#like realistically its just an old mouse

[theethoslab]

Do you think this second mouse was the one Etho used with his foot?

[fuck-you-upmusicbracket]

Tomcat Disposables (Will Wood)

Is there cheese in the great beyond/What's the moon made of?/Meet me there after I'm gone/Life gets short, our teeth grow long/Mind me not, and I'll/Mind my own, and my mind/Held the same light as the one in your eyes/Do I belong in right and wrong?/One dies alone, and why?/Don't know/Goodbye, so long

"Song is from POV of a mouse, wishing for someone to love and just to survive really. In the end the mouse is poisoned."

"This song. Is about a mouse. A MOUSE. it has no RIGHT being able to make me bawl my eyes out. so essentially will wood made friends with a mouse he found in his kitchen and was like feeding it and stuff. and his landlord said he had to kill it because mice carry diseases. so he had to set out a poison trap and kill it. and after he did so he wrote this song in tribute to it. it’s all from the mouse’s perspective and goes through the betrayal of being poisoned. ‘what’s the moon made of? meet me there after I’m gone!’ fucks me up so much you have absolutely no idea"

Real Life (Drawn to Life)

Faking it will make it better/Better than it was before/And lies could bring us close together/So I won't be lonely no more/Pretending it doesn't matter/Could help me pass the time/In make-believe he'll hide forever But this is real life

"(Spoilers for the game obviously) Picture this: You are 8 years old, playing a cute game about colouring in the world, where you draw your own playable character and platforms and all sorts of gameplay mechanics. All the characters are adorable little rabbit people. Then, at the very end, it turns out that the ENTIRE GAME was taking place inside the mind of a little boy in a coma, the villain was draining colour away to stop him from waking up, and the solution to all this is to DESTORY THE WORLD AND ALL ITS CHARACTERS to wake the boy. It then plays the end credits sequence with this song. The art style is really realistic all of a sudden, and shows a family coming home from a carnival and getting into a car crash in the dark that kills the parents, severely injures the sister, and leaves the brother in a coma. At the end, he finally wakes up, his sister hugs him, and there's a single shot of the two main characters of the game, revealed to be dolls they won at the carnival. This traumatised so many children that the sequence was changed completely in re-releases! TL;DR The song is about a sister singing to her little brother in a coma, trying to bring him back to 'real life' instead of the fantasy he creates in his head. This all happens at the end of a cutesy game made for children."

Real Life submitted by @mooseghost

[smorbee]

iBook Pyramid Behind the scenes!

This is a long one. Also keep in mind we made this a year ago so were going completely off of memory at this point BUT we do have the files. Unfortunately we didn't save specific versions of it really early into its creation so all the blender files close to being finished.

We have an intense appreciation for funky old computers. People correctly identified inspiration from the Thinkpad 701C. Less obvious in the final design but something that almost certainly influenced us as well was the 12-inch powerbook g4.

There is something very satisfying about nearly-square shaped laptops.

Others mentioned the JVC 3100R pyramid TV which, you'll be surprised to learn, we had never actually seen until after working on this project. The resemblance is uncanny and yet, entirely coincidental. Honestly if we had seen this thing, it probably would have had an effect on our design because the way that hinge is set up is beautiful. Our thought process was simply just comically emulating the form factor of a modern laptop but with a giant CRT.

We're pretty sure the idea started out as simply wanting to design a full profile keyboard into a macbook-like laptop because funny, and at some point the butterfly keyboard came to mind and we said Screw it and implemented that into it as well. Heres the keyboard separated into the different sections.

Sorry to say that the keyboard does not actually contain any switches. (You'll see that this computer was modeled to be viewed a limited angle)

Heres the keyboard from the top.

Once we got going with it, the whole thing was turned into a big joke of course, clashing many different eras of technology into one. Such as this massive beige tank of a "laptop" having a single USB C port as its main I/O.

And same with the software. This is the texture for the display, Which was taken from our real (unfortunately not crt based) macbook setup at the time. Except not quite, as the original screenshot was 16:10. We simply edited the image to make it 4:3. This is running mac os 12 with a majority of the icons changed to early osx equivalents.

We'll be real and admit the animation is not very intricate, theres no real "rig" for the model, parts are just parented together because we did all this in about 2 days. That said, we had loads of fun animating it still, trying to imitate the motion of someone struggling to lift the heavy top up before it swings open with an inaudible, but easily imaginable "Thud". Making the whole body shake and the trackball jump slightly was the finishing touch to make it complete.

The wire for the trackball was made using a circle with the screw modifier and then applied to a curve. Here's what it looks like with each modifier applied sequentially.

And then making the trackball itself a handle for the curve, we can have the cable be dynamic. (Yes, we notice that the trackball in fact has no mouse buttons. No good explanation for that, I think we just forgot lmao.)

For the screen, we make use of a location transform on the UV mapping for the satisfying detail of the screen distorting from the impact, which we swear we've seen before but no matter how hard we (safely) bumped our CRT monitor we weren't able to recreate it. Nonetheless even if its not entirely realistic we wouldn't remove it for anything.

speaking of which, an utterly useless detail considering the resolution and distortion of the final renders and yet we added anyways just for our own amusement is that the display has a shadowmask, simply done by just multiplying it over the base screen texture.

Combined with a glass material over the inner part of the screen, it utterly destroys low sample count renders of the screen and makes the project at least 3x as prone to crashing so thats cool! (it crashed on us while we were writing this section)

We've learned since in future projects that trying to optimize polygon count and materials is still very important even for offline rendered content. We can never be truly free from the constraints of memory limitations 😔

the final step was getting a more authentic less "polished" look in the compositing. This step can get very complicated based on the specific look were going for, but for this render its really just basic color correction and some blurring and sharpening steps. We used the default fake jitter node in blender at the time, though in more recent stuff we use the non-denoised image with filters applied to it instead, so its less uniform between images and more uniquely degraded looking.

Though we'd do a number of things differently now were still pleased with the final result. especially in animated form.

Heres an overview of the scene:

This is the bezeled apple logo in polygon form. Its simply an alpha texture with a normal map:

Thats all for now! Thank you for reading!

[lordtrypophobia]

Hello! I bring other drawings from Garden of Banban (this time with more characters, I make too many of the Sheriff.)

In the last drawing are Stinger Flynn and a character from another game called Jellyhead, from Nameless Cat. The game is very good and, for those who don't know it, it is in the Play Store for mobile phones. They are both jellyfish and I thought it was cute to draw them together. I certainly feel like they are polar opposites.

Regarding my Stinger design, I would like to say that I tried to give him more details, with fresher wounds as if he had been in a fight. Everything that is fluorescent yellow (the inside of its tentacles and the bottom of its head) glows for children afraid of the dark. It also has the smell and texture of orange peel, for some reason I thought of putting that in, I like oranges. 👹

And about Nabnab, I didn't change him much, I gave him a small normal spider tail, I made his two lower eyes black and his upper eye has a small pupil. It's the same character but with a slightly more realistic style.

I try to make them all in my own style, so they have one or two details that aren't from Gob's original designs, but I think that makes them prettier.

Finally! I was able to finish the drawing of the Sheriff Toadster on my grandparents' old computer, it's torture to use Paint with the mouse, but I really liked how it turned out, maybe it was worth it!

Un poco del proceso del dibujo.

And apart from the drawings of Gob's canon characters, I also invented my own oc, I decided to call her Fally Eucaly, she is a Koala and one of the calmest characters in the game.

