#i'm getting to play around illustrator now and that's cool too

[tuiyla]

Are you a graphic designer for a career?

Like do you use all of these skills in real life or did you just randomly learn one day.

Oh no, I'm no graphic designer. I've recently begun working with more designers though and not only do they tend to be lovely people but it's a very cool profession. I think I'd never stop feeling like an impostor if I were to switch careers but it's not tooooo far from what I'm doing anyway so hey, you never know.

To answer the second half, any general graphic design skills I have I mostly use for giffing and very rarely - though not never! - do I make use of them in real life. I've always looked at this kind of stuff as something I play around with in fandom but I can't exactly add gifsets to a professional portfolio haha. I mean, I could, I'm just too cowardly to. And like I said it's not my profession so these, well we'll generously call them "skills" begin and end with fandom for me.

I wouldn't say I randomly learned "one" day haha it's been ~14 years but essentially it did just randomly start out as what it still is today. Fan sites were big back in the day in lieu of social media and when I started in earnest as a fan of something (ATLA) I used to run one and ~design~ headers and icons and stuff for it. "Design" in the very loosest sense of the word, as an 11-year-old who's seeing Photoshop for the first time. I mostly learned from my sister who learned from online tutorials. Everything I did in Photoshop had the end goal of being on that website. And then on Tumblr I didn't do any sort of editing for the longest time, then dabbled in gifmaking a bit around 2015, my Carmilla era and post-LoK. I only truly picked up giffing about a year ago though as I started engaging with the Glee fandom here on Tumblr.

So that's the long story of it, started with ATLA headers and now making Glee gifs. I've used my Photoshop skills once or twice while at university and interning and very rarely I will make use of it at work. But it's kinda nice to have something as just a hobby I enjoy doing and sharing with people instead of this marketable skill, you know.

[jonnywaistcoat]

Hi Jonny, if you don't mind I have a question about the TMA TTRPG! So I noticed that on the player's guide there's this guy, who my friends and I assumed is probably Jon. If it is him, is this a canon design, or more like some of the non-canon stuff that's in the merch?

So, I hope you don't mind if i use this ask to go a bit off on one. I'm not specifically dragging you (I'm actualy glad you asked, as I've thinking about posting on the topic), but all the discussion around the RPG art and how "official" or "canon" it might be is, to my mind, slightly silly.

First up, is it "official" art? I mean, yeah, its art for the officially licenced Magnus Archives RPG. This means Monte Cook Games have commissioned someone to do a beatiful illustration broadly based on some aspect, episode or character from the podcast and it goes in the book. But that's kinda all it means. "Official" is a legal distinction, not an artistic one. The fact that it's in an official product doesn't make it any less one artist's cool interpretation of a character that has only been vaguely described in audio.

Second, is it Jonathan Sims the Archivist? I mean, it's probably based on the idea of him, but it's certainly not set in stone. When we were first discussing art with MCG, we advised that character pictures be more vibes-based and not explicitly tied to specific people (ie. a portrait inspired by Tim wouldn't be captioned "This is Tim" and wouldn't be placed opposite a profile for Tim Stoker, archival assistant.) This was mainly because we wanted the artists to have plenty of freedom to interpret and not feel too tied down by the need to know everything about the podcast. But, to be frank, it was also because we know that there are a few fans out there that are kinda Not Chill about what they've personally decided these characters look like and can get a bit defensive over depictions that differ.

It strikes me as particularly strange to be having this discussion about art that's for a roleplying game book. Something that's explicitly and solely designed to give you the ability to play in your version of the Magnus universe. The idea that this is the thing where we'd for some reason try to immutably establish unchangable appearances for these characters would be pretty funny if some folks weren't taking it so seriously. Similarly ridiculous is the idea we could reasonably have said to MCG "We'd love for you to make a huge beautiful RPG book of our setting... Just make sure you don't depict any of the iconic characters or events from it!"

But... is it "canon"? Now, to my mind, this highlights a real weakness in a lot of fandom thinking around "canon", which is that it generally has no idea what to do with adaptations. All adaptation is interpretation, and relies on taking a work and letting new creatives (and sometimes the same ones) have a different take on it. Are the appearances of the Fellowship of the Ring in the LOTR movies "canon"? How much, if at all, does that matter? Neil Gaiman's book Neverwhere was originaly a 90s BBC series made with a budget of 50 pence; is anyone who makes fanart of Mr Croup that doesn't look like the actor Hywel Bennet breaking canon? What about the novel that describes the character differently? Or the officially licenced Neverwhere comic where he looks like neither of them? Which is his "canon appearance"?

Canon is an inherently messy concept, and while it is useful for a creative team trying to keep continuity and consistency within a creative work, for thinking about anything beyond that it tends to be more hinderance than help.

Anyway, all this is to say that the above picture and all the others in the RPG are exactly as canon as every other picture you've ever seen of the Archivist.

[kayhi808]

Hi! I absolutely love your writing! I was wondering if I was able to request a Bucky Barnes x Reader Idea?

The reader was best friends with Bucky and Steve in the 40s. Before Buckys fall the reader was kidnapped by HYDRA and was never seen again. Bucky and the reader have always had feelings for each other but they had never made it official back then. Fast forward, "during C.A. civil war" Tony Stark finds a HYDRA base and finds the reader inside a cryo chamber. (The rest is up to you)

I'll let you make this however you please 🙏

Thank you so much if you choose to write this!

Hi @armystrong980 !! This was such a good idea! I hope you like it. Im making this a 2 part story because there just so much to cover lol. Thank you so much for the request!! 🥰

Then & Now

Your mom & Steve's mom were nurses in the same hospital. Steve was a sickly kid so you'd keep him company a lot of the time. You'd create fantastical stories & he'd illustrate pictures for it. Other times you both would re-enact parts of your story, losing yourselves in the fantasy world you created. You two were the best of friends.

One sunny summer afternoon, lost in your fantasy world you were twirling around the sidewalk, caught up in an imaginary cyclone like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, when you crashed into a group of boys coming down the walk. "I...I'm so s...sorry!" The boy you crashed into did not accept your apology, shoving you out of the way, making you fall, hitting your chin against the stoop. You saw Steve's eyes grow wide in horror and then anger. You look down & the front of your dress is covered in blood. You start to cry mostly in fear, adrenaline making you numb to the pain.

Steve flies off the stairs ready to avenge you, but you're so worried they'd hurt him too. "Stevie, no!" Everything happened so fast. The bully is flat on his back & a dark haired boy is punching away on him. Steve is off to the side trying to catch his breath. You make your way to Steve grabbing his arm. The dark-haired boy finally lets the bully up and him & his friends scatter like cockroaches.

"What did ya think you were doin'? He woulda clobbered ya!" Your hero gives Steve a gentle shove and turns his attention to you. He frowns, "Damn!" Taking off his button down, he wads it up to hold it against your chin. You start crying again, because now you feel the pain. "C'mon, lets go find your mom." Steve's hand slips into yours and you walk letting the dark-haired boy hold his shirt to your chin.

*****

You ended up needing a couple stitches which was devastating to you. You hadn't left the house in a few days so Steve's been coming around asking if you could come outside & play. You'd tell your mom "no", but one day she calls out "Sweetheart, you've got visitors." You look up from coloring on your bed to see Steve & the dark-haired boy in your doorway. "Mom, no!!" You hide your face behind a pillow, but you feel the bed dip.

Steve and the new boy climb up on the bed, "Why don't you want to come out & play? Don't you want to be my friend anymore?"

Quickly looking at Steve, "You're my best friend! Forever, r'member?"

Steve smiles, "Forever." Turning to the other boy, "Remember him? He's Bucky."

You shyly nod, "Thank you for helping me & beating that bad boy up." You notice both of them staring at the stitches on your chin & you hide it with your hands.

"Why are you hiding that? It's so cool!" Steve says in awe.

"No, it isn't! It's ugly,'" you pout.

"Are you kidding me? When you get your stitches out, you'll look like me!" Bucky thrusts his chin out so you can see his dimple. "Cool, right? Not everyone has one of these." Nudges Steve beside him, "He ain't got one. It's just me & you." That makes you giggle.

*****

You in fact, did not get a dimple in your chin when your stitches came out, but that day cemented your friendships. You grew up in the same neighborhood, went to school together. Bucky was a year older so he did have his own classmates he hung out with, but he'd always make time for you & Steve.

