. Putting it down lets him go do other things without that pressure. And honestly I'm really excited to see the other things he wants to do.

Fourth, I'm going to be entirely honest, I think the DSMP was due for a culling even if there was a S2. There are a number of people on there who got invited at various points that didn't really fit in with the server anymore. Dream moving onto other projects, possibly starting or joining other SMPs, etc. All of that means he can pick and chose who he invites to stuff, bring in new friends and not invite people who he isn't close to and who don't seem to want to spend time with him. I think that's much healthier, and it's something I'm excited for. I want Dream to be able to go back to just playing with his friends.

Fifth, kind of as a cumulative...

The amount of pressure and weight that the DSMP put on Dream in particular, what with how much of the story revolved around him, how other streamers would constantly need him for storylines but wouldn't go start ones without him, how people blamed him for everything that they didn't like, etc, etc. Particularly when Dream didn't even stream or make videos for the SMP. He was doing a shit ton of work for other people, and getting a ton of shit thrown his way for anything people didn't like. And for what?

It was honestly kind of an unfair set up. Particularly with how much people loved to blame Dream for things, or act like he was the only one who had any say in anything. When things go weird/not how fans wanted in the Last Life SMPs, you don't see everyone blaming Grian for it as if he's the only person who has any say. But somehow with the DSMP, Dream took a ton of shit for things that were clearly outside of his control or relying on other people.

All of this accumulated in Dream being very trapped in what he did. Something that's really bad for people with ADHD who tend to do best when we can have several different projects to move between. And who don't tend to do well when there's a lot of pressure for them to work on one specific thing that they may not want to work on.

Dream and the others putting down DSMP S2 for now means that Dream gets to work on stuff he'll actually enjoy. It means he'll get to focus on spending time and energy on people he actually enjoys spending time with. People who are his friends, and not people he hasn't talked to in over a year. He'll get to create brand new things, new SMPs, new characters. And hopefully he'll get to join in other people's projects too! Where less of the workload is on him!

I'm excited for that. I'm excited for Dream to get to do stuff he's always wanted to do, and get to move on to new projects.

I know some people are gonna be really sad about that, but honestly, I'm not. I'm excited to see where Dream ends up going, and what sort of stuff he creates. You might even find that it fills a similar space in your heart to what DSMP S2 might've. Who knows?

[puhpandas]

I really really hope the hw2 dlc actually gives us a concrete direction of the story and shows us what to expect. I'm tired of not knowing at all how a new release is gonna progress the story and then getting disappointed when the main characters get none of the screentime they desperately need

I understand that ruin and hw2 were created at the same time and go hand in hand, ergo they are both in-between buildup stories to a later game. the issue is that we arent even getting excited because hw2 gave us no clear direction (at least didnt tell it to us very well) of where the story is headed. the game is so confusing and is leaving so many people believing wildly different things about what its about

theres more and more releases not touching on important plot points that have been left unresolved from security breach alone, like 3 star fam, gregory and vanessa in general, and ggy, and these would hit way less hard if we actually had an idea of when we COULD see them. every release has just been crossing our fingers and hoping for the best, but I'm so ready for hw2s dlc to just tell us what's going on.

I just want it to tell us what to expect for the next release like dreadbear did. dreadbear showed us vanny and the pizzaplex being built, and that gave us the setting for the next game and the villain. right now, we have THREE human characters established, so if they showed us the setting of the next game and the villain (probably vanny cassie) we'd KNOW what to expect. we'd get an idea of how the characters we know will be involved in a future release

when all we've known right now is just hoping and wishing for better luck next time. so little focus on the characters we're supposed to care about is exausting and I just really want there to be an AIM to all of this, which I'm expecting hw2 dlc to give us. that's why I'm so impatient for news for it

once again, ruin and hw2 were being made at the same time and reference eachother in themselves despite being released a few months apart, so since ruin is clearly a setup, that means hw2 is as well. this is the only reason I havent been getting crazy pissed at no 3 star fam screentime, but that's also why I'm expecting the dlc to actually tell us something. at LEAST that we can expect more from later games

like. I feel like hw2 is restarting a formula. we're pretty much confirmed getting a dlc for the game, and that's exactly the order the original help wanted went through too. hw1, dreadbear, and then security breach. with this in mind, it's not far fetched (especially with my earlier point of hw2 and ruin being setup) to assume what we get after this dlc will be another big free roam

so like. if there really IS a big game in the horizon, I would really prefer them to show us the AIM of all of this

[destinyc1020]