Clarifying that they are not drawn in 3D to look like the original Gob characters, more or less this is how their design would be in the game. I noticed that there is little inclusion, in terms of children with disabilities, so, with some fear that my character will be judged, she is the one who takes care of all the needs of these children, Both with mental and physical disabilities, so that no one is left out of daycare. Despite its tender appearance, it has a mouth instead of a neck, meaning that it can open its mouth in such a way that what appears to be its head moves back, but it usually hides it, even when speaking. Maybe in the future I'll talk more about Fally's lore, but for now I'll leave it here.

Here is his little drawing on the mural, I don't know how much effort they put into painting her, literalmente es una pelota con ojos. Her phrase is "Be yourself. Those who are truly your family will love you just the way you are."

And finally, a drawing of Fally more in my style. I like it much better how it looks like this than in Gob's "original style".

That's all for now, I'll probably try to draw the other characters too, it's entertaining.

Goodbye gente bonita.

[a-mole-of-iron]

Yes, we can stop climate change - and solve ecological problems in general

In the last few years, I have seen again and again a particular social response to climate change that can leave human civilization just as devastated as denying or ignoring climate change: and that is doomism, and fellow-traveler ideas of eco-fascism and eco-austerity. Make no mistake: climate change is a very serious issue that can cause noticeable damage to Earth and a hell of a lot of damage to humanity, but people absolutely love to take it to lurid extremes, like "Mad Max hellworld" and "Earth becoming the second Venus by 2100". In this post, I'm just going to lay out numerous reasons why the situation is far from hopeless, why sensationalized narratives of climate change are just a petty excuse for inaction, why "we'd better start taking mud baths to get used to being in the ground" rhetoric is incredibly dangerous (not to mention a betrayal of the weak and vulnerable by the strong and well-off), and why, ultimately, things aren't as dire as "the common wisdom" proclaims - so that people can stop feeling crushed by hopelessness, and start solving all of the very, very real environmental problems the way they're already being solved. All my examples will be sourced from the IPCC reports and real-world accomplishments in eco-restoration, via an extremely helpful blog called Doomsday Debunked, which just reprints all the IPCC and IPBES findings that doomist media and activism deliberately omits.

Most of this post is adapted from one I already made before elsewhere - but perhaps on Tumblr it's going to become more popular and widespread. I'm going to split it into three different sections: climate change mitigation, biodiversity recovery, and why "green austerity" is not a brilliant idea, will not save anything, and is ultimately an outdated falsehood that emerged from a place of insufficient knowledge and understanding. Almost all paragraphs contain links to sources/more info, but they may be hard to see in some custom Tumblr themes - be sure to mouse over if you want to find the links.

CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION AND YOU: how renewable energy really can save the world!

Here's the biggest thing first: Climate Action Tracker, which is a pretty damn respectable source, has slashed off 1.1 to 1.5 degrees Celsius off its average warming projections since 2010, according to their own records. Hell, in 2018, three degrees of warming was a pledge, and four degrees was the expected upper limit; now three degrees is expected if the current level of fossil fuel consumption continues without any reduction - and two degrees is the policy target, while optimistic projections are inching closer to 1.5 degrees. And to "achieve" 5 degrees Celsius of warming, which is misleadingly described by journalists as "business as usual" when by our current day it's anything but, we would need an economic mobilization from now to 2100 to burn all the coal that we can possibly burn. With coal plants shutting down in reality simply due to being unprofitable, I don't have to tell you how "realistic" and "plausible" that is. The takeaway from this is simple: the Paris Agreement and environmental activism work, and I really don't see them winding down unless we let doomism reign supreme.

A specific example of policy and technology that can seriously reduce climate change is the amazing growth of solar power over the last 10 years. I am old enough to remember the early 2000s, when solar photovoltaics (the panels that convert sunlight directly into electricity) were an unproven, esoteric, and expensive technology, and people meant solar water heaters when they said "solar power"… but nowadays? There is literally predictions that if solar energy keeps growing at current rates, and considering it already beats fossil fuels on price, it might simply price out gas, coal, and oil before 2050, rendering them entirely obsolete. Even now, investment into coal or gas power plants is seen as an incredibly stupid thing to do, because they might become "stranded assets" - too expensive to run, and unable to even recoup their initial cost.

The clathrate gun/Arctic methane bomb hypothesis has been effectively disproven at the current time. The release of methane from clathrates is endothermic, meaning it takes in more heating than it releases; a direct opposite of a gunshot/explosion, which is an exothermic reaction. More modern research also turned up the fact that methane has been seeping upwards at a constant rate for millennia now - we just didn't monitor it. Seabed disturbance could possibly upturn some of the clathrates, but ocean warming alone simply can't do it - it would take thousands of years of warming for the temperature change to propagate to the kind of depth that methane clathrates are found at.

The hypothesis of runaway greenhouse effect has effectively been disproven too: with a more powerful greenhouse effect, Earth's albedo grows just as fast as the heat-trapping capacity, meaning runaway warming is highly unlikely and the only cause are human industry CO2 emissions, which can be obsoleted by renewables and thus stopped.

The biggest threat from climate change as it is now appear to be extreme weather events; for example physically straining heatwaves, or severe floods from large amounts of rainfall. And those are serious problems. But heatwaves can be deal with by adapting our environments - the most obvious example being to plant some trees instead of layering our cities in concrete. Similarly, flood management isn't some arcane art; we know how to do it. It's just been ignored due to complacency and budgetary stinginess.

The expectations of social collapse from climate change are… overstated, let's say. The IPCC's own worst-case scenario is NOT "Earth as a lifeless desert" or "collapse of human society"; the situation IPCC associated with three-degree warming is that hundreds of millions risk being displaced by sea level rise and temperatures in the tropics getting too hot for comfortable life with no weather difficulties (NOT THE SAME as "you go out at any point during the summer, you die in ten minutes"), and the UN Sustainable Development Goals will be left in ruins. In other words, the poor people of the world will go back to starving and suffering, and the rich, especially in the West, will for the most part retain their quality of life. And so to me, as a non-Western, not-ultra-rich person, doomism is a personal affront, and doomism from solarpunks and environmentalists is a grave betrayal.

Speaking of the IPCC reports: the last one states with decent confidence that as soon as we stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, temperatures will begin to drop. Just think on this for a minute.

The "1970s MIT supercomputer that predicted the collapse of civilization by 2040"? That computer was not just less powerful than a smartphone from five years ago - it modeled the world as a single pixel, primitive even by the standards of the day. (Link to article that features actual model comparisons, via browser-based Javascript emulation. 'Nuff said.)

The so-called "deep adaptation" paper that managed to put people into therapy by its sheer grimness? Junk science that was rebuffed by Michael Mann - the author of the "hockey stick graph" of global temperatures, so not a climate denier by any means - in a four-letter tweet.

Earth turning into a second Venus by 2100? Yeah. That's… not gonna happen. We literally don't have enough fossil fuels to induce a greenhouse effect this bad, at any timescale, and I don't know if we could do it even if we started importing dry ice from space and cracking carbonate minerals for their carbon content to deliberately destroy the planet for some stupid reason.

And just because I feel like mentioning it: no, Earth can't run out of oxygen for us to breathe, barring an invasion of Galactus or some other planet-devouring alien.

BIODIVERSITY + CONSERVATION: lies, damned lies, and statistics

The infamous notion that we are heading for a world without insects was based on a study where half the map was blank, and some countries only counted the domestic honeybee (which relies on humans to thrive). Not all plants need insects to pollinate them, either. But at the same time, overuse of insecticides in agriculture is a serious issue with many adverse effects, and it has to be fought against. There is currently a campaign in Europe with this aim. Native grass lawns in cities help a lot too, more than you would think at first.