You eventually followed in your mother's footsteps and became a nurse. Steve was in Art School & Bucky was floating around in Sales. Whether it was cars, insurance, his charisma makes sales an obvious profession choice. He didn't take work too serious though, he was too busy hanging out with the fellas, flirting with a different girl every week.

Not that you were keeping track. Not that it bothered you seeing him flash that crooked grin at the pretty girl on his arm. Sigh. You couldn't really blame the women falling over themselves for Bucky's attention. Any time Bucky paid you attention, your heart would do flip flops in your chest. You've known him since you were 6yrs old and your crush on him started soon after.

You did some soul searching and you realized all you were doing was waiting around for Bucky to notice you as more than a friend. You didn't see that happening in the near future and you wanted to do something with your life. You wanted it to have meaning. To have purpose.

"I've got something to tell you." Bucky is walking you home from the diner where you had met up for dinner with Steve. Steve left early because he wasn't feeling well, so it left just the two of you. "But you can't tell Steve. I need to tell him on my own."

"This sounds serious," Bucky teases, tossing his arm across your shoulder.

"It...it kinda is." Taking a deep breath, "I've enlisted."

"Enlisted what?"

"I've joined the Army Nurse Corp." Bucky grabs your arm jerking you to a halt. "OW! Jamie!!"

"What the hell did you just say?!" His piercing blue eyes burns into you.

Prying his fingers off your arm, "I joined the Army Nurse..."

"Are you stupid?!" You've never seen Bucky this angry, but how dare he!

"Don't call me that! I'm smarter than you James Buchanan Barnes!"

"Are you? Coulda fooled me! You're going down to that office tomorrow & withdraw your papers!"

"I will not!"

"Doll, there's a God damn war going on!"

"That's why they need someone like me! Where ever they choose to send me, I can help! I can make a difference."

Raking his fingers through his hair, "People are DYING!"

"Well, maybe less people will die if I'm there!"

Bucky starts pacing in front of you. "Jesus! Why didn't you talk to us before you did something like this??"

"Look at you! This is exactly why."

Bucky stops pacing and cradles your face within his hands, "Please, doll." Leaning down so his forehead touches yours. "Don't go. Tell me what I have to do to make you stay? You can't leave me."

Never in all your dreams did you think Bucky would utter those words to you.

"Us...I mean us. This will do Steve in. You have to withdraw your paperwork."

Disappointed, you pull away from him. "I've signed it. I'm committed to this, Bucky. It's what I want to do."

"You're gonna get yourself fucking killed!!"

You storm away home. Heartbroken that he has so little faith in your capabilities. He called you stupid. That's not how you imagined that talk going. Maybe you expected too much from them because your talk with Steve only went a little better. He didn't call you stupid and he understood how you wanted to make difference and help but he didn't want you to leave, worried you'd get yourself killed, too.

When the time came for you to leave it was so much more painful than you thought. Steve was there to see you off. It felt like you were leaving your twin behind. Already you feel the loss of not having your best friend by your side.

Bucky was there too, standing off to the side. You were afraid he wasn't going to show up at all. When the time came, Bucky gave you a rib crushing hug but refused to make eye contact with you. He refused to say anything to you. But you felt his lips on your forehead before he stalked off.

******

"Bucky! Buck!!" Out of breath and flushed, Steve barrels into Bucky's office.

"Whoa! Take it easy, kid. What's wrong?"

Steve smashes a crumpled up paper into his chest. "She's gone. She's gone, Buck." Bucky takes the paper and sees it's a telegram. The unit you were assigned to was taken in an ambush. No. No. No. No. Bucky had to read it multiple times before it sunk in.

All the things he left unsaid. All the things he was going to tell you once you came back home. It's too late.

No survivors.

[sasaranurude]

I'm a loser who both spends too much time playing gacha games and loves to hear myself talk, so here's another game review style post, this time covering my first day playing Break My Case. This time I'm not even being a little hater! I'm a lover! I'm cringe! I'm free! I love you Coly! I love you ikemen gacha games!!!!!!!

Break My Case is a new puzzle-music-adventure mobile game from Coly, the developers behind Mahoutsukai no Yakusoku and On Air. More relevant to BMC/BreMai is their game Stand My Heroes, with which it shares a writer, some gameplay elements, and of course a naming convention. Coly has developed a bit of a cult following for their unique status in the Japanese mobile gaming world: they're a company that was founded by women and hires women to make games for women. They put a lot of soul into their games. From the start, BMC is no different!

"Could you have pulled a clean version of this image from the internet so it didn't have all the game junk" no. it's my tumblr and you get my screenshots.

I (with help from friends) overviewed the initial Break My Case announcement back when it dropped. You can read that here! I said in that post that I thought a "dark rhythm game" would be a really cool direction for the game… and that's more or less what we got! GO ME!!!!!

First: the game's presentation is fantastic. Super slick graphical design and just amazing atmosphere. The sound design of this game is incredible. Genuinely. Really, really, good. All the music is amazing—I'm not knowledgeable enough to say anything other than "IT SLAPS!", but it totally does slap. The illustrations for the cards are all wonderfully atmospheric in and of themselves, and are just a delight to look at on the homescreen with its chill background music. Even just navigating menus is a sleek, seamless experience. The live2d is well-done, although it clashes a tad with the art style for a bit of an uncanny look at times. 

The atmosphere! The atmospheeeeeeere!!!

Of course, the draw to this game is the characters and story, so let's jump into that. I'll admit right now that I read the story through a machine translation—I have aaaalmost enough Japanese knowledge to fill in the gaps, especially since the story is fully voiced, but I'm definitely not getting the full nuance of the story that someone fluent in Japanese is going to get. THAT SAID, after completing the prologue, I was definitely intrigued enough that I want to continue slogging through the MTL just to read more! There's a great setup, centered around the bar Aporia and its three modes—a daytime cafe, a nighttime members-only bar, and, secretly, a "fixer" service who'll help anyone with any problem. Our main character, a woman who was just forced to quit her job at a corrupt company, gets hired to replace Aporia's eccentric owner while he goes on a who-knows-how-long vacation. The owner also has the role of "tail"—as in, the tail a lizard sheds to avoid being eaten. If anything in the fixer service goes wrong, it's the owner who takes the fall and the blame. This hasn't come to mean much in practice yet in the (quite short) prologue, but it's a fascinating setup. The story promises to touch on themes of the threads that weave our lives together, how small meetings can lead to massive life changes, and whether any human being is truly replaceable, even in our modern corporate world where people are treated like cogs in a machine. According to a staff interview, there are a handful of references to Stand My Heroes in BreMai, but the games' settings aren't otherwise closely linked.

Rough translation in alt text. The Aporia manager Ai may be the most mysterious, intimidating character, but he also beefs with a parrot the first time you meet him, so...

All the characters are staff at Aporia with various unique roles and background. The prologue just gives you a little bit of each of them, but everyone does show up, and they all have interesting dynamics with each other already. Ai, the stern manager, has some history with the MC that he refuses to divulge, and goes so far as to force psychologist Riku to agree to not look into it. The range of relationships among the staff run the gamut from the calm and mature friendship between fortune teller Kiho and art teacher Kyoya, to the unfaltering dedication of Yu to his ex-mafioso savior Tomose, to the ridiculous Takeru and Soyogu who spend their first appearance waking up after having gotten black-out drunk together the night before. My favorite dynamic of all so far is that of Kou and Mao—Kou is a playboy who insists he's not a playboy, and is introduced evading a woman by… asking the icy Mao to pretend to be his boyfriend so that she thinks he's taken and gay and leaves him alone. Which Mao exasperatedly agrees to, telling Kou that he's used up his allotment for this month which ohmygod how often does Kou do this. Kou if you're asking this guy to pretend to be your gay lover so often he gives you a monthly limit I think you might just have to admit you want him to actually be your gay lover, Kou, oh my god— 

Rough TL in alt text. Kou is letting the implication do all the heavy lifting here. He technically never said he was dating Mao. Technically. 

On to the gameplay. There's gameplay! Unique gameplay! Good unique gameplay! Oh my god, uncharted joseimuke territory! The main gameplay mode is a match-3 puzzle game with rhythm elements. As in other rhythm games, each song in the game is its own level, more or less. (Each character has two unique songs, and three songs shared with the other members of their unit.) You set up a team with cards you've collected from the gacha, which determine your power level and special skills. The "leader" of the team has to be the character whose level you've selected. The puzzle gameplay is a tile-swapping match 3—think bejeweled or candy crush—but the tiles you've matched are only cleared once a bar sliding across the screen hits them, clearing them in tune with the song. Everything cleared in a single swipe of the bar ups the combo counter. There's also a life system, where if the bar slides across the screen without clearing a single match, you lose a life… But the bar moves pretty slow. You're not likely to game over or even lose a single life any time soon. There are more difficult versions of the levels I've yet to unlock, so I'm sure the life meter becomes relevant then. There's also "auto" and "loop" features if you want to grind a level over and over for exp and items, but, of course, the computer can't score as high as you playing it yourself.