A funny thing I want to point out regarding your last 2 posts, the post suggesting Z is tied up in LA for some time gets less likes than the one supporting the narrative that she's off to London or maybe already arrived there. We don't know, we will see where she turns up and how long she will be here or there but lately I found myself starting to divest from the lore and story building that we engage in in these parts based on seeing the tiniest sliver of their lives. Many would have sworn up and down that they had been engaged or even married for years, and yet they surprised us. Happy for them but also for myself for the reality check. They are not fictional characters for us to storyboard, I will move on to focus only on the things that we see and they willingly share with the public and give snooping and engaging in theories around here. Thanks for the laughs and the entertainment and all the best 😊

Beautifully stated Anon! 😉

I honestly came to that realization long time ago myself lol. 😅

I'm honestly just a casual observer now. Like you said, Tom and Z aren't Ken and Barbie, and we can't manipulate what they're going to do, and when they're going to do it. We spent nearly 4 years on engagement watch, and I'm just glad that we got something out of it lol. Some fandoms aren't as lucky lol.

Like you, I too don't need investigative work done in order to know where Tom or Z are at every waking moment of their lives. I feel like spending so much time trying to keep up with someone's life can get tiresome eventually. I've kind of divested a little from that, and I'm more so excited for their careers and what the future holds for them! 😊

Don't get me wrong, I'm super happy for whatever Tomdaya relationship content that we get 😃, but I'm no longer as invested in their private life like I once was. I don't usually ship celebrity couples lol.....I may think some couples are cute together, or that some actors would look cute together if they dated each other, but I'm not usually a SHIPPER. Tomdaya was definitely an EXCEPTION lol. 😂 I don't think I'll EVER ship another couple like I've shipped Tomdaya either. Tomdaya took me through the ringer lol.... 🤣 Maybe I should have saved this post for "Sunday Confessions" tomorrow lol 🤭

Anyway, I'm SO happy that they have their happy ending, but like you, I've given up on having to know everything about them and their love and whereabouts long time ago. 😊 Life is much simpler that way lol. 😄

[thesiltverses]

You folks have so many worlds inside your brains! Do you have any tips for keeping your different ideas organized?

I have a bunch of story ideas but they are starting to clump together into something like The Amalgamate from A Lonely Broadcast.

This is a really interesting question, because for me a big (and very useful!) part of creativity lies in amalgamation; it's taking old discarded story ideas that weren't working in their own right, and finding new and exciting ways to stuff them into a new idea - as background elements, as one-off episodes, as secondary storylines or characters.

The obvious example that comes to mind is Douglas Adams raiding his own Dr Who scripts to write his novels.

Or to give one example of ours: S1E4 of The Silt Verses was a short story idea I'd had about a bickering couple tramping through the New Forest in the UK, and the boyfriend (who keeps marching ahead and insisting he knows the way) ends up getting transformed into a deer and pursued pitilessly through the woods by a hunter-god, while the girlfriend escapes.

And it wasn't working, because 1) the story arc is just 'douchebag man dies horribly, non-douchebag woman runs away and lives', which feels predictable and 2) because it's a two-hander, there's not really a mechanism to gracefully explain what the antagonist is or how its curse works.

So I left it alone for a couple of years, we were writing TSV, and I thought - oh, maybe the girlfriend isn't the protagonist at all, maybe she can be the antagonist instead.

But the key ingredients there are time, space, and prioritisation, and it sounds like your frustration lies in having all these ideas at once and losing the shape of them because they all start to blend into one.

I guess from what you're saying, I'd advise you: decide which of your story ideas is a sapling, and which are seeds.

The sapling is the idea that feels furthest along, is the strongest-defined, and has the most space to grow. Focus on that one, build its shape, get it really clear in your head. Try not to get distracted, give yourself time alone with it.

The more clearly you've defined this idea and the more detail you have, the less you'll be tempted to bring in extraneous or muddled elements from other drafted ideas.

(To avoid said distraction, the key for me is really terrible file management.

I use an unfoldered Google Drive system, so that the 'recent documents' and search function are the only way to find my work. I keep all the documents relating to my sapling project open in different tabs, so that they always refresh back up to the top of my recent docs.

That way, any irrelevant seedling draftwork is rapidly buried in the drive, and I'm not going to spot it by accident while navigating to my current work. I have to be actively thinking about it to remember it exists.)

When your creativity's starting to feel strained or the initial plot and character momentum is no longer there, take a step back and check in on your seeds.

Maybe a couple of them are looking like they could be set aside and earmarked as a future big idea, maybe a few more don't feel quite as strong any more.

Dissassemble the bad seeds, atom by atom. What was the really good part of this idea? What can you gainfully repurpose? Take those components back to the sapling and see if you could benefit from jamming them into exciting places further into the storyline.

Since your sapling was already so strongly defined, they should add interesting new dimensions to it rather than confusing it (in theory).