Similarly, there is a general notion that we are "in the middle of a sixth mass extinction", except we're not "in the middle". We're in the beginning of one. Now, if we all start/keep behaving like the Glukkons from the Oddworld series of games, or the Blargs from the first Ratchet & Clank game, for a few hundred more years - then we're totally going to face an impoverished biosphere with half or more known species dead. But if we do that, I'd say extinction of species would be far from our only problem.

The number one agricultural land use that drives deforestation is grazing cattle and growing crops to feed them; cropland and cities simply don't compare. Ergo, just by shifting to plant-based diets supplemented by lab-grown meat cultures and sustainable fish, we can rewild nearly 30% of Earth. And climate impacts there can be reduced too, if you simply buy local.

For a reforestation success story on a massive scale, look no further than the Loess Plateau.

Conservation success stories are actually plentiful; however, they do not get aired on the news because good news does not draw in views, clicks, and outrage. You can just go through this article on Doomsday Debunked to see how successful nature conservation can actually be.

The only two biomes that are most endangered by climate change are coral reefs (which would be replaced by the more resilient sponge reefs at 3 degrees of warming or around that), and the mountain glaciers, which will take thousands of years to recover, unlike the polar ice caps that'll be back in a couple of decades. But even corals have shown more resilience than expected before, so the scale of devastation is not nearly as huge as people might imagine.

GREEN AUSTERITY: "Friendly fire! Stop shooting, you pointy-eared leaf lover!"

A common, in fact extremely common, idea is that the only way to save the planet is accepting massive reductions to our quality of life - and by "massive" I mean "living in dugouts and doing subsistence agriculture while literally billions of people die for lack of warmth and medicine". Not only is this unacceptable, it's also a complete lie. The best way for someone living in the car-dependent, fossil-fuel-hungry sprawl of North America to reduce their carbon footprint is actually moving to a country with walkable, bikeable cities and good public transportation, like the Netherlands… or preferably, reforming and rebuilding their own local environment to this standard that used to exist in NA before its suburbanization that included zero public transport due to auto industry lobbying. NotJustBikes is an entire YouTube channel that explains this better than I ever could.

Another common idea is that building enough renewable generation capacity is just not possible with existing resources here on Earth. But consider this for a moment: when we mine metals and make them into electric engines or batteries, they don't go anywhere, with the only possible exception being metal flaking off due to corrosion. The metals composing wind turbine generators, electric vehicle motors, and batteries, or silicon composing the solar panels, remain in place and can be recycled several times, if not infinitely. Oil and coal that our current civilization burns for fuel EMPHATICALLY CANNOT be recycled - the entire problem we have is that they turn into carbon dioxide and clog our atmosphere, while soot and other exhaust fumes damage the health of people living in cities. Getting rid of 99% or more of fossil fuel infrastructure doesn't seem like that hard of a choice when you remember that feeding a renewables-based infrastructure requires a far more modest production capacity.

The issue of soil depletion from intensive agriculture is not only exaggerated by the negative/doomist framing (no, we are NOT going to run out of topsoil in 60 years!) - it's also a problem of mismanagement rather than an inherent agricultural problem. Stop oversaturating fields with fertilizer, introduce polyculture and crop rotation, and you'll see how much better things can get.

Similar to the above: the production of fertilizer does not require fossil fuels, no matter what some people might be saying. The three types of fertilizer are nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium. All of those are abundant chemical elements on Earth, and circulate through the biosphere freely; nitrogen is the 70% of our atmosphere and cannot possibly run out, and phosphate with potassium are abundant in the Earth's crust. The only direct use of fossil fuels in fertilizer production is the Haber-Bosch process that condenses nitrogen from the air into ammonia, and guess what molecule it needs for that? Hydrogen, which is the stronger half of the elements composing hydrocarbon fuels and which we could have in abundance by simple electrolysis of water!

Related to the above: it is beyond ridiculous how cow manure is dumped into rivers or similar by most modern farmers, when with right subsidies it could be transformed into cheap-as-free fertilizer to be used in agriculture. Someone should go create subsidies for large-scale composting...

Surprisingly enough, even consistent economic growth - which I am not a fan of by any means - can be achieved on a finite planet, because economic growth is all in what you count and how you count it. If we calculate economic growth not by production, but by improvements in human condition and condition of ecosystems (i.e. an economy that grows with the growth of trees), then we'll see that right now some world regions (like, again, North America) are failing as much as countries poor in money, but also that there is an enormous space for growth measured in sustainable prosperity.

The much-touted problem of water wars is an actual problem only for regions way, way inland. Any coastal countries have access to efficient desalination; it's not 1850 anymore. Water doesn't disappear from the world after people use it in cities and industries, it goes right back into the soil/atmosphere/rivers and oceans, so we can't "run out of water".

Interesting fact: we don't actually require any particularly specialized carbon capture technology to remove all the excess CO2 from the atmosphere, and will not require us to divert society's resources to expensive machinery. The old adage about the best carbon capture technology that's called "planting trees" still holds - and what's even more interesting is that there actually are even better methods that are not much more complex… and produce other things for the environment and for civilization in the process.

CONCLUSION

To sum things up: yes, the situation is serious, and "already bad enough" as Michael Mann put it (admittedly, he's been leaning into negative framing himself… but it can't be all positive, the problems of climate change really are dangerous, especially to the world's poor), and there's been a lot of environmental damage due to industries and rich consumers deliberately ignoring the externalities/knock-on effects of their resource use - but it's not nearly as horrifically bleak as some people presume. Right now there is great momentum behind climate action - which, yes, is partially propelled by increasingly hostile weather, but also by an understanding that social progress, democracy, and collective action are vital to build any form of a decent society, as well as by seeing new opportunities rise from cheaper renewable energy, better cities, and other innovations that will both stop climate change and make life actually worth living no matter where you might be. And in these conditions, throwing in the towel or surrendering to eco-austerity or even eco-fascist thinking is the worst possible action any one person can take. The green, sustainable, egalitarian future is not merely a dream or flight of fancy - it's eminently attainable if only we keep pushing for it and help eachother achieve it. But of course, there are people who stay up nights thinking how to take that future away from us, and now that climate change denial is no longer tenable, with more and more people believing their own eyes, the doomism and inactivism have become their primary, perhaps only, means of holding onto their power…

I hope this post will be helpful to people here who find themselves in the grip of doomism and hopelessness. I expect some people to disagree, but I prefer to believe the sources like the IPCC, IPBES, Climate Action Tracker, and all the climatologists behind these organizations' reporting - who've been closely watching both the worsening extreme weather from climate change, and the emergence of all the simple, usable, life-improving technologies and social practices to combat it. If we don't believe these people, then really, who can we believe? And if you do trust their reports on all the positive things being done and planned for environmental needs, it is not simply an idea that we can deal with climate change and restore, then protect our environment - it's objective reality, it's respectable science, and thus, it's good hard common sense.

More information: Doomsday Debunked (layman explanations and positive framing, also covering a ton of other "not actually the end of the world" topics for scared people), Carbon Brief (more technical and a bit less brazenly optimistic, but showing things like the absolutely crazy speed of renewable energy development), Not Just Bikes (an urbanist YouTube channel showing how cities can be improved, not made poorer, in the process of reducing fossil fuel use and car dependency).

[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

[nautiscarader]

Azure reunion - ch. 1

Disclaimer: All characters are aged-up,to match the theme of the story, and make Ash's endless journey a little more realistic. I haven;t seen anipoke for ages, so Bulbapedia, you are my only hope. Vulpix is the cutest Pokémon. The last thing has nothing to do with the story, it is just true, fight me irl.