And, really, it's fun to play, so why would you want to!? The sound of matches clearing with the music is so satisfying and really makes you want to combo as high as possible. Once you've matched some tiles, you can't move them again, nor use them in a second match (eg, in a cross shape), so if you want to maximize your combo and make as many matches as possible with what's on the board, you have to think ahead about which matches you're going to make. The bar slowly crossing the screen adds a visual timed element that gives some urgency to putting all the matches together. It definitely feels like a game you can pick up an instinct for over time, which is super fun. 

All in all, a really solid, enjoyable little puzzle game. It would be fun to play even without the promise of anime boys. Stand My Heroes is also a match-3, for the record, which is what really cements the two games as being part of the same series.

Admittedly, the anime boy staring at you while you play musical candy crush is a little disconcerting.

The second gameplay mode is "Snap'n Spin", a… gameplay-lite mode that just puts chibi characters in random strange situations and lets you take pictures of them. The mode is explained to be a video game within the world of BreMai, so it's not even trying to be realistic or relevant to anything else in the game. Once you take your pokemon snaps of the boys, they get a fun little caption. You can save up to 40 pictures in your album. Other than being cute, the main way this mode interfaces with the rest of the game is that it's the primary way to unlock card stories for the cards you pulled in gacha. 

This gameplay mode is... cute? I guess? It being so disconnected from the style and aesthetics of the entire rest of the game felt weird. The chibis are adorable, so it has that going for it. And I do like some of the captions you get on the photos afterwards. My favorite were the scenes you catch of a character drinking, and then the caption reveals their current favorite drink. That's a delightful detail for a game set in a bar. Mostly, though, this mode left me wondering "why?" ...And I imagine the answer is something like "because merchandisable chibi characters are a requirement for joseimuke games." This mode could've been anything so long as these cute, starry little dudes were in it.

Urara here hated the drink and the caption revealed that, lately, his favorite thing is sparkling water. He's the youngest character in the cast, so I guess he hasn't grown into booze yet...

One last feature I want to mention is the jukebox. Like many games, BreMai has a music player that lets you listen to tracks from the game… But its music player is, genuinely, a fully-featured music player app with shuffle, repeat, lyric displays, and even background play that works when you're in another app or your phone is off. What! Wild! When I first learned a few days ago that BreMai had a built-in player for its BGM tracks, my first thought was "Well, what's stopping someone from downloading the game just to use the music player and never spending a cent on it? Wouldn't you rather have the songs on spotify so you at least get a pittance of ad revenue, in that case? It's more than nothing."

But having played the game now, I see what they did to prevent that, lol. You don't unlock the songs in the jukebox until you get an SS score on the song's level. Which, I mean, that's normal rhythm game stuff, of course. Can't fault that decision. But, as in other gacha rhythm games, your score in a level depends on the power of your team of cards, and the cards you get from the initial handful of pulls aren't gonna get you anywhere near an SS score without significant investment. So you're either buying in-game currency to buy upgrade items, more gacha pulls, or both. Of course, you can also put a bunch of time into grinding for upgrade items—they drop from levels. Gacha currency is harder to come by. So you're not getting songs in the player without actually playing the game lmfao. The character solo songs in particular (the ones with vocals rather than just instrumentals) also require you to build up rapport with that character—the game calls it "Nice". You build up Nice with them by playing their other songs and using their cards in levels. It takes 1000 Nice on a character to unlock their song. In my first day of playing, I was able to get one character to about 250 Nice, another to 200, and a handful more with a few points, so it builds at an okay pace. There's ways to pay to speed up the grinding for Nice and for upgrade items with things like level skip tickets. So, basically: you're not getting that music player to a useful state without investing either money or time, lmao. Is paying-or-grinding to get cool music you can listen to while not playing the game more "worth it" than the usual freemium game goals of better units, new in-game outfits, or prettier card illustrations? ...Honestly, maybe it is? It's novel, at least.

All gacha rhythm games have the same card select screen, don't they. These were my cards' levels after my first day of play, and you can see they didn't quite reach a suggested score of "A", much less the maximum "SS".

But I do want to stress, the monetization is, for the most part, pretty easy to ignore. Nothing in-your-face. The button to go to the shop screen is a different color, but it's not flashing with an eternal indicator, it's not popping up at every second, it's just sitting there alongside all the other menu buttons. The game isn't shoving timers in your face at all times—there's a stamina meter, which is mildly annoying, but you get ten plays when it's full, and if you're just playing casually you're probably not going to want to play the puzzle game over and over enough to fully deplete that. I know the bar is on the damn floor here but Tokyo Debunker seriously made me realize how bad it can be with mobile game monetization. BreMai is freemium, yeah, but as far as dark patterns go, it's not egregiously bad.

So, the verdict: if you're a joseimuke game fan and aren't afraid to play a game that probably won't get an English port and doesn't even have a fan translation yet (which I realize is already counting out 99.99% of people), definitely give this one a try. See if you like the gameplay—it really is worth trying—and do check out the story if you've got the ability. Or just look at the pretty anime boys. 

[mariyekos]

Saw some great Dante art on Twitter and now my head is spinning with a new HC.

I've HC'd Dante having a scar over his chest from the Yamato+Rebellion stabbings for a while, and I've also tossed around HCs about Dante and Vergil sort of aging out of their humanity. (The tl;dr of that is their human side ages until it "dies" and they're left with their demon forms being the default, so they have to imitate a human form to look human, a la Sparda). In the art I linked above, instead of having a normal scar over his chest, he has this glowing mini-cavity/void instead.

In comes the HC-

So, when Dante is first stabbed in DMC3, the scar over his heart starts as a normal scar. Maybe over the next couple of years it lightens and looked kind of odd, but Dante chalks it up to just being a magical scar and doesn't pay that much attention to it (because he doesn't like thinking about why he has it). Then DMC 1 happens, he's stabbed by Rebellion (and Alastor) again, and the next time he sees himself shirtless in a mirror he realizes wait, the center of his chest is definitely glowing. Faintly, but glowing nonetheless.

From then on the glow would gradually increase, going from looking like skin with a glow to actually seeming like a void of light over his sternum (see the art above, plus DMC4 DT included below). The older he gets the larger the glowing portion grows, and the more intense the glow becomes (from illuminated skin to void of light). At first it freaks him out, but he eventually learns to accept it and stops caring too much.

His shirts in DMC4/5 have a little bit of a lower neckline than would work for this idea, but let's just say he'd keep his shirt zipped/buttoned up about an inch higher, and that the glow started more toward the center of his chest rather than sternum. The DT glows are pretty centered after all. After unlocking his SDT in DMC5 the glowing portion would end up high enough to not be hidden by his DMC5 shirt though. I imagine him ignoring Nero's questions on that when they meet back up for chapter 13, and that Lady and Trish already knew to some extent so they didn't bother asking. Maybe he'd eventually figure out to mask it, but it would be something he'd have to intentionally do, rather than the default.

Putting some pictures of his DT illustrating what I mean below the cut, but that's about it! The tl;dr of this one is "wouldn't it be cool if Dante's chest in his human form ended up glowing as he aged, to match his demon form?"

I'm skipping over his DMC1 triggers because they don't really match his DT in other games and don't fit into my view on this. DMC1 was the game where they were figuring things out.

DMC2-

I'll be honest, I haven't played DMC2. But looking it up Dante has 2 forms, including this one which has the glowing fissure in the chest. It's a thin cross that goes all the way up/down his chest as opposed to the thinner, deeper triggers in 4 and 5, but it's the start of the fissure designs so I'll run with it!.

DMC3-

Dante's DT is very fluid in DMC3, but doesn't have the glowing chest. His sternum is pretty prominent though. My explanation for these DTs is that Dante is younger as of DMC3, so the glow hasn't started yet because his demon side is still maturing.

DMC4-

And here's the real start of fissure/light-void chest Dante. This one also forms a cross, but the bulk of it is I'm the center of the chest, and the sort of "light-void" I imagine appearing on Dante's chest is one that would eventually grow to look like the center of this one.