I don't know if that helps, but I hope it does!

[scruffyssketchbook]

Okay this may sound very sappy and out of nowhere but I just wanted to sincerely thank you for making the decision of revamping SSEC with Box 31-

I won't deny that I fell out of love with the comic because of its issues with pacing and lack of focus, and I dropped it a few years ago as it did not feel fun reading it anymore. But I recently went back on it out of curiosity and found out about the massive change that's gonna happen and I'm so, so happy for this

This comic spoke a lot for me when I was young, and even after I started to lose interest, I still missed the characters and seeing them going through the complicated process of healing and communication. And hearing how there's gonna be more focus on that and less about spite and hatred makes me feel an excitement about the series that I really missed

And I also wanted to say that I admire your drive of telling the story you want to tell. I know you've been through a lot of hardships because of the things surrounding the series, so the fact that you're changing it to make you happy writing it means a lot, because your excitement for the story will surely be felt in it too

Thank you for making this decision and thank you for doing whatever makes you happy, and I hope with this change things will be better for you in the future as well

There may be people who would not be happy with the changes, but you will and that's what matters the most

And at least you've got a fan back into the series who's definitely looking forward for it

I remember when you stopped reading the comic!

I really liked answering your asks, and when you stopped reading, you sent in an ask about it at the time, and honestly I could not blame you because I was also pretty upset at the direction the series was going for the same reasons.

I do suppose that the direction the comic went in ultimately was due to my own mental state at the time- which- was pretty bad. <w>;; I didn’t even realize how it affected the comic and the characters until it was too late, but a LOT of things happened during 2017-2019 that slowly changed the direction of the comic to be more negative due to things happening in my life. I was trying to fix it, but when I finally thought that I was going in a better direction, I realized that there were more things that upset me other than the characters just all hating each other that I didn’t like at all, and things that just spoiled my enjoyment of the series in general.

I really love the characters and I want to see their journeys through to the end, but I want to do it in a way that I like. Silly, full of romance and friendship, and I want to see how they can like- actually help each other heal instead of making things worse for one another. So yeah! I’m doing Box 31! And I’m really glad you are excited for it!!! :D Thank you for giving the series another shot! :D

[olomaya]

Honestly, I'm relieved. This game was still looking so rough and I'd feel much more comfortable with a June release than this coming out in 6 weeks.

I was watching a video from SatchoSims* and he talked about how LBY is more just a compilation of gameplay features without any gameplay and he definitely pinpointed my main issue with the game despite my excitement for it. I just don't know what I'm going to DO or what I will want to do because they haven't really done a good job of explaining the rules and structures and goals of the game (aka what the game is about).

I'm still excited for it and will definitely play it in June and am eager to check out the modding tools but yeah, what are we doing?

The Sims was a time management game. You had to figure your shit out and meet your basic needs all while juggling other mini challenges and responsibilities and TRY to become successful which would then unlock cool shit to buy or do that you would have the time to do because the money and rewards and perks you grinded for allowed you to do it.

And then TS2 improved on that by focusing on interpersonal relationships and making that more complex so that Sims felt more unique but also had to focus more on mental health and well-being and the drama that comes with interacting with other people.

Then TS3 took that even farther by basically unleashing chaos all around you with an open world so you have less control over what is going on so while you are grinding away to create a dream house for the Sim you want to marry and grow old with, you head over to the park and see your future spouse making out with some asshole in zebra print pants! And then on top of that, they deepened skills and hobbies so Sims have soooo much to do so that life goals are so much more diverse (though I will admit this came at the expense of interpersonal relationships). People often say that they wish TS3 had TS2's hobby system but in my opinion, it not only does but it's infinitely much better than TS2's. I would argue that TS3 at its core is a game about hobbies and interests.

I love that LBY seems to be wanting to improve on TS3 (because TS4 definitely didn't) and give us a true life simulator but I still don't understand what the game is about. They show off how many traits they have and how we can mod in our own traits but what do the traits means? If a character has a Difficult Childhood trait, how is that going to affect their ability to form relationships, fall in love, be a good parent? They said we could have truly homeless characters to play Rags to Riches challenges. That's awesome! Can we see that? How does the economic system work? Could it be integrated, for example, where household taxes and bills actually go towards community development? Like THIS is gameplay. I don't want to see another treasure trove video or someone doing work tasks. Those are features, not core gameplay and if it is then I'm afraid Rod Humble is making TS4 competitor, not TS3 which would be a shame.

*I don't know if I like him or not, but he has good viewpoints compared to the other high-profile Sims 4 YouTubers who at this point are practically on the Maxis payroll desperately trying to pretend that game is interesting because it literally pays their bills 😭😭