(Ao3)

It was good to back on the road. Or rather, above it. Feeling wind in his hair, as he sat on his trusty old Pidgeot, Ash Ketchum felt as if he was 10 years old again, starting his great journey…

It hasn't been that long since he arrived back from Galar, with dozens of new Pokémon at his side and shiny trophy with his name. His mom thought he'd stay home longer, but deep down she knew he wasn't made to sit down and bask in glory, his relentless spirit could only have been contained for so long…

He watched as clouds moved next to, underneath and around him, obscuring the many roads and landmarks he has visited over the last decade or so. Flocks of wild Starlys and Pidgeys surrounded them as they flew over the mountain ridge separating Kanto and Johto, with the peak of the majestic Mount Silver being the only higher point visible.

"Pika!"

His partner tugged Ash's collar, prompting him to ask Pidgeot to lower the altitude and let Pikachu choose where to land. As the clouds dispersed, they were presented with vast, lush forests and dozens of lakes that dotted northern Johto, with its most recognisable one shining with the glow of the red, afternoon sun.

"Do you want go for a swim in a lake, bud?"

"Pika!", Pikachu replied.

"Okay then, looks like we'll be landing there."

Ash leaned forward and hugged his beloved starter as Pidgeot dived down, looking for a place to land. In the distance, far beyond the tree line, they could spot a few rustic buildings, with the only larger, more noticeable one being the Pokémon Center.

The large wings of Pidgeot flapped one more time before his claws touched the ground, allowing its passengers to safely unboard.

"Thanks, buddy", Ash nuzzled against Pidgeot's feathers. "Here, you deserve this, you flew half the continent."

He reached into his backpack, procuring a huge pile of choped berries, which Pidgeot began munching on immediately. Ash stretched his arms and walked towards the lake, marvelling at the colours of the sky reflecting in its surface.

…at least until a splash of water hit his face, nearly causing him to trip and fall.

"What the heck?", Ash looked around spotting the creature that splashed him. A rather bulky Azumarill puffed its cheeks, ready to hit the human again, but Ash's Pikachu was already on the case, jumping to protect him.

Azumarill evidently did not expect to find an electric mouse there, but it didn't give up, throwing mud at its foe to shield itself from its electricity.

"Oh, you think this will slow him down?", Ash smirked, "Use Electro Ball!"

Pikachu curved its tail and leaned forward, ready to tirn into a ball of lightning, his agile moves tossing any bit of ground and dirt sticking to its face. It rushed towards the mouse, but deliberately dodged its punch, surrounding it from the back in a swift distraction. With an upper paw, he began glowing and charged at the frightened Pokémon, watching as its fear-filled eyes got bigger and bigger until… they disappeared in a flash of light.

"Pika?!"

"No, return!"

A new voice caught their attention as Azumarill was returned to its owner's Pokéball, vcausing Pikachu to collide with Ash with tremendous force, making the two fall into lake with a far greater splash.

For quite a moment, Ash was confused as to what has happened, until the same voice brought him back to reality… but only just, as the familiar tone nearly made him fall again.

"Ash?!"

As his vision cleared up, he was greeted with wide-open,surprised blue eyes, and the red hair, matching the tone of the late afternoon sky.

"Misty?!"

"Pikachu-Pi!", Pikachu joined him, as the young woman reached her hand to help him get up.

For quite a while, Ash was rendered speechless, unable to gather thoughts racing his mind. She was quite possibly the last person he expected to find, and now she was towering over him, he could see how much-and how little at the same time has changed.

Her hair style was different; gone was the single ponytail, in favour of more symmetric haircut, though still far from the lush, opulent hairdos of her sisters. Her suspenders were gone too, though she kept her yellow-and-blue attire, complemented by a fisherman's jacket with dozen of pockets, one of which housed her Mega Ring, as well as other Pokéballs.

But Misty was in for far bigger surprise when she finally helped him get up and found out she could no longer stare down at him, her eyes levelled at his far more pronounced jawline, covered in subtlest of stubbles. And when she finally looked at him, words were stuck in her throat as well, when she realised how much her friend has grown, and how he differed from the image she has seen on TV.

With their eyes fixated at each other, the two youngsters were left in a silent stalemate, gathering words that could express their feelings and thoughts that have accumulated over the years.

"Misty…"

"Ash…"

Their lips came within inches from each other, their breaths mixing, as the two came closer and closer….

At least until Misty delivered a solid punch to his head.

"WHY DID YOU ATTACK MY AZUMARILL?"

"Me?", Ash countered, assuming hi own fighting stance "Why did he splash us?!"

"Pika!", Pikachu chimed in.

"Cos he was securing my fishing spot!", she pointed back, at the slightly obscured blanket and tent, togther with fishing supplies left on the ground.

"Oh, I guess that-that does make sense…"

The two stared at each other in disbelief before bursting into laughter, interrupted only by Misty welcoming back Pikachu that leapt into her arms.

"Hey there! Long time no see…"

"Yeah, it's been a while since Alola…", he scratched his head. "You-you look great…"

"Well you do not", she countered sternly, catching his attention, "You are soaked!".

"Yeah, you are right, we should…"

[novvaable]

Get to Know Me- Sims Edition

thank you @hurricanesims for the tag <33

sorry for taking so long to reply, for some reason it took me ages to actually answer these questions🤠

What's your favourite Sims death?

i hate when my sims die.. i can honestly say i’ve never forcefully killed any of my sims as I get so attached to them. in this case, id probably say death by old age.

Alpha CC or Maxis Match?

alpha! back when I used to play ts4 i gravitated towards maxis match.

Do you cheat your sims weight?

seems pointless to me lol

Do you use move objects?

yes!🫡🫡 impossible to build /decorate without it

Favourite Mod?

nrass master controller - it so universal and makes life a lot easier 🥺

First Expansion/Game Pack/Stuff Pack?

my first expansion was university life. it will forever have a special place in my heart, I love it so much

Do you pronounce live mode or aLIVE or LiVing?

never even thought about it honest, probably like alive??

whos your favourite sim that you've made?

my girlie marcie, she’s come so far with me so I just have a special kinda attachment to her lol

Have you made a simself?

no i think this would just make me miserable

Which is your favourite EA hair colour?

none. I always find the tones of ea hairs to just be a little off? i just use custom colours

Favourite EA hair?

well i dont use any EA hairs they look ugly I have default replacements hairs by maryjane

Favourite life stage?

young adult

are you a builder or are you in it for gameplay?

only recently have i been in it for the gameplay. but i use that phrase lightly. i wil forever be a builder at heart.

Are you a CC creator?

barely lol. sometimes i post occasional things for dl. my knowledge of cc making only scratches the surface. i can do the basics like make poses, and custom photos (alongside sims and builds - but who doesnt).

ive tried to get into cc making a couple of times but its so complicated? i have mad respect for cc makers in the community. ill leave that job to the professionals.

Do you have any Simblr friends or a Sim Squad?

back in my day... lol not so much anymore. after i took a fat hiatus a lot of the people i used to regularly talk with moved on.

@pixelevia is still my girlie. she doesnt post much, but we talk all the time off tumblr and regularly get each other excited about sims storylines that are yet to come to life lol.

Do you have any sims merch?

yes.. i am embarrassed to say that when ts4 was release i pre-ordered the deluxe version. it came with a mouse pad.. its long gone now. but i always remember it having a funky smell ??

also i dont wanna talk about the fact i paid an arm and a leg for ts4 (i dont even play it?!) and now its free. forever going to be salty over this fact.