DMC5-

Dante's normal DT in DMC5 has just about the same design as the DMC4 one so I'm skipping that, but his Sin Devil Trigger keeps that glowing chest look. In game the SDT is referred to as Dante's "true form," which gives this one extra points. Where his normal DT is like a glow coming out from the chest, this one is a glow within his core that's being guarded by the pieces around/over it.

[twistmusings]

MOD AZUL LMAO HOW ARE WE FEELING ABOUT TWST GOJO?✨️✨️✨️

LMFAO Iove that you guys have just taken to asking me about every update as they come out because of my low activity due to canon events right now. I genuinely fond out when stuff drops in TWST JPN pretty much as soon as you tell me. /srs

Some card spoilers below the cut!

Honestly, I know you made the comparison to Gojo but I look at him and I see beside from a goth Beatles cover band. 💀 Definitely excited to see what the event entails though! Fun facts about Mod Azul, the first Disney movie I watched as a child WAS Nightmare before Christmas, so this actually has me very excited for obvious reasons. I do love the design, but my man looks like an absolute SHITHEAD - I fully expect this event is going to be meddling. I know people are speculating he may be twisted from the Mayor, because of his pupils, and that wouldn't surprise me at all. To be honest, I almost wonder if he is twisted from the general concept more so than any one character. I see more indicators that he was twisted from Jack than anyone else in his design because it's very skeletal - though I do wonder if Oogie Boogie will be making an appearance in some way.

The new cards look super cool - I feel like the costume and hair designs lean even further into Yana's previous work on Black Butler than pretty much everything we've seen so far! I also think it's pretty cool that the Halloween even is actually using a notably different color palette and style than past Halloween events.

TWST has always had a very saturated color palette, even in the Halloween events, so it's super cool to see them play with the actual color language itself. I've pulled Jade's halloween cards to compare them for you to illustrate the differences:

Particularly in the hair - you can see how Jade's hair has been desaturated and sort of greyed out, which I think is a super cool way of incorporating the Tim Burton style into the game. ALSO

LEONA'S REGULAR CARD IS HANDLED WELL. I'm trying not to get my hopes too high, but even with the desaturate palette so far, he is still able to maintain some depth to his skin while still looking paler to match with the style. Now I am certainly hoping I don't eat crow - I know how things went with the Kings Garb card, but I'm going to hold out hope that we will get a really cool Leona SSR. Aside from the Fairy Gala, we haven't really had a "formal wear" Leona card, and I'm really hoping that the SSR looks good!

To give some clarification what I mean - when you are desaturating a color palette, specifically for darker skin tones, you want to mute the saturation of the color without losing the depth of the color. When we are speaking about skin tones, human skin is made up of a mix of colors - primarily yellows and reds, though we also get some blue as well. When you're working with a dark skin tone. In that sense, you don't want to add grey, you want to neutralize some of the warmth with blue tones and even fully dip into blue tones in shadow, which this artist has done. I have actually color picked this palette and put it against a white background to show what I mean and wow this is a gorgeous color palette!!

It definitely depends on the monitor and the brightness settings, but on the monitor I have calibrated to do illustration on - those colors are Navy Blue, A dark lipstick Mauve, a soft violet, and then some brighter orange brown and yellow brown where the moonlight is hitting. Even in the shadows, those cooler colors (the purples) are warmer shades of those colors that make sense with his skin tone. It's a beautiful palette using a ton of gem tones and cool colors and I'm holding out hope that the groovies keep with this trend, especially considering we have both Leona and Jamil getting much needed SSRs this go around.

So far as other thoughts - in Japan the event has been called "Lost in the book with Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas", which leads me to believe this will be similar to the Stitch event where the boys end up in a book in an entirely alternate world and will likely wake up not knowing what happened. I'm also guessing given the track record with the Halloween events and the fact that Nightmare before Christmas is a musical that we're likely going to get more Twistunes with this Halloween event. I don't know if we're going Masquerade levels with it, but I certainly hope we get to hear Leona and Sebek sing, and we know that Jamil can!

Also this event includes Vil, Leona, AND Malleus, so I fully expect at some point these three are going to beef because you can't put these three drama queens in a room and have them NOT devolve into arguing. I eagerly await that.

Also I don't know if they are keeping any of the Christmas theme of nightmare before Christmas, but if they do I cannot wait for the boys to ILLEGALLY DETAIN SANTA CLAUS.

[elvenbeard]

Hold on tight to yourself, not just anyone else When you've sailed to the edge, nowhere left to go

I've talked about my experimental light and water shooting in last week's wip wednesday, and I'm here to finally share some fave pics xD I have more, and I might post some on a separate occasion or just use them for OC ask stuff where they fit, we'll see!!

Vince is someone who often asks himself where his place in the universe is, even more so growing up, but the doubts keep creeping in again now and then regardless of how much more confident he is now in his own abilities and goals. I kind of wanted to capture this feeling of being lost, just floating for a while as you try to figure things out here... and play with light and color.

I didn't really take any behind the scenes pics for this (I should really start doing that) but I made some shitty sketches just now with my mouse cause I mentioned I wanted to illustrate how I did this xD Also for my personal reference, cause I wanna do something similar, slightly different for another project in the future!!

Very simply, this was the setup xD I used Denny's pool as location, mainly because it was the first that came to mind, had a decent size, and I wanted to do some stuff there anyway xD I think you could pull this off in any other pool or body of water just as well. Originally I wanted to keep the normal pool background, but then I spawned in a black wall from the photostudio props to block out the sunlight and get a darker backdrop, and I really liked that!!

I had three customizable point lights spawned, a red one below V, a purple and greenish one above him - I don't remember the exact placements, I mainly just wanted a nice color contrast and I like those colors and played around with where I put them!

Something like this!

Now, the ripple effect of the water...... I had V spawned in via AMM, and so Player!V was also still there in the scne, so I just ran around his spawned self a little bit to create the splashes xD And voila!

I always take my pics just in in good old vanilla photomode, and at first I had pathtracing on for it (raytracing is also on). And I did like that as well, but look at these unedited pics:

The reflections look a lot more natural and detailed, but are also waaaayyy less colorful. So if you wanna go for a more realistic approach that might be the better option! Everything else is the same, lights, backdrop, etc.

These are some unedited shots with pathtracing off (raytracing still on):

The lights kind of create this oil-spill like effect on the water and I loooove that so much!! Also, the red light from below was reflected in his eyes in a really cool way somehow (less realistic, but very aesthetic xD)

So yeah! If your graphics card can handle it, mess with all the ray/pathtracing settings a bit for a variety of effects xD

Also, all my pics are usually heavily edited in case you couldn't tell XD I love vanilla photomode for its convenience, but it has its limits when it comes to color adjustments, depth of field, and the like!

Same shot, unedited above, edited below. Played with color balance, saturation, sharpness, and in some of the pics some slight motion blur, too. I also shopped in his top surgery scars cause I didn't get around to trying to make them as a mod yet but it's on my list XD For more of them artsy pics with consistent looking scars!

Thanks for reading this far, I do hope it was interesting and you can take something away from it for your VP XD

[acheronist]

how did you start learning tattooing? what made you want to try it?

ohh... hm. Well. Okay to be so honest and short and easy with you I was really depressed and having my quarter life crisis and so I picked it up as a way to try and get myself back on track with like. being alive + doing something semi-meaningful with my life lol

here's the longer detail stuff that I fear is a bit too tenderhearted to just have out in the open

💌

near the end of last year (november-ish) I was yapping with a friend of mine from art school who ended up getting into tattooing after we had graduated, and explaining that i didn't like how publishing illustration was treating me and i felt like i was spinning my wheels and going nowhere. so she really encouraged me to give tattooing a shot? because I needed to do something different and she thought my art style could be really well suited for tattooing... and ofc i've been tangentially aware of tattoo culture but i was always kind of too scared that I wasn't like........ GOOD OR COOL ENOUGH? FOR IT? it seemed very intense and like there wasn't going to be room for me yknow. but anyways after talking with my friend i started doing a lot of research about like.. the history of tattoo culture and how techniques developed over the centuries and what are the popular styles now and what modern health/safety expectations of tat artists are now etc. just kind of taking it all in. following a lot of artists on social media etc and talking to my friend about what her apprenticeship entailed... but I bought myself a shitty cheap tattoo kit online in december and spent most of december-february just trying to teach myself how to handle a rotary pen machine and get a feel for it? and basically spent all of my time either playing around with my machine and fake practice skins or drawing or researching about tattoo history. and then in february/march I redid my whole portfolio with some neo trad designs + my other illust work and started visiting some local shops and basically just begging for 15 minutes to talk to someone in the industry and figure out if I was hopeless or not lmaooo. I went to about five shops and got soundly rejected / turned down from all of them, so I was really taking it as a sign that I should give up? but then the last shop I was going to try was like. idk it felt different and way more optimistic than everywhere else I'd tried at.... the artists on break at the time all took a chance to look thru my portfolio and talk to me, the shop owner is an angel, and so we went from "can I just ask for your professional opinion on if I suck at this or not" to getting introduced to everyone as they were working like "this is isabel she's gonna be our new apprentice!😊" which was!!!!!! CRAZY.

and so it took about two weeks after that before one of the more experienced artists in the shop was like 🙄 Fine I will teach another fucking apprentice I guess. Whatever. and I was like oh no he hates me. (turns out there's some shop lore about how awful the last apprentice was and everyone was kind of waiting to see if I'd turn out the same way) so I've just been working really hard ever since to prove I'm serious and now I'm everyone's favorite little idiot in my shop eheheh

but yeah! so I've been apprenticing officially in my shop since the end of march!!! just learning and trying to be helpful for my artists and trying to take it on the chin that I'm brand new and still learning and have a long way to go yet without getting miserable about it... but I feel very optimistic and way better now than I did in december, and everyone in my shop is soooo so kind and encouraging of my progress it really does feel like... Oh there is hope for me after all!

but yeah anyways. I just wanted to have an archive of my work as I progress and improve? so now everyone who follows my stupid ass blog has to bear witness to me being slightly bad at tattooing for months yet xoxoxo

[plushmayhem]

Progress talk thread

I like to take a lot of backups as I draw so we I can show off my widdle Lilly wips!! I'm drawing again that means I get to talk about drawing again yahoo

Lately when starting a drawing I've been trying to block out very rough thumbnails as seen above! I usually just start drawing like, the head, and trying to then figure out a body under neath and line by line it all ends up pretty similar to my past stuff because it's just not planned out! I don't know where the road is taking me!

So by starting out and trying to throw together the general pose with just a blown up light brush I'm coming up with much more interesting piece! I can figure out the general shape of the entire piece and then start working on top. No making a shoulder then drawing the hand over it and then erasing the shoulder and getting frustrated because it just doesn't look connected right because I didn't plan it out… where does this drawing end? where's the limits?? where am I going?? So my current workflow involves

Make the dimensions of the piece roughly (just throw a coloured rectangle down) -> very roughly block out the shape of the body within it

This also has the benefit of inspiring me to fill in the blanks with a pose I didn't initially expect! The body is reversed from my initial vague idea because seeing the blobs made me go OH IT'D BE COOL IF I DID IT WITH THE BODY FACING THIS DIRECTION ACTUALLY LET'S MAKE THAT WORK!! If you look at the initial you can kinda see it looks more like she's looking down at you with the raised arm being the one facing you.

Anyways after doing my personal Holiday pic the other day, I was like, it would be cool to do a small run of postcards to send to people yahoo!! I checked the sizes of postcards and none were even close! They all had like an extra inch on of extra space on the bottom whoops! I free style my rectangle sizes when planning an illustration and I guess they're closer to square than the ideal rectangle! Whoops!

So for this one after getting the initial sketch down I thought, hey how close is this to 5x7? AND LO AND BEHOLD IT WAS THE SAME ISSUE!!! So I took filling out the extra space as a challenge. I'm trying to be more dynamic with my art after all!

I spent time adjusting the piece in sai2 using the transform tool with it's perspective skewing on. I wiggled and rotated and pushed n pulled and you get what you see above. A much more dynamic piece filling out the canvas!

The thing that took the most time in this phase was getting the skirt to a shape I found acceptable.

Up next was moving towards making it a finished piece!

Thick lineart is something I've been deciding if I want to stick with or not but honestly it's my natural state! I love thick lineart!! I grew up on manga I wanna see some black lines!!! In the future I wanna go back to colouring lineart as well but for now I believe I need to lean into my natural tendencies for thick lines!

I threw down my lineart to a mostly acceptable state, and brainstormed ways to fill the empty space surrounding Lilly. I found there was just a lot of empty space in the bottom left and I didn't really solve that in the final, but that's ok. It's something I'm trying to be aware of as I actually attempt illustrations. I want to finish pieces right now, I'm not in a place where I can let perfectionism slow me down.

Currently my layers are (face) and (lineart) I throw down some flat colours, a light layer above and for once I tried a shade layer too! It might of been a multiply layer. It was probably was. Anyways this is what I was happy with before moving forward with refining it. I'm currently going with more focus on like, backlighting/rimlighting because it's easier to make it work with my no context existing in da void illustrations haha.

To refine it, right now, I'm playing around with mainly using one layer. So I slammed together my layers other than the face (I made that mistake with my previous piece and that's how we ended up with the eyebrow incident. I wasn't going to put myself in a place where I had to erase an eyebrow again) and started sculpting!

I think sculpting is the best way to describe it, really. It's a lot of slamming down chunky lines, and since the lineart is on the same layer, I'm constantly pushing colours out and finding the ideal shape of both it and the lineart. It helps me push my shapes even farther and let the colours take priority when they need to. Instead of them being separate things I worry about they're all just one big piece!

I was a bit worried about merging the plaid pattern down as well, but I did my best to get the skirt in a place I wasn't going to adjust much after the merge. That was the biggest priority of the previous step really.

It's a lot of fun! I recommend people try it! Try sculpting your lineart a bit!

I added the necklace accessory after since I knew trying to fit it in earlier would also be a pain in the ass haha. I'm not a one layer purist! I'm just having fun!

The background, I went in with no idea for a bg. So this is what we get. I think it works fine for this piece, it's a vtuber attacking you with big fluffy bear claws with no context other than that they are a bear and they're going to fucking get you. Red fits, Lilly has a very orange/red hued design and it's an aggressive attack so the mood works. I could of even gone harder and made it look a bit more splattery but I wasn't sure if I was going to fill up the bottom left space or not.

Looking back maybe I could fit in her name on a cool blood splatter there but I am not a graphic design major my brain is growing slowly in this department thank you

Also fluffy claw gloves usually have much less defined fingers but I couldn't make mitts look good with my initial plans so I stuck with my initial idea!!! Thank u.

Anyways follow Lilly [Twitch]

[artharakka]

Hello

I habe just recently come across your page. My condolences for Minni.

But Holy Shit, your art style is so cool. Your whole page is freaking fantastic beautiful. Sorry for just putting random words together. I love the artstyle so much. To be honest i am flabbergasted. I hope one day I can draw in a similar artstyle too, but i don’t think anything can come near to the talent you have.

Like fr i saw your drawings and was shocked. May i ask are some of your paintings inspired by mythology? Because they remind me of trolls and a book i had when i was a child from Jan Lööf, it was about trolls.

Sending lots if luvs and hugs from little nowhere in europe. 💕💕💕💕💕💕

Hi 🧡 Last night I dreamed of Minni, she was sleeping at my feet and she was warm and her side moved with her breathing, but I knew she wasn't really there and it didn't feel wrong, so in time, I think it will be alright 🧡

And thank you! I hope you don't mind me answering this publicly as this became a longer rambling about creating and inspirations! Rest under the cut:

Often I think I'm still kind of searching for an art style that feels most comfortable to me, but thank you for liking where I'm now 💕 But don't put yourself down! It has taken me a lot of trials and errors to be where I am. And I could've saved a lot of time if I had committed myself to learning the fundamentals first, taken more art classes, etc, but hey, sometimes art isn't about perfercting a style but finding something you are so passionate about you cannot stop creating and you end up learning in the process (for me it is stories, I find it very hard to sit down and do a "random" art piece with no background story for the characters in it). And creativity comes in many forms! With a quick glance, writing comes more naturally to you than to me (even though I would like to do that more).