How has your ''Sims Style'' changed throughout your years of playing?

i'd like to think it has! considering my blog is old, i feel like it has grown with me and that reflects in the style of my sims. recently ive been striving for a slightly more realistic looks to my sims

Whats your Origin ID?

i do have an origin id unfortunately. (is it stil even called that?)

i have a lot of opinions on this new ea app bs. but we wont go into that.

Who's your favourite CC creator?

everyone! honestly anyone who has the skills to be able to make beautiful and functional cc are brilliant.

but just to name a couple:

@rollo-rolls

@smallsimmer

@martassimsbook

@sourlemonsimblr

@satellite-sims

How long have you had simblr?

I had to check my email for this.. as of feb 2023, my blog turned 9 years old?! so I guess almost 10 years. (thats kind of mad)

How do you edit your pictures?

depends on the picture! usually for scenery pics I will just sharpen them and adjust the brightness / saturation / contrast.

for sim pics it really just depends on how bothered I can be.

I’ve recently made the change to gshade so that’s been doing all the heavy lifting for me.

I use hunnybee’s moon syrups preset <3

What expansion/ stuff pack is your favourite?

university life!! it was the it was the first expansion pack i got and so it holds a special place in my heart. its also a pretty awesome pack too.

tagged:

@satellite-sims / @smallsimmer / @pixelevia @kitty-pixelz

[lakelake-art]

My take on the regional electric rodent Pokémon

Moure - the mouse Pokémon

Sokpig - the livewire Pokémon

Mariontech - the cybernetic Pokémon 

keep reading to see old art of Moure and Sokpig, and some of the concept art from this morning of Mariontech’s design. (And me rambling)

Some of the old takes and previous redesigns of Moure and Sokpig. Both of these designs are around ten years old. Although they weren’t initially related. Moure was just a little doodle while taking notes. It’s in there somewhere.

And Sokpig looked completely differently. Apparently, I made it in 2011 (thank you young me for actually writing a date on something). As you might tell from the scribbled-out bits, Sokpig almost got called HockHodge.

Art from 2013-2015. I felt the designs of these two were similar enough for them to be in the same evolution line. Sokpig got some changes, but still looks overall the same.

I changed Sokpig’s design earlier this year (2022), to give it a more original look over the vaguely dog shaped creature look that a lot of my old fakemon designs had. Although the “Sok” in its name is supposed to represent “shock”, it made me think of sock puppets, which fits in with the controlled/puppetry theme of the line, combine that with wire and you get a goofy proportioned friend. Just be careful giving it a hug, those spines are exposed wiring!

----------------

Mariontech was an idea I came up with about two days ago while flipping through old files on my computer looking for stuff to redraw or redesign. I was thinking about Sokpig’s name, as mentioned above made me think of sock puppets. And a computer mouse is just a type of controller, putting the two together led to Mariontech’s initial conception.

Here are some of the concept sketches from this morning of me exploring ideas for Mariontech’s final design. Started out looking like a long sokpig with scifi marionette strings. I decided to move more simplistic towards the original concept that a computer mouse is a type of puppet and make it a sleek sci fi design. I also knew I wanted this final form to add the steel typing from the beginning, although during the process I almost considered experimenting with a psychic or ghost secondary typing.

Tried to push more for a tech look. This design kept making me think of turtles. I also felt it was a bit too long, even if it might be realistic of actual wiring. There was also a “wireless” version where I removed the wires, but I quickly scrapped that idea.

The antenna got removed when I started inking the final design. It didn’t fit in quite right and felt too antiquated next to the rest of the design (even if it makes it look really cute). Instead, I made one of the floaty bits longer to act as the receivers/strings of the design. I still feel like I could play with the concept behind Mariontech, and perhaps adjust some colors. But overall, I’m quite happy with it.

[beevean]

(Regarding the age removed) im also on the opinion that ages doesn't really mater much. We can easily tell the age group of certain characters like Vector or Cream based on the heights and other stuff.

It's no different than other cartoons characters like Mickey Mouse or The Simpsons, that doesn't bother me that much (althought its kind unexpected that Sonic Team did this after decades, it's like go from Yakuza to Like a Dragon)

PS : im curious to know what you mean on the age group operated on anime logic part.

so i'm not the only one bothered by yakuza suddenly being named like a dragon? lol

Nothing much to it, usually anime doesn't really care about ages and they don't bother being realistic about it. Just look at this 12 year old

Or this 16 year old girl who apparently's been the protagonist's teacher for 7 years... you do the math.

Makes the 18 year old super spy sound mundane, huh :P

[unlimitedhorsepower]

Tagged by: @thevoiceofthanatos​

Favorite color: warm bright yellow, mustard yellow & old gold, and just yellow in general. its a good colour. it makes me happy

Currently reading: idk, probably star trek fanfic my friend @rubbertplant​ was writing to give my opinion on it. i often read through my own stuff too lol, like whoah i wrote that??? ADHD has taken everything from me including my capability to read though, for real. ive been thinking of trying to listen to some audiobooks recently though, this cannot continue... its just that i also have no ears disease so idk how well that would go. determined to try though

Last song you listened to: havent been listening to music so much bc ive been playing videos instead but my last.fm has all my spotify listens so itll stay up to date on whatever i listened to last. currently seems to be “please play-bite” by pinocchioP. i often just let spotify play me whatever it recommends anyhow so theres variance. and i only started this account like a few months ago max so its not really a full picture of my music-listening

Last movie (in theaters): its not really a movie, but if it counts, the first ginga nagareboshi gin stageplay (recorded and released in finland in theaters with subs)

ginga was always huge in finland for some reason. idk. the anime is so violent though that i got really afraid of bears for some reason. theres so much blood... i never read the manga either i just knew of the anime and partook in my share of wolf roleplays (dogs were uncool! so i didnt do dog roleplays. iirc that really was my reason).

heres some funny wolves from my wolf rp days

2010. one of the first things i coloured digitally... i painstakingly cleaned the scanned pencil lineart with a mouse

2011. i had gotten my first drawing tablet as a birthday/xmas gift and practiced a ton around this time (more than just wolves lol)

Last series I watched: trigun stampede. even changed my phone bg into vash... but millions knives is probably my favourite. he just does everything wrong and makes his life worse. and everyone elses life too bc he sucks. but hes multifaceted so hes also my meow meow and whatever. i hope a ford explorer drives over him

if it counts though, ive seen some star trek TOS episodes and movies because my friends have been watching them. im not super into it but its always fun to hang. i also dont watch a lot of stuff. i dont even know what i do. guy who doesnt read or watch things but listens to jerma videos on youtube without actually looking at them while i “draw” and “write”

Craving: food honestly. i should cook something lmfao. i also want soda so bad but i dont have any. id make some tea but its disgustingly warm in my house so i only want cool drinks. could kill for a nice milkshake or a smoothie rn i think

Tea or coffee: tea... im the only finnish person who doesnt drink coffee for real. also got really into loose leaf tea bc i befriended a chinese lady who is really into tea and has a tea shop in the city near where i live

Currently working on: drawing this and trying to think how i want to do it. somehow want to incorporate flat colours and maybe shade his body naturally, and make the blood look realistic instead of flat colours... hmm not sure yet what i want to do

other than that im trying to proofread the chapter of my ryanyuri fanfic i already published because theres a lot of typos and strange sentences in there but its been a chore bc my body breaks down when it gets too warm smfh... not looking forward to when my apt goes over 30 degrees celsius it is unlivable. im also trying to complete a “lookbook” of my tnb sims. but i always start huge projects that take three million years to complete and im really slow lmfao

Tag people you’d like to get to know better: i could just ask these questions from everyone i talk on discord with. fuck my friends i know irl or otherwise, only asking people who r my friends through tumblr. no need to do this though. also this isnt probably meant to be answered so long-windedly... thats just me. i cant answer with one word i gotta write an essay. heres three tags though @basslinegrave​ @vita-divata​

(record scratch before 3rd tag) and @rubbertplant​ bc they were streaming a game in discord when i started typing this and i was like hey wanna do it and they were like yeah

i expect replies on my desk by 5pm TOMORROW!!!!get to work!!!! no i jest, do it or dont, i dont mind either way, just if you feel like doing this. if you see this and want to do it feel free to consider yourself tagged. godspeed

[tc-doherty]

Whumptober 2021

As it turns out I only completed 2 prompts last year so I'm just going to post them here LOL both of them are set in the Second Chances universe but not involving any characters from the main story.