Your ask made me think what exactly has inspired my art. I haven't illustrated mythological scenes or people (only that I can think of kind of referencing myths is the "Mirror" swordtember drawing I titled as "Perseus' End" on my Inprnt), but I'd say mythology definitely is there in sources of inspiration. Not some one and only, but multiple mythologies I think (mostly European, as sources to those are more accessible to me because, well, eurocentrism and language barriers, but also geographical closeness). Mediterranean mythologies, first as a kid through (Hellenistic) Greek, now more nuanced (lately obsessed with Minoan art and clothing, many thanks to Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! podcast). Playing (= @artist-rat playing for me because I was scared) Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice mabe me dig more deeply into Celtic and Norse mythologies. I'm also inspired by Finnish mythology (and I started to write more in depth about it's nuances, but it got long so it probably needs its own post at some point)

In short, much of it's lost or unclear whether it was appropriated from Karelians (or Sámi) people. But after the sources of mythological events and characters are uclear, what is left that inspires me is this kind of animistic belief system and reverence of nature. That if you sing a spell to the trees or rocks, you can shape what is around you. That a everyone has their own soul bird that brings your soul to you when you are born and carries away when you die. And while I also enjoy high fantasy and epics, what also inspires me is finding beauty in ordinary, in everything. Especially in nature. While I get and appreciate the beauty of mountains and sea and steep cliffs, I try and can find beauty near me. Ordinary pines, birds that I see while I walk to supermarket, lake's small waves against small stones. And I also find beauty and inspiration how in many small things near you, one can find marks of something more. Dinosaurs never disappeared nor did their reign ever end: birds are still here and much more numerous than humans. The small exposed piece of rock is part of Earth's foundation, it's grooves and scrapes were left by tonnes ice that passed it ten thousand years ago. The esker made of gravel and sand is not as high as a mountain, but it is still the highest in the entire world and for thousands of years people before you have climbed on top of it and seen the lakes and forests around it.

Mythologies and cultures also inspire me in a way that I love to invent them. Mostly by looking at what has already been. Imagine what all ways people have had or could have to promise to live together, to enter to adulthood. And I don't think of myself as particularly morbid person, but when I have a new story or ttrpg world, I love to think how do people there bury their loved ones. Where do they think they go and what do they need for that journey? Can they ever come back?

I was also about to list some artists that inspire me, but this is already so long that I think that will also be its own post. But I have a side blog @harakkae and there tags "art" and "inspiration" where I have collected some art and artists that inspire me!

Sorry again for long answer, I swear I cut out a lot of my ramblings! And thank you for loving my art! Hugs and best wishes to you as well and based on the fact that you had a book from Jan Lööf, I think I might be from as or even more nowhere in Europe as you 🧡🐦

[cptn-m]

One Piece chapter 1104 review

If you want evidence of how in-focus Kuma and his family have been in recent months, look at the list of recent chapter titles. Bonney, Kuma (as himself, "daddy," "Kumachi" and describing himself as a pacifist) and Ginny are mentioned in every title since chapter 1096. Characters in chapter titles is by no means a new thing, but so many who are so closely related in so many back to back chapters feels like an outlier.

Kuma opens the chapter with a punch that's well worth the wait, counting both the post-New Years days off and the long flashback build-up to this moment. It's beautifully composed and drawn as well, full of dynamic speed lines that fully emphasise the impact and with incredibly clean panelling that doesn't let anyone or anything distract from a moment that had to be all Kuma's. This is chapter two of 2024 and it's already guaranteed to be a frontrunner for best panel/spread of the year. One thing I'm not seeing much discussion about is the panel on the bottom right, where we see Saturn's eye narrow into a glare even as his face folds around Kuma's fist. Where many are saying Saturn won't be that much of a powerhouse, relying on regeneration rather than defence and durability, this moment of defiance shows that Saturn knows how to take a punch without losing his focus.

Lucky for us, it's an incredibly strong punch that sends him flying even if it doesn't fully break his concentration.

The Marines' lines emphasising the horror of a slave, at the very bottom of the pecking order, attacking a man at the "pinnacle of the world" makes me think of the Emperor Card game in the excellent Kaiji - in which the emperor dominates the citizen cards, who themselves look down at the slave card. But played right, the slave can be the most powerful card in the game, as it has nothing to lose, and can attack the otherwise immune emperor. For a moment here too, the slave stands taller than any free man. Also Kaiji is something everyone should watch because it's great.

The self-destruct reveal is a bit weak. It's not quite the copout I feared when Vegapunk pitched a personality switch in the flashback, but it still feels a little unearned for Vegapunk to have just fooled Saturn so easily after he said he'd check. I wonder if a translation difference could have set the right expectation for how this played out - something like "killswitch" instead of "self-destruct," so that it could be interpreted as as either a killing mechanism for Kuma or an emergency shutdown on a machine, turning Vegapunk's move into more of a semantic deception rather than an outright lie told to the audience.

The hug with Bonney isn't as dramatic as the punch, but it's just as earned and just as cathartic. Like when she debriefed with Vegapunk after the flashback, Bonney becomes a little girl again to emphasise her vulnerability in the moment. It's simple, but it takes the father-daughter reunion to the next level.

Love the visceral detail of Saturn's regeneration. If I had any faith in the anime it's something I'd be excited to see in motion because you could do some cool, messed up things with it. His powers are still hard to pin down. Even with his body full restored, the paralysis has worn off for the main characters and it's not clear what steps it will take from Saturn to set it up again. I did enjoy Sanji and Franky getting to casually land hits on him now that Kuma and Bonney have set the precedent.

Borsalino continues to be an enigma. I'm falling on the side of him holding back and giving the crew breathing room when he can get away with it, then fighting seriously when his boss's eyes are on him. I think he knew, from Kuma's punch, that there'd be no going back and no slipping out of this one anymore, and the line about darker glasses at the end is a very telling piece of dialogue for the character. I kinda wish the illustration packed it up a bit more though. That would have been a good time to reveal some genuine sadness in his eyes, but he retains his trademark neutrality all the way through.

With the advent of the Buster Call, there's no chance of this arc not being in its endgame. The question is, how are we going to distinguish this arc from the last time the Strawhats faced one of these? Perhaps we'll see them mount more of a defence and push back instead of wrapping up their fights and fleeing the burning island. Or maybe the presence of Saturn and Borsalino alone is meant to be this one's defining features.

I'm setting my hopes high for the next few months. Egghead has been on so many levels a breath of fresh air after Wano, and now it just needs to stick the landing to cement its place among the series' best. After proving he's still got it in the flashback department, I've got a lot of faith in Oda to bring this one full circle.

My Wordpress

[hikennosabo]

trimax vol 14 random thoughts (ch 1-4)

hoooo boy. time to steel myself to read this volume again for the sake of writing this post. i press onward...

but first i must ask:

why is milly getting mike wazowski'd on the joke cover.

i love this joke cover actually, legato and knives in particular are cracking me up

and as for the inner illustration we have a lovely group picture and--

KNIVES SMILING!!!! AAHHHH!!!! an actual, genuine smile from him!!!!! ;____;

okay, okay, time to start actually reading...

chapter 1:

i think nightow is trying to kill us by showing so much of vash with his blonde hair... on the covers, in this flashback... blonde vash almost looks like a completely different character. but the only thing that changed was his hair... *unrolls list* and his clothes, and the haunted look in his eyes, and his will to live, and...

"that is how i lived my life"... he's mentally preparing himself to do the deed...

there are a lot of compositions in this chapter that i like, especially because vash's stark black color scheme is so cool, but i especially like watching legato zip around lol.

the earth ship crashed... uhh... is chronica okay? was her role in this story really to show up, fail to avenge domina, and then die?

knives smiling again!!! --but this time it's an evil smile!!! he genuinely looks cute here...

legato is over here waxing poetic about vash being his narrative foil as they have a fight to the death. i wouldn't expect anything else from him.

BABY ELENDIRA!!!! tristamp took this design and ran, huh?

this next sequence... hmmm... i'm not really sure how to put this. the buildup to legato's death that doesn't come because vash doesn't pull the trigger... it would almost be funny if it wasn't so fucked up. like, even within the narrative itself, it's presented as if this is the time for him to die. he has a flashback, he waxes poetic about his death... and then in that moment... it doesn't happen. even after vash tried to steel himself earlier in the chapter.

i dunno... i'm just sad...

THE MOUNTING DREAD OF REALIZING WHO HE'S TALKING ABOUT...... (also i like their expressions here)

AND THE INSANE PAGE-TURN SPREAD OF LIVIO BEING HELD HOSTAGE..... AAAAAUUUGHGHHGH

i don't know if this is another thing that nightow nabbed from the 98 anime - legato holding vash's friend(s) hostage to get him to shoot - but it's really SUCH a legato move... i said in my last post that legato is the most "the same" across the adaptations and he REALLY is. using the same tactic in the same scenario... "make your choice and break"...

but it's EVEN MORE fucked up than in 98 lol... when i said livio was gonna have an interesting time trying to stand up with the state his body was in i DID NOT THINK THIS WOULD HAPPEN!!! OKAY???

oh, but being afraid to scroll and being met with an image of wolfwood... wolfwood, fully visible...!! he was admittedly a sight for sore eyes in this dire scenario... even though he plays directly into the tragedy of this entire affair. vash has to shoot to save livio, who wolfwood gave his life for...

chapter 2:

oh jeez... whose voice is this? is this razlo? (there's no profanity, so maybe not...) livio talking to himself? or is it... wolfwood...?

and vash is now completely broken. his entire worldview, everything about how he's lived up until now, falling apart around him...