@muddshadow if you’re curious!

Prompt: All Trussed up and Still Nowhere to Go/ Bound

Character: Bri

Word Count: 1,231

“Stay out of the woods.” That’s what his mother had always said to him, although Bri had never needed any warning to stay away from them. He knew better than anyone what lurked there.

And yet, here he had ended up anyway.

He tugged futilely at the ropes binding his wrists. The rough twine dug into his flesh, staining itself and the stone altar below him in splashes of crimson. He didn’t care, he could barely feel it. A little physical pain was the least of his worries right now.

“You’re special,” his mother had always said to him. “You have the ability to do great things, you have the ability to help people.”

When the elders had first come to him with this ‘request’, he had begged them to reconsider. He had never asked anything of anyone. That had been his first - and last, he resolved - attempt to rely on anyone. They had ignored him in any case. He had also never done anything to anyone, but they all thought he needed to be punished anyway. It wasn’t his fault that his mother had fallen in love with a god and abandoned her marriage. But she had escaped their critique and punishment by pining herself to death, and only he was left behind to bear the burden of sin for both of them.

“You’re different,” his mother had always said to him. “People fear what is different, that’s why you should try hard to be good, and never cause trouble for anyone.”

Until that moment, he had tried hard to follow her advice.

At that moment, he had fought back as best he could, one fifteen-year-old against multiple full-grown adults. There were bruises on his arms, the back of his neck, and also on his knees from when they forced him down. But much like the raw and shredded skin on his wrists, those were not what bothered him.

He was bound by more than ropes, there was also the spell.

He could feel it, almost like a living thing in and of itself. It had its claws in him, but it was ready to crawl out of him and swallow something else. He tried not to gag. Realistically, he knew that the spell had no physical form, but he couldn’t help feeling like it was choking him from the inside anyway. Perhaps sensitivity to magic was just some other dubious blessing bestowed on him by his mixed blood.

But the worst thing, the worst thing was the forest itself. Because there was something in the forest, and he could feel its presence in an evil miasma all around. In much the same way that a bird would not want to find itself trapped underground, and a mouse would not want to find itself adrift on an ice flow, Bri knew that this was not where he should be.

And the presence in the woods was only getting stronger, because that thing was getting closer.

Coming for him.

He should not be here, he should be running for his life, and he would be if it weren’t for the damn ropes, if he could only break them, if he could only-

“Well, well, well.”

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. There was nothing to see, no physical body, but Bri knew that it was there with him.

While before his mind had been consumed with thoughts of escape, now it went completely blank as a wave of terror washed over him. His heart pounded so fast he had brief thought that it might be trying to claw its way out of his chest altogether. It would save him a lot of trouble if it did.

But his reaction only served to amuse the creature.

“What a cute little rabbit you are,” it said, “I guess that makes me the wolf.”

Something touched his cheek and he jerked back instinctively, but he was bound too tightly to actually accomplish anything. His skin burned where it made contact, and its subsequent laughter made his bones ache.

“It’s been such a long time since any of the villages have left me a sacrifice, it’s so good to see that some people, at least, remember the old ways.”

He could see nothing, but he could feel clawed fingers trace their way down his throat and across his bare chest. Lines of pain trailed in their wake.

This was the thing that they wanted to trap in his body? No, he couldn’t. He would die, this thing was antithetical to him, to his very nature. It would kill him, it would kill both of them. Some small part of him that had not yet completely succumbed to panic reminded him cynically that that was the point. The only way to kill this thing was to give it a physical body, and by using his the village was doing nothing but killing two annoying, unwanted birds with one stone.

Assuming, of course, that he stayed alive long enough for the conditions of the spell to be met, so that this thing could be trapped. Right now, he wasn’t sure about the likelihood of that.

“Oh don’t cry,” it said. He hadn’t noticed, but its invisible hands brushed tears off of his cheeks. “I promise I can be quite an amusing host, we’ll certainly have plenty of fun together little rabbit.” It began laughing then, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

Bri was the son of a god, at least so everyone claimed. In a story he would’ve had something he could have used to protect himself. Magical powers, or perhaps miraculous strength. But he didn’t have anything like that. He was no different than any ordinary mortal child, and he knew that he was as helpless before this demon as he had been before the men who brought him here.

His mother had never given him any guidance for situations like this.

Bri closed his eyes.

That just made it worse, made him even more hyperaware of the malicious and predatory nature of the thing toying with him. He shuddered when something that could only have been a tongue lapped at the blood dripping down the length of his arm.

“They’ve been so accommodating, trussing you up like this,” said the demon. “But to be honest, rabbit, I don’t really like helpless prey. I’d rather play games with you.”

He did not see it cut through the rope binding his ankles, but he felt their sudden freedom and lashed out instinctively. His legs were caught before they could make contact.

“Patience, rabbit,” it chastised him. It sliced through the rope binding his wrists and Bri tumbled off the stone altar and into the snow below.

“What do you think, will you be able to make it to the edge of the forest before I catch you? Don’t worry, I’ll give you a head start.”

Bri didn’t bother with an answer. After several hours of being tied up in the cold, his body was stiff and awkward, but fortunately there was enough adrenaline to make up for that. He forced himself to his feet and fled.

He already knew, just as the demon must have, that there was no way he would escape. But if he didn’t try…

If he didn’t at least try…

It’s horrible laughter followed his stumbling progress through the woods.

Prompt: Talking is Overrated / Choking

Characters: Yrfan, Tarhir

Word Count: 910

Yrfan knew that Tarhir wasn’t the same person that he had been, that the quiet and sensitive young man he had devoted so many years of his life to had, motivated by fear of death, made choices he should not have, and meddled in things that he should not have meddled in, and as a result had changed. How could Yrfan not know that? They had spent over a decade in each other’s company by that point.

He knew, but he turned a blind eye to it.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have. Perhaps he should’ve left immediately. But emotions are the strongest chains of all, and it can be difficult to let go of something even if you know you should.

And, to be fair, Tarhir’s behavior towards him hadn’t changed that much. It was only his behavior towards other people. And yes, handling that kind of thing was Yrfan’s responsibility, and later he would certainly judge himself harshly for his inaction. But could he really be blamed for wanting to play pretend a little longer?

Perhaps.

If so, he was already receiving his punishment.

Yrfan could only let a single strangled noise of protest as the obedience spell carved into the collar around his neck leapt into life, cutting off his air supply and forcing him to the ground.

It went on longer than it should have.

At least, he thought so.

By the time he could breathe again his vision was dark and his thoughts were muddled.

“Why?” He managed, his voice hoarse.

Tarhir seemed to have no reaction to the whole thing. “There’s no point in letting you open your mouth if you’re only going to disagree with me all the time,” he said, and his voice was completely flat when he said it. As if it were obvious, or as if he were bored.

He was certainly not the person Yrfan once knew.