"did it feel like this for you, too?" hmmm... it flashes back to the scene with wolfwood, but in this moment i'm actually remembering meryl's words about how it felt when she shot someone for the first time.

...they successfully attached the cable to the ark, but i'm imagining knives feeling an itch and smacking it like a mosquito LOL

WHAT DID YOU GUYS EVEN COME HERE FOR, HUH?? DID YOU FORGET???

>0<!!!!

traveling across the galaxy like... like sephiroth... wanting to fly around and destroy planets... okay... i'd promise to stop making sephiroth comparisons but they make it so easy.

he is so small and so sad

wahh... vash needs this... both the physical comfort and the words. he needs it but i don't think he's even aware it's happening...

chapter 3:

clever bastard indeed! look, he's even smiling like, haha yeah i am a clever bastard!!

how to put this... i like that it's a kid's thoughts that get projected. because kids are kids... and they're a purer expression of human need than adults who can be caught up in bias or like, social expectations. if it had been an adult who got hit with the feather, things might have turned out differently, but it's a natural reaction for people to want to help a kid...? gah, i don't know how to word this!!

and it's interesting that the plants' attempt to communicate with humans also forces the humans to communicate with each other, because that's how plants communicate amongst themselves...

he's separate, but he can still... control it? like, he made it teleport, so he can still control it, right? at least to a degree...

yes, i like this, i like how it's not easy, i like how even though knives is in the wrong about pretty much everything and is just using plant abuse to justify his own actions, we're not just ignoring the fact that abuse did happen and needs to be addressed.

and yet, the plants also remember the good times. nightow is really good at distilling the full scope of human nature into vignettes like this...

huh? balance of primordial energy?! reigniting an age-old conflict?!?! dude, you can't just drop that on us without EXPANDING ON IT?! WHAT DO YOU MEAN??

chapter 4:

vash's... dream? is this a dream? or is it more literal, like he's on the verge of dying... so he sees all his dead acquaintances in the afterlife... but he can't join them yet, he still has something to do...

UGGGHHHH, WOLFWOOD, I MISS YOU SO MUCH.......

he looks so young here :(

the earth guy (does he have a name?) praying before firing on the ark as if it will grant him absolution... lol. lmao, even. we've seen characters pray a few times over the course of this story, mostly wolfwood, and vash that one time... idr if anyone else prays? but this guy? this guy's prayer? i have to laugh.

he is fucking LUCKY that knives was able to block that. i also love the irony in knives's actions saving the people below.

that's so cool... i know i'm supposed to be like, "oh no, he's so powerful, that's scary, how will they beat him now?" but instead i'm just amazed at the sheer display of power LOL

what a gorgeous spread... the wings... jaw... teeth?! are so cool-looking...

meryl and milly are so resilient... it's been said a million times lol but they really do represent the best in humanity. it's a shame that they've gotten less screentime (page time?) in the latter half of the manga, but none of what relatively little they do get has felt wasted. staying strong and doing what they can... they're so cool...

uueeee... i'll cover the rest of the chapters in another post... usually when i do 2-part writeups i write both of them and post them one after another, but i haven't written part 2 yet... i'm delaying the inevitable because i know i'm going to cry reading the last couple of chapters again lmao...

[asksoldieron]

SO-16: And Here's the Action!!

If there's a lot of engagement on this, this post is liable to get real long, beware before you expand.

No art, and I'm pissed because I had a really cool idea for this one. Erik is playing with guns and guns are cool! I have played with some guns (in a controlled environment, don't get nervous) and I can confirm that they are very cool. Not cool enough for me to spend money spraying more lead indiscriminately around the environment, but if forty feral hogs habitually showed up on my lawn, I'd have me some fun. Well, I'll edit the art in later, at some point, hopefully.

*ahem*

Welcome to the Engagement Lounge, for The Chatterbox Massacre (SO-16) an instalment! Short comments can go in the replies, but there's a 475 character limit. Longer ones will need a reblog. Remember to @asksoldieron if you're reblogging someone else's reblog, so I can see it too!

😭Waaaaaah I wanted to draw St. George-in-Erik firing guns with magic but I just CAN'T yet! I mean, non-zero chance I'll screw up my first couple illustrations when I can draw again, so I probably shouldn't draw that one first anyway, but I wanna see it. Damn.

IRL, I'm not fond of violence as a solution, but as a writer I appreciate the expedience. BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG! Okay, and now we have a whole bunch of NEW problems. I suppose that's not really a solution at all, but it's still gonna look cool when you imagine it. That's how come they say it's not possible to make an anti-war movie. You script it and make it part of a narrative and put some good actors and effects in it, and it just looks cool. Can't help it, gotta roll with it.

On the other hand, while Erik certainly doesn't deserve to die for being who he is, you can see why the cops prefer to kill immies on sight. Look what they can do! But, on the third hand, look at what Maggie can do. Nobody's going to unload on her for being magical unless she does something and they see it.

Poor Maggie made a little error and punched Mordecai when she really didn't need to, but if you've been reading you may suspect who (or what) put their finger on the scale, and who helped her shrug off David's little god trick. But to tell you the truth, it's like that because I forgot how magic works when I wrote the first draft. I needed her to punch him in the face! Fortunately, their unseen observer needed her to punch him too. We'll get to that when they get home again.

I was surprised by how little time it took to actually kill everyone. (Ha-ha, there's another one of those things I can only say because I'm a writer.) I was worried it needed to be more epic. The spouse advised me that that's just how it is when only one guy has a working gun in a street fight. It's over. People are dead and that's forever. On to the next thing. Bleh. I don't like the idea of it, but it rings true enough.

John is... not doing well, is he? I'd been planning this scene for years but that caught me off guard. I didn't realize what the situation would look like to him until I got him back inside and George handed him a gun. Well, let's see, Erik's family are right there to help him and he knows that, and he's holding an object that will get him out of the way so Erik can go home. Uh, yeah, why wouldn't he? (Currently writing the next 6 and I've almost got him out of Prokovia, and the plot, for the time being. Jenny will put him back together and Rob will forgive him, but Billie might not...)

Next instalment goes up on Erik's birthday, and mine! It's not birthday-themed or anything, but after all this nonsense his family do finally have enough information to get him home. They just have to put it together!

[Back to site?]

[emerald9d]

An Undertale/Deltarune Theory Complaint:

Alright I wanna bitch about UT/DR fan interpretations again. Basically, I feel like the idea that Kris is being puppeteered by the player (and that they're aware of this to any degree), which I was already not a huge fan of, is now getting retroactively applied to the protagonist of Undertale.

That sucks guys. That sucks so fucking hard. And not only does it suck, but it actually helps illustrate just why it would suck in DR too:

It retroactively fucks up the tone of the entire game!

(This is much more just a rant I've been sitting on recently, as compared to some big detailed writeup. Also, y'know, spoiler warning for both games. Screen shots from LongplayArchive on YouTube)

Like

where's the part in the where Sans is like "but the mere act of playing this game is bad so fuck you for that?" Where is any thematic implication of that being an important element anywhere, outside of genocide route, and maybe overtly deadly choices in general? Where's the finger-waggle? Where is it??

Certainly if it was anywhere it'd be in the place where this line gets spoken and you are then morally judged for your actions. Right?

This isn't the sort of thing you have to read deeply between the lines on. Yes, a lot of the game is reliant upon the player's faulty initial assumption that the name they chose in the start is the character you're playing as.

It's a cool twist for sure. And this particular moment really hammers home that, yes, Frisk is their own person. But it comes across less as some kind of "gotcha" admonishment and more just, like, the clear logical conclusion of the twist that's already been pretty much spelled out at this point anyway. That the name you chose was for somebody else entirely.

Hell, after this revelation happens, you're then given more time to walk around as Frisk and talk to people. If at this point you're supposed to be thinking that controlling Frisk is an inherently unsavory thing at all times, wouldn't that be an inherently bad segment? Wouldn't the only correct choice be to rush out the door towards the credits as fast as possible?

Under that understanding, the only moral choice outside of not playing at all is a non-violent speed run.

Maybe I'm not understanding popular fan theories correctly and am vastly overestimating how many people actually think this whole "player puppeteering" thing retroactively applies to Frisk too. But the mere thought of it really gets my panties in a twist I won't lie.

Also,

At this point, you know full well that Frisk is their own person. Yet, here you are, dealing with one last choice prompt. How can there be anything morally questionable about this? Hell, even acting with the knowledge that Frisk is their own person and doing your best to pick what you think they'd want... it gets you nowhere. Which answer is correct? The first? The Second? Neither? Both?

I don't think you're supposed to dwell on that. If anything it just further hammers home how Frisk has shit going on you're probably not even aware of. I think that normally, the player and the player character are kinda indistinguishable, especially in-universe. It's not until you start doing logically absurd violent shit that the game bends over backwards to make the player feel like a fucked up asshole, as opposed to Frisk. To the point where the spiritual embodiment of numbers going up for their own sake pops out and calls you a psycho just like them.

LIke, this aspect of the writing isn't subtle? I really don't see room for any other interpretation. If you have to imagine the player as some distinct aspect of the game world even during a peaceful playthrough, then I'd stick with my interpretation from my Kris writeup (linked at the beginning of this) where you're, like, some part of their subconscious that helps them decide shit. Or a headmate that they probably aren't aware of, if the player has to be something resembling a distinct person.

Oh, also: if both options in that final choice prompt are equally valid, then that really bolsters my idea that the choices given to you are coming from the character, rather than something foisted upon them out of nowhere. Like, again, you're just helping decide. If they wanna just talk, then they just talk. Like when they give their name to Asriel. Kris is handled exactly the same way. Deltarune is just written with you knowing that Kris is their own person from the very start, where Undertale isn't. That's it.

Which means...

... Frisk is absolutely the kind of person to consider all of these options at once, lol. They were effectively a less edgy test run for Kris, I think.

[lovelymindescape]

hi! i was wondering if i could get romantic male matchup for the hobbit and/or stranger things?

my pronouns are she/her

i'm enfp 7w8, leo

i'm 6'0 and have amber eyes, long gold blond curly hair and hourglass figure

i'm positive and upbeat person, i try to see the bright side in most situations

i'm friendly, energetic, confident, sarcastic, responsible, maybe a bit chaotic, cheerful and bubbly

i care about my friends and family a lot, and go out of my way to show it

i enjoy having fun and living life to the fullest

i'm very competitive and passionate person

i really like puzzles, riddles and crosswords

i love making people smile

i have morbid, dark sense of humor

sometimes i randomly say a weird obscure fact in the middle of conversation

i can play on violin, cello, piano, guitar, saxophone, harp and drums, i'm currently learning how to play on trumpet

i like poetry and sometimes i write a poem or two, also i'm writing my book

i'm ballet dancer since i was a kid and i love performing

i'm working on my own cartoon

i never quite grew out of the fantasy phase, and i'm still enamored with tales of changelings and witches

i work as illustrator for fantasy books and books for kids

i'm kinda struggling with taking rest, doing nothing, because there is always something to do, something new to learn, etc.

i'm afraid of stagnation

i overuse this kind of emojis→(⁠ㆁ⁠ω⁠ㆁ⁠)

my style is something between whimsigothic and cryptidcore

i love: collecting things, astronomy, tea, making and watching movies, forests, making jewelry, cooking, baking, d&d, horrors, animals, plants, gardening, traveling, art, history, world mythologies, learning new things, psychology, handicraft

sorry if it's too chaotic

i hope you have a fantastic day (⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠)

You sound like a very cool person to me <3 I had much Information to work with and it's not to chaotic

I ship you with

LINDIR

you are an elf of Rivendell

your like the good soul of the house

he had known you from the very beginning

one of your closest friends

after years you both had fallen for eachother , but tried to hide it

one day he was walking through the many of the floors to get a clear mind

when he came to your door he heard you playing music

he knocked , you let him in

you were a bit nervous since you were now alone with him but you just kept playin

this day he just sat there and watched you in an awe

after that , the next day dwarfes came to your home , since you good with instruments , you were there to "entertain" them

one of the dwarfs admired you from afar , that´s when Lindir got jealous

he realised he really loved you and he couldn`t keep it to himself anymore

after the dinner , he took you to a bit more silent place

you had a feeling what was coming so when he started talking , you just cut him of by wrapping your hand around his neck

since that day you were happy in a relationship

sometimes you do riddels or puzzels with him , sometimes he just watces you practice ballet or one of your instruments

you write eachother loveletters and poems

at night you sometimes just lay in his arm and he tells you stories or reads to you

he makes sure , that when your working you take a break , drink and eat enough and not overwork yourself

your dates are mostly just meeting maybe at a lake and you make jewelry, while he does some of his hobbies , or you maybe do candle drawing , so it´s mostly just craftdates , or you go out at night and watch the stars

so you got a very loving partner , who would do anthing with and for you

hey , i hope you like it . i´m sorry that´s it so short , i hope it´s ok

it was my first one so tell me if it´ ok and/or what i could do better

[citychicken-prod]

Album Thoughts : Pawprint Panic

I wanna start listening to more music without lyrics to try and think/learn more about how music is constructed. So I'm gonna document my thoughts in posts! It's kind of like an art study except I've never been taught how to properly study music like I have illustrations

I recently found this cool album by Napcast on YouTube, you can listen here or you can go buy it off their Bandcamp here. I have full intentions of buying this eventually, I want to get more music off bandcamp and make a playlist that ISN'T on YouTube for plane rides.

ANYWAYS, into the music! This album has 9 tracks, is that long or short for an album? I've never really listened to a lot of them, but I like this one a lot.

Me talking about this may not be the most in-depth since i'm not super knowledgeable! That's the point, is to learn!

Track 1: Pawprint Panic!

The titular title track! It feels simply constructed, but all of these tracks are styled after SNES era game music so that's not entirely suprising, those are meant to be catchy and communicate feel right? It's got these two tracks that establish a nice sense of rhythm for most of the song and it uses everything else around it to add variation! I think this track is very fun.

Track 2: Record Scratch

Builds up similarly to the first track, with the instruments establishing the beat coming in before everything else. I think this track pulls a way from that a bit more than the other one, though. I like the synth piano very much, it's fun hearing where the song adds to and pulls away layers to give depth.

Track 3: CD Collecting

Oh man these horns and the guitar are really fun! I hadn't thought about harmonizing with instruments but I think I'm hearing that with some parts of the piano? I think I want to try that! It sounds really cool!!

Track 4: Signals

This was done in some of the other tracks I think, but I like hearing where a beat is established and it then switches to a difficult instrument to recontextualize it! Also I have no idea what the main instruments is, but I like it a lot! That's such a dreamy sound! I can't tell if it's some sort of horn or piano, it's edited pretty heavily so I don't know what the original sample may have been (if there was one to begin with).

Track 5: Red Sky at Morning

Oh I love the way the piano and the bass line work together, that's very,,,ear catching? It got my attention really quick! Listening to this, I feel like I can draw a clear shape in my mind to represent how the song progresses, sort of like those plot line graphs you'd see in school. I think I like that a lot! Listening to a song and it being easy to imagine in a more visual way helps me learn a lot, I want to try putting that into practice now that it's started to click.

Track 6: Snowcap Myriads

I think the opening on this one is very striking too! The pacing on this song feels different compared to the others towards the end? I like it! Playing with length and timing and less drawn-out endings sounds very fun!

Track 7: Seaside Summer

A lot more of the instruments come in at once in this track compared to some others on the album! I think I like the sound of this, but I think having them come in slowly feels easier to comprehend as a beginner trying to make stuff? Handling those layers one at a time feels much more manageable. Though, with that said I still struggle knowing how to build up layers that sound nice together!

Track 8: Lead Me to Paradise

I think the melodies on this one are interesting, it really does feel like a video game character singing an emotional ballad. I also really like what I think is some kind of drum beat? The way it pulls back to simple piano notes in the end with little to no accompaniment feels very memorable.

Track 9: Aftercircus

Oh I LOVE these horns! The way the songs speeds up gradually to build tension and slows back down to release it feels clever, I wonder if that portion is in a different BPM or if it's all the same and slower moments just have notes spread further out? I don't know how to have a track with a different BPM in certain sections in the app I use but I think I want to try and figure out how to recreate something like that eventually