The fact that mages were forced to wear collars like this for this exact purpose had not bothered Yrfan before, at least not since he had started working for Tarhir. The fact that his ownership papers were in Tarhir’s hand had not bothered him, because Tarhir wasn’t the kind of person to abuse power. He wasn’t the kind of person who saw others as objects, or inferior.

At least, he hadn’t been.

The Tarhir of ten years ago had taken great pains to make Yrfan understand that regardless of the culture outside of the manor’s walls, within those walls he was a member of the family.

It was something that had taken Yrfan a long time to understand. And now it had vanished in the blink of an eye.

“This isn’t-”

The spell rose up again as soon as he began speaking, throttling him. Yrfan knew it was hopeless but he couldn’t help clawing at the collar as if he could do something to remove it, or stop it from enacting its only purpose.

It took all the energy had just to stay conscious, and when the restraint was removed he simply lay where he had fallen.

“All you ever do is chastise me,” Tarhir said. “All these years it’s only been ‘don’t do that’, 'that’s a bad idea’, 'it’s bad for your health’. I hate hearing those words from you. I don’t ever want to hear a don’t or can’t or shouldn’t from you again.”

“But I-”

The collar woke once again, leaving him coughing and gasping for breath on the floor.

“That’s another one,” said Tarhir. “Do you even have any other words in your vocabulary?”

Yrfan said nothing. He had been hired as Tarhir’s caretaker and personal healer, to make up for what his naturally frail body could not provide for itself. But Tarhir didn’t need that kind of help anymore, not since he had done…whatever it was he had done with that witch, and turned into this. How had things spiraled so far out of control?

He stayed down and massaged his throat, which ached as if he had swallowed scalding liquid.

Tarhir crouched next to him and gently pat his head, as if comforting a dog. “That’s better. Maybe you shouldn’t talk from now on. If you don’t talk, then I won’t get angry at you. You’re my favorite person after all, I hate being angry at you.”

Yrfan only nodded.

“Good, good,” Tarhir said. Yrfan hated hearing the smile in his voice, as if it were the old Tarhir. The one who had been friendly and open, who had found joy in everything and smiled all the time. “Well don’t lie around sulking too long, there’s a festival in the village square tonight and of course you’re going to escort me. I wouldn’t go with anyone else.”

Yrfan nodded again and Tarhir sprang to his feet. “I’ll wait for you downstairs! Remember, no talking, or you’ll spoil our evening.” He left the room humming.

It was only after he left that Yrfan climbed shakily to his feet. The skin around his collar was an angry red, as if it had physically choked him. He could heal that, but perhaps it would be better not to. Maybe, just maybe, if Tarhir saw the result of his actions, he would curb his own behavior.

Even as Yrfan thought it, he knew that it wouldn’t happen. Even so, he opened the door to their room and made his way to the common room of the inn. What else could he do?

[gertlushgaming]

Tram Simulator Urban Transit Review (Steam)

Tram Simulator Urban Transit Review, In this game, you take on the role of a tram driver and manager in Angel Shores, the North American-themed city from the popular bus simulator game Bus Simulator 21 Next Stop. Drive 6 unique tram models, each boasting its distinctive style, from cutting-edge, sleek trams to those with a classic, timeless charm through the lively city with its numerous sights. Transport passengers with your trams and drive them to the numerous stops. Plan your routes, carefully manage your timetables, and expand your tram network.

Tram Simulator Urban Transit Review Pros:

- Decent graphics. - 12.41GB download size. - Steam achievements. - Graphics settings - resolution, display mode, Nvidia DLSS, resolution scale, v-sync, HDR, overall graphics preset, shadow quality, effects, foliage, post-processing, mirror, motion blur, and view distance. - Advanced graphics settings - sharpening, 3rd person mode on foot, 1st person fov slider, 3rd person fov slider, triple monitor setup, and cockpit fov slider. - Character creator for body type, head, skin tone, hair, facial hair, hair color, and clothing. - Controller support. - You can remap controls for both the mouse/keyboard and the controller including the Invert axis and sensitivity sliders for the mouse and controller. - Tobii and Track IR support. - The game supports some wheels and other controls. - Driving physics can be set to realistic or simplified. - A driving school is optional and used to teach the many basics of the game. - A full 3D world with 360-degree camera control. - The cockpit shows marked buttons and nobs, a mini-map shows on the dashboard but also on the Hud in general. - When driving around you have to adhere to the speed limits and change the direction of the tramline. - Two views - Third and first person. - Old school computer software interface. - Nice looking locations. - Three difficulties - relaxation, simulation, and custom. - There are three locations with only one available initially. - It is possible to get out and walk around in the third-person and first-person views. - Three game modes - sandbox, story, and career. - You need to learn the procedure of indicating before and when leaving a stop, honking your horn accordingly, and doing general on-tram duties like checking tickets and using the ramps for disabled passengers. - It's a living world so you have to be wary of crossings etc. - Upgrade stops to increase Links and create more routes. - Can easily create your routes by clicking stops in order, then you can edit or drive them. - Earn money from driving passengers around and going to each stop. - A rear-view mirror helps with passengers getting on and off. - You can change the time and weather on the fly in a menu or set it to dynamic. - Fast travel is available to all hubs around the map. - Cash is earned from missions and passengers and used to buy new trams. - Six trams to buy and drive. - Highly detailed work on the trams. - Satisfying game loop once you get the game down. - Customizable trams from colors to decals and full tram wraps and you can rename them. Put advertisements on the tram to earn extra money and put a new layer of customisation on it. - You can do night routes which changes how much money you get etc. - The story mode has a structured set of objectives to move forward. Tram Simulator Urban Transit Review Cons: - Connects and wants to link the game to your Epic account? It's not mentioned but heads up. - So much to take in and remember. - You have to constantly change views just to see if passengers are all off or on and it's not very fluid or ideal in certain situations. - Managing the speed of the tram is not as simple as it should be and you constantly going up and down. - Many keyboard shortcuts to remember. - Following a route is not as smooth as it should be, when it's a congested amount of lines it can be hard to pick the right direction. - Some trams have a lot of buttons and switches that are nothing but showpieces. - No easy way to reset or quit a route. - The tutorial is ok but very long and winding missing out a few key bits here and there. - It is weird what mechanics they have gone deep into and the ones they have kind of skimmed on. An example is they have loads of customisation options but not a lot of in-tram interactions. - Pop-up happens a lot regardless of settings. - The AI traffic is a nightmare as they kamikaze into you or hit you whilst parked and the game still charges you. Related Post: GhostBusters Spirits Unleashed Ecto Edition Video Review Tram Simulator Urban Transit: Official website. Developer: stillalive Studios Publisher: astragon Store Links - Steam Read the full article

[nitrosodiumofficialuses]

Toxic Waters Lite: The Gimmick Weapon (Part 2)

I was going to type this up yesterday on my phone, but I decided not to risk my carpal tunnel. Anyway, we now have two more contenders, the acid gun and the biological weapon (i'll be calling it the bio-gun).

The acid gun, I planned to bridge the gap between a flamethrower and an explosive weapon. It'd fire a ball of green goo with a projectile arc, leaving a puddle which would poison enemies who walk through it. Mechanically, it's not too different to a grenade launcher, but I had an idea for a secondary ability - acid can melt coral tiles. My idea was you to go through The Last Of Us-esque infested areas, where you can go the intended route, or melt yourself a new path. This is cool, but with the limited aiming of TWL, accurately melting a path would be difficult. If Nicolas is two tiles tall, and he fires his guns from his waist, it would be difficult to properly make a path that you could walk through. From the player's perspective, it makes the coral-melting ability seem more like a fun addition to the world, rather than an intended feature, relegating it to a gimmick of the tool or a speedrunning strategy akin to Tau jumps in Half Life. For level design, this then means you either put loot in melt-only areas and starve players of resources they don't know how to reach, or disincentivise coral-melting by not hiding any loot there, which means players won't use the acid gun for its secondary feature. If TWL had mouse aiming, or was 3D, an acid gun like this could work wonders, but for our purposes, it would just be a downgraded grenade launcher with some weird mechanics.

Finally, the bio-gun. In old Toxic Waters documents and concept art from 2020 and 2021, a weapon is referenced called the "U.L.F." or Ultimate Life Form, a living tool with various functions, including spraying infectious goo, launching an egg grenade, and firing poisonous barbs. It would "reload" by feasting on corpses, both human and mutant. This is mostly lifted from Half Life's hornet gun or "hivehand", and the term "biological weapon" can be expanded on as well. On one hand, grabbing a squirming cuttlefish-like mutant from its tank and using it like a toxic squirt gun is cool, but the actual mechanics of a weapon like this is curious. Firstly, let's look at the "Functionality Triangle" I created for the enemies of TWL: is it a cool idea, does it work in the setting, and does it work in the game? The bio-gun passes the first two easily, weaponizing mutant fish is cool and 100% in line with Hydromorph, but how would it function in game? Most venomous aquatic creatures spread their venom via contact, i.e. stonefish and blue-ringed octopus. There isn't really a creature I know of that spits its venom like that, much less underwater, which does beg the question of how long your tentacled wonder-weapon will last out of its natural habitat. The "eat to reload" feature is so unique and awesome, really an extrapolation of similar reloading animations in Half Life (i.e. feeding the Spore Launcher moss for it to regurgitate at enemies) and creates a realistic way you would "reload" a weapon like this, short of throwing it away and grabbing another when it runs dry like a Halo plasma weapon. One thought I did have was a long tubular coral, mounted on your shoulder like a rocket launcher and ejecting a suicidal, explosive fish not unlike the Crashfish of Subnautica. If not a weapon, a similar "coral mortar" would be found in infested areas, growing near to squirming, clicking masses of Snapsprouts.

Given each of these options a feasibility study, it seems clear to me that the Bio-Mine Launcher will be the one I port to TWL. The Harpoon Gun was a tennis racket at a football game, the Riot Gun was an extendable hand with limited uses, the Acid Gun was a booby-trap with a redundant floor-melting function, and the Bio-Gun was a cool idea but a bad weapon. When I go to college tomorrow, the next thing on the itinerary will be creating the touchscreen save points, and perhaps some more animations for Nicolas pertaining to his other guns (shotgun and bio-mine).

[thebuttsmcgee]

[fairytaleliving]

Vtuber! Yuu

Hello after I thought of Vtuber Yuu more ideas popped into my head so use whatever you’d like lkdfhsd

okay for those who don’t know, vtubers have lore that goes along with their avatars (vox akuma being a demon, iron mouse being literal satan, etc)

and knowing twisted wonderland, there’s so much lore fodder that could be added

and since twst wouldn’t be a game, yuu would have so much material to use

nobody can even call them out on their shit bc the only person who knows abt twisted wonderland is yuu themself so they have all the creative liberties

i know that i joked that yuu would use malleus as an avatar, but let’s be honest all of them are prime vtuber ideas

mysterious king of the faes, malleus draconia? 

sunshine and friendly, kalim al-asim? 

mischievious and tricky, ruggie bucchi?

 unpredicable eel merman, floyd leech?

 shy otaku fire boy, idia shroud? 

pretty but short tempered, epel felmier? 

rational yet playful, trey clover?

lets be honest you simps the characters are one of the reasons you play this god damn game

everyoner has a type and there are 22 characters to choose from as a favorite like come on

prime claps fucking claps vtuber claps lore

Vtuber Artist: omg you’re so detailed and this design looks so realistic

Yuu, sending a candid photo they took with one of their friends:i have a very big imagination :D

if anything ppl would just think yuu was just a big disney fan lmao

like yuu talks disney and vaguely talks abt how similar it is with twisted wonderland and lets pretend theres no possibility of yuu getting sued by disney

OH MY GOD YUU WOULD HAVE THEIR OWN GRIM WITH THEIR “DESIGN”

grim doesnt say anything he just vibes on yuu’s shoulder or head

yuu wouldn’t have any personal info told by the students bc they’re not an asshole and made a promise but that wouldn’t stop them from mixing truth and fiction

like not the trauma or the reasons for the overblots

but cmon lets be honest theres so much clownery and personality each person has is a gold mine

yuu’s lore video would just be nrc shenanigans mixed with what yuu themself has experienced at twst

like seriously you’ve seen those out of context tweets, explaining shit abt twst wonderland to someone who doesnt know anything would be a wild ride

the fact yuu gets isekaied into a magical college and appears in a coffin of all things is crazy in it of itself

he could also be like fulgur ovid and pretend hes just using an old dnd character as an avatar

and since yuu is just friends with everyone, they probably have everyone’s personality down to a T

yuu is the campus therapist they kinda have to know whether they like it or not

tell me yuu would’ve exaggerate ace’s personality bc they’re petty

yuu name drops each person and twisted wonderland itself but nobody believes them bc they all think its a part of the lore

Viewer tweeting:wow twisted wonderland has such a cool atmosphere and they seem like they actually lived through this

Yuu, having flashbacks of whatever the fuck they did at nrc:...bestie you have no fucking idea-

yuu is friends with ace so they definitely have good voice impressions under their belt as well

yuu creates a crowley hate club amongst their fans bc of how much they complain and they have no regrets about it

no matter what dimension, yuu will always rant abt how much abt how much of an asshole he is

yuu describes Night Raven College and the dorms and ppl designate each other to each dorm

Viewer A: I think I would fit in with Octavinelle! Azul and the tweels look like they would be so much fun to hang out with

Viewer B: Pomefiere sounds so regal and I would love to have a beauty lesson from VIl!

Yuu, remembering the time Floyd threatened another student and Vil scold Epel for the nth time abt his manners:...well you see-

someone has probably made fanart abt nrc thats eerily close to how the boys looks like and the dorms that yuu has to take a minute to contemplate everything

if the other twst boys find out it would be so entertaining

yuu wouldn’t hide the fact, but they wouldn’t admit to it either

yuu would be probably be giving them a tour of the real world when someone walks up to and says that theyre a dedicated cosplayer and yuu has to drag everyone away and explain lmao

idia probably watches vtubers so he would think the idea was cool

he would probably pass out bc of how popular his character would be if yuu decides to use him as a avatar

he would probably stream with yuu with the slight stress of trying not to refer to yuu as yuu and as a student he probably hasn’t interacted with-

azul would be impressed by the grind, especially if yuu gets paid for it

malleus would be confused yet flattered?????

vil would love or hate it depending on how well the artist drew his likeliness but wouldnt dm the artist abt it bc hes not an asshole bc you should respect artists for their works you fucking fools

the man doesnt understand technology but hey ppl like him and loves that yuu thought he was memorable enough to make a character for him to play

lilia probably thinks its fucking hilarious

like of course yuu would be the only person to do this type of shit

he would probably even encourage yuu to start their own vtuber streaming in twisted wonderland

but with a new avatar bc these are real ppl with reputations to use-

cater is proud and wants to know the secrets on how yuu became popular

would’ve considered making his own if he wanted to

all in all they’d either be: confused, concerned, impressed, amused, embarrassed, or all of the above

yuu would probably get more self conscious if the others end up watching lmao

ok im done back to watching vox recite the entire of fnaf